An interesting problem emerges whenever Christians begin talking about supernatural experiences. Someone says, “God spoke to me.” Someone else says, “I felt the presence of God.” Another tells us about a miraculous healing. Someone claims to have seen an angel. Someone else says that Jesus appeared to them in a dream. And then, somewhere in the room, the philosopher quietly clears his throat and asks: “Yes, but how do you know?” And there it is. The awkward question. Because Christianity is not the only religion with supernatural experiences. Muslims report visions. Hindus report encounters with deities.

Buddhists report mystical experiences. New Age practitioners report encounters with spiritual beings. Occultists report supernatural phenomena. And atheists can sometimes report extraordinary experiences that they interpret entirely naturalistically. So where does that leave the Christian? Does supernatural experience prove Christianity? No. Does the existence of competing supernatural experiences disprove Christianity? Also no. And this is where things become philosophically interesting.

The first distinction: an experience is not the same thing as an interpretation

One of the most important distinctions we can make is between experiencing something and knowing what that experience means. Those are not identical.

If I wake up at three in the morning and see what appears to be a person standing beside my bed, I have certainly experienced something. But what exactly have I experienced? A person? A dream? A hallucination? A shadow? A supernatural being? A particularly ambitious coat hanging on the back of a chair? The experience itself does not automatically settle the interpretation.

This becomes even more important with religious experiences. Suppose someone experiences an overwhelming sense of love and peace and concludes, “Jesus was present.” The experience may be completely genuine. But the conclusion “therefore Jesus was present” is an interpretation of that experience. The same applies to a person who says, “I experienced Lucifer.” We should take the person’s experience seriously without automatically accepting their interpretation of its source.

This is precisely why the philosophical literature on religious experience distinguishes the phenomenology of an experience from the epistemological question of what, if anything, that experience establishes. Contemporary philosophers such as William Alston and Alvin Plantinga have argued that religious experience can have genuine epistemic significance, while critics point to religious diversity and competing explanations as potential defeaters. That is a much more sophisticated position than either: “I experienced it, therefore it must be true.” or: “I cannot scientifically verify it, therefore it must be false.” Both are philosophical shortcuts. And philosophers should be suspicious of shortcuts. Especially the ones that look impressive in PowerPoint presentations.

Christianity does not teach us to believe every spiritual experience

This is where Scripture is remarkably clear. John does not say: “Believe every spiritual experience.” He says: “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.”

—1 John 4:1

That is an extraordinary statement. The Bible assumes supernatural experiences can be real and still misleading. That should immediately destroy the naïve Christian assumption that supernatural equals divine. Paul tells Christians: “Test everything; hold fast what is good.”

—1 Thessalonians 5:21

Jesus warns about false prophets who come in sheep’s clothing and speaks of false prophets who will perform signs and wonders (Matthew 7:15–20; Matthew 24:24). Paul goes even further and warns that Satan can disguise himself as an “angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). That means the Christian epistemological question cannot simply be: “Did something supernatural happen?” The question must be: “What happened, what does it mean, and how do I know the interpretation is true?” Those are three different questions. And Scripture insists that we ask all three.

The Bible contains spiritual counterfeits

This is not some embarrassing footnote in Christian theology. It is all over the Bible. Moses confronts Pharaoh’s magicians. Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal. The New Testament encounters false prophets, false apostles, deceiving spirits and counterfeit signs. And perhaps one of the most remarkable passages is Deuteronomy 13. Moses imagines a prophet who gives a sign or wonder—and the sign actually happens. You would think that settles the matter.

Miracle performed. Case closed. But God says, essentially, not so fast. If that prophet then leads Israel toward another god, Israel is to reject him. Think about the implications.

A supernatural event is not self-authenticating.

The miracle does not interpret itself. The supernatural event must itself be evaluated against God’s revelation. That is devastating to a simplistic “miracle = truth” epistemology. The Bible does not teach: Miracle → therefore God. It teaches us to ask: Miracle → what is being claimed → who is speaking → does this accord with God’s revealed truth? That is a considerably more rigorous epistemology.

Pharaoh’s magicians should make us nervous. The Exodus account is particularly fascinating. Moses performs signs by the command of God. The Egyptian magicians imitate some of those signs.Whatever precisely we make of the mechanics of those events, the theological point is unmistakable: Supernatural phenomena are not enough by themselves to establish divine authority. The same principle appears in the confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal.

There is a contest. There are claims. There is supernatural expectation. And then God acts. The point is not that Christians should spend their lives looking for spiritual cage fights. Although, admittedly, Elijah’s approach to apologetics had considerably more dramatic flair than most contemporary apologetics conferences. The point is that God Himself must ultimately authenticate His revelation. And that takes us to a much deeper question.

Does faith depend upon evidence?

Here we need to rescue the word faith from both Christians and atheists. Atheists sometimes portray faith as believing something without evidence. Some Christians inadvertently reinforce that caricature by saying things like:

“You just have to believe.” No.

Biblical faith is not intellectual roulette. Hebrews 11:1 describes faith as confidence concerning what is hoped for and conviction concerning what is not seen. That does not mean believing absurdities. It means that not everything that is real is directly visible to the senses. We already know this in ordinary life. We do not see gravity. We infer its effects. We do not directly observe another person’s consciousness. We infer it from behaviour, communication and analogy. We cannot empirically place justice on a laboratory table. Yet we talk about justice as though it is more than a chemical reaction inside someone’s brain. And we certainly cannot put a proposition under a microscope and discover whether it is logically valid. Different kinds of reality require different kinds of epistemic access. That is not special pleading for Christianity. It is simply philosophical sanity.

William James and the limits of proof

William James famously wrestled with this question.

In The Will to Believe, James argued that there are situations in which human beings cannot wait for conclusive evidence before making a commitment. Religious belief was one of the areas he considered, especially where the decision is “live,” unavoidable and significant.

But James should not be misunderstood. He was not saying:

“Believe whatever you want.”

His argument was much more subtle: human rationality sometimes has to operate where conclusive proof is unavailable. That is an important observation. But Christianity can go further. Because Christianity is not merely asking someone to make a pragmatic decision about which worldview feels useful. Christianity makes truth claims about reality.God exists. God created. God revealed Himself. Jesus existed. Jesus died. Jesus rose. Jesus is Lord. These are not merely psychological propositions. They are claims about the world.

The resurrection changes everything

This is why Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 15 is so important. Paul does not say: “Even if Christ wasn’t raised, Christianity is still a beautiful way of interpreting life.” Quite the opposite. He says that if Christ has not been raised, Christian faith is futile. That is a remarkably dangerous thing for Christianity to say. Paul effectively puts the Christian faith on the examination table. Check the evidence. If Christ is not raised, Christianity collapses. The Christian proclamation therefore cannot ultimately be reduced to: “I had an experience of Jesus.” The Christian proclamation is: God acted in history in Jesus Christ. And Christian experience is then understood in light of that revelation. That distinction is crucial.

The Spirit does not replace truth

This is where I would also challenge a common charismatic misunderstanding. Sometimes Christians say: “I don’t need arguments. I have the Holy Spirit.” Well, yes and no. You certainly need the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit does not make truth unnecessary. The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of truth (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13). He does not lead us away from truth into subjective spiritual impressions. Jesus says that the Spirit will glorify Christ (John 16:14). The Spirit’s ministry is therefore not:

“Forget everything you know and chase experiences.” It is: “He will take what is Christ’s and declare it to you.” The Spirit illuminates the revelation God has given. He does not become an excuse to abandon the revelation. This is why I would modify the statement: “My confidence depends entirely on God’s power and revelation rather than His wisdom or my own mind.” Yes, but we must be careful. God’s revelation is not irrational, and God has given us minds precisely so that we can apprehend and evaluate what He has revealed. Isaiah says: “Come now, let us reason together.”

Jesus commands us to love God with our minds. Peter tells Christians to be ready to give a reasoned defence for their hope (1 Peter 3:15). Paul reasons from the Scriptures. The apostles appeal to eyewitness testimony. Christianity is therefore not anti-rational. It is trans-rational without being irrational. There is a difference.

Reason is a servant, not the sovereign

This is probably where I would locate the proper relationship between faith and reason. Reason is extraordinarily useful. It can identify contradictions. It can test arguments. It can examine historical claims. It can expose fallacies. It can evaluate competing explanations. But reason cannot create revelation. Reason cannot make God speak. Reason cannot raise Jesus from the dead. Reason cannot regenerate a sinner. And reason cannot manufacture the knowledge of God. That does not make reason useless. It means reason has a proper scope.

Aquinas famously treated philosophy and reason as serving theology rather than replacing revelation. The broader classical Christian tradition consistently resisted the idea that faith and reason are enemies. Faith seeks understanding precisely because truth is unified: if God is truth, genuine reason cannot ultimately contradict genuine revelation. Augustine expressed the relationship through the famous idea of crede, ut intelligas“, believe so that you may understand”—while also pursuing understanding through faith. The Christian therefore does not say: “I believe because I refuse to think.” Nor: “I think, therefore I don’t need faith.” The Christian says: “I believe in order that I may understand, and I reason because I believe truth is worth understanding.”

But what about competing religions?

Here we arrive at the difficult problem. A Muslim can say:

“I experienced Allah.”

A Hindu can say:

“I experienced Brahman.”

A Mormon can say:

“I felt the burning in the bosom.”

A New Age practitioner can say:

“I encountered a spiritual guide.”

A Christian can say:

“I encountered Jesus.”

So how can the Christian privilege his own experience?

The answer is: We don’t privilege our interpretation merely because it is ours. We test it. This is precisely where contemporary philosophy of religious experience becomes interesting. William Alston and Alvin Plantinga, for example, have argued that religious experience can have legitimate epistemic force even though it is not publicly demonstrable in the same way as ordinary physical observations. At the same time, the problem of conflicting religious experiences remains a serious philosophical challenge.

And Christians should not run from that problem. We should embrace it. Because Christianity has resources for dealing with it. The question becomes: Which worldview best explains the totality of the evidence? Not: Which person had the most dramatic experience? Those are radically different questions.

The experience is not the foundation

Suppose a person becomes a Christian because they experience a supernatural encounter. Wonderful. But what happens when they later meet someone who claims an equally powerful encounter with a different deity? If their entire epistemology is: “My experience was powerful,” they have a problem. The other person can simply say: “So was mine.” Now we have spiritual experience tennis…. I suck at tennis… And nobody wins.The Christian needs something more foundational. The experience must be interpreted within a broader account of reality. That includes:

  • the existence and nature of God;
  • the reliability of revelation;
  • the identity of Jesus;
  • the historical resurrection;
  • the testimony of Scripture;
  • the coherence of the Christian worldview;
  • the work of the Holy Spirit;
  • and the fruits produced by the belief.

The experience may be part of the evidence. But it cannot be the entire court of appeal.

“But you weren’t there.”

This is particularly important when dealing with someone who has experienced something personally. Imagine someone says: “You weren’t there. I was.” That is true. But it does not follow that: “Therefore my interpretation is infallible.” A person can be the world’s greatest eyewitness to an event and still misunderstand what happened. I can watch a man fall to the ground. I know he fell. But I don’t automatically know why he fell. Was he pushed? Did he faint? Did he trip? Was he pretending? Was there an unseen cause? The witness has direct access to the event but not necessarily exhaustive access to its explanation. And that is exactly the distinction we need in spiritual experiences. Experience gives access to the event. It does not automatically give omniscience concerning the event.

The Luciferian example

Consider the person who experienced comfort during a traumatic childhood event and later came to believe that Lucifer was the one who comforted her. We should not mock the experience. We should not say: “Nothing happened.” Perhaps something profound happened. But the conclusion: “Therefore Lucifer was the one who came to me” requires justification. And then comes the really important question: How did she discover that interpretation? If the answer is: “ Lucifer later told me,” we have simply moved the epistemological problem one step backward. How does she know that the being claiming to be Lucifer was actually Lucifer?

And even if it was Lucifer, how does she know that what he said was true? The Bible gives us the answer: Test the spirits. A supernatural messenger is not automatically a truthful messenger. Paul even says that if an angel from heaven should preach another gospel, the angel is to be rejected (Galatians 1:8). That is extraordinary. Paul essentially says: “Even if an angel shows up, check his theology.” I rather like that. It is a good rule.

Supernatural does not mean trustworthy

This is perhaps the sentence I would want every Christian to remember: Supernatural does not automatically mean divine. The Bible gives us categories for deception in the spiritual realm. That means Christians should be neither supernatural naïve nor supernatural skeptics. We should be supernaturally discerning. Paul says: “Test the spirits.” John says: “Test everything.” Jesus says: “You will recognize them by their fruits.” Scripture therefore gives us an epistemology of discernment. Not gullibility. Not cynicism. Discernment.

What then is faith?

Faith is not believing something because we lack evidence. Nor is faith merely an emotional response to an experience. Biblically, faith involves trust, allegiance, confidence, and commitment to a person whom we have reason to regard as trustworthy. And this is why Christian faith is ultimately relational. I can know propositions about my wife. But knowing propositions about her is not the same as knowing her. Likewise, Christianity is not satisfied with:

“I know that God exists.” The goal is: “I know God.” This is why Christianity can never be reduced to apologetics. Apologetics can remove intellectual obstacles. It can demonstrate coherence. It can defend historical claims. It can expose contradictions. It can show that Christianity is intellectually viable. But ultimately, the Christian wants more than intellectual assent. We want Christ. And that brings us back to Paul’s extraordinary statement: “I know whom I have believed”(2 Timothy 1:12).  Notice that Paul doesn’t merely say: “I know what I have believed.” He says: “I know whom.” Christianity ultimately rests not upon an abstract proposition but upon a Person.

Faith does not mean intellectual surrender

This is where Socrates also needs a little rescuing. “The wise man knows that he knows nothing” is often used as though the height of wisdom is perpetual uncertainty. But intellectual humility does not require perpetual agnosticism. There is a massive difference between: “I don’t know everything.” and: “Therefore I cannot know anything.” The first is humility. The second is skepticism.

Christianity embraces the first and rejects the second. We are finite creatures. God is not. Therefore our knowledge is necessarily limited. But limited knowledge can still be genuine knowledge. I don’t need to know everything about the ocean to know that I am standing beside one. I don’t need exhaustive knowledge of another person to genuinely know them. And I certainly don’t need exhaustive knowledge of God before I can trust Him. The Christian does not possess omniscience. The Christian possesses revelation. And revelation changes everything.

The danger of epistemological arrogance

There is another form of pride that we rarely talk about. We normally think pride says: “I know better than everybody else.”

But sometimes pride says: “I refuse to believe anything until I have personally solved every possible objection.” That can sound remarkably humble. But it may actually place the individual human intellect in the position of judge over God. At some point, the creature has to acknowledge: I am not omniscient. Neither are you. Neither am I. And neither is the professor who wrote the 700-page critique of Christianity. We are all finite knowers.

The question is therefore not:

“Can I personally establish everything from first principles without trusting anyone?” Nobody lives like that. The question is: “What should I reasonably trust, and why?” That is a much better epistemological question.

Christianity does not ask us to abandon reason

The Christian therefore has no reason to fear philosophy. Philosophy is not the enemy. Science is not the enemy. Questions are not the enemy. Doubt is not necessarily the enemy. Sometimes doubt is simply the intellectual discomfort that accompanies the pursuit of truth. The danger comes when doubt becomes an idol. When the question becomes more important than the answer. When skepticism becomes a permanent posture rather than a tool for investigation. When we become so frightened of being wrong that we become incapable of affirming anything. There is a strange irony here. A person can become so committed to intellectual humility that they become absolutely certain that certainty is impossible. That is not humility. That is an epistemological contradiction wearing a cardigan.

So where does supernatural experience belong?

I would put it like this: Supernatural experience can be evidence, but it is not automatically authoritative evidence. It can confirm. It can encourage. It can awaken. It can confront. It can transform. But it must be discerned. And Christian discernment does not happen in a vacuum. Experience must be tested against revelation.

Revelation must be interpreted within a coherent worldview. Claims must be examined rationally. Historical claims can be investigated historically. Philosophical claims can be examined philosophically. Spiritual claims must be spiritually discerned. And through all of this, the Christian trusts that the Holy Spirit is not merely an emotional force but the Spirit of truth who glorifies Christ.

The final court of appeal

So what ultimately gives Christianity its confidence? Not that Christians have better experiences than everybody else. Not that Christians are more sincere. Not that Christians are more intelligent. Not even that Christians have better arguments. Our ultimate confidence is grounded in God’s self-revelation. God has revealed Himself in creation. God has revealed Himself in Scripture. God has revealed Himself supremely in Jesus Christ. And the Spirit bears witness to Christ.

The climax of revelation is therefore not: “I had an experience.” It is: “The Word became flesh.” That is the Christian claim. Christianity is not ultimately the story of humanity climbing toward God through mystical experience. It is the story of God coming toward humanity in Christ. That changes the entire direction of the epistemological problem. We are not trying to climb high enough to discover God. God has stooped low enough to make Himself known.

Hebrews begins with precisely this movement: God spoke in many ways through the prophets, but has now spoken decisively in His Son (Hebrews 1:1–3). And John says: “We have seen his glory.” Christianity is therefore simultaneously experiential, historical, propositional and relational. We encounter Christ. We believe claims about Christ. We investigate the historical claims concerning Christ. And ultimately, we come to know Christ.

Conclusion: Don’t throw away the experience, put it in its place

So, should Christians reject supernatural experiences? No. Should Christians unquestioningly believe every supernatural experience? Absolutely not. Should we be embarrassed that Christianity involves the supernatural? Certainly not. Should we use every spiritual experience as though it were an infallible divine revelation? Please don’t. The biblical answer is considerably more balanced. Experience matters. Reason matters. History matters. Scripture matters. Theology matters. Discernment matters. And above all: Christ matters.

Our confidence is not ultimately: “I had an experience, therefore Christianity is true.” Nor is it: “I have a syllogism, therefore I don’t need the Holy Spirit.” It is: God has revealed Himself, Christ has been raised, Scripture bears witness, the Spirit illuminates that truth, and therefore I have sufficient reason to trust the God who has made Himself known. That is not arrogance. That is faith. And biblical faith is not the opposite of knowledge. It is trust grounded in the knowledge of the One who has revealed Himself. As the writer of Hebrews reminds us, faith concerns realities that are not presently seen, but unseen does not mean unreal. There are more things in heaven and earth, as Shakespeare famously observed, than are dreamt of in our philosophy. And Scripture would add: That does not mean we stop thinking.

It means we learn to think properly about a reality larger than ourselves. Because at the end of the day, Christianity does not call us merely to believe that something supernatural exists. It calls us to know Someone. And perhaps that is why Paul’s words remain so powerful: “I know whom I have believed.” Not: “I have explained everything.” Not: “I have experienced everything.” Not: “I have answered every objection.” But: “I know whom I have believed.” And sometimes that is the beginning of wisdom rather than the end of it.