Netherlands, 1860s: Tiele's (tentative) science of religion
The Dutch context of the late nineteenth century was marked by the establishment of the so- called duplexordo (i.e. the ‘two- fold order') via the 1876 law on Higher Education, according to which a formal separation of the academic, theologically free approach to the study of religion(s) and the ecclesiastical, theology-driven pastoral formation, became the law of the Dutch state (Platvoet 1998a: 116; Molendijk 2017: 7).
In the long run, this landmark decision, which kickstarted the inception of modern HoR (initially labelled there as ‘science of religion'), legitimated an accommodationist approach to re-confessionalize the discipline. This outcome can be considered as the consequence of the academic and cultural environment in which the discipline was set to grow, which remained deeply theological: ‘Protestant theologians [were] in a position to make decisions about the shape of university curricula', and they dominated the intellectual and humanistic landscape of that time (Strenski 2015: 79).However, as the brainchild of Dutch pioneer and Arminian minister Cornelis Petrus Tiele (1830-1902), the Dutch ‘science of religion' (godsdienstwetenschap) was originally imagined, first, as an ally of the natural sciences (Wiebe 1999: 183), and, second, as the battering ram with which to break through the citadel of institutional theology (Platvoet 1998a: 116). Like Max Müller, Tiele is often recalled as one of the pioneers, if not the founder, of modern HoR (Molendijk 2005: 1-2). Not dissimilar to Max Müller, Tiele too thought of the new discipline as a way to filter spiritual notions and reach a purer and more coherent form of theology and religion (Platvoet 1998a: 118; Molendijk 2004: 323, 347). However, just like Max Müller, Tiele was committed to scientific epistemology, which made him an opponent of the ‘obscurantist supranaturalism' of confessional theologies (Tiele 1866a; from Platvoet 1998a: 117; cf.
Molendijk 2004: 332) and a staunch advocate of a comparative ‘scientific theology' (Tiele 1860: 816). This discipline was based upon the following elements:1. historical data;
2. the identification of Tylorian survivals;8
3. the rejection of the degeneration thesis, i.e. the regressive course of religious development from pristine and divine origins;
4. the abolition of the disconnection between ‘natural' (i.e. non-Western and/or non-doctrinal) and ‘revealed' (that is, Abrahamic and Eastern) religions;
5. the inclusion of Bible studies as part and parcel of the comparative spectrum;
6. the adoption of general laws describing, and classifying, religious development within a progressive framework (Platvoet 1998a: 118; cf. Molendijk 2004).9
This approach was completed by a further distinction between genealogical and morphological classifications of religion, the former being concerned with historical descent, the latter being dedicated to the identification of developmental stages (Molendijk 2004: 330). From a methodological point of view, Tiele's science of religion was envisioned as the result of the fusion between anthropology and psychology within the natural sciences, with the inclusion of materials coming from aesthetic, historical and systematic theology (Platvoet 1998a: 120).10
These Wittgensteinian family resemblances between the late Victorian science of religion and Tieles own science of religion are not accidental. Direct contacts, acquaintanceship and research invitations strengthened an intellectual partnership started with a letter dated 2 October 1884, in which Tiele was asked by Smith himself to contribute to the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1886),11 and crowned by the invitation to hold the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1896 and 1897 (Tiele 1897-1899). Paralleling Smith's working hypothesis, as well as the early Max Muller's vision for the discipline, Tiele's project for a truly scientific theology was nonetheless dominated by a theological a priori in the guise of a divine revelation as ‘the basic' or ‘primeval' force, which instilled a religious sense in human beings ‘by nature' (Tiele 1866: 228-30, from Platvoet 1998a: 120), although he recognized that any theorization explicitly based upon the idea of homo religiosus as such would be as futile as ‘saying that a dog barks because he has the capacity to bark' (Molendijk 2005: 138 n.
50, paraphrasing Tiele 1871: 401). At last, after more than 10 years of relentless attacks against theologians and proposals for institutional reorganization, Tiele's ‘strategy of conquest' (Leertouwer 1989) was successful, and in 1878 he became the only professor in the field to be appointed in a faculty of Theology from outside of the Dutch Public Church in a non-ecclesiastical public university (in Leiden; Platvoet 1998a: 117).Tiele famously stated that the ‘science of religion is as distinct from [confessional] theology as astronomy is from astrology, and chemistry is from alchemy' (Tiele 1873: 379; from Platvoet 1998a: 122-3). Indeed, his project, notwithstanding the implicitly unresolved tension between faith and science, could have provided the epistemological basis for a durable scientific agenda (Wiebe 1999: 44, 183). However, just as the coeval Victorian science of religion was doomed, his science of religion proved to be more than permeable to more fideistic infiltrations because of some flaws in the original design itself (but see Wiebe 1999: 39). First, Tiele's antireductionistic approach insulated beliefs and matters of faith from further critical scrutiny (Wiebe 1999: 44). Second, Tiele tried to dissociate its developmental aspect from Darwinian evolution, insofar as it identified a moral gap between human beings and nonhuman animals (again, a gap embedded in both the inner religiosity of the human being granted by a god, and the direct link between God's love and revelation and human conscience; Platvoet 1998a: 119). Th ird, Tiele showed a certain reluctance, and resistance, to embrace a fully fledged Darwinian approach, for fear of being labelled as reductionist and materialist (see Molendijk 2005: 156, 162-3). Fourth, and lastly, the typological development of religion through religions resulted in Tiele's adoption of the idea of ‘mankind as religious by nature', with humankind striving to attain a ‘fitter and fuller expression' of a religious devotion seen as ‘the eternal working of the divine Spirit' (Tiele 1897-1899, I: 32, 38; for the metaphysical postulates in Tiele's works see Platvoet 1998a: 129). As a result of such premises, the Dutch discipline was bound to adopt a providential way of explaining the course of history, as if a ‘divine direction lay behind a movement of history which marched in [...] favour' of whoever was studying it as such (in this case, Dutch theologians; Strenski 2015: 79). This idea suited quite perfectly the belief in teleological directions as described in the previous chapter; naturalistic accounts of religion were abandoned, and evolution per se discarded (contra Spineto 2010: 1258; cf. Molendijk 2005: 26 on the turn of the century as ‘the end of an era').