Table Of ContentA M A N 'S R E L I G I ON IS T HE C E N T ER OF
H IS T O T AL O R I E N T A T I ON TO L I F E; IT IS
I M P E R A T I VE IN T H IS A T O M IC A GE T H AT
WE U N D E R S T A ND T HE F A I TH OF O T H ER
M E N, W I T H O UT W E A K E N I NG O UR O W N,
IN T H IS C H A L L E N G I NG B O O K, A N O T ED
S C H O L AR OF C O M P A R A T I VE R E L I G I ON
C O N S I D E RS T HE O U T W A RD F O R MS A ND
I N N ER C O N V I C T I O NS O F, A M O NG O T H
E R S, C H R I S T I A N S, M U S L I M S, H I N D U S,
B U D D H I S T S, M A N I C H E E S, Z O R O A S T R I A NS
E V EN T HE M O D E RN I D E O L O GY OF
M A R X I S T S.
AS D R. S M I TH E X A M I N ES T HE T H I N K I NG
OF T HE G R E AT P R O P H E TS OF H I S T O R Y,
HE SHOWS T H AT T H E Y, L I KE C H R I S T,
H A VE N OT P R E A C H ED A " R E L I G I O N ."
T HE A U T H OR I L L U S T R A T ES T HE
W O R L D 'S R E L I G I O NS AS C H A N N E LS
T H R O U GH W H I CH A M AN OF F A I TH
F I N DS S P I R I T U AL T R A N S C E N D E N CE M E
D I A T E D. H IS IS A R A D I C AL D E P A R T U RE
F R OM T HE T R A D I T I O N AL M E T H O DS OF
T HE S T U DY OF R E L I G I O NS AN A C
C O U NT W H I CH T A K ES I N TO F U LL C O N
S I D E R A T I ON T HE E M P I R I C AL H I S T O R I
C AL F A C T S, AS W E LL AS T HE D Y N A M IC
I N N ER L I FE OF D I V E R SE B E L I E V E R S,
A ND O F F E RS A P O W E R F UL S Y N T H E S IS
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Joseph Gaer
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P R I N T ED IN T HE U N I T ED S T A T ES OF A M E R I CA
Chapter One
I N T R O D U C T I ON
is or a religion? What is religious faith?
W H AT R E L I G I O N,
Such questions, asked either from the outside or from with
in, must nowadays be set in a wide context, and a rather ex
acting one. The modern student may look upon religion as
something that other people do, or he may see and feel it
as something in which also he himself is involved. In either
case he approaches any attempt to understand it conscious
not only of many traditional problems but also of new
complications. Sensitive men have ever known that they are
dealing here with a mystery. Some modern investigators have
thought to strip the phenomena of any transcendent reference,
to explain by explaining away. Yet their explanations, how
ever persuasive each one might sound at first, have proven
mutually discordant. They have left the sensitive still in the
presence of an open element, unknown or undominated, but
one that is surrounded now with a formidable range of new
data bearing on the matter in an elaborate and perplexing
way.
Many considerations, then, must be taken into account in
any analysis that is to satisfy a serious modern inquirer. We
may enumerate four or five as among the more weighty. First,
of course, there is science. This impinges both in a general
and in several particular ways. It is relevant in its broadest
coverage, as signifying the growing body of knowledge about
7
8 T HE M E A N I NG A ND E ND OF R E L I G I ON
the empirical universe in all its sweep; as signifying further
the method and mood of attaining that knowledge; as signify
ing also the practical mastery that it imparts. It is relevant
also more specifically in so far as particular studies such as
psychology, sociology, economic history, and also the ad hoc
sciences of Religionswissenschaft have seemed to illuminate
the ostensibly religious behaviour of man. Science radically
modifies life intellectually and practically for all men, includ
ing those who would live it morally and spiritually; as well
as modifying the scholar's understanding of its processes.
Secondly, there is the multiplicity of religious traditions. In
addition to a myriad of lesser groups, there are on earth not
one but at least four or five major religious communities each
proclaiming a faith w i th a long and impressive, even brilliant,
past and with the continuing creative allegiance of mighty
civilizations. This is known in theory; the knowledge is today
supplemented in practice by personal contact and widespread
social intermingling. A ny adequate interpretation of a Chris
tian's faith, for instance, must make room for the fact that
other intelligent, devout, and moral men, including perhaps
his own friends, are Buddhists, Hindus, or Muslims.
Somewhat related to this consideration is the further fact
of diversity w i t h in each tradition. Every faith appears in a
variety of forms. Regarded from another angle, this may be
seen as a problem of authority: the multiplicity of guidance
with which modern man is faced religiously, which may
approximate to an absence of guidance. It is no longer easy
or even possible to have a religious faith without selecting its
form.
Next may be noted the sheer fact of change. The world is
in flux, and we know i t. Like other aspects of human life, the
religious aspect too is seen to be historical, evolving, in pro
cess. A ny modern endeavour to clarify what religion is, must
now include a question as to what at various stages of develop
ment religion has been. A nd if it does not venture on some
speculation as to what it may become in the future, at least
there is recognition that, like everything else that we know on
earth, religion may be expected to continue to change.
Finally, we would mention the vitality of faith. The prob
lems besetting a satisfactory understanding of religion are
increasingly evident Yet religion itself continues, and in many
parts of the world appears perhaps to be resurgent. For a
time some thought that the onslaught of science, comparative
religion, uncertainty, and the rest—in a word, the onslaught
of modernity—meant or would mean the gradual decline and
disappearance of the religious tradition. This no longer seems
I N T R O D U C T I ON 9
obvious. The outside student in his attempt at explana
tion must reckon w i th the fact that, despite all 'debunking',
men find in religion something outweighing the critics' charges.
From w i t h i n, the man of faith must strive to attain some ex
position of that faith that w i ll do justice to the values that,
even in the modern w o r l d, are being made available to him.
Though this continuing or renewed vitality is general, it is
also particular. One has not understood religion if one's inter
pretation is applicable to only one of its forms. On the other
hand, neither has one understood religion if one's interpreta
tion does justice only to some abstraction of religiousness in
general but not to the fact that for most men of faith, loyalty
and concern are not for any such abstraction but quite specifi
cally and perhaps even exclusively for their own unique tra
dition—or even for one section w i t h in that. The Christian
and the Muslim must be seen, certainly, in a world in which
other men are Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews. Yet inter-re
ligious and even intra-religious strife and disdain, and cer
tainly difference, as well as any common characteristics that
may be discovered, are significant and may be crucial. There
is no a priori reason for holding that the unique may not
be more significant, more true, than the common. The student
must be careful lest he glibly decide before he starts that the
differences between the various communities are either con
siderably more or else considerably less important than the
similarities—thereby taking sides, in a facile and perhaps un
conscious fashion, on one of the most profound of religious
issues. On this as on other points, no analysis of religion is
serviceable even for purposes of discussion if it is manifestly
subordinate to one of the great questions w i th which it should
deal.
On these, then, and on other scores it has been easy for
studies of the religious quality of man's life and the religious
aspect of his history to fall short of adequacy. The philoso
pher of religion has formulated interpretations that are at
times penetrating and may be brilliantly conceived; but to
them the historian of religion musters specific and stark ex
ceptions. The historian of religion has offered descriptions
that may be meticulously accurate as to detail; but in
them the man of faith does not recognize the substance of
that in which he is involved. The believer has propounded
views that have the virtue of depth and genuineness; but they
are relevant or intelligible only to those within the same or a
similar tradition. The psychologist or sociologist has probed
the externals or the aberrations of faith; but has missed the
heart of the matter that has kept the externals living, or the
10 T HE M E A N I NG A ND E ND OF R E L I G I ON
norms from which the abnormal, perhaps all too readily,
deviates. The insider knows something precious within the
materials that he uses, but cannot assimilate the external
truths about those materials that an observer has carefully
ascertained and can convincingly document.
The rich panorama of man's religious life over the centuries
presents the observer w i th a bewildering variety of phenome
na, and the studies of those phenomena present him w i th a
cacophony of interpretation. Those who would understand,
and those who would intelligently participate, are confronted
with a task of no mean proportions.
Indeed, an argument can be made that the whole enter
prise is inherently impossible or illegitimate. Any attempt to
make a rational or scholarly study of religion, some have
held, is foredoomed. Clearly I do not find these arguments
convincing, or I would not write this book. Presumably those
who take the trouble to read or even to glance at it are also
not committed to a negative position of this k i n d. Neverthe
less, although we may not find such views finally cogent,
neither should we find them absurd. There is much to be said
for approaching not merely with caution but w i th hesitation
and even something akin to awe what some, with but careless
rhetoric, have called 'this field of study'. In this case the
analogy of a field can be misleading. No matter how exten
sive, how difficult to encompass, a field yet lies at our feet,
to be surveyed and in the end dominated. The subject mat
ter of our study, on the other hand, is not so abject or
supine, not to be paced upon by a would-be surveyor.
It has been said that one must tread softly here, for one is
treading on men's dreams. Furthermore, what we view in
contemplating man's religion lies not only below us, stretch
ing on and on without bounds, but around us and w i t h in
us and above us. A nd not only does it lie, passively; here is
something active, momentous, with its own initiative.
There are three main groups from whom comes a challenge
to any scholarly inquiry into religion. First there are those
who would disdain comparative or empirical study on the
I N T R O D U C T I ON 11
grounds that the elucidation of religion's meaning and na
ture, and an insight into its functioning and processes, is to
be obtained only from a knowledge of Christianitv—or of
Islam, or whatever is one's own faith—as representing reli
gion at its highest, or the only true religion. Such men would
hold that to consider other religions as well, is to fa'sify and
distort, rather than to enlarge one's understanding; that one
gains in breadth by sacrificing both depth and truth; that an
understanding of roses is not enhanced by a study of ro
settes.
As a criticism of the nonbeliever, this is not irrelevant.
Even those who do not share such a conviction must treat it
with respect. A ll should concede this much, that a person who
has not seen the point of any one religion is not in the best
position to generalize about the significance of them all.
Our answer to this point will develop only gradually, in
the course of our argument. Part of it is that one need not
accept the either/or dichotomy of those who thus contend that
one should study Christianity (or, Islam; etc.) rather than
religion in general. One may, and should, study both the
Christian and the Islamic and the other individual traditions,
so that ultimately one's interpretation may do justice not only
to the insight or force or validity of one faith but at the
same time to the facts of all.
It may also be objected that an understanding of Christian
ity is impossible except for those who have faith in i t, that
only a Muslim can understand Islam, and the like. This ob
jection too must be taken very seriously. Again our answer
w i ll emerge only as we proceed. It w i ll in part run along
the lines of suggesting that the issue may be formulated
differently, in a way that both sharpens the problem and
makes possible a solution.
Secondly, a study of the world's religious life in its em
bracing variety can be decried also from quite another pole:
not that it is beneath one's dignity, but that it is above one's
competence. This argument would have it that in some degree
all religions (and not only one's own) deal with what is holy,
transcendent, infinite; and that therefore the attempt to sub
ject them to rational analysis, empirical investigation, compari
son, and human interpretation is not only impious but vain.
By accusations of irreverence modern man, particularly sci
entific man, is not much deterred: he will scrutinize all that
is before him, sacrosanct or no. But before the other half
of this charge he must, if honest, pause: that his scrutiny
of holy things is vitiated by the inherent inappropriateness of
the method to the material. Religious men have charged
