The nature of religious experience

• Types of visions

  Corporeal

  Imaginative

  Intellectual
• Visions

  categorised by St Augustine
• Corporal visions

  empirical, experienced through a physical sense
• Example of corporal visions


  • Joan of Arc
  • Bernadette Soubirous
• Imaginative visions


  Mediated through the mind's eye
• Examples of imaginative visions

  Joseph's dream
• Intellectual visions

  no visual image, experience illuminates the soul
• Example of intellectual visions

  Teresa of Avila
• Numinous experience

  Rudolf Otto's term for describing an encounter with "the Holy"; it is characterized by the two powerful and contending forces, mysterium tremendum and fascinans.
• example of numinous experience


  Isaiah's vision
• Mysterium


  • something removed from humanity
  • can be experienced, not understood
  • elicits awe and wonder
• Tremendum


  feeling of peculiar dread and awe
• Fascinans


  • creates desire for a relationship with the being, despite fear
  • creates awareness for salvation
• Numinous

  relating to the power or presence of a deity
• Supernatural


  beyond normal forces of nature
• Immaculate conception

  The belief that Jesus was conceived without Original Sin
• Imaginative vision


  Vision seen in the mind, usually through a dream experience
• Illumination

  cast light, doctrine or illumination holds (for example) the Holy Spirit illuminated their minds with the truth.
• Biblical account of religious experience

  Saul of Tarsus

  • going to persecute christians
  • meets Jesus
  • converts to christianity
• key thinkers

  • william james
  • rudolf otto
  • walter terrrence stace
  • michael. A. persinger
  • richard swinburne
• william james

  1842-1910

  • object of mystical experience is union with God
  • religious experiences are primary
  • organised religion is secondary