Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire:
Theological and Philosophical Roots of Christendom in Evolutionary Perspective was a book published in 1991 by the State University of New York Press. It has since gone out of print. All the while, inquiries about its availability are on the increase. Inasmuch as no scholar likes to see his most significant piece of work die a premature or unnecessary death, I have begun to revise its five portions to be displayed as separate “booklets” (or “pages”) on the Internet. I have no illusions that this fresh exposure will in some miraculous manner make the content much easier to read. But as it was, the original book had a serious flaw that hereby can be remedied. The 1991 edition roams enthusiastically across no less than five academic disciplines.
Not all the readers have appreciated this scope and complexity—and among potential reviewers only a courageous few have accepted the challenge. Inasmuch as the Internet presents itself as a perfect medium for virtual illusions I shall pretend here, for a while, that the book’s five sections are separate booklets that can stand by themselves. So, for the time being my 1991 publication has become again a manuscript in progress. This means, what you read here today may not be exactly what you will find here tomorrow.
WHAT IS RELIGION?
Definition on a Sliding Teeter Totter Scale
by Karl W. Luckert
Reorientation in the Phenomenology of Religions
The phenomenon generally referred to as religion has been defined by Western scholars over the years in many dozens of ways. Most of these definitions are still useful to all who take time to immerse themselves in the ontological contexts in which their originators conceived and formulated them. Different aims and methodologies among professionals require different emphases or foci. Different foci support different ontologies, and different ontologies invariably result in different working definitions.
For instance, a historian, philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, anthropologist, or theologian, each begins his or her train of specialized professional thought with a preferred ontological emphasis. Their respective methodologies are applied to help highlight the subject matter they are examining. Moreover, the decision to focus one’s attention on specific types of data implies, by itself, the commitment of an academic discipline to a primary configuration of reality. For example, historians value events that have scored in their linear reckoning of time as their basic data and realities; philosophers evaluate axioms and propositions as fundamental; psychologists traditionally have focused on the “psyche” and have shifted, more recently, to more easily observable “behavior”; sociologists study societal units and their functioning; in a wider angle of view, anthropologists concern themselves with larger societal configurations or cultures; and finally, theologians begin their work with a focus on the nature of God or gods.
The subject matter “religion,” in the domains of all these specialized academic disciplines, has been examined by individual scholars with varying degrees of seriousness. But, inasmuch as religion seems peripheral to the ontological focus of such specialized academic disciplines, it easily disappears or is reduced to a mere aspect of other, more central realities. So for instance, viewed from the perspective of philosophy, various types of religious thought tend to be evaluated simply as irrationality. And frequently, in the psychological perspective, religion tends to be reduced to emotionality or to some type of abnormal behavior. For instance, in Freudian psychology a theistic religion may be seen as originating with the amplification or “projection” of the concrete model of a human father. Sociologists of the Dürkheimian persuasion regard gods and totems as “social representations”; that is, as projections or spiritualized expressions of concrete social togetherness. Marxists characterize religion by its role in the class struggle, as a means utilized by capitalists as an opium or tranquilizer in their exploitation of workers.
On the other hand, theologians who are committed to the ontology of a specific theistic tradition will focus first on the reality of their recognized God or gods. They will proceed to measure the gods of other people by that standard. In this manner theologians, like other scholars who either explicitly or implicitly operate on the basis of a presupposed ontology, may explain the wider world of religion, likewise, as epi-phenomenon of their envisioned central reality configuration. Some theological systems have gone so far as to depreciate the category “religion” itself—for instance, the theology of Karl Barth or the so-called philosophies held forth by numerous Hindu gurus. The latter reserve the label religion to designate the weaknesses they find in other people’s outlook and behavior. Meanwhile, Barthian theologians and Hindu gurus classify their own ever-so-religious postures as respectable “non-religious” ontologies or philosophies.
Religion, defined to serve the needs of this discussion, and stated as briefly as possible, is the response of humankind to so-experienced or so-perceived greater-than-human configurations of reality. This definition is “relational” in that it focuses on the Homo sapiens-religiosus as he or she experiences and relates to the physical as well as socio-cultural environment. A religious person who becomes a historian’s subject matter may or may not perceive the surrounding world in the same way as his or her academic observer. Nevertheless, religion always belongs to a person’s own perception of the larger world, or ontology. That larger ontology helps categorize one human experience as aggressive, another experience as religious, and still another as egalitarian or social. A passive observer therefore can do no better than to note how another person’s religious behavior varies from his or her ordinary egalitarian or societal behavior, or how it differs from aggressive behavior in that person’s quest for survival.
On the other hand, every person does encounter greater-than-human configurations of reality, religiously. By the very fact that a superior reality configuration is greater, it can never be fully comprehended or explained, neither by a subjective experiencer nor by an objective observer. Nevertheless, with the same humility that a person acknowledges, religiously, one’s relational inferiority toward greater-than-human reality, a historian of religions may note instances of such humble behavior and expressions as religious data.
Some historians of religions may object to this quantified delineation of the subject matter “religion.” They may offer the fact that elves and dwarfs are less-than-human beings, and that meanwhile human responses toward them in ancient times have been classified as religious phenomena. A historian of religions must answer that, indeed, sincere responses to elves and dwarfs are still today religious behavior, as in the case of northern European peasants who, occasionally, still pray for blessings and protection from these unseens. Although, admittedly, the recipients of these prayers nowadays do seem less than human to worldwise historians, they definitely are deemed still greater by those who offer them prayers and gifts—at least for the duration of these ritual presentations.
The duration of how long a person retains his or her religious posture is of no consequence for the basic perspective of this approach. Not even the mightiest among deities is responded to religiously by everyone, or all the time, as if he or she was unquestionably greater. This is to say, that a Homo religiosus in this world practices his or her religion neither one hundred percent nor all the time. Every living Homo religiosus is always more than that. He or she is a Homo ludens and, as such, a bundle of playfulness, oscillating between being a Homo sapiens aggressor and a Homo religiosus engaged in commonsense religious retreat. I am prepared to classify a human response to reality as “religious” whenever there are clear behavioral indications that the responding person, as far as he or she is concerned, acknowledges and defers to a greater reality.
So for instance, it is possible to observe a person’s religious responses even at the mild intensity level of “fascination.” Expressions of fascination are religious, because during an initial encounter an object that fascinates, ontologically considered, ipso facto, is not a less-than-human “object.” Its effects on the human experiencer are inflicted, at least momentarily, by what looms as being potentially greater. But being only a mild borderline religious response, a state of simple “fascination” is impermanent and may quickly be deflected in one of two opposite directions.
An experience of “fascination” may be pushed, by the defensive ego of an experiencing individual, toward a desire for greater egalitarian “familiarity.” It may be pushed beyond that point even toward a desire of gaining experimental control; that is, control over the reality that initially has stimulated fascination. This is the time-worn path over which myriads of predators’ fascinations have deteriorated, with doing analysis, into curiosities and have thereby been reduced to the status of victims.
But then in the other direction, whenever confronted by a tenaciously fascinating reality configuration, an experiencer’s ego may as well retreat further. A retreating ego may allow itself to be transported into an even more intense mode of religious experience or retreat. Inasmuch as a gradation of intensity is involved, the entire range of ontology, experiences and responses from total “control” to total “surrender,” can be plotted quantitatively along a graduated scale that indicates degrees of intensity.
SOON :
– What is religion – part 1
– What is religion – part 2 : The Teeter-Totter Scale
– What is religion – part 3 : Behaviorology of Religion
– What is religion – part 4 : Religion in Evolution
– What is religion – part 5 : Universal Salvation Religions
