Gefühls- und Erfahrungstheologie als methodologische Basis der Religionswissenschaft

Neue Zeitschrift fur Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie. 2022. Vol. 64. No. 1. P. 70–92.

Zolotukhin V. V.

The paper is devoted to the problem of continuity between the German post-Kantian theology of religious feeling and experience, from the one side, and the later science of religion (especially, history and psychology of religion), from the other. The main attention is paid to shifts in methodology, which are intended to make the study of religion as empirically justified and ‘impartial’ as possible. The Protestant post-Kantian theology was attentive to religious experience, this trait made possible its influence on the growing academical humanities in the German-speaking world. Religious experience in its historical and social context became a subject of the history of religion (Friedrich Max Müller endeavored to understand, by which spiritual laws does the feeling of infinite shape different religious traditions and mythologies). Religious experience considered through the structure of personality became in its turn a subject of psychology of religion (Gustav Vorbrodt tried to reconstruct, which psychological and even biological grounds determine the development of individual religious feeling). The emergence of the both existing disciplines would be impossible without relying on Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Sentimentalist view on religion.

Keywords: psychology of religion, history of religion, sentimentalism, science of religion, religious feeling, theory of religious experience