How To Study Religion

There is a perpetual temptation for the analytic mind to
classify religion under strict heads, to seal its facts with pre-
conceived labels, as if reality had to fit the handy trade-marks
of our theories, as if that which cannot be compared and
stamped as mana, tabu, totem, or the like, must be ignored or
denied. Every particular act of faith or ritual is, furthermore,
analyzed as if it were a bank account, a matter of calculation,
wherein every detail is explainable and every transaction a
computable operation.
      Having attained supreme critical detachment from their
subject matter, some scholars apply to religion a paleontolgi-
cal method, as if it were a fossil chiseled from the shale or a
plant brought home by an expedition from exotic lands. In-
deed, when taken out of the depth of piety, it exists mostly in
a symbiosis with other values like beauty, justice or truth.
      Some students of religion operate with categories gained by
anthropological observers of primitive beliefs and rituals, as
if the total character, the genuine nature of humanity were
revealed in its primitive stage. They seem to be guided by a
doctrine that glorifies the primeval person who was natural and 
unspoiled by the arts of civilized life. As a result, they insist
upon understanding the prophets in terms of the savage.
      It was a basic tenet of older anthropology that in primitive
society there is no place for the spontaneous activity of the
individual, that the thoughts and actions of the individual were
always imposed upon them by social pressures. That tenet is the
underlying assumption of the sociological theory in which
society, its demands and instincts for survival are looked upon
as the mystic cause of religion.
      That tenet has been discarded by present-day anthropology,
which claims that even on the low levels of civilization the
individual was not completely oppressed. To us it seems ob-
vious that the great ideas were born in spite of social pressure,
in spite of circumstance. Moses had to wage a battle not only
against Pharaoh but also against his own people. Upon the
masses which clamored for a golden calf the prohibition to
make a graven image had to be imposed. The essence of reli-
gion lies beyond the grasp of sociology.
      Psychology of religion, on the other hand, idealizing neutral
and indifferent informants, claims to attain an understanding
of religion by submitting questionnaires to a typical group of
people or by taking the views and mentality of an average
person as a perspective of judgment. But can lack of bias ever
compensate for absence of insight? Is indifference the same
as objectivity?
      How do we gain and adequate concept of history or astron-
omy? We do not turn to the person in the street, but to those
who devote their life to research, to those who are trained in
scientific thought and have absorbed all the data about the
subject. For an adequate concept of religion, we likewise
should turn to those whose mind is bent upon the spiritual,
whose life is religion and who are able to discern between
truth and happiness, between spirit and emotion, between faith
and self-reliance.
      From the point of view of a mind to which the enigmatic
holiness of religion is not a certainty but a problem, we can
hardly expect more than a vague understanding, a glimpse
from afar of what it is to the pious person compellingly present
and overwhelmingly real.
      Experts on religion are in danger of resembling the prover-
bial yeshivah-student who claimed to understand and master
all arts. Asked whether they could swim, replied” I do not
know how to swim, but I understand swimming…’
      We encounter a similar situation when people who apply
themselves to prosody and are experts in scanning meters.
They boast of a craft that comes easily to the naturally gifted
poet. Unlike the experts, the poet, though they know how to
compose perfect poetry may not be able to teach the theory
of verse-making. The poet is, however, capable of teaching someone,
who like them is naturally gifted, with a slight hint. Thus sparks
are kindled in the souls of people open to religion by the words
of the pious, sparks which become luminous in their hearts.

Is Religion a Function of the Soul?

Those who cannot free themselves from the idea that morality 
and religion is a person’s own response to a selfish need, the result
of a craving for security and immortality, or the attempt to
conquer fear, are not unlike people who presume that rivers,
like canals were constructed by humanity for the purpose of navi-
gation. It is true that economic needs and political factors have
taught humanity to exploit the waterways. But are the rivers them-
selves the products of human genius?
      Most people assume that we feed our body in order to ease
the pangs of hunger, to calm the irritated nerves of an empty
stomach. As a matter of fact, we eat not because we feel
hungry but because the intake of food is essential for the main-
tenance of life, supplying the energy necessary for the various
functions of the body. Hunger is the signal for eating, its
occasion and regulator, not its true cause. Let us not confound
the river with navigation, nutrition with hunger, or religion
with the use which humanity makes of it.
      Psychological theories claiming that religion originated in
a feeling or a need seem to overlook that such a cause does not
have the efficacy to produce religion. They fail to see that 
since, for example, the feeling of absolute dependence or the
fear of death entirely lacks any religious quality, its relation
to religion cannot be that of cause and effect. Such a feeling
may contribute to a person’s receptivity of religion, but is itself
incapable of creating it. Since the authentic religious intention
associated with such a feeling must be derived from another
source, it is obvious that those theories fail to enucleate the
issue.

Magic and Religion

The essence of religion does not lie in the satisfaction of a
human need. It is true that a person, seeking to exploit the forces
of nature for their own profit, does not recoil from forcing
supernatural beings to do their pleasure. But such intentions
and practices are characteristic, not of religion, but of magic,
which is “the next of kin to science” and the deadly enemy of
religion, its very opposite.
      While it is impossible to prove that magic has everywhere
preceded religion and that, by recognizing its inherent false-
hood, the “age of magic” gave  place to the “age of religion,”
the survival of magic within religion is a fact too apparent to
be overlooked. Its danger to religion was recognized in the
Pentateuch, where it is most emphatically condemned as a
heinous sin, as well as by the prophets in whose eyes it was
tantamount to idolatry and by the rabbis who took stern
measures to eliminate it from Jewish life. And the fight had
to be continued through the ages.
      Abraham was not going to sacrifice is only son in order
to satisfy a personal need, nor did Moses accept the Decalogue
for the sake of attaining happiness. The second command-
ment” “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image,” has,
in fact, defied rather than satisfied the “religious needs” of
many people throughout the ages. Nor were the prophets
eager to please, or to be in agreement with, popular sentiments.
Prophetic religion may be characterized as the very opposite
of opportunism.
      To define religion primarily as a quest for personal satisfac-
tion or salvation is to make it a refined kind of magic. As long
as a person sees in religion the satisfaction of their own needs, a
guarantee of immortality or a device to protect society, it is
not God whose they serve but themselves. The more removed
from the ego, the more real is God’s presence. It is a sure way of
missing God when we think that God is an answer to a human
need, as if not only armies, factories and movies, but God, too,
had to cater to the ego.
      There have always been people who thought that “it is
expedient that there should be gods, and since it is expedient,
let us believe that gods exist.” (Ovid, Ars Amatoris)
It was to such people that Amos addressed himself.
    Woe unto you that long for the day of the Lord!
    Wherefore would you have the day of the Lord?
    It is darkness, and not light.
    As if a man fled from a lion,
    And a bear met him;
    He ran into the house
    and leaned his hand on the wall,
    and a serpent bit him. 
    Is not the day of the Lord darkness rather than light?
    pitch-dark and not a ray of light?
                                                           (Amos 5:18-20)

      To believe in God is to fight for God, to fight whatever is
against God within ourselves, including our interests when
they collide with God’s will. Only when, forgetting the ego, we
begin to love God, God becomes our need, interest and con-
cern. But the way to love leads through fear lest we transgress
God’s unconditional command, lest we forget God’s need for humanity’s
righteousness.

The Objective Side of Religion

Every investigation springs out of a basic question, which
sets the rudder of our mind. Yet the number of questions
available for our research is limited. They are conventionally
repeated in almost every scientific investigation. Like tools,
they are handed down from one scholar to another. Not
through our own eyes do we look at the world, but through
lenses ground by our intellectual ancestry. But our eyes are
strained and tired of staring through spectacles worn by an-
other generation. We are tired of overlooking entities, of
squinting at their relations to other things. We want to face
reality as it is and not to ask only: What is its cause? What is
its relation to its sources? to society? to psychological mo-
tives? We are tired of dating and comparing. Indeed, when
the questions that were once keen and penetrating are worn
out, the investigated object no longer reacts to the inquiry.
Much depends upon the driving force of a new question. The
question is an invocation of the enigma, a challenge to the
examined object, provoking the answer. A new question is
more than the projection or vision of a new goal; it is the first
step toward it. To know what we want to know is the first
prerequisite of research.
      Modern humanity seldom faces things as they are. In the inter-
pretation of religion, our eyes are bent toward its bearing
upon various realms of life rather than upon its own essence
and reality. We investigate the relation of religion to eco-
nomics, history, art, libido. We ask for its origin and develop-
ment, for its effect upon psychical, social and political life.
We look upon religion as if it were an instrument only, not an
entity. We forget to inquire: What is religion itself? The
objective aspect of religion is usually left in the background.
In the foreground looms large and salient its subjective supple-
ment, the human response. We heed the resonance and ignore
the bell, we peer into religiosity and forget religion, we be-
hold the experience and disregard the reality that antecedes
the experience. To understand religion through the analysis
of the sentiments it instills is to miss its essence. It is as if we
were to apprehend a work of art by describing our impression
of it rather than by grasping its intrinsic value. The inner value
of a work of art subsists regardless of our responsiveness to it.
The essence of a work of art is neither tantamount to nor
commensurable with the impression it produces, with what is
reflected in the enjoyment of art. The stratum of inner expe-
rience and the realm of objective reality do not lie on the
same level.

There Is No Neutrality    

To restrict the world of faith to the realm of human en-
deavor or consciousness would imply that a person who re-
fuses to tae notice of God could isolate themself from God.
But there is no neutrality before God; to ignore means to
defy God. Even the emptiness of indifference breeds a con-
cern, and the bitterness of blasphemy is a perversion of a
regard for God. The world of faith is neither the outgrowth
of imagination nor the product of will. It is not an inner
process, a feeling or a thought, and should not be looked upon
as a bundle of episodes in the life of humanity. To assume that a person
stands before God for the duration of an experience, medita-
tion or performance of a ritual, is absurd. A person’s relation to
God is not an episode. What is going on between God and a
person is for the duration of life.
      Religion as an institution, the Temple as an ultimate end,
or, in other words, religion for religion’s sake, is idolatry. The
fact is that evil is integral to religion, not only to secularism.
Parochial saintliness may be an evasion of duty, an accommo-
dation to selfishness.
      Religion is for God’s sake. The human side of religion, its
creeds, rituals and institutions, is a way rather than a goal.
The goal is “to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly
with  God.” When the human side of religion becomes the
goal, injustice becomes a way.
      
The Holy Dimension    

What gives rise to faith is not a sentiment, a state of mind, an
aspiration, but an everlasting fact in the universe, something
which is prior to and independent of human knowledge and
experience—the holy dimension of all existence. The objective
side of religion is the spiritual constitution of the universe, the
divine values invested in every being and exposed to the mind
and will of a human being; an ontological reaction. This is why the ob-
jective or the divine side of religion eludes psychological and
sociological analysis.
      All actions are not only agencies in the endless series of
cause and effect; they also affect and concern God, with or
without human intention, with or without human consent.
All existence stands in the dimension of the holy and nothing
can be conceived of as living outside of it. All existence stands
before God—here and everywhere, now and at all times. Not
only a vow or conversion, not only the focusing of the mind
upon God, engages a person to God; all deeds, thoughts, feelings
and events are God’s concern.
      Just as a person lives in the realm of nature and is subject to its
laws, so does a person find themself in the holy dimension. A person can
escape its bounds as little as a person can take leave of nature. A person
can sever themself from the dimension of the holy neither by
sin nor by stupidity, neither by apostasy nor by ignorance.
There is no escape from God.

Piety is a Response    

To have faith is consciously to enter a dimension in which
we abide by our very existence. Piety is a response, the sub-
jective correlative of an objective condition, the awareness of
living within the holy dimension, the realization that what
starts as an experience in a person transcends the human sphere,
becoming an objective event outside of themself. In this power
of transcending the soul, time and space, the pious person sees
the distinction of religious acts. If, to our minds, prayer were
only the articulation of words, of nothing but psychological
relevance, and of no metaphysical resonance, nobody would
waste their time in an hour of crisis by praying in self-delusion.
      It is a person’s very existence that stands in relation to God.
A person’s relations to state, society, family, etc., do not penetrate
all strata of their personality. In their final solitude, in the hour of
approaching death, they are blown away like chaff. It is in
the dimension of the holy, that they abide, whatever befalls
them.
            
The Modesty of the Spirit    

We are prone to be impressed by the ostentatious, the ob-
vious. The strident caterwaul of the animal fills the air, while
the still small voice of the spirit is heard only in the rare hours 
of prayer and devotion. From the streetcar window we may
see the hunt for wealth and pleasure, the onslaught upon the
weak, faces expressing suspicion or contempt. On the other
hand, the holy lives only in the depths. What is noble retires
when expose to light, humility is extinguished in the aware-
ness of it, and the willingness for martyrdom rests in the
secrecy of the things to be. Walking upon the clay, we live in
nature, surrendering to impulse and passion, to vanity and
arrogance, while our eyes reach out to the lasting light of
truth. We are subject to terrestrial gravitation, yet we are
confronted by God.
      In the dimension of the holy the spiritual is a bridge flung
across a frightful abyss, while in the realm of nature the
spiritual hovers like the wafted clouds, to tenuous to bear
a human across the abyss. When a vessel sails into a typhoon and
the maw of the boiling maelstrom opens to engulf the totter-
ing prey, it is not the pious person, engrossed in supplication,
but the helmsman who intervenes in the proper sphere with
proper means, fighting with physical tools against physical
powers. What sense is there in imploring the mercy of God?
Words do not stem the flood, nor does meditation banish the
storm. Prayer never entwines directly with the chain of phys-
ical cause and effect; the spiritual does not interfere with the
natural order of things. The fact that a person with undaunted 
sincerity pours into prayer the best of their soul springs from
the conviction that there is a realm in which the acts of faith
are puissant and potent, that there is an order in which things
of spirit can be of momentous consequence.
      There are phenomena which appear irrelevant and acci-
dental in the realm of nature but are of great meaning in the
dimension of the holy. To worship violence, to use brutal
force, is natural, while sacrifice, humility and martyrdom are
unheard of from the point of view of nature. It is in the domain
of the holy that a thought or a sentiment may stand out as an
everlasting approach to truth, where prayers are steps toward
God aere perennior.
      We live not only in time and space but also in the knowl-
edge of God, being near God not only through our faith but,
first of all, through our life. All events reflect in God; all
existence is coexistence with God. Time and space are not
the limits of the world. Our life occurs here and in the knowl-
edge of God.