Being True

Steven Delay

doi:10.3390/rel12040262

Abstract

Turning to Karl Jaspers’s 1937 lectures, later published as Philosophy of Existence, this paper examines what might be meant by the colloquial expression “spiritual but not religious”. In doing so, it is argued that while Jaspers’s critique of organized religion mostly hits the mark, critiques of religion—as represented here by Jaspers’s Existenzphilosophie—fail to undermine a form of genuine spirituality grounded in a faith in the revealed Christ.

Highlights

Turning to Karl Jaspers’s 1937 lectures, later published as Philosophy of Existence, this paper examines what might be meant by the colloquial expression “spiritual but not religious”
Instead of denying the fact of revelation, accepts it to be one, such thought still frequently looks on revelation warily, seeing in it an encroachment, or a violation of its sovereignty, or an impediment to pursuing the form of truth it alone is suited to seeking through its open-ended questioning
Despite disagreeing over so much else, Jaspers and Heidegger, for example, both agreed that philosophical thinking must methodologically subordinate faith in Christ to itself, if it is to access its proprietary domain of existential truths which the adherence to revelation, they said, only obscures

Summary

Introduction

Turning to Karl Jaspers’s 1937 lectures, later published as Philosophy of Existence, this paper examines what might be meant by the colloquial expression “spiritual but not religious”. Despite disagreeing over so much else, Jaspers and Heidegger, for example, both agreed that philosophical thinking must methodologically subordinate faith in Christ to itself, if it is to access its proprietary domain of existential truths which the adherence to revelation, they said, only obscures.

Results

Conclusion