Impression Management and Religious Experience: A Comparison of Seven World Religions

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian A. Gutierrez ◽  
Amy Hale ◽  
Crystal L. Park
Keyword(s):  
Impression Management ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
World Religions

Rudolf Otto and the Concept of the Numinous

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Sarbacker
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
English Language ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Rudolf Otto ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Academic Study

The contemporary academic study of religion has its roots in conceptual and theoretical structures developed in the early to mid-20th century. A particularly important example of such a structure is the concept of the “numinous” developed by the theologian and comparativist Rudolf Otto (1869–1397) in his work, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational (1923). Building on the work of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Friedrich Schleiermacher (1772–1834), and Jakob Fries (1773–1843), Otto developed the concept of the numinous—a “category of value” and a “state of mind”—as a way to express what he viewed as the “non-rational” aspects of the holy or sacred that are foundational to religious experience in particular and the lived religious life in general. For Otto, the numinous can be understood to be the experience of a mysterious terror and awe (Mysterium tremendum et fascinans) and majesty (Majestas) in the presence of that which is “entirely other” (das ganz Andere) and thus incapable of being expressed directly through human language and other media. Otto conceives of the concept of the numinous as a derivative of the Latin numen, meaning “spirit,” etymologically derived from the concept of divine will and represented by a “nodding” of the head. Otto argues that understanding the numinous in a satisfactory way requires a scholar to draw upon their own experience of religious sentiments, given its non-discursive and direct nature; this becomes a point of contention among later secular scholars of religion. In later works, such as Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism (1932), Otto gives numerous examples of the ways in which the concept of the numinous can be applied cross-culturally to traditions beyond Christianity, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Otto’s theories regarding the numinous have been extremely influential in the development of the academic study of religion in the 20th and 21st centuries, as evidenced by the impact they had upon scholars such as Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Ninian Smart, whose works were instrumental in the formation of religious studies as a discipline. Jung cites the concept of the numinous extensively with regard to his theories on the breakthrough of unconscious material into conscious awareness. Eliade’s work The Sacred and Profane: The Nature of Religion (1959) takes Otto’s concept of the numinous as a starting point in the development of its own theory; Eliade’s use of the category of the “sacred” might be considered derivative of Otto’s larger conception of the “holy” (das Heilige). Eliade’s work, like Otto’s, has been extensively criticized for postulating a sui generis nature of both the numinous and the sacred, which are viewed by Eliade as irreducible to other phenomena (historical, political, psychological, and so forth). Smart’s influential “dimensional analysis” theory and his scholarship on the topic of world religions is highly informed by his utilization of Otto’s theory of the numinous within the contexts of his cross-cultural reflections on religion and the development of his “two-pole” theory of religious experience. The concept of the numinous continues to be theorized about and applied in contemporary academic research in religious studies and utilized as part of a framework for understanding religion in university courses on world religions and other topics in the academic study of religion. In part through the work of Eliade, Smart, and other scholars—Otto included—who have found a popular readership, the term has been disseminated to such a degree as to find common usage in the English language and popular discourse.

A Transcultural Gospel?

1981 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-472
Author(s):  
Brendan Carmody
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Common Factors ◽  
World Religions

In this search for common factors in world religions, Brendan Carmody stresses the unique contributions of Christianity to world religions vis-à-vis the reality in African religious experience.

scholarly journals The entheogenic origins of Mormonism: A working hypothesis

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-260
Author(s):  
Robert Beckstead ◽  
Bryce Blankenagel ◽  
Cody Noconi ◽  
Michael Winkelman
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Working Hypothesis

Historical documents relating to early Mormonism suggest that Joseph Smith (1805–1844) employed entheogen-infused sacraments to fulfill his promise that every Mormon convert would experience visions of God and spiritual ecstasies. Early Mormon scriptures and Smith’s teachings contain descriptions consistent with using entheogenic material. Compiled descriptions of Joseph Smith’s earliest visions and early Mormon convert visions reveal the internal symptomology and outward bodily manifestations consistent with using an anticholinergic entheogen. Due to embarrassing symptomology associated with these manifestations, Smith sought for psychoactives with fewer associated outward manifestations. The visionary period of early Mormonism fueled by entheogens played a significant role in the spectacular rise of this American-born religion. The death of Joseph Smith marked the end of visionary Mormonism and the failure or refusal of his successor to utilize entheogens as a part of religious worship. The implications of an entheogenic origin of Mormonism may contribute to the broader discussion of the major world religions with evidence of entheogen use at their foundation and illustrate the value of entheogens in religious experience.

scholarly journals Fenomenologijsko-komparativni pristup u razumijevanju povijesti religija

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (18) ◽  
Author(s):  
Željko Oštarić
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
General Problem ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Modern World ◽  
General Study ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Mircea Eliade

Following the theoretical and methodological work of Joachim Wach, Mircea Eliade and Joseph M. Kitagawa, in this article I try to show how Wach's model of systematic typology of disciplines, known as Religionswissenxchaft or the "general study of religions", can be fruitfully used to bridge the gap between the historical and the systematic approach to studying retigion/s. In that sense, by following the track of some of Kitagawa's works, I develop the idea of a phenomenological-comparative approach to understanding the historical development of the religions of mankind (primitive religions, classical religions and modern world religions) to which three main types of religious experience correspond. At the same lime, the article implicitely wishes to point out the so called general problem of "understanding" religious experience and its manifestations within different disciplines, or in other terms, the necessity of harmonizing and coordinating the different specialist views and contributions to the exploration of religion/s within the historical and systematic areas, under the condition that the generally accepted criteria of interpretation may not exclude the theoretical-methodological hypotheses of any of the different disciplines.

Ineffability

2000 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN HICK
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Global History ◽  
World Religions ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Concrete Form ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
William Rowe ◽  
Pseudo Dionysius

Within each of the major world religions a distinction is drawn between the ultimate ineffable Godhead or Absolute and the immediate object of worship or focus of religious meditation. I examine the notion of ineffability, or transcategoriality, in the influential Christian mystic Pseudo-Dionysius, who reconciles the divine ineffability with the authority of the Bible by holding that the biblical language is metaphorical, its function being to draw us towards the Godhead. If we extend this principle to other faiths we have gone half way towards making the global history of religions intelligible. The other half consists in a recognition of the different human conceptualities and spiritual practices that give concrete form to the divine reality within religious experience. However, William Rowe, and Christopher Insole, have criticized this use of ineffability, and their arguments are responded to here.

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