Religious Transcendence

I contend that the core of religion is its quality of transcendence beyond the limits of human thought, perception, and emotion. This is not to say that nothing may be said of the divine, but that the stuff of our realm does not exhaust the mystery. We can’t have God utterly figured out, for it would be impious of creatures of finite knowledge to presume such knowledge that would fill up the dark hole of absolute mystery. I turn to the Christian theologian, Karl Rahner, and to the Hindu Rigveda to support this point, which is valid, I submit, for anything that is (or can be counted as) a religion.

In chapter two of Foundations of Christian Faith, Karl Rahner reflects on “that transcendental experience in which a person comes into the presence of the absolute mystery which we call ‘God,’ an experience which is more primary than reflection and cannot be recaptured completely by reflection.”[1] In other words, the theologian reflects on a human experience that is more primary than reflection. Similarly, he claims that the word, God, “is itself a reality,” which, unlike the word itself, is presumably beyond reflection.[2] Borrowing from Pseudo-Dionysius, we could say that both the transcendental experience and the metaphysically real referent of the word God go beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and sensibility (i.e., emotion). The key here is go beyond, which is different than “is entirely beyond.” So we can hang what Hume refers to as anthropomorphic ornaments on the experience and reality, which thus need not be utterly ineffable. Both the experience and the reality go beyond our reflections, and thus our words, and this should situate our attempts to provide descriptors such that we do not take them as absolute and exhaustive. Even divine revelation, Augustine writes, arrives in our realm as through a darkened window. Hence, a person having a transcendental experience comes into the presence of absolute mystery—a point that Hegel seems to relegate under the presumed clarity of revelation. To the Christian, according to Hegel, the proclamation “God is dead” means that “the truths of faith are not in heaven but fully revealed in and for the finite world.”[3]  That is, the content of Christianity “is that God is revealed to human beings, that they know what God is.”[4] Augustine’s darkened window is assumed to be transparent, as if the taint of the fall had no impact on our reception of revelation. Dionysius’ “goes beyond” is utterly ignored. In short, Hegel risks idealizing our realm and extirpating the continuance of absolute mystery.

I submit that the inclusion of a transcendent referent even though it inherently goes beyond the limits of our cognitions, perceptions, and sensibilities is essential to the domain of religion and renders it sui generis, and thus properly subject to its own criteria, rather than those of history, ethics, or science. This is the thesis of one of my research projects. I submit that transcendence as “going beyond” is present not just in Christianity, but in Hinduism as well. For instance, “going beyond” is depicted in X.90 of the Rigveda in the person of Purusa in the following verses:[5]

“Having covered the earth on all sides, he extended ten fingers’ breadth beyond.” (v. 1)

“he is master of immortality when he climbs beyond (this world) through food.” (v. 2)

“So much is his greatness, but the Man is more than this: a quarter of him is all living beings; three quarters are the immortal in heaven.” (v. 3)

“Upon his birth, he reached beyond the earth from behind and also from in front.” (v. 5)

“From his head the heaven developed.” (v. 14)

According to Jamison and Brereton, the “ten fingers’ breadth” by which Purusa “exceeds the world measures from the Man’s hairline to his mouth” and is thus of “the imperceptible world of thought.”[6] Also beyond the world lie immortality (v. 2) and heaven (v. 3). Indeed, heaven developed from his head (v. 14). This ethereal beyondness lies beyond our realm, or world, and thus beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility. In the cosmological myth of the primordial Purusa, a transcendental experience can thus be associated with the nature of Man—in particular, with our mind—what Feuerbach would say is simply human nature. But as coming from the mind, the experience may be construed as being of thought, rather than going beyond the limits of cognition as Dionysius claims. If so, going beyond the world in the Rigveda (X.90) is not as transcendent. Thus it may be asked whether the absoluteness of mystery is eclipsed. If so, it would not necessarily be as compromised as in the case of Hegel’s view the human capacity for knowledge of God, for beyondness itself is salient in Rigveda X.90. That is to say, what is beyond the world is specified only to a limited extent (e.g., heaven, immortality). Yet it is presumably from thought—the area between the hairline and the mouth. Thought may begin us on the road to a transcendental experience (and notion of the divine), but the key lies in being willing to go beyond thought into the presence of absolute mystery. 

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1. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, William V. Dych, trans. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1978), p. 44.
2. Ibid., p. 50.
3. Jeffrey Kosky, “The Birth of the Modern Philosophy of Religion and the Death of Transcendence.” Pp. 13-29 in Transcendence: Philosophy, Literature, and Theology Approach the Beyond. Regina Schwartz, ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004): 22.
4. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, p. 130.
5. The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India, Vol. 3, Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P Brereton, trans. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 1549-550.  Bold added.

[6] Ibid., p. 1538.

Pope Francis on Families and the Environment

On a trip to Indonesia in early September, 2024, Pope Francis signed a declaration on religious harmony and environmental protection at the Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta with the mosque’s grand imam. The Pope said that our species was facing a “serious crisis” bought about by war and the destruction of the environment.[1] Of war, the tremendous destruction of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and Gaza that had been taking place was doubtless on the cleric’s mind. Of the environment, climate change was undoubtedly on his mind. In addition to volcanoes and wild fires, human emissions of carbon into the atmosphere were poised to push the global temperature increase above the critical threshold of 2.5 degrees C above the pre-industrial level. What connects the two problems at the root—the source of the two problems—went unmentioned. In fact, the Pope made a statement that, if acted upon, stood to exacerbate the underlying problem: the exponential explosion of growth of the human population in the twentieth century.

In 1798, Thomas Malthus’ book, An Essay on the Principle of Population, was published. In demonstrating that it is possible for a species’ population to increase beyond the capacity of a species’ food supply, Malthus single-handedly dealt a blow to the “argument from design,” which maintains that the design in Nature implies a designer, and thus the existence of God as an intelligent being. An inherently flawed design found in nature would destroy this “proof” of God’s existence, for an omniscient, perfect being would not create a flawed design. As of the year of the Pope’s visit to Indonesia, the population of the human species, roughly 8.3 billion, had not (yet) outstripped the sprcies's food supply on a global level, but humanity's imprint was clearly already making more than a dent on the planet’s atmosphere and oceans. Malthus predicted not only the possibility of famine and disease from over-population, but also increased conflict, and the two world wars of the twentieth century could have been manifestations of growth pains. After all, Hitler wanted more land to the east for the Germans. 

With further increases in population in the twenty first century, not only even more conflict, but also famine and pandemics could occur. As of 2024, climate change was arguably the most dire consequence from the tremendous growth of humanity’s presence on the planet during the prior century. As biological organisms, we cannot help but consume energy. More people means more energy is needed, and other things equal, more pollution is one result. To be sure, pollution abatement technology has helped, but the sheer scale of population has eclipsed such incremental measures to reduce pollution.  In terms of “clean” energy, the increase in global energy consumption in 2023 was greater than the increased “clean” energy, so at the end of that year we were more, not less, dependent on fossil fuels. Clearly, technology’s salvific role would be in the long-term rather than right away. In the meantime, humanity could do worse than focus on the source of the environmental problem.

By worse, I have in mind the Pope’s praise of Indonesians “for having large families with up to five children. ‘Keep it up, you’re an example for everyone, for all the countries that maybe, and this might sound funny, (where) these families prefer to have a cat or a little dog instead of a child,’ he said.”[2] Perhaps if more families had one or two children and a dog, the population of our species would be more manageable and more in line with the natural constraints of our planet. Like technology’s role, managing the species’ population in a responsible way is a long-term project. Least of all should we hope for a massive pandemic or war that would decimate the population, as happened in the fourteenth century in Europe during the Black Death (and before then in China). Making sure there are enough workers to support the elderly is but one reason why quick, radical solutions are unwise. 

But it is also unwise to preach in favor of larger families. Indeed, such preachments stray from the domain of religion. Put another way, expertise in theology does not include expertise in human ecology. I submit that what makes religion distinct, or sui generis, is precisely its transcendent element, which goes beyond our earthly realm. Pseudo-Dionysius of the 6^th century describes religious transcendence as going beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility (emotion). Put another way, religious belief, faith, and experience includes a yearning for that which lies beyond. This core of religiosity should have been the Pope’s concern or focus, rather than family planning. He was on firmer ground during his trip in saying that people from different religions are “all brothers, all pilgrims, all on our way to God, beyond what differentiates us.”[3] The latter is what Augustine refers to as earthly matters, whereas being on our way to God intimates transcendence beyond our everyday world. The pope was right to emphasize the transcendence—the shared experience of unifies us all as creatures with an aptitude for transcendence in a distinctly religious sense. To put the matter crassly, if we all push out as many babies as we can, and with medical science exponentially increasing the human lifespan, chances will be greater that there won’t be a habitable planet for people to live in and thus be able to experience transcendence. To borrow a phrase from The Search for Excellence, a business book written in the 1980s, clerics would be wise to “stick to the knitting” rather than try to pontificate on other domains.

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1, Joel Guinto, “Pope and Top Indonesian Imam Make Joint Call for Peace,” BBC.com, September 5, 2024.
2, Ibid.
3, Ibid.