Religion is a complex phenomenon, and one not easily defined. The core of the problem is this. Language and thought are rooted in religion the way vegatables arise from the soil. There are no words capable of defining religion itself apart from words. Everything we know of religion must be perceived indirectly. The purpose of this document is to present a synopsis of how religion scholars approach the task of defining religion as a human experience.
The topics covered are:
At the dawn of the French Revolution (1789), people knew what religion was. It was whatever the Church sanctioned as revelation. As the Revolution progressed, scholars began to explore religion as a basic human experience. The focus shifted from the religious group as an authority accrediting experiences of revelation to the actual psychology of the revelatory experience of the individual receiving the revelation. As a result it became possible to distinguish the program of the Church as an institution from the human experiences of religion which led to its foundation. Indeed, scholarship began to write the universal history of religion as a human experience. The result was a new discipline called The History of Religion.
Religious experience is a response to an encounter with the Holy or the Numinous (Rudolph Otto). It transcends rational and linguistic experience. It is a border or threshold experience in which Time meets Eternity. Holy appropriately means "set apart." The Holy is "Other than" the World. It is Mystery. Theologians frequently speak of it as the "Wholly Other" as a way of stressing that the Sacred does not belong to the order of Creation. It is said to transcend Creation.
Mirca Eliade defines religion as an encounter with Sacred Power in which one experiences oneself as absolutely dependent upon the Sacred for Life or Death; one responds with fear and facination simultaneously. One is drawn to the Sacred by facination with its Power; one is repulsed by this same Power which might destroy one.
Catherine Albanese calls this encounter with Sacred Power EXTRAORDINARY RELIGION, a definition which we will use frequently in discussing texts.
Man's first experience of the Sacred made rational awareness possible. The meeting with the Sacred established a principle for discrimination. Life was divided into the "Temple" or Holy Place where the Sacred Power was encountered and the Profane (lat:pro = around, fanis = temple), all area surrounding the Temple. It was possible to orient oneself with regard to the root experience of an encounter with the Holy. Basic to this experience was the definition of borders. The first border is a simlple circle of stones which is later rendered as the wall surrounding a Holy Place. This border is eventully expanded like concentric circles from a stone thrown into a pond of still water. There are geographic or regional borders defined by the Holy Place. The human body as a temple defines another set of borders. Within man, the seat of the soul (psyche) defines the border of the holy place.
Encounter with Sacred Power produced two powerful, primal symbols: the Sacred and the Profane. The names of the gods were comprehended within the symbol of the Sacred; the names of men within the Profane. The names of gods are among the very oldest of our words: weird (a Northern goddess), Wednesday (Woden's Day), hermetic (Hermes), et. al.
Places where appearances of a god was experienced entered into the new, primal language system of mankind. They became holy places. Men returned to these places seeking for further experiences of the Holy. What had happened once might happen again. Worship is primarily concerned with connecting the present moment with the moment of an original revelation so that the power of the Sacred flows into the Sanctuary (Holy Place).
The primal symbols become in turn the building blocks for larger language constructions like myths, creeds, codes, rituals, and community proclamations. These symbolic constructions guide us in what we "see" and "experience," and they enable us to interpret this experience of "seeing." For examle a Roman Catholic Christian tends to view the Bible in the light of the central moment of the liturgy, the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. Protestants tend to view it in light of the central Protestant affirmation that every person is his own priest. Great stress is placed upon individual responsibility before God.
The Greeks defined mythos(myth) as "a telling word."
First, the myth tells the will of the gods as a revelation calling some new form of social action or consciousness into being.
Second, the myth enables us to tell others of the experience of revelation. The religious experience is never an "immediate" experience. It is always "mediated" through "a telling word," a system of symbols-- a mythology.
A sacred literature like the Bible is always a collection of primary symbols which mediate the heart of relgious experience so that the Sacred and the Profane are brought into a constructive relationship. It is a telling word.
The experience of the Holy leads to the definition of a variety of boundaries; conversely, every boundary crossing is an occassion for wonder in the face of the mystery of the Holy. There are rituals enacted to insure a safe crossing of the boundary.
Boundaries are:
1. Geographic : transitions from one kingdom into another; from desert into civilization or vice versa. 2. Temporal : transitions from one birthday to the next; from the old year to New Years. 3. Bodily : substances enter or exit the body-temple. 4. Psychic: persons discover the Unconscious by entering into themselves.
Examination of the human experience of borders reveals that we have three basic dimensions of experience. We experience Time, Space, and Spirit.
Time corresponds to our experience of body and an external sensory world with geographic and temporal borders.
Space corresponds to our experience of symbols and a religious world of dreams (private myths), and myths (public dreams). If this point seems unclear reflect on the fact that humans have binocular vision and must psychically generate an approximation of three dimensional space. Also, we say that someone is "spaced out" if he is under the influence of mind altering sustances. He is in an altered state of consciousness.
Spirit confronts us with the boundless within ourselves and calls us beyond a Reality defined simply by symbols (Space) and social arrangements and sensation (Time) towards an unknown which transcends even the Mystery of religion. Spirit gives us the possibility of a non-temporal, non-verbal, non-spatial Awareness by means of which we transcend ordinary reality and find union with the Sacred.
Symbol is a concrete object which makes present an invisible Reality.
The Sacred, the Profane, the Names of the Gods, and the Holy Places are powerful primal symbols. They form the basis of all human language. Indeed, many religions declare that the Word was the source of all creation, even the source of the gods.
Religion may be described as a system of primal symbols.
Albanese defines Comprehensive Religion as a system of symbols by which a community locates itself in relation to ordinary and extraordinary values.
We live at the intersection of our experience of Time, Space, and Spirit. At any moment we may orient ourselves with regard to Time as Past or Future relative to a Present (Now) and with regard to Space as being Inner or Outer relative to the boundaries of the body (temple) skin (border). At this juncture of Now and Skin(border), our awareness is either ordinary (rational discursive, sensory) or extraordinary (visonary, intuitive, presentational).
Albanese tells us that we will find:
Creed Symbols associated with the Past ,Code (Law) Symbols associated with the Future, Cultic Symbols associated with the Inner Space , and Cultural Symbols with the Outer Space .
These symbols may address either ordinary or extraordinary experience.
Consider this example.
The Church is regarded by most Protestants and all Catholics as a Holy Place, a Sanctuary. The space outside the Church is regarded as profane . The inner space of the sanctuary is regarded as holy. The narthex or vestibule is a transition area marking the place where one crosses the border between the sacred and the profane. In this space one puts aside the encumberments from the profane.
Once inside the worshipper turns inward using the cultic symbols prescribed for personal prayer. The Creed that is recited is a creed symbol. In so far as the sermon tells one how to live, it is a code symbol. The message that the worshipper takes out to share with the profane world is a culture symbol.
If there is a Holy Communion, the myth of God becoming Man on the Cross in Christ Jesus is re-enacted. This is a cultic symbol.
Notice how the human experiences of Time and Space are integrated by the service of worship.
Cult symbols define the actions and awareness of an "in group," who belong to the Sacred in some special way. They are the people who serve in the Sancturary (Holy Place) before the Holy Presence. These people are the Cultus, the sacred community.
Culture symbols define the life of the community beyond the Sanctuary in the Profane arena. The symbols by which a city unites a pluralism of religions constitutes that city's culture. The symbols by which a cultus spreads its message beyond the Temple are also culture symbols. This is the messge that the cultus shares with the world.
In Modern times, culture is defined by the symbols of Science or Natural Religion (morality). The messages of revealed religions like Judaism and Christianity must be delivered in a culture which denies the existence of the Sacred and extraordinary religion--a difficult task indeed. This situation has led to scholars giving much consideration to the principles of interpretation, or hermeneutics
At any moment in a culture the full expression of Reality is made by all symbol groups working in concert to create a Whole larger than any symbol group alone could command.
If any cultic group becomes intolerant of its culture, warfare breaks out. Symbol groups are pitted against each other. The communal Whole is weakened or even destroyed.
If a culture ceases to listen to its Creeds (Past) there will be revolution. If it ceases to allow new voices to legislate the Future, there is decadence. If it listens only to insiders, there will be war with outsiders (Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy).
Luke Johnson, a NT scholar, stresses the point that our symbolic world (mythology) is created by the interaction between our symbols and the social arrangements which express these symbols in living patterns.
For example, Christians traditionally expressed the "myth" of the Incarnation in the way they build their houses. The house is pointed like the Cathedral and has a door with the cross carved into it. Moderns have houses with flat roofs and flush doors. Indians had tepees, cone shaped portable dwellings. Such social arrangements reflect mythology or ideology.
If a society changes its social arrangements, this is a sign that it has experienced a shift in mythology (its primal ideas or ideology). Conversely, a change in mythology will lead to rearrangement of social patterns. We may study a text by looking at the social arrangements which produced it. Or, we may study the symbols in the text and observe how they call new social relationships into being.
Interpretation takes place in such a context of social arrangements. It is never truly personal. We seek what the community tells us to be valuable. Our language is a gift we share with the community. We may innovate on the invariable patterns, but we remain within the boundaries of "meaning" defined by the community.(See Stanley Fish, Is There A Text In This Classroom?)
A cultures' "telling word," its mythology or ideology, constitutes its symbolic world.
For example, even as Jews spread through the Greek empire during the New Testament period, the Torah Books were their "telling word." Torah as scripture defined the symbols all Jews used to represent reality to themselves and others. Secondary symbols like Temple, Promised Land, Suffering Servant, People of God, and the Resurrection were drawn from the primary symbol of Torah.
What is Christianity's primary symbol? The Reformation helped Christians define this as Scripture and the decisions of the first five General Councils of the Church. Consequently, almost all Christians accept the Old and New Testaments and the primary doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity. An exception is found in a branch of Christianity little known in the West: the Syrian Church. This group does not accept all the prescriptions of the first five general councils. It accepts a smaller New Testament (22 books).
The primary symbol of Modern Society is Science. Secondary symbols related to this are The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, The Rights of Man, freedom, equality, brotherhood, and liberation, to name a few. Ideology replaces mythology since there are no gods recognized by Moderns.
A culture's symbolic world is preserved in its tradition--that collection of stories, theories, deeds, rites, and understandings which seem too natural and obvious to be questioned. Tradition contains everything which outsiders and a new generation must be taught if they are to be properly initiated into the society. Tradition is "that which goes without question." It is "common sense." Albanese calls it Ordinary Religion--religion that can and must be taught to members of a cultic community.
Communities are very intolerant of challenges to tradition. Hence, we find that mystics, seers, prophets, poets, and other similar types are generally regarded with suspicion if not contempt. Yet, these are the types most likely to speak from an encounter with the Sacred Power-- Extraordinary Religion . Moses and Jesus were such figures; consequently, you find an ambivalence about them even in the literature they called into existence.