Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T22:48:21.914Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Deification as Spiritual Sensation:

The Epistemology of Religious Experience

from Part III - The Religious Epistemology of the Cambridge Platonists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2024

Samuel M. Kaldas
Affiliation:
The University of Sydney and The University of Notre Dame Australia
Get access

Summary

This chapter further explores the Cambridge Platonists’ religious epistemology by examining their theory of spiritual sensation, a striking fusion of early modern sense theory, early Christian notions of deification, Puritan spirituality, and Platonic metaphysics. The Cambridge Platonists hold that when a soul becomes deified through the practice of virtue, God comes to dwell in it, and that as a result, the soul becomes able to know God directly by looking inward. This knowledge is the fruit of direct, perceptual contact with God, granting it a phenomenal quality that cannot be attained by mere descriptions of God. Conversely though, when a soul marred with vices looks inward in the attempt to know God, it inevitably forms a distorted picture of God that reflects its own moral flaws. Thus, the Cambridge Platonists’ theory of spiritual sensation undergirds their rejection of Calvinist doctrine, providing them with a sort of ‘error theory’ to explain how their theological opponents arrived at the views they did.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Platonists and Early Modern Philosophy
Inventing the Philosophy of Religion
, pp. 237 - 268
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Deification as Spiritual Sensation:
  • Samuel M. Kaldas, The University of Sydney and The University of Notre Dame Australia
  • Book: The Cambridge Platonists and Early Modern Philosophy
  • Online publication: 09 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009426930.013
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Deification as Spiritual Sensation:
  • Samuel M. Kaldas, The University of Sydney and The University of Notre Dame Australia
  • Book: The Cambridge Platonists and Early Modern Philosophy
  • Online publication: 09 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009426930.013
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Deification as Spiritual Sensation:
  • Samuel M. Kaldas, The University of Sydney and The University of Notre Dame Australia
  • Book: The Cambridge Platonists and Early Modern Philosophy
  • Online publication: 09 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009426930.013
Available formats
×