Knowledge via Religious Experience
Douglas Wilson
[
Faith & Reason
]
When I said that Jesus is good for the world because he
is the life of the world, you just tossed this away. You said, "You
cannot possibly 'know' this. Nor can you present any evidence for it." Actually,
I believe I can present evidence for what I know. But evidence comes to
us like food, and that is why we say grace over it. And we are supposed
to
eat it, not push it around on the plate—and if we don't give
thanks, it never tastes right. But here is some evidence for you, in no
particular order. The engineering that went into ankles. The taste of
beer. That Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, just like he
said. A woman's neck. Bees fooling around in the flower bed. The
ability of acorns to manufacture enormous oaks out of stuff they find
in the air and dirt. Forgiveness of sin. Storms out of the North, the
kind with lightning. Joyous laughter (diaphragm spasms to the atheistic
materialist). The ocean at night with a full moon. Delta blues. The
peacock that lives in my yard. Sunrise, in color. Baptizing babies. The
pleasure of sneezing. Eye contact. Having your feet removed from the
miry clay, and established forever on the rock. You may say none of
this tastes right to you. But suppose you were to bow your head and say
grace over all of it. Try it that way.
Source > "Is Christianity Good for the World?",
Christianity Today debate between Douglas Wilson and Christopher Hitchens. (May, 2007)
(305 reads)
William P. Alston
Alston notes two pillars that he believes, in tandem, support theistic belief: the general consideration of natural theology and the experience of God. For Alston, the latter bears the greater weight and he goes on to explore how such experience contributes appropriate epistemic support to theism.
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(3770 words)
Jonah Goldberg
So let me answer the question even though I find it distasteful. Yes, I believe in God. But I suppose I would emphasize my belief that He is a mysterious God — a very mysterious God — and that the best way we have to understand Him is through metaphors which we will, and almost always should, find wanting. God may be able to make a boulder too heavy for Him to lift, but even He couldn't do better than "I am that I am."/ "I am Who am." Or He could, but we wouldn't understand it.
Source > "The Big Questions", in
The National Review, (December 02, 2004) (234 reads)
Gordon Kaufman
The central problem of theological discourse, not shared with any other "language game," is the meaning of the term "God." "God" raises special problems of meaning because it is a noun which by definition refers to a reality transcendent of, and thus not locatable within, experience. A new convert may wish to refer the "warm feeling" in his heart to God, but God is hardly to be identified with this emotion; the biblicist may regard the Bible as God's Word; the moralist may believe God speaks through men's consciences; the churchman may believe God is present among his people?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùbut each of these would agree that God himself transcends the locus referred to. As the Creator or Source of all that is, God is not to be identified with any particular finite reality; as the proper object of ultimate loyalty or faith, God is to be distinguished from every proximate or penultimate value or being. But if absolutely nothing within our experience can be directly identified as that to which the term "God" properly refers, what meaning does or can the word have?
Source > God the Problem, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 7. (232 reads)
John Locke
The great obstinacy that is to be found in men firmly believing quite contrary opinions, though many times equally absurd, in the various religions of mankind, are as evident a proof as they are an unavoidable consequence of this way of reasoning from received traditional principles. So that men will disbelieve their own eyes, renounce the evidence of their senses, and give their own experience the lie, rather than admit of anything disagreeing with these sacred tenets.
Source > An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Alexander Fraser (New York: Dover, 1959), IV, xx, 10, p. 450. (229 reads)
John Calvin
For how can the human mind measure off the measureless essence of God according to its own little measure, a mind as yet unable to establish for certain the nature of the sun's body, though men's eyes daily gaze upon it? Let us then willingly leave to God the knowledge of himself... But we shall be "leaving it to him" if we conceive him to be as he reveals himself to us, without inquiring about him elsewhere than from his Word.
Source > Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. Ford Lewis Battles and ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), I, xiii, 1, p. 146. (244 reads)
