Review article

Everyday Experience as the Locus of the Experience of God

Valerija Nedjeljka Kovač orcid.org/0000-0002-7535-1951 ; Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

The article discusses everyday experience of the contemporary human being as the locus of the experience of God. Starting from the basic, original meaning of experience, the first part of the article demonstrates that there are at least three different horizons within human life, where experience has an important role and that within those horizons experience is understood differently: while one can perceive an obvious narrowing of the concept of experience to only one of its dimensions in the area of natural sciences and contemporary postmodern mentality and religiosity, Christian faith, on the other hand, presumes the original meaning of the concept of experience and depends on it. The second part of the article articulates characteristics of everyday experience, which shows its multi-dimensionality and dialectic structure, and points out various stages or levels of emergence of the experience of God »in, with, and through everyday experience« (W. Kasper). Within such a developmental process, certain boundaries of possibility of experiencing God within the concrete life experiences become evident. Starting from the presupposition of the absence of the experience of God from the human being’s experience of the self and the world, which also contributes to the contemporary crisis of faith, the third part of the article presents Kasper’s interpretation of the experience of meaning and courage found in working for a better world in the concrete history as a possible way to experience God in the contemporary times. This part concludes with a review of Kasper’s proposal and with a sketch of further perspectives.

Keywords

experience; experience of God; faith; history; meaning; natural sciences; postmodern religiosity; Walter Kasper

Hrčak ID:

133993

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/133993

Publication date:

6.2.2015.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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