Encountering Mystery Quotes

“Subjectivity undoubtedly is a prerogative of the Christian faith, which affirms a personal God-human relationship and not just subscription to a collectively held package of dogma or nominal participation in a religious or social institution.” —Klaus Bockmuehl”
― Dale C. Allison Jr., Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age

“most clergy perceive encounters with deceased relatives, angels, beings of light and celestial visions as nonsense.”
― Dale C. Allison Jr., Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age

“What good is an underinformed religious leader who is at a loss or dismissive in the face of mystical raptures, unexpected occurrences at deathbeds, visions of self-luminous figures, or encounters with dead loved ones?”
― Dale C. Allison Jr., Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age

“Gregory of Nyssa observed, “most judge the credibility of what they hear according to the measure of their own experience, and what is beyond the power of hearers they insult with the suspicion of falsehood as outside the truth.”
― Dale C. Allison Jr., Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age

“Skepticism about religious beliefs and experiences is, for many today, an integral part of what it means to be educated.”
― Dale C. Allison Jr., Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age

“Death is not one thing, and theology should not seek to reduce it to one thing. It is rather, like life, many different things.”
― Dale C. Allison Jr., Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age