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Featured Author: Dale C. Allison Jr.
Dale C. Allison Jr. is the Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. His numerous books include Night Comes: Death, Imagination, and the Last Things and The Luminous Dusk: Finding God in the Deep, Still Places.
His new book with Eerdmans, Encountering Mystery, makes the argument that stories of religious experience are meaningful and not to be marginalized - and that we have a moral prerogative to lovingly engage with such stories regardless of whether we have had similar experiences.
  Despite widespread skepticism on the matter, a significant number of people today have stories of religious experience—moments of inexplicable terror or rapturous joy, visions, near-death experiences of the afterlife, encounters with angels, heavenly voices, and premonitions. How should rationally minded people respond?
What would your reaction be if someone told you that, one night while sitting alone, she saw through the window a brilliant light descend from the sky until it was so large that it filled the room—and that it radiated a feeling of “pure love”? And what would you say if a friend confided that one night he woke up and could not move, felt he was being suffocated, and sensed an evil spirit in the room?
Through a close look at phenomena such as moments of inexplicable terror or rapturous joy, visions, near-death experiences of the afterlife, encounters with angels, heavenly voices, and premonitions, Allison shows how ordinary practices of faith need not be at odds with individual religious experiences. Above all, he enjoins us to be honest about the persistence of religious experience in a secular age and to make space for those who encounter mystery in their lives.
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