study of religion

Neutrality and subjectivity in the study of religion

Discussion about religion has been complicated further by the attempt of some Christian theologians, notably Karl Barth (1886–1968), to draw a distinction between religion and the Gospel (the proclamation peculiar to Christianity). This distinction depends to some extent upon taking a projectionist view of religion as a human product. This tradition goes back in modern times to the seminal work of the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72), who proposed that God was the extension of human aspirations, and it is found in the work of the philosopher Karl Marx, the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, and others. Barth’s distinction attempts to draw a line between the transcendent, as it reveals itself to humans, and religion, as a human product involved in the response to revelation. The difficulty of the distinction consists chiefly in a denial that God, as the object of the response, is a “religious” being (i.e., God is transcendent, not religious in the sense of being a part of the human product), and the question about revelation as a religious fact thus needs to be answered.