A 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 OF T HE R E L I G I O US E X P E R I E N CE OF M AN . . . A ND M A N K I N D, SIGNET and MENTOR Books of Special Interest by Wilfred Cantuoell Smith ISLAM IN MODERN HISTORY A noted scholar discusses the impact of Mohammed anism on Middle Eastern political life today. (#MT537—750) How (revised) THE GREAT RELIGIONS BEGAN Joseph Gaer A readable guide to man's quest for the spiritual, told through the inspiring lives of the world's religious leaders. (#P2253—<50$) by Huston Smith T HE RELIGIONS OF MAN The origins and basic teachings of the major faiths by which men live—from Hinduism to Christianity— by a noted scholar. (#MT350—750) by William James VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE A new edition of James* classic work on the psychology of religion and the religious impulse. Introduction by Jacques Barzun. ... (#MT320—75$) To OUR READERS: If your dealer does not have the and books you want, you may order them SIGNET MENTOR by mail, enclosing the list price plus 50 a copy to cover mailing. If you would like our free catalog, please request it by postcard. The New American Library of World Literature, Inc., P.O. Box 2310, Grand Central Station, New York, New York, 10017. © W I L F R ED C A N T W E LL S M I TH 1962, 1963 A ll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper. F or information address the publishers of the hardcover edition, T he Macmillaa Company, Fifth Avenue, New Y o r k, New Y o rk 60 10011, F I R ST PRINTING, D E C E M B E R, 1964 M K N T OR T R A D K M A HK HVX}. T*.S. P A T. O F F. A ND F O R H I ON C O U N T R I ES ItKi'JISTKKKD T it AI>KM A I C K—M A R CA B t U I S TK A DA B K C HO KN O H I C A U O, U . S . A. M E N T OR B O O KS are published in the United States by T he New American Library of World Literature, I n c ., 501 Madison Avenue, New Y o r k, New Y o rk 10022, in Canada by T he New American L i b r a ry of Canada Limited, 156 Front Street West, Toronto 1, Ontario, in the United Kingdom by T he New English L i b r a ry Limited, Barnard's Inn, Holborn, L o n d o n, E . C. 1, England 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