Experience alone is too flimsy a base on which to rest the Christian system. The mere fact that a psychological event has taken place in one’s brain cannot establish the truthfulness of the gospel…Religious sensation by itself can only prove itself…However unique an experience may be, it is capable of a number of radically differing interpretations. It may be only an encounter with one’s own subconscious. Those who place all their emphasis on a subjective validating process…eventually reduce the content of revelation and fit it to their taste. The central thing becomes that which comes across to me, rather than what God has done and spoken. The reason some theologians favor the use of drugs to heighten religious perception is patent. Whenever the existential cart is put before the historical horse, theology becomes a synthesis of human superstitions, and putting LSD into the communion wine is fair play!
Clark Pinnock, Set Forth Your Case (Chicago: Moody, 1967), 69-70.
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