Religious Experience And The Creation Of Scripture

Mark Wreford examines the reasons that prompted the New Testament writers to create the texts which would become the formation of the Christian religion, exploring the possibility that certain religious experiences were understood as revelatory, and consequently inspired the writing of texts which were seen as special from their inception. Wreford uses Luke-Acts and Galatians as test-cases within the New Testament, reflecting both on the stated importance of religious experiences – whether the author's own or others' – to the development of these texts, and the status the texts claim for themselves. Wreford suggests that Luke-Acts offers a helpful example of the relationship between religious experience and the creation of Scripture, as an extensive narrative which reflects on early Christian claims to Spirit-inspired witness and which begins with an explicit authorial statement of purpose. Similarly, in Galatians, Paul's autobiographical account of God's revelation of Christ to him is the foundation of a letter that is intended to play an authoritative role in shaping its addressees' own faith and practice. Wreford argues that religious experiences are presented as the driving force behind the creation of the texts, examining how such religious experience links with notions of scripture and canonicity. He then asserts that both Luke and Paul understood themselves to be creating new scriptural writings on the basis of their relationship to new religious experiences, citing the experience and speech at Pentecost, the inclusion of gentiles in the experience, and Paul's own conversion experience as key elements behind the self-understanding of these New Testament authors.

This collection of essays continues the investigation of religious experience in early Judaism and early Christianity begun in Experientia, Volume 1, by addressing one of the traditional objections to the study of experience in antiquity. The authors address the relationship between the surviving evidence, which is textual, and the religious experiences that precede or ensue from those texts. Drawing on insights from anthropology, sociology, social memory theory, neuroscience, and cognitive science, they explore a range of religious phenomena including worship, the act of public reading, ritual, ecstasy, mystical ascent, and the transformation of gender and of emotions. Through careful and theoretically informed work, the authors demonstrate the possibility of moving from written documents to assess the lived experiences that are linked to them. The contributors are István Czachesz, Frances Flannery, Robin Griffith-Jones, Angela Kim Harkins, Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, John R. Levison, Carol A. Newsom, Rollin A. Ramsaran, Colleen Shantz, Leif E. Vaage, and Rodney A. Werline.

Today most people feel less interested in religion and more interested in spirituality. If you ask what they mean, they will tell you that organized religion tends to turn them off, but, nonetheless, they feel a hunger in the heart that they cannot seem to fill. They do not mean that they would rather have disorganized religion; they mean that institutional religion does not seem to satisfy their spirits and feel there must be something more, some better way of experiencing whatever that is for which they are hungry. Much new experimentation is going on as a result. Some of it is a search for the meaning to fill the soul and satisfy the spirit; much of it is a search for meaning on the spiritual level itself. Spirituality reaches always toward the question about the meaning of God, the meaning of relationships with others, the meaning of intimacy, and the meaning of soul gratifying insights into truth. Here, Ellens carefully and sensitively explores the full range of our spiritual natures and the variety of spiritual experiences of which we are capable, describing the way our souls and psyches work in our hunger and thirst for meaning. He explains in an enlightening and unconventional way why and how every human desires to reflect upon, learn, and share a heartfelt experience of God and of others. Readers will find in this book a description of the meaning of the biblical stories about spiritual experiences in addition to descriptions of the kinds of spiritual experiences that ordinary people are having, how they are achieving them, and the ways in which they are filling their lives with meaning that goes beyond the horizons of material life. The author paints this picture in such a way as to let us in on what biblically based authentic spirituality and spiritual experience really is, and why it may or may not necessarily have anything to do with traditional institutionalized religion. He carefully and vividly explains the notion of spirituality as it is illustrated in the Bible and discusses spiritual experiences such as prayer, epiphany, visions, and other experiences. He considers whether spirituality is mainly a connection with God, with others, or with both. Readers hoping to get a better sense of what it means to be spiritual will have many of their questions answered in these pages.

For many Christians, personal experiences of God provide an important ground or justification for accepting the truth of the gospel. But we are sometimes mistaken about our experiences, and followers of other religions also provide impressive testimonies to support their religious beliefs. This book explores from a philosophical and theological perspective the viability of divine encounters as support for belief in God, arguing that some religious experiences can be accepted as genuine experiences of God and can provide evidence for Christian beliefs.

In this fascinating book James D. G. Dunn explores the nature of the religious experiences that were at the forefront of emerging Christianity. Dunn first looks at the religious experience of Jesus, focusing especially on his experience of God in terms of his sense of sonship and his consciousness of the Spirit. He also considers the question of whether Jesus was a charismatic. Next Dunn examines the religious experiences of the earliest Christian communities, especially the resurrection appearances, Pentecost, and the signs and wonders recounted by Luke. Finally Dunn explores the religious experiences that make Paul so influential and that subsequently shaped Pauline Christianity and the religious life of his churches. The result is a thorough and stimulating study that not only recovers the religious experiences of Jesus and the early church but also has important implications for our experiences of the Spirit today

God has provided a way for all people, not just scholars, to know that the Bible is the Word of God. John Piper has devoted his life to showing us that the glory of God is object of the soul’s happiness. Now, his burden in this book is to demonstrate that this same glory is the ground of the mind’s certainty. God’s peculiar glory shines through his Word. The Spirit of God enlightens the eyes of our hearts. And in one self-authenticating sight, our minds are sure and our hearts are satisfied. Justified certainty and solid joy meet in the peculiar glory of God.