Religious Experience and Transcendence
Religious Studies June 1, 1979 DOI: 10.1017/s0034412500011331 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that claims about God's transcendence must be grounded in experience to be credible, and proposes examining whether religious experience motivates attributing transcendence to God and what conditions in our experienced world would justify a theory of transcendence. |
Abstract
Someone may ask what the reasons are for putting religious experience and transcendence together. My answer is the following. My general philosophical position is empirical by nature. I am of the opinion that everything that is said about reality must in some way or other, in order to be true or probable, be related to or grounded in reality. If God is thought to be real in some sense of the word and if he is said to have the quality of being transcendent, there must be some sort of empirical reasons for it. Experience is generally - at least in its objective variant - a usual way of motivating propositions about reality. There is therefore reason to ask: Is there anything in religious experience that motivates giving God the predicate of transcendence? And on the other hand: What conditions would there have to be in our world of experience to justify a consideration of a theory of Transcendence?