Page 290 - Contribution To Phenomenology

THE STUDY OF RELIGION IN HUSSERL 283

grounding. It claims an absolute validity which does not come from seeing
and insight. Faith is indeed judgment but not mere judgment, mere doxa.
As his colleaque Scheler might have put it: It is a matter of believing-
that, but the believing-that is inseparable from a believing-in; that is, it
is a matter of loyalty and trust. Therefore of it Husserl says: "The
negation of faith is not merely false but also, and above everything else,
sin, and fundamentally this negation is false because it is sinful not to
believe in this matter" (A V 21, 4b).
In one form theology is an apologetic in that it seeks to resolve the
opposition between "natural reason" and revelation and to justify the
latter before the court of reason. Revelation may be referred to as
knowledge stemming from a supernatural light whereas philosophy and
science are knowledge originating in a merely natural light (A V 21, 3a).
Natural reason has the status of theoretical truth which is prior to and
existing along side of revelation. Natural reason is the center of the
tradition of autonomous philosophy, which itself has the possibility of
being a non-confessional, even atheistic way to God because it gives an
account of the essential necessities of the world, especiaUy in terms of its
teleology. Natural reason itself, as exemplified in Aristotle, is a form of
theology, a form of philosophical theology (cf. E III 10, 14b ff.; A VII
9, 20 ff.). But as apologetics natural reason and philosophy become
handmaidens, organs or servants of a pre-philosophical organ of truth,
faith. This pre-philosophical truth, e.g., through Christ, enters into the
world at a particular time and place, e.g., in Graeco-Roman culture.
In the Kaizo essays Husserl speaks of this pre-philosophical approach
to truth as "faith-experience." This would seem to refer to the discussion
we reviewed earlier of experience led by an immediate intuition of values.
Recall that this experience is an encounter in faith with an original
tradition. This may be a matter of the tradition's representation of
immediate uplifting experiences or of exemplarily good people, or it might
involve the revelation occasioned by the idealizing and edifying work of
a noble artist of the tradition.
It is clear in Husserl's writings that "faith-experience" is an experienc-
ing proper to all cultures. Thus, though his examples are from the culture
in which he is situated, it is not unique to the West. In the incorporation
of natural reason into the faith experience, for, e.g., purposes of
apologetics, the contents of faith themselves become thereby themes of
theoretic judgments which follow upon faith but are not grounded in faith
(Hua XXVII, 103-104). Husserl notes that faith, as in the faith-ex-