an introduction
An acknowledged phenomenologist of religion was Geradus van der
Leeuw (1890–1930), a Dutch scholar, who identified the nature of reli-
gion with power and aimed to understand religion rather than explaining
it by means of epoché and empathy. Van der Leeuw divided religion into
five parts: the object of religion; the subject of religion; the object and
subject in their reciprocal relationship (inward and outward action); the
world; and forms (religions). This structure focused on what appeared
without neglecting the subject that perceived the phenomena. By consid-
ering these parts as they related to religion, it was possible to discover
that power belonged to both the subjective and objective aspects.
Becoming familiar with the life stream in which phenomena appeared,
the scholar contemplated its essence before intuitively analyzing it. The
experience of similar phenomena was connected to ideal types, which he
conceived as structured connections and instruments of understanding
that lacked spatiotemporal reality, though they manifested another kind
of reality connected to meaning.
Another self-acknowledged phenomenologist was Ninian Smart
(1927–2001), who was also influenced by the philosopher of language,
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) and his notion of family resemblance.
By seeking family resemblances of religious phenomena, Smart avoided
the search for the essence of phenomena. In his scholarship, Smart iden-
tified six dimensions of religion: doctrine; mythology; ethics; ritual;
social institutions; and religious experience. Smart intended to call atten-
tion to the dynamic nature of religion.
John Hicks was also influenced by Wittgenstein’s theory of family
resemblance within the context of his philosophy of language, which
prompted Hick to conclude that religion could not be defined, even
though it can be described. Although the plurality of religions made it
impossible to find their essence, they did share family resemblances that
helped to account for the many similarities and differences among them.
Within a cross-cultural context, religions shared a concern for the real, a
neutral concept that affirmed different forms of transcendent belief.
Around the mid-twentieth century, the history of religion school
emerged with the scholarship of Mircea Eliade (1907–1986), who defined
religion as the sacred as distinct from the profane. Besides being set apart
from everything else and being surrounded by the profane, the sacred was
dialectic in the sense of possessing the power to transform a natural
object, equivalent to a power, saturated with being, and identified with
reality. Jonathan Z. Smith also used an historical approach, and criticized
Eliade for his emphasis on sameness and for missing the fact that religion
was a creation and abstraction of a scholar’s mind, suggesting that reli-
gion was not an empirical category. Smith asserted that religion, a human