Religious Experiences
AQA Requirements:
1. Visions: corporeal, imaginative and intellectual
2. Numinous experiences: Otto, an apprehension of the wholly other
3. Mystical experiences: William James; non sensuous and non-intellectual union with the divine
as presented by Walter Stace
4. The challenges of verifying religious experiences
5. The challenges to religious experience from science
6. Religious responses to those challenges
7. Swinburne’s principles of credulity and testimony
8. The influence of religious experiences and their value for religious faith
Key Intro Points:
• Religious experiences come in a seemingly infinite variety and there is not doubt that they can be
life changing.
• 1 in 4 people will have an experience they describe as ‘religious’ ‘mystical’ or ‘spiritual.’
• “A religious experience involves some kind of perception of the invisible world, or a perception
that some visible person or thing is a manifestation on the invisible world.” - Ninian Smart.
• Mystical experiences - used to describe experience of direct contact or oneness with God or ulti-
mate reality.
• Numinous experiences - experiences of awe and wonder in the presence of God.
• Visions - e.g. Muhammad’s vision in the Night of Power/St Teresa’s visions.
• Direct religious experiences - refers to cases where a person encounters God in a direct way.
• Indirect religious experiences - refer to experiences in which the mind of the individual focuses
on God.
1. Visions: corporeal, imaginative and intellectual
Corporeal Visions
• Are a form of empirical religious experience - via your senses.
• Empirical experiences are those which we have through our five senses.
• One of the most common forms of religious experiences is that of seeing God through nature -
glory of a beautiful sunset. - Indirect religious experience.
• Corporeal vision comes through physical sense of sight - experiencer sees a supernatural (be-
yond the normal forces of nature) vision of an object that is really present - the object is seen in
the same way you would see any normal object such as a chair.
• Joan of Arc - claimed to experience these visions - from age 12 experienced visions of angels
and saints accompanied by voices which told her to bring renewal to French nation.
Imaginative Visions
• While someones experiences corporeal visions can to some extent interact with what is see and
heard (as with Joan of Arc), in imaginative visions the experiencer has no power to direct the ex-
perience, as the sign that it comes from God.
• The experience is given to the experiencer without being perceived by the normal process of
sight.
• Imaginative visions often occur in dreams, where the experience is seen or imagined with eh ‘eye
of the mind’ and what is seen as completely beyond the individuals control.
• Examples:
- Pharaoh’s dream (Genesis 41) - the Egyptian Pharaoh receives two powerful dream
visions that he cannot interpret: in first - seven thin cows devour seven fat cows, the
second - seven withered ears of grain devour seven fat ears. He cannot interpret the
dreams but a Hebrew prisoner (Joseph) tells the Pharaoh that the vision is a warning
from God that seven years of plenty will be followed by seven years of famine, the im-
portance is to store surplus grain.
- The Pharaoh’s dream experience was beyond his control and seen with the
eye of the mind.
AQA Requirements:
1. Visions: corporeal, imaginative and intellectual
2. Numinous experiences: Otto, an apprehension of the wholly other
3. Mystical experiences: William James; non sensuous and non-intellectual union with the divine
as presented by Walter Stace
4. The challenges of verifying religious experiences
5. The challenges to religious experience from science
6. Religious responses to those challenges
7. Swinburne’s principles of credulity and testimony
8. The influence of religious experiences and their value for religious faith
Key Intro Points:
• Religious experiences come in a seemingly infinite variety and there is not doubt that they can be
life changing.
• 1 in 4 people will have an experience they describe as ‘religious’ ‘mystical’ or ‘spiritual.’
• “A religious experience involves some kind of perception of the invisible world, or a perception
that some visible person or thing is a manifestation on the invisible world.” - Ninian Smart.
• Mystical experiences - used to describe experience of direct contact or oneness with God or ulti-
mate reality.
• Numinous experiences - experiences of awe and wonder in the presence of God.
• Visions - e.g. Muhammad’s vision in the Night of Power/St Teresa’s visions.
• Direct religious experiences - refers to cases where a person encounters God in a direct way.
• Indirect religious experiences - refer to experiences in which the mind of the individual focuses
on God.
1. Visions: corporeal, imaginative and intellectual
Corporeal Visions
• Are a form of empirical religious experience - via your senses.
• Empirical experiences are those which we have through our five senses.
• One of the most common forms of religious experiences is that of seeing God through nature -
glory of a beautiful sunset. - Indirect religious experience.
• Corporeal vision comes through physical sense of sight - experiencer sees a supernatural (be-
yond the normal forces of nature) vision of an object that is really present - the object is seen in
the same way you would see any normal object such as a chair.
• Joan of Arc - claimed to experience these visions - from age 12 experienced visions of angels
and saints accompanied by voices which told her to bring renewal to French nation.
Imaginative Visions
• While someones experiences corporeal visions can to some extent interact with what is see and
heard (as with Joan of Arc), in imaginative visions the experiencer has no power to direct the ex-
perience, as the sign that it comes from God.
• The experience is given to the experiencer without being perceived by the normal process of
sight.
• Imaginative visions often occur in dreams, where the experience is seen or imagined with eh ‘eye
of the mind’ and what is seen as completely beyond the individuals control.
• Examples:
- Pharaoh’s dream (Genesis 41) - the Egyptian Pharaoh receives two powerful dream
visions that he cannot interpret: in first - seven thin cows devour seven fat cows, the
second - seven withered ears of grain devour seven fat ears. He cannot interpret the
dreams but a Hebrew prisoner (Joseph) tells the Pharaoh that the vision is a warning
from God that seven years of plenty will be followed by seven years of famine, the im-
portance is to store surplus grain.
- The Pharaoh’s dream experience was beyond his control and seen with the
eye of the mind.
