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