What are the marks (essential characteristics) of a religion? I am not sure I have a good answer to this question, but I propose to take a stab at it. I have three marks in mind. This post sets forth the first of them. Let me say that I take as data the great post-axial religions, in particular the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and the two greatest Asian religions, Hinduism and Buddhism. Taking these five as our examples, are there any essential characteristics possessed by all of them and constitutive of their being religions?
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The first essential characteristic summarized: The great religions are based on a response to the world as radically defective and unameliorable by human effort alone. I don't mean this as a mere stipulation, but I also don't meant it as a part of a merely lexical definition of 'religion.' I am trying to get at the normative essence of religion, what it could be and what it ought to be, basing myself on what it is in its highest manifestations.
Religious attitudes and practices arise originally (i.e., when they are not merely appropriated uncritically in social situations under pressure to conform) in response to recurrent experiences of the radical deficiency of the human condition. One cannot be said to be religious unless one perceives this world, the natural and social world of our ordinary waking experience, to be radically defective, as a fundamentally unsatisfactory predicament that cries out for some sort of remedy or solution. This is of course a global, not merely a local perception: it is not as if this or that aspect of the world or someone’s life in the world is perceived as unsatisfactory. The wholeof it is so perceived. Whether or not this global perception of deficiency is veridical, it is a necessary feature of the religious attitude, which of course can be described under bracketing of the question of its truth. A religious person, to be such, need not constantly be experiencing the world as fundamentally unsatisfactory; indeed such experiences may be relatively infrequent. But they will come in moments of existential clarity and speak with an authority that trumps the deliverances of ordinary world-absorbed experience.
One thinks of Siddartha’s encounter with sickness, old age and death on leaving the safety of the royal compound. It shocked him out of his complacency and set him on his path. The religious person will want to preserve and prolong these moments of insight since they reveal, or seem to reveal, a truth normally hidden. Even when not explicitly feeling the fundamental unsatisfactoriness of the world, the religious person will try to bear it in mind always as indicative of a deeper truth that he dare not, for his own good, lose sight of. This mindfulness will of course be a part of his spiritual practice. Thus the perception of the unsatisfactoriness of the world gives rise to spiritual practices one of which is the maintenance and intensification of this perception.
By radically defective and fundamentally unsatisfactory, I mean that the dis-ease of our condition goes right to the root of it, and so cannot be dealt with by any half-way measures. In particular, no one who is religious could possibly believe that the fundamental malaise of our condition could be alleviated by any sort of human social action no matter how concerted or revolutionary. We need help, and if any truly ameliorative help is to come it must come from elsewhere, from beyond the human-all-too-human. A religious person can and must take action now and again to right wrongs and make piecemeal improvements in the conditions of his own life and those of others; but no religious person could be an activist if an activist is one who believes that humanity has the resources within itself to bring about any such fundamental and lasting improvement in the human condition as the elimination of war. For this reason, Communism is not a religion, though it is in many ways like a religion and functions in many as a substitute for religion.
In characterizing our predicament as defective and unsatisfactory, I mean to allude in the first instance to moral and natural evil, but without denying that there is much moral and natural goodness in the world. This life is radically defective (defective from the root up, and not merely in the branches), but not wholly defective.
But beyond this there is the ontological deficiency of our condition which will loom large in the ensuing pages. To say that the natural and social world of our ordinary waking experience is ontologically deficient is to say that its very metaphysical structure is fundamentally unsatisfactory. As a material world of time and change, it is devoid of ultimate reality. As Plato puts it, “nothing which is subject to change...has any truth.” (Phaedo St. 83a) The whole of existence is vain, an empty seeming devoid, in Buddhist jargon, of ‘self-nature.’ This vanity of existence, says Schopenhauer,
finds expression in the whole way in which things exist; in the infinite nature of Time and Space, as opposed to the finite nature of the individual in both; in the ever-passing present moment as the only moment of actual existence; in the interdependence and relativity of all things; in continual Becoming without ever Being; in constant wishing and never being satisfied... (WL 229)
To perceive (or apperceive) the world in this way is not enough to make one religious, but I am suggesting that it is necessary for being religious.
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Related Posts (on one page):
- John Hick's Religious Ambiguity Thesis
- What is Religion, Part III
- What is Religion, Part II
- What Is Religion? Part I
As you write a sentence onwards, we are dealing with a "radical deficiency of the human condition"; and I would add: a deficiency to deal (let alone cope) with the existential facts of life (Primarily, death ;o)
A religious person, I think, does not deny that we die, and also does not necessarily think this worldy fact to be a bad thing - but fights the view that this earthly life and its material aspects is all there is. The Buddhist, for example, asks us to radically question ourselves in the most severe way, to find out what 'really matters' - resulting in the opinion that to hold fast onto anything, including our lives, as something we own does not really matter, because we, as the Buddha clearly saw, get ill, old, and die.
From a Christian perspective, the belief in God does not eliminate the fact that we, at some point in time, have to leave this earthly body (and our loved ones) behind. A Christian just believes that this is not the complete story, and that the non-religious person is radically mistaken when (s)he says that the empirical world is all there is. This non-religious view is, essentially, concordant with the view that "man is the measure of everything" (not sure of the English expression) A religious person denies this.
Whatever our opinion of the world, the religious person recognizes that our opinions and priorities are defective - not the world. A religious person has made a drastic turn away from this material world, not because it is radically deficient, but because this material world (and the sciences, concentrating exclusively on this aspect) is not enough to help us cope with existence, at least, when we actually take the trouble to face it... A religious person has made a literal conversion to accept that man is, radically, not the measure of all things.
...but perhaps I am hurrying into areas that you still wanted to discuss...
"The great religions are based on a response to a radically defective response to the world, unameliorable by human effort alone"
Much food for thought here. I've understood the essence of religion to be timeless and relational, it's expression to be temporal and relational. I've thought of the essence of religion as a right response and relationship to God. So St. James says, "Religion pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to give aid to orphans and widows in their tribulation, and to keep oneself unspotted from this world" (1:27). In another world, maybe tending a garden is religion pure and undefiled. But maybe it's wrong to distinguish the essence and expression of religion, so it'll be good to think this through again.
Your post then leads me to a question. For the sake of my question, please suppose Genesis 1-3 is factual history. Would you say Adam and Eve prior to the Fall could not be religious and/or had no need for religion?
1. What are we supposed to be? (Creation)
2. Why aren't we that way? (Fall)
3. How can be become what we're supposed to be? (Redemption)
According to her, most major philosophies and teachers attempt to answer these questions in one guise or another.
So what you're describing would be not unique to religion, but rather to the human attempt to understand the cosmos.
Unless, of course, you strictly require the Redemption to be not "by human effort alone", which appears to cut out some philosophies we might wish to define as non-religious -- but still includes Marxism and such.
I guess I need to know -- what do you want from your definition of "religion"? Do you have some criteria?
-Billy
I may be missing something, but unless we're talking about Japanese Buddhisms (where the Boddhisavtra--sorry in advance if I've mis-spelled that... {s}--may descend to help bring people to release from desire), what part of (let's call it) 'classical' Buddhism involves a person _NOT_ being wholly responsible, in his own discipline ('effort' might be the wrong way to put it), for ameliorating his own condition?
I ask, because it looks as though you've made a shift. You summarized the first characteristic as involving the world as radically defective and unameliorable by human effort alone. To which, I suppose, the classical Buddhist would respond by rejecting the world (which is only mere appearance and thus unreal). So far so good. But when it comes to the sufferings of the Buddhist from desire, there is an intended amelioration: the renunciation of all and everything evident, thereby defeating suffering by defeating (not fulfilling, exactly) desire. (Strictly speaking, the Buddhist attempts to escape suffering of the world by the extinction of his self; he is not concerned with saving the world, which is mere appearance and so is unreal.)
Does the classical Buddhist expect help from something not human in achieveing this renunciation? I don't quite see how he could expect it, but I am not as conversant as I could be in the doctrines.
(This may be why various Christian comparative-religion analysts--from Chesterton to David Marshall in his _Jesus and the Religions of Man_--tend to classify classical Buddhism as being a philosophy and _not_ a religion.)
Jason
Whoops. Just read another comment elsewhere. Please delete the preceding; I really don't want to cause problems.
You are asking whether the religious atttitude requires the notion of a Fall. I should think so. The religious person interprets the human condition as radically deficient. This could be taken to mean that our condition is fallen. Fallen from what? Fallen from a state that is possible, or once actual in the past, or actual in the present if only we could remove the blinders that prevent us from seeing it.
The Fall could be spelled out in terms of original sin, but it could also be spelled out in terms of original ignorance (or both). Accordingly, the deficiency of the human condition is due to a deep metaphysical ignorance distinguishable from ordinary empirical ignorance.
In this way I think I can accommodate your suggestion. To the enlightened, the defects in the world are merely apparent.
In sum, any religion would have to involve the notion of a Fall from an ideal state, whether that state be located in the past, or in the present (if only we could open the "doors of perception" (Aldous Huxley) sufficiently to see it, or in the future.
Now that's an interesting question! I would answer, yes. They would have no need for religion. They already stand in the right relation to the Absolute Reality (which is God on an Abrahamic scheme) so they have no need for a means to achieving that end.
In Buddhist terms, religion is like the raft that brings us across the river of Samsara to the the far shore of Nirvana. If we are already at the far shore, we have no need for the vehicle. Or it is like Wittgenstein's ladder, assuming one could abide forever on the roof . . . which reminds me of a song by the Drifters . . .
I am trying to characterize religion as a human enterprise, a human approach to the world-as-experienced. Thus religion is pursuit of right relation with the Absolute rather than possession of that relation.
For example, when someone 'gets religion,' does that mean that they now stand in right relation? No, it means that they are trying to get into right relation.
Finally, does anyone here take Genesis 1-3 as factual history?
I like the way you deploy the notion of a Fall from an ideal state. It certainly does reflect something deep about religion among we humans. I've never encountered any flavor of religion that didn't begin from a sense of profound loss/separation. 'Religio', if I remember correctly, connotes restoring broken ties.
It does seem, however, that this approach rules out by fiat any notion of religion among creatures who have not fallen, even though they might still cultivate the sort of devotional, worshipful attitude I alluded to earlier.
Are these questions unique to religion? Well, in this form they are. The first question presupposes that there is a human nature assigned by a Creator,a nature that is normative in the sense that it prescribes how we ought to live if we want to achieve the good that the Creator has prepared for us.
But not everyone believes that we are creatures in the strict sense. Some would say that there is nothing that we are supposed to be. We just exist, and we project our purposes. Existence precedes essence, as Sarte would put it.
Creation, Fall, and Redemption are religious concepts. They don't correspond to anything in a naturalistic view of the world.
I think you are right, Bob. But I think my characterization fits the five religions that I mentioned, and that represent the highest manifestations of religion so far. Playing on etymology, religion is the restoration of broken ligatures. What you are referring to is perhaps a form of nature-mysticism.
I am not merely stipulating a sense for 'religion,' nor am I trying to cover everything anyone ever called a religion. Thus Roman polytheism is not religion as far as I am concerned. I am aiming at a 'precisifying' definition, one that involves an unvoidable regimentation.
I'm inclined not to.
The words are religious, but the concepts and questions the refer to aren't. "Creation, Fall, Redemption" could perhaps be "Origin, Inadequacy, Success". Naturalism itself doesn't have a single answer to all three, but there are many naturalistic systems which do. Oddly enough, Mormonism is one example -- they believe that matter itself is eternal and self-existant, and the laws of nature declare the way in which matter proceeds to becoming a God. But secular humanism also answers those questions!
But I'm not completely "with" Bill on this definition of religion. I'm trying to understand, but I'm not sure what the purpose is. It seems that perhaps he's trying to quantify religiousness...
Inasmuch as I can define religion, I would call it a set of prescribed (and proscribed) actions through which humans attempt to relate to the Ultimate. I do not believe that religion is a set of attitudes, questions, or answers.
If by "religion" you mean a system of beliefs about the ultimate, then perhaps -- but such a religion would seem pretty shallow, since it would have to explain why so few people followed it (wouldn't that imply that all the other people were factually wrong?). Of course, that question doesn't have anything to do with my definition of religion.
Well, there are worldviews which DO state that. Here's an example.
Creation: all is one.
Fall: we falsely perceive that we are individuals.
Redemption: by meditation and karma we reject the illusion and accept oneness.
There's still a fall there.
-Billy
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