It was only the second date, with the woman who would become my wife, when she first asked me why I even bothered studying phenomenology: what has phenomenology to do with theology? Like poor old cliché Tertullian before her asking what Athens has to do with Jerusalem, she, along with all Christians, is right to question the wisdom of this world—which as it happens is precisely what phenomenology is about. Jesus himself performs a peculiar form of phenomenology in the parables which brackets the world and brings the kingdom of God into experience; this is Kevin Hart’s central thesis in Kingdoms of God, and his essays work to outline the foundations of a phenomenological theology grounded on Jesus’ reduction from world to kingdom. As such, Hart does not pursue a phenomenology of religious experience like van der Leeuw or William James, nor does he pursue a phenomenology of God the Father as just another phenomenon amongst others, but rather devotes his attention to both the way Jesus “renders his Father manifest through scripture” and more importantly “how Jesus asks us to turn away from the world to the Kingdom” (178). If Jesus is any indication of what theology ought to be about, and if phenomenology can instructively describe a particular content or method of Jesus’ teaching then Hart is right to articulate a theological strategy that ensconces phenomenology at the very heart of theology itself. His strategy is unique and specific. His is not just a sophisticated version of natural theology nor is his a study of charismata or mysticism which, perhaps unfortunately, reside at the fringes of Christian tradition.1 Rather his phenomenology is an attention to the center of Christianity itself—the parables of Jesus. This both emphasizes phenomenology as a method of theological inquiry and simultaneously limits its application by maintaining that God does not offer himself as phenomenon beyond Jesus and the kingdom.

Phenomenology, in essence, articulates the recognition that we humans do not perceive the world objectively.2 In Husserl’s language, our consciousness intends its perceptions. For instance, science intends to perceive an objective, material, and observable world with repeatable phenomena while the Christian intends, as Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it—a creation “charged with the grandeur of God / it will flame out like shining from shook foil.” Of course, these intentions do not always conflict, and consciousness can intend many perceptions simultaneously. But, the goal of the phenomenological method—or epochē—is to bracket these intentions, natural, or commonsense attitudes, in an attempt to open our perceptions to that which is beyond our intentions. From this germ of insight, phenomenology has grown, diverged, and developed into a vast tradition of thinking that shares this central tenet and, I think, can be constructively applied to every aspect of human endeavor.

Hart’s project fruitfully applies phenomenology to find that Jesus’ parables can be described in just this fashion and argues that Jesus “brackets everyday life and its worldly logic in order to lead those who hear him to a deeper place” (131). His primary example is the parable of the prodigal son, in which Jesus, Hart contends, brackets the world of family and community obligations and offers a vision of the kingdom “based on compassion and forgiveness” (131). This vision of the kingdom invites the listeners and readers “to see how we can be constituted as properly human by participating in the Kingdom” (132). To participate in the kingdom, first, we experience the kenosis of emptying ourselves of worldly logic and ways of being. Then after kenosis, we experience epektasis whereby “the listener stretches himself or herself into the Kingdom of God, that is, into the embedded relations of unconditional love” (132). This movement from the world to kingdom is possible because the listeners have attended to the narratives of Jesus’ parables and thereby “learn how to live as God wishes us to” (132). Or, in other words:

I see the [kingdom] in hearing Jesus; it is intelligible, an intentional correlate of an act; but whether there is such a thing is a risk, one that I must engage by trying to live the life one calls Christian. (153–54)

Phenomenological theology is thus situated as the discipline of attending to the narratives of Jesus in order to allow his presentation of the kingdom to challenge our worldly logics and commonsense attitudes thereby learning how it is God wishes us to live. In a sense phenomenology serves as the bridge from theology to ethics.

In this presentation, the object of the phenomenology is the revelation of God in Scripture and through the kingdom. This is an essential point of Hart’s phenomenological project; Hart is clear that “no human, not even the subtlest of phenomenologists, can make God manifest himself . . . we must wait for revelation” (135). God is always the agent of revelation; we are not. And, the revelation Hart is most comfortable with is “scripture and ecclesial tradition” in which we experience Jesus as Christ “first and foremost through our reading of scripture” and we make acts of faith “on the basis of testimony that has become concrete in the context of a community and a tradition” (136, 139, 142). Yet, it is easy to imagine in our post-Christian world a person embedded in a community and tradition who has read the scriptures and still does not encounter Jesus as Christ and does not perceive the kingdom as a phenomenon in experience. And, Hart does acknowledge that kingdom phenomena are “easily blocked by others.” This recognition suggests to me, however, that something must happen before we can receive the kingdom as revealed by Jesus.

Hart limits his use of phenomenology to the manifestations of Jesus and the kingdom, “which is phenomenon, an elusive one that is easily blocked by others, one that we are enjoined in the synoptic Gospels to help the Father make more manifest” (136). If our perceptions of the kingdom are easily blocked by the world, however, how then are we as humans living in the world east of Eden to help bring it into manifestation? In other words: is the restriction of phenomenological inquiry to Jesus and the kingdom sufficient to disrupt the power the world has over our perceptions and actions? Is it possible that there is an experience, helpfully described in phenomenological terms, that precedes the parables in the lives of Christians? Perhaps Erazim Kohák would prove a helpful dialogue partner at just this point.

Erazim Kohák’s presentation of phenomenological practice emphasizes embodied practices to help create space for the non-intentional to manifest itself in our pre-reflective experience.3 Kohák, like Hart, is also securely within the phenomenological tradition clarified by Husserl, and like Husserl, Kohák starts with the intentionality of perception defined by the natural or commonsense attitude. As another example of how the commonsense attitude can color our perceptions consider a logger; from the perspective of logging, a forest appears as X number of board feet. An ecologist likewise perceives a forest as an ecosystem, and a wildlife photographer sees woodpecker habitat. In each case, the perception of the trees—understood as X number of board feet of lumber, ecosystem stability, or photographic possibility— are not objectively incorrect, but do inhibit the perception of alternative aspects of the forest. This recognition of the intentionality of perception brings to light the pre-reflective attitudes which precede and inform the perceptions upon which we make ethical judgments and actions. These pre-reflective commitments are akin to the worldly logics Hart finds Jesus bracketing in the parables and that are shed in the experience of kenosis. So, to return to Hart’s recognition that phenomena can challenge or block the perception of the kingdom, in one sense this is a purely cognitive failure of humanity—we pre-reflectively intend to see the world rather than intending the kingdom and thus fail to shed our worldly logics and thus fail to perceive our place in creation. Hart’s reading of Jesus’ parables, in Kohák’s language, invites us to bracket our commonsense attitudes and commitments in the effort to allow cognitive space for the kingdom to presence itself to us. Yet, the cognitive brackets are only one-half of the puzzle of perception, according to Kohák.

Kohák expands a second sense in which our perceptions can be limited. He follows the thinking of Jan Patočka, who like Merleau-Ponty emphasized the embodied nature of human consciousness and the ability of the world to impose itself upon the consciousness via the body. This brings to the fore the question of what worldly objects saturate our experience imposing themselves on our bodies and thereby on our consciousnesses. This is easy to observe in the realm of technology where the old adage teaches us that to a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail. If a mere hammer can shape our perceptions how much more so are our perceptions shaped by the high-technology of smartphones, fitbits, and roombas which saturate our lives? Cognitive technologies and social structures such as science, economics, and government bureaucracy are even more powerful to shape our perceptions because they are largely invisible and often culturally unquestionable.4

The recognition that our technologies, physical, social, and structural, shape our perceptions suggests Kohák’s second and more radical epochē, which is the embodied bracketing of particular technologies and social structures to free our bodies as well as our consciousnesses from the imposition of artifacts and structures of our own design. In Hart’s reading of the prodigal son, the father enacts a parallel practice by bracketing the social and religious structures of purity rites and expectations in order to offer unconditional love. If we understand the social structures of first-century Judaism as a kind of religious technē—a set of procedures enacted to bring about a previously intended outcome—then Jesus seems to be suggesting an embodied bracket akin to Kohák’s by telling a parable where his main character brackets the technology, structures, and logics of the day and opens the situation to a previously unimagined possibility.

This suggests that our participation in the coming of the kingdom is precisely a bracketing of our worldly commonsense attitudes which are manifest in the structures and material of our daily lives. If, as Kohák observes, our daily lives are constantly imposing worldly logics on us pre-reflectively, what hope have we of shifting our pre-reflective attitudes by force of reflective will and intellect? Asked another way—does reading Jesus’ parables affect in us a new cognitive understanding by which we are empowered to help make the kingdom manifest—in Hart’s language, do we learn how to live according to the kingdom? Or does a phenomenological reading of the parables invite us into a kingdom practice of bracketing the embodied worldly logics of our day-to-day experience and thereby create a space for God to manifest the kingdom if he so wishes? The translation of Hart’s insight into Kohák’s embodied practices retains the emphases of world, kingdom, and phenomena. But, this translation offers the opportunity to perceive the whole history of Israel and the church as a reduction from world to kingdom affected by the Lord.

If it is true that Hart’s findings can be extended from the parables, then it should be evident elsewhere in scripture. In Exodus, for instance, Israel is led into the desert to escape slavery in Egypt but desires to return to Egypt. This looks like a commonsense attitude imposed by the material and social experience of living, even as slaves, within the relatively secure Egyptian empire. Surely enslavement is better than death in the desert. In Hart’s language, is this not a story of God effecting a reduction from worldly logic to kingdom? And, through kingdom logic and experience Israel comes to perceive the phenomenon of the wilderness not as a place of death, but as a place of encounter and preparation for the promised land? Similarly, when Elijah flees into the desert in fear of his life he is looking for God’s wrath and power to come and secure for him his bodily safety. Instead, God effects a reduction from the worldly logic of power and self-preservation to kingdom logic of trust via the still small voice. This suggests that even the prophets and chosen people of the Lord have commonsense attitudes of worldly logic that require reduction to kingdom logic—for the Lord’s ways are not our ways.

The tradition of the church also provides plenty of examples of embodied bracketing practices. The desert fathers certainly engaged in an epochē of their commonsense attitudes to enter into the unimagined possibilities of the desert. Monastic vows, fasting, prayer, the whole range of spiritual disciplines can be described as an embodied epochē in Kohák’s terms in which the disciple brackets the world in order to allow space to receive kingdom logic. As Hart rightly describes it, “The order of Creation as we know it on Earth has been compromised by the imposition of worldly logic as the only logic to follow: what was created in proper relation with the Father has fallen from that proper relation. We must change our perspective” (137). The ultimate question then is how do we change our perspectives? Hart recommends attending to the phenomenology Jesus performs in the parables in order to learn the logic of the kingdom. But, as he acknowledges, it is a logic that may not be revealed in the first reading, or even in centuries of readings, as our readings themselves can become manifestations of worldly logic. This recognition suggests that there must be something beyond our attentive reading that is at work.

Perhaps radical embodied phenomenological brackets are continuously essential for Christian thought and praxis. Perhaps the phenomenology that Jesus inaugurates is not cemented in the parables of scripture but is in fact carried forth from the scriptures by the Spirit into the world as invitations to continuous, essential, and kingdom-building practices of Christian bracketing. Perhaps the phenomenology of Jesus’ parables is the most perfect of many practices of bracketing aimed at the deconstruction of worldly logic and the opening of Christians to the previously unimagined possibilities of kingdom logic. In any case, no phenomenology, neither Hart’s nor Kohák’s, can make God manifest by necessity. He remains the agent of revelation; “we do not bring God into presence; we enter into his presence” (168). I emphatically agree with Hart that any set of practices, reading or embodied, will not make God manifest to our consciousness—only God can do that. But the God that came and dwelt among us did not abandon us at the ascension. The Spirit continues to brood over creation, nudging, coaxing, cooing, and in some cases dragging us kicking and screaming into participation with the coming of the kingdom.

In the past two decades, Kevin Hart has carried out some of the most significant theological engagements with phenomenology, or, more specifically, with la nouvelle phénoménologie, and his recent collection of previously published academic essays, Kingdoms of God, is a valuable resource for English-speaking theologians who recognize the significance of the contemporary French theological or religious turn in phenomenology. He is a singularly erudite and sure guide into terrain that is still largely terra incognita for many theologians, and his own burgeoning synthesis of theology and phenomenology, present in an incipient way in Kingdoms, is a fruitful goad to theological thought in several related areas. I want to focus in this brief essay on the question that Hart broaches in Kingdoms of whether there can be a phenomenology of the Trinity.

Kingdoms of God explores some different ways that the biblical kingdom revealed by and in Christ has been understood, but it focuses especially on how phenomenology can be utilized to clarify Christ’s own way of moving hearers of his words from worldliness to recognition that God the Father has a claim on humanity that precedes its relationship to the world. Christ himself performs, in word and deed, a “basilaic reduction,” a leading back to the kingdom. Rigorous attentiveness to Christ’s own living approach to reduction can provide the key to a renewed fundamental theology that relates the genesis of creedal Christianity to scripture and the historical existence of the church and that informs both the philosopher and the theologian of the obligations of life in the kingdom. In speaking of “kingdoms” in the plural, Hart proposes a path to theological thinking that is ever aware of the need to avoid the kinds of monolithic, ideological co-opting of Christ that have been found in the history of the church.

Hart explores the question of theological phenomenality in conversation with various thinkers, and, in central chapters of the book, particularly chapters 7 and 8, he provides a helpful, synthetic summary of what it means to speak of a “phenomenology of Christ.” He provides therein his most direct clues for how phenomenology might be appropriated in the domain of Trinitarian dogmatics, or at least might help theologians to clarify their methodological presuppositions in this area. In chapter 7, Hart argues that the starting point for phenomenological theology is reflection on the relationship between Jesus and his Father. Jesus is both the datum and genitive of divine revelation. He is at once the phenomenalization of revelation, given to us in scripture, and, one might say, himself the supreme phenomenologist, whose own reception and articulation of divine phenomenality should be the decisive fundament of theological inquiry. Following Jean-Luc Marion, Hart holds that phenomenality must not be consigned to the domains of judgment, consciousness, or being, but, in principle, extends to all that gives itself in whatever manner it does so. In considering the concept of “revelation,” the Marionian construal of phenomenology has helped to relate philosophy to theology in a coherent way that brings the modern question of appearances to the fore. Philosophy may be able to consider “revelation” as an eidetic possibility, yet, as Hart clarifies, it would remain within the boundaries of intuition. Theology, on the other hand, takes revelation to be an actuality. It is a requirement for practitioners of the discipline of theology to hold that the phenomenality of Christ belongs to God’s self-revelation. The theologian has to think in terms of actualities that exceed intuition and that draw the believer into the presence of God. In the basilaic reduction, the theologian is led back to the presence of God; God is not led into the absolute presence of transcendental consciousness. Receptivity has primacy. One cannot methodologically force the kingdom of God to appear.

Hart places a primacy on pre-thetic disclosures, particularly with reference to the parables of Christ. The parable of the prodigal son is of foremost importance to him, for he sees it as particularly revelatory of the nature of the kingdom. The fatherhood of God is illumined in an especially forceful way in this parable. God’s fatherhood is characterized by compassion, forgiveness, and love. It is both like and unlike human fatherhood. Scripture scholars do not generally take the parable of the prodigal son to be about the kingdom, but it nevertheless shows forth the nature of the relationship of God’s fatherhood to his children, the defining personal ground of the kingdom. Creedal dogmatics, Hart avers, cannot provide the basis for a systematic theology that would attend to the concreteness of God’s revelation. It does not bring into play the nuances of Christ’s life and teachings, and it does not show us how to live according to the logic of the kingdom of the Father. Before thetic constructions are achieved, one must first attend to the nuances of the phenomenality of Christ in his words and deeds—particularly his own phenomenological bracketing of the world in the parables. The parables are fathomlessly polyvalent and should stir in us new ways of seeing that we would not have access to in a thetic theological system that did not sufficiently consider the problematic of appearances. Phenomenological analysis applied to the parables enables us to highlight in a supple and rigorous manner the various modalities of givenness and receptivity that come into play in appropriating their metaphorical and narrative meaning.

Chapter 7 lays out in broad strokes many of the general implications of “basilaic reduction.” It stresses the indirect way that God the Father gives himself in and through the kingdom by revealing and re-veiling, by presence and absence, showing forth and re-concealing. We are brought into the kingdom through a transformation of our gaze, whereby we recognize that it is in fact God’s gaze upon us that moves us to enter into the divine presence. This transformation requires both kenosis, or self-emptying, and epektasis, or a stretching out into the kingdom, whereby we find ourselves anew in the primacy of our relationship with God the Father. We must attend to both cross and resurrection, to the unworldly character of the kingdom as well as to the scriptural promise of eschatological transformation of the world. Christ’s own phenomenological practice should be the ultimate locus of the theologian’s attention: a phenomenology of Christ’s phenomenology would constitute what Hart calls in chapter 8 the “supreme phenomenology.”

The concreteness that phenomenological theology seeks, in giving full due to the pre-thetic domain, might lead us to wonder if Trinitarian theology would be relegated by it to an adjunct status, one that it toiled in prior to the renewal of Trinitarian thinking in the past several decades. Does phenomenological theology require us to bracket dogma in an attitude of suspicion, of ideology critique, or to see it as mistaken and invalidated by modern modes of thought? Chapter 8 of Kingdoms might allay this concern, while remaining attentive to the phenomenological desideratum to keep theological thinking connected to living personal existence. Can there be a phenomenology of the Trinity? The imaginary dialogue partners at the beginning of the chapter suggest different answers to this question, one partner in the dialogue cautioning us as to whether the Trinity can be said to have phenomenalized itself in any way, and the other suggesting that the testimony of Jesus of Nazareth evident in the Frükatholizimus or proto-Catholic layer of scripture might enable us to think phenomenologically about Trinitarian revelation. Hart’s own view seems to be a qualified version of the latter. If the triune God cannot be said to be phenomenalized in Christ, so that philosophy would have access to self-evident phenomena of Trinitarian disclosure, at least it can be said that the triune God is given in Christ by the light of faith and ultimately by the illumination of the Holy Spirit. From the standpoint of faith, the whole mystery of the Trinity is present in Christ, the “abbreviated” or “condensed” Word of God. Philosophical and theological phenomenologies would differ in their approach on this matter. The upshot of Hart’s position, it seems to me, is that there is no reason for a phenomenologically-inclined theologian to bifurcate her belief in the eternal unity and relationality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and her perception of the phenomenon of Christ.

Hart insists that we cannot be said to be able to constitute the Trinity. He holds that not even an enstatic phenomenology along the lines of Michel Henry’s can be said to give us direct access to phenomenalization of the Trinity. If the one God of “natural revelation” can be said to be present to us as a phenomenon, or Christ himself as well, still, the triune God transcends our mental acts. If we can say legitimately, as the tradition of mystical theology has done, that the triune God indwells us, nevertheless, this divine presence within is given modus sine modo. Henry himself can speak of a dyadic manifestation of Life and the living, but he does not, on Hart’s view, recognize the necessity of Christ’s historical mediation in order for us to be brought into the kingdom of life. Neoplatonism, which is not Trinitarian, might give us just as much of the divine as Henry’s phenomenology does. It is only by the light of Christ’s supreme phenomenology of the kingdom of the Father accepted in faith by a gift of the Holy Spirit that Christian Trinitarianism opens up into the domain of phenomenality, but in a concealed way available only to a form of thought suffused with apophatic caution.

Hart gives us much to think about regarding the possibilities and limitations of phenomenology in the domain of Trinitarian thought. He points us back resolutely to the concrete Word of Christ, which, in fact, from the standpoint of faith, provides a more intrinsically Trinitarian starting point for theology than arguments for the existence of God, or explorations of human judgment, feeling, and transcendental experience. Hart enables us to sort through issues regarding the role that phenomenology can play in helping us to attend to the concrete richness of the phenomenality of Christ. This would slip through the nets of a dogmatic theology that limited itself to reflection on the ontological implications of creedal affirmations. There are other approaches that one might take in this regard that are congruent with what Hart says, although they are developed along different lines. Robert Sokolowski, for instance, has explored Christ’s use of language and its Trinitarian implications. The declarative, first-person personal pronoun that Christ employed indicates his full personality and distinction from the Father. This distinction implies, Sokolowski argues, a real sense of eternal, divine relationality. More generally, Sokolowski has shown that phenomenological theology, or the theology of disclosure, might serve dogmatic theology fully and explicitly. It enables the theologian to demonstrate the necessities of disclosure that link history and creedal affirmation. It mediates positive and speculative theology and does not have to imply or entail a denigration of either one or the other. Certain ressourcement theologians utilized phenomenological tools to clarify the way in which the ecclesial consciousness of the faith has operated in particular times and places to appropriate the phenomenon of Christ in doctrinal development. These theologians were very much indebted to John Henry Newman’s historical theology, which was in fact more phenomenological, in a genetic vein, than merely fact-based or historical. One might take a more sympathetic view of Henry than Hart does, particularly by focusing on the former’s Words of Christ, and explore the theme of deification phenomenologically as a source for creedal Trinitarianism. One would thus walk along a path with Saint Athanasius, although this would surely require a reorientation of Henry’s thought. These faint concluding suggestions should in no way detract from Hart’s salutary movement of reduction that leads us to Christ himself, surely, from a Christian standpoint, the supreme phenomenologist and the ultimate source of all Christian theological, Trinitarian understanding.

In my response to Kevin Hart’s beautiful and intriguing book I would like to focus on the middle section “Manifestations” and what they have to say about phenomenology. I’m particularly interested in Hart’s reflections on the possibility of a “phenomenology of the Christ” (chapter 7) or even a “supreme phenomenology”—namely, one that would consider “the phenomenality of the Trinity” (chapter 8). Although the titles of the chapters sound rather ambitious in this respect, within the text he is careful to distinguish between a purely philosophical use of phenomenology and what is repeatedly called a “phenomenological theology.” I take it that this book, or at least these three central chapters, is engaged in the latter and not the former activity. (Suggested, for example, by the question: “What, though, if our aim were theology, or more precisely phenomenological theology?”) That is to say, Hart seems to be employing phenomenological language and tools, such as the epochē/reduction, phenomenality, or intentionality, in order to pursue what is a theological endeavor of unfolding the phenomenality of Christ’s announcement of the basileia as it is set forth in the Christian gospel accounts. What I would like to take up in this response to his provocative analysis is the question of the relation of this phenomenology to both theology and to philosophy. I want to stress that I am not concerned here with the question of “trespass” over the borders between philosophy and theology (which has been debated to death since Heidegger’s “Phenomenology and Theology” essay and even more so since Janicaud’s accusation of the “theological turn” in French phenomenology) or even the more substantive question to what extent it might be legitimate and productive to employ phenomenological tools within theology. This is neither about policing of borders nor about legitimacy of methodological appropriation. Rather I am interested in raising two questions, one about what the phenomenology means within the theology, and, second, what a philosopher qua philosopher can and should examine when investigating religious phenomena or even specifically “Christian” phenomena (presumably all religious phenomena are specific to traditions rather than abstractly “religious”). What does phenomenology mean when it is a theological endeavor? And can there be such a thing as a “phenomenology of Christ” or a “phenomenology of God” as a philosophical endeavor? (And I certainly intend both of these as real questions, not as veiled criticism of the book.)

Let me summarize in a few words what I see Hart articulating in these central chapters (central, I think, both in terms of location within the book and in their importance). In chapter 6 he engages in a close and creative rereading of the parable of the prodigal son and suggests that it might reveal to us something about the “phenomenality of the Father” in terms of abundant forgiveness and its relation to justice. For example: “The phenomenality of God is given both in his running toward the sinner in love and mercy and in coming out to the righteous elder son with tenderness toward him” (133). In chapter 7 he analyzes what he calls “phenomenology of the Christ” as what is revealed in the preaching of the basileia as identifying God’s phenomenality in the kingdom but also in the person of Christ. In chapter 8 he begins by envisioning a brief dialogue about the possibility of discussing the “phenomenality of the Trinity” and then analyzes this discussion and the questions it raises. Hart draws extensively on phenomenological language in his treatments (in Christ’s parables he “performs a reduction” and in Christ’s description of the basileia the “phenomenality of God is given”) and argues that “Christian theology therefore requires a phenomenology of the Christ before everything else” (139). He explains this task as follows: “A phenomenological theology would begin with Jesus as phenomenon, given to us in scripture, with a determinate material core, as seen, heard, questioned, believed in, and rejected” and it “would attend to Jesus as a phenomenologist, that is, to how he receives phenomena” (144). The “task of the theologian” is “to clarify the basileia” using Husserl (157). The “phenomenology of the basileia” is not an issue of knowledge or givenness but of actions. The “phenomenality of God” is the “revelation of the basileia” (158). And although Hart acknowledges that the Trinity cannot become a phenomenon in the philosophical sense, he does speak of an “enstatic phenomenon of the Trinity” (169) and ultimately proposes “a phenomenology of the triune God” (176).

I am wondering a couple of things: First, Hart is right to draw clear distinctions between “manifestation,” “revelation,” “vision,” and “experience” (165). Do such careful distinctions also have to be drawn between a reduction that sets aside questions about the existence of the object “out there” in order to focus attention entirely on how it appears and a reduction that sets aside our concern with the world (maybe permanently) and converts us to the kingdom? For example, Hart explains: “I want to suggest that Jesus performs a reduction in his telling of the parables, and that we see more deeply into what a parable does when we recognize this. In telling a story Jesus brackets everyday life and its worldly logic in order to lead those who hear him to a deeper place. . . . Jesus leads us from using a worldly logic—one involving exchange, honor, law, and convention—to using a divine logic, one based on compassion and forgiveness” (131), but he seems to want this to become a permanent shift: “We are not asked to see how we constitute the meaning of the phenomena but rather invited to see how we can be constituted as properly human by participating in the Kingdom” (132). Is this process where “the ‘world’ is put out of play for the time of the story and perhaps for a little longer” (148) the same as the phenomenological reduction or at least sufficiently parallel to deserve the same name? What does it mean that “we are reduced, not God”—an essential point Hart suggests Husserl misses (152)? Similarly, is the theological use of “phenomenology” the same as (or sufficiently parallel to) the philosophical one? At one point he says, “Phenomenological theology, as I propose it, would therefore run in quite the opposite direction to that of most classical phenomenology” (152) and insists that “things change” when phenomenology enters theology (172), but then why still use its language? Is the “lived experience” one might have of Christ in listening to the parable (or in reading it or in hearing it preached) what phenomenology generally means by “lived experience”? And if not, then what exactly is served by the use of the phenomenological language? Is it more than just an exhortation to theologians to pay more attention to the ways in which the biblical texts are heard and experienced and how they inform our actions (i.e., to be less focused on texts and more on the whole lived experience of faith)? Again, I’m not worried here about the legitimacy of employing phenomenological tools in theology, but wondering instead about the extent to which they still are phenomenological and what theological work their transformed phenomenological character is accomplishing.

I also wonder about the distinctions between biblical texts (as basic and primary) and the creed (as complicated doctrine): What might be the role of liturgy in this? I’d like to hear more about how prayer and the sacraments “attune us to God” (150). How exactly does phenomenology help us enter into God’s presence (147)? Here also phenomenological language is heavily employed: “The Christian is concerned with understanding his or her home—in the habitus of belief, in Church, in parish life—and is therefore engaged with generative phenomenology, whether knowingly or unknowingly” (153). Indeed, phenomenology turns out to practice contemplation: “In some ways phenomenology is a mode of contemplatio: it trains us in essential seeing, what Husserl calls Wesenserschauung” although in the case of Christianity, contemplation is “directed to the triune God who transcends the world, while phenomenology teaches us only how to look behind the world” (168). The truths of Christianity become visible in the transcendental attitude of phenomenology: “It is only when we pass from the natural or the supernatural attitude to the transcendental attitude that the statements of Christianity or any religion become intelligible” (169). By studying Scripture and experiencing the Eucharist, we can reach a phenomenology of Christ or even a supreme phenomenology:

Even here, phenomenology can focus with confidence only on the Christ as given to us in the words of scripture, preaching, and the Eucharist. It is a phenomenology of the Christ, in the objective and subjective senses of the genitive, which needs to be undertaken. The one would tell us how Jesus renders his Father manifest through a study of all that scripture shows him doing and suffering; and the other would show us how Jesus asks us to turn from the world to the Kingdom, even though the Cross is implicit in the preaching of the Kingdom. That would be the true supreme phenomenology. (177–78)

Is this still a “theological phenomenology” and, if so, how does it move theology forward? Or have we returned to phenomenology proper and maybe gained broader phenomenological insights that might be accessible to anyone?

This brings me to the question about philosophy: What philosophical access might we have to the divine or even to Christ as an incarnate manifestation of God? Let me illustrate my question with two clearer examples: In his trilogy on the Paschal Triduum Emmanuel Falque endeavors to read Christ’s experience phenomenologically as a pattern and paradigm for human suffering, death, resurrection and erotic experience (flesh, marriage, Eucharist). In the first volume, Le passeur de Gethsémani, he analyzes Christ’s experience in the garden prayer for the cup to be taken from him as an instance of a fully human experience of suffering and anguish over death. Similarly, Jean-Luc Marion often speaks of various biblical passages in phenomenological fashion. Christ’s transfiguration or resurrection are instances of a “pre-eminent saturated phenomenon” or even paradigmatic for all phenomenality. But this is puzzling to me: How might we have any access to what Christ actually felt or experienced at that moment? We certainly have some sense what the Gospel writers thought he felt at that moment (and maybe what they think we ought to feel in response). But does that give us any access to Christ’s consciousness or his lived experience? Surely this is not experience that could be examined more closely by varying it or repeating it or imagining and remembering it? What would it mean to posit the Gospel text (philosophically) as some sort of direct access to Christ’s consciousness?

Hart is generally far more careful than Marion and Falque on this point (although at times also somewhat dismissive of historical-critical biblical resources—I’m not sure that “hallowed” and “hollow” readings of Scripture [128] are really the only alternatives) and he is obviously right to say that “we cannot consider the Father as an eidetic essence that we can revolve and inspect at our leisure” (149), but can we do so with Christ? Hart raises this question in terms of evidence: “In phenomenology, the evidence that counts is Evidenz, the making evident of something, and no rules are set in place to limit what makes itself evident” (130). And he is careful to distinguish between philosophical evidence for God’s existence and evidence that comes in living as God says. God’s phenomenality is made manifest in love, “registered in love impulsively coming forward, freely manifesting itself by way of overwhelming compassion for both sorts of people, the younger and the elder sons” and Hart assures us that “one may receive this phenomenality in diverse ways, most usually as artistic pathos or as divine truth. Phenomenology as such is neutral with respect to the choice; it merely allows the choice to be made” (130; see also 146). Here the experience does not seem to be Christ’s, but that of the believer who encounters God’s compassion. Why is the contrast posited as one between the kingdom as “philosophy” and as “truth” (137–38)? Does the distinction between knowledge and agape really hold up? And even if it does, then what would knowledge about God mean? Is it a priori excluded or does it become a different kind of knowledge, namely one of love instead of “certainty” (as Marion insists)? What would it mean to work out a “doctrine of God” (132) based on phenomenological insights? If “no phenomenology within the limits of philosophy can have anything to say about the Trinity” and yet we can have a theological “phenomenology of the Triune God” (176), then it seems to imply that some analysis of God’s experience would be possible. Does such a “doctrine of God” have philosophical import, that is to say, does it provide philosophical evidence for God (maybe not God’s “existence” per se, but at least some sort of insight about who or how God is)? What might this mean for the possibility of a philosophy of religion in a phenomenological mode? Can the divine ever be “in human consciousness” (163) and how could that be identified or described philosophically? Or is philosophy—maybe like sociology or anthropology of religion—always only concerned with human experiences, even when they are experiences that might be called “religious,” “mystical,” “revelatory,” or even “of the divine”?