The Feeling of Transcendence, an Experience of God?
- Philosophy
- Theology
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Published: 2021
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Publisher's Description
In this book, Louis Roy takes account of the fact that, in the last fifty years, numerous people in the secularized West have responded yes to surveys that asked, "Are you aware of having had an experience during which you felt in the presence of a dimension or a reality very different from ordinary human life?" Are such experiences mere illusions? Some thinkers, like Feuerbach and Freud, believed so. Are such experiences encounters with God? Karl Barth, a great Protestant theologian, did not think much of their worth. On this issue, psychologists and theologians are divided. Roy argues that those experiences are valid, that they possess a real potential, and that they can open their recipients to a genuine wisdom. He reports on eight narratives, spells out their constitutive elements, classifies them into four categories--aesthetic, ontological, ethical, and interpersonal--and suggests criteria to assess their concrete authenticity. Thus, this book will appeal to educated readers interested in spirituality, philosophy of religion, psychology, literature, theology, and pastoral ministry.
Endorsements (3)
“This book comes at the right time for the many contemporary people who, living through an era of social upheaval, religious scandal, and suffering on a global scale, are asking ultimate questions and searching for something deeper in life. With this exploration of transcendent experience, Roy points readers to deeper, more mysterious realms of reality and does so as only a person seasoned by lived experience and serious scholarship can do.”
“In his thought-provoking and illuminating account of transcendent experiences, theologian Fr. Louis Roy, OP, engages in a careful and penetrating analysis of these phenomena, by considering their basic structure as well as the different ways that people encounter the transcendent, taking into account both secular and theistic perspectives that reject such experiences, as well as those that provide a rationale for acknowledging their real possibility. A valuable resource for students of spirituality.”
“Prof. Roy masterfully engages the notion of transcendent experience through aesthetic, ontological, ethical, and interpersonal experiences. He makes complex ideas clear and concrete.”
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