Can you feel it? How is Experience Related to Revelation?

Christ is revealed to us by the Spirit as he meets us in our experience of the true church. Wherever the gospel is truly preached, and the sacraments rightly administered, there is Christ. Special revelation provides the framework for contextualising our subjective experiences. The objective dimension of special revelation deals with the historic events narrated by Scripture and divine speech[1], which has at its heart the incarnation of the Son of God. The subjective dimension addresses how this is received.

Formerly, appeals to experience were descriptions of what happens in the Christian life. Now experience is taken as an authority all on its own. However, an over-emphasis on experience to the point of marginalizing or excluding the controlling witness of Scripture produces highly subjective interpretations. Inner experience, self-referentially regarded as true and authentic, becomes the privileged starting point.

Such a strong emphasis on the inner workings of the Spirit over and above the function of the Scriptures, the external Word, produces a totally subjective approach to ‘religious experience’, leaning heavily towards a ‘Christian mysticism’ that rejects both Scripture and tradition. Vague and ambiguous transcendent experiences, located in the private realm, are unreliable and unverifiable as they are can only be judged internally. Indeed, such experiences may be no more than a psychological response evoked by the demands of the situation or the phenomenological realm of the ‘believer’.

Hence, experience can neither be the starting point nor the decisive criterion for evaluating revelation – it is the consequence of an encounter with the Spirit of God who condescends to make himself known in ways we can know and understand subjectively.

The experience of Christ in the Spirit must be subject to the external standards and criteria set forth in Scripture, and validated by the faith community, in order to be consistent with the God who has spoken once for all. The enlightening ministry of the Spirit interprets to us the contents of Scripture rather than embolden fresh revelation[2]. The hidden work of the Spirit enables the exercise of faith needed to interpret the experience as an encounter with God[3]. Thus Scripture, the external Word of God, becomes revelatory and salvific on the reception of the inward testimony of the living Spirit, justifying, regenerating and sanctifying the believer within the community of faith.

This community is ordered in such a way that the experience of the revealed character of God also becomes accessible in ecclesiastical tradition – in histories of narrative performance, communal practices of prayer and charity[4]. The preaching of the word and the right administration of the sacrament are connected with the presence of Christ – and wherever Christ is, there his church is to be found as well[5].

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[1] Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 29.

[2] “The office of the Spirit…is not to form new and unheard of revelations or to coin new forms of doctrine, by which we may be led away from the received doctrine of the gospel, but to seal on our minds the very doctrine which the gospel recommends”. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. H. Beveridge (Michigan: Eerdmans, 1989), I.ix.2

[3] Packer, “Scripture”, 573.

[4] Loughlin “The basis and authority of doctrine”, 50.

[5] McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, 489.