What Kind of Unity does Religion Possess?

The difficulties in giving a clear operational definition for ‘religion’ do not reflect an inability to pick out the general area of human life that the study of religion is concerned with.

The relation between the alleged common core to religions and their outward characteristics can be understood on the model of ‘essence and manifestation’. The common core to all religions is then said to be the essence of religion. There are different religions because this essence is manifested in different historical and cultural contexts. The unique features of a particular religion can be explained by showing how the core features of religion would produce the outward characteristics of the religion in ques­tion, given the particular setting that this religion is placed in. The core features of religion are thus believed to be its true essence in that they are the unvarying, underlying features fundamental in explaining all else.

Such a definition of‘religion’ that arose from a search for religion’s inner essence or core would have two distinct advantages over an operational definition. It could, in the first place, be said to be a true account of the nature of religion. An operational definition on the other hand would at best be a true summary of ordinary usage, but its adequacy would largely be a matter of its suitability to the purposes behind it. But if we discovered an inward core to religion we would be able to describe the true source of religion’s unity and the true explanation of its manifold characteris­tics. Such a definition would produce a second valuable consequence in so far as it would be the means of settling the boundary disputes over the demarca­tion of religion in a sure and non-arbitrary fashion. The religions shown to possess the core would have been linked together in fundamental respects. Those things our operational definition had previously allowed to be margi­nal examples of religious phenomena but which did not possess the core of religion would have been shown to be essentially unlike the central cases.

The power of an account of religion’s essence to produce a strong, clear demarcation of religion points to the way one could test any such account. If the account excludes from the denotation of ‘religion’ central examples of religious phenomena according to a reasonable operational definition, then it is false and inadequate. If we cannot come up with any precise specification of a common core to all religions which does not exclude some such examples, then all religions do not have a common core and religion does not have an essence.

There seem to be two main sources of the belief in an essence to religion, in the belief that all religions share a common core. One we may call ‘theological’, the other ‘scientific’.

The theological source of the belief arises from a concern with the truth of religion. Those who wish to contend that religion in general is correct in its claim that there is a sacred realm beyond the profane or that there is a God will naturally be embarrassed by the apparent diversity and conflict amongst the contrasting beliefs of the world’s religions.

Given the terms of this study, we cannot endorse so evidently theological a motive in searching for religion’s essence. But we can take cognisance of another source of the search. One might well believe that a truly scientific treatment of religion must be committed to the belief in a common core to all religions, for only if this belief is true will the world’s religions be explicable in a truly scientific way. The student of religion will be able to see his investigation into religion by analogy with the way a scientist investigates the nature and properties of a natural substance.

The attractiveness of the belief in an essence to all religions to those who wish the study of religions to be a true science lies in the thought that a precise delimiting of the object of study and the true laws to explain its characteristics are thereby possible. With a common core there is a real non-conventional and non-arbitrary way of picking out ‘true’ examples of religion and there is hope of being able to explain the many facets of religion by generalisations from its essence. In considering examples of suggested cores for religion we thus need to bear two questions in mind.

The entire question of whether a true science of religion is possible is an important one and we shall touch upon it later in considering how far a disinterested study of religion is possible. In now turning to sample accounts of refigion’s essence or common core, we shall discuss examples of theories which locate the essence/core in religion’s beliefs, in its origins and in its experiences.

An early example of an attempt by a Western scholar to find an essence to all religion comes from the work of the seventeenth­century humanist Edward Herbert. Exhibiting very clearly the theological motives that can lie behind the search for a common core to all religions, Herbert argues that, if God exercises a universal providence over the whole of mankind, we should expect to find in all religions a reliable account of how God is to be served. There must therefore be some ‘common notions’ in religion or ‘catholic articles’ which all true religions agree in. Herbert thinks he has found these common notions in the following five simple beliefs: 1. ‘That there is one supreme God’; 2. ‘That he ought to be worshipped’; 3. ‘That virtue and piety are the chief parts of divine worship’; 4. ‘That we ought to be sorry for our sins and repent of them’; 5. ‘That divine goodness doth dispense rewards and punishments both in this life and after it’ (Herbert, 1705: 3—4).

The problem that we have pointed to facing Her­bert’s attempt at unity shows initially in how he links both Christianity and Classical paganism together by reference to his common notions in religion. The Classical world apparently believed in many gods who were often regarded as being identical with parts of the natural world (e.g. sun, heavens, moon) rather than as supreme and transcendent. Ancient heathenism and Christianity are still linked, however, for, according to Herbert, the heath­ens’ worship of the sun etc. ‘was symbolical’ (Herbert, 1705: 31). Thus he is forced to seek a ‘true’, ‘inner’ meaning behind the outward form of pagan beliefs. Such an inner meaning ought to be there if his belief about God’s presence in all religions is correct, but can we follow him in this ‘symbolical’ interpretation of Classical polytheism if we do not accept his theological starting-point? The question here raised about the attempt to see a common theology in all faiths gains force upon noting that Herbert acknowledges popular polytheism could not be interpreted symbolically. Polytheistic and pagan beliefs were taken seriously by many with the result that in place of religion, defined by the common notions, we had superstition and idolatry (see Herbert, 1705: 381-2). But now all religion is being unified by Herbert’s common core of belief only at the cost of setting aside many forms of theology and worship as superstitious and idolatrous. We have: not an attempt to seek a common core to all religions, but a theological judgement that all correct, worthwhile religions will share certain beliefs. Herbert’s theology is more unifying than some, because it is less specific, but he is none the less trying to estabfish what is correct in religion rather than what is essential to all its manifestations.

When we reflect, as Herbert could not, on the greater variety of doctrine and myth apparent with the recognition of non-theistic religions, the normative, theological character of attempts to see a single set of beliefs as unifying all religions is even more evident. Only if we are prepared to wield the distinction between ‘true’ and ‘false’ religion with vigour can we hope to unite all religions around a common set of beliefs. But that this is so, shows in turn that this form of the search for a common core to religion has no place in a disinterested, neutral survey of mankind’s religious life throughout the world and its history.

The second form of the belief in an essence to all religions we wish to consider focuses upon the idea that all religions are identical in origin. There is a common essence to all religions because they all spring from the same original root (see Alston, 1967:141). This approach to the search for religion’s essence is popular wherever a strongly evolutionary perspective upon human life is influential. For if one thinks that human life and culture is the product of an evolutionary process, one may be led to conclude that the key to understanding it will lie in its origins. Since it is reasonable to suppose that human culture had similar origins in different parts of the world, one can assume a uniform starting-point for mankind’s religions. Accepting the crucial role of origins in an evolutionary account of any aspect of cultural life, one will conclude there is common essence (i.e. explanatory key) to all religions.

There are numerous examples of this version of the essence theory, for it was particularly in vogue amongst late nineteenth­century scholars in Europe impressed by the success of evolutionism in biology and other fields. Thus E.B. Tylor argues in his famous work Primi­tive Culture that all religions share in a common root, which is also their essence, through ‘animism’. Animism is the first philosophy of life and nature primitive man can be supposed to have thought out. It shaped the first human societies, the first religions from which all the rest flowed and is still at the heart of the religious faiths found today. It consists of the simple belief in souls (i.e. spiritual, non-material personalities) which animate man and his environment and control nature. Because of the centrality of the evolutionary origins of religion, animism in Tylor’s account is the key to understanding the manifold beliefs and practices now extant and is the hidden unity beneath that manifold. Despite the popularity of searching for the essence of religions through origins, there are a number of grave difficulties in this approach. They can be instructively set out by reference to Tylor’s theory. How, we may first ask, could we know that animism was or was not the first philoso­phy of life and nature from which all religions sprung? We have no direct access to the period of human history when culture and religion first arose, for by definition it occurred long before written records were possible. We can investigate the archaeology of the first human communities, but the traces they have left behind are meagre, rarely found and leave only the slimmest basis for inference as to the shape of the earliest human religions. Tylor overcomes this problem by largely basing his account upon the evidence of the beliefs of contemporary primitive peoples. These are tribal peoples who employ a low standard of technology and food production by European standards and can thus be taken to be living examples of the very first human communities. Leaving aside the much debated point of whether their religi­ous life is really united by the philosophy of animism, it may be doubted whether they truly fill the evidential gap that threatens the anthropologist’s speculations about the origins of all religions. For how do we know that their material culture has not developed slower than their spiritual? How do we know that either one or both are not degenerations from a state more sophisticated than that enjoyed at present? Even if their religious life were uniform, no sure clue is provided to the earliest origins of all religious Efe.

In fact the search for origins can be seen as a mislead­ing detour in the search for religion’s essence. For granted that all religions originate from, say, the same philosophy of nature, this will not unite them now unless they are all still true to that origin. It is an obvious fallacy (the ‘genetic fallacy’) to assume that because something originated in X it must still be essentially X and no more. Thus Tylor still has to show that all religions are still united in essence by the animistic philosophy (a point recognised in Chapter 11 of Primitive Culture). But then the origins theory of religion’s essence collapses into one of the other types of theory. In Tylor’s case it becomes another version of the view that all religions are united around a common belief or beliefs, but in his case a vague philosophy of nature has replaced the minimal theology Herbert lays down.

There is good reason to doubt whether any single philosophy of nature is or has been shared by all the central examples of religion. Animism, as defined by Tylor, will not do. For we read that in early Buddhism (to take but one example), though a variety of beings, including devas (gods), populate the universe, they occupy a secondary place, being impermanent and subject to a higher, impersonal cosmic law (see von Glasenapp, 1970: 30). The ‘gods’, therefore, did not occupy a fundamental role in the theoretical, practical, sociological or experiential dimensions of this central example of a religion.

The two sample accounts of religion’s essence so far considered flounder upon the doctrinal and theological complexities exhib­ited by the world’s religions. Given these complexities it is hard to find a common set of beliefs shared by all, or a common philosophical outlook in which they all agree. One way of continuing the search for religion’s essence which bypasses the doctrinal and philosophical differences among religions is provided by the notion that we must look for the shared possession of a certain type of experience. A shared mode of experience underlying doctrinal differences is the common core to all religions and the essence of religion, the key to understanding its other dimensions.

Numerous writers have prosecuted the search for religion’s essence in this fashion. One of the most famous is Rudolf Otto, who in his influential work The Idea of the Holy describes the numinous experience and ofit concludes ‘There is no religion in which it does not live as the real innermost core, and without it no religion would be worthy of the name’ (Otto, 1950: 6). This experiential essence to religion is described by Otto as having three essential features: mystery, power and love. The religi­ous experience is firstly an experience of something ‘wholly other’, that is, of something felt to be totally different from mundane objects of awareness. It is of something alien, foreign and transcendent. It does in addition strike those who have it with a sense of immense power. Before it awe, dread and fear are appropriate. The human subject of the experience feels himself and the objects around him as nothing in comparison with what is revealed in the numinous experience. The third important feature of the experience is shown in the way that, despite the mystery and power given in it, it draws and fascinates those who have it. They are not repelled, but rather their interest and concern is demanded by what is shown to them in the experience.

There are reasons for believing that something like Otto’s numinous experience is present in many religions otherwise different in points of doctrine or explicit philosophical outlook (why this is so will become apparent below). Despite this there are a number of grounds for doubting whether we have stumbled upon the essence or common core to all religions. Some of these grounds relate to the specifics of Otto’s account, others apply generally to accounts placing religion’s essence in experience.

A specific point of criticism comes from the difficulty of seeing that Otto’s analysis fits the character of many types of mystical experience. In mysticism the object of religion is sought through contemplation and inner quest. The characteristic result is a unitive experi­ence in which the object is not felt as ‘wholly other’ but as identical with, or somehow within, the self. A concentration upon numinous experiences has been held to come from over-attention to the strand of worship in the religions, worship being a religious attitude or discipline which encourages the idea of a gulf between the believer and the object of his devotions (see Smart, 1964: 129-31).

A further question mark over the status of the numinous as the essence to all religion casts doubts about the validity of any search for religion’s unifying essence in a mode of experience. The reason why the numinous experience looks like an important unifying feature, binding together at least all those religions in which worship is an important strand, is because its description captures many of the general features of man’s experience of the sacred. But ‘the sacred’ is not the name of a specific object common to all religions; no more is it the name of a specific experience. Otto’s description is unifying because it picks out some of thegeneric features (transcendence, power and attraction) that specific experiences of the sacred exemplify. We must be clear, however, that specific experiences of the sacred exemplify these generic features in different ways. This is not an accident. It arises through the mutual interaction of experience and doctrine in the religions. Those religions which all may be said to have as their generic object ‘the sacred’ differ enormously in the beliefs they hold about what specifically for them is sacred, and these idiosyncratic beliefs naturally colour in part how the sacred is experienced in religion. Otto’s appearance in Ute Idea of the Holy of presenting a precise, specific, non-generic experience is created by the concentration upon Jewish and Christian sample experiences used to illus­trate the numinous, for here we have experiences coloured and shaped by similar and overlapping beliefs about the object of experience. Otto himself affirms that the true essence of religion is not the numinous in isolation but the category of‘the Holy’ (see Chapters 14 and 17 of The Idea of the Holy), this being the numinous experience mediated, interpreted by some definite con­ceptions and beliefs. They turn out to be elements of conception and belief associated with the concept of God as we find it in the philosophical theology of the Christian tradition. No wonder then that, if organisation around the category of the Holy is the mark of the full development of something as an example of religion, ‘we find that Christianity... in this as in other respects, stands out in complete superiority over all its sister religions’ (Otto, 1950: 142). Here, then, we have a general point of principle against any attempt to seek a specific religious experience that will unite all religions despite their doctrinal and philosophical differences. There is no such specific experience because doctrines shape experiences, so the specifics of doctrine will affect the

Religion and the Religions specifics of experience. Only if experience and doctrine in religion were sharply separable (with perhaps differing doctrinal structures floating free above a unifying, specific experience to be found in all religions) could this be otherwise.

There are other ways of seeking an essence to religion than by the three modes we have illustrated (belief, origin and experience). Another important approach, for example, undertakes to dis­cover a common, unifying feature in the function religion might have in personal and social life (see, e.g. Durkheim, 1936). In the course of discussing our examples of the quest for religion’s essence we have noted one crucial problem that faces all such attempts. They have to locate religion’s essence in something sufficiently precise enough to have a real unifying and explanatory force, but sufficiently general not to be tied to the specifics of some central examples of religion rather than others. Our discussion also throws up another general difficulty for all forms of the quest. We see that it is hard to find a core with the right combination of precision and generality in any of the beliefs of the religions or in anything that is fundamentally affected by their differing beliefs (such as their different philosophical outlooks or modes of ex­perience). The measure of the difficulty in finding a core to religion which bypasses doctrine and belief may now be shown. For we can hope to find a common essence to religion only if we can hope to demonstrate that the theoretical dimension to religion is strictly secondary in making institutions examples of religion and in explaining their fundamental characteristics.

One may feel that this goal of relegating to the secondary and consequential the theoretical dimension in religion is too far-fetched to make the task of seeking an essence and common core to all religions seem at all attractive. Abandoning the task, one may still hope that the study of religions will produce interesting facts from one religion which illuminate our general conception of religion, and through that, other religions as well. One will have given up, however, any attempt to discover an absolute, definitive unity amongst religions or to explain the characteris­tics of religion by universal laws modelled on those in science.