The presence — assurance to fire.
From the quiet inner witness Wesley described to Pentecost's flame: the felt side of grace, differently weighted in every stream.
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Being born again.
A datable before and after. The evangelical tradition treats it as the pivot of a life and asks for the date; the sacramental traditions locate the same change at an infant baptism nobody remembers, and the two have never really understood each other.
⚖ contested within
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Hesychia — the stillness.
The mind stops commenting. Fourteenth-century monks on Athos claimed the practice could end in seeing the uncreated light; Barlaam of Calabria called this absurd; Gregory Palamas defended it and the councils sided with Palamas. The claim remains a live difference between East and West.
⚖ contested within
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Tongues.
Speech that outruns the speaker, in a room full of people doing the same. Pentecostals treat it as evidence of Spirit baptism; cessationists hold the gift ended with the apostles. Half a billion people are on the first side of that argument, which is a fact about the twentieth century as much as about the experience.
⚖ contested within
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The gift of tears.
Weeping without grief. The desert fathers called it penthos, took it as evidence the heart had softened, and warned in the same breath against performing it — which tells you how quickly it was being performed.
held by most
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Consolation and desolation.
Ignatius treated the movements of the interior life as readable data rather than moods, and gave rules: never change a decision while in desolation; test consolation by where it leads over time. It is the closest the tradition comes to a method for the inside of a person.
held by most
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The dark night.
Prayer goes dry and stays dry. John of the Cross read it as progress — the senses being weaned off spiritual reward — rather than as failure or as absence. Teresa of Calcutta's letters, published in 2007 against her wishes, record about fifty years of it alongside the work.
⚖ contested within
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The peace that passes understanding.
Named in Philippians as something that guards the mind, not something the mind produces. It is reported most often by people whose circumstances did not improve, which is the whole of the claim being made about it.
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