Page 292 - Contribution To Phenomenology

THE STUDY OF RELIGION IN HUSSERL 285

types, that the original Protestant Reformation, not the established forms
of Protestantism, was a religious liberation from religion, and to that
extent rational. The medieval Roman Catholic church represents rather
cleanly the type "religion" as a stage of higher mythic culture.^^
The medieval church is pervaded not only by traditionalism but also
by an aspiration for a science that would be in essence theology. It no
longer, however, wishes to be merely apologetic. Rather what is desired
is a science of divine things and of humanity in relationship to God not
only as these are experienced in faith but also as they are grasped in
concepts. Now one desires a universal philosophic system, a universal
theory of absolute reality and absolute norms of action presentable in an
encompassing scientific theory, all of which are* related to the foundation
which is revelation and its dogmas. Husserl refers to this as the ecclesial
imperium and as the idea of civitas dei.
In the course of things this medieval science declared an increasing
number of spheres of revealed dogmatic contents to be incomprehensible.
Husserl goes on to note, perhaps with a touch of irony, that at the same
time this science distinguished between the comprehensible and incom-
prehensible and taught how to grasp the incomprehensible in concepts
and to pursue these incomprehensible matters in their deductive
consequences and how they imply norms for a universal human praxis
(Hua XXVII, 105). Husserl probably has in mind the Catholic theological
teaching of revealed truths, e.g., the Trinity, which are essentially
supernatural, i.e., essentially beyond the reach of reason and in need of
the supernatural Ught of faith, in contrast to truths which are de facto
revealed, e.g., the immortahty of the soul, but which are not beyond the
reach of the light of reason.^
On another occasion Husserl complicated this type of theology by
calling attention to several senses in which a new sense of philosophy
emerges and which changes the very concept of science. And he linked
this to the names of Philo, Plotinus, Neo-Platonism, Neo-Pythagorean-

1' Needless to say, Husserl overlooks the rich movements in Roman
Catholicism for which the original authentic value-experiences were central, e.g., the
mystical and reform movements. But these were, for the most part, indeed, reform
movements which were not favorably received—at least in their own time.
^ Husserl's meditations (in the 1920's and 1930's) on the relationship between
theology and philosophy were perhaps in part occasioned by the religious turn that
many of his students took or the theological interpretations of his writings by people
like Eric Przywara and others involved in the Thomist renaissance.