Friedrich von Hügel

Hügel's "three elements of religion" are his most enduring contribution to theological thinking. The human soul, the movements of western civilisation, and the phenomena of religion itself he characterised by these three elements: the historical/institutional element, the intellectual/speculative element, and the mystical/experiential element. This typology provided for him an understanding of the balance, tension, and 'friction' that exists in religious thinking and in the complexity of reality and existence. It is an organising paradigm that remained central to his project. The effort to hold these sometimes disparate dimensions together is structurally and theologically dominant…