TH E SCOP E AN D AIM S O F THI S STUD Y
I.I The core of religion Is religious experience.*
If a man must say that he cannot find God in the reality of his own present life, and if he would compensate for this by the thought that God is nevertheless the final cause of all that happens, then his belief in God will be a theoretical speculation or a dogma; and however great the force with which he clip to this belief, it will not be true faith, £or faith can be only the recognition of the activity of God in his own life fi
These two quotations provide the starting point for the present study.
Granted that religious experience is the core of religion, the questions have to be asked. What is religious experience? and What religious experience?
Granted that faith, or at least an important aspect of faith, is 'the recognition of the activity of God' in one's Ufe, the questions have to be asked. What do we mean by 'the activity of God' in our lives ?
How do we distinguish 'activity of God' from the merely physiological or sociological, or indeed from the more sinister forces and pressures active in any society?
Such questions as these are particularly relevant to a student of the N T, or to anyone who is interested in the history of Christian origins, for Christianity is one of the most important religious movements in human history - no one would dispute that.
It must be important therefore to inquire closely into the religious experience which launched this new religion: what were those recognitions of God's activity which constituted a new faith of such dynamic and durable vitality?
The task we set ourselves in the following pages is to attempt to answer this and similar questions. In particular, no one doubts that Jesus was a 'religious genius' of towering stature, at the very least. What was the religious experience out of which he lived and which enabled him to minister and die as he did and to make such a lasting impact on his disciples?
Again, few students of Christian origins would deny that Christianity proper goes back to certain deeply significant experiences of the first disciples - experiences in which they saw Jesus 'risen from the dead', experiences of Spirit understood by them as the Spirit of the end-time. What were those 'resurrection appearances'? What happened at 'Pentecost'?
What were the experiences of Spirit which transformed a Jewish sect into an independent religion of international significance?
Again, few would deny that the most important single influence within first-generation Christianity in that transformation was Paul, and that it was in and through the churches established by Paul that Christianity attained its independence and maturity over against Judaism.
