Understanding the phenomenology of Religion

In today’s Scenario, when we look at the phenomena of religion, we notice several things like a growing indifference towards organized religion even to the point of taking an atheistic stand. On the other hand we see an attraction to the phenomena of religion especially proven in the fact that men turn to various religions to solve mysteries of the human condition, which today, as in earlier times, burden people’s hearts. There is a religious pluralism, especially in a country like ours.

First of all I need to understand what religion is. Though there are many definitions (substantial and functional) I shall content myself with the definition that Levinas proposes: Religion is God’s search for man and Man’s loving response to Him. As Van der Leeuw would speak of the horizontal and vertical dimension of religion, I would say that at the horizontal realm we try to understand the phenomena – the varieties of religious expressions espoused in the religious language (God-talk), symbols, myths, rituals, etc. The vertical realm is understood in view of the faith and trust in the ineffable.

“Religion is an attitude of the whole human being as person and as community interior as well as exterior which is characterized by the acknowledgement of a radical dependence on a personal and transcendent being from which everything proceeds out of love and to which everything returns as a response in love.” Carlo Cantone

Since there have been many approaches (sociological, anthropological, psychological, theological, etc) to unearth the phenomena of religion in its essence, they were reductionist in nature and would not genuinely look at religion as it appears. So applying phenomenological method is a suitable method to do justice to the phenomena of religion.

I realized that Man is a fundamental phenomenon when we study phenomenology of religion. Man is the one who seeks clarity in the face of what appears before him. Van Roo would name man as the symbolizer who makes what appears intelligible and move towards meaning. The very fact that many philosophers and theologians looked at the phenomena of religion and analyzed religion with the application of the phenomenological method reveals that Man is confronted with meaning and religion is just the responsible response in action towards meaning. Man is basically spiritual.

As I studied religion as the subject-object relation, I would like to say that the bipolar tension between the subject and object is a dialectical tension in as much as they are irreducible. Many philosophers like Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas tried to solve the subject-object duality through the concept of irreducibility in the event of knowing (subject in itself and the object in itself). The theologians solved this problem in the event of God becoming man (in which there is no separation of the immanence and transcendence, i.e the immanent is in the transcendent and the transcendent is in the immanent).

Macquarie says that the essence of religion is the self-manifestation of Being as this is received and appropriated in the life of faith. Heidegger would say that we need to be attentive to the self-manifestation of Being and wait to let Being come-to-presence.

Macquarie tried to find a reason for the existence of varieties of religion through his typology of religion in two convergent series – immanence and transcendence. In applying the phenomenological method, he attempted to talk of general structures of religion on the basis of participation in a particular religion (he being a Christian).  He observed that all religions can be seen as variations on a fundamental theme - the impinging of holy Being upon the being of man.  In connection with the variations, he says that when Being discloses itself, the expression of those whom Being is revealed is conditioned by history and circumstantial conditions.

The point that Maquarrie makes is that one can commit oneself within one’s own community of faith and in terms of the symbols established in that community, and yet believe that for a person in other circumstances, the same God reveals himself in another community and under different symbols, and that there may be nothing defective or inadequate about that person’s commerce with God. This fact could be expressed in the wisdom of sages - Ekam Sat vipraha bahudah Vadanti (Reality is one but sages call it differently).

One final point to make is that as the human consciousness develop, it is the interpretation that changes with the time. Hence, I would say that Religion is never ‘is’ but ‘becoming.’ In any religious phenomena, the dialectical process goes on and on (experience, revelation, tradition, scripture, culture, reason).

Viktor Frankl would say that if religion is to survive, it will have to be profoundly personalized. This does not mean that we need to do away with symbols and rituals. Because we do not come to see just by looking but by training our vision through the metaphors and symbols that constitute our central convictions.