analysis and creative development of those thinkers, texts, and traditions. The term
regularly implies a contrast with “analytic philosophy,” a widely used if not very precise
name for the dominant form(s) of Anglo-American philosophy, whose provenance is, for
the most part and not surprisingly, Anglo-American.
There is no continental equivalent to the analytic philosophy of religion industry, with a
large number of practitioners and a standard list of topics to be discussed. One will look
in vain for much discussion of the proofs for the existence of God, the problem of evil as
a counterproof, the divine attributes, the evidential value of religious experience, and so
forth. But if “continental philosophy of religion” does not signify a well-defined
subdiscipline, richly articulated in standard subdivisions, it does point to the interesting
and important things continental philosophers have to say about religion and theology.
It is not possible to do justice to this dimension of continental philosophy in
end p.472
a single essay. The nineteenth century alone gives us, among others, the work of Hegel,
Feuerbach, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, which continues to inspire and provoke
contemporary discussion and debate. To reduce the task from impossible to merely
daunting, this essay will limit itself (with one major exception, Heidegger) to the latter
half of the twentieth century and to the work of thinkers from the European continent.
Even with these restrictions selection means substantial omission, and the reader will get
but a sampling of a richer and more complex domain.
Phenomenology and Religion: Heidegger
During the twentieth century no tradition has been more widely pervasive in continental
philosophy than phenomenology. So it is not surprising that the question of the relation of
philosophy to religion should be asked in terms of phenomenology. Husserl, the founder
of the phenomenological movement (though not without precedent; see Spiegelberg
1971), had little to say about God and religion, and it is just as well. For the Cartesianism
of his most influential works, namely, the demand for utter clarity and absolute certainty,
might well be seen as a methodological bias against any religious subject matter. Because
of (1) Heidegger's hermeneutical critique of Husserl's Cartesianism, (2) his own religious
journey, and (3) the important role of religious texts in his early philosophical formation
(Kisiel 1993; Van Buren 1994), it is appropriate that he should be the one to pose the
question. In 1927, the year he published Being and Time (1962), he gave a lecture at
Tübingen entitled “Phenomenology and Theology.” Rejecting the “popular” view that
they represent two competing worldviews, addressing the same subject matter from the
standpoints of reason and faith, respectively, Heidegger distinguishes them as two
radically different sciences. Phenomenology is the ontological science, whereas theology
is one of the ontic, positive sciences of what is given and, as such, more like chemistry
and mathematics than philosophy (1998, 40–41)!
As a positive science, Christian theology (the only theology Heidegger discusses) has its
own distinctive content, its positum. This is (1) “a mode of human existence,” (2) given