Experientialism

Characteristics (more or less) of Experientialism

• Religious truth is based on and is ratified by religious experience. That is, experience is the final authority for truth. If you haven’t had “the” experience (or any experience at the expected level of mystery, power, or intensity) then you’re not yet where you ought to be.
• Apostolic experience is more important than Apostolic teaching. (What happened to Paul or Peter, say, is given more weight than what they taught in their writings). The “moving of the Spirit” and the evident power of God in the lives of the Apostles becomes the experientialist’s measure. Experientialists seem to need the same experiences as the Apostles and the early church to validate and to lift their 'truth' above the 'truth' of others.
• Experience is self-verifying. That is, if you’ve had an experience then it is true, real, appropriate, and valid. If you compare your experience with scripture and there’s a problem with your experience (perhaps because it is outside or contrary to scripture) then your experience is right, and scripture is not, or, more often, scripture needs to be reinterpreted to validate your experience.
• Your experiences are yours alone. No-one else can have your experience so there’s no mechanism for checks and balances. Because individuals can have individual experiences (that many times can’t be verified by others) then individuals are free to exercise authority and validate their own relationship with God. The Church militant and its teaching can be sidelined. Given the self-verifying nature of experience such that scripture can be put aside in favour of experience and experience can’t be validated by anyone else, the inevitable outcome is that experience can be called upon to provide ultimate authority trumping, good, sound theology – no matter what.