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Saving the particulars: religious experience and religious ends

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2001

S. MARK HEIM
Affiliation:
Andover Newton Theological School, 210 Herrick Road, Newton Centre, MA 02459

Abstract

Conflict in the testimony of religious experiences appears to seriously undercut its evidential value. Arguments that make positive appeal to the evidence of religious experience usually deal with this objection by denying evidential value to the particularistic elements in such experience as descriptive of an ultimate religious reality and an ultimate human end. Using the work of Jerome Gellman, I contend that the referential value of diverse and particular religious testimony can be saved. I suggest that the strongest form of this argument requires two assumptions: the possibility of multiple religious ends and intrinsic complexity in the religious object. If the argument is valid, these assumptions may also serve as theological criteria.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2000 Cambridge University Press

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