Contextualizing the term 'religious experience' in theological discourse

Abstract

In this paper, rather than taking 'religious experience' as a defined and well established term or category, we shall focus on that which makes an experience 'religious' or 'theological'. In this context, the term 'religious experience' will be taken to mean awareness of God's presence and activity, which will avoid the danger of an imaginary vision or doctrine of God, on the basis that any act of the imagination that creates an inner sense of awe, joy, etc. can be traced back to this divine presence and activity. The core of such religious experience is constructed by God via these realms, i.e. God acts in human thought through His presence and activity. This is the context in which we use the term 'religious experience' as opposed to any product of the imagination independent of this experienced realm. In our attempt to graft experience into theology, we are not attempting to reduce theology completely to experience, but rather we intend to give experience a theological meaning. Theology cannot justifiably be reduced completely to individual experiences, for this would eventually create a closed universe with no window through which the observer may look beyond himself and the universe he observes. This purely physical ontology has nothing to do with theology, which longs to consider every observed phenomenon as a clue to a divine reality (sign/āya) which may be seen beyond it.