Jesus’s direct experiences of God the Father: a paradox within Jewish theology and gateway to human experience of God

Abstract We have no other experience of God but the human experience, claims Emmanuel Falque. We – human beings – are in the world. Whatever we do, whatever we think and whatever we experience happens in the world and is mediated by the manner of the world. This also includes religious experience. Reflection on the possibility of religious experience – the experience of God – suggests that the world is interrupted by someone or something that is not of the world. The Christian worldview makes the tension explicit, which is perhaps why theology neglects the concept and fails in any proper sense to address the world. Through following the phenomenologist Jan Patočka, critiquing the theologian Johann B. Metz and exploring the theological turn in phenomenology, I will face the challenge and argue for a genuine engagement with the world as a theological problem.

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Responsive Phenomenology of God: On Varying Divine Evidence

The Expository Times ◽

10.1177/0014524620977446 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 001452462097744

Author(s):

Paul K Moser

Keyword(s):

Moral Character ◽

Human Experience ◽

Experience Of God ◽

Moral Phenomenology

A ‘phenomenology of God’ will characterize human experience of God, at least regarding some of its distinctive aspects. This article contends that theism acknowledging a God worthy of worship owes its ultimate credibility to a morally relevant phenomenology of God, given the centrality of God’s unique moral character and will in all things divine. The neglect of such a phenomenology has left many versions of theism speculative and uncompelling, even if they call themselves a ‘phenomenology of the Spirit’. So, inquirers about a God worthy of worship should attend carefully to the prospect of a morally relevant phenomenology of God. The article explains that this phenomenology is interpersonally responsive and thus interactive in a manner foreign to typical moral phenomenology, and that it contributes to an illuminating approach to varying divine evidence among humans. The article also identifies a morally relevant challenge, based in conscience, for sincere inquirers about God.

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Paul Tillich in Conversation on Psychology and Theology

Journal of Pastoral Care ◽

10.1177/002234097202600306 ◽

1972 ◽

Vol 26 (3) ◽

pp. 176-189

Keyword(s):

Human Experience ◽

Gestalt Psychology ◽

Personal Relationships ◽

University Faculty ◽

Paul Tillich ◽

General Area ◽

Experience Of God ◽

Questions And Answers ◽

Therapeutic Processes

This is part of a set of transcripts of a series of conversations between the late Paul Tillich and members of a university faculty in 1960, concentrated on the general area of psychology. Topics dealt with in the questions and answers are: Freedom and Destiny; Anxiety: Destructive and Constructive; Gestalt Psychology and Human Experience; The New Being and Therapeutic Processes—Status of the Soul, The Power of Being Overcoming Non-Being, The Effects of Estrangement and the New Being, The Centered Self; and Personal Relationships and the Experience of God.

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Experiential Dissonance and Divine Hiddenness

Roczniki Filozoficzne ◽

10.18290/rf21693-2 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 69 (3) ◽

pp. 29-42

Author(s):

Paul K. Moser

Keyword(s):

Moral Character ◽

Human Experience ◽

Experience Of God ◽

Divine Hiddenness

Our expectations for human experience of God can obscure the reality and the presence of such experience for us. They can lead us to look in the wrong places for God’s presence, and they can lead us not to look at all. This article counters the threat of misleading expectations regarding God, while acknowledging a role for diving hiding from humans on occasion. It contends that, given God’s perfect moral character, we should expect typical human experience of God to have moral dissonance, that is, experiential conflict in morally relevant ways. We shall see the evidential or cognitive importance of how humans respond to such dissonance. Our failing to respond cooperatively with God can result either in our obscuring evidence of divine reality or in God’s hiding divine self-manifestation for redemptive purposes aimed at our benefit.

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