Numinous Experience Notes

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What is a Numinous Experience?

The word 'numinous' comes from the Latin word 'numen', which means 'to bow the head.'

Numinous experiences are experiences of awe and wonder in the presence of an almighty God.

It is an awareness that humans are nothing in comparison to such a holy being. Therefore, in numinous experiences, the person feels as though there is nothing greater than what they are experiencing.

Numinous experiences are the most common type of religious experience.

Numinous experiences make us want to find out more about God.

External links:

https://prezi.com/_mrqtnrka2q8/numinous-experiences/

http://revisionworld.com/a2-level-level-revision/religious-studies/philosophy-religion/religious-exp...

Scepticism

What is great to me, may not be great to you. We all experience feelings of awe by different things.

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Examples of Numinous Experiences

The prophet Isaiah records a numinous experience in Isaiah 6:3-5.

3 And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;

the whole earth is full of his glory.”

4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King,the Lord Almighty.”

The temple filling with smoke could be from a fire or volcanic eruption.

Remarking that he is 'a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips', Isaiah means that he is living among people who have doubted and not believed, and so he needed to have this experience to realise that he needs to submit to God.

Philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662) wrote:

"From about half past ten in the evening until half past midnight, Fire! ... God of Abraham, God of Issac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars. Certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ... Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy... I have cut myself off from him, shunned him, denied him, crucified him. Let me never be cut off from him! Sweet and total renunciation. Total submission to Jesus Christ and my director."

The description of fire shows the presence of God.

Pascal is calling for God's help and realising that he needs to submit.

Mother Julian of Norwich:

She was a religious recluse who wished at 30 years old to be extremely ill, near to the point of drying without actually dying, so she could have the last rights and be cleansed by the mercy of God and live on to lead a more sacred life. This happened and at the end, when she got better, she received visions and revelations and this enables her to lead a life totally dedicated to God.

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Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 - 1834)

Friedrich Schleiermacher was a liberal, German theologian, who was well known for tackling the theological problems caused by the enlightenment.

Schleiermacher agreed with Otto in that he argued that religious experiences are primarily emotional.

These emotions are deeper than reason, and it is ‘self-authenticating', which means they do not require testing to see if it is genuine.

He argued that these experiences are not numinous, but instead an awareness of a dependence on a ‘source of power that is distinct from the world’ that is at the heart of religion and that everyone has an awareness of the divine.

Criticism

There is too much emphasis on the subjective, reducing religion to emotion and removing the possibility of showing that religious claims are based on fact.

Some critics argue that there has to be the possibility of testing experiences again the Bible/Church doctrines, otherwise any experience would count (even those caused by drug induced hallucinations or mental illness).

Research by Prof. VS Ramachandran (University of California) discovered that heightened activity in the temporal lobe of the brain floods all senses with over whelming emotional experience similar to the account by believers of numinous experiences.

Aquinas argued that we can never really understand God, which means that it is difficult to know if religious experiences are numinous or not.

AJ Ayer said that it is impossible to verify the existence of God because religious experiences are unverifiable and thus it is unreasonable to believe them.

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Rudolf Otto (1869 - 1937)

Otto was a Protestant theologian who wanted to identify what it was about a religious experience that made it religious, instead of just an experience.

He also wanted to show that it was fundamental to religion that individuals should have a sense of a personal encounter with the divine.

Otto was inspired by Schleiermacher's ideas.

In The Idea of Holy, Otto argued that all religious experiences were numinous in nature; "It is an experience of being acted upon by something outside of ourselves, a 'Wholly other.' It makes us aware that we are creatures of an almighty God. This contrasts with a 'mystical experience' which tends to seek the unity of all things."

Otto outlined three key criteria which makes something a religious experience;

mysterium - there must be a mystery to the experience – such as being felt but unable to be described

tremendum - awe inspiring terror, almost a sense of dread in the presence of an overwhelming being

fascinans – being drawn into the experience with a strange fascination

These experiences provide a reference point. From then on, believers interpret the world through the experience and the beliefs attached to it. Ideas about God may be developed when believers reflect upon their experiences, but ultimately, an encounter with God is completely inexpressible.

Ordinary language cannot do justice to religious experience, because it is an experience beyond normal sense-experience.

Religious language is a ‘schema’ – an attempt to find clusters of words which approach the idea of expressing an inexpressible idea.

The numinous experience is key to understanding the spirituality of many religions. Otto claimed that 'there is no religion in which it does not live as the innermost core of and without it no religion would be worthy of the name.'

Otto was greatly influenced by the work of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Kant's Moral Argument

Otto recognised that God cannot be known through sensory experience or logical argument.

For Otto, God is ‘wholly other’ – completely different and distinct to humans. Humans are not able to know God unless he chooses to reveal himself. Thus, when we do experience God, he has chosen to reveal himself to us, so Otto described all religious experiences as numinous by nature. The numinous experience is where God reveals himself and his revelation is felt on an emotional level.

Otto implies that numinous experience is a ‘once and for all’ experience – which implies there can be no further experience.

Rudolph Otto and C.S. Lewis

The Idea of the Holy by the Lutheran phenomenologist Rudolph Otto is profoundly influenced C. S. Lewis, who writes about it in Surprised by Joy.

Otto coined the term “numinous” to designate the non-rational part of religious experience. By it, he meant the blissful exultation one experiences when contemplating the divine. Lewis describes such an experience in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when he relates how the Pevensie children reacted when Mr. Beaver told them that Aslan was on the move: “At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in his inside.”

None of the children knew who Aslan was . . . but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning . . . so beautiful that you remember it all your life.

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Criticism

Otto claims that knowledge and understanding of God comes from reflecting upon numinous experiences. What about people who believe without such an experience?

To suggest that all religious experiences are numinous is limiting as other forms are so well documented.

Otto's argument is confusing, as he seems to say that knowledge of God comes from experience, as he states that the experiences come from the 'deepest cognitive apprehension.' However, he also states that the theological ideas come after the experience.