Phenomenology of Religion

Phenomenology of Religion

Louis Dupre

1/12/95: Lecture

Religion can't be defined. This is endemic to what religion is; it is related to what is beyond knowledge (transcendental); a relation to what is absolute.  Is there a common denominator? Wilfrid Smith: the transcendent itself.  If so, a basis for seeing a commonality that goes through all religions. What approach can be used vis a vis this commonality? Dupre: phenomenology--a description of that which appears or presents itself to us.  Jung denied the transcendental aspect; Durkheim saw religion as the cement of society.  Dupre: these are reductionistic.  Phenomenology does not deny the existence of the transcendent (unlike Jung and Durkheim), but limits its investigations to that which is experienced and does not ask about the transcendent itself.  All that can be done in Phenomenology is typologize religious experiences from different religions. So, religion is not viewed in phenomenology as being merely experience.

Religion consists of experience (religious attitudes based on it), a way of acting (how we respond), and a given (a content--e.g. dogma).  Religious experience is not a feeling; a feeling is an emotional way of being that does not have a precise object (i.e. it is not a relation).  'Feeling' remains in the subject whereas religion is a relation between the subject and the transcendent.  There is something more than the subject in religion.  This does not mean that feeling is absent from religious experience.  Feeling is the passive element of experience. Experience is related to a reality beyond the subject.  Shlermacher: experience is more than feeling.  There are three kinds of religious experience: 1. a mystical, intense experience (unquestionable)--e.g. Arjuna's vision in the Gita, the Transfiguration of Jesus. 2. an ordinary numinous experience (strange; out of the natural realm), and 3. ambiguous experience (interpreted religiously).  On numinous experience: Rudolf Otto on the numinous: mysterious, terrifying, and fascinating(riveting). As feelings, they are responses. They are not just in religion. He also refers to a feeling of an overwhelming power.  Finally, he refers to the energy, or urgency, felt.  Dupre: also a sense of wonder; a sense of presence. A realization that one stands in relation to unconditional being; a dependence upon.  T.S. Elliot wrote on it: the moment in and out of time. This is phenomenological: describing the qualities of the religious experience.  Dupre: the religious experience is not necessarily thematized; rather it involves a sense that one is at a border of the transcendent (that which goes beyond our knowledge and experience).  On ambiguous experience: an experience that may or may not be considered religious. For example, a sense that I am a contingent being--my existence is surrounded by contingency. This could be called a limit experience. A feeling of vulnerability is present.  Dupre: religion is an experience via a vis a message.  So, such a feeling can be religious, associated with a message. In general, there is an ambiguity in certain experiences.  A problem: most of us are afraid of this experience; a fear of nothingness.  Also, there can be a positive experience of joy from getting something by accident.  This too is an ambiguous experience.  Dupre: almost all religious experience is ambiguous--if a radically secular society, then religious experience is more apt to be experienced with ambiguity.  If so, religious interpretation has to come from the individual or small group.  Berger: when the external authority is of tradition (e.g. religion), then the individual must become more reflective, propelling us to turn to our religious experience.  Experience itself becomes devaluated. We don't trust our own experience, because there is a world-view that says you don't trust experience and because of the fall of traditional religious authority.

1/17/95: Lecture

The Sacred:

In religion, there are three elements: disclosure that brings a definitive message which leads to a unique experience which in turn results in a response.  So, experience is not enough to characterize religion.  Religious faith, for instance, is experienced as an encounter.  So, the experience is not just of oneself.  Reducing religion to 'experience' is a secular phenomenon.  The sacred is that which corresponds with the experience.

Two kinds of phenomenology:

1. Essential Phenomenology: presumed to deal with phenomena that occur in all forms of religion. So, it deals with what is taken to be universal.  Dupre: It deals with questions such as: Is the sacred universal?  Dupre is not sure if it is.

2. Typological Phenomenology: different types of experience.  'Types' does not mean a common essence.

What is the sacred?  How does it differ from the holy?  Sanctum is the past tense of sancire (to delineate; to define definitively).  Holy comes from 'wholesome' (what is good for one). So, sacred and holy are not the same.  Sacred means to be removed from.  Sacred as the opposite of profane.  Durkheim came up with this distinction.

The characteristic of the sacred: Absolute, uncompromising reality.  Opposition and integration.  Rudolf Otto: that which causes awe, astonishment. When confronted with the sacred, one is impressed that it is real. For example, Moses sees a bush burning but it is not consumed.  Something that has no meaning in the ordinary order of things.  God then said 'I am the one who is truly there'. A reality about it. A sense of absolute presence, or a more real reality.  More real than my other experience. A distinction between it and the rest that is not so fully real is the most salient characteristic of the sacred.   For example, in Hinduism, Maya means the creation.  Shankara said that relative to the absolute reality, maya is illusion.  From Buddhism, Samsara (wheel of life). Samsara is illusion. Enlightenment: realizing that it is an illusion. 

The sacred functions as the integrative force of an opposition.  A conflict, or dialectic. Wherever the sacred exists, there is an opposition to something else that will be integrated.  An element of segregation and re-integration.   For example, monks separate from the world to be with the sacred.  This is an attempt to concentrate on the one and only reality. The ideal of a monastery: God alone. A difference goes along with this. 

Holy means very real.  The difference between the sacred and the profane is that the sacred alone is holy (wholesome, or whole).  An extreme power and separation.   The element of opposition is found in conflictual images: Pali, Shiva's consort, is the divine mother yet she looks like a monster.  Religion is a dangerous force--not always a good.  There is something in religion that can lead to harm. There is danger in the opposition between the sacred and the profane. 

A third element of the sacred: the profane reality is assumed by the higher reality, yet while remaining subservient.  Reintegration. Without it, religion is a dangerous thing.  Reintegration: the sacred giving meaning to itself as well as to the profane (to all of our life and cosmos).  Religion puts a name on everything; gives everything, good or bad, meanings.  Eliade: the sacred brings the opposites together and integrates them.  Hegel: in facing the center which synthesizes the parts, one reaches the highest consciousness.

Dupre: Sacred refers to the object of a passive immediate experience. 

Strict Monotheism wherein sacrality is limited to God is dangerous: only God counts; only God is holy.  All else doesn't matter, so it can be harmed. But, if holiness is not limited to God, then the profane would not be harmed.  Sacrality is a chosen attitude, rather than being passive, in such a case.  The O.T. in its later phases: sacrality is not only God, but his people as well. 

Secularism: no absolute distinction between sacred and propane.  Modern life is one of functional.  No room for outside elements such as the sacred or profane. Sacrality no longer is used to integrate. Religion has become 'something' rather than 'everything'. This is why religion declines.  Yet, revivals.  The sacred is that divine element that has to come from within in the modern society.  Today, there is the interiorization of the sacred.  That is, no separations externally based on relative degrees of reality are recognized.  Instead, attitude and inner disposition and judgment have become more important with regard to the sacred.  

1/19/95: Lecture

Does the sacred belong to the essence of religion?  Can one have religion without the sacred?  To speak of the sacred does not make much sense. 

In a secular society, the passive input of the sacred is rather weak or rare. 

Something strikes one as being sacred because one chooses it to be.

Archaic Religion:

Everything is seen in view of the sacred; everything rooted in the sacred. So, it does not make sense to speak of the sacred and the profane.   The sacred was not a passive response to something. 

Archaic religion may be seen as the essence of religion, or the primitive beginnings of modern religion(an evolutionary view).  Dupre: both of these involve the 'illusion of the beginning'.  The assumption in this view is that the essence is in the beginning.  This is value-laden and wrong.  Essence is not in the beginning (can't get the essence of religion necessarily by studying ancient religions) and primitive religions are not the beginning of modern religion. 

So, the phenomenology of religion applied to archaic religion: Describe the meaning the religions had for those people of the religions. For instance, one could bring elements in these religions into types of the sacred.  Van der Leeuw and Eliade have done so.  The Van der Leeuw school gives us a description of the sacred in the primitive societies in the nature of them themselves (from the point of view of the ancient believers--rather than looking back to the ancient religions to find the essence of religion or the beginning of our modern religions). 

Modern religions have ancient liturgies reinterpreted. For example, 'water' used to be taken as powerful for what it was; reinterpreted as powerful because of what it symbolized.  The ancient is not the beginnings of the modern.  Recall, the person confronted with the sacred is confronted with what is real.  Finally finding reality: something true and genuine.  How does reality come across in the ancient religions?  How does the ancient person experience something as real? Three ways: Dynamism, Animism, and Totemism(Animalism). The impression thereof: that which is powerful.  Henry Codrington had been working in S. Pacific islands (Malaysia).  To him, the primary impression: things mysteriously powerful and other things.  A concrete phenomenon, yet standing out: 'mana'. 

Dynamism: The sacred discloses itself in physical forces. Can be portrayed in anything.   Something that overwhelms us with its power. American Indian religions have such phenomena too.  An impersonal power that can't be reduced to a personal power such as a god.   The dynamic view of religion: that religion was in its beginning: of power.  The sacred power, unlike other powers, is awe-inspiring and yet dangerous if interfered with.  Leeuw: we are passive to the religious object.  The object is seen as having (an impersonal)power.  The supernatural reality of the power was seen in the things themselves.  This confrontation with power inspires fear, anxiety and a feeling of danger beyond everyday affairs, leading to prohibitions against going near the object (taboo).  An impersonal power in an object. 

See 2 Sam. 6: three layers--the story, the interpretation of it, and the Christian interpretation. Essau was killed by the Lord because he touched the ark to keep it from falling. Touching a sacred object of power results in death.  Taboo.  Interpretation: death as a punishment.  Yet, unfair, so David was confused.   Dupre: the negative aspect of the sacred: it can't be interfered with or there will be harm.  Any person or object from which power goes out (e.g. persons or things of fertility: a power in it: life out of nothing) can be held sacred in such a view.  No man should approach a woman during her period (Leviticus).  Unclean means to come in a situation of extreme power (fertility was seen there--provoked an awe--a taboo, so there was a law to stay away when the power of fertility was evident). 

There are also sacred times.  Separate times surrounded by prohibitions. A division, or segregation, of certain day(s). 

On the earth: people have always been impressed with stones. Traditionally, they have been sacred.  See Gen. 28: the story of Jacob's vision.  He slept on a stone.  Ladder up to heaven.  He woke, thinking God is in this place: 'how awesome is this place', he said. So, he set up the stone as a memorial pillar: it becomes a sacred object.  This story could have been built around the sacredness thought to be in the stone, in a biblical way. So, a development from the impersonal to the personal.

On trees: a numinous symbol.  In Eden, a sacred thing: the sacred center of things.  We still have the Xmas tree, and the May Pole, and the Cross.  The Pole used in Summer Solstice rite in Scandinavia.  On the Cross, it has been related to the tree in Eden.

On water: the source of; purifying.  Baptism: purifying.  In ancient religions, the sacrality (purifying) is in the water; in Christianity, it has to be blessed. 

On fire: needs to be protected.  In ancient Rome, only a virgin could care for the continual fire. The Easter Vigil begins with the blessing of the fire.  Light is sacred: eternal.    The Xmas festival was of the new light.  Transmitted to Christianity and reinterpreted.

Animism: when the sacred was seen as powers of the spirit, it was seen as spirits. For example, ancestor spirits.

Animalism: animals seem as sacred in that even though they are close to us, they are removed and powerful(characteristics of the sacred).  The Egyptian gods: half animals (animal origins in the gods) and half human.  The mixture of animals and humans is present in many ancient religion.  She-wolf: symbol of the Roman Senate.  The Werewolf: humans that go back to the animal form.  The mysterious power that goes out from the animal. So close yet distant: mysterious.  This is related to Totemism.  Claude Levi Strauss: religion has been projected onto it by us.  Dupre: not so. 

In Totemism, an animal is associated with a tribe, so it should not be killed except by ritual so its power may be consumed.  Durkheim: Totemism is important because what is holy to a society is the society itself. Society is the principle form of the sacred.  Dupre: it is one-sided to reduce the sacred to a social form.

So, three forms of the sacred in ancient religion: Dynamism, Animism, and Totemism.  A Typology.  Key: a power that stands out.  According to Durkheim, this is the beginning of the distinction between the sacred and the profane.  But at this point, everything can be sacred.  Nothing regarded as profane.

1/24/95: Lecture

The sacred manifests itself in specific times and spaces.  It manifests itself in the four elements (reinterpreted in biblical religions).  In the ancient religions, the sacred was seen in everything.  Tillick: sacred is what is of an ultimate concern.  Dupre: but there are ultimate concerns not in religion.[1] 

What is the aspect of something that makes it seem sacred?  Dupre: the aspect of being symbolic of a higher reality.  What is a symbol (as a subdivision of signs)? A sign is the genetic term because a sign is something that refers to something else.  'Mere signs': the signal (Langer). A symbol is more.  All symbols are signs, so they point at something. Further, symbols re-present the reality of that which is pointed to in some way.  A symbol articulates a reality in its (the symbol's) very nature.  For example, a work of art: there is something more represented than the colors themselves: a reality.  What is the surplus here?  What is a work of art a symbol of?  To something that brings life together that gives the looker a reaction.  The human condition in some sense is conveyed. It goes beyond the canvas.  A paradox of art: it opens up to, yet there is no beyond.  What you see is what you see.  It goes to something greater, but this has no place in the reality of the canvas.  That which the work refers to is only in that work (the reality pointed to in an art work may not exist--whether it does is not relevant).

The religious symbol is more ambiguous. It refers to something beyond and yet it is 'a beyond' that is present in the symbol.  In the religious symbol, reality is not limited to the symbol itself.  So, there is no idolatry.  It is never the statue itself that is prayed to, but that to which the statue represents in some way.  The deity is not identified with the symbol itself (as being limited thereof).  One is not praying to the symbol itself, but to what it re-presents in some sense (it does not represent the totality or exactuality of that reality).  The religious symbol re-presents the divine (which is unknowable).  So, ambiguity and mystery.  Imp.: re-presentation.  The sacred is present (re-presented).  The religious symbol participates in the sacred.  

What is the essence of religious symbolism?  We live in the mind, neglecting our bodies.  But everything has to be embodied--even the ultimate.  This is why art grips us more so than does Philosophy.  A religious symbol: the sacred embodied.  Mysterious: embodying something that is beyond form.  So it is something that is transcendent.   So, the religious symbol conveys a sense of absolutely real; a sense of powerfully real.  Religious symbols have a certain negativity--even against themselves.  It is purposely self-destructive.  Going up the ladder and then tossing it.  Tossing the articulate to get to the inarticulate.

Besides the real and the negation, there is an integration aspect.  Durkheim: without religion, a society cannot be kept together.  Can integrated lives be possible without religion?  Comte started his own church--atheistic.  He didn't like Christian religion, but he wanted the integrative feature of religion.  Can my life be together(integrated) yet flat, without reference to any other reality? Dupre: No.

1/26/95: Lecture

The sacred is always a symbol because it points to something higher in spite of its immediacy. 

Ritual:

Ritual is the sacred deed, which transforms existence by connecting it to a sacred realm.  Deeds and words are important here.  The word is related to the deed.  Which comes first?  Three possible ways the words and deeds are related: 1. no relation. For instance, a ritual without a myth such as was the case in ancient Roman religion before the Greek mythology was incorporated. 2. First the deed, then the word to justify the deed.  3. First the word, then the deed. The ritual acts out the word.  Also, word and deed can come about simultaneously.

The four elements can be used in the sacred.  But they must be used.  For instance,  Baptism.  There were Jewish sects which used water in a purification ritual.  Also, Islam has a ritual washing before the service.  An element of separating the action from others, so it is different from others and is transcendent.  The ritual becomes a model of time. 

Religion is a set of symbols, which can have varying interpretations, but what remains are certain gestures.  The meaning of the rites can change without any change in the deeds (the actions).  For instance, Judaism: a change from an agrarian religion to a historical religion.  The meaning of its feasts changed.  Also, Christianity on the Eucharist: different meanings; same deed.  Dupre: the deed typically follows the word in Christianity.

In ritual, we celebrate emotional occasions without having those emotions.  Sorrow without tears, happiness without joy.  The ritual gesture is something like a play.  Playing is a way of doing things without a purpose.  A play is its own purpose.  The same is so with ritual. An activity that has no purpose other than itself.  Ritual is a different space and time that we create in our life. 'Temple' comes from a Greek word that means 'set apart'.  Ritual is set apart from ordinary things.  Levi Strauss: a play is there to win; not so in a ritual.  Nothing is accomplished or gained.

Two kinds of rites: stability rites and passage rites.  Van Gennep: Rites of Passage.  In stability rites, a re-capturing of an original place or time, for the sake to renew it.  Eliade, in The Sacred and the Profane, wrote on this.  In ritual, a re-enactment of the creation of the world. Unless we re-enact the beginning, the world will not be renewed and thus maintained.  Going back to the time of origin to renew and maintain the world.  The time of the beginning is the model time.  Making it present again renews the cosmos such that it can remain stable.  Eliade: we must do what the gods did in the beginning.  The Jewish Sabbath reproduces the primordial rest of the Lord.  It was then re-interpreted. Deed before word here.

Why did this practice begin?  To give meaning to what seems meaningless: the passage of time.  The transient character of all that we do has a meaninglessness to it.  It prevents giving anything a definitive meaning; it prevents giving life a meaning.  That what was is no longer and what is will no longer be...inhibits meaning.  By ritual, one tries to salvage something permanent.  This can be done by going back to the beginning of time.  It can also be done by recapturing the beginning of a new age (e.g. the Mass).  In the ritual, through the sacred gesture that goes back to the beginning, we radically transform the transient into a lasting reality.  In repeating the beginning, we take part in a lasting reality.  The ritual 're-presents' a time and space having a permanent reality, thus transcending linear temporality(which is inherently without permanent meaning) so to give meaning and thereby to renew us.  

For instance. X-mas is not a commemoration of the past, but a making present of the time of Christ's birth.  We separate ourselves from the force of linear time to recapture what was lost.  We can do it because that time was permanently real.  The ritual deed re-captures a primeval time--a sacred time, and thereby transcends temporal time.  This takes us out of the progression of time, making us renewed. 

The assumption that certain times are different than others is the ground of religion.  The assertion of transcendence is born in that assertion--that separation.  We don't want the moment to end.  Sacred time goes away, but can be recalled.  For Plato, thinking is memory.  Only in memory does the past become eternal/permanent.  So, ritual is a remembering--making a time permanent.  Entering a time and space where time does not progress.  Stability ritual: being a model of the ordinary by not being ordinary.  Such ritual imitates a gesture that was at a time and place that is now beyond the progression of time.  Such a gesture is without ambiguity, so there must be a certain order to ritual.

The role of ritual is important not only in ancient religions, but for us too.  With us, we recapture a historical, rather than a mythic, event.  It transforms our perception of time and existence.  It is the redemption of time.  The anticipation of the future comes into the ritual moment.  Dupre: that there are moments of time that have meaning--the curse of time being broken--is the amazing aspect of ritual.  Modernity has made it difficult for us.  Since the eighteenth century, there has been a realization that each moment is unique and will not be repeated.  This idea gets in the way of what ritual seeks to do: to transcend the temporality of time (the transience, and thus meaninglessness, of time).  Yet there are modern means by which to transcend linear time(time as progressing) to get to a timeless meaning.  For instance one can get the effect of ritual in the theatre: transcending time to something that has meaning.

1/31/95: Lecture

Rites (cont):

Rites of passage take place at times of danger between clearly defined states. 

Sacraments:

A third form of rite(stability and passage rites are the first two forms).  Sacraments give meaning to the ordinary things in life.  Unlike rites of stability and passage, sacraments can occur frequently.  The name: Greek word---mysterium (mystery religions which gave invitations by rituals involving sexuality. They were involved with the life and death of the gods--to gain eternal life). The mystery in Latin was translated as sacramentu(a military oath of allegiance to a general or emperor. You consecrate yourself to that person).   When the early Christians translated the O.T., they used 'mystery' for something hidden in God that would be revealed by the prophets. A hiddenness in God revealed to Israel.  Paul: mystery: something that was hidden in the O.T. is revealed in the N.T.  This is the Hebrew meaning. The hiddenness of 'mystery' and the consecration in 'sacramentu' came together in 'sacrament'. 

The ritual of a sacrament in Christianity conveys what it expresses.  If it conveys washing, for example, washing is done.  It does not merely convey something.  The rite itself conveys what it says.  It is not an imitation conveying the meaning of something else. By the deed itself, rather than the disposition, it is done.  The 'doing' of the ritual conveys the meaning and thus transforms the person.  It is not magic.  The power (grace) comes from something beyond the ritual itself.  Magic: the power is in the ritual itself.  So, a sacrament is endowed with a power. In Christianity, by Christ.  Relating the institution of a sacrament back to Christ has in it the danger of magic.

What makes the difference between a shower and baptism? The word.  The word becomes the symbolic expression of what is happening in the sacrament.   The intention in the words is key here.  The gestures are those of ordinary life.  Van der Leeuw: religion is a system of symbols. The Eucharist was the Passover supper. The Eucharist was communal, going back to primitive meals wherein parts of the gods were eaten.

Why no discussion of sacraments in Judaism?  The whole life is sacramentalized for the orthodox Jew.  Dupre: the sacramentalization in Christianity shows a secularization of ordinary life.  Even within Christianity, a reduction of sacraments (dropped sacramentals--minor sacraments, and some major ones).  

Summary:  the expression conveys the thing itself(the doing conveys the meaning). Some of this in all gestures. What distinguishes the sacrament? 

Sacrifice:

It has been in every religion.  It has been exclusively religious.  A sacrifice is a cultic (ritual) act in which some objects are separated from ordinary use in order to effect a communion with a higher power.  Key: separated from ordinary use to serve for mediation to a higher power.  Theories: Edward Tylor: a sacrifice is a bribe to a god (so to get something in return).  Dupre: not true.   Others would say that without expecting anything in return, give in adoration to give homage.  Dupre: Closer, but not so either.  A form of communion with a higher power--a participation in the higher power. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites: recalls that the totem animal could not be eaten by the tribe. Further, on some occasions, one would be eaten and the tribe would participate in the power of the animal.  Key: not in giving something up, but in a participation in something of higher power.  While his generalization about Totemism doesn't stand, his emphasis on participation, or communion, rather than a gift or the aspect of giving something up. 

Susan Themis applied this theory to ancient Greece. The sacrificial aspect is the eating ritual. Later came the myth.  The god came after the sacrifice had been done.  In the beginning, not the word but the drama.   The third theory: the substitution theory--instead of giving oneself, something else given.  Something sophisticated in the realization that the animal stands for oneself. See: Abraham and Isaac.  No more human sacrifice. Animals substituted for humans in Judaism from then on. Something in the sacrifice reflects society.  A change of substitution may go along with a change that has occurred.

2/2/95: Lecture

Sacrifice (Cont.):

There is something true in the gift theory.  But, communion is even a better theory.  Dupre: giving a gift is a way of establishing communion.  Smith's communion theory was unfortunately connected with the totem idea. 

Besides the gift and communion elements, the idea of substitution can be an element: giving something as replacing the surrender of myself.  Judaic biblical sacrifices are imbued with the idea of symbol--as replacing oneself.  Christianity: one does not replace oneself, because one offers oneself.[2] 

Judaic Sacrifice:

In Leviticus, several types of sacrifice are mentioned in chapters 6 and 7.  Clearly substitution sacrifices.  A holocaust sacrifice: the whole victim must be burnt. An expiation (sin) offering (6:11) is not a fine to be paid but an act of restoration or reintegration, so as to establish a new relation so we can re-enter the sacred.  This is done by putting something outside the ordinary.   A holocaust offering can be a sin offering.  The point is not an eye for an eye (justice), but to segregate and separate so as to bring in the realm of the sacred.  So, vicarious satisfaction (e.g. Anselm) is not a correct interpretation of Christ's sacrifice.  A communion sacrifice (a peace offering) (Lev. 7:11) involves a sacred eating--a thanksgiving offered in a meal.  In it, we separate ourselves from our ordinary lives.  Fat and blood may not be eaten, though.  Why?  The blood is the life.  So, blood is a life offering.  Fat was also related to life.  God would get the life so offered; not given to us.

Christian sacrifice:

Death of Jesus: a sacrifice.  Catholics see the Mass as a repetition of Christ's sacrifice. Protestants take Christ's sacrifice in a more literal sense--as happening uniquely on the cross.  Did God order the death?  If it was ordered, the act would be terrible.  The real interpretation is in the O.T.  See Hebrews (N.T.): Christ interpreted as being the sacrifice of restoration.  Christ is a sacrifice as a total surrender of himself.  Sacrifice here is the total surrender of the inner disposition of the person, rather than of a substitute.  Yet, there is a substitution aspect in that Christ took on the guilt of the nation.  See: 2 Issiah--the suffering servant.  By his suffering may he justify others. 

In the history of sacrifice, a gradual spiritualization.  First, the element of substitute is seen in Lev. as a restoration.  In Isiah, however, the emphasis is on the inner disposition.  Christ was both a substitution and yet he sacrificed himself, as a sacrifice in his inner disposition.

Religious Language:

God is unknown. So, what is the point of talking about a reality that we really can't say anything about?  Little in scripture about what God is.  Rather, much on our relation to God.  English positivists see it as poetry.  Dupre: this is wrong.  This is not what the believer intends.  Religious language is based on the presupposition that it is about something. 'Thetic': language in which we posit something.  Why do people want to talk about something of which they know nothing?  Because religion requires speaking to God.  This is done directly (prayer) and through talking about God.  Religion is an attempt to speak to God.  In so doing, we can do what is.  In this function, language is rich. 

Characteristics of religious language:

See Donald Evans, The Logic of Self Involvement.  Evans states that one can't speak about the sacred without being deeply involved in the speaking.  To speak about God is never objective.  According to Ramsey, religious language is of commitment, which involves involvement by the speaker and involves God as love.  Dupre: putting this in terms of love is Christian and exaggerated.  One can speak about God without a language of commitment.  So, religious language not have to be to God as love.  But, if there is a unique way of speaking in religion, then there is an involvement.  The object of the speech is unique.  God is not an object, but a reality which is as subjective as it is objective. So, any language about God is about me.  God is not just 'the other', but is in me.  Yet, religious language is not projection.  The speaker is involved: an intimate connection between the speaker and the spoken of.  

How can we speak meaningfully about God and yet speak so in objective language?  The trouble is that language is objective.  How avoid objectifying God?  Analogy: a way of speaking that goes between univocal speech (one meaning of a word) and equivocal  (more than one meaning of a word which are not related).  Analogy: more than one meaning of a word related to the same locus (the primary analogate).  Can one have God as the primary analogate?  Dupre: No.  Can't use analogy to invent terms about God.  Also, can't say a word as applied to human nature applies in a certain way to God.  Use analogy as follows: use it as a system of logic to keep what you say about God within a system.  Dupre:  Take 'God as being more important than myself' as the point of departure in speaking about God via analogy.  Everything that comes from God must bear some similarity: the world must look somewhat like God (rather than saying that God must look like the world--the use of analogy in which God is the primary analogate).

2/7/95: Lecture

Religious Language (Cont):

There is nothing wrong with analogous language.  With analogy, one can test whether our religious statements conflict with logic.  It is a tool, but there is more to religious language in getting at what God is.  For instance, mystical language puts the whole on its head, and in such gets closer to the nature of God than does analogy.  So, analogy itself is a tool of religious language, but it does not go far enough to get at the reality of God.  

All speech of God is justified only because God speaks first. By being spoken to, one feels secure in talking about something one knows nothing about.  Such language is given, rather than invented. It is for them that God is immanent in the language itself. Divine language; sacred language.

The paradoxical character of religious language:  religious language is odd. Ramsey, in his book on religious language, point to the burning bush not being consumed.  A paradox.  God said: I am the one who is'.  Odd language.  A friction with ordinary language.  Hinted that not dealing with an ordinary state of affairs. 

Dupre's text: the story of the Samaritan woman. Jesus, a Jewish man, spoke to a Samaritan woman. He speaks of his living water.  Unusual language. Points to something extraordinary. Ramsey would say: an ordinary model of a story with qualifiers that makes it unusual.  Religious language is in the qualifiers.

A paradox: an apparent contradiction that reveals something on a more profound level--leads to a deep meaning.  For Kierkegaard, a paradox is the essence of religious language. Such is the language of Socrates' irony. Socrates forces one inward, driving his hearers into their own subjectivity by forcing them to use language to show that objective language doesn't work for this, as shown by using an odd language that doesn't work in ordinary life.  For Kierkegaard, paradox is necessary to talk about oneself.  Religious language, to Kierkegaard., is about the self in relation to God which is not an object. So, paradoxical.  Christianity to him is the absolute paradox--the absurd.  In Christianity, God becomes human.  Eternal becomes temporal. Oppositions are so strong that it can't be in an ordinary paradox.  It is absurd.  So, Christianity is absurd. It doesn't work because it uses merely an ordinary paradox to deal with a pair of opposites that are too strong in their opposition to be remedied in a mere paradox. To Kierkegaard, Christianity is really about the self. It is about the self of Jesus. In dealing with a strong paradox, it has the power to transform one's life.

A paradox is used to drive one away from objectivity in the use of religious language.

How does the language of paradox interact with ordinary language? For example, theoretical physics language. The language of paradox requires ordinary language for there to be something to speak against. For example, Zen koans. Paradox is a special use of language, rather than a special type of language.

Religious language is symbolic.  All religious language is metaphorical--a form of speech which drives beyond the original meaning of the word. Using an expression that has an ordinary meaning in a different way. How could language about God be anything but metaphorical?  Such a use of language gets one beyond.  Symbolic metaphorical language transfers one into another sphere. For example, in Pascal's work, there is a presence as well as an absence in a picture. Symbolic paradox. So, no meaning is literal only.  Otherwise, not able to meet the conditions of religious meaning.  Symbols get one beyond the ordinary--their meaning is not exhausted by the ordinary.  Also, only symbols can refer to self involvement (subjectivity). 

Typology is a form of symbolic expression.  A type of being segregated by God used in Judaism.  Prototypes used. For instance, Ps 104: creation is an ongoing process.  Also, the story of the exodus (liberation) was told and retold.  Christians saw themselves are fulfilling that type.  But, Jews saw their type as different. How do we justify typological language?  Hermeneutics: the art of interpretation.  Interpretation requires taking a text by itself. The trouble is that a text acquires new meanings over the years. The primary sense is the literal words. But, also need to consider what it has come to mean.  Different interpretations of a text--different types.  Is there an end to the number of types coming out of different interpretations?  This is not necessarily a problem; different types seen in a text give rise to a richness of meaning.

2/9/95: Lecture

Religious Language (cont):

Van der Leeuw considers a variety of languages.  Performative (that does something--such as sacramental--separating from the ordinary), Supplicative (religious vows), and the Narrative (myth, story). 

Myth:  the exegesis of the ritual.  But, this is so only if the myth follows the ritual.  The word that interprets the action.  The myth provides the plot of the ritual, rendering it meaningful.  It provides it with a dramatic power.  A myth is a narrative. The beginning of myth was before the distinction between the sacred and profane.  The myth is what made the distinction between the sacred and profane possible.  A primitive character to myth.  In the mythic form is the first developed form of thought.  Stories by which connections were made.  Herder and Schelling wrote on myth.  Schelling: myth is the most important point in the beginning of thinking.

So, myth is a story that makes distinctions. 

What is the function of a myth?  It is certainly fun to listen to stories.  Myth thinking is not logical-discursive.  For us, thinking is objective: a distance between the subject and object.  Not so in a myth.  So, myth is a participative thing.  Myth: of involvement by the narrator. Causality doesn't exist in mythical thought.  For example, projection into the past of an event in a myth is a substitute for causality.  Also, time can be cyclical as well as linear.  Two senses--not incompatible in a myth.  Also, 'space' can mean anywhere as well as a particular space.  Both senses can be used in myth.

Henry Frankford: On Egyptian religion--the temple is the center of the world where the world began.  Then, a new temple was built which became the center of the earth.

So, not causal, objective language.  Related to the psychic aspect of myth.  Freud and Jung saw the subject as fully involved in a myth.  The myth is a projection of the psyche.  Freud: myths have a structure that teaches of the human psyche.  This is also so in dreams.  Jung, however, wrote that the myth has in it the original dreams within which reside archetypes. 

There is also a social function of myth.  Bringing people into the group. Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl, and Levi-Strauss: Myths talk about the group so as to bring folks into the group.  Levi-Strauss:  even though myth began a long time ago, it is relevant today.  It is a way of putting together ideas which is not 'pre-logical', but is an alternative way of putting things together.  It is an alternative form of rationality, rather than of non-rational.  For him, a myth is a way of putting order into things. An alternative system of logic.  Dupre: this is rationalism, even though he is against rationalism!  Yet he is correct that myth is a way of educating the group.

Also, a theoretical function of myth.  A means of satisfying the mind's curiosity. This was especially relied upon before science.

Also, a function of myth in regard to religion in particular: giving rise to the sacred.  A distinction between the special and the ordinary.  This distinction is necessary for the later distinction between the sacred and the profane.  One thing is more real than the other. 

What is myth to us?  What was it 2000 years ago. What happens when the myth is not believed in?  What is left of the myth once it breaks apart? In the case of creationism, evolutionism left nothing remaining.  But we still have mythology, some of which we see as science.  Dangerous to live by a myth and not know it.[3]   Also, living as if this is 'the land of the free' when not all are free.  Mythology can still bring things together for us.  But it should not be seen or acted upon as science. What about religion?  Religion needs to get rid of some its mythic worldview.  Religion is a constant attempt to de-mythologize (of former myths) without losing the aspect of myth.  Yet, not enough de-mythologized for us to take them seriously. How far can we get rid of the myth.  See: Bultmann--we need to see where the myth comes from.  The N.T. is full of Gnostic and Hellenistic mythology.  De-mythologize, and replace it with an existentialism.  Dupre: No.  The mythical language can't be thrown out.  It still fulfills a function.  Religion needs to de-mythologize but it can't do so without myth.  Myth is sufficiently broad to hold the whole picture.  The myth becomes the occasion for thought in a unique way that allows participation.  So, de-mythologize the pre-scientific view of the  meaning of the myths, but don't de-mythize religion.

2/14/95: Lecture

The De-mytholization of Religion:

We live in a world-view which regards the cosmologies of the O.T. and N.T. as untrue.  So, what should be done with the mythical texts?  Don't dismiss them, because they provide for a unity in the texts.  The texts have a sacred character and the myth helps to bring this out.  So, the words in the myth have a sacred meaning.  They are symbolic, which makes their meanings multivalent.  So, don't take away the literal level.

Revelation:

Universal revelation: in any religion.  Whatever induces us to consider the ultimate is not in us, so it has to be revealed. If the absolute lies beyond our horizon, then we have no knowledge of God.  So, that about God which is revealed comes from outside of us. A sense of shock at something abnormal--totally beyond the ordinary--can induce this.  It is not necessarily in written words. For instance, a Zen Buddhist gets revelation in an experience of enlightenment. 

Scriptural revelation: only in religions of a book, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  How can there be revelation when we admit that we don't know God?  For instance, revelation from history of a theophany(manifestation of God) codified in a text (e.g. Judaism).

Judaism: In Judaism, creation itself is seen as a history. Nevertheless, the theophany of nature survives in it (see the prophet Baroch).  In the O.T., the deeds of Yahweh are depicted in history. A radical interpretation of history as a theophany: history becomes a history of salvation.  The sacred word from Yahweh's involvement in history is an attribute of God.  Word: attribute of God.

Christianity: Began with a Judaic theology.  Yet, added a new historical fulfillment:  Jesus as the Messiah.  So, Christians too interpret the theophanies of God as historical events. The revelation is called 'the Word'.  The word of God is almost identified with God Himself.  In Proverbs, God's word is described as an attribute of God. In Christianity: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God and the word was God' (Jn).  God is a speaker in His manifestation in history. A new theology, seminally present in Judaism (in: the word is sacred), wherein the word is God. This is hard to understand in a society in which words have become de-valued.  The sacredness of words is de-valued in modern society.  In Christianity, the sacred word is a theophany for anyone. 

Islam: In Islam, which builds on Judaism and Christianity, Mohammed had the full revelation written in the Koran.  The word is so sacred here that the Koran is divine itself. So, in Islam the word is sacred and divine.

A philosophical problem: How can that which is transcendent reveal itself without no longer being transcendent?  What does revelation mean in this sense? 

Carl Jaspers: the word of revelation is a mysterious sign or signal which does not forestall the transcendence of God.  But, if revelation is a cyphrus, what about the validity of personal revelation? 

Another solution: God pours Himself into our categories so we can be inspired. Dupre: too vague.

Dupre: God is a self-manifesting reality.  So, God is not just absolute but is manifest as well.  The fact that I depend on this God means that He is revealed.  God reveals Himself as the very movement that goes out of himself.  So, God is both transcendent and manifest.  Hegel: God reveals Himself of the very movement of humans (through humans).  This same movement impels us to go beyond them.  The religious person is aware that there is more to God than the words. In the moment of overcoming the words, the religious person realizes that of God he knows nothing. 

So, revelation is the beginning of the message.  The rest of the message is beyond.  The words are symbols, so they matter, even though at the end one realizes that one does not know anything about God.

2/16/95: A guest lecturer on Judaism:

Rabbinic Judaism: began after 70 CE when the temple was destroyed.  Rabbinic sages dominated. Revelation is inseparable from commentary and interpretation.  The text of the O.T. had been set by then.  A Graeco-Roman hellenistic influence.  Also, early Christianity at the time that Rabbinic Judaism was formulated.  Rabbinic Judaism is of stories.  There were the written and oral Torahs(teachings).  Both were revealed to Moses at Sinai. Some Jewish groups rejected the latter.   Perhaps unique to Judaism, a 'dual' revelation: written and oral.  Oral Torah as distinct from oral traditions(added on to scripture).   In the Rabbinic tradition, revelation is both written and oral; a two-fold revelation.

Rabbinic interpretation makes use of different areas of the written Torah. The activity of interpretation is thought to go back to the moment of revelation.  Also, emphasis on the multiplicity of meanings (interpretations) in one passage. One passage issues as several meanings.  Each word splinters into a multiplicity of meanings.  The ability of divine speech to engage the variety of Isrealites.  One meaning does not come from more than one scriptural passage.  This is only so of divine speech.  So, some meaning to each word of scripture.  So, break scripture down to get its meanings.  Turn it over and over.  In fact, it is understood that the divine voice no longer has a role to play; active divine intervention no longer has a place.  Revelation has already been given containing all of its meanings at Sinai.  So, don't even listen to Yahweh's direct voice after Sinai. 

So, revelation is a partnership between a revealer and an interpreter.  

Interpretations which appear to be new were revealed to Moses.  So, the experience of an engagement with scripture is as if one was back with Moses. 

Interpretation becomes an end in itself.  Even an act of worship.  A religious experience in its own light. Engaging in study is just as Moses ascended to heaven(Sinai) to receive the Torah.  That is, the everyday struggle of study is equivalent to the ascent to Sinai.  A religious experience in the struggle of interpretation.

A sense of the intergenerational frailty of revelation.  In some sense, like needing to maintain a temple, least it fall down. 

Imp.: application of human interpretation to preserve the continuity of revelation.  The sense of a fluid text, open to renewal.  Even though the written Torah can't be added to.  Yet, a going back to a revelation at a historic time (at Sinai).   Also, a claim that human argument can rise to sanctifiction: a divine dialogue.  Yet also a recognition of the human frailty in the carrying forward of revelation.  So, humans as participating in divinity yet weak.   The Rabbis' sense of revelation: an old text can be seen in a new meaning.

Dupre: the word of Yahweh was sacred to the Jews.

2/21/95: Lecture

Revelation (cont):

In Christianity, the revelation is Christ, rather than the word.  So, in a person rather than in a scripture.  Christ is the divine word.  Whereas Judaism: the word is the revelation.  Islam: the written word itself is divine.

Judaism (cont.):

On the lecture on Judaism: the words themselves are taken seriously.  So, a literal interpretation is justified.  Yet, still have the mythical language.  The text is to be taken literally in that every word is inspired(so, includes literal and figurative meanings).  That element remains in the interpretation (the spiritual aspect). 

On the idea of God:

 A spiritual experience is necessary.  Rational arguments do not prove the existence of God.  What is left?  Is anything there?  The spiritual person.  To know about the mystery, go beyond the books to the spiritual life.  Plotinus said that the One is to be known in a prayer.  A sense of divinity is necessary.    Rational language should say: 'this is not it'. 

The problem of God is not a metaphysical problem. Rather, it is of mystical experience.  Metaphysics is not relevant to the problem of transcendence. 

The first thing is to recognize that there are limits.  Dialectic: affirmation, negation, and integration. This issue goes further. 

Phenomenological approach:  There is a history of God.  See Armstrong, A History of God, although she is biased.  Dupre: Before the idea of God: power seen in nature itself. The earliest idea of God: the experience of power as will(i.e. as a subject); that there is a will in power.  Then, a desire to put a form on the power by putting a name on it.  It gave some sense of a brutal force.  It personalizes an impersonal power.  A will that has been identified is in a sense under control. Van der Leeuw: the will becomes a something.  The numinous of Otto is formless.  So, first is the name (quality), then comes the carrier of the qualities(the god).  The name, then the god.  For example, the Roman religion: the name becomes the god.  Different names, so different gods in the religion.  A god of thunder, for instance.  A storm-event becomes the name of a god.  In fact, Yahweh was a name from a storm-event. 

Andrew Lang: some primitive people had an idea that god is one.  Schmidt agreed. Dupre: Not so, but: even in polytheistic cultures, a single god in the background that was  virtually ignored by the practitioners.  That single 'background' god is that which stands behind the preservation of the world. 

It is not sufficient phenomenologically to say that god is a naked power.  There is something else besides raw power that makes the name 'god' so dangerous and attractive:  a quality unique to the sacred object--that of being holy.  Even if in a secular world, the word 'holy' is not used lightly.  The specifics of 'holy' are hard to define.  That which is holy has value in itself.  The most valuable.  This comes close to the notion of 'sacred'.

What is God?  It is morally wrong not to use reason to reflect on what is important to one.  So, how have western philosophers thought of God?  Plato does not explicitly discuss God.  But, in Republic, book 6: the form of the good is above all other forms.  God is the highest good.  Aristotle:  the unmoved mover directs the cosmos.  But where does movement come from? Plotinus was a mystical philosopher (Middle Platonism).  He is radically monotheistic. Plotinus (300s, CE):  'The One"--that which is beyond not only reality (so God is not a being and does not think) that is the principle of utter simplicity.  The One is beyond being. This is so because 'being' is a category of the finite being and God is beyond that realm.  Aquinas: God gave his name as 'I am', which means that God is being; the real.  This is essentially 'God as being'.

God as being went into the Jewish and Muslim traditions too.  Dupre: if God is being, is there any difference between God and finite beings?  Spinoza: we are finite modes of that substance.  Dupre: this could be seen as close to polytheism.  Aquinas: being can be applied as infinite and finite.  So, we and God have being.  But: this puts God on an equal level with creation.  Also, if God is infinite being, then there is nothing left outside of God, leaving the difference between God and the finite being unaccounted for. So, because I exist, I would have to be part of God.  God is in all finite beings the way the soul is in the body.  But what is the body then?  Aquinas: God is the substantial being as standing by itself--a being that is the fullness of being that stands by itself. 

How do finite beings relate to God?  Aquinas: (like Plotinus) the relationship between finite being and infinite being is in terms of participation: one being is in the other.  Dupre: what does it mean to participate in us?  Does this account for any difference between God and us?

How does the finite Being depend on God?  Aquinas: causality.  God is the cause of my being and that of the world.  Dupre: but there is a distance between a cause and effect.  As the totality of being, how can God be outside of the effect?  For Aquinas, being is existence.  Eckart: being is essence.  Essence is not in terms of what defines me (negative attributes)--rather, what a reality is in its positive innermost essence(beyond attributes).  Like the difference between love and falling in love.  Love is beyond the attributes that one fell for.  Love is beyond existence which can be described in terms of qualities, so it is in the realm of 'essence': beyond attributes.   As such, my intimate being is divine--in that I share an essence with God.

None of these solutions is adequate.  How can one say that we are in God and participate in Him, but yet are separate from Him?  

2/23/95: Lecture

On the idea of God (cont):

To say that God is the cause is to deny the identity between God and mankind, because there is no real identity between a cause and its effect. So, creation does not indicate God as a cause but that God is in our innermost being.

For instance, Aquinas: Finite being participates in divine being, the latter being the cause of the other.

Dupre: the difficulty in defining God is based in the problem of transcendence.

Tillick: God as being is between substance and cause.  The being of God, as being itself (like Aquinas), is not a being along or above others.  If God were a being, he would be subject to finite space and time.  For Tillick, God is powerful being, the power of all that is--the innermost of being (an inner presence)--the ground of being.  Like Eckart.  Power and meaning are attributed to God by Tillick, such that God is the ground or source of being rather than being 'a being'.  Dupre: what is such a ground? 

Heidegger:  God is not about metaphysics.  Heidegger's question: why is there reality?  Saying that there is reality because God created it does not answer this question as per the reality of God.  Heidegger distinguishes beings from 'being'. Being is the power of all that is.  Regarding God, the holy, and being, Heidegger argues that from an understanding of being comes an understanding of holiness out of which comes an understanding of God.  He reverses the order. The holy is not holy because it is divine; rather, divinity is divine because it is holy.  Being is holy, which leads one to an understanding of divinity.  Only from the truth of being can the nature of the holy be seen.  Only from the nature of the holy can the divine be seen. 

On the person of God: is God a person?  'Person' is a bad translation of hypostasis.  Susan Armstrong, The History of God: The personal God reflects the idea that no value can surpass personhood.  Yet, seeing God as a person presents problems such as anthropomorphism.  Dupre: the category of 'person' does not capture God's intimacy.  Armstrong: Judaism, Christianity and Islam used mysticism to get away from God as seen in a personal sense to that of an impersonal force. The mystic holds onto both. So, God as a person or as a personal God is not necessary for monotheism.  God has a presence that can't be captured in personhood.

For instance, in Hinduism: Shankara--God is an impersonal.  Then, Ramanuja in the 1200s began the bhakti movement in which devotion to personal gods was practiced and god as a transcendent impersonal force was believed in as well.  God as impersonal transcends God in personhood.  Brahman transcends Vishnu.  Buddha-nature transcends the Bodhisattva.

John Finley: wrote an ontological proof for the non-existence of God.  Recall the ontological proof for the existence of God: God is greater than that which can be thought.  The idea of that which is greater than can be thought of can be thought.  So, God exists. 

Anyway, Finley wrote on the impersonality of God.  God is totally unique; beyond any category.  The rationality of God is not limited. So, not like that of a person.  So, don't think of God as a person.  In God, the limitations are gone.

Dupre: if God is transcendent, then none of our categories (even 'being') will work. Yet, we need them.  So, think of God in dialectical terms: Affirmation (e.g. God is being), Negation (e.g. God transcends being) and Integration (e.g. God as being transcends 'being' as a category).  Some religions such as Christianity stress the affirmations at the expense of the negations, while others such as Buddhism stress the negations at the expense of the affirmations. 

2/28/95: Guest Lecturer on Islam

570-632 CE, Mohammed.  His message:  The is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger.  Mohammed's context: Polytheism and Animism, as well as some Jewish and Christian communities.  He misunderstood the Trinity as Father, Mother, and Son.  But, he had some knowledge of Jewish-Christian scriptures, some of which is in the Koran.  Mohammed saw the one God as the creator and judge.  Heaven and hell.  Emphasis: The oneness of God, in reaction to polemics with the polytheist Meccans.  At Medina, he unified the Arabs via a social revolution: from communities of tribes to a community based on one faith.  Mohammed provided a revelation which was put together in the Koran after his death.  As the divine word, no translation or commentary allowed.  Mohammed saw the Torah and N.T. as in line with the Koran.  So, a variety of prophets before Mohammed.  Jews and Christians had tampered from their respective scriptures, and this explained any inconsistency between them and the Koran. 

Islam has had a missionary zeal. By 732, reached France.  It also went west through Iran to India.  By 750, the Arabs were less interested in military expansion per se and more interested in converting others to Islam.  The Koran contains mainly laws and admonitions.  Little theology to combat those in the conquered lands. So, the Muslims worked out laws for living based on the Koran and their experience into the Books of Hadith.  A model of life.  There was not a teaching human authority in Islam, so used consensus of the scholars of Islamic law.  So, such law was open to change.

Also, knowledge from other areas was translated into Arabic. Aristotle's logic and metaphysics, as well as Plato, were especially important for the Muslims to work out an Islamic theology.  So, Hellenistic reasoning used to explain Islamic monotheism.  This in turn impacted Christian scholastic theology, such as by Aquinas. 

There had been a division within Islam on the leader after Mohammed.  The Sunni's (90% of the Muslims) wanted to find a leader not necessarily in Mohammed's family. They eventually used scholarly consensus as the teaching authority. The Sufi's wanted someone in his family in whom the teaching authority could be vested.  But the line ran out, so a human authority established as an Iatola. 

Islamic mysticism--a reaction against the emphasis on Islamic law, rational argument and the militaristic concerns.  Inner experience of God that had driven Mohammed was desired.  Experience the oneness of God by a feeling of mystical union, whether through a loving relationship or gnosis (one in the act of knowledge).  The Sufi's emphasized this.  They felt that although the Koran was the end of God's revelation, God could speak to one via an inner experience of God.  An interiorization as God being alive in the individual.  A realization of a oneness experience: a oneness of being between man and God.  Participating in one reality: the oneness of being.  Sufism was useful in assimilating the indigenous theologies in the captured peoples. 

In conclusion, Islam is strongly monotheism.  As it assimilated other traditions, Muslims came to feel that they share the same faith even though in different ways.  Both unity and variety.  Islam is not just Mohammed and the Koran.  It has grown.  The fundamentalists' view of the Islam State is not necessary coming from the Koran, but came out of the development of the faith. 

3/2/95

Misc. Remarks:

Phenomenology: describe the object from a distance without determining its truth. 

Dupre disagrees with Bultman's view of myth.  Dupre: myth goes beyond whether it is factual.  This 'beyond' is not affected by one's questioning of the literalness of the myth.

On the ontological arguments for God: useful if one is religious.  So, use them based not on logic but a prior experience.  Not that one ought to base it on irrationality; rather, just recognize that there is more needed than logic.

On such arguments:

Aquinus gives five arguments, based on cosmology.  We will not discuss the fourth argument (it is closest to religious experience). 

Argu. 1-3: based on cosmology.

Argument 1: a  thing moving will remain so unless an outside force.  Likewise for a thing at rest.  God is the unmoved mover. Dupre: Neuton disproved this.

Argument 2: on causality: an order of efficient causes.  Based on extrinsics. No thing is its own cause.   So, a first cause which everyone calls God.  Dupre: does everyone?  Further, Hume: a cause is something we can't prove to exist.  This critique has been abandoned.  Causality can't be discussed on a purely empirical basis.  Kant: causality is not just an impression.  Look for an unconditioned.  All that is conditional must rest on something that is unconditioned.  An ultimate unconditioned: a reality on which all beings depend.  Dupre: What is gained in the intelligibility of the world by placing God outside the series (the world)?  Aquinus' first cause is not meant in a chronological sense.  The Greeks would say that the world is godlike; so the utimate condition was not outside for them.

Argument 3: What is a sufficient reason for being?  Based on intrinsics. In nature, things that can and can't be.  Contingency.  We know this because things come and go.  So, they are not necessary.  Such things cannot always exist.  A thing that begins to be indicates by such its non-necessity.  If all were contingent, then no beginning.  How then get from non-being to being?   There was a beginning, so there must exist something necessary--having its foundation in itself: God.  Dupre: this is the best of these three arguments.  But, is is so that that which is contingent is not necessary?  No.  If reality is a process with a necessity in its totality, then underlying the comings and goings of beings there is a necessity in the evolutionary process in which contingent individuals are a partial expression.  The process is necessary.  So, the beginnings or endings of individual beings says nothing of the necessity of the process.  Also, it is not necessary to look outside the world to find its necessity.  The divine is imminent in the world.  This is not so evident in the Judaic-Christian view of creator vs. creation.  French existentialism: by claiming a necessity outside the world, what is one to make of the experience of contingency?  Look at the experience.  Dupre: But, necessity is necessary.  So, can find it in the experience of contingency.  The existentialist would not seek to find it.

Another critique by Dupre: what sort of necessity is required, given Acquinus' argument?  Does it have to be a god? 

Argument 5: Governance of the world.  Things without knowledge act for a purpose because the act in the same way--so by design.  They must be directed by an intelligent being which we call God.  Telos (purpose, or end).   We know that there is a telos, according to Acquinus, from the above.  A mind is presupposed.  Dupre: is it true that a telos comes from a constancy of relations? Suppose a system perpetuates itself.  A system that works does not necessitate an intelligence outside it.  An ecological system takes care of itself (eg an ecosystem) without a purpose.  Darwin: on the evolution of animal species, this is an elimination process--survival of the fittest.  Key: elimination, rather than pre-arrangement. That the best survived was not pre-arranged but occurred out of the process of elimination--the fittest survive.  Things that are simple have the best chance of survival--can adapt to changes in the environment.  Complexity, such as in modern human society, may thus make us less 'fit' to survive.  Complexity threatens.  More difficult to maintain, and if there is a glitch...   And, if the environment changes... 

Aquinus gives a second part to his argument: there is order in the world.  Such order can exist without a telos. Dupre: where does the order come from? Outside, or inside?  For the Stoics, the order comes from the logos within the world.  The world-soul.  Also in Plato and Plotinus.  Hume: must the designer of order be God?  No.  This is a messy world.  Not a perfect order.  There is too much disorder for there to be a creator.  Too much evil.

Dupre: none of Acquinus' arguments are so in the strict sense.  They do not start from scratch.  He uses sloppy logic.  Dupre: the religious experience is not the basis for an argument, but it needs to be considered for the arguments to be useful. 

3/21/95: Guest Lecture: Richard Davis on Hinduism.

Rg Veda 1200-1000 BCE

Upanisads 700-300 BCE

Ramayana 300 BCE-200 CE

Sankara 700 CE

Kashmir Saivism 900-1200 CE

Yoga Vasistha Maha Ramayana 1100 CE

On Maya, or illusion.  The phenomenal world is an illusion, like a dream.  Shankara holds this position.  Moreover, the schools in Hinduism which include it are called maya-vadin.  That this world is an illusion is counter-intuitive to what we tend to believe.  So, why hold such a position?  Moksa and advaita(non-dualism; reality is one--there is just one thing or principle).  Kashmir Shaivism teaches that this principle is consciousness.  So how account for apparent plurality in the world?  Maya causes the apparent particularity of the world.  In fact, maya is the creative power of appearances.  The force of maya leads to human alienation--the tendency to regard ourselves as separate and autonomous.  The cause of alienation is ignorance.  Moksa is to be liberated from this ignorance; to recognize that the world's plurality is an illusion.  The problem of alienation and how to be liberated is central to Hinduism.  Different solutions within Hinduism.  The Maya-vadin see the solution in intellectual terms: jnana, or knowledge--realization of advaita(the oneness of all). 

How does a monist (advaita) teacher get to this intellectual solution?  The text, Yoga Vasistha Maha Ramayana.  This is not the epic.  It relates a long dialogue between Rama, a young prince (who was later regarded in India as a king who was an incarnation of Vishnu).  The text's purpose: how to get Rama out of his depression.  Stories are told to Rama.  They convey what it would be like to live in a world as how the advaitas see it.  The stories involve hallucinations which after the person is awoken are found by the person in the 'real world'.  The planes of experience that we distinguish are found to both exist. In our lives, we distinguish between our mental world and the 'real world'.  E.g. school and the real world.  An ontological distinction between two types of reality.  Only one of the pair is regarded as real.  Indians make such distinctions too, but give more credibility to inward experiences than we do. Both the hallucination and the 'reality' of the real world are hallucination and untruth.  Phenomena that we would view as mentally-created are seen by Hindus are revelatory--as revealing the true nature of the world.  What is most real is not accessible through ordinary knowledge, but through transcendent experience.  A transcendental experience is regarded as more, not less, real, than our everyday reality.  The latter is seen as illusion whereas the former is revelatory. 

Maya is like an extended illusion.  Moksa is like waking up to find out that it was just a hallucination.  In the form, rather than content, of our experience, all experience is ultimately shown to be illusion.  Every experience is fictive. 

Hindus tend to believe that religious aims and earthly pursuits are mutually-exclusive.  So, moksa is gained by renouncing the world.   Learn to withdraw your senses into your mind from the world (yoga), for instance.  Fast, celibacy, etc.  The maya-vadins renounce the ontological status of the world itself, including the 'me'(so no thoughts of me or mine) and the 'knowledge' itself. So don't have to renounce the world itself; can be in it but not of it(thinking its real).  Once one realizes that even the knowledge is illusion, one doesn't need to renounce your home or sex because they are not seen as real.  Even a king in the world can realize moksa if he realizes that it is all illusion.

 Shankara's school, Advaita Vedanta, is also monist.  This school teaches that the highest formulation of the oneness is that the atman is the Brahman. 

The school of Kashmir Shaivism would teach that Cit is Shiva; consciousness is a god and is in this sense the true oneness.  Like the Buddhists, they believe that distinctions such as that between samsara and moksa are illusions but useful until one get a sense of the oneness of reality. 

Why try for moksa?  Hinduism: liberation from the alienation from people and the world.  Buddhism: liberation from suffering itself.  Moksa comes from the word 'muc'(to get free)--of alienation/distinctions.  Nirvana literally means blowing out or extinguishing--of suffering.  

3/21/95: Guest Lecture: Stanley Weinstein on Buddhism.

Hinayana(S.E. Asia), Mahayana(China, Korea, and Japan), and Varuyana(Tantric--Tibet, Mancheria, Napal). 

Different interpretations, values, scriptures and geographies. 

Gotama was the Buddha.  'Buddha' means the awakened one.  Hinayana school: he was the only Buddha of our eon.  Mahayana and Varayana schools: many Buddhas in this eon. 

Gotama's life.  Biographies written only after four hundred years of his life.  Buddhist scripture written then too.  So, there are questions about the historicity.  That he was from a royal family has been questioned.  He was from a marginal area of India.  The encounters with the sick, old and dead men are mythic.  He leaves his family and meditates.  Meditation was 'in' during that Upanisadic period.  He inflicted pain on his body for six years (ascetic practices).  He realized that this was futile.  He returned to meditation.  Enlightened in short order at the age of 35.  Four noble truths involve: the existence of suffering (as inevitable), the cause of suffering is craving, and to end suffering is to stop craving--the realization of Nirvana(possible in this life).  He teaches his doctrine which must be experienced--not just understood.  Two merchants give food to the Buddha, seeing him as a holy man.  They leave without being taught.  His former five ascetic fellows return to him.  The three jewels: the Buddha, his teaching, and his order. 

Two groups of followers: one that emulates the Buddha, renouncing the world and following his injunctions.  Monasteries formed only toward the end of his life.  They rely on alms.  Also, a group of the householder followers.  Different paths followed by these two groups. 

'Arhat': one who has attained Nirvana.  The Buddha did too, but he was also the path-finder.  Women as well as men can be arhats. 

By 100 CE, a split between Hinayana and Mahayana.  The Mahayana thought that enlightenment is available to many people.  Hinayana school: only a few can attain Nirvana.  Must live the life of a renouncer, according to Hinayana school. Householders give to the monks to get merit--so will have a better rebirth--because a layman can't be enlightenment.  Mahayana: accepts four noble truths, the eight-fold path.  But, the Buddha obtained enlightenment not for himself, but was enlightened countless eons ago.  Buddhas enter this world as a mortal and attain enlightenment.  The Buddhas have been Buddhas from countless eons ago, but take on our form for our benefit.  So, countless Buddhas.  Gotama is one of them.  His incarnation in human form is for us; he actually transcends that form.  Pure land: a land created by Buddha.  Can call upon him to be brought there to attain enlightenment.  Bodhisattva: one who as vowed to attain enlightenment.  In his vows is his desire to help any living thing to reach enlightenment.  He would help them when in peril and on a spiritual level.  The ultimate sacrifice--holding back on his own enlightenment.  Like the case of the Buddha (names/buddhas such as Amitabha), four or five of them have become the objects of intense worship.  Buddha nature: each of us has the same identical nature of the Buddha.  We are all in reality Buddhas. 

Ch'an (Zen) school: finding the Buddha nature within yourself.  Break preconceptions.  Koan: something one meditates on.  You have to get past words to experience it. 

Both schools: the literalness of the cosmology is not important.  Buddhism has no belief in a soul.  So, how does transmigration take place?  The Buddhist theories on this are not taken seriously by Buddhists.  They are concerned with suffering and liberation therefrom.  For instance, Nirvana is described in only negative terms.  Nirvana is unconditioned.  It is not 'voidness' or nonexistence.

No concept of God, but there are gods(devas) which are subject to transmigration.  No being as creator.  Buddhist view: our world is one of countless worlds, all of which go through cycles.  No beginning or ending of time.  No divine purpose over the cosmos.  Karma: every act you do leaves its mark on your personality.  Takes time to change your personality--you subconscious retains your prior acts which condition your present actions. 

In both schools, the Buddha was not viewed as an enlightened man.  He is on a plane above ordinary people.

3/28/95: Lecture

Hinduism and Buddhism deal with evil. 

Creation:

'Creation' is a religious issue which has been made into theologies.  Creation is a religious symbol.  Creation myth is found in all religions.  For the Babylonian religion, creation is the essence of salvation.  For example, the festival of the new year was seen to renew creation and thus preempt a return to the pre-existing evil.  Judaism, on the other hand, emphasizes God's salvific deeds in history.  Salvation is salvation history.  They were forced to consider how it all started.  In response, Judaism developed its own creation story, influenced by myths which have become historicized (demythologized).  There are two creation stories in Genesis.  They do not contain the idea that God created out of nothing.  It was not an issue whether there was something or nothing of which God created.  Rather, the creation is a separation: the firmament from the water, then the dry land from the water.  Before creation, there was chaos.  The question of whether there is something rather than nothing was not asked and should not be asked because the issue of why God exists or how He came to exist is problematic from it. 

How, then, did a theology of 'God created something from nothing' arise?  This involves philosophy.  One can't have theology without philosophy (reflection).  Three sources:

1. Plato:  In the Greek view, the cosmos is divine.  So, no beginning to it.  Yet, there are Greek cosmologies: how the cosmos was made.  The world must have a justification; the world is not self-sufficient, so there must be something to support it from outside.  Plato's Timaeus, includes the story of the creation of the world.  There were gods and 'in-between beings'.  The latter created the cosmos.  Both were divine.  Dupre: this is a myth in Plato, rather than being Plato's philosophy.  The Jews and Christians took it to be how the Greeks saw the creation of the world.  This was not so.  Plato is recounting a myth.  Plato knew that he was only telling a story.  However, Plato had his own cosmology.  The sun is in the center, around which are concentric circles, behind which is Plato's mover.  Unlike Aristotle's mover, it is not quiet.  Philo, a Jewish philosopher, argued that the Timaeus was the real story.  He argued too that Yahweh did more.  Yahweh created from nothing, whereas creation in the Timaeus was out of primordial matter.  Dupre:  this is not so for either Philo or Plato.  Plato was considering metaphysical principles.  So, not creation out of primary matter.  Philo's view that Yahweh created out of nothing is besides the point of the Hebrew story: that the world is dependent on God. 

On the positive impact on Plato: Christians and Jews learned a lot from him.  They learned that the world was created as an image of God.  This is in Gen. too.  Plato allowed them to work this out philosophically: the idea of a platonic archetype for the world in God's image.

2. The second source for the theology of creation: opposition to gnosticism.  Gnosticism never existed by itself but held on to others.  A fluid religion, but one main point in it: a pronounced difference between the material and spiritual worlds.  Plato says that only the spiritual is worth having.  So, the division between the soul and body in Greek philosophy (which was not the position of the Jews) went along with Gnosticism.  In Judaism, 'flesh' meant body and soul.  But, the Gnostics believed that the god who created the world is evil.  Christian Gnostics claimed that this was Yahweh; that The Father was pure spirit.  In reaction to this, the Church claimed that God created the heaven as well as the earth.  Irenaeus wrote against Christian gnosticism.  God became flesh in Jesus.  So, reaction to gnosticism played a role in the theology of the Bible. 

3. Third source on the theology of creation: Neoplatonism.  Plotinus.  200's CE.  He wrote six Emneads.  It is important, in a negative sense, the central principle of reality has no name.  It is called 'the One'.  From 'the One' comes Being.  So, can't say that God 'is' or 'exists'; He is beyond being.  Out of Being comes psyche and out of this came matter.  There was no creation in Plotinus's thought.  No beginning.  Everything was always there.  Things come out of the first principle by emanation. This is the opposite of creation. Things flow out of 'the one' necessarily.  So, no choice in it.  Like the good: it goes out necessarily.  The Christians rejected this, taking Genesis literally.  God could have decided not to create. But this brings contingency into God.  Why would He choose to create? It does not make sense to say that God need not have created.  Also, the Christians claimed that there was a beginning. 

Christian problem: they assumed a conflict between God's freedom and necessity.  They couldn't get around the problem that God could have chosen not to create.  Creation is not necessary from our point of view.  Creation is contingent to us.  But from God's point of view, creation is a necessity.  God creates freely out of necessity. 

Problem with pantheism: Creation has the same principle of identity as God.  Dupre: No, I am not God.  To say that I am an emanation of God does not mean that I am God.  There is point where we coincide, but there is also the otherness.

  Did God create in time?  Is there a beginning?  Al Farabi (980 d.), an Islamic theologian:  God must have given Himself by necessity.  The world must have been in existence.  Aristotle used here.  Avicenna (Ibn-sina), also a Muslim: according to Aristotle, the world has no beginning.  So, Aquinas disagreed.  The world had a beginning even though there is no rational argument for it.  Dupre: 'In the beginning, the world was created' was against the Gnostics.  Dupre: the religious issue: the cosmos is dependent upon a higher principle and is not self-sufficient. What does it matter how things came into being as long as this point is recognized? In this light, questions about a beginning, as well as freedom and necessity, are silly.

3/30/95: Lecture

The critical question in religion: The problem of evil.  It is rather a mystery.  Religions face it in different ways. 

Methods we will use:

Phenomenological: description according to essence.

Philosophy: critical reflection of solutions.

I. Phenomenological method:

This century has seen evils unprecedented.  Fighting about nothing.  Was it worth dying for?  WWI: No.  Then, Nazis.  Moreover, the mechanization of arms has become unprecedented. So, evil has been intensified in our century.  But it has been around long before.  Religions have attempted to deal with it.  For instance, Zoroastorianism: a dualism between good and evil. Buddhism and Vedantic Hinduism: evil doesn't really exist; it is only in the world of appearances.  In some religions (e.g.. Babylonian religion), evil existed before the creation.  Evil is the primeval disorder.  Creation then means the bringing of order.  God creating order.  In Judaism and Christianity, however, evil comes after creation.  Creation was good and nothing evil before it.  Evil came after creation in the Fall.  Only one principle: the good.  Yet evil is not an illusion.  A succession of solutions in Judaism.  For instance, evil as the punishment of wicked behavior. The Fall. The assumption is that suffering is deserved.  But why do good people suffer from evil?  Also, why wicked behavior in the first place?  Second solution: Job.  Job was on trial.  Kierkaggard, Jaspers, and Jung have commentaries on it.  Job's problem: it is not fair.  He is told that he suffers because he did something wrong.  Job rejects this.  God tells Job: who are you to question My ways?  There is a transcendence that we should not try to cope with.  Dupre: this gets rid of some bad solutions, but what is its positive value?  Third solution: The Suffering Servant. See 2 Isiah on the suffering servant.  Is this Israel or of a Messiah?  The point is that suffering can be redemptive.  Salvation through suffering.  It can't be explained in rational terms what good it does to me if someone else suffers.  Christianity grabs this solution and runs with it.  Christianity universalizes sin coming into the world: an original sin.  Not so in Judaism.  Christianity applies the suffering of Jesus to this generalized evil. 

II. Philosophical method:

Religions have found it necessary to justify God by positing the existence of evil.  Monotheism has a problem: the God who created the world is good.  How then could there be evil in the world created by God?  God put evil in the world?  For the sake of having the best possible world.

Theodicy: justifications of evil. 

Different kinds of evil: physical suffering (e.g.. natural disasters, accidents).  Key: not responsible for it.  So, not a punishment.  Augustine:  evil is an absence of good or being.  So, it is a non-being.   Dupre: but the being of suffering from evil is not a non-being.  Suffering for Augustine is the absence of being.  This is neo-Platonic.  Evil is necessary for the beauty of the whole. The world is beautiful even in its imperfection. Dupre: but not from the point-of-view of the suffering person.  So, an ascetic solution that doesn't work. 

In a positive sense on physical evil: what does it mean to make a world?  It is not so simple to say what is good and what is bad.  Could we have had a world without suffering?  Is suffering in a positive sense a symptom of our sensitivity?  Is creation good when it implies so much suffering necessarily?  Is it better to be than not to be? Is it worth the price?  Dupre: these are not decisive questions.  The argument against it is not decisive.

On moral evil: that which we do (are responsible for).  If God is omnipotent, could He not have made it better?  The real question here is that of freedom.  Why could not God have omitted some of the bad apples?  Because if there are to be free beings, there must be choices and thus moral evil.  Moral evil: the choice of the less good.  Freedom is not a choice between the good and the bad.  The existentialists on freedom:  Sartre--freedom is a creation of values; not just a choice of a pre-existing set of values.   So, freedom is creative.  So, God can't have known before hand and so take out moral evil actions.  We build a system of values in our freedom.  Freedom is an ultimate, where human reality culminates. 'Is freedom in itself worthwhile' is not a question that makes sense because freedom is an ultimate.

III.  The meaning of evil:

What is evil good for?  Augustine: it is good for the whole.  But, problems with this.  Dupre: What happens when we are creative?  To create true otherness makes us vulnerable.  The apex of personhood is in the creative communication:  in a love relation, for instance.  We become weak and vulnerable.  When God creates, he does not add anything but becomes vulnerable.  Creation is to make place for otherness, rather than to make more of it.  That makes God vulnerable and weak.  Jewish mysticism:  the insecurity of the creative act is the expression of a fundamental uncertainty, changing one's personhood.  Ultimately, the creative act is reducible to the being of God Himself. In creation, something is expressed of God's weakness.  Otherness in God.  There are opposite principles in God. 

Look at evil paradoxically religiously.  Evil goes back to the heart of God.  In Christianity, our suffering is in God and for others.  Why do some freely choose such suffering?  Because in suffering there is redemption.  This can't be philosophically justified.

4/4/95: Lecture

Atheism and Secularism: 

How can the religious person cope with the trend toward atheism and secularism?  What is behind this trend?

The sacred and profane are complimentary and interdependent. 'Secular' originally meant that property that is not owned by the Church.  Today, it means the process by which certain fields of meaning or reality are not under the jurisdiction or teaching of the Church. For instance, Descartes and Galleleo sought to separate science from the Church.  Today, the secular is that which is outside and not dependent upon the sacred.  Unlike the profane, which is dependent on the sacred.  The secular is that realm in which the sacred-profane dialectic is excluded. 

A modern problem:  In the process of the diminishing of jurisdiction of religious institutions, there has also been a narrowing of that which is taken to be 'religious' and a broadening of what is outside of religion. What is left for religion?  Religion is about the sacraments and burying people.  The problem: to kill religion w/o persecution is to take away any power for it to integrate things.  No matter or how narrow, if a religion is not capable of integrating things, then it will fail.  Religion functions as an integrating force in life.  If no replacement that can integrate, then secularism(a lack of integration).  This is distinct from a narrowing of the religious field (secularization).  

In Christendom, a secularization and secularism.  In Arab Islam, there has not been a secularization; rather, the religion pervades all areas of their world.  The world there is not compartmentalized into 'religious' and 'secular' spheres. 

For Dupre, the problem is not secularization(though a price is paid for this) but is secularism.  In other words, the problem is not the diminishing jurisdiction of religion, but is its diminished capacity to integrate values in society.

Atheism:

Secularity is not atheism.  Why has the former developed into the latter?  Atheism deals with the question of God, rejecting the assertion that God exists. If only the objective is real, then a belief in God as 'the other' does not make sense.  There is a problem in reducing the relation to God as a causal 'objective' relation in which God is the object. Seeing God as an object of a causal objective relation ignores God's omnipresence and leads to atheism(God does not make sense in this sense).  In a totally objective universe, there is no place for God.  So, the modern way of defining reality as objective leads to atheism because God can't be classified in such a definition. 

The opposite of objectivism is subjectivism.  If say that the source of meaning and value is the subject, it implies that the object depends on its reality on the subject.  Descartes, for instance.  Implies that God is a projection of the ego.  This is the subjective version of atheism.  So, seeing God as a subjective projection of the ego devoids God of any reality of His own. This can lead to atheism.

Freuerbach: in religion, consciousness of the subject and the object is the same.  Consciousness of God is self-consciousness.  A projection.  Dupre: but just because I am a subject doesn't mean that God is.  Anthropomorphism.  We are not aware of this.  Freuerbach: there is difference between what I attribute to God and what I ascribe to myself.  How do I justify the difference?  If one can't do something, rather than face this, the individual assumes that no one can do it, so there is a difference between Man and God. Dupre: A bad rationale.  Moreover, if the subject is made the center of meaning and value, then you will not be able to do justice to the problem of God.  This is a modern situation.

Freud:  Humans project their wishes on God.   Religious doctrines have to do with wishes.  So, God is an illusion.  So, one can't say if the wish is founded in anything.  Religion is a lazy way to suppose that one's wishes will become true.  Freud says that from his view in science, there is no way to say anything about whether God actually exists.  Freud's subjective stance does not permit objective claims.  He realized this, saying that his view of God was not objectively true but followed from his subjective view.

Sartre: Human autonomy: that the human race has its own law and is fully responsible for what happens.  Things do not depend on God, but on us.  So, we are free or autonomous. This causes anxiety. So, anything like an idea of God which gets in the way of this autonomy is wrong.  So, the nonexistence of God and 'existence precedes essence'.

Nietzsche:  human autonomy does not permit the existance of God.  He does not say that God did not exist; rather, that we have killed God.  Taking away the source of meaning and value is a disaster but is liberating too.  Where are we going?  Through an infinite nothing?  A world without meaning and value as the price of our liberation.  Needed: a replacement that will give meaning and value.  He wants to develop a new human race for this.

Atheism started as Deism: there is a God, but one that does not interfere in his creation.  Then, d'Holbach said that we can be moral without God if that is all that God is.  So, he did away with God.   Marx: religion is not poison.  Lenin: religion is poison.  Modern view of atheism: there is no God.  Modern atheism is 'areligious'.

How can religious people live with this?

4/6/95: Lecture

Modernity: the relative independence of realms of life from religion.  Secularism: satisfaction with these fragmented realms so no questions of ultimate significance are asked. 

Three causes of atheism:

1. Objectivism: equate reality with objectivity.  God as the extension of the scientific world view is to see God as an object doesn't work.  It views God in an idolatrous sense. This has led to scientific atheism.  Max Otto.  d'Holbach also.

2. Subjectivism: the subject is the source of all meaning and value, so God is only a projection of the human subject.  Freud and Jung.  Freud called himself an atheist.  He saw that psychology could not lead to a conclusion of atheism or theism.  But he believed that religion was wishful thinking. 

3. Autonomism: the idea that the human being is the source of his own values.  Implied: no need for God reduced to looking at us.  The idea that human freedom must constitute its own values.   This can result in axiological atheism: the creation of value doesn't tolerate interference (e.g. from God).  Neitzche and Sartre. 

Also, the anti-theism of the 1800's was a cause of atheism because it discredited ideas held about God. 

Today, it has gone beyond attacking theism to ignoring it.  Atheism today doesn't want to be called 'atheism'.  They are the humanists who don't ask the questions from which 'atheism' comes.

Where does atheism fit in the study of religion?  What are the points of contact between religion and atheism?

'Religious Atheism':

1. Atheism in Religions.  Taravada Buddhism: the Buddha has not become a god.  Nothing about God in the 4 Noble Truths.  Rather, an attempt to be liberated from craving, even to the notion that 'something is something'.  But this is not to escape religion.  Buddhist meditation is religious.  Buddhism teaches that the absolute is so absolute that it should not be in our grasp, such as being named (e.g. as God).  The Christian mystic comes close to this too.  The religious person knows nothing more about the absolute than does the atheist; rather, the religious person knows of the relation to the absolute. 

Plato, via Socrates, dared say that the moon was just a rock.  He was an atheist in that he held a different view of the absolute.  This does not mean that he was not religious.  Likewise, the early Christians were seen as atheists because they would not sacrifice to the Graeco-Roman gods.  So, atheism is a part of the dialectical movement of religion, present when the conception of the absolute changes.  Vahanian(a modern Calvinist): purification of idols in atheism.

2. Despair with the purely secular; a search for meaning.  There are mysteries in the world; science has become mysterious again and the contingent nature of the world has become increasingly evident.  Its mechanization has been confronted with the greater mystery in the world.  For example, in biology and physics.  Science is no longer explanatory of so much of the world that we see.  This does not lead the scientist to theism, but to an experience of mystery with transcendence.  A new confrontation with transcendence.  Secularity has created its own mystery which in turn has given rise to a transcendent experience. There is no  psychology that will be a substitute for religion.  We find ourselves in a situation of total factuality, but it is contingent.  That I am a fact does not inhibit me from seeing the contingency in me and thus to looking for something beyond my own existence.  Pure factuality and pure contingency is not enough for us.  We must ask 'why'.  We feel that we are surrounded by a void, and the constant danger of lapsing into nothingness.  Heidegger: it is only against the constant threat of nothingness that we become aware of being.  That void is the awareness of my contingency.  Like waking up from a nap--like coming out of nothingness.  A sense of being comes out of the threat in this sense of nothingness.  So, to Heidegger, one can't experience 'being' without having had an experience of nothingness.  Bultmann: in the concept of God is only an inquiry of God.  God is experienced as a question, coming out of nothingness.  Tillick: we are aware of the experience of being through that of nothingness.  Experience of nothingness: can be in the loss of a love relation--brings about a sense of emptiness and raises the question of contingency, and thus of meaning. 

There is in my anxiety an exp. of ultimacy--when we hit bottom, from which questions from the recognition of my contingency arise. 

3. There is something sacred in the face of the other person, such as in a love relation.  A social sense: There is something of the absolute in the face of the other.  So, we abhor domestic beatings.  This does not necessarily imply God.  What is the other that suggests mystery and transcendence?  This is a religious question.

4. The need for sanctification of our value--that there must be more than the writing of ten books or putting up a business--these don't last.  What is the meaning of our lives?  Sacral meaning of our existences wanted due to the impermanence of our pursuits.

5. The mystical acceptance of absence.  For a person that makes the absolute one's life, where does he end up?  The more one is concentrated on the absolute, the more it becomes empty of definable meaning.  John of the Cross speaks of God as 'nada' (nothingness).  Eckart:  In the godhead is only unity and there is nothing to  talk about.  This is mystical atheism:  A refusal to attach names on the absolute.  A sacred sense of absence may be had by the atheist.  The sense of absence of any absolute may be so painful to the spiritual person that this sense has a sacred meaning.  For this reason, we have the sense of absence of God--even in the secular life.  Deprivation binds us with those who are fulfilled.  The atheist is the person who is of the absence. 

4/11/95: Lecture

Salvation:

It is so religious that it is difficult to define from outside religion.  Can the non-religious person explain it?  Salvation is that which corresponds to the alienation of the human heart.  Salvation is dependent upon a sense of alienation.  If one lives a life of distraction, then alienation is not felt so no need is felt for salvation.  It is at points of limits in life that such distraction may collapse and one may experience alienation.  Kierkaggard: there are few Christians because people do not feel sick (unwhole) enough to want salvation.  A critique of contemporary culture--that in it we are cut off from our alienation.  Needed for salvation: a sense that there is a need for it--that one is alienated.  Wm. James: the need to create a gap is necessary for it to be filled if one is not aware of a gap already.  Specifically, an uneasiness is necessary; a sense that there is something incomplete in my natural condition.  Needed: a recognition that a relationship to a higher power is necessary; that my higher part is continuous with a more.  Is such a 'more' merely a notion or does it really exist?  If it exists, in what form?  A personal God or an impersonal force?  Not only salvation, but alienation too, is construed in different ways.  For example, Buddhism: the source of alienation is craving; the solution is non-attachment.  Non-attachment as an attitude is higher than the first--and it is not my normal state of being. So, it can be seen as salvation. Also, Hinduism (Vedantic): we need to encounter our deeper self to find the absolute.  Atman is Brahman.  This recognition is the Hindu solution to alienation.  In Judaism: the history of Israel is one of liberation.  Liberation through history is the solution to alienation in Judaism.

'Salvation', 'healing', 'whole', and 'holy' come from the same root.  Making oneself whole again: an integration.  Modern culture no longer provides guidance for such integration.  It is now one's private business. 

The primitive forms: see Van der Leeuw.  Bringing things back together had no particular form but was often associated with fertility.  For instance, the phallic Greek cults.  Fertility is the way life continues and becomes whole.  A search for wholeness behind fertility festivals.  Also, water was a symbol of salvation.  In Egypt, water as such as symbol was connected to fertility.  Water is also a salvific symbol in Christianity.  Also in Egypt were animal-human figures.  Symbolize holism.  Animals can express the raw fertility in a way that humans can't. 

Seasons can portray alienation and salvation.  Fall is a death and Spring is a rebirth.  Much in Christianity is based on this.  The story was worked out via natural symbolism.  In Judaism, their festivals were put on ancient agricultural seasonal festivals.  The seasons are not salvation, but symbols thereof. 

Salvation has also been symbolized in the idea of a personal savior.  Salvation precedes a concern about creation in Christianity.  So Van der Leeuw said that the Son came before the Father. 

In many religions, salvation results from a struggle which involves pain.  For instance, the idea of a suffering god who redeems.  The suffering servant is the redeemer (2 Isa. 18:20).  The idea of a savior is connected with an epiphany(an appearance of the god).  In Christianity, there is an epiphany in a stable to three wise men.  That he appeared was important.  The epiphany was the important feast (not X-mas).  Also, an epiphany at his baptism.  Also, an epiphany at his first miracle.   Important: the manifestation of the savior.  The deed of salvation is important too.  Finally, the revival.  For instance, the resurrection. 

Christianity was at first a movement in Hellenistic Judaism.  But it accepted gentiles.  Yet it had Judaism's historical view of salvation.  How make a universal salvation history?  Augustine's City of God was an attempt to explain universal salvation history.  He was the first to detach the Roman Empire from the Christian history.  Rome is falling is but this is not the fault of the Christians--this was the point of his book.  Also he made the point of a dialectic between what is happening and what should happen. 

What is salvation?  Christians say 'forgiveness of sins', but this doesn't make sense to many people.  Christian salvation means overcoming evil (both physical and moral).  We have lost this connection, so salvation as the forgiveness of sins seems foreign.  See it in a positive sense: wholeness, health, and re-integration.  Redemption means that all things will be well 'in spite of'.  Christian salvation is not only atoning for past sins (justification) but includes as well a revelation of God(sanctification).  Neitzche: that nothing that is valuable will never be lost is salvation: the eternal return.

4/13/95: Lecture

Christianity:

Harnack wrote on the essence of Christianity.  A developmental concept.  So, one single concept can't get to it.  Barth: Christianity is not a religion.  Rather, it is a message from above of which human cooperation is not involved.  Other religions are human inventions.  Dupre: Christianity is a religion. 

Unique to Christianity: it concentrates and depends on a historical human being--especially that he suffered, died, and was raised.  Buddhism does not depend on Gathma but on a way of behaving toward life.  Judaism does not depend on Abraham as a historical person.  Islam depends only on Allah (so not Mohammed).  

Christianity is not an ethics.  Ethics is not a criterion for inclusion.  For instance, Jesus did not come for the righteous.  Confucianism, on the other hand, is of a code of ethics.  Unlike Islam, Christianity does not have a particular social structure for society.  The person of the historical Jesus is the essence of Christianity.

Also unique to Christianity: the dramatic character--must go through the lowest humiliation to get to the highest exhaltation.  Key: cross and resurrection. The glory of the Christ is both the passion as well as the resurrection.  To realize that the scandal is part of the glorification is the essence of Christianity.   The down is the up and the up is the down.

The stages in the development of the essence of Christianity:

1. A movement of Jews who followed a man named Jesus who taught  of a new rule of God manifested in the already and yet 'not yet' in the Kingdom of God.  Gospel of Mark gives the teachings without theological speculation.  Key: a new relationship to God.  A notion of salvation in the Kingdom of God that is not through enlightenment nor through moral nobility.  Rather, a salvation as a total conversion to do the will of God.  A total surrender to the will of God.  Key: a willingness to surrender to whatever it takes.

On how Jesus spoke of God: as his and our father.  Intimacy.  A new relationship to God.  For example, the story of the prodigal son.  A paradox in the relationship: God no longer punishes those who are bad or kills those who do not believe for the sake of the purity of faith of those who do; not that there is no justice, but that in God there is now  mercy and compassion over vengeance and jealousy.[4]  A teaching that the death of Jesus has something to do with salvation.  Why did he have to die and what good is it going to do to anyone else?  Why crucial to the message?  These questions were considered in later development of the religion.

2. The messenger becomes the message.  Jesus becomes the center of the message.  It happened after Pentecost.  Acts. 4: Peter told the Jewish authorities that by the name of Jesus Christ he resuscitated a man.  Jesus becomes the center.  Christianity then became a sect within Judaism.  No break yet. 

A continuity as indicated by Paul: salvation is from the Jews.  No salvation in anyone else but Jesus.  Continuous with Judaism in that it was the fulfillment of the scriptures.  Mt. emphasizes this.  Also see Ps.22.  Jesus applied the words of this psalm to himself.  Also see Psalms 2 and 110.  Jesus never said that he was the Son; rather, his followers attributed this title to him on the basis of Ps. 2.  From Ps. 110, Jesus was seen as the high priest of a new order. 

The beginning of a break with Judaism: Paul called Christianity the new Jerusalem which included gentiles.  So, a new interpretation of scripture led to the break.

3. Assimilation into Hellenistic culture.  Christianity had broken with Judaism, though it kept the Jewish canon.  Unlike a sect of Judaism, a break.  Liberated from the Torah, according to Paul (Rom.).  Elements of Greek thinking entered Christianity that could not have been used in Judaism.  They come from Stoic philosophy and Philo.  For instance, 'In the beginning was the word and the word was God'.  The word itself is declared to be God.  Judaism would not accept this.  'The word became flesh'.  Scandalous to Jews.

4. Patristic reflection: a canon is gathered.  The closure of the revelation.  The dogma of the trinity was worked out.  It is not in the N.T., but its ingredients are.  In 325, the Council of Nicea: Christ was God.  Constantinople 381: The Holy Spirit is God.  So, God in himself is father, and is Son as he speaks to us, and is Spirit as he reveals himself to us.

5. Constantinian Revolution. 

Why did Jesus die?  Anselm was wrong in saying that it was as a vicarious satisfaction.  Why would a good God insist on the killing of his son?   Dupre: Jesus saw that his message would get him into trouble, and that death would be the price of the message that was so at odds with the world.  The surrender to his message inevitably led to a conflict with evil that would end with death.  Jesus wanted to do God's will whatever the price.  The conflict of God in Christ with evil.  So, a sense that evil has been overcome even though there is still evil in the world.  This is the message and hope of Christianity. 

4/18/95: Lecture

Is institutional religion problematic to world peace? How do religions relate to each other?  The desire to be totally ecumenical can be a vacuumous pluralism (without content).  Religions have their own identities and exclusivenesses that need to be recognized, yet without necessarily resulting in conflict between them.  This is not a problem in Hinduism, for it has universalism as one of its tenants.  But, Hinduism does not contain the specific doctrines and disciplines of other religions.  For instance, the Four noble truths and the eightfold path of Buddhism are not included in Hinduism. 

The problem is particularly acute in historically-based religions which make exclusive claims.  For instance, Christianity and Islam.  Judaism is historically-based, but does not make an exclusive claim, yet the idea of 'chosen' has the indirect problem of implying a priority.  In the case of Christianity, the moment they stop being persecuted, they start persecuting.  If outside Christ there is no salvation, how can an Christian respect another religions?  Some tolerance has been learned by Christianity.  Not so in Islam. Does historical rootedness inevitably lead to exclusiveness? 

In general, there are four possible attitudes: atheism(no religion is true), exclusivism(only my religion is true), inclusivism(only one, but it can assimilate others which are compatible, or just its predecessor), and pluralism (all religions are correct, each offering a unique view to ultimate reality.  Or, a religion is true only for its believers, so all religions are true in that sense).  Relativism is a form of pluralism.

There are contradictions between religions. E.g.  Buddhism: everything is illusory; Christianity: Christ is reality.  So, inclusiveness may be overstated.   

To say that because a religion is unique doesn't necessarily imply exclusiveness.  But, uniqueness that is irreducibly unique makes inclusiveness difficult. 

Inclusiveness involves the issue of whether other religions are true or false.  The notion of universal revelation doesn't get at this.   That God is revealed in the woods, for example, does not necessarily mean that Islam is correct.  Saying that what different religions are really saying is really what Christianity doesn't get at it either.  Rahner's anonymous Christians, for instance.  This is really an arrogant 'shell game'.  Dupre: to be inclusive, a Christian would have to include in himself elements of Buddhism that are unique and not assimilatable to Christianity.   This possibility of integrating is done in the name of something beyond both religions. 

Pluralism:  is it possible to accept a pluralist solution and still consider one's own faith to be true?  John Hick and W. C. Smith.  They claim that we can be radically pluralist.  What does pluralism imply?  1. That all religions are equally true. or 2. That a religion is true relative to the one who believes it (relativism) or 3. Not all religions are equally true: the most inclusive religion is the truest.

Smith:  a religion is not a set of beliefs but is a way of living using a set of principles.  God speaks in various religions and they respond in their own way to that appeal.  The content of the response doesn't matter as much as that one responds.  Dupre: But religions differ on what God is or whether there is a god.  Impersonal vs. personal terms, for instance.  Smith: But all religious language is metaphorical, speaking about that which we cannot speak.  Dupre: But we have to live with these metaphors and take them seriously if we are in a particular faith-tradition.  Hick: don't get attached to the metaphors.  Dupre: this is negative theology; it may not allow enough content.   Dupre: it is the religious experience which is important.  But it is informed by a particular religion.  Mysticism is not blind. Hick:  religious tradition is a cultural relative means of experiencing divine reality.  Dupre: then all are equally true.  But do they worship the same god?  If the ultimate reality is unknowable, does it make sense to presume that it exists?  If it exists, why use a particular religion?  Smith: religion is the phenomenon.  Behind it is the thing in itself.  Dupre: but we can't talk about the thing in itself.

Relativism: 

Panikkar: a Catholic priest who lives in a Hindu temple.  Each religion has its own truth.  Can't reduce them because truth is deeper than whether one thing agrees with another.  For instance, the truth of a poem does not bar contradiction from it.  Truth is disclosing a deeper level of reality.  Dupre: but can anything then be said in favor of my particular religion? 

Lindbeck:  A religious doctrine is not an expression of an experience but is cultural linguistic rule.  A functional interpretation.  A rule that defines a particular relation to divine transcendence.  Dupre:  true, they are rules.  But, is that all it is?  Are not certain cognitive propositions to be taken more seriously than as a rule.  The opposite to such a proposition would be untrue.  Lindbeck does not deal with this.  

Dupre: culture effects particular religions.  Use of language of its time.  So, human defect.  O'Leary: a religion deconstructs itself in references made to other religions.  There is a perpetual variation in meaning or interpretation even though the text stays the same.  For instance, transubstantiation.  What is a substance?  It has been seen in different ways.  What is meant(the intensionality) is absolute, even if it is interpreted in different ways.

Dupre:  differences between religions do matter, but this doesn't necessarily mean exclusivity.  Key: the difference between describing religions (where truth is shown in various means) and maintaining one's own faith.  In my personal relation, I must seek the truth in my religion, so my own religion becomes absolute.  Inclusive to the extent that other religions fit mine, otherwise exclusive.  This is a relative exclusivism: only whatever opposes my faith is excluded; all else will be assimilated.  So, inclusive and relatively exclusive.

4/20/95: Lecture

There is something problematic in integrating the religions.  The problem of an exclusive stance is that a majority would go without God.  Inclusivism: all religions are included in my own, or all religions are really saying the same thing.  But, this ignores the uniqueness of particular religions and the contradictions between them.  Pluralism: all religions are true because they refer to something that can't be stated.  But why then not be silent and have no religion at all?  Relativism:  truth itself is manifold.  Religions speak of it in different ways. 

Dupre: there is a way of putting these together.  No matter how relative religions are objectively (in describing other religions), for me in regard to my faith-life there can be only one  religion which is true.  That of other religions which agrees with it can be assimilated or included; that of them which is contrary is barred--and in this sense my religion is exclusive. 

For instance: Christianity.  At its core is the Trinity.  God who is one is a relation.  One being (ousia) in three ways of being (hypostases).  

God the Father: Jesus designated the absolute (the absolute principle) as our Father.  The absolute really has no name so is in silence.  When named, we make it less absolute; absolute in a certain sense.  It excludes other senses.  Bradley: God is only the appearance of the absolute.  To say 'God' is to make the absolute less absolute.  Even in saying God is being is the absolute made less absolute.  Plato: the absolute is on the other side of being.  God lies beyond being.  When speak of being, already leaving something out (e.g. reflection).  So, God is beyond being(Plotinus). If so, then Christians must say that the Buddhists are right in refusing to name God.  Here is an instance of inclusiveness.  Something in Buddhism is compatible with Christianity.  The negative theology of the Christian mystics is consistent with the Buddhist teaching that God is nameless.  If assume that God is the absolute, then one must admit that any name falls short.

God the Son:  The Son, or the Word (Logos) is God as revealed, manifest, and being.  The absolute transcendence becomes revealed.  This is necessary for there to be a religion.  In the Word, the absolute establishes a relation with mankind.  The absolute becomes manifest.  In that manifestation, I become the one addressed by the absolute.  The possibility of speech to and from God here.  The transcendent is made manifest.  Inclusion: in other religions, the absolute is shown as manifest.  But in Christianity, the manifestation has been restricted to one man: Jesus Christ.  How can this be inclusive?  The notion of Jesus as Christ is not as exclusive as we might think.  Is the Christ to be identified only with Jesus?  This is not to question that Jesus is Christ.  Jesus: one person and two natures.  To say that one person is God is to say that he is not limited to the one human nature of the historical Jesus.  The Christ is an all-inclusive divine reality, of which Jesus was a manifestation.  The personal (not bodily) identity of someone refers to the core of his identity.  Jesus is an individual but Christ is a divine person.  Christ was incarnated in Jesus.  Other manifestations in other religions can be considered as Christ.  Otherwise, limiting God in saying that God could only be manifested (Christ) in Jesus.  So, Christianity can be viewed in an inclusive way.

God the Spirit:  The immanent presence of God.  God's presence.  The absolute can't be absolute without being present.  God as the absolute is also the deepest presence of itself to itself everywhere.  God is the core of everything that is.  God is the very presence of ourselves.   A total presence.  It is where we are in ourselves divine.  This is inclusive.  In the Upanisads, for instance, Brahman is atman. 

God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three moments of God are necessary: the immanance, manifestation, and presence.  If not have all three, then less inclusive.

Judaism:  not so hard to make inclusive as Christianity because the manifestation was not in one individual. 

Islam: Even more inclusive than Judaism.  Included Moses and Jesus.  It is not seen that it is an inclusive revelation.

The religions of the word don't understand their own universalism.

Why is religion so far from us?  Even from those of us who don't care.  Our culture is empirical, so it makes it difficult to be religious.  Religion is an endless thrist for God and a profound dissatisfaction with its forms expression (e.g. worship).  The result is a culture without integration.  Atheism is a healthy reaction against idolitry.  God should not be identified with any single thing. 

Why should religion be important?  Because of its intrinsic truth.  Without it, nothing has final meaning.  Life loses it coherence.  Society loses its coherence.  Religion is the one thing that can tell one that one's life has any value at all.  There is a basic need to believe that my life has a meaning that is beyond my own reality.  This life is flawed.  It is vulnerable.  It involves loss.  So, it is hard to trust life.  Religion indicates that there is meaning in my failures.  Holy Week is a celebration of suffering, humiliation and defeat and yet it has the most meaning. 

How can one get to religion?  By grace. But I can be open to it; receptive.  'Do I believe in the forms of my religion?' is not the question; rather, let it come to me without dogma, predudice, or rule.  Start with how the stories began, rather than from where they ended.

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[1]But, sacrality is not limited to 'religion'. 

[2]An evolution from other humans to animals (both sacrificial, but with an improving morality) and then to one's self. 

[3]For instance, the bodily resurrection of the physically dead. 

[4]A reversal from the God of Judaism.