Non-Discursive Experiences of God

 

(Kitty Hawk, NC)

A non-discursive experience is an experience that is felt and "known" as real, but which cannot be captured in the steel nets of literal language. One has such experiences, but cannot discourse about them. (On religious experiences that "I know that I know that I know" but cannot speak of, see James K.A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues.)

I experience God in a variety of ways, many of which are non-discursive. This is how it should be, right? None of us has epistemic access to the being of God. We fail to fully understand what it's like to be all-knowing, or all-loving, or all-powerful.

The expression of a non-discursive experience is confessional and testimonial. There is a sense in which it cannot be refuted. What does this mean? Say, for example, that I now feel joy. I make the statement, “Now I feel joy.” It would be odd, in a Wittgensteinian-kind of way, for someone to say “You’re wrong.” That would be leaving the language-game I’m now playing. (Wittgensteinian “playing” is what I have here in mind.)

Consider the statement, “I felt God close to me today.” Even a philosophical materialist could not doubt that today I had some kind of numinous experience which I describe as God being with me. They could doubt that what caused my experience was “God.” I understand this. But their doubt has no effect on my experience and the interpretation of it. Their doubt does not make me a doubter, precisely because I am not a philosophical materialist. I see no reason to disbelieve my experiences because others do not have them. This relates, I think, to Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne's "principle of credulity."

At this point I’m influenced by theistic philosophers Alvin Plantinga and William P. Alston. For them, belief in God is properly basic if the noetic framework of Christian theism is true. Plantinga’s work on “warranted belief” and Alston’s work on the “experiential basis of theism” is helpful here. Alston writes: 

“the relatively abstract belief that God exists is constitutive of the doxastic practice of forming particular beliefs about God's presence and activity in our lives on the basis of theistic experience.” 

For Alston, experiential support for theism is analogous to experiential support for belief in the physical world. He explains what he means by “theistic experience.” He writes:

I “mean it to range over all experiences that are taken by the experiencer to be an awareness of God (where God is thought of theistically). I impose no restrictions on its phenomenal quality. It could be a rapturous loss of conscious self-identity in the mystical unity with God; it could involve "visions and voices"; it could be an awareness of God through the experience of nature, the words of the Bible, or the interaction with other persons; it could be a background sense of the presence of God, sustaining one in one's ongoing activities. Thus the category is demarcated by what cognitive significance the subject takes it to have, rather than by any distinctive phenomenal feel.”

For Plantinga, if the noetic framework of Christian theism is true, then I can expect to experience God. God exists, has made us in his image, has placed a moral consciousness within us, has revealed himself in the creation, and desires for us to know him. Plantinga, of course, believes this noetic framework is true. As do I. One then expects experiential encounters with God. They come to us, as Alston says, like sense-experiences.

This is to argue for the rationality of theistic experiences. One can have “warrant” for the belief that such experiences are from God. But these experiences do not function as “proofs” of God’s existence.

Non-discursive experiences, and experiences in general, cannot be caught in the steel nets of literal language. “Experience” qua experience has what French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has called a “surplus of meaning.” “Words” never capture all of experience. All experiencing has a non-discursive quality. Here the relationship of words to experiencing leads to volumes of discussion in areas such as linguistic semantics and philosophy of language.

Even a sentence as seemingly simple as “I see a tree” is, phenomenally, incomplete. Consider this experience: sitting on an ocean beach watching the sun set with the person you are falling in love with. Ricoeur called such experiences “limit-experiences”; viz., experiences that arise outside the limits of thought and language. But people want to express, in words, these events. For that, Ricoeur says a “limit-language” is needed, such as metaphorical expression. So-called “literal language” cannot capture limit-experiences.

Every person has limit-experiences that are non-discursive.

Experience, not theory, breeds conviction. Theorizing either for or against God is not as convincing as the sense of the presence of God or the sense of the absence of God. This is why I keep returning to my “conversion experience.”

Among the God-experiences I consistently have are:
- A sense that God is with me
- Numinous experiences of awe and wonder (not mere “Einsteinian wonder”)
- God speaking to me
- God leading me
- God comforting me
- God’s love expressed towards me
- God’s Spirit convicting me
- God directing me
- Overwhelming experience of God
- God revealing more of himself to me

These experiences are mediated through:
-Corporate worship
-Individuals
-Solitary times of prayer
-Study of the Christian scriptures
-Observing the creation
-In difficult and testing situations

Sometimes I have experienced God in an unmediated way.

I discern and judge such things to be experiences of God because...
-I spend many hours a week praying
-I have heavily invested myself in prayer and meditation for the past 42+ years
-I saturate myself in the Christian scriptures
-I study the history of Christian spirituality
-I keep a spiritual journal and have 3000+ pages of journal entries concerning God-experiences
-I hang out with people who do all of the above
- I've taught this material in various seminaries, at conferences, in the United States & elsewhere around the world. I've gained a multi-ethnic perspective on the subject of experiencing God.

All this increases one’s diacritical ability (dia-krisis; “discernment”; lit. “to cut through”). Spiritual diacritical ability is mostly acquired. It is in direct proportion to familiarity.

The more we live in connection with God, the more familiar we will be with the presence of God. We will speak of it, and our words will fall short of expressing it, which is how it should be.



***

My books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

The Great Invasion

To Love Deeply Is to Suffer Deeply

 

(Linda and I in Green Lake, Wisconsin. How many years ago?)

The one who loves much suffers much.

To surrender to love is to risk. It is to be vulnerable. It is to be open. Because eventually, there will be loss.

For example, our family loved our dog So-fee. When she became so sick that we had to put her down it was painful. It made me think that I never want another dog, because I never want to go through that again.

Suffering can cause one to stop loving, since loving entails suffering, a hurting-with (com-passion) the beloved. When we open ourselves to transparency and vulnerability we invite the real possibility of suffering.

Will Hernandez writes: 

“It is equally accurate to say that only one who has known the experience of deep suffering can freely love and give love with true abandon. If suffering happens to be the consequence of true love, then that same love also becomes the fruit of real suffering.” (Hernandez, Henri Nouwen and Spiritual Polarities: A Life of Tension, K231)

Henri Nouwen has written: 

“Yes, as you love deeply the ground of your heart will be broken more and more, but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit it will bear” (IVL:60; cited in Hernandez, K240).

To immerse yourself in the sufferings of others is to grow in your capacity to love others, one’s own self, and God. “Love and suffering are bound to change anyone radically.” (Hernandez, K240)

How to Communicate When In Conflict

 

Art on a building in Columbus, Ohio

(I am reposting this to keep it in play.)

One of the blessings Linda and I have had is to know and be taught by David Augsburger. We were in a couples group with David and Nancy for two years. We dog-sat for them (they had Irish Setters). David was one of my seminary professors.  After hanging around him in these contexts, I felt I could be helped by meeting with him. David was kind enough to meet privately and counsel me. At the time I did not understand his counseling approach. Only years later did some of this activate in me.

David is one of Christianity's great scholars on understanding anger and conflict, and ways to work through these things. Linda and I still use his book Caring Enough to Confront. David takes Ephesians 4:15 and develops a template we use to this day: Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

How should we communicate with others when we are in conflict? Ephesians provides two actions we are to take:

1. Speak truthfully

2. Speak lovingly

Both are needed. 

If we only speak truthfully, we can blow people away. I could tell you the truth in unloving ways. Speaking truth without love can injure people.

If we only speak lovingly, we may never address the truth. This can leave issues undealt with. It feels warm and fuzzy for a while, but the bleeding has not been stopped.

Instead, says Paul, we are to speak the truth in love. The formula is: Truth + Love. That sounds like Jesus, right? Jesus asserted the truth, always in love.

Practically, says Augsburger, it looks like this.

• I care about our relationship & I feel deeply about the issue at stake

• I want to hear your view & I want to clearly express mine

• I want to respect your insights & I want respect for mine

• I trust you to be able to handle my honest feelings & I want you to trust me with yours

• I promise to stay with the discussion until we reach an understanding & I want you to stay with me until we've reached an understanding

• I will not trick, pressure, manipulate, or distort the differences & I want your unpressured, clear, honest views of our differences

• I give you my loving, honest respect & I want your caring-confronting response

These are attitudes Linda and I learned and practice. These teachings have been so important to us! As a young married couple we saw, lived-out before our eyes and ears, how to be loving and truthful even when you don’t like each other at the moment. Even when you are angry.

Speak the truth in love to one another.

That is the way out of what sometime seem like irreconcilable differences.

***
Two of my books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God(May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018).

Beginning a New Devotional Book Today

(One of my praying places. Sterling State Park, on Lake Erie. Seven miles from our home.)

I've been looking for a new devotional book. I've chosen to use, for a year (hopefully), Ancient Christian Devotional: A Year of Weekly Readings. 

My Psalm 23 Praying Exercise

 

                                                                (Luna Pier, Michigan)

This is the handout I have been giving to pastoral leaders and seminary students over the past 40+ years.

If you want me to send you the file - johnpiippo@msn.com.

Three Hermeneutical Points

 

*Hermeneutics: *theory of interpretation.

Like many of you, I study the Bible. And, for fifty-six years as a Jesus-follower, I have been studied by the Bible.

Here is the threefold approach to Scripture that I have.

1. My guiding question is: What is the biblical text saying? Apart from me. Apart from what I might want the text to say, or might not want the text to say.

2. Given an understanding of what the text is saying apart from me, I then ask: What is the biblical text saying to me, about me? Personal application of the text is rooted in the objective meaning of the text. And often, while reading and studying biblical texts, they just speak to me and encounter me, without me asking the question as to what they are saying to me.

3. Then, my question is: What is the biblical text saying to us, about us? I am uninterested in Christians who skip over #1. I am avoidant of Christians who ignore #2 but want to tell others what they think God is saying to them (i.e., others).

For #1, I recommend How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, by Gordon Fee.

For #2, I recommend my book, Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God. 

Re. #3, remember that the Bible is almost entirely written to communities of God's people, and not for individuals (which does not mean people are not spoken to as individual God-followers). For example, in the letters of Paul, think corporate.

The Myth of Value-Free Hermeneutics

 

(In Bangkok)

One of my doctoral qualifying exams was in hermeneutical theories. That was in 1980. I have not stopped studying such things.

I'm reading Craig Keener's The Historical Jesus of the Gospels: Jesus in Historical Context. In the Introduction Craig makes some methodological points, such as this: "no one is free from assumptions, and... the presuppositions of skeptics are no more value-free than those of believers." (xxxi)

I agree. Failure to recognize this is seen in fundamentalist hermeneutics as well as a skeptical fundamentalism that is often a reaction against one's fundamentalist Christian upbringing. The Jesus-skeptic who thinks he is unbiased is hermeneutically just as narrow-minded as the fundamentalist hermeneutic he criticizes. As one who was not discipled in such anachronistic ways I see "value-free" discussions as essentially misguided when it comes to interpretation theory.

More recently, Craig has published Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost. 

N. T. Wright on The Lord's Prayer

 

in 1977 I taught an M. Div. course, at Northern Seminary, on prayer. Since then, for 49 years (!), I have done a deep dive into the praying life, practicing it, and studying it from all angles.

I have written two books on praying.

I have a collection of books that have assisted me in deepening my understanding of the praying life. Many of them have motivated me to pray. Here's one by N. T. Wright.

Wright has written a beautiful book on The Lord's Prayer. When Wright writes, every New Testament scholar is listening.

From the book's beginning...

"Where better to start [talking about prayer] than with the prayer that Jesus himself taught us? If we value and marvel at the fact that Christian worship has been offered in our Cathedral church for nearly thirteen hundred years - and it is indeed a wonderful thing - how much more ought we to cherish and marvel at the fact that for nearly two thousand years people have prayed this prayer. When you take these words on your lips you stand on hallowed ground."

(N. T. Wright. The Lord and His Prayer (Kindle Locations 28-31). Kindle Edition.)

Shall we pray...?

***

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

My Life-Command for Marriage

Linda and I will celebrate fifty-three years of marriage this coming August. 

Recently we talked together about the abundant life the Lord Jesus has blessed us with. 

This includes the many help-sessions we have had with premarital and marital couples

We talk with them about mutual submission. About serving one another. About putting the other before oneself.

I give the husband or husband-to-be my life marital verse. It is Ephesians 5:25.

Husbands, love your wives, 

just as Christ loved the church 

and gave himself up for her 

I often write this verse on a 3X5 card and carry it with me, pulling it out often to read it again. And again. And...  The Holy Spirit has led me to do this. Repetition (meditation) on God's instructions causes them to descend from my mind into my heart.

Ephesians 5:25 is not a suggestion. It's instruction for how to do marriage well. It is, as New Testament scholars agree, a command. An essential. Like all God-given commands, it is life-giving and abundance-producing, when accompanied by the Spirit's power. 

The analogy I use is this. I used to teach guitar in a guitar studio. All my students wanted to play better and more beautifully. I taught five-finger fingerstyle picking. I could produce a certain kind of sound. I taught this to my students. Yes, among skilled guitarists, there can be stylistic differences. But there are several basic techniques that all agree are needed. If you want to get this particular and wonderful sound, you must do it this way.

Ephesians chapter five, says New Testament scholar Klyne Snodgrass, gives us a series of Pauline commands about how to live in the Kingdom. (See Snodgrass, Ephesians, pp. 266 ff.) This includes Eph. 5:21-33.

Husbands, do you want abundance and flourishing and beauty in your marriage? If yes, then love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. 

You'll need the Holy Spirit's empowerment to do this. Ask for it, with all your heart.

EPHESIANS 5:21-33

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

The $20 Wedding

 

(Yes, I wore a tux...)

( I'm re-posting this, to keep it in play. Also, see THIS.)

In 55 years as a Jesus-follower and pastor I have officially performed one bazillion weddings. That is a lot of rehearsal dinners and wedding reception dinners.

1. I have done one bazillion weddings.
2. Therefore, I am overweight.

When I think of these weddings what I remember is not the food, but the people. The most beautiful weddings I have seen have to do with the marital couple, who they are, and what they can one day be. 

All the money in the world cannot cover over two clueless people. But a groom and bride who submit their lives to God and to the serving of the other shine like stars in this materialistic darkness of "happiness." I am thinking of some of them now. They loved, and still do. Their love influenced others, without trying to.

It's really about preparing for marriage and life together, not the wedding day. The more the former happens, the greater is that special day.

I present to you a wedding plan. Here are the costs, in my Monroe community.

• Wedding planner - $0. (I charge nothing for this advice.)
• Officiant - $0. (I charge nothing to officiate your wedding.)
• Building rental - $0. (We can have your wedding outdoors. We've had weddings in our backyard, on the river.)
• Groom's tuxedo - $0. (The groom wears nice clothing that can be worn again.)
• Bridal gown - $0. (The bride wears nice clothing that can be worn again.)
• Flowers - $0. (From your mother's garden.)
• Photographer - $0. (Because all your friends have phones.)
• Music - $0. You've got a musical friend who would love to play at your wedding. You've also got a friend with a cell phone and a small portable speaker.
• Food - cost per plate - $0. (Your friends bring finger foods. That's what Linda and I did, and we had 350 people at our wedding.)
• Miscellaneous costs - $0.
• Marriage license in Monroe County - $20.
• Pen to sign marriage license - $0. (I will lend you mine.)

Total costs - $20

Stress - less.

Relationship - more.

I have done weddings like this. I remember them for the inner beauty of the couple and the presence of God.

See also:

"Is Simplicity the Newest Wedding Trend?"

"Does a Big Wedding Equal an Unhappy Marriage?" (Wall Street Journal)