What authority can such religious experience have?
For the person who is convinced that he or she has had a direct or indirect experience of God, the authority is absolute. If it were not, that person would not believe that it was God they had encountered. For a person reading or hearing an account of that religious experience, its authority depends on two things: the trustworthiness of the person concerned; the degree to which what is revealed in that experience agrees with a persons own convictions and understanding of the world. Religion has generally invoked both of these. It has argued that the religious authorities should be obeyed, and has punished those who challenged them. It has also presented rational arguments to justify its beliefs. What can be revealed in a religious experience? Schleiermacher described the consciousness of a religious person as sense and taste for the infinite. It is seeing the whole in and through the particular; seing the eternal in and through the changing moment. Otto highlighted the weird feelings w
