religion essay

Chapter lll

Religion

WHAT IS RELIGION?

If this were a book on the philosophy of God or natural thcol- ogy, we would at this point examine the varit.rus arguments for and

against God. But since we are on our way to a study of Christian

theology, we must for now lcave aside the philosopher's path ttr Gocl antl enter that explicitly religious dimension of human expcri-

ence of which theology is a part. Like philosophy, the religions too

concern themselves with the depth dimension of human experi- cnce. In the words of the Second vatican council's Declaration on

the Church's Relationship to Non-Christian Religions:

Women and mcn expect from thc different religions an answer

to the obscurc riddles of the human condition which today also, as in the past. profoundly disturb their hearts' What is a

human bcing'/ What is the mcaning and purposc of our life'l

What is good and what is sin? What origin and purposc dtr

sufferings havc? What is thc way to attaining truc happiness'i

What are death. juclgcment. and retribution aftcr dcath'" Lastly, what is that final unutterablc mystery which takes in

our lives and from which we take our origin and towards which we tend'? (ParagraPh l)

In studying rcligion. the first problem one faces is the nectlttr

clecicle what will be included in the study' This is the problcm of

definition. To what does the tetm religio'n refcr'l This problem appears in a concrete way in our socicty when the courts have

ttl

decide what forms of behavior should be protected under the laws

that are intencled to recognize ancl guarantee religiclus frcedom or

prevent the cstablishment of religion.

RnltctoN

"RELICION' IN THE AMERICAN CONTEXT

The brief reference above to American law indicates that thc question "What is religion?" is always asked in a spccific context. j,ne Ameti.an environment has unique conditions that influencc thg waY Americans tend to answcr this qucstion.

Tho forces have in the main shaped American cultural ideals.

41

VATICAN II

The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965)' convokcd by

pop" lo"t,n"iXIII. assembled the catholic bishops of the world

in qn ecUfilentcal council (an assembly representing the whole

:1,::;; v"rican II was the twenty_first ecumenical council. as llrsrv_-,

;h"n ;;" reckoned by the Catholic Church' and the first since

l8?i,.-i; uaoi,ion to rhe coilcge of bishops in union with the

.1"" f tirftop of Rome), Eastern Orthodox' Anglican ' and Prot-

5#;; ..pr"r.nrurives also atrended the council as official ob-

;;;;;;r. i,ope John asked the council to address the spiritual needs of the contemporary world by engaging

it in dialogue'

itr" .oun.il produced sixteen documents: four constitutions iJ"-n doctiinal statements in which the church

rearticulated

i,, o*n self-understanding in a contemporary setting)' ninc de-

crees, and three declaratircns' The latter have a more practical

significance and address such modern conditions as religious

pi-uralism and religious liberty. Among the council's most im-

portant documents are: the Dogmatic Constitutions on the-church and Divine Revelation, the Pastoral constitution on

the Church in the World of Today, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the Decrees on Ecumcnism and on Eastern Catholic Chuiches. and thc Declarations on Religious Free- dom and the Church's Relationship to Non-Christian Reli- gions. Along with the founding of the World Council of Churches in 1949, Vatican II is one of the most important reli- gious events of the twentieth century.

46

Rnllcton 494u TRa,orlroN a,No INcanNATION

The first is the dissenting English Protestant Christians who set- tled what is now the east coast of thc United States. The sccond is the European enlightenmcnt or age of reason, a period that dates roughly from 1650 to 1800. The first is represcnted in our cultural and historical symbols by the New England Puritans, the second by Thomas Jefferson. Under the force of various circumstanccs. these two cultural streams flowed together to form one of thc most distinctive features of American public life. We call it "sepa- ration of church and state." It is enshrined in the First Amcnd- mcnt to the U.S. Constitution. It would be fair to say that for the first half of the republic's history, the dissenting Protestant hcri- tage shaped our understanding of church-state separation. Morc recently the enlightenment side has predominated. Doubtless this is because the more inclusive enlightenment symbols, e.g. re ason, law, and the individual, are better suited to a more diverse popula- tion. The ascendancy of the enlightenment side of our heritage in public life has had a tremendous effect on how Americans vierv "religion. "

Though it is often treated as a fundamentally intellectual movement associated with the rise of modern science, thc enlight- enment was primarily a movement for the political emancipation of individuals from various forms of traditional authority. the established Christian churches of E,urope being chief among them. Freedom of scientific inquiry is one important instancc' of such emancipation. Thc chief enlightenment ideal is individual political liberty and the freedoms of speech, assembly, and rcli- gion that it implies. Enlightenmcnt commitment to individual po- litical liberty is bascd on a nearly absolute faith in the competence and autonomy of individual reason. In this text, I will refer to this complex of enlightenment ideals and beliefs by the shorthand lerm modernity.

In contemporary American culture, as it is shaped by law. mcdia. and political discourse, modcrnity has a strong influencc on how we perceive "religion." In a sense , the very idea that thcrc is a universal phenomenon known as rcligion is a crcation of the cnlightenment. In fact, there are only particular religions and they are not accustomed to presenting themselves as one among the many religions we can choose from. The very category of religion. as moderns use it, does violence to what it describes.

The religions have most often understood themselves as both

".rr;;;;1Go-d is the God of Abraham) and true (there is only one

\til"."|irre are almost as many such claims as there are reli-

;;;;. They appear mutually exclusive and bound to conflict.

i,,.r, .orp"ting claims, when pushed, lead to religious wars, per-

:;;;;r,'and other forms of intolerance. By replacing rhc con- .i"t. ."figions with religion as an abstract and universal category, *"a.r"r,v sought to avoid or submerge conflict

and secure politi-

..ii*"a,ir". In so doing, howcver. it changed our approach to the

religions.^---"By adverting to how religions worked prior to the enlighten-

ment, we can grasp the extent of modernity's impact on our under-

,iunOing and use of the term religion. Before the enlightenment in

the wesi, the idea of a people or nation implied shared gods and

shared public prayer and ritual. Consider the examples of the an-

cient Roman empire, the Holy Roman Empire of medieval chris-

tendom, the Islamic empire, and even the modern confessional

nation states that emerged in Europe after the reformation and the

Peace of westphalia in 1648. They all had what in enlightenment terms we would call "established religions" or "churches." A look at how religions work in contemporary cultures that are in tension with modeinity shows a similar situation. From an historical point of view, Islamic republics are not unusual-we are. Today's Ameri- cans are among the lirst people in history not to consider their religions as primarily shared and public. We generally call this disconnection of the gods from the public life of the people "separa- tion of church and state" and we consider it a very important politi- cal good. Under modern conditions, religions have become volun- tary associations.

The point here is not to argue against the voluntary character of religion in modern society, but to emphasize how modernity has changed the religions and our understanding of them. By rendering them voluntary, modernity has thereby rendered prob- lematic the essential public and communal dimcnsions of tradi- tional religions. Religion has become: a) privatizecl or inte- norized, b) separated from shared daily life, and c) focused on personal ,.belief."

a) Privatkation-IJnder modern conditions, religious faith and life tend to become private and interior as opposed to public

Rgr-rctoN 5150 TReotrtoN a.Nl INcnRNATIoN

and communal. In order to prevent legal establishment and the religious intolerance and persecution that went along with it, the gods had to be banished from public life and confined to the individual soul. When modern people want to find God, the first place they are inclined to look is within themselves'

b) Separation from Shared Daily Life*Once the religious sphere is located primarily in the soul, the rest of life becomes secularized or separate from religious influences. We no longer expect to find God in ordinary daily life, the activities we share as members of American culture-business, politics' law, sports, entertainment. In a world-historical perspective, what we take for granted is a most unusual development.

Because of the Christian side of its founding heritage, the United States, throughout most of its history, has managed to avoid

the full impact of these changes. Instead of having one established church, the United States had many voluntary churches, denomina-

tions, as they came to be called. In spite of the multiplicity of denominations, the United States had a shared religious culture. All the churches-Catholicism and Judaism were conspicuous exceptions-were descended from the reformation. Public struc- turei such as law, schools, and language supported their communal life. By the first decades of the twentieth century, however, public life had become sufficiently secularized to complete the privatiza-

tion of American religion. c) Focus on Personal"Belief"-One common effect of privatt-

zation or interiorization is that religious faith and life come to be

equated with "belief." When we talk about religion, we often speak of our "beliefs." we often divide the world into "believers" and ,.non-believers," the latter a more civil term than "unbeliev-

ers." In an academic setting, belief takes on an intellectual cast' To study religion is to study different beliefs. To be a catholic. for

example, is to share certain esoteric beliefs with other Catholics' catholics .,believe in" the pope. Protestants don't. catholics, Lu-

therans, and Episcopalians are all just like their other fellow Americans except they have differeni beliefs. The scriptural and

traditional idea of travlng one's entire life (heart and soul and strength) transformed in God goes by the way'

I-n rno." popular religious settings, "belief" takes on a more devotional than intellectual cast. This preserves some of the sense

,rat God appeals to the entire person and not just to the part that

:111,;;..i iut belief as religious devotion still remains relatively Uvt'J

,iiui^r" from rhe rest of life. In the table of contents of the

lriJ"rd news magazine, "religion" is only one among many

lrlr"-l,oportant headings. It comes pretty close to the end of the

irr"* ""; is comparatively brief and often sensational. Most of us

*."fa be surprised if it were otherwise'""* nloa.rnity hur created a situation in which most people do

not expect to encounter God in their daily affairs. God is not

.*p".r"o to appear.in our shared public life. If we are interested

inbod, we pray privately or go to church' From a religious per-

,p".tiu., modernity presents a challenge of the highest order' ileligious faith and life are not likely to survive unless they can

be

puUflfy shared in worship and service and community life. Our

culturono longer provides public structures for such shared activ-

ity. Where traditional religions have remained vital under modern

conditions, people have voluntarily built such structures. The pro-

foundly counter-cultural nature of this effort comes to light when

such people try to pass their faith on to their children.

DEFINING RETIGION

As a curiosity in the modern world, traditional religions have become an object of study. This gives rise to the problem of definition. When religion is no longer taken for granted as part of daily life, we arrive at the problem of defining it. A brief survey would reveal that scholars have devised various approaches to the problem of definition.

. As examples we can consider the efforts of two philosophers who have influenced the acadernic studv of relision in the United

ftales. William James (1842-t910) and Alfred "Norrh

Whitehcad. Both James and Whitehead are strikingly and refreshingly original

in l\:it approaches to religion. But their common aversion for thepublic or institutional dimensions of the religions lends to their language about religion a naively individualistic ring. Its public otmension

is relegated to the categorv o[ the merely extcrnal. k.- ln the ...o,id of his prestigious Gifforcl Leciures at Edin-ourgh in 1901. James tackles the problem of dcfinition. He begins

TRaurtoN aNo It{c.qRNATloN

by noting that the Ierm religion "cannot stand for any single princi- ple or essence, but is rather a collective name" (James' 39) He then goes on to distinguish between "institutional" and "per- sonal" religion. The former is a merely "external art, thc art of winning the favor of the gods" (James, 41). For religion so under- stood James has little use. He declares personal religion to be more fundamental and defines it as

the feelings. acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitudc, so far as they apprehcnd themselves to stand in rela- tion to whatever they may consider the divine (James' 42).

James' comments on human relations to the divine are cxtra- ordinarily insightful, but they remain limited by his charactcristi- cally modern focus on "individual men in their solitude."

Speaking a quarter-century later in 1926, Whitehead cchoes James' dichotomy between the internal and the external. He rec- ognizes the dimensions of "ritual, emotion, belief and rationaliza- tion" as giving religion "external expression in human history" (Whitehead, 18). But again for Whitehead, the primary rcligitrus category is "solitariness." Barely paraphrasing James, he defines religion as "what the individual does with his own solitarincss" (Whiteheacl, 16). Like James he is eloquent on the development of the individual's relationship to God. But like James, white- head remains profoundly innocent of the social dimensions of interior life.

Thus rcligion is solitariness; and if you are nevcr solitarv' you arc t.tcvcr rcligious. collcctivc enthusiasms. rcvivals. irlslilu- tions, churches, rituals, bibles' ct>des of behavior' are the trap-

pings of religion, its passing form (Whitehead. 16)'

In their emphasis on the solitary individual' these two dcfini-

tions are almost quaintly modern. Their radical separation of the

external ancl the internal blinds them to the enabling rolc of tradi-

tion or inheritance, ancl to a full appreciation of the public antt communal dimensions of religious tlie. nny primarilv sacramental or incarnational approach to the relationship between the so- called external and internal is excluded at the outset'

Rer-rcroN

If students were to approach the study of religions with such

arnniilonr, the behavior of serious Jews, Christians, and Mus-

I1"". f". example, would be incomprehensiblc except in condc-

#ili;, terms. The Passovcr meal, the eucharist, the pilgrimage

i. frrf"..u would be consigned to the merely external. Readcrs J*;. aware that such modern understandings

of religion as 'r:;"". and Whitehe ad's are historical exceptions. Tradition al rcl i -

nio* ur. usually not anything like what James, Whitehead, and

|it",,oa.rn people assume religion is supposed to bc. In his book The world's Religiorts, Ninian Smart offers a

richer but more tentative and heuristic approach to the problem

of d"finition. Recognizingreligion as a modcrn catcgory.:rnd onc

that religions don't usually use to understand themselves. hc finds

it more profitable to study particular religions rather than tcr search for the essence of something called religion. As an aid to

such comparative study, Smart proposes a sevenfold schema of dimensions. It provides some initial basis for comparison and contrast among religions.

One category that cuts across Smart's dimensions, and ap- pears as well in many of the classical religious traditions. is that of worship. Worship is a difficult word for the modern, secular mind to understand. Whiie we might speak analogically of people wor- shiping money or the state, the primary scnse of the tcrm worship implies what in the previous chapter has bcen called thc transcen- dent. The transcendent is a realitv that is not reduciblc to us or ttl the world, but that is made maniicst through them. Thc prcsence

SMART'S SEVEN DIMENSIONS

1. practical-ritual 2. experiential-emotional 3. narrative-mythic 4. doctrinal-philosophical 5. ethical-legal 6. social-institutional 7. material

5,1 52

lt'

<A Tna.otrroN eNo Il< nRNATION

of transccndence, which we pcrceive as worthy of our worship. 15

arguably one of the most significant, distinguishing featurcs of ths religious dimension of human existcnce. If worship (awe-filled appeal to a transcendent) is allowed a key rolc in a workins definition of religion, then we would think of Judaism, Islam. and even some forms of Buddhism as religions. Humanism and Marx- ism, for example, could only be called religions by analogy. Not only would such an approach be more respectful of thc self- understandings of humanists and Marxists, it would also mean that key religious ideas, e.g. God, are best understood in terms of worship.

Throughout human history, people in disparate places and cultures have claimcd special kinds of extraordinary expericnccs, in which transcendent reality erupts into their routine and makes itself known as "holy" or worthy of worship. Such claims are recognizable as religious by their appeal to the transcendent. In the following sections, we will examine two classic examples of religious experiencc claims from the history of religions. 'l'hc first one is taken from the Hindu holy book known as the Bhagavadgita. The second is taken from the religious tradition of Judaism and appears in the biblical book of Exodus. The divinities in these examples are not abstract and removed from the world. They are identifiable precisely by their historical con- nections to family and people.

ARIUNA'S ENCOUNTER WITH VISHNU/KRISHNA

Thc name of the Hindu religion, like that of India itself is related to the name of the Indus River which separatcs contempo- rary India and Pakistan. The Indus Vallcy saw the emcrgencc oI

an ancient urban civilization going back to thc third mitlennium B.C. Religious elements from this civilization, especially its ent- phasis on yogic meditation techniques, combinccl with elcments irom the religion of the "Aryan" warriors, who invaded the In-

dian continent ca. 1,500 8.C., to form the traclition out of which contemporary Hinduism has devcloped.

A remarkablc diversity and all-inclusiveness (onc might cven call it "catholicity") distinguishes Hinduism as a religious tr:rdi-

REr-rcroN

In the text from the Bhagavadgita, or "Song of the Lord," we encounter more of the devotional than the meditative or ascetical side of Hinduism.

. The Bhagavadgita is only one of the many scriptures or sacrcd wntings of the lons Hindu tradition. Others include the earlier Vedas and the lJianishads. The latte r evidences more of the "searching philosophical inquiry" and "ascetical practices" or ueep meditation" referred to bv Vatican II. The Bhagavadgita

represents thc heieht of the devotional , or hhakti,strain of Hinclu-

i:T I, is a smalllart of the grcat Sanskrit epic, saicl to be thetongest poem in the world. the X',tahabharata. The Mahabharata Ieus the story of a great war. In the Bhagavadgita we find a Hindu

55

. . Tn ;ts hiehly developed incarnational/sacramental sense, just lll,;t ."t1niig is a potential means for manifesting thc transcen- i::l';;'" ,"n!es here a certain kinship with the analogical imagi- (l9rr " -

nation of Cathollctsm','o.'"on" of Hinduism's most fascinating aspects is thc rolc

played

,.., ^.'"tut-heirm,

the belief in many gods' in symbolizing the infinite v f Y"'J

r,iri""* and mysrery of ultimate reality. while there is a sense of

irr"'i"*l,"ule oneness of the ultimate or absolute, the depths of

its infinity are mlrrored by an endless multiplication of divinitics

;;;;'i;;. local traditions. These lesser gods embody the vari-

lul uttriUutes of divinity and function in a way that is very similar

;j",1'; of Mary and the saints in Catholicism's "communion of

saints." Those contemporary Jews and Christians' who have

t"urn"a to think of monotheism and polytheism as opposites, will

huu" u difficult time appreciating the positive role of polythcism

in Hindu religious practice and belief' without using the Ierm polytheism,the Second Vatican coun-

cil,s Declaration on the Church's Relationship to Non-Christian Religions has recognized this positive role' noting that

In Hinduism the divine mystery is explored and propounded with an inexhaustible wealth of myths and penctrating philo- sophical investigation, and liberation is sought from thc dis- tresses of our statc either through variclus forms of ascctical life or deep meditation or taking refuge in God with loving confidence. (Paragraph 2)

51 TnnorrroN nNo INcaRNATIoN

knight of the warrior caste named Arjuna on the plains q1 Kurukshetra with his chariot driver. It is the eve of the great battle that may have taken place sometime between 850 and 650 B.g. Thoughts of the upcoming battle fill Arjuna with distress. The threat of death is compounded by the fact that the opposing arrny includes many of his own relatives. He does not want to fight.

Those for whose sake we covet Kingdom, delights and things of pleasure. Here stand theY, arraYed for battle , Surrendcring both wealth and life.

They are our venerable teachcrs. fathers. sons, They too our grandsires, unclcs. Fathers-in-law, grandsons, Brothers-in-law, kinsmen all;

These would I nowise slaY Though thcy slay [me], mY friend. Not for dominion over the threc [widel worlds, How much less for [this paltry] earth'

(r, 33-3s)

Arjuna and his chariot driver spend the night in deep convcrsa- tion. Unknown to Arjuna, the charioteer is really the Lord Krishna in disguise. Krishna is one of the avatars, or incarnations' of the Hindu god Vishnu. Atong with Shiva, Vishnu is one of thc two chief deities in the devotional strain of Hinduism. The climax of the

Bhagavadgila occurs in Chapter XI when Krishna reveals himse lf to Arjuna in his multi-faceted heavenly form. Smart describes this

pu.rug" as expressing "a shattering reiigious experience' which is

here clothed in the mythology of the cult of Vishnu. ." Upon learning Krishnattrue identity, Arjuna makes the fol-

lowing request:

Even as Thclu hast described [thy] Self to be. So must it be, O Lord Most High;

[But] fain would I sce the [bodily] form Of Thee as Lord, All Highest Person'

(xr. 3)

'1;ohlishting the ce.ntral role of darsan

(seeing) in Hindu practrce' noHilffi theophany or manifestation of God is rendered in i*,nser\that is p"tutily

visual' Th-e-repetition of "I really want to

"'--u-.^,,u in George Harrison's 1970 popular song"'My^Sweet

i?J,?:,";Jtt ;devotionat hymn to Vishnu, exemplifies the

Iame religious motrl'

REt-tctoN 56

So saYing Hari' The great Lord o[ Yogic Pttwer'

Revealed to the son of Pritha

His all-highest sovercign form'-

[A form] with manY a mouth and eYe

And countless marvelous aspectsl

Many [indeed] were its divinc adornments'

Vuny itt" cclestial weapons raised on high'

Garlands and robes celestial He worc'

Fragrance divine was his anointing:

[Be"hold] this God whosc every [markl spells wonder'

The Infinite , facing everY waY!

If in [bright] heaven together should arise Thc shining brilliancc of a thousand suns'

Then woulcl that Iperhapsl rcsemble The brilliance of that God so great of Self '

Then did the son of Pandu see The whole [wide] universe in One convergcd' There is the body of the God of gods' Yet divided out in multiplicity.

Then {illed with amazemenl Arluna, His hair on end, hands joined in revcrent grceting' Bowing his head before thc God.

[These words] spakc out: (xI, e-14)

Gazing upon thy mighty form With its myriad mouths, evcs, arms, thighs, feet'

58 TRnorrroN ,qNo INc,qRNAT'roN

Bellies. and sharp, grucsome tusks. The worlds [all] shuddcr [in affrightl,

how much more I!

Ablaze with many colourcd [flamcs] Thou touch'st the skv. Thy mouths widc open. gaping. thine cycs distcncletl. t'laiins: I sec Thee. ancl my inmost sclf is shakcn: I cannot bcar it, I find no pcace. O Vishnu!

( XI. l-r -l+ )

More terrifying visions follow and. apologizing for any unclue familiarity he may have been guilty of before he knew Krishna's true identity, Arjuna pleads with his Lord to return to the wav he was before:

Things nevcr seen bcfore I'vc seen, and ccstatic is my joy.

Yct fear and trernbling possess my mind Show me. thcn, God that [same human] form [I knewl. Havc mercy, Lord of Gods, Home of the universc!

(XI..1-5)

Krishna's subsequent instruction to Arjuna exprcsses the heart of Hindu devotionalism:

The Blessed Lord saio: Right hard to see is this my form

Which thou has scen: This is thc form the gods themsclves

Forevcr cravc lo scs.

Not by thc Vcdas or grim ascetic practice. Not by the giving of alms or sacrificc Czrn I bc seen in such a form

As thou didst scc Me.

But by worship of love (bhakti) addrcssccl to Me alonc Can I be known and seen In such a fbrm and as I really am: ISo can my lovcrs] enter into Mc.

Rt,t-t<;roN 59

Do works for Me. make Me thy highcst goal. Bc loyal in lovc (bhakta) to Me. Cast off Iall othcr] attachments. Havc no hatred for any bcing at all; For all who do thr.rs shall comc to Mc.

(xr. -52--5-5)

MOSES'ENCOUNTER WITH YHWH (I AM) IN THE

BURNING BUSH

Moses can be regardcd as the founder of Judaism. His experi-

ence with the burning bush precedes both the exodus from Egypt

and the expcrience at Mount Sinai. Tbgether with them it forms the basis of thc Jewish religious tradition. The biblical book of Exodus, as well as the books containing the Mosaic law. Leviti- cus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. proviclcs our only information about Moses. Therc are n() accounts in Egyptian history that correspond to the Exodus account. and some of what we do know of the period of the nincteenth dynasty in Egypt is difficult to harmonize with Exodus. Since we are dcaling with thc thirteenth century B.C. and evidence is scanty. these discrepancies necd not imply a critical decision against the belief that the Hebrews fled Egypt approximately 1.300 years bcfore the birth of Christ and migrated to Canaan under the leadcrship of Moscs. Moses is indeed an Egyptian namc, and the traclitions that ascribe the origins of Jewish cult and law to him are ancient and strong.

From thc final chaotcrs of thc book o{'Gencsis. we learn how the Hebrews, thc descclndants of Abraham, came to be in Egypt. This is the storv oi Joscph. the favorite son of his fathcr Israel, thrown into u well by his jcalous brothcrs and clrrried off to Egypt by Midianite mc-rchants. As Gcnesis encls. a famine reunitcs Jo- seph and his brothcrs in Egypt. With the beginning of Exoclus. Joseph has cliecl and a new h,gyptian pharaoh has bcgun to persc- cute the Hebrews. Newbclrn malcs arc to be cast into the Nile. Accorcling to the well-known account in H,xodus 2. Moses'mother puts him in a basket and sencls his sister to hicle him in the reeds flone the Nile . Pharaoh's claughter flnds him thcrc and raiscs theHebrew child as a mcmber of thc Egyptian royal houschold. Theyoung

Moses is clceply moved by the piight of his fellow Hebrews.

60 TRaorrroN a,wo INcnRNATIoN

One day when he sees an Egyptian strike a Hebrew laborer, hs gets into a fight with the Egyptian and kills him. Fearing for his own life, Moses flees to the land of Midian, probably in thc Sinai peninsula, and marries a local woman. As Exodus 3 begins. r'ys find Moses in Midian tending his father-in-law's sheep.

Meanwhile Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading the flock across the des- ert, he came to Horeb. the mountain of God. Thcre an angel of the Lono appeared to him in fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed. So Moses decided, "I must go over to look at this remarkablc sight, and see why the bush is not burned. "

When the LoRo saw him coming over to look at it more closely, God called out to him from the bush, "Moses! Mo- sesl" He answered. "Here I am." God said. "Comc no nearerl Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. I am the God of your father," he c<lntin- ued. "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob." Moses hid his facc. for he was afraid to look at God. But the Lonp said, "I havc witnessed the affliction of my pcople in Egypt and havc heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffcring. Therefore I have comc down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a got'rd and spacious land. a land flowing with milk and honey. the country of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. So indeed the cry of the Israelites has reached me. and I have truly noted that thc Egyptians are oppressing them. Come, now! I will send you to Pharaoh to lead my people . thc Israelites. out of Egypt."

But Moses said to God, "Who arn I that I should go tcr Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of Egypt'J" He ans*'crcd. "I will bc with you; and this shall be your proof that it is I wh<r have scnt you: when you bring my people out of Egypt' you will worship God on this very mountain." "But," said Moscs to God, "when I go to thc Israelitcs and say to them,'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' if they ask me. 'What

is his name?'what am I to tcll them?" God replied, "I am who am." Then he addcd, "This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to vou."

Rr,ltctoN 61

God spoke further to Moscs, "Thus shall you say to thc

lsraelites: The Lonp, the God of your fathers' the God of

Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob' has sent me to

you.

"This is my name forever; this is my title for all genera-

tions.

"Go and assemble the elders of the Israclites' and tell them: The Lono, the God of your fathers, thc God of

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob' has appeared to me and said:

I am concerned about you and about the way you are being treated in Egypt; so I have decided to lead you up out of the misery of Egypt into the land of the Canaan- ites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey."

SOME GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF

RETIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Bhagavadgita ll and Exodus 3 provide two classic examples of religious experience claims. Because of their antiquity, longev- ity, and foundational role in their respective traditions, we can take them as in some sense typical or representative. The ap- proach taken in the following discussion of them derives from what students of comparative religion call the "phenomenology of religion." As a general method in philosophy, phenomenology "brackets," or sets aside, questions about the extra-mental exis- tence of whatever is being studied. Phenomenologists focus their efforts on finely nuanced descriptions of what appears to con- sciousness.

Phenomenology literally means the study of what appears' Since religiou, qr.iiion, .unnut be solved by strict demonstration ' but are nfvertheless important, the method of phenomenology is particularly well suited to the study of religious experience. One of the fruits of its use in relisious studies has been the emergence of a sense of the remarkable itructural similarities among religious ex- Periences from disparate times. places. and religious traditions. the best-known practitioner of this method is the Roumanian-

TRnotrtoN a.No INca,RNlttot'l

born historian of religions Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), who taught for many years at the University of Chicago.

In Chapter I, we used the correlative terms ordinary and extraordinary to open up the depth-dimension of human expcri- encc. Similarly, Eliade uses the correlative terms sacred and pro,

fane to elucidate the religious dimension of human experience. He develops thesc categories at an introductory level in The Sa- cred and the Profane (1957). It is important to keep in mind that these terms are not to be equated with good and bad. The profane is simply thc ordinary background against which the sacred ap- pears. It has absolutely nothing to do with "profanity" in our sense of the term. In Eliade 's cosmos, every aspect of the profane offers a potential medium for the manifestation of the sacred. This capacity of the visible world to body forth the invisible , along with Eliade's easiness with cosmic symbolism, gives his approach a striking affinity with the incarnational/sacramental ethos of Ro- man Catholicism. Doubtless this affinity has something to do with Eliadc's own religious background in the Roumanian Orthodox Church. When we analyze religious experience in Eliade's catcgo- ries of sacred and profane, we can identify five characteristics or structural elements.

l. The Ordinary Person in Ordinary Space and Time-In our two examples, Arjuna and Moses are ordinary figures in the sense that no supernatural claims are made for their origins or natures' Although they have both achieved heroic stature in their respec- tive traditions, there is no qucstion that they are human beings in

thc ordinary sensc. They are likcwise engaged in thc routinc tasks proper to them, Arjuna as a warrior, Moses as a shepherd. Obvi- ously, Arjuna's situation on the eve of a battle puts him in a more extraorclinary situation than Moses and heightens his scnsitivitV to

the depth-dimension. Reconstructing the inner lives of such shadowy figures frttm

thc past as Arjuna and Moses is risky business. Nevertheless' we

might hazard some observations from a psychological point of

view. goth Arjuna and Moses have arrived at what might be tcrmed crisis points. Both tcxts indicate that they are experienc- ing certain tensions in their hearts and minds. At the end of the fir.st chapter of the Bhagavadgita, Arjuna slumps down in his chariot and "let slip his bow and arrows. his mind distraught with

. tr tr 47t.The kinship Moses fecls with the pcople of his birth gttt_,'^

"\-," murder onc from thc peoplc who raiscd him. Fearing

i?iT #'*fii murder them as he hacl murdered the Egyptian, the :'j:;"";. too relect him (Ex 2:13-14)' Both Arjuna and Moses l""Jiii.ttrracteiistics of what William Jamcs called the "divided

:]n:, ;, the ..sick" or "twice-born" soul. This state of tension or i,"iAJn"r. keeps both Moses and Arjuna open to the depth-

iir."ri." and in a state of readincss for a possible sign from the

sods of thcir ancestors'b"-- 2. The sacred Appears-The sacred is the name E,liade gives to

what religious people think they have experienced. In phenomeno-

loeical t..r., the sacred is the object of religious consciousness' nitt,ougtt it could refer to a personal God, it is a broader term,

intende-d for use across the entire range of the history of religions.

A nearly identical concept is developed in Rudolf otto's (1869- Ig37) T"he Idea of the Hoty,first published in Germ an (Das Heilige)

in 1923. Otto wanted to use the category of the holy to reach beyond the rational and ethical dimensions of our language about

God, to touch upon the distinctively religious. i.e. that which elicits

the distinguishing religious response of worship. The texts we are examining both describe the dramatic erup-

tion of the sacred or the holy into the lives of Arjuna and Moses. Both Krishna/Vishnu and Yahweh are experienccd as coming un- bidden and on their own initiatives. Though the ground seems to have been prepared, neither Arjuna nor Moses is portrayed as expecting to encounter his respective Lord. The same could be said of St. Paul on the Damascus road (Acts 9) or the other New Tbstament figures, such as Mary Magdalene or Peter, who are gtven to see the risen Lord Jesus.

Rr,lrcroN

The holy never appears "directly," but through a non-sacred or profane medium. As lons as the term is not used in a reduc- tionist sense, we could say that the holy is symbolicr.r//y mecliated. The chariot clriver and the bush are the mediums in our texts. "There the angel of the Lono appeared to him in the flame of a ourning bush" (Ex 3:2). The sacred is recognizablc as such pre- ctsely through the distortion of the medium by which its presence ls disclosed or made manifest. This is not an ordinary bush. It ourns but is not consumed. This is what initially catches Moses' attention and draws him ncar. Hunclreds of years latcr, Blaise

63 62

I t

L

64

Pascal will begin his "Memorial" commemorating his own encoun-

i.. *i,tt the dod of Abraham' with an allusion to the same "fire"

of Exodus 3. Inasimilarmannertothebush'thechariotdriverisdistorted

before Arjuna's eyes into the kaleidoscopic "t:i?1:ll]:T:ll: li"

" it fr

"L"lv .t,r'. r l' a g av a d g it a co n tr asts,w :l : l:: "..:'T I : I

;,,fi';i;;%i;..uiion tletween Moses and the Lord' This c.n-

- ^-l +L^ ^,--*^

Rr,ltctoN

" (XI,32)' Arjuna adclresses his Lord as

"[Thoul the first

t::.:, ;r .cod,s L"rdl,'h; ;oJJ;' tuuiolngl

home' unendin g' Thou

:;;" Imperishabit" u"i"t'' Not-Being and what surpasses

,,tL - ,, .wr 17\, :4rr.r, "?ihis

universe the last prop and rest-

Lnth \/rr!" '

itig'prut"" ({t' ]:] ,, okes worship'lnboth texts' the manifesta-

"l"l;?"',1:::'f ,fr#l:'J;;".:i-::::::^il:::li,';.0^:*.'

Li-"tt.action and ""i;;;"";;us fearfulness' Moses is drawn

to

if^,.',.t, but he i' ui'o i"u'ful: "M-oses covered his face' for he

tne uuo", --' cn God,,(Ex 3:6). After begging the Lord to

was afraid t" PY:;to his sight' Arjunu tunnoibear what he has

::ff'l':.'J+XiJ.tl il:il'y'::lill"r'ut"n' I cannot bear it' I

;;;';" peace' O Vishnu!* (Il'24];'-"^.

es tvoificd bv A The fundamental religious

attitude' as typified by Arluna

and Moses, i' on" of awe and reverence' Thii'is the attitude

of

worship' God doesn't have to command it' it comes naturally'

To

the holy or the ";;;;;';1i'"' y11;h inspires worship' i:i::t

Otto has given the Latin name mysterium ffemendum

et las'cmans '

the awful unO tu'"i"nlii"g rnytt"tv Jews and Christians might

ac-

cept Otto's pt"u'"^u' un-apt'designation for the God of Abraham

unu l".tT;, sacred Involves a calling-The

sacred never gives it-

self as an ordinary object in expenence' It is not simply there

among the other';od; ont dot' not know the sacred in the

manner ot "u".vJul';;;;;;"n' r-trt does not go on a-s usual'

Encounter with the sacred is a transtorming experience that pro-

roundryur,",,on"i,;;"p't'":[Ti-.X:il*i':J"TJ'.::'il': new way. Religious experience otten

sion, a vocation. W" ilJrttis with Arjuna and Moses',T L"]l,i:

with figures such as-Paul from the other great conversion stortes

in the religious ,ruJi,iont' Arjuna -utifight on the plains of

Kurukshetr". rurorJ.*i.^.rfl"O to lead his people out of,Egypt'

Neither one finds these missions perionally appealing' Moses

is less than reassured by Yahweh'' inliiar p'o'oitt ihat ' when all

of

this is over, the people will worshrp C"a on Mount Horeb (Ex

3:12). Like ,h" p"r;;it;t. *ho will come after him' Moses resists

the Lord and his call. He protests five separate^times (E'x 3:11;

3:13;4:1;4:10;;,ii;. itl"'"o spends the entire first ten chapters of the Bhaeavadgltc arguing "nu*u'"t

with his Lord over the

TRnotrtoN aNo INc,qnNATloN

trast reflects the general biblical stress on hearing and the corre-

sponding Hindu stress on seeing' - tl ln neither text is there any question of Arjuna

or Moscs

confusing the holy with the -"diut through which it is' made

manifest. Moses does not identify the bush with Yahweh' nor

0... iri""a think ttrat tfre charioteer is Vishnu' The sacrcd is not

reducible to the *oriJry or visible medium through which it ap-

p""t.. fftft i, unottt"' *uy of saying that people' even so-called

"primitive" on.., do-not *o"ttip rocks and trees' From a reli-

gious point of view, the great advantage of the phenomenological

!pp-".ft to religion is-that it lets the sacred be itself without

reducing it to something else' i'e' without reductionism'

Among ottrets,^ Siimund Freud (1856-1939) at the individ-

ual, and Karl Marx iisrs-rsg3) and Emile Durkheim (1f35lt-

191,7) atthe level oi society' each practiced some form of reduc-

tionism. fn"y toor. tot gt"titlO thaireligious people have gotten it

wrong and that wtrat tiey think they experience must.really be

.orn"Ttting else. We fini a good example of reductiontsm rn

Freud,s opinion that ,.what is" sacred wai originally nothing but

the perpetuu,.O *itt oi the ptimeual father" (Moses and Monoilte-

tt-'f.u];reducible in its manifesration, the sacred is also

self-

defining. lt gives itself in experience precisely as the "totally

other." Its initial definition is to be othei than :r.not :l: l:()'^n'

BothYahwehanoVishnuidentifythemselves.Itisveryimportant to Moses that he Iearn the name of

Abraham's God' The tetragrarn

YHWH (transiiterated from Hebrew as "Yahweh") is

'really no

name at all. Like the Mosaic prohibitio.n agalnst.elllll-ilot"t uf

the Lord, its primary intent is in saving the divine transcendence:

"l

am who am" (Ex j'i+i' aitrtough the-issue of the divine name'doe

s

not assume the impoltance thai it has in Exodus 3' Vishnu identt-

fies himself similar'ly' "Time am I' wreaker of the world's clcstruc-

1

REr-tc;toN 6766 TRnol't'IoN aNo INc,qRNArloN

traditional Hindu vicw of death. Neither Arjuna nor Moses is portrayed as having surrendered his frcedom or human faculties. In the end, the tension is resolved. They relent and freely acqui- esce to their respective Lords.

5. The Return to the Ordinary-" But they will never believe me or listen to me; they will say,'The Lono did not appear to you"'(Ex 4:1). Even in the midst of his awe-inspiring experi- ence, Moses never stops thinking like a human being. He works to fit this experience in with the rcst of his life experience. For prophets like Moses, the most difficult moment occurs when they come down from the mountain and return to the people.

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

As the examples of Arjuna and Moses illustrate, phenome- nology serves, in a modern context, as a particularly apt means for studying religions. By its refusal to reduce religious faith and life to something other than they claim to be (see above), phc- nomenology directs our attention to what is specific to the expcri- ences we call "religious," namely, manifestations of the s:rcred and worshipful responses to them.

In his classic study, The Varieties of Religious Expericnc'e (1902), William James popularized the term religious experience' Because of its currency, and in spite of its limitations, we shall continue to use it. James focused in his work on "that element or quality in them [religious experiences] which we can meet no- where else." In defending his own choice of cxamples, he argued that the specific quality he sought "will be of coursc most promr- nent and easy to notice in those religious experiences which are most onc-sidecl, exaggcrated and intense" (James, 52). In choos-

ing the classic "*uffi",

of Arjuna and Moses, I havc followed James' example. Suci dramatic examples, however, run the risk

of giving readers the false imprcssion that rcligious expericnccs onty hopp"n to shadowy heroic figures who lived long ago' Thts

would reinforce the modern tendincy to scparate religious life from the rest of life.

This tendency seems to be a built-in hazard of the phenone-

nological approach' This is not surprising whcn we consider that

,r.- method arose urlder modern conditions' The very term reli-

,".:.::;;'""rience suggesrs rhat rherc is a special kind of experience

flffilif;;; politicar. cconomic, or athletic cxpcrience. rt hap- 1.". nnfv rarely ancl to very unusual people' Phenomenology of

l""ir'r";J cruciil distinction between the sacred and the profane lll'i.l," ,.flect the modcrn dichotomy bctwcen the religious and

,fr""t.."fr.. which we find cmbodied in certain contemporary

ini"rpr.tutions of separation of church and state'

Such an approach to religious cxperience, with its emphasis

on th; differen-ce between the sacred and thc profane or God and

;;;;:;e can call diulectical' ln the Old Tcstament' the call of itt" p-pft"t Isaiah (ls 6) provides a dramatic cxample of the Jiuf".ti.ul approach. Rudolf Otto uscs Isaiah 6 extcnsively in The

iiro o7 the i1oly. God's {inal spcech to Job from "our of the storm" (Job 38-41) provides another examplc. In thc New Testa-

ment, St. Paul, with his dramatic conversion on the Damascus road (Acts 9) ancl his emphasis on being creatcd anew in christ. fits this dialectical pattern well. In Christianity's long history, fig- ures such as St. Augustine. Martin Luther, Blaise Pascal, and SOren Kierkegaard provide furthcr illustrations'

But if James is correct. such clramatic examples are simply exaggerated instances of a phcnomenon that appears most often in more ordinary people in less one-sided and intense forms' In addition to its insistencc on the cliffcrence betwecn the sacrcd and the profane. phenomenology of religion also cmphasizes that the sacred only appears in and through the profane. Anyone or any- thing is a potential metlium for the sacrcd. Recall the examplcs of the chariotecr and thc bush. This latter emphasis means that phenomenology of rcligion is open on its own terms to an ap- proach that emohasizes not the differcnce but the continuity be- tween the sacred and the profane, betwecn God and creation. Borrowing a term from the previous chapter. we can call this aPproach analocical.

-. Analogical and dialectical approaches to rcligit'rus experience differ in thJir presentations of God and of thc people who expcri- e.nce God. The rest of this chapter will be devotcd to developing the analogical approach by contrasting it with the dialectical ap-

RsuctoN 6968 TnnotrtoN aNo INcnnxATIoN

proach. The purpose of this contrast is to emphasize that religiou5

experience can haPPen to anyone.

THE DIATECTICAT APPROACH TO RELICIOUS EXPERIENCE

a) God in the Dialectical Approach-The dialectical moment of the phenomenology of religion emphasizes that the sacred appears precisely in its differentiation from the profane. As is the case with the God who addresses Job from "out of the storm," the emphasis here is on the wholly Other character of thc object of religious experience. In a modern context' however, such cm- phasis on God's otherness tends to promote the common view of God as separate from the world. God becomes a separate being who competes with other beings for our attention. Time spent with God is time spent away from work and family. Loving God with our whole heart and soul and strength becomes a cruel and impossible command. Only those with no family or no work could even dare attempt it.

If God is totally Other, we ought not to expect to find God in the affairs of daily life. To find God' we would have to go to tl separate place, either our own interior or perhaps a church' From

wiitrin such a perspective on God, pastors can chide their people for not being able to give God "even one hour a week"'

-fhe

possibility oi paying aitention to God and loving God in arrd through creation remains dim.

i7 nttigious People in the Dialectical Approach-If religious experiences are always as dramatic as St. Paul's on the Damascus

.oid, th"n they are relatively rare and only happen to the "great souls" among us. In The Varieties of Retigious Experience' James spoke of "twice-born souls," people such as Paul, Augustine' Luther, and Pascal, whose inner clivisions could be healed only bV

momentous experiences of conversion. For the great saints and

mystics of the modern period, such conversion experiences are most often interior. The great saints and mystics do not appear

to

be like the rest of us. Though we go to church, it might not occur to us to describe that as "religious experience.

THE ANALOGICAL APPROACH

rb nruclous EXPERIENCE

a\ God in the Analogical Approach-The story of Elijah in the

*,", i'oot of Kings provides an old restament example of the

analogicalapproacntoGod.Afterhiswell.knownface-offwith liI.i.,nrr"ts of Baal in 1 Kings 18, Elijah slit all of their throats'lrrv r_ r ThisenrageoLezeoel,theSidonianwifeofKingAhaboflsrael unJ,fr" oie ,rnder whose influence Ahab had

promoted the wor-

"i1" "t Baal. With the forces of Jezebel in pursuit, Elijah fled to

irr"'a.r.r, and finally took shelter in a cave on Mount Horeb, the

rur" nofy mountain where God had appearcd to Mose.s' The oirt

"ur,"n"d prophet was instructed that only upon leaving the

shelter of the cave would he meet the Lord'

A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains and crush-

ing rocks before the Lono-but the Lono was not in the wind Aiter the wind there was an earthquake-but the Lono was

not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was fire- buttheLon.pwasnotinthefire'Afterthefircthcrewasattny whispering sound. When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in

his cloak and went and stoocl at the entrance of the cave' A voice said to him, "Eliiah. why are you hcre?" (l Kgs l9:11- 13).

In this story, Elijah did not find God in the great wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire. Storms, earthquakes, and fires are the kinds of places where the dialectical approach might lead us to expect to find God. Rather Elijah recognizes God in "a tiny whis- pering sound" (1 Kgs 19:12). According to the analogical ap- proach, we should expect to find God in the kinds of everyday occurrences suggested by some of the varied English translations for what .u-.*uIt", thc hre in I Kings 19:12: "a faint murmuring sound" (Revised Enelish Bible), "a sound of a gentle breezc" (Jerusalem Bible), "a"still small voice" (King James Version).

The God of the analogical approach to religi.us expcricnce speaks not onlv "out of the storm," but also in "a still small voice." God is the kind of God we experience in and through

-t

TRa,prrroN l,No INCnRNATIoN

other rcalities of creation. We are actually experiencing God all the time. As St. Paul insisted in his speech before the Athenians. though we might seek and grope for God, God "is not far from any one of us" (Acts 17:27). "For'In him we live and move and have our being' . . ." (Acts 17:28). This is a consoling thought that is in keeping with the analogical moment of the phenomenol- ogy of religion. The sacred appears in and through the profane but is not identified with it. The analogical approach takes vcry seriously the religious truism that God is everywhere.

In the writings of the medieval English visionary and mystic Julian of Norwich (1342-1413?), we find a highly developed sense of God's presence in the "tiny whispering sounds" of creation. In the following passage from S/zowirzgs, probably the first book written in English by a woman, God's abiding presence to cre- ation is manifested to Julian through the mediation of a tiny hazel- nut. Julian's analogical text provides an instructive contrast with Pascal's dialectical one from the previous chapter.

And (our Lord) showed me something small, no biggcr than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and I perccivcd that it was as round as any ball. I lookcd at it and thought: What can this be? And I was givcn this gcneral answer: It is cverything that is made. I was amazcd that it could last, for I thought that it was so little that it could suddenly fall into nothing. And I was answcrcd in my undcrstanding: It lasts and always will. because God lovcs it, and thus everything has bcing through the love of God.

In this little thing I saw three propcrtics. The first is that God made it. the second is that he loves it. the third is that God prcscrves it. But what is that tc'r mc? It is that God is the Crcator and the lover and the protcctor. For until I am sub- stantially united to hirn, I can ncvcr have love or rest or true happiness; until, that is, I am so attached to him that there can be no created thing betwecn my God and me. Ancl who will do this deed? Truly. hc himself. by his mercy and his grace. for he has madc mc for this and has blessedly assured me.

Julian of Norwich. Showings, translated by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, The Classic:s oJ Western

Spirituality (197U). pp. 130-31.

Rr,lrcroN

h\TheRoleofWorshipintheAnalogicalApproacft-IfGodis ,n" liind of Gocl we find not only in storms but also in the

still rrtv --' ' -r ^-'rryday life , then church (as in "going to small votces

or cvc .tu..t,"; cannot simply be a separate

p-lace where we go to find a

7=.li *fro isn't anywhere else. But if God is nevcr far from any

",* "' uS, why.do.l.

..go to church''] The classic answer is that

we go to "worship" Gtld'"- "Fo. Christians, God is present in the liturgy (public worship of the church) in a special and unique

way. catholics have empha-

Jized t5e real sacramental presence of Christ in the eucharist. But

'*'''orpublicworshipisconnectedtotherestoflife.The,u..u'1n"n,ul life of catholicism, for example, is based on the incarnational or analogical perspective according to which the ordinary realities of creation-bread' wine, water, words, and the

people who speak them-are all potential manifestations of God. The world is full of God.

christians believe that in God's history with us some of that potential has become actual. Christians go to church becausc they

telieve God is manifesled in the scriptural word proclaimed and preached in the assembly, in the fellowship with other believers. and in the eucharist. But, under modcrn conditions, going to church serves another crucial function. It is a kind of school in which Christians cultivate the analogical imagination and learn to experience the world sacramentally. i.e. as potentially full of God.

Under modern conditions. the liturgy provides a counter- cultural voice. It is an erltcrnative to thc chorus of dominant voices that teach us daily that God is abscnt from the world, and that we should not expect to find God there. The liturgy can reshape our expectations about God. From its biblical storics and its sacra- ments, we can learn to cxpect to find God in the still small voices of our everyday expcriences of creation. Evcn in spite of suffer- Ing, the biblical stories teach. we can trust that the world remains full of the God in whom wc live and move and have our being. Our culture teaches us that God is absent from the ordinary af- fairs of music, school, sports. and business. The liturgy teaches analogical patterns of perccption and experience. It can teach people how to pav attention to the God who is never far from any one of us. This leads to praisc and thanksgiving.

-1IT70

72 TRnorrroN,q,No INca.RNA'roN

c) Religious People in the Analogical Approach-Accordins to the analogical approach, the rare souls we recognize as saints and mystics are not the only ones who experience God. The lons list of the "twice-born" includes St. Paul and St. Augustine. with their new-found and often oppressive certitudes. In the face of such religious prodigies, it is crucial to recall the multitudc of lcss spectacular souls who walk daily along the way in which they have been nurtured.

The New Testament gospels offer to believers two other mod- els of Christian faith and disciplcship. Their religious posrurcs seenl more ordinary and everyday than Paul's. One is the steady, trusting faith of Mary the mother of Jesus. He r soul magnified the Lord who lifts up the humble. Thc other is the sometimes shaky but ever generous-hearted faith of Peter the apostle. an unlikely and near-comic "rock." His ineptitude and full measure of human weakness were matched only by his willing spirit. These two gos- pel figures, each embodying a different nuance of weakncss, keep us from being overwhelmed by Pauline power and perfcctionism.

In addition to the examples of Mary and Peter, I can think of many saints who have lived with God under modern condi- tions. I am reminded especially of St. Elizabeth Seton. My daily tasks in E,mmitsburg often take me under the shadow of her memory. She lived her life with God as a wife and mother as well as a Christian teacher and founder of a religious communitv. In the midst of various monuments to her mcmory, I think often of her dancing shocs. She had danced in them as a young New York socialite and she kept them until her death. They are now on display in the museum at the Provincial House of the Daugh- ters of Charity in Emmitsburg. They look incredibly small. Some- one with a dialectical imagination might see in her having saved the shoes a sign that her conversion was less than complete. Someone with an analogical imagination might find in it a spiri- tual refreshment and consolation.

In the analogical approach, loving God with all one's heart and soul and strength appears as a way of living opcn to anyone ' Even seemingly little souls who are not twice-born can expericnce God in the dancing shoes. hazelnuts, and other murmurs of daily life. But this experience is clifficult for those who have not learned

RglrctoN / J

.^ ernect God to appear in the world' A joke readers may have

it "^lay

heard providcs a light-hearted illustration.

In the middle of a scvere flood. a man took refuge from the

rising water on top of his roof ' As the water continued to risc'

h" piuy"O to God and asked to be savcd from the flclod' A

,.r.u" boat appeared and tried to take him aboard' But the mandeclined,sayingthathehadfaiththatGodwouldsave him. As the water ctlntinucd to rise. a rescue helicopter came

and dropped the man a rope ladder' But again he declined' He

knewGodwouldsavehimandhesentthehelicopteronits way. Eventually the watcr covercd the house and thc man

drowned. When he got to heaven, he was quite upset with

God for failing to save him. He asked God angrily' "Why

didn't you save me when I prayed to you?" "Wcll. I tried"' God replied. "l sent you a boat and a helicopter' Why didn't you use them?"

The man on the roof had an excessively dialectical imagina- tion and an over-developed sense of God's separation from the world. He was expecting fire and storms and earthquakes instead of boats and helicopters.

THE ANGELS OF SUPER THRIFT

Having argued that the world is full of potential manifesta- tions of God, and that ordinary people experience God in their daily lives, good faith impels me to provide at least one example from my own religious experience. I call it "The Angels of Super Thrift."

My wife is now a practicing physician. We have three chil- dren. During her years in medical school, as during my years in graduate school a decade earlier, we had to live apart for weeks at a time. This was often difficult and stressful. One particularly stressful night, we had a long-distance argument on the phone. It was an especiallv bad one. Mutual recrimination and guilt were flying in ail directions. After I had hung up for the second time, I telt terribly alone. As often happens at such times, I felt my

7574 Tn,q.orrroN aNo INcnRNATIoN

situation was impossible and I didn't see how I could go on. I hacl to get out of the house.

Depression drzrws me to food. So I got in my car and drove to the Super Thrift parking lot in Emmitsburg. I pulled into a park- ing space. "God," I said. "if you want me to keep doing thrs. you'd better send me some help." Then I put my head down on the steering wheel and cried.

After a whilc a wonderful thing happened. A red Escort pulled in beside me. The concerncd and curious faces inside be- longed to one of my closest friends and her daughter. They of course asked me if I was all right and I said NO. They stayed with me for a while and then went inside for their groccries. Soon I gathered enough energy to go inside too. I wanted to buy a one- pound box of Cheesc-Its-my medicine for emotional and spiri- tual ills.

As I walked in the door, another wonderful thing happencd. Another of my closest friends-we go back to college days-was standing in the checkout line near the door. I must have looked pretty awful. When she saw me, she came right over and said, "You look like hell." Then, right in the middle of the Emmitsburg Supcr Thrift, shc gave me a big hug. This didn't make everything all right, but I no longer felt so alone and impossiblc.

Just as in the stories in the Biblc, God had truly heard my prayer and sent not one but two angels to comfort me. I bought my Cheese-Its and went home and ate the whole box. My wife came home the next weekend. and we had our usual reconciliation.

To thc cynical eye, this is not a story about God or angels at all. It's simply about a couplc of supcrmlrkct coincidences. Aftcr all everyone in Emmitsburg goes to Super Thrift at least once il day. What makes it plausible for me to bclicve that God sent angels to comfort me'?

This is how I expect Gocl to act. From my earliest childhood' when my mother listened to my prayers each night and tauqht me to say "good night" to God. through all the years of readins and hearing the stoiies about God in thc scriptures, I have learnc-rl from my inheritance, my tradition, what God is likc. This is the kincl of thing I expect God to do. It doesn't happen all the time' but it happens often cnough that when it doesn't, I give Goc'l the benefit of the doubt. My scnsc of the story, howcver, lcads mc to

Rr, lrcroN

expect that in the face of death' giving God the benefit of the

loubt will be verY dil-ficult' Was this a "supcrnatural intervention"'l The thcological

name for what these first chapters arc about is "fundamental

it "ology."

In discussi<tns of fundamental thcology. contcmporary

iheologians oftcn gct very ncrvous about what they call "super-

natural interventions." lnterventions or intcrferences by God in

the world's affairs arc said to violate the autonomy gf the w6rld

and of human bcings' They offcnd the modern sensc of how things work '

When used with referencc to God. tcrms such as intervention and interf'erel?.'e conn()tc a certain inappropriatencss. They imply

that God is someonc who lives outsidc of or separate from the world. This is a modern concept, given classic expression in David Hume's essay "Of Miracles." This essay will be treatcd at length in Chapter XIII bclow. For the prcsent. it will be enough to say the following. If God is not someone who lives outsidc of or separate from the world, but rather is the Creator "who gives to everyone lifc and brcath and cverything" (Acts i7:25), thcn it would be prcfcrable to speak of God's manif'estations rather than God's interventions. In spcaking of such manifestations, Christian theology has traditionally used the tcrm revelation.

Questions for Review and Discussion

1. List and discuss thrce ways in which the modern American context shapcs thc practice and understanding of traditional religion.

2' What clistinguishes religious expcricnce from other extraordi- nary expericnces?

3. How arc Vrhwch ancl Vishnu/Krishna similar? How are they diffcrent?

4' How are thc experienccs of Moses and Arjuna similar? How are they different'l

5' Discuss the clanger of using extreme cases to understand rcli- glous cxperience.

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6.

TRnorlroN rrNo INcnRNATIoN

What is phenomenology of religion? Distinguish its dialecticql and analogical moments.

7. Contrast the dialectical and analogical approaches to re ligrous experience. What are the differences in how each approach conceives God and the people who have religious cxperiencc'/ Give biblical examples of cach approach.

8. How is speaking about God's action as manifestalion diffcrcnt from speaking of God's action as inlervention'! Why is the diffcrence religiously important'/

For Writing and Reflection

1. Both Moses and Arjuna were. in a sense, at crisis points in their lives. In both cases, in some mysterious ways, the God of their mothers and fathers-a God they were already familiar with or had learned about-made a self-revelation to them and had an impact on what they decided to do.

Write an essay about any event in your life that might be termed a "crisis" or a "problem," in which religious faith has had either a positive or a negative effect.

In writing this essay, give serious thought to the possibility that religious experience isn't just something that happens to others. You might actually have your own religious experienccs. One of the purposes of theology is to learn to reflect on them. With the possible exceptions of burning bushes and kalcido- scopic light shows, perhaps you are more like Moses and Arjuna than you think.

2. Using the tcxt from Sftowings by Julian of Norwich and Pas- cal's -'Memorial" as examples. write an cssity comparittg ltnd contrasting the analogical and dialectical approirches to reli- gious cxperience. Use the texts to support your claims.

For Further Reading

Mircea E,liade, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Mitc- millan Publishing Co., 1987). An exccllent general refercnce guide to the history of religions. Articles on Bhagavadgitu (Vof . Z). Mahabhaiala (Vot. 9), and Moses (Vol. 1t)) provide background for this chapter.

REr.rcroN

Ninian Smart, The World's Religions (Englewood Cliffs' NJ: prentice-Hall, 19tJ9). Provides an excellent college-level sur- vey of the religions of the world. The problem of defining religion is discussed on pp. 10-21. The chapters on Judaism and the religions of India are also pertinent to this chapter.

R.C. Zaehner, ed. and trans. , Hindu Scriptures (London and Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.. 1966). The source for the translation of Bhagavadgita used in this chaptcr.

Declaration on the Church's Relationship to Non-Christian Reli- gions in Norman P. Tanner, 5.J., Decrees ofthe Ecumenicul Councils,2 vols (London and Washington, DC: Sheed & Ward and Georgetown University Press, 1990), Vol. lI. pp. 968-7r.

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Mentor Books, 1958).

Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, trans. by Katherine Jones (New York: Vintage Books, n.d.). This book first ap- peared in 1939, the year of Freud's death.

Rudolf Otto, The ldea of the Holv (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1es8).

Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York: Pan- theon Books, 196-5).

John Shea, Stories of Faith (Chicago: Thomas More Press, 1980). Helps the reader to identify and reflcct upon less dramatic forms of religious experience. In Chapter I the author ex- plains them as "revelation-faith experiences."

David Tracy, The Analogical Imaginalion (New York: Crossroad, 1980). The source for the typology of analogical and dialecti- cal used in this chapter.

Nicholas Lash. Easter in Orclinary (Charlottcsvillc: University of Virginia Press, 19S8). Provides an in-depth, funclamental- theological account of religious experience.

Alfred North Whitehead , Religion in the Making (Cleveland and New York: Meridian Books. 1965: original edition 1926).

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Terms To ldentify

Yahweh

Vishnu

Krishna

Moses

Arjuna

monotheism

polytheism

modernity

enlightenment

separation of church and

the holy or the sacred

Hindu

twice-born soul

mysterium tremendum et fascinans

theophany

Bhagavadgita

phenomenology of religion

analogical

dialectical

reductionism state

Tna.otrroN LNo INca,nNATION

Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, translated fro6 the Frcnch by Katherinc Woods [19631, African Writers Se- ries (London: Heinemann International, 1912). first eclition 1962. In this novcl a Muslim youth from colonial Senegal travels to France to go to school and encounters the conflicts between his traditional culture and modernity.

ChaPter lV

Christian Revelation

"RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE'AS AN AMBIGUOUS TERM

In the previctus chapter, the term religiotts experience was used ambiguously or in two different senscs. One sense was dc- scriptive, the other engaged or cvaluative.

a) "Religious Experience" as a Descriptive Term In the con- text of phenomenology of religion, and with reference to the sto- ries of Arjuna and Moscs, religious experience was intended as a primarily descriptive term. Used in this sensc. the term has two implications. First, it means that we recognize in the accounts of Arjuna and Moses a certain conformity to patterns of behavior that we have learned to call religious. Wc recognize that thcse accounts should be filed under "religion." Second, referring to the stories of Arjuna and Moses as "religious expericnces" doesn't necessarily commit one to the position that Arjuna and Moses really did meet God. This question is left open. With these two qualifications, the term religious experience can be used in psychology, sociology, and philosophy. Religious behavior is a fascinating human phenome- non and can be studie d from a variety of methodological perspec- tives. In a general way, we can say that the tcrm religious experience ts associated with the cross-disciplinary area of study in North American colleges and universities known as "Rcligion" or "Reli- glous studies. "

, b) "Religious Experience" as an Engaged Term ln discussing tne dialectical and analogical approaches to religious expcrience, and in my story about th" ung.i. of Supcr Thrift, thc term reli- Srous experience was intended in a primarilv evaluative or en- |ug:d way. In talking abour my Super Thrift expcricncc. I wanlcdto claim. first, that it-," p",rpi. I met really were God's angels,

j

I

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