Comparing Religions

The subfield of comparative religions can be exciting because the beliefs, values, symbols, myths, and rituals can introduce a person to such different ideas that the rush of making a discovery can even be felt. Jaroslav Pelikan, a twentieth-century historian of Christianity, once said that he had learned so many languages just so he could have access to ideas that were not as of yet available in English. Such ideas could be very different than the historian’s extant knowledge. It is perhaps like the early European explorers in America finding plants and cultures that were so unlike those of Europe because the distance had not allowed for cross-pollination and the influence of cultural exchanges. I contend that one reason why religions can be very difficult to compare is that elements of them in a given topic can be so different in kind as to not be comparable. Religions may even be based on variables that cannot be directly compared because they are so different in kind. The related paradigms also may not be comparable. Therefore, it may be that religious comparison is more fitting to comparing sects (e.g., denominations) within a given religion. Even when continuity exists between an established religion and a new one in the same context, the foundational variables may be so different in kind that they are not comparable. I will look at cosmology (e.g., Creation), ritual (e.g., sacrifices) and divine attributes (e.g., truth and love) below to support my claim.

The paradigm of a creator and creation must seem very foreign to a Buddhist who has been brought up without the notion of a beginning point. Indeed, the Big Bang could be reckoned as one explosion in a series. The underlying cyclical idea differs appreciably from that of linearity. That Creation occurred only once at the beginning and salvation history does not repeat itself assumes that time is linear—a straight line that keeps on going without doubling back. I contend that religions are so difficult to compare because they rest on qualitatively different variables and even paradigms (i.e., basic frameworks).

Shankara’s Hindu metaphysic of truth surrounded by illusion surrounded by ignorance (maya) is so different from the Abrahamic religious notion of a creator and creation that the two paradigms can hardly be compared in that finding a common denominator is necessary. That the Abrahamic deity created all that is may be true, but truth itself is not the same as creation ex nihilo. Truth cannot depend even on the created existence if the Abrahamic deity is the first cause and stands outside of creation as well as being omnipresent within it. Furthermore, truth can be regarded as a divine attribute, whereas creation is a divine function. Truth is what God is, whereas creating the world is something God did (as time is linear in the Abrahamic religions). Conflating the nature of an entity and what it does overlooks the basic difference between the two, and thus can give rise to false comparisons based on an assumed common denominator.

In my first world religions course in college, I was fascinated that I could hold both of the disparate (i.e., essentially different in kind; not allowing of comparison) paradigms of Hinduism and the Abrahamic religions in my head without being able to find a basis on which I could compare the two paradigms; they were so unlike. Put another way, I was intrigued that two paradigms do not allow for comparison and yet seek to explain the same phenomenon (i.e., religious metaphysics). The sheer paradigmatic difference alone amazed me so much that I was convinced that further study in the field would give me ideas and paradigms fascinatingly different from what I already knew (e.g., from my religious upbringing).  In studying ancient Greco-Roman religion and Christianity, I discovered that even though continuities can be found, that the two religions are based on qualitatively different religious variables renders comparison difficult if not impossible outside of the few shared continuities.

Ancient Greco-Roman religion was not just “Greek mythology.” In fact, ritual played the central role as means of appeasing and petitioning one god or another. The ritual sacrificing of animals took place on alters outside of the temples, which were used to store gifts for the gods. Because the Roman emperors considered themselves, or were considered to be divine, they mandated that sacrifices be made. Some early Christians accepted even death rather than sacrifice to a god other than Yahweh.

Christianity carried on the ritual of sacrifice in the Eucharistic liturgy. The bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ when a priest holds them up in the air above an alter (later, table) and recalls the sacrifice that Jesus makes in the Gospels. The Greek and Roman priests consumed the best of the burnt offerings, and the Christian priests consume the body and blood of Christ. Until the Vatican II council of the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s, the chalices were not extended to the laity. There was thus a continuity between the respective Roman priests.

Lest it be assumed that the two religions are easily comparable, it should be noted that even the importance of Jesus Christ’s vicarious sacrifice (see Anselm) does not mean that Christianity’s most important variable is ritualistic sacrifice. Even more important than the ritual consecration is the variable of love. The relative importance of love over ritualistic sacrifice is particularly evident in Protestantism. Even in Anglicanism and Lutheranism, taking Communion receives less emphasis than in Roman Catholicism. That ritual sacrifice is not the core of Christianity does not downgrade the religious efficacy of the Eucharist in the transforming process of sanctification. Rather, the ritualistic sacrifice is a means to an end that reflects another variable (love). The variables of love and ritual are not only distinct; they are different in kind.

To Augustine, “God is love” is foundational. Calvin agreed. The theologians could have been looking at the following biblical verse, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”[1] Even to say God loves is awkward because God’s very nature is love. Hence no one says, love loves, for what else would love do? This is not to say that the action of loving is synonymous with love itself. By example and preachments, Jesus of the Gospels makes the foundation clear. This is not to say that Jesus’ vicarious sacrifice for the salvation of humans therefore lies at the core of the religion. Just following the biblical passage above ending with “God is love” is this sentence: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”[2] “In this,” namely that God is love, God became incarnate and willingly allowed that incarnation to be sacrificed for humans. The incarnation, including its sacrifice, presupposes that God is love, so ritually reenacting the sacrifice of the incarnation cannot be foundational over God’s nature as love. Put another way that should now seem familiar, God’s nature exists before, and is thus not contingent on, God sending his Son into the world. Whereas sacrifice can be classified under ritual (as one type), love cannot be so classified as it is not a type of ritual; indeed, love as the deity’s nature and ritual as a human activity are not directly comparable.

Therefore, just because phenomena exist in the same domain does not mean that the underlying core variables that are not shared are directly comparable. To be sure, two religions may be based on the same core-variable, in which case comparison is not nearly as much of a problem, but where the bases are disparate, comparisons can only go so far. For example, we can compare the ritual sacrifices in ancient Roman religion and Roman Catholicism, but once we go deeper, we run into a brick wall because ritual and love are not directly comparable as they are disparate.  Even if two variables can be connected, they may still be disparate. For example, truth and Creation are not directly comparable even though it can be said that it is true that the Abrahamic deity created all that is in Creation. The nature of truth in Hinduism does not recognize this connection. This alone means that truth itself must transcend its particular manifestations. Hence St. Denis (Pseudo-Dionysus) wrote that God transcends the Trinity, so a person clutching to the latter metaphysical idea does not sufficiently transcend beyond the limits of  human cognition in yearning for God. It follows that the nature of God transcends human conceptions of the incarnation, which includes Jesus’ sacrifice and the related ritualistic sacrifices. Only by getting to the core variable of a religion can it be understood as sui generis, or unique, even though other religions are within the same domain.

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[1] 1 John 4:8. English Standard Version.

[2] 1 John 4:9.

On Believing in Jesus Christ as the Preeminent Focus of Christianity

Jesus’ identity as the Son of God is salient in the four canonical gospels, as well as in Paul’s letters. Hence, christology has been an important field of theology. While the benefits to the Christian have been touted so much in historical and contemporary theological writings, the costs and vulnerabilities of the nearly monopolistic focus have largely gone unnoticed. The realization of them would allow Christians (including extant theologians) to gain a fuller (i.e., holistic) perception and understanding of the religion, and even a better practice thereof.  I will begin with the theology then provide a practical example of the problems involved in having a willowed-down focus at the expense of the drawbacks.

In approximately 170 CE, Irenaeus, a bishop in Lyon in the Roman Empire’s province of Gual (in modern-day France), selected Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as the four canonical gospels. He wrote, “The heretics boast that they have many more gospels than there really are. But really they don’t have any gospels that aren’t full of blasphemy. There actually are only four authentic gospels. And this is obviously true because there are four corners of the universe and there are four principal winds, and therefore there can be only four gospels that are authentic.”[1] To the extent that such a rationale held any sway in his day and beyond, we can surmise just how flimsy what we literally take as gospel can be. Irenaeus assumed that the four gospels were authentically written by the four disciples, but slapping a prominent name on a piece of religious writing was commonly done in ancient times. The Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Peter could also have been said to be written by two disciples.

Irenaeus viewed the negative stance on the material realm in the Gnostic texts as heretical (even though Augustine would write in his later texts very negatively of the earthly realm—seven the physicality of sex is not to be enjoyed even when done to reproduce). I contend that Irenaeus was even in this respect motivated especially to highlight the divinity of Christ.  

Irenaeus didn’t like there being “many gospels circulating with different accounts about Jesus, particularly a number of these accounts [that] rather down-play the materiality and physicality of Jesus’ body.”[2] Ironically, dismissing the physicality of Jesus’ body goes against the christological doctrine that Jesus is the Son of God because as such, God is made flesh (i.e., corporeal). Hence the resurrected Jesus not only walks through a door of the Upper Room, but also asks his disciples for fish, as he is hungry. By implication, that the god-man is fully human and fully divine, which the Council of Nicaea would make official dogma in 325 CE, must have been important to Irenaeus when he was selecting gospels to include in the canon. That is, the identity of Jesus Christ as a god-man must have played an important role in Irenaeus’ selection of the four canonical gospels, within which Jesus’ christological identity is not only the central theme, but also the basis of the salvation of souls in transformed, resurrected bodies, which is the ultimate goal in the faith narratives. God sent his only son to reunite the human species from its sordid earthly condition due to original sin. Jesus’ identity is absolutely crucial to Christ being the second Adam, vicariously undoing Adam’s mistake in having sought divine knowledge of good and evil. I submit that the prideful presumption of seeking divinity is the original sin.

The problem is that presumptuous pride can flourish even though a Christian’s religious focus is on his or her belief that Jesus is divine and that accepting Christ as such means that the he or she is saved and will thus be reunited with God; hence Luther’s doctrine, solo fides, or only by faith. I submit that good works are also necessary. By good works, I don’t mean the liturgical Eucharistic process of sanctification, which is salient in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox doctrine. I don’t even mean good works generally, such as volunteering at a charity. Rather, I mean the putting Jesus’ teachings of neighbor love into practice, and especially of not violating them. Such teachings include turning the other cheek, and even going on to help people who are, in modern parlance, being jerks or assholes. The application of self-emptying love goes well beyond people who are persecuting.

On Easter one year, when I lived in an apartment complex, a resident below one of the units just next to mine played loud, high-bass music with his front door open for hours. Passing by with my garbage at one point, I saw the man in his doorway and asked him to turn his music down. He stared at me for a second, then turned his back. He did not lower his music’s volume or even close his front door. I surmised that the man’s attitude was the underlying problem. Indeed, he even went outside to laugh about my request with another resident who had blasted racist lyrics containing much profanity out in the courtyard (even though kids were in the courtyard). That other resident, who just a week earlier had told police that playing  loud racist, swearing music was part of his culture and thus to be respected, then went to another resident and pointed to my apartment. I knew I was being targeted (with racial overtones), which is at two degrees of separation from being considerate. A bit later, I called the police, who asked the man to turn down his volume. I could hear the man shouting at the police. This is really bad, I thought in reference to the man’s attitude.  

The irony is that the very inconsiderate man was playing the loud music in anticipation of relatives coming over for Easter! He was like the person who goes to hell thinking all the while that he is going to heaven. Aggressively violating Jesus’ teachings on how to enter the Kingdom of God while having an Easter party suggests the presence of gaping cognitive dissidence. The same sort of cognitive dissidence applies when a person celebrates Gandhi’s birthday by being violent. The mind should be able to be conscious of such contradictions, and yet this is not the case, at least in the realm of religious ideas. It is precisely this disconnect that has provoked so much of my analytical thinking on religion. Perhaps the human brain contains a weakness or vulnerability in reasoning and being conscious of discordances between religious ideas and practice. Even in terms of religious ideas, such as inflame self-idolatry, the human mind may be handicapped organically. Such a handicap could warp the use of logic. For instance, a person might think, I’m going to annoy my neighbors intentionally as I celebrate Easter. That such an approach not only undoes any religious merit in celebrating Jesus’ resurrection, but also adds sin is something obviously worth realizing, and yet it is not, and has not, been acted on, let alone realized.

The narrow focus on Jesus’ religious identity and even his role in the history of salvation can mean that his instructions for how to get into the Kingdom of God are eclipsed such that they are violated even, it is presumed, in the service of Christ. Crusaders, for example, killed their enemies in Jerusalem and Constantinople for Christ. It never dawned on the four Medieval popes and their soldiers appropriated by Christian kings that killing Muslims in Jerusalem and eastern Christians in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) violates Jesus’ important injunction against harming enemies (as they are to be loved). In going on offence to take back one or the other city, the Crusaders could not even resort to Christian just-war justifications. That the leaders of the Christian Church in Western Europe were leading the charge demonstrates just how great the cognitive dissidence can be even in proclaimed vicars—earthly representatives of Christ. To represent Jesus by killing enemies is such an oxymoron that the human faculties of mind are themselves implicated as they apply themselves to religion.

I recommend, therefore, that Christians shift their focus from the christological and soteriological beliefs to Jesus’ teachings on how to enter the Kingdom of God. That is, rather than focusing on a belief about Jesus’ divine, salvific identity, focus on following and not violating Jesus’ example and teachings in the gospels. Even in self-questioning whether an attitude or conduct violates Jesus’ admonition to turn the other cheek and even proactively care for neighbors even if they are a pain in the ass or an outright enemy, a Christian can rest assured that beliefs about Jesus’s identity and role in salvation will take care of themselves, like lilies in the field. Perhaps the human mind is not good at holding very abstract beliefs and very concrete conduct together such that they can be compared and contrasted. Beliefs concerning conduct may be easier to hold, and thus a stronger focus for the believing Christian.

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[1] Elaine Pagels, “The Emergence of the Canon,” in “Emergence of the Four Gospels,” Frontline: From Jesus to Christ, PBS.org , April, 1998 (accessed April 12, 2020).

[2] Elizabeth Clark, “Irenaeus and the Heretics,” in “Emergence of the Four Gospels,” Frontline: From Jesus to Christ, PBS.org , April, 1998 (accessed April 12, 2020).