Dealing with the Noumenal
Gamma Gamaliel
Shipmate
in Purgatory
Ok. I give up with the inappropriately named 'woo-woo' thread.
Could a kindly Host close it for us please?
So, to try again ...
I'd like to explore issues around how we deal with the 'noumenal' and the (as yet?) unexplained.
Is it possible for people of faith to present these issues without 'special pleading' or glib appeals to higher authority in a wooden kind of way? The Bible says ... The Church says ...
Of course, Christian believers are going to appeal to those 'authorities' but is it possible to do that without it becoming a bolt-hole or get-out-clause? The cosmic equivalent of the 'Father knows best' attitude found in some Anglo-Catholic parishes - or its equivalent elsewhere.
Readers of the 'woo-woo' thread will see that these questions have been sparked by issues raised by @Lamb Chopped on the thread about the veracity or otherwise of the NT accounts.
Hope this makes more sense than my previous attempt.
Could a kindly Host close it for us please?
So, to try again ...
I'd like to explore issues around how we deal with the 'noumenal' and the (as yet?) unexplained.
Is it possible for people of faith to present these issues without 'special pleading' or glib appeals to higher authority in a wooden kind of way? The Bible says ... The Church says ...
Of course, Christian believers are going to appeal to those 'authorities' but is it possible to do that without it becoming a bolt-hole or get-out-clause? The cosmic equivalent of the 'Father knows best' attitude found in some Anglo-Catholic parishes - or its equivalent elsewhere.
Readers of the 'woo-woo' thread will see that these questions have been sparked by issues raised by @Lamb Chopped on the thread about the veracity or otherwise of the NT accounts.
Hope this makes more sense than my previous attempt.
Comments
(ˈnuːmənl) adjective. possessing the character of real rather than phenomenal existence
I do not consider the boring thread to be an apologetic thread within my understanding of the term.
Lamb Chopped made it clear from the start that she sees the bible as being both human and divine. The thread, and her posts on the thread do not appear to justify or defend that position - they just take that position as the starting point and explain the process of "how the text came to be", taking into account this dual nature of the bible, from the point of view of a believer. The thread, as it stands, does not set out to justify this to a non-believer.
But I see the question has changed for this version of the thread. I think it is quite possible to explain large chunks of the process described on the "boring" thread without appealing to "higher authority", as you put it. But some parts of it, such as the formation of the cannon (quoted by The_Riv on the The Numinous (...) thread) are not.
@Bishops Finger - yes, that's what I had in mind and more besides that I can't quite think of the words for.
I think this might be a subject for which it is very difficult to find words...
Maybe it’s just me and my own peculiarities, but something like the Bible being divinely inspired isn’t something that I’m convinced of by logical reasoning. It’s not something where I think through the arguments and sift through various bits of evidence in the text or the like, and come to a reasoned conclusion. It’s more something that through experience I feel in my gut or my bones.
Perhaps others have minds that work in a way that the reasoned arguments work, but that’s not how my mind works. I don’t expect things like this to be explained through logic or reason, any more than I expect how I feel about those I love to be explained through logic or reason.
And having said that, I would never expect anyone else to be convinced on the basis of something like what I feel in my bones, nor would I try to convince them based on a basis like that. I guess I’m content to just to leave it at “here’s what I believe.” Others may say I’m appealing to higher authority or whatever, and I’m not going to get the least bit bent out of shape over that, because I’m not saying that what convinces me should convince anyone else.
Does it work? I have no idea. Did it work for me? Hmm, I have done it, but not to experience the numinous, that is something I have experienced at least since my teens and probably far longer. I only did the disciplined sitting less than a decade ago. I can not say I experienced anything particularly numinous but that might just be because I was accustomed to it. Oh and though I am pretty regular in spiritual discipline, my high experience of the numinous come randomly. I build altars for fire to fall elsewhere**.
*not sure I have got the name quite right
** to paraphrase C.S. Lewis
In my own experience, the high spots come during the most miserable times, if you know what I mean. When they're needed, not when they're wanted.
In other news, see the prayer thread... (seriously, I'm okay, but this month kinda sucks in a lot of ways)
😉
With some minor quibbles, to pinch and adapt another famous quote (at least this side of the Pond), 'I agree with Nick.'
But look what happened next ... 😉
No, seriously, it won't satisfy everyone of course, but Nick's approach strikes me as about the best we can do or hope for - humanly speaking - if I can put it that way.
To do any better would require more 'woo-woo', if we can still use that phrase in this context.
I also agree with @Jengie Jon about 'building altars so the fire falls elsewhere.' 🔥
I'm going to have to adopt that approach more consciously or intentionally - or perhaps simply get on with things as I am doing without getting too exercised about stuff or beating myself up or trying to 'produce results.'
Now here's something that may mess with some posters heads. We had a 'Piece of The True Cross' at our 'Liturgy of The Pre-Sanctified Gifts' last night.
What did I do? I was conscious of Erasmus's thing that there were enough pieces of The True Cross in Early Modern Europe to build a battleship. I was conscious of my evangelical Protestant background and broader Protestant heritage.
I knew all the arguments that it might be fake.
But I venerated it. I 'submitted to be more vile' (to use a John Wesley quote out of context). What's more, I watched how other people did it, bending and bowing and prostrating themselves more fluidly than I am able these days, and I did likewise. I copied them.
It's only something I've done once before and I did it less self-consciously this time. Next time it may feel even more 'natural.'
Now, what am I saying? That it's all mind over matter? Convincing ourselves of 6 impossible things before breakfast?
Or that Peter Bohler's advice to John Wesley holds, 'Preach faith until you have it?'
Or is it that whether whatever sliver of wood was inside that box, there was 'a green hill faraway, / without a city wall / where our dear Lord was crucified / who died to save us all'?
That 'on a hill faraway / stood an old rugged Cross / the emblem of suffering and shame ...'?
None of that is going to satisfy an atheist or someone with a neater and more scientific mind than mine.
It's all part of being there. Dasein. And it's most satisfying, most shamanistic, most dramatic, most moving and I'm most grateful for it, as I am for my Stendhal's syndrome, which hovered yesterday,
I was there. And it was all me. I was my own enchanter, my own witch doctor. As we are the author when we read. The Eid group were lovely.
All phenomenal, nothing noumenal about it. Nothing to deal with. In gratitude. As I drifted off last night I could feel the fear of it being my last moment, as if it were upon me. It wasn't too bad. Hopefully there will be distraction. People to be brave and funny for unless my mind has disintegrated. Or it comes like a former pastor's. He was working in the garage and dropped dead before he hit the ground.
Happy days!
This doesn't mean most or any fragments are genuine.
Of course.
Hence my referencing of popular 19th century/early 20th century hymns in my post.
It's why the sermon became the focus and the locus for the woo-woo and the hocus pocus (I'm teasing) in the churches that emerged from the Reformation and the radical Reformation.
It's why the 'worship time' became the focus among independent charismatic churches or the 'worship time / sermon / "ministry time"' format as this developed within that sector.
@Dafyd - no, indeed. It won't satisfy everyone as an answer but it's why my default position with relics is to act 'as if' they are the real deal unless there is proof positive otherwise.
FWIW, I will also nod or bow or cross myself of make some kind of physical gesture by way of acknowledgement as it were, if I enter a church in traditions other than my own which have objects or iconography of some kind.
It's not just my residual Protestant evangelical sensibilities but I do find some RC tat and representations very hard to deal with - particularly Baroque and Rococco.
I love the music of that period buy find most of its religious art hard to take.
I venerate icons of the Virgin Mary but find the dolls and statues in some RC and Anglo-Catholic settings hard to take. I nod politely and move on.
That doesn't mean I don't 'sense' the prayerfulness or sanctity, as it were, of RC or Protestant places of worship. I do. Even in bare nonconformist chapels.
The same at holy wells or sites associated with Saints or out in the natural world more generally.
@Martin54 - lovely. Embrace and savour those things. We may differ on the source but we feel the effects.
This is well said, and what ought to be be said of all supernatural aspects of religion. Individual, internal feelings -- as comforting and important as they may be -- aren't adequate for anyone else. Less so when they're propped up behind something deliberately nebulous like "woo woo," or some other unquantifiable, unchallengeable notion.
Do you think a committee sat down one day and said, 'Aha! Let's make this thing deliberately nebulous ...'?
I will. Especially the fear of dying ; ) Looking forward to seeing the resurrected Robinia on my way home. Will it have Buxus, with its associated buxine, surrounding it? Why did all the Robinia die? All about 2.5m high. 20m apart. It is 'naturally disease and pest free', although at least four Lepidoptera would disagree, including Cameraria ohridella of horse chestnut leaf mining fame. Deliberately poisoned? Not ringbarked. Most odd. Perhaps Jesus passed by and cursed them, they do have terribly thorny suckers. Other noumena are available I'm sure! Just a bad batch from a nursery? Dehydrated or water logged? Or is that too phenomenological? I suspect pre-resurrection human agency.
No, I think the committee generally behaves as if a term like woo-woo or any of its equivalents is unchallengeable, and that it's often invoked with a certain kind of superiority, and that when challenges are made, those challenges are characterized as inflammatory, or hostile.
This is what I was trying to tease out on the "Can you be in the wrong religion" thread - how is it meant to work for people with such a mind, if it's meant to work for everyone? Especially given that changing the fundamental way one's mind works isn't necessarily an endeavour blessed with success.
John Polkinghorne is an example of someone whose mind appears to work completely differently to mine but who is a theist.
I've got no glib or easy answer to any of this. I'm simply thinking aloud. Thinking allowed?
I don't know much about the 'religious gene' idea or the idea that there's a 'God-slot' in the brain that appears to be more active in some people than others. I'm intrigued by those ideas, though but don't have as 'scientific' a mind as may be required to investigate them further.
FWIW I do appear able to 'process' or deal with paradoxical material. I think that's probably more a 'practice' thing than something innate.
Wiser minds than mine will be able to tell you.
Sure. I understand what you saying here, of course. As with any ideology or belief system - religious or otherwise - the ideas are developed and debated in community.
Hence the rabbinic 'midrashes' and debates, hence the various Church councils and synods and so on down the years.
Sure, at some point beliefs become codified or recognised as the prevailing orthodoxy. The 'winners' may well develop 'supernatural' explanations for that.
That doesn't necessarily rule out any divine element in and of itself.
But yes, it's always going to be impossible to verify that in baldly scientific terms.
Conversely many people who are religious have very little time for the numinous. I think this was very evident in Victorian Broad and Low Church Anglicanism, for example, where mystical experience was seen as primitive and superstitious.
Mind you, the last person who told me they were 'spiritual rather than religious' didn't appear particularly spiritual either ...
But in general terms, I think you are onto something.
Is there such a thing as "Christian but minimally spiritual?" To some degree I think for me it's self-defense strategy against emotional appeals. I'm from a denominational background that shows the blotchy influences of the work of Charles Finney, and I just hate that stuff.
But it's also my personality. I am simply suspicious of things that would feel like manipulation or faking it to me. I can say, "It's fine for you." But don't ask me to participate. If the experience is a requirement, well, I'm done. While I know the "numinous" (as I understand people to mean it) is important for many people or a large part of their Christian experience, it's not how I function as a human or a Christian. If I tried, it wouldn't be real.
Yep.
In the spirit of "Christian but not spiritual" as a brainy teen and uni student, I latched on to the ideas that this is all provable like a court case. But the few apologetic arguments I've had the patience to hear have mostly been disappointing at best.
The Gospel is a proclamation. Take it or leave it. Even early disciples didn't get it, and some of them lived with Jesus for years. Prophets, disciples, apostles, witnesses didn't use rational arguments to make a case. They stated it, and referred to Scripture if at all. I don't think we can do any more.
However, operating in this way means that one gives up any forms of "worldly power" (Christendom in its various forms, political influence, etc.) in an attempt to get the message through. If the message is God's, then it's his to empower to do its work. By his Spirit.
I'm sorry you're going through all this.
My worst experiences have been more like a long, slow grind, where I was surprised still to be standing afterward and very grateful for all the people God put in my way to prop me and my family back up. Over and over.
On Stendhal's Syndrome. Yes, absolutely and yes it's a thing and 'phenomenal rather than 'noumenal'. Some people seem more susceptible to it than others.
Equally, some people appear more prone to the 'vatic' or the 'affective' elements of religion. I had all the charismatic experiences one was expected to have back in my full-on charismatic days. My wife didn't. Some assumed there was something 'wrong' with her spiritually because she didn't 'react' in the ways that were expected. Thing was, she could see through a lot of it.
I'm with @Kendel on the baleful influence of Finney and of revivalism with its emotional appeals. Which doesn't mean that there can't be authentic or genuinely transformative experiences in settings influenced by all that.
We are wired to see patterns and make connections and our emotional or affective responses are bound to be the product of a whole range of factors.
I once heard a poet describe - to the extent that he was allowed - a visit to a holy Aboriginal site in Australia. You could only visit with the permission of the tribal elders and by given an assurance you wouldn't reveal what you'd seen. I don't know what it was, a meteorite, a geological feature but whatever it was he felt it 'communicated' something and he had a sense of 'connection' with the numinous as apprehended by a culture very different from our own.
Later, he discussed the visit with a famous author, whom I won't name, who had also visited the site.
Without describing what they'd seen but only the impression it had made on them, they were both struck that they had experienced the same thing.
Ok. This isn't in any way scientific nor is it anything other than an observation about perception and how we interpret things.
One of us may very well have received a completely different impression on visiting the site. Some of us might pick up a sense of mystery and the numinous. Others might just think, 'Hey, it's just a rock / tree / meteorite' or whatever else it may have been.
@Kendel - as courageously honest as @Nick Tamen.
You think the experience of the numinous is caused by an electromagnetic field ?
There is research on the neuroscience of religion but I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone suggest that.
I disallow all cookies so can't see the link. I was referring to the God Helmet, which I now see as bogus, self-deceived and deceptive; a matter of suggestibility just like @Gamma Gamaliel's account. It even fooled young Dickie.
But I do get a "thin place" thing. A feeling that the very air around me has been buffed and polished by a thousand years of human emotion. It's hard to explain.
I'm now almost sixty and it's been circular for decades; I can't say for sure what triggered it. But I think the "thin place" feeling started when I was six or seven, and that made me curious about history. Learning about history meant that facts were woven into the feeling, which boosted the feeling, which encouraged the fascination with history.
It didn't start in churches, but I do now get it in churches. I don't know if it's fed into my faith, or whether my faith has fed into it. It's as though the atmosphere has a patina.
ETA - It's also something I try to accept rather than analyse.
Although I think you could put this much more strongly; Broad/Low Church Anglicanism often has a fairly aggressively hostile view of spirituality in general (to the point of having an almost Platonically abstract view of God).
Whilst still being superstitious? Having 'answers to prayer', 'was that you Lord' moments, denying coincidence, cold reading our own lives. None of the five (four large urban, one large for a village) Anglican congregations I have been part of ever expressed such a view as you describe. All publicly proclaimed the currently miraculous.
Anyway, about the numinous. Doesn't it depend on what you're looking for. Materialists won't see it, and will scream about it to all and sundry - in saviour mode: don't listen to those who would deceive you! Religious materialists will do a similar thing: don't listen to anything but the church/(our reading of) the bible - anything that's not a shared part of the liturgy/the "word of God" (not enough quotation marks in the world) is deception - follow our chosen path to righteousness and to connect with God.
To me, all of that is idolatry, and based on fear. Fear of the potentially realisable possibility that God offers direct relationship, and we will sometimes, fleetingly, be able to respond. Such experiences need testing, of course - never good to get prematurely high on one's own supply. On the other hand, throwing gifts in the face of the divine gifthorse is not necessarily a useful strategy either. Sometimes you just have to be willing to listen. Not always to the screaming of beauty, or indeed pain. Sometimes the infamous still, small voice speaks - though sometimes that will just be wind.
I fear them all less than I used to. We'll see when I'm dying.
Well that tends to be the charismatic types - conservative evos are indeed very wary of such things. I remember my (con evo) CU rep criticising someone's description of prayer as "talking with God": "No", he said, "prayer is talking to God - you can only hear from God by reading the Bible..."
Likewise cessationism was a thing, and even those conservatives who in theory allowed the possibility of present miracles were deeply suspicious about healing, "words" etcetera. There was one exception - conversion was held to be intrinstically miraculous since it was impossible for the unregenerate to exercise saving faith by natural means. I was told by a recently-converted conservative friend that no supposed charismatic miracle could ever be anywhere near as important as the miracle of a non-Christian coming to faith.
(All from mid-1990s UK university experience).
It happens that the geology of the location was similar to that of a well known beauty-spot in this part of the UK and one which features in one of thd writer's novels.
Let the reader understand.
On Anglicanism. As we know it's a very broad church. I've certainly come across Anglicans such as @chrisstiles and @TurquoiseTastic describes.
Just because you may not have come across them @Martin54 doesn't mean they don't exist.
I'd certainly suggest that there are fewer than there were at one time. These days you are more likely to encounter charismatic-lite Anglicans or liberal-catholic ones than the old stuffy Victorian style ones.
But that'd be material for another thread. These days some URC churches are more 'Anglican' in feel than the pariah church across the road.
I like Anglicans. Some of my best friends are Anglicans but it's been going every which way at a faster rate than it used to.
Here endeth the tangent.
This I agree with. I think basically charismatics are better at evangelism.
heh heh heh