III.

The Religions

Religions, as defined in this article, arise in cultures in which people have acquired a strong sense of differentiation of the human mind from the natural environment, subjective consciousness from objective fact, and thus spirit from matter. This sense of differentiation accompanies the development of settled agricultural civilizations in which the division of labour requires that individuals play different roles in the community. In hunting cultures, each individual male is master of all the skills required for survival, but in farming cultures a much higher degree of cooperation is required between individuals with differing skills and functions. Such cooperation necessitates in turn more precise forms of communication between people and thus of convention, or common agreement, as to the symbols of communication, especially language and role.

A.

Language, Convention, and Roles

A language becomes more effective as its vocabulary increases. Large numbers of words also indicate a high degree of awareness of distinctions among various things and events. Every word is a label for a class of experiences, and the essence of classification is that it divides things from one another. The necessity for playing different roles in the community also divides individuals from one another, and, to avoid confusion, requires individuals to identify themselves with their roles. Many names, such as Smith, Baker, Priest, Taylor, Carpenter, and Fuller, originally denoted roles performed in society. The word person (Latin persona) comes from the word for masks worn by actors in Graeco-Roman drama, the different masks identifying the roles to be played by the actors. People develop an awareness of their uniqueness and separateness from others based, in part, on their acceptance of particular roles in society.

The division of individuals by role and the increased perception of divisions in the world by language come about through convention, which is both divisive and cohesive. Conventions, however, are complex and learned with some difficulty. Because of this, the differences agreed on by society have to be enforced, just as children must be disciplined to learn a language and to master the rules of games or of etiquette and morals. The very life of the community depends upon observing the conventions of communication. The function of a religion is precisely to guarantee the whole system of convention, or the rules of thought and language, conduct, and role. For Judaism and Christianity, the idea of salvation is inseparable from the idea of belonging to a community of so-called chosen people, that is, the Church, considered as a body of members, or an assembly (Latin ecclesia), whether it be Israel or the communion of saints.

The connection between a system of social convention and a system of beliefs about the universe requires further explanation. Social convention includes such means as grammars, vocabularies, numbers, and signs, without which a person can feel but cannot think about the world. The American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf suggested that the structure of language, that is, of a person's thinking instrument, determines that person's view of the structure of nature. Thus, it is understandable that both the Semitic and the Indo-Aryan religious traditions conceive of the universe as having been created by the word of God. If the world is explained, managed, and described by thinking, it is therefore natural to suppose that it is created by thinking and that the laws of nature that thought discovers are the word or law of God underlying the world as its primordial pattern.

As a culture develops a coherent and orderly picture of the world, it is natural for its members to believe that the numinous power behind the world is itself coherent and orderly, and that it has unity. Their gradual realization that the natural order of the world has an intelligent pattern is accompanied by a feeling that they did not invent, but discovered this pattern, which someone must know entirely. They therefore attribute it to an intelligence other than their own. The more people appreciate the complexity of the pattern, the more they marvel at the intelligence behind it and so begin to formulate a mature conception of the Deity as a being who excels in wisdom and power and is immeasurably greater than a mere mortal. Thus, contemplating the wonder of his own bodily structure, the psalmist in the Bible wrote, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it” (Psalms 139:6).

B.

Theism

Religion, in this sense, is invariably theistic. It involves belief in a personal, living, and spiritual God, distinct from the world that he has created as the human mind is felt to be distinct from what it knows. Various forms of theism exist, however. The Old Testament shows a progress from henotheism (belief that the community must be loyal to one god only) to monotheism (belief that this god is the one and only God). Other forms of theism are polytheism, belief in many gods, which includes usually at least a vague apprehension that the many are aspects of one; pantheism, the belief that God is simply all things in the universe (although this type of belief is historically a philosophical idea rather than a religious belief); and panentheism, the belief that every creature is an appearance or manifestation of God, who is conceived of as the divine actor playing at once the innumerable parts of humans, animals, plants, stars, and natural forces.

Religion is therefore communal faith in and conformity to the pattern that thought discovers, or has revealed to it, as the will or commandment of the intelligence behind the world. The community binds itself to this pattern as its rule of life consisting of three elements—the creed, the code, and the cult. Creed is faith in the revealed pattern and in the divine intelligence that gave it. Code is the divinely sanctioned and authorized system of human laws and morals comprising the rules of active participation in society. Cult is the ritual of worship, or symbolic acts, whereby the community brings its mind into accord with the mind of God, either by ceremonial dances or dramatic re-enactments of the deeds of God, or by sacrificial meals held in common between God and his people. It is from this last-mentioned type of cult that, for example, the Christian Mass or communion service is derived.

C.

Salvation

Religious salvation is basically the idea of incorporation in a divine community through conformity to the will of God. In the later phases of the Semitic tradition, salvation began to include the idea of survival beyond death, first through miraculous resurrection of the body and later, as a result of Greek influences, by virtue of the inherent immortality of the soul. Salvation, however, remained subordinate to and conditional upon membership in the divine community. After death, those who remain unincorporated are spiritual outcasts consigned, for example, to the Judaic Gehenna, the Christian Hell, or the Islamic Iblis. On the other hand, salvation beyond death is conceived of as being a state of the most intimate union with God, in which, however, the distinct personality of each member is preserved.

Although salvation is considered to rest upon observance of a rule of life, all religious traditions recognize that, of their own powers, people cannot fulfil perfectly the conditions of salvation. The Hebrew Scriptures, which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam hold to be divinely revealed, contain the idea of a primordial Fall, or original sin, committed by the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, as a result of which the human will is basically perverted by self-love and pride. Salvation is therefore impossible without divine assistance. The three religions teach in common that God is, above all, loving and merciful and that his final purpose is the salvation of all humanity. Whenever individuals repent of their shortcomings, God freely offers his grace, that is, salvation considered as a gift to the undeserving. In the Christian tradition the only mediator or giver of grace is the historic Jesus of Nazareth, who is held to be the human embodiment or incarnation of God himself. Jesus loves the world so much that he comes into it to suffer its pains, bear its burdens, and transform it from within.

Therefore, in the present scheme of classification, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam may be termed the three “world religions”, that is, religions that have as their ideal the incorporation of the whole human race.

A number of other more localized faiths fit the definition of religion, but they are more closely bound to definite patterns of culture. These faiths are Sikhism in India and Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Parsees, in India and Iran. Among certain forms of religion no longer practised are the cults of Ra and Osiris of ancient Egypt and the classical mysteries of the Graeco-Roman world.