introductionstood as a pure light and related to God. Both of them also object to
traditions that claim that God’s knowledge is possible only through
the element of exteriority, and that the separation of object from
subject is necessary in order for the phenomena to show itself. Instead
they both argue that the essence of manifestation is an ipseity and
immediacy before any such separation.
The theme of religion within phenomenology is not limited to the
so called “Theological turn” in the second half of the 20th century. In
her contribution Jonna Bornemark argues that the preconditions for
such a turn were present already in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology
and were explicitly developed by Max Scheler and Edith Stein, both
of which can be read as precursors to the turn to religion in later
phenomenology. Scheler for example develops a phenomenology of
love that shows a richer structure of intentionality, and displays an
open ness for phenomena that escapes conceptual and cognitive
thought. Both Stein and Scheler can be characterized in terms of a
“mystical realism”, arguing for an intentionality that transcends the
ego and points towards the presuppositions that make subjectivity
possible.
In the following contribution, Christian Sommer recalls another early
dialogue between phenomenology and theology around 1920–30, be-
tween Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Bultmann. Through the example
of the problem of sin, Heidegger’s relation to secularization, as well
as his debt to Christianity, is examined. Sommer claims that the early
Heidegger could be understood as an Aristotelian and a secularized
Lutheran. Heidegger’s analysis is based on a certain type of atheism,
it is a “turning away” from the God of the philosophers, which at the
same time makes a return to the God of negative theology possible.
But this does not lead to a common ground of phenomenology and
theology, instead it forces us to go back to anthropology, and the “be-
ing human” as primary for being the philosopher and the theologian.
It is not only Janicaud who has perceived an inherent danger in a
growing intimacy between phenomenology and religion; this was also
a problem for Paul Ricoeur. In her article Morny Joy discusses how
Ricoeur attempted to keep his philosophical work strictly separate
from religious allegiance, and to stay “within the limits of reason
alone”. But nevertheless he became increasingly interested in areas