Experience of God : Revelation as affective knowledge in the works of Ignatius Loyola

To try to speak of 'experience of God' is always risky. From a philosophical point of view, the risk is that we will collapse the distinction between the sheer otherness of God and the limits of human thought, meaning that the God we 'experience' is no God at all. From a theological point of view, the risk is not only that we will overlook this distinction and subsequent collapse, but that we will also speak for God in our own names – not only as a community, but also as individuals. At the same time, in a Western cultural space that is highly detraditionalised and framed by immanence, being able to open onto the possibility of finding God in experience assumes a new importance. Here, I sketch what forms part of a larger project on revelation. Addressing the tension between propositional and relational accounts of revelation, I argue that phenomenology offers a way forward for theology to consider revelation in the context of experience. An examination of experience yields the possibility of encountering God in affective knowledge, an approach which can be tested in the example of the experience of Ignatius Loyola