Abstract
A second issue that is no less fundamental than that of veridicality presents itself once it is allowed that at least some epiphanies are truly of or from religious reality: the nature of the religious reality that is experienced in epiphanies. This issue arises because, while epiphanic experiences are recognized and occur in various religious traditions, the phenomenal content of epiphanic experiences varies greatly from tradition to tradition and because there is interreligious disagreement about the nature of religious reality. In this chapter, we consider three ways of understanding the relationship between the religious reality encountered in epiphanic experience and the diverse phenomenal content of those experiences. These approaches avoid both equating the reality with the variegated phenomenal content of those experiences and absorbing the reality of one tradition into that of another. One of them is exclusivistic, deriving from a church teaching that goes back to the fifteenth century. Another is embodied in the pluralistic thesis developed by John Hick. The third way is an approach that looks to relationships with religious reality as they are understood in different traditions. These ways of understanding all take religious reality to be unique and ultimate, but otherwise they are different.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
John Hick, “A Philosophy of Religious Pluralism,” in Problems of Religious Pluralism (New York: St Martin’s, 1985), p. 31.
- 2.
Hick, “A Philosophy of Religious Pluralism,” p. 36.
- 3.
John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University press, 2004), p. 236, and “A Philosophy of Religious Pluralism,” p. 39.
- 4.
Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, p. 245. These brief lists of personae and impersonae are not exhaustive.
- 5.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 30, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (Boston and New York: St Martin’s, 1929), p.74.
- 6.
Hick discusses his use of Kant’s thinking in An Interpretation of Religion, pp. 240 ff.
- 7.
I have discussed faith relationships and abiding relationships from the standpoint of other issues in God-Relationships With and Without God (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), in Introduction to Philosophy of Religion (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007), and in “Religious Commitment to One’s Own Religion and Acceptance of Other Religions,” Arc, 38, 2010.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kellenberger, J. (2017). The Nature of the Religious Reality Experienced in Epiphanies. In: Religious Epiphanies Across Traditions and Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53264-6_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53264-6_20
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-53263-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-53264-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)