What do you do with Holy Spirit encounters?
Christians, I think, should be skeptical of claims that God has revealed himself in some private, extra-biblical fashion—think of Sarah Young’s “Jesus Calling” books, for instance, or the wave of “visits to heaven” titles that crested at some point in the previous decade.
And yet, it seems like a mistake to wave away all stories of divine encounters as products of deception or self-delusion. In his book Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God: The Evidential Force of Divine Encounters, Harold Netland of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School explores the philosophical and theological grounds for receiving such stories open-mindedly. Travis Dickinson, professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University, spoke with Netland about his book.
“Experience, all by itself, will not produce Christian belief,” says Netland. “But I think there are cases in which a person who has a particular experience can be justified in believing certain things even without being able to provide compelling reasons. “I come back to the blind man healed by Jesus (John 9). It’s a beautiful story. The Pharisees are after him, saying, This man Jesus is a sinner. And the blind man comes back and says, Hey, whether he’s a sinner or not, I don’t know. All I know is that once I was blind, and now I see. And so, in certain circumstances, it’s entirely appropriate for someone to say, ‘I don’t know about all of these philosophical issues. All I know is that I was a sinner. I was forgiven by Jesus, and he has given me peace. And I’m happy.’
“Such a person may not lack adequate reasons for belief—only the ability to articulate them. But for most people, since experiences are often misleading, it is important to place the experience within a broader context, which provides reasons for accepting it as valid.”
The Medieval Air C.S. Lewis Breathed
I had a world history teacher who glossed over the Middle Ages in one pithy statement: “Nothing happened.” I don’t think he meant to be cheeky or glibly dismissive. Rather, I suspect he (or the course material he drew from) was merely channeling the popular perception of this era as backward and benighted, awash in religious superstition and scientific ignorance. According to this narrative, Western civilization suffered through the “Dark Ages” until the Renaissance, blessedly, switched the lights of learning and inquiry back on.
In recent decades, we’ve seen welcome scholarly efforts to rethink this consensus. More and more, we’re coming to appreciate the cultural richness of the medieval period. Take, for instance, the work of Jason Baxter, a professor at Wyoming Catholic College, whose new book charts the influence of medieval art, literature, and theology on C. S. Lewis—in both his scholarship and popular writing. Houston Baptist University professor Louis Markos reviewed Baxter’s book, The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind, for CT.
“To help us get into the medieval mind, and thus understand Lewis better,” writes Markos, “Baxter quotes a well-chosen passage from the Roman writer Macrobius that influenced Lewis both as a scholar and a writer, one that captures perfectly the medieval love for literary recycling: ‘You know how a chorus consists of many people’s voices, and yet they all produce a single sound. … That is my goal for the present work: it comprises many different disciplines, many lessons, examples drawn from many periods, but brought together into a harmonious whole.’
“We may be impressed today by the vastness of space or by the unexpected twist at the end of a postmodern novel or film, but that experience is of a different order from the awe, wonder, and love that the medieval readers felt toward Dante’s great epic or the ordered cosmos upon which it was patterned. They felt at home in their universe and with their books in a way we no longer do. Things made sense; they had a clear order and purpose, a carefully crafted wholeness that pervades Lewis’s work.
“For [Lewis], schooled in ancient manuscripts and the medieval cosmological model, the ‘important thing,’ writes Baxter, ‘was not necessarily inventing or concocting in an original style, but to renew, recycle, enliven the original, so that the old vision could be credible to those who live in an incredulous age.’ Thus did Lewis allow us to breathe the air and experience the atmosphere of a world that was haunted and enchanted by the divine.”
