Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 172

148

§47.

RELIGION

[Div. II

of interesting studies of religious ideas, culture-forms,

usages, without ever touching

Since

we now have

upon the study

a psychology without pysche,

and

of religion.

we

also hear

a great deal said of a science of religion Avithout religion.

In which case itself is

study remains phenomenal, but religion not reached. Hence in this domain also, everything all

addresses itself to faith.

If the subject

religion out of himself, religion itself Its

characteristic

is

were to construe his

would be destroyed.

that the subject places not only the

cosmos outside of him, but primarily himself in absolute dependence upon the central power whose superiority he acknowledges. Consequently he can never place himself above this central power; this, however, is just what he would do, if he placed this power under himself as object of Much less his investigation, or construed it out of himself. can he construe this central power from the cosmos for if the moral sense demands that we subordinate all that is cosmical to our ethical life, a fortiori this cosmical can never be adequate to the central power which dominates our ethical By the study of phenomena, therefore, many world-order. definite ideas of religion may be derived from the subject and from the cosmos, but with all this there is nothing gained unless I have first grasped the heart of religion, of which the phenomenal is merely the outshining. Thus, what in the preceding section we found to be the case with respect to our relation to other subjects, repeats No sense, no percepitself here with still greater emphasis. and no knowledge is here possible for us, unless this tion, central power reveals itself to us, affects us, and touches us inwardly in the centrum of our psyche. When we as man stand over against man, we are always able from our own subject to form our idea of the other subject, on the ground But in religion this inferof faith in our common nature. Except, therefore, this central power makes ence fails us. itself felt by us, and with entire independence reveals itself to us in a way which bends to the form of our sense and of our consciousness, it has no existence for us, and religion is For tliis reason all those systems which try inconceivable. ;

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