Source: “GOD AND THE UNIVERSE OF FAITHS: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion”, By John Hick, Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, 1993.
3. Faith as Experience - A Philosophical Guide.mp4
8. Religious Faith As Experiencing.mp3
This podcast explores religious faith not as mere belief in propositions, but as a distinctive form of "experiencing-as," akin to how we perceive everyday objects. The author argues that just as we "see" a drawing as a duck or a rabbit, or recognize a fork as a tool, believers "experience" life and historical events as mediating God's presence and activity. This concept suggests that religious awareness, like all perception, involves interpreting sensory data within a conceptual framework. Therefore, the Bible is seen as a record of history experienced from the standpoint of faith, and revelation is understood as God's actions in history that require a human response of faith to be recognized, preserving human cognitive freedom.
Topic 1: The Nature of Religious Faith as Cognition by Acquaintance The central aim of the discussion is to understand religious faith as a form of 'knowing God' that can be described phenomenologically, making the analysis acceptable to both believers and non-believers. The sources argue that religious literature, such as the Bible, confidently assumes a direct 'cognition of God by acquaintance,' involving personal encounters and dealings with the divine. In contrast, much of theological literature has historically treated faith as a 'cognition in absence,' defining it as assent to propositional truths revealed by God, akin to holding beliefs about something. The author asserts that this theological assimilation of faith to propositional belief was a "wrong step" and proposes that religious faith is more akin to perception, or 'cognition in presence,' rather than merely believing statements about an absent God. The exploration focuses on the awareness of God itself, considering it the primary sense of distinctively religious cognition.
Topic 2: Introduction and Expansion of "Experiencing-as" To explain faith as a form of perception, the sources introduce the concept of "seeing-as," drawing on Wittgenstein's work on puzzle pictures and ambiguous diagrams. These examples, like the Necker cube or duck-rabbit, demonstrate how the same objective reality can be consciously perceived in two different ways, as having distinct characters or meanings, with the mind often switching between these aspects. This notion is then expanded to "experiencing-as" to encompass all senses. This means that just as one can see a bird as a bird, one can also hear it as a bird, feel wood as mahogany, or taste wine as Burgundy. The overall idea is that perception is not a simple, automatic registering of external data but an active interpretation where multiple senses cooperate to produce a conscious "end-product" of experiencing-as.
Topic 3: The Ubiquity of "Experiencing-as" in All Conscious Perception A critical argument presented is the thesis that all conscious experiencing is a form of "experiencing-as," not just instances of ambiguous or erroneous perception. While it might seem paradoxical to say one "sees a fork as a fork," the sources clarify this by equating ordinary recognition or identification with "experiencing-as." When we recognize a familiar object like a fork, we are implicitly applying a concept. This act of recognition goes beyond mere sensory data, integrating our understanding of the object's purpose and cultural context. For example, a Stone-Age individual would not recognize a fork as such because they lack the concept. Therefore, even in seemingly straightforward perceptions, the mind actively interprets what is given to the senses through the lens of concepts, which are social products. This implies that even ordinary secular perceiving shares a fundamental epistemological character with religious experiencing, both involving interpretations that go beyond what is immediately registered by the senses.
Topic 4: Levels of Awareness and the Concept of "Significance" Experiencing-as is not a monolithic concept; it operates at various "levels of awareness." Some instances of experiencing-as are mutually exclusive (e.g., seeing grass as a rabbit versus as a tuft of grass). However, there are also "supplementary" levels where one way of experiencing presupposes and builds upon another, indicating a deeper or more comprehensive understanding. For example, seeing a moving object as a bird, then further seeing it as a hawk, then as a hawk searching for prey, represents successively higher-level recognitions. The sources introduce "significance" as the correlate of "experiencing-as," defining it by the "appropriate response" that an object or situation evokes. To recognize something as having a certain character (e.g., a fork versus a fountain pen) means being in a particular dispositional state, prepared to act or respond to it in specific ways.
Topic 5: Application to Ethical Significance in Human Situations The concept of "experiencing-as" is extended from individual objects to more complex "situations." A situation, while composed of objects, has its own distinctive significance that evokes a particular dispositional response. This is clearly illustrated by the distinction between purely natural/physical significance and ethical significance. When someone is in danger and cries for help, the situation can be experienced at a purely physical level (cliff, tide, shouted appeals). However, a moral being also experiences this physical pattern as having "ethical significance," constituting a moral claim that demands a response to help. An individual entirely lacking a moral sense would only perceive the physical events, unable to grasp the ethical dimension. This demonstrates how ethical awareness is a higher level of "experiencing-as" that supervenes upon and interpenetrates the physical, presupposing it but going beyond it.
Topic 6: Application to Religious Significance as a Higher Level of Awareness Building on ethical significance, the sources propose religious significance as an even higher level of "experiencing-as." This dimension is seen as both including and transcending moral judgment, adding a new layer of meaning to experiences. While the sense of God's presence often carries moral demands, particularly in prophetic religions like Judaism and Christianity, it can also occur in solitude, mediated by the vastness of nature or through prayer and meditation, independent of specific ethical obligations. However, even these solitary experiences of God typically lead back to a deepened ethical engagement and service to God in the world through one's neighbors. This "religious experiencing-as" involves perceiving life and its events as continually mediating the presence and activity of the transcendent God, shaping one's overall disposition and interaction with the environment.
Topic 7: Biblical Examples of Faith as "Experiencing-as" The theory of faith as religious "experiencing-as" is applied directly to biblical history. Old Testament prophets are described as vividly conscious of God acting within the events of their time, experiencing humanly explicable events as having distinct religious significance and as acts of God (e.g., divine wrath, mercy, or covenantal calling). Crucially, this prophetic interpretation was not a retrospective philosophical framework but the actual way they experienced and participated in those events as they unfolded. Similarly, in the New Testament, the foundational faith of the disciples involved "seeing Jesus as the Christ." This was an experience of being in the presence of God's personal purpose and love through their interaction with Jesus, an experience from which later Christian language and theology emerged, rather than a pre-existing theory they adopted. This immediate experience, where Jesus was encountered as Lord, is presented as the distinctive essence of Christian faith.
Topic 8: Revelation as Divine Activity Met by Human Faith The theory of faith has significant implications for understanding revelation. If faith is construed as a distinctively religious "experiencing-as" of life mediating God's presence and activity, it aligns with a concept of revelation as consisting of divine actions occurring within human history. God is active in self-revelation within the world. However, these divine actions are intentionally not overwhelmingly manifest or unmistakable. This allows for human cognitive freedom, enabling individuals to either "see" or "fail to see" these events as divine acts. Revelation, as a communication from God, only becomes actual and effective when it is met by a corresponding human response of faith. This necessity for a free response ensures that the cognition of God's presence and activity is uncompelled, thereby preserving the freedom and responsibility of the finite human creature in relation to the infinite Creator.
Topic 9: The Nature of Biblical Inspiration, Miracles, and Sacraments This theory also sheds light on the nature of the Bible and its inspiration. The Bible is seen as a record of revelatory events, but it differs from a secular account because it is written entirely from the standpoint of faith. It describes history as it was experienced from within by the prophets and apostles, and their faith—their ability to "see" these events as revelatory—is identified as their inspiration. The Bible's uniqueness stems not from its writing style but from the profound significance of the events it documents, which became revelatory through the writers' faith. Consequently, the Bible itself mediates this revelation to subsequent generations, inviting a new response of faith. Regarding miracles, the theory suggests that a miracle is fundamentally an event that is experienced as religiously significant, making one intensely and immediately conscious of God's action and presence. Even a startling event that might defy natural law is not a miracle in the religious sense unless it evokes this profound awareness of God. Thus, "experiencing-as" is an essential element of the miraculous. Finally, sacraments are viewed through the same lens. In sacraments, ordinary material objects like bread, wine, or water are experienced as vehicles of God's grace, becoming focal points for an intense awareness of God's overarching presence and purpose. While similar in religious quality to a miracle, sacraments occur within a liturgical context and ritual, serving to elicit and nourish faith for believers in a way analogous to the direct experience of Christ by the first disciples.