Transcendence, Immanence, Mystery
The Figures of God’s Invisibility in the Contemporary Phenomenology of Religion
Abstract
The article addresses the problem, which has not yet been analyzed in the Polish philosophical and anthropological literature, and which deals with the subject of unknowability or invisibility of God in the contemporary French phenomenology of religion. The text focuses on the ideas of transcendence, immanence and mystery as developed and further elucidated by Emmanuel Lévinas, Michel Henry and Gabriel Marcel. The author deduces from the philosophical discourse on the three concepts that the transcendence (as understood by Lèvinas) and immanence (as perceived by Henry) are the ideas which unilaterally carry out the tasks set for them by their authors, which is “to protect” God from objectification to which the phenomenological method leads when applied to the problem at stake, in particular, as it was presented by Edmund Husserl. Not only Lévinas and Henry were in opposition to this method but so was Marcel. who had used the concept of mystery for the same reason. According to the author of the article, neither the transcendence (Lévinas) nor the immanence (Henry) but the concept of mystery (as developed by Marcel) is the one which «protects» God the most efficiently against objectification. From the phenomenology of religion point of view the most important thing is that in Marcel’s thought God does not appear as a phenomenon (as Gerardus van der Leeuw and Lévinas and Henry believed), and yet that does not exclude the religious relationship between Man and God.
According to Lévinas and Henry this biblically understood relation cannot exist even though their concepts also have relatively strong foundations in the Bible. Therefore, the author of the text believes that the Marcelian concept of mystery meets the expectations of a believer (homo religiosus) better than the Lévinasian concept of transcendence and the Henrian idea of immanence. The concept of God as the Mystery as developed by Gabriel Marcel allows man to enter into a religious relationship with God by the means of prayer.
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