arne grønof addressees: “we” are the ones to see beyond, but beyond what we
see. The movement beyond points back to us seeing.
If we take this lead, religion is not just about a “beyond” or the
“beyond.” Rather, it is about seeing beyond, that is: seeing differently
in the radical sense of being transformed. Seeing has to do with being.
This means that religion, in invoking a beyond, is about how humans
see the world in relating to the world as the world in which they live
their lives. The further implication is that religion is about how
humans take themselves in relating to their world. How then should
we understand this: “seeing beyond what we see”? What is religion
about? How is it about what it is about? Anticipating what I am going
to argue for, I’ll suggest the following answer: Religion is about a self-
transformation which humans themselves cannot bring about,
although it can only come about through what they do: through their
ways of seeing and relating. What would that mean in terms of
“beyond”? Or, rephrasing the question in terms of addressees: what
would we see if we came to see beyond what we see? If we would
qualify this in terms of something beyond, the question follows:
beyond what? Beyond is itself qualified by seeing what we see.
Before moving on let us look once more at the question: what is
religion about? It is difficult not only to find an answer to the ques-
tion, but also to see what an answer would amount to (despite the fact
that this is what approaches to religion have tried to offer). We cannot
do justice to the varieties of religion^2 by simply or directly stating what
religion is about. We might even question that religion is “about”
something. There is something impossible about the question itself.
How would it make sense to deal with religion in asking what it is
about? Religion itself does not deal with something in the same way
theory does. Even though religious traditions can put forward doc-
trines, these seem to be part of human ways of “taking the world”
which makes it difficult to say what it is all about. It is about “all”: the
world, or rather ways of relating to the world. Thus, we can give at
least two kinds of reason for the counter claim that religion is not
“about” something. First, religion is not theory, but practice in a deep
- I use “religion” in the definite-indefinite form in order to explore possibilities
more or less attached to religions.