Assess the view that personal religious experiences are the inspiration and driving force of faith and practice. Include your own point of view.
Assess the view that personal religious experiences are the inspiration and driving force of faith and practice. Include your own point of view.
Religious experiences can be seen as an influential role in the inspiration and driving force of faith and practice. Religious experiences can inspire and motivate and can enhance a religious believer’s faith in God. However, there are certainly many more aspects of a person’s experience of religion, which can have equally inspiring effects. I will begin by assessing how religious experiences can indeed be an inspiring and, in a way, the driving force of faith.
A religious experience is a difficult phenomenon to describe, as it is a very personal event. Theologians such as Swinburne have attempted to categorise religious experiences, to make them easier to understand. For example, Swinburne split religious experience up into five different groups, including the categories of public and private experience. Clearly, though, religious experience is a difficult idea to pin down completely. In general, however, religious experience involves: a sense of wonder, a sense of new insight and values, and a sense of holiness and profundity. A religious experience involves the whole person- mind and emotions, values and relationships- and seems to touch the most basic and fundamental sense of being oneself. They can be experienced in countless ways; whether it be through praying, simply watching a sunset or through a dream.
