Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The limits of theistic experience: An epistemic basis of theistic pluralism

  • Published:
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. Alston will not necessarily disagree with what I have just said. InPerceiving God (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), he is careful to describe what he means by perceptual beliefs and he in no way thinks that every belief that, say, the Christian has about God is derived through perception of God. In fact, he says, that “one's conception of God (the Ultimate) enters to a greater or lesser degree, into a particular subject's identification of the perceived object as God (Brahman⋯). When I takeGod to be present to me I will, if I am a Christian, but not if I am Moslem or a Hindu, most likely take it thatHe who became man in the person of Jesus Christ to save us from our sins is present to me. Indeed, it is generally true that we make use of what we believe about perceived objects when we perceptually identify them”(Perceiving God, p. 258). Insofar as Alston allows, then, that not all our information about God is experientially rooted, then my suggestions here should not be construed as showing the limits of this experientially rooted approach. The limits are implicit in Alston's own work. Instead, we can take my suggestions here as explaining why there are the limits that, in fact, there are.

  2. What follows is based on William P. Alston,Perceiving God, chapter 7. Alston's main focus of discussion is the apparent incomptability of various religious-belief forming and justifying practices, but I've limited my concern to incompatible theistic beliefs.

  3. As was suggested by an anonymous reviewer of this essay for theInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion.

  4. See “Christian Experience and Christian Belief” inFaith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983) and alsoPerceiving God.

  5. Here I am indebted, although through a rather convoluted route, to J. William Forgie's “Theistic Experience and the Doctrine of Unanimity”,International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (1985): 97–118.

  6. Various versions of this paper have been discussed by a number of people. The audience at the Pacific Meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers in February 1991, some of my colleagues at the University of Texas at San Antonio — Mark Bernstein, Arthur R. Miller, and Saranindranath Tagore — and the audience at the 1992 Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy of Religion have raised helpful, clarificatory questions, and the paper is better for their suggestions. Several clarifications were also added at the suggestion of an anonymous reader for theInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of English, Classics, and Philosophy, University of Texas at San Antonio, 78285, San Antonio, TX, USA

    Mark S. McLeod

Authors
  1. Mark S. McLeod
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

McLeod, M.S. The limits of theistic experience: An epistemic basis of theistic pluralism. Int J Philos Relig 34, 79–94 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01317098

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01317098

Keywords

Search

Navigation