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NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES. A THEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION.

Harm Goris. Tilburg School of Catholic Theology, The Netherlands

Keywords:

Near-death experience (NDE); mysticism; private revelation; Thomas Aquinas.

Abstract:

Stories about near-death experiences (NDEs) draw much attention from the general public and

are extensively discussed by medical doctors and neuroscientists. However, though eschatology

belongs to their core business, only few theologians participate in the debate. This paper

proposes a theological interpretation of NDEs as ‘private revelations’. I first give a critical analysis

of the development of the modern, allegedly ‘scientific’, concept of NDE. This concept changes

concrete personal testimonies into statistical data that are used as scientific evidence for the

existence of an immortal soul. Next, the main criticisms against this concept from neurosciences,

study of mysticism and philosophy of mind are discussed. Finally, I argue that ‘private revelation’

is a useful model for a theological understanding of NDEs and that an analogy from Thomas

Aquinas’ view on prophetic dreams can help to account for the specific circumstance of imminent

death. The interpretation I propose can do justice to the impression NDEs make on people, but

can also accept and meet some of the most important criticisms raised against the modern

concept of NDEs.

I. Introduction

In an interview in 2000, actress Elizabeth Taylor describes an experience she had in the late

1950s while undergoing surgery. To the interviewer’s question if she did not fear death anymore,

Taylor answered:

I don’t fear it anymore. Because when I was on the other side, like in a tunnel and was with Mike [Mike

Todd, Taylor’s third husband and her great love, who died in 1958, H.G.], it was so beautiful and warm

and the light was so welcoming. And I held onto him and he said ‘you have to go back, you have things

to do and I’ll be here.’ And this was so long ago. When I came out of like seven minutes of not breathing

and no heart beat and pronounced dead … It is still something I don’t like to talk about much because it

was very painful, I wanted to stay with Mike. Adjusting to life again was like learning to walk all over. But

then I started appreciating sounds, colours, music. And I thought ‘my God, I have taken all this for

granted and it is so incredibly beautiful.’ And it made me cry and I thought ‘thank you, God.1

1 A video of the relevant part of the interview can be found on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P8Y5K62U8w (accessed March 10, 2014).

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Taylor’s story is one of countless others that since the 1970s have become known under the

label ‘near-death experiences’ or NDEs. NDEs have become a fashionable topic in popular

spiritual literature and TV-shows. But also pastoral ministers often hear emotional stories from

parishioners about very intense personal experiences in the face of mortal danger.

Testimonies about NDEs appeal to a wide audience. Could it be that these experiences offer

conclusive scientific proof that there is something after death? That the soul is immortal and that

we shall be happy for ever in the afterlife, reunited with all our beloved ones? Can science now

give us the comfort and hope that religion once offered?

Or is it humbug, as many claim? After all, is it not the case that neurosciences have already

come up with purely natural explanations for all the characteristics of NDEs?2

While NDEs receive much attention nowadays, both in the broader culture and in the practice of

pastoral care, academic theologians have generally shunned the issue, with few exceptions. It

could be that we fear our academic respectability as theologians will be (even more) at risk when

we seriously engage in what seem esoteric topics like NDEs, miracles, angels, Marian

apparitions and the like. Furthermore, most of these topics have been monopolized by either

Protestant or Catholic, right-winged fundamentalists, with whom academics do not always want

to be associated.3 And, finally, since Kant theologians have gradually appeased the natural

scientists by respecting a sharp borderline between science and faith or between natural

sciences and the humanities. What Stephen Jay Gould has termed ‘non overlapping magisteria’

has become the prevailing model. NDEs, many think, belong to the domain of medical and

neurosciences, with which theologians should not interfere and about which they are not

knowledgeable.

There are only few full-length studies about NDEs that support the use of theological methods.

Two are from experts in the field of religious studies: Carol Zaleski’s Otherworld Journeys and

(1987) and Religion, Spirituality and the Near-Death Experience by Mark Fox (2003). Zaleski

adopts the method of comparative literary analysis and proposes to view NDEs as culturally

shaped ‘works of the religious imagination, whose function is to communicate meaning through

symbols rather than to copy external facts.’4 Fox employs a phenomenological approach and

calls for an interdisciplinary study of the NDE, in particular from the perspectives of theology and

of religious studies.5 Unlike Zaleski, I shall consider the NDE from a more specifically theological

angle, focusing on topics from theological anthropology. In doing so, I want also to answer Fox’s

call for the participation of theologians in NDE-research.

2 A selection of relevant texts on NDEs can be found in Bailey and Yates, Near-Death Experience. A good survey of the most important debates in the study of NDEs is: Williams Kelly, Greyson and Kelly, “Unusual Experiences.”3 On the other hand, many conservative Christians keep away from a phenomenon like NDE because they associate it with Satanism and witchcraft.4 Zaleski, Otherworld journeys, 187.5 Fox, Religion, 344-345.

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In my view, we as theologians can and should take NDEs seriously, but on our own theological

terms. In this paper, I shall give a critical analysis of the present-day discussion about NDEs and

propose a theological reading that I think does justice to the impact these experiences can have

on individuals, bring out their theological and religious relevance, and refute exaggerated

consequences that some draw from them.

First, I shall give a critical account of the development of the modern concept of NDE and

summarize the positions of its most important advocates, who think that NDEs provide scientific

evidence for the existence of an immortal soul. Next, I shall discuss the main criticisms and

problems that can be raised against the view that NDEs give evidence-based proof of an afterlife.

These counterarguments are derived from different fields: neurosciences, mystical studies, and

the philosophy of mind. The final part of the paper offers a theological evaluation of NDEs that

takes into account the objections but also tries to value their religious significance. I shall argue

that the concept of ‘private revelation’ offers a very useful theological model for interpreting NDEs

and I shall draw an analogy with the view of Thomas Aquinas on prophetic dreams in order to

account also for the specific character of NDEs.

II. The modern concept of Near Death Experience

Although stories about ‘otherworld journeys’ are of all times and of all cultures, the modern notion

of the NDE was only shaped in 1975 when medical doctor and psychologist Raymond Moody

published Life after Life. The Investigation of a Phenomenon: Survival of Bodily Death. The small

book is a collection of about one hundred stories of people who were considered ‘clinically dead’

and had had extraordinary experiences before ‘returning to life.’ In the 1970s more and more of

such stories had became public and Moody’s book came out at the right moment. Sociologist

Allan Kellehear lists a number of medical, social and cultural reasons for the growing popularity

of these stories: development of new medical technologies like CPR, which saved many people

who previously would have died, changing view on death because of higher life expectancy,

dissatisfaction with traditional religions, rising interest in and social appreciation of personal

testimony and of the experience of ordinary people.6

Moody’s book shaped our present-day discourse about NDEs in two ways. First by coining the

expression ‘Near-Death Experience’ itself. The introduction of this term established the very

concept of NDE as a special category of peculiar experiences that – so it seems – are essentially

distinguished from all other kinds of experiences. Second, Moody selected and listed fifteen

‘elements’, which, he claimed, are common in most NDEs and which characterize a concrete

experience as an NDE, although he admitted that none of the stories in his book displayed all

fifteen. The best known ‘elements’ are: out-of-body experience, travelling through a tunnel,

meeting a being of light and beloved ones, feeling of bliss, experiencing a life review, returning 6 Kellehear, Experiences Near Death, 80-99. Kellehear also thinks that NDE is the present-day form of the perennial inspirational idea of an ‘ideal society’ in Western culture, the successor to Cokaygne, Arcadia, Utopia etc.: ibid. 100-115.

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painfully into the body, having life altering effects. Most of these are also found in the story of

Elizabeth Taylor cited at the beginning of the paper. Later Kenneth Ring reduced the number of

elements to a scale of five ‘stages’ of the ‘core experience’, ranging from ‘feeling of peace’ to

‘entering the light’, though not all persons reach this final and highest stage of the NDE, as Ring

points out.7 Bruce Greyson refined King’s ‘Weighted Core Experience Index’. He questioned a

group of members of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and

developed a 16-item ‘NDE scale’ in order to quantify and identify NDEs, and to classify them

further into four types.8 All this shows that it turned out to be problematic to specify the criteria

that a concrete experience – or story – must meet to qualify as an NDE.

After the publication of Moody’s book, NDEs became the subject of scientific research, first and

foremost by medical doctors, like Bruce Greyson (psychiatrist), Michael Sabom (cardiologist) and

Pim van Lommel (cardiologist), who succeeded in publishing an article about NDEs in The

Lancet, one of the leading journals in medical science, in 2001.9 Nowadays, prestigious

universities officially sponsor long-term research projects, a scientific peer-reviewed ‘Journal of

Near-Death Studies’ (JNDS) is being published by the IANDS, and there are academic

conferences devoted on NDEs. Most recently, the autobiographical book Proof of Heaven. A

Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife, published by neurosurgeon Eben Alexander in 2012

about an NDE he claimed to have had in 2008, has become a bestseller, although the author has

been accused by journalist of not giving a truthful report of all the circumstances of the 2008

events.10

The intervention of scientists, especially of medical doctors, who enjoy a high epistemic authority

in modern Western societies, has given a specific appeal and trustworthiness to personal stories

from ordinary people about extraordinary experiences. What the scientists’ interference in fact

causes, is the transformation of single, subjective, private testimonies into public, empirical,

statistically processed evidence for the existence of a separate and immortal soul and of the

afterlife. At least, this is how the experts present their NDE-research and how it is perceived by

many ordinary people.

This ‘scientification’ is a key factor in explaining present-day popularity of NDEs. It persists in

spite of what one might call ‘controversial spiritual radicalisations’ among prominent NDE-

researchers. Moody, for example, claimed that he knew about previous lives, including his

existence as some pre-human tree-creature and he started to experiment with mirror-gazing;

Ring predicted apocalyptic destruction and the dawning of a Golden Era, and connected NDE-

research with UFO-abductions and shamanism. Van Lommel subscribes to the ‘New Paradigm

Science’, which seeks to combine New Age spirituality with Einstein’s physics and quantum

theory and is somehow reminiscent of how nineteenth-century Victorian spiritists appealed to the

7 Ring, Life at Death, 32-66.8 Greyson, “The Near-Death Experience Scale.”9 Van Lommel, Van Wees, Meyers, and Elfferich, “Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest.” There have been other publications in The Lancet about NDE-research.10 Dittrich, “The Prophet.”

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then developed physical theories about electricity and magnetism.11 Some of these rather exotic

heterodox views provoked the anger of another prominent NDE-researcher, Michael Sabom, who

had become a conservative Christian. It led to the so-called ‘religious wars’ in the ‘NDE-

movement’ and the IANDS around the year 2000.12

The ‘scientification’ of NDEs was also not completely undone by the criticisms from mainstream

science, in particular from neuroscientists who claimed that physiological processes in the brain

can completely account for NDEs. In the next section, I shall discuss neuroscientific arguments

for a purely naturalistic explanation of NDEs, together with other objections from the study of

mysticism and from philosophy of mind.

III Criticisms: Neuroscience, Mysticism, Philosophy

The most popular refutation of the claim that NDEs offer experiential evidence of an immortal

soul and of what happens to it in an afterlife, comes from neuroscientists.13 Susan Blackmore’s

hypothesis of the ‘dying brain’ is probably the best known example.14 She argues that specific

neurophysiological reactions in the brain to the breaking down of its normal functions during the

process of dying, account for all the impressive features of NDEs. Out-of-body experiences

(OBEs), by which people witness their own body from an external vantage point, are the result of

a new perception-model that the dying brain develops in response to the stress caused by the

increasing malfunctioning of the senses. The normal ways by which sensory information is

processed are disrupted and the brain tries to organize the chaotic input from the senses in a

new way, which creates the impression of seeing and hearing from an external vantage point.

The stress the dying brain experiences also leads to the release of endorphins, which brings

about ecstatic feelings of peace and bliss. Stimulation of the cells in the temporal lobe produces

the reliving of memories in the ‘life review’, while the random neural firing in the visual cortex

explains the sensation of moving fast through a tunnel. Blackmore and other scientists, including

many psychologists, conclude that NDEs offer no evidence whatsoever for an immortal soul,

‘other worlds’ or an afterlife. However, their arguments have been questioned again by other

researchers.15

Less discussed, but more decisive I think, are two other forms of criticism. The first one comes

from the study of mysticism and cross-cultural studies. It concerns the calling into question of the

very concept of a near-death experience, on the basis of two arguments. First, it has been

empirically shown that NDE-like experiences occur also in situations in which there is no

question of imminent death. Drugs and meditation can provoke similar feelings of bliss and

11 On Moody, see: Fox, Religion, 51-54. See also Ring, Heading Toward Omega, esp. 197; Ring, “Near-Death and UFO Encounters” and Van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life, 223-257.12 Fox, Religion, 330-338. 13 Also psychologists have come up with explanations of NDEs: see Williams Kelly, Greyson, Kelly, “Unusual Experiences,” 374-378.14 Blackmore, “Near-Death Experiences.” See also Jansen, “Neuroscience, Ketamine.”15 For a literature review, see Greyson, “Near-Death Experiences: Clinical Implications.”

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images of a tunnel or of light, but these can also arise unexpectedly under perfect normal

circumstances. Mark Fox conducted research on the 6000 stories about religious experiences,

collected since 1925 in the archives the Religious Experience Research Centre (RERC) at the

University of Wales, Lampeter. Using Moody’s fifteen elements of the NDE, Fox selected 32

testimonies of what he called ‘Crisis-Experiences’ (CEs) and 59 so-called non-Crisis-

Experiences. Fox introduces the term ‘Crisis-Experiences’ to cover cases in which there had

been some kind of life threatening situation but in which the danger appeared to be no longer

imminent. While the category of CEs is already broader than that of the classical NDE, the

number of non-CEs still exceeds by large the number of CEs. Also some leading NDE-

researchers admit that near-death is not necessary for an NDE.16 In other words, the term ‘near-

death experience’ turns out to be something of a misnomer and the very concept becomes

questionable. It seems more reasonable to subsume so-called NDEs under the broader category

of ‘mystical experience’. Or, when focusing on the life changing effects of the experience, one

might further characterize it as a ‘conversion experience’.17 The second argument against the

concept of NDEs as a specific, well-defined category of experiences, has to do with its defining

characteristics. We already saw that Moody’s fifteen ‘elements’ were considered too strict and

that others came up with gliding scales for identifying the ‘core’ of an NDE. However, in the study

of mysticism the notion of a kind of universal, common, unmediated, cross-cultural ‘core’ in

mystical experiences, which could be isolated and purified from all culturally and subjectively

determined interpretation, has been seriously called into question. Steven Katz’s 1978 paper in

which he argued that ‘the notion of an unmediated experience seems, if not self-contradictory, at

best empty,’ was epoch-making.18 George Lindbeck illustrates the incommensurability of mystical

experiences as follows: ‘Buddhist compassion, Christian love, and [...] French Revolutionary

fraternité are not diverse modifications of a single fundamental human awareness, emotion,

attitude, or sentiment, but are radically (i.e. from the root) distinct ways of experiencing and being

oriented toward self, neighbor and cosmos.’19 Zaleski gives the example of a woman who told

Kenneth Ring that in her NDE she saw Jesus with a communion chalice. To reduce this image of

Jesus to an allegedly underlying, neutral category like ‘a being of light’ and qualify the rest as

merely subjective, personal ‘embroidery’ does not do justice to the woman’s experience. ‘Meeting

a being of light’ is not just an innocent phrase nor the formulation of a pure experience. Such a

reformulation ignores that ‘a being of light’ fits very well present-day, Western, pluralist, non-

traditional spirituality and is in fact as culturally specific and no less an imaginative form than

16 See: Ring, Heading toward Omega, 220-251; Cook, Greyson, and Stevenson, “Do Near-Death Experiences Provide Evidence,” 378-379; Williams Kelly, Greyson and Kelly, “Unusual Experiences,” 368-9, 411-4.17 On the life-changing effects of NDEs, see Greyson, “Psychology of Near-Death Experiences”, 518-520.18 Katz, “Language, Epistemology and Mysticism,” 26. Fox, Religion, 98-141. Katz’s position is still dominant, though it has been challenged: King, “Mysticism and Spirituality”, 333.19 Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine, 40.

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Jesus with the chalice.20 We might even consider such a reduction an act of violence against the

personal experience and proper imagery of the person involved.

In conclusion, the concept of ‘NDE’ seems highly problematic, both because the limitation to a

near death situation is arbitrary and because the abstraction of a neutral ‘core experience’ of

phenomenal commonalities stripped of all meaning and interpretation, is impossible. As a

consequence, quantification over NDEs becomes highly problematic and the whole statistical

basis of NDE-research is severely undermined.

A third fundamental criticism can be brought in from philosophy, in particular from philosophy of

mind. Most NDE-researchers seem to assume a Platonic or Cartesian type of dualism of body

and soul. The human being is thought to consist of two substances: a physical body and a purely

spiritual, immaterial soul.21 Especially out-of-body experiences (OBEs) serve to illustrate this

anthropological dualism. OBEs are considered as proof of the existence and ongoing activity of a

soul that has been separated from the body. However, such an interpretation of OBEs is

confronted with a serious paradox: the sensory activity of disembodied souls. How can a purely

spiritual soul by itself have sensory experiences, either of events and things in this world, for

example of the person’s own body, or – a fortiori – of a transcendent, non-sensory, spiritual

reality? When it lacks sense organs and a brain that can process sensory input, how can a soul

see and hear? These philosophical questions seem obvious, but they are hardly raised by NDE-

researchers.22 This may be because philosophers participate even less in the discussion about

NDE than theologians. Moreover, because most present-day philosophers favour some form of

physicalism, which somehow favours the physical (brain) over the mental (mind), they are more

willing to speculate about the epistemic activities of soulless bodies or zombies, than about what

a disembodied could or could not know and learn, in contrast with their medieval predecessors.23

IV A theological interpretation

In this section, I shall resume and evaluate the criticisms from neuroscience, philosophy of mind,

and the study of mysticism, and then propose a theological interpretation of NDEs a ‘private

20 Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys, 127. Ring himself advocates a pluralist, de-institutionalized, de-traditionalized universal spirituality: Ring, Heading Toward Omega, 21 For an overview of dualism in its different forms, see: Robinson, “Dualism.” 22 Terence Nichols thinks the epistemological problem the strongest objection against NDEs: Nichols, Death and Afterlife, 108. Ornella Corazza suggests an Eastern, Japanese view as an alternative, but does not discuss the internal tensions of the Western view: Corazza, Near-Death Experiences. Exploring the Mind-Body Connection. 23 The cognitive activity of an anima separata was a much debated topic in medieval philosophy. See Potts, “Sensory Experiences.” In his interesting paper, Potts sketches several possible Thomist interpretations of NDEs especially on the basis of Aquinas’ speculations about how and what a soul separated from the body – either after death or in prophetic ‘rapture’ – might know. Because I question the classification of NDEs as a separate category of experiences, I shall focus in the next section on the situation of revelations in sleep, which Potts also mentions (ibid. 92, 97).

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revelations’, which I shall elaborate with the help of Thomas Aquinas’ analysis of prophetic

dreams.

Most neuroscientists that are very critical of NDEs, connect their empirical findings with a position

in the mind-brain debate that is contrary to dualism and is usually labelled ‘reductive

physicalism’. Basically, it claims that in reality the mental is nothing but the physical: the mind is

the brain. All that we call ‘spiritual’ can be reduced to material processes.24 If one accepts this

philosophical view, any final explanation of NDEs must be naturalistic and theological

interpretations become vacuous. NDEs can be disregarded as mere hallucinations, produced by

abnormal neurological processes in the brain. However, physicalism is a philosophical view, not

a scientific theory that can be empirically validated. Therefore, there seems to be no cogent, let

alone valid, argument from neuroscientific data and explanations to the denial of the existence of

the mental or the soul. One can accept the former without the latter.

On the other hand, neither do I think that a theological appreciation of NDEs requires a form of

Cartesian dualism, as many NDE-researchers and some theologians do.25 First, there are

general problems that face dualism, like questions about the unity of the human person and

about how the body and the mind could interact. Second, in the previous section, we saw that

NDE-like experiences can also occur when there is no life danger and that there are logical

problems with sensory perception by an immaterial soul of empirical reality and even greater

problems in the case of the, allegedly, transcendent reality of the afterlife. Third, I see no

compelling reason why we should not allow for the possibility, in principle, of neuroscientific

accounts of striking phenomena of NDEs, like OBEs – without, however, endorsing physicalism

and claiming that neurosciences can give a full and final explanation. In fact, as I shall argue in

the next paragraph, some neuroscientific explanation must always be possible, because every

human experience necessarily involves bodily, neurophysiological processes. For these three

reasons, I think that NDEs do not constitute objective, neutral, empirical evidence that warrants

beliefs about survival of a soul or about an afterlife, and by which each rational, right-minded,

unbiased person should be convinced of the truth of such beliefs.

We can avoid the two extremes of reductive physicalism as well as Platonic-Cartesian substance

dualism. A middle position is the Aristotelian hylemorphic view, adopted also by Thomas

Aquinas, that a human being is a unity, composed not of two substances, but of two principles,

matter and form.26 The soul is the ‘form of the body’, i.e. the soul makes the body a body, which

is by definition organic and living. Without the soul, the body is no longer a body, but a corpse.

One consequence of the more unified view on the human person is that all of his or her epistemic

24 On the mind-brain identity theory, see Smart, “The Mind/Brain Identity Theory.” Cf. also Nichols, Death and Afterlife, 118-27 for an overview of different contemporary philosophical views on the mind-body/brain relation. 25 The theological appreciation of NDEs by Walls and by Nichols is based on substance dualism. See: Walls, Heaven, 156-60 and Nichols, Death and Afterlife, 109-112, 117-18.26 The Aristotelian-Thomistic view cannot be easily classified in terms of any of the contemporary forms of dualism. Neither is it a form of non-reductive physicalism or emergentism. See McInerny and O'Callaghan, “Saint Thomas Aquinas,” section 8.

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activities, ranging from basic sensations to the highest forms of intellectual contemplation,

necessarily involve both the body and the mind.27 The human intellect simply cannot function

without neurophysiological processes in the brain. This explains why some neuroscientific

description and partial explanation of NDEs must always be possible.

Finally, there is the phenomenological evidence, mentioned above, that imminent death is not

necessary for having an NDE, making ‘near-death experience’ a misnomer. Although I think this

evidence is convincing, I still want to suggest that a life-threatening situation and a ‘dying brain’

can be relevant. I shall come back to this when discussing Thomas Aquinas’ view of revelatory

dreams. Because I think mortal danger can have a specific role, I shall continue to use the term

‘NDEs’ in the remainder of this paper, though I remain sceptical about considering NDEs as a

well-defined, separate class of experiences.

From the proper perspective of theology, the concept of ‘private revelation’ seems to me to be

the most appropriate category for interpreting NDEs. This is in line with a recent remark by Carol

Zaleski: ‘In traditional language, a near-death experience is a kind of private revelation, which

can neither provide its own warrant nor interpret itself.’28 Private revelations concern visions and

revelations from God that occurred after the completion of the New Testament, the testimony of

God’s final and decisive public revelation in Christ. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says

about private revelations:

It is not their [viz. of private revelations, HG] role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation,

but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the magisterium of the Church,

the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an

authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church.29

Qualifying NDEs as private revelations has at least three consequences. First, being ‘private’

precludes generalizations of and quantifications over NDEs. The interpretation is no longer a

matter of selecting variables and identifying common denominators in order to generate

statistical data as the basis of scientific research and to construe a ‘core experience’. ‘Private’

means that the individual experience and testimony is considered in its own particularity. The

concrete, specific circumstances and imagery can and must be fully acknowledged and taken

into account.30 Second, ‘revelation’ implies a divine origin. From a Catholic viewpoint, this entails

27 Pickavé, “Human Knowledge,” 314.28 Zaleski, “Near-Death Experiences,” 622-623. 29 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 67. See also the theological commentary on private revelations by the then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger, in: Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Documents Regarding ‘The Message From Fatima’.” In 2012, the same Congregation also published a document drafted in 1978 about the official procedure and criteria for the recognition of private revelations: “Norms Regarding the Manner of Proceedings in the Discernment of Presumed Apparitions and Revelations.”30 One could draw a parallel with Marian apparitions, which – as far as I know – are always taken as concrete, particular occurrences and have never been quantified and subjected to statistical analyses.

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that the interpreter is not so much the individual who has the experience, let alone the (secular)

scientist, but rather the whole faith community, with a specific role for pastors, theologians, and

the magisterium. This concerns the sensus fidelium (‘sense of the faithful’) which the Catechism

mentions and which expresses the idea that all believers participate in elaborating Christian

truth.31 This does not mean that the individual is dispossessed of his or her own personal

experience and that church authorities can impose an interpretation. Rather, it means that it is

only from the insider perspective – or emic approach – of the Christian faith that these individual

experiences should be interpreted and assessed, and that the interpretation is a communal effort

and task of the Church – as the faith is. Private revelations ‘are to be understood within the life of

faith.’32 In the case of private revelations that have a large impact, like the Marian apparitions in

Fatima or Medjugorge, many believers and Church officials will have their say. But with an NDE,

it will rather be the local faith community and pastor that can help the person to give meaning to

the particular experience. Third, the concept of ‘private revelation’ also indicates that the

experience does not belong to the realm of human ‘nature’, in which we can act autonomously as

self initiating agents, but rather to the realm of ‘grace’, of God’s special gifts and charismas.

However, supernatural grace does not destroy or bypass human nature. Private revelations by

God must fit our human condition and our corporeal-mental cognitive capacities and operations,

if God wants to truly communicate with us without violating the natural integrity of the human

person and his cognitive acts.

The last two consequences of considering NDEs as private revelations, viz. the qualified

interpreter and the role of natural corporeal-mental processes in human cognition, can be

clarified by making use of Thomas Aquinas’ account of prophetic dreams. I am not saying that

NDEs are dreams, but a comparison with what Aquinas says about prophetic dreams can offer

some insights for better understanding what is typical of NDEs. Aquinas distinguishes different

forms of prophecy: they can happen with or without images and the latter can occur either when

awake or in dreams.33 According to Aquinas, sleep creates a favorable situation for receiving a

prophecy from God. In everyday life, our cognitive processes, in particular the outer senses, are

occupied with the impressions from immanent, empirical reality. However, in sleep, we are less

engaged by these external sensory impressions and are more open and have a heighted

sensitivity to other influences.34 In this way, God has, as it were, a better opportunity to make use

of and to work on our internal senses, in particular the power of imagination, while respecting the

natural mode of operation of human cognition. Being a bodily power, as Aquinas argues, the

31 Burkhard, “Sensus fidelium.”32 Ratzinger in “Documents Regarding Fatima.”33 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae q. 174 a. 3. For Aquinas on prophecy in general, see Wawrykow “Prophecy.” Thomas Aquinas also knew hagiographic stories about journeys to the underworld. Michael Potts refers to a text in Quaestio Disputata De Anima art. 19 ob. 18 where it is said: “it is related of the dead who are brought back to life, as we read in many histories of the saints, that they said they saw certain imaginable objects, for example, houses, camps, rivers, and things of this kind” (Potts, “Sensory Experiences,” 91).34 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae q. 172 a. 1 ad 2.

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activity of the power of imagination includes necessarily all kinds of physiological brain

processes. And one may also include psychological and cultural influences on the religious

imagination. But Aquinas considers the immanent, physiological and mental natural processes in

dream formation only as instrumental causes for God’s agency and he would claim that the

natural processes, though necessary, do not give a complete and final explanation of the

phenomenon.

We can extend what Aquinas says about sleep and dreams to other situations in which the

distraction by the regular input from the outer senses is suspended, like meditation or a crisis of

imminent death. In such situations our imagination is more receptive to the influence of divinely

inspired sensory impressions. In this way, I would argue that ‘near-death experience’ is not

completely a misnomer.

However, the representation in the imagination is only part of what is needed in prophetic

dreams. Interpretation by the intellect is even more necessary. According to Aquinas, in all

human cognitions the intellect has to play its own role. While our intellect is always dependent on

phenomenal representations or images produced in the power of imagination in order to function

properly (what Aquinas calls the conversio ad phantasmata), the intellect also interprets and

judges them. Sensory images as such are not self-explanatory and need to be understood by the

intellect. However, in the case of prophetic images the normal interpretation by the intellect’s

natural capacities does not suffice. In the case of ‘things divine’ (in divinis), the mind needs the

extra help of an inner intellectual illumination by the supernatural ‘light of faith’ or maybe even the

charismatic ‘light of prophecy’ in order to understand the religious imagination correctly.35

Aquinas points out that the divinely inspired intellectual judgment need not even be made by the

same person who has the religious images. In the Old Testament, it is Joseph who gives the

right interpretation of the dreams of Pharaoh, and Daniel who knows how to read the signs on

the wall of the palace of king Belshazzar. In other words, Aquinas’s explanation of the

interpretation of prophecies strengthens the idea that, in the case of an NDE, its religious

interpretation is not simply an autonomous decision, which is up to the individual person who has

the experience, but that the interpretation must be developed in the light of faith, which has its

proper subject in the Church, the community of the faithful.

V Conclusion

Nowadays, NDEs are a phenomenon too remarkable and too widespread for theologians to

ignore. Most theologians get cold feet when confronted with stories about NDEs, but I think we

should try to overcome our reluctance in dealing with these stories. Theologians should take

NDEs more seriously and bring their own theological expertise into the discussion. This means

that we have to be critical about two extreme interpretations that are given by scientists and that

35 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae q. 173 a. 2-4. Also Goris, “Thomas Aquinas on Dreams,” 275-78.

12

are accepted in popular and esoteric media. On the one hand, there is need for unmasking the

usually hidden metaphysical presuppositions of neuroscientists who apply a form of reductive

physicalism in order to come up with purely naturalistic, neurophysiological explanation for

NDEs. On the other hand, theologians should be critical of some of the strategies and

interpretations adopted by medical doctors who are advocates of NDEs and think they give

scientific proof of the existence of an immortal soul and of an afterlife. First, we should question

the procedure of considering individual testimonies of ordinary people as mere empirical data

and of transforming these stories into statistical evidence for metaphysical claims. In particular,

we could learn from studies in the field of mystical theology that it is questionable to classify

NDEs as a distinct category of its own and also to abstract a kind of universal core NDE, which,

allegedly, underlies all concrete instances of an NDE. Second, theologians (and philosophers)

can explicate the problems involved in interpreting the way in which the experiencing subject and

the experienced objects are usually represented in NDEs: one should question the tacitly

assumed anthropological dualism of mind (or soul) and body and also point out the

transcendental character of the afterlife itself.

An adequate model for understanding NDEs from a theological perspective is the concept of

‘private revelation’. It preserves the particularity of an NDE as an individual, personal testimony; it

points to the community of the faithful as the first qualified interpreter; and it can account for the

supernatural origin of NDEs, with respect for the natural workings of the human mind. Aquinas’s

analysis of God-sent dreams offers an analogy for better understanding the last two elements.

Aquinas argues that common physiological and mental processes are always needed for there to

be genuine human experience and human cognition at all. The particular situation of sleep, in

which one is less absorbed in ordinary sensations and thoughts, can create a certain openness

and sensitivity in the human mind and imagination for extraordinary divine influence. By analogy,

we can extend what Aquinas’s example of sleep to other particular situations like meditation,

imminent death, or other crises, in which the natural workings of the human body and mind offer

a specific openness for divine influence. However, the right interpretation of the God-sent images

depends on the illumination of the intellect through the light of faith, of which the Church is the

primary bearer.

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Note on the contributor

Harm Goris (PhD Utrecht 1996) is senior lecturer in systematic theology at the School of

Theology of Tilburg University, the Netherlands, and member of the Thomas Institute at Utrecht.

His area of specialization is the thought of Thomas Aquinas.