The Spiritual Senses
An inner sight, hearing, and taste by which the soul perceives divine things
The doctrine of the spiritual senses, developed by Origen and later by Bonaventure, describes interior faculties that parallel the bodily senses: a way of seeing, hearing, tasting, and touching divine realities. As the soul is purified, these inner senses awaken, allowing it to perceive and delight in God. The idea offers a rich language for prayer and contemplation across the Christian spiritual tradition.
How it traveled
- Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. JohnHippo Regius · c. 430 CEexplains
- A Treatise on the Soul and its OriginHippo Regius · c. 430 CEexplains
- A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three PartsNorthampton, Massachusetts · c. 1758 CEexplains
- Narrative of Surprising ConversionsNorthampton, Massachusetts · c. 1758 CEapplies
- Five Sermons. On Different OccasionsNorthampton, Massachusetts · c. 1758 CEexplains
Key passages(20)
Each passage is tagged by what it does with the idea: explains it, applies it in practice, redefines it with a new meaning, or challenges it. Relevance shows how directly the passage is about this idea.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts · Jonathan Edwards
Under the head of the first distinguishing characteristic of gracious affection, I observed, that there is given to the regenerated a new supernatural sense, a certain divine spiritual taste. This is
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A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts · Jonathan Edwards
Spiritual understanding primarily consists in this sense or taste of the moral beauty of divine things; so that no knowledge can be called spiritual, any further than it arises from. and has this in i
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A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts · Jonathan Edwards
From hence it follows, that in those gracious exercises and affections which are wrought in the saints, through the saving influences of the Spirit of God, there is a new inward perception or sensatio
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A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts · Jonathan Edwards
The confidence of many of this sort, whom that Mr. Shepard calls evangelical hypocrites, is like the confidence of some mad men, who think they are kings: they will maintain it against all manner of r
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A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts · Jonathan Edwards
Again, it is evident from what has been observed and proved of the manner in which gracious operations and effects in the heart are spiritual, supernatural, and divine, that the immediate suggesting o
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A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts · Jonathan Edwards
It is evident that there is a spiritual conviction of the truth, or a belief peculiar to those who are spiritual, who are regenerated, and who have the Spirit of God, in his holy communications, dwell
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Inquiry Concerning Qualification for Communion · Jonathan Edwards
And as to the words following in the next verse; “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body:”—these words by no means make it
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A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts · Jonathan Edwards
By this therefore all may try their affections, and particularly their love and joy. Various creatures show the difference of their natures, very much, in the things they relish as their proper good,
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A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts · Jonathan Edwards
From hence it may be surely inferred, wherein spiritual understanding consists. For if there be in the saints a kind of perception, which is in its nature perfectly diverse from all that natural men c
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A Treatise on the Soul and its Origin · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 3.—The Difference Between the Senses of the Body and Soul. Again, I wonder whether this man taught you the difference between the bodily senses and the sensibilities of the soul; and whether
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Five Sermons. On Different Occasions · Jonathan Edwards
3. This spiritual light is not the suggesting of any new truths or propositions not contained in the word of God. This suggesting of new truths or doctrines to the mind, independent of any antecedent
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A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts · Jonathan Edwards
I come now to take notice of some things, wherein those affections that are spiritual and gracious, differ from those that are not so.—But before I proceed directly to the distinguishing characters, I
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A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts · Jonathan Edwards
It may be clearly illustrated thus: we will suppose two men; one, born without the sense of tasting, the other with it. The latter loves honey, because he knows the sweet taste of it; the other loves
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Now the natural man doesn’t receive the things of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to him, and he can’t know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
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A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles · John Chrysostom
Such is a soul winged with heavenly love. For if those who cherish the foul (earthly passion which men call) love, think nothing either glorious of precious, but those things alone which tend to grati
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A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts · Jonathan Edwards
Hence it appears, that the spiritual understanding of the Scripture, does not consist in opening to the mind the mystical meaning of the Scripture, in its parables, types, and allegories; for this is
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Five Sermons. On Different Occasions · Jonathan Edwards
First, it is scriptural. My text is not only full to the purpose, but it is a doctrine with which the Scripture abounds. We are there abundantly taught, that the saints differ from the ungodly in this
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Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John · Augustine of Hippo
14. The Lord speaks somewhat more clearly of that living water. Now the woman had said, “Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, his children, and his ca
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A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts · Jonathan Edwards
There is such a thing as good taste of natural beauty, (of which learned men often speak,) exercised about temporal things, in judging of them; as about the justness of a speech, the goodness of style
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A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts · Jonathan Edwards
The true martyrs of Jesus Christ, are not those who have only been strong in opinion that the gospel of Christ is true, but those that have seen the truth of it; as the very name of martyrs or witness
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