Individual Experience and Social Experience as Sources of Religious Insight
Individual Experience and Social Experience as Sources of Religious Insight
This chapter addresses individual experience and social experiences as sources of religious insight. The essential conditions for discovering that man needs salvation are these: one must find that human life has some highest end; and one must also find that man, as he naturally is, is in great danger of failing to attain this supreme goal. If one discovers these two facts, then the quest for the salvation of man interests him, and is defined for him in genuinely empirical terms. To conceive the business of religion in this way connects religion with personal and practical interests and with the spirit of all serious endeavor. Meanwhile, society, in a certain sense, both includes and transcends the individual man. Perhaps, then, something can be done toward solving the problem of the religious paradox, and toward harmonizing the varieties of religious opinion, by considering the religious meaning of people's social consciousness.
Keywords: individual experience, social experiences, religious insight, salvation, religion, society, religious paradox, religious opinion, social consciousness
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