(March 31, 2022 at 10:09 pm)Angrboda Wrote: extra-mundane
I wonder if you have a view here of "revelation" as being a disembodied voice, or privileged visual representation shown to us, by an active agent separate from us, of something from out of our normal world. I can see how people might think of it this way.
Through history, many people have seen no clear boundary between the mundane and the divine. The divine is immanent in the mundane. God is not separate from where we are. To see God is not a removal to another location but a change of perception -- particularly, a strong and selfless attention. Revelation, therefore, is not a picture show from another world but an accurate view of where we are.
Many many Christians have held to this definition.
This has its roots in Neoplatonism. The idea is that our minds are narrowed down, though in fact are inextricably a part of the whole. The function of the senses is largely to filter out most of what's out there, but in special moments may open to admit a larger view. (Much spirituality from India echoes these ideas.)
If this is how a person thinks of religion, then what we call divine is different only in degree and not kind from our regular non-divine experience. "Religious apprehension," in this view, would be regular apprehension, turned up to eleven.
You're right that Nietzsche is relevant here in that he reverses this traditional view. Whereas a traditional Neoplatonist would say that a complete, unfiltered view of the world is of perfect order and brings joy, Nietzsche says that such a view is of chaos and brings madness. For him, the purpose of great art is to present us with the true knowledge of this chaos in an ordered way we can withstand.
