Phenomenology and Theology: Methods, Limits and Transformations

Dear Colleagues,

The relationship between phenomenology and theology has been one of the most productive and contested sites in continental philosophy over the past four decades. From Heidegger’s formal indication of religious life to the so-called theological turn associated with Marion, Henry, and Levinas, phenomenological method has repeatedly found itself at the threshold of theological questions it was not originally designed to answer. Yet the debate has often been conducted on phenomenology’s terms: theology appears as either a contamination to be resisted or a resource to be cautiously borrowed. This Special Issue proposes a different starting point.

What does it mean to do theology in a phenomenological register? What if phenomenological method is not a neutral descriptive framework that theology subsequently appropriates but is itself a mode of theological thinking—one that takes seriously the structures of givenness, embodiment, finitude, and alterity as conditions under which transcendence can be genuinely encountered, described, and thought?

We invite contributions in four interconnected areas: (1) The theology of incarnation and embodied existence: how do phenomenological accounts of flesh, sensation, and corporeal vulnerability reframe classical doctrinal questions about creation, sacrament, and the Incarnation itself? (2) Finitude, interruption, and religious transformation: in what sense do structural features of human existence make the theological phenomena of conversion, metanoia, and spiritual crisis possible, and how can phenomenological description illuminate these without dissolving their properly theological character? (3) The phenomenology of post-Christian religiosity: what does religious experience look like after Christendom, and how can phenomenological attention to lived experience—to longing, ritual, and secular residues of the sacred—serve constructive and pastoral theological reflection? (4) Critical and post-phenomenological perspectives: when the subject of religious experience is culturally situated, technologically mediated, or marked by historical displacement, the categories of phenomenological theology are not simply applied but put to the test, and potentially transformed. What new theological possibilities emerge when these displacements are taken not as complications but as starting points?

We welcome submissions from scholars working in systematic and philosophical theology, philosophy of religion, and phenomenology. Contributions that engage these questions from interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, or constructively theological perspectives are encouraged.

Dr. Martin Koci
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.