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THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM
OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS


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INTRODUCTION¹

In this book I propose to reflect on that great fact in the history of mankind represented by the history of religions. Of course, within the narrow confines allowed by these pages I can do nothing but to approach the history of religions as a whole, i.e., I cannot address religions individually, but only consider the history of religions in a particular manner, —if one prefers— in the abstract, as a history, which occurs within mankind. That not only does not impede, but indeed compels us, in the course of these reflections, to make allusions, albeit sporadic ones (quite understandably), to different religions, religious practices, or religious customs. Within this totality of the history of religions it is not our intention to make a kind of comparative balance of the different religions —though that would doubtlessly be more enticing, and interesting. That is a matter for the science of the history of religions, and is not the subject of these pages, which do not deliberately address the “history of religions”, but the philosophical problem posed by the fact of the history of religions. We are concerned, therefore, with just a {12} philosophical intellection on this fact, taken in its totality as an historical reality.

To do this it will be necessary, above all, to start by articulating what it is that we understand by the adjective “religious”. In what does the religious aspect of those facts, which comprise the history of religions consist, and why are they called “religious facts”? At the outset one might think this is something trivial and insignificant —everyone knows more or less what a religious fact is. However, we shall soon realize that this is not so insignificant or trivial. Once this matter is resolved, it will then be possible to have the spiritual amplitude to confront the subject of the history of religions itself from a purely philosophical perspective. In this study a consideration of Christianity cannot be excluded for clearly understandable reasons. And yet, it is not our intention to make an historical apology for Christianity; it is purely and simply the case of understanding it in its intrinsic historical condition. No religion escapes the historical functionality with which it has been born, exists, and develops. It is the case, therefore, of considering Christianity purely and simply within the history of religions, without any pathos. Philosophy has no other pathos but the monotony of bare truth.

We have thus delineated the way we shall follow, in three stages:

First: What do we understand by a religious fact? In other words, What is the religious as such, actually?
Second: the fact itself of the history of religions. What is this religious fact?
Third: Christianity in the history of religions.



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FIRST PART

THE RELIGIOUS FACT



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CHAPTER 1

THE RELIGIOUS FACT AS SUCH

In this chapter we are going to concentrate our attention on the first of the points mentioned in the introduction, namely, What is a religious fact?

The problem is not to describe religious facts, which are well known by everyone, nor is it to ask about characteristics which more or less distinguish religious facts from those, which are not such or more precisely, to distinguish that, which is religious in some facts from what is not religious in others. Rather, it is about asking ourselves In what does the religious formally and constitutively consist as such? To answer this question we can proceed in several ways.


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§ 1

RELIGION AS AN INSTITUTION

The first and most obvious way, is the one which consists in saying: religions are facts, which exist out there, in human society, and as such are constituted by certain religious institutions, certain rites, certain beliefs, certain practices, etc., framed within the society to which they belong. Those beliefs, practices, and precepts constitute a moment of the objective spirit, whose social aspect is independent of and different from what may be the individual spirit of each member of that society. What is religious would be the religious institutionality. It is said that this objective spirit, equally in the order of religion as in the other social facts, is imposed on all individuals. Not only does it float above them, but in a certain way has that peculiar character of coercive pressure over each of the individuals living in that society, not as a function of authority, but as a social fact. This social pressure, institutionalized, would constitute, if not religion or the religious, at least one of its essential aspects. This is the classic theoretical and thematic position of Durkheim in his famous book The Elemental Forms of Religious Life².

That a religion in general may take on this form is undeniable. Moreover, it is definitely something essential to religion. But that is not the question, because to the conception of religion {17} so understood —without loss of the validity it has within its limits— one must contrast, in the first place, that it leaves outside of its framework many religious acts, which do not belong to the institution: for example, supplication, individual prayer. Even for the believer belonging to a particular religious institution there are many acts of his religious life, which are quite individual. How can one say that this does not belong to religion? The overextension of the social and collective characteristic of the religious phenomenon cannot cancel in any way a dimension (as insufficient as it may be, but real and authentic) of religiosity, if not individual in the sense of opposition to the social, at least true with respect to religious acts, which are of an individual nature.

In the second place, all these institutions, rites, practices, collective organizations, etc., which —I must again emphasize— are essential to a religion, nevertheless they are not themselves religion: they are the body in which religion becomes incarnate. Under apparently equal rites, and under very similar institutions, which have been able to be transferred from one religion to another, there may lie quite different religions. Institutionalization is the form of the objective spirit, but not the very essence of the religious as such.

And, in the third place, the strength of the religious is not simply, even inside the institutions, social pressure. Just the opposite: social pressure always constitutes religion if and when it refers to the religious. In other words, the religious is prior to the social. Social pressure is religious because it already incorporates the religious character, but is not religious because it may have the characteristic of social pressure. It is necessary that this series of acts, as social, refer specifically to a religious object. Durkheim himself recognizes this, and points out that this object thus qualified is precisely the sacred.


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§ 2

RELIGION AS DOMAIN OF THE SACRED

This is the second way we must follow: the way of the sacred. The precise and formal object of the religious would be the sacred. It is not precisely the gods, because there are religions, which have none; Buddhism, Taoism, certain forms of Jainism, probably even Brahmanism itself, strictly speaking lack any gods. It is not that they lack supernatural entities —that is another matter—, but all those supernatural entities superior to the ones of Earth are subject as a whole to something, which is not precisely a god, and constitutes the formal terminus of those religions. It is said that what is specific to religion is the sacred. And religion is defined by the thematic and polar opposition between the sacred and the profane. Of course, then we must ask, What is the sacred? That is the question.

A) The first answer to this question is given by Durkheim himself. The duality in question between the sacred and the profane —he tells us— is not capable of definition: one can only say it is absolute. So absolutely absolute, Durkheim says, that even the opposition between moral good and evil pales next to the difference between the sacred and the profane. Precisely in its absolute absolutism, so to speak, the whole strength of this opposition resides. The sacred is that which is intangible, that which cannot be touched by the profane. And upon this characteristic of separation, which the sacred has would rest {19} the specific characteristic of the religious act. Needless to say this was precisely the conception, which fascinated Durkheim so much that he believed the elementary form of religious life was precisely a taboo. The opposition is absolute, and between both worlds there is no possible communication. It is possible that something belonging to the profane may become sacred. For example, the initiation rites, or also other religious rites, sacralize the profane; but the result of those religious acts consists precisely in a kind of internal metamorphosis of the one who submits to them, by virtue of which one ceases to belong to the world of the profane in order to become rooted mysteriously in the world of the sacred. Naturally, the complete definition of religion for Durkheim is not only that it may be a social institution, but a social institution, which rests on the sacred, where the difference between the sacred and the profane is constituted precisely by the social bonds themselves.

Now then, to this conception of the sacred we must make several objections. In the first place, it does not extend to all the dimensions of the sacred. The sacred is not only the untouchable; it is also the venerable. It does not appear that all the dimensions of the sacred fall within Durkheim’s conception. Moreover, in second place, it is true that the sacred is in its own way untouchable, but it is so because it is sacred. It is not the case that it is sacred because it is untouchable. What the social organization does is precisely to delimit or select the ambit of the sacred, to declare with the strength of a social institution which things are sacred, but it does not create the sacred as such. As it turns out, this notion of the sacred is merely negative, consisting only in saying what is not profane. The sacred, however, in order to be of use to us in our endeavor, must have a positive content, and must be a positive quality. {20} This is the second concept of the sacred: the sacred as an objective quality.

B) The sacred is undefinable, like anything elemental, however, it is perfectly objective. The book by Rudolf Otto Das Heilige³ —which should be translated as The Sacred— has indeed become a manual of the theorization of that which is sacred. It is, Otto says, a perfectly objective quality. Certainly, it is not apprehended in an act of reason, and in this sense it is irrational. It is formally apprehended, he tells us, in an act of sentiment. But sentiments are not completely subjective: they have an objective correlate which is value. The sacred is a value, and as a value it is perfectly objective. To one who has no religious sense to perceive the sacred this conception tells him nothing, Otto points out; but someone born blind would find himself in the same situation unable to understand an explanation as to what color is. Assuming one may have this sentiment, the sacred presents itself to the mind of the one who senses it as a perfectly objective characteristic.

Sacredness —Otto says— is not reducible to whatever is good physically or even morally. When, for example, the Old Testament refers to God as kadosh (holy), the Greeks as hierón, etc., these terms include a dimension of moral goodness. But they transcend it in large measure; they mean much more. And this “more” is precisely what characterizes the sacred. It is what he called the “numinous”, a term derived from the Latin word numen. Facing the {21} numinous, man feels overwhelmed. But this being overwhelmed is not the first feeling with which the sacred is apprehended. It is apprehended in a sentiment specifically numinous, the sentiment of the numinous. The overwhelming, Otto says, is purely and simply the subjective reflection of the apprehension of the numinous as such.

Somewhat more positively, What is this numinous thing? In the first place, he tells us, it is shattering, it is tremendous. Tremendous... we cannot, in a certain way, approach it. From a certain point of view it is majestic —sebastós the Greeks used to say—, facing which man feels himself in the subjective reflex of humility. But in addition it is energetic in the Greek sense of the word: source of life, vitality and movement. Let us remember, for example, the idea of orgé, the wrath of God. Besides being tremendous it is mysterious: it is mysterium tremendum. It is not only admirable —this would be the subjective reflection—, but is in itself the marvelous. It has that quality, precisely by being marvelous, which separates it radically from everything else. The numinous in this sense is wholly other, what is totally other. Because of this it encompases precisely that paradoxical and antinomial structure in which all mystics find solace. Besides being tremendous and mysterious, it is fascinating. Not only is it marvelous, it is also prodigious. And the prodigious form attracts, but also frightens: is deinós (Gk.), terrible. Finally, he tells us, it is the holy. The expression Tu solus sanctus —Otto repeats— is one of the essential characteristics of the sacred. The overthrow of this value is justifiably a sin; something worse than a moral transgression. And everything not belonging to this sacred order is purely and simply the profane.

In conclusion, confronting the presence of the numinous and the sacred, man is in the presence of a tremendous and fascinating mystery. {22} The sacred rests upon itself as something majestic. And religion is nothing but the piety, the obedience, and the submission before this supreme sacred value: the reverent bow, and the respect facing the numinous.

The analysis of Rudolf Otto has been very influential. A thousand detailed observations could be made from this analysis, but its essential element has imposed itself like a flood over the current mentality: in the science of religions, in philosophy, and even in theology itself. In the history of religions it has had its most splendid expression in a book, absolutely first class and unique in its field, by Mircea Eliade entitled Treatise on the History of Religions⁴. For Mircea Eliade what is religious is anything, which possesses the value of the sacred. In this sense, the object of religion is always a manifestation of the sacred: it is a hierophany. Naturally, the sacred and the profane are always in perpetual exchange. Everything is capable of been sacralized, and actually, if all religions are considered, there are few profane things that have not been sacralized. However, each religion selects a few to make them sacred. And because of this there is a veritable dialectic of the sacred. The object, when made sacred, in a certain way becomes distant to itself, and passes into a different world. The objects, in addition, acquire, lose, and can recover their sacred character. This dialectic is the dynamic coincidence of the sacred and the profane in every hierophany.

As an example Eliade presents the encounter of Yahweh with Moses in the burning bush (cf. Ex 3), or the episode that appears in the first book of Kings in the Old Testament about the struggle of the prophet Elijah with the prophets of Ba‘al {23} (cf. 1 Kgs 18:20-40). Elijah, tired of remonstrating with the prophets of Ba‘al, challenges them to a test: they proceed to Mt. Carmel, prepares the victims for the holocaust, and asks the prophets of Ba‘al to call on Ba‘al to see if fire comes down from heaven to burn the sacrifice, and make it a holocaust. Three times they make their invocation, but the fire does not descend from heaven. Ironically Elijah says: “Call louder, for he is a god and may be meditating, or may have retired, or may be on a journey. Perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened” (1 Kgs 18:27). But it is now his turn. And, of course, the fire comes down from heaven and consumes the sacrifice. Eliade says: “The ‘divine form’ of Yahweh prevailed over the divine form of Ba‘al; it revealed sacredness in a more complete form..., it allowed for a more direct communication, which at the same time was purer and more complete. In the end, that is how the Yahwist hierophany triumphed... it became a religious value to the whole world”⁵.

The history of religions, in the end, concerns these hierophanies and this dialectic of the hierophanies. Of course, there are acts in the history of religions, for example, the rites. But in a poignant phrase he tells us: “The hierophanies sacralize the cosmos; the rites sacralize life”⁶. Finally, for Mircea Eliade the history of religions ultimately consists in the drama produced by the loss and discovery of religious values⁷.

The result of this attempt has been splendid. Through it the authenticity of the sacred in the history of religions against all sociological and evolutionary conceptions has been recovered, at least in a phenomenological sense —no small accomplishment. The good fortune of this idea reached {24} philosophy itself; in Heidegger’s words, “Only from the essence of the sacred can one think about the essence of the deity”⁸. It even entered into theology, not only Protestant —Otto was a pietist Protestant theologian—, but Catholic as well. Every religion, it is stated, is certainly a relationship with God, but the differential and specific note of the relationship with God is sacredness. “Perhaps” —again quoting Heidegger— “what characterizes our times is its obdurateness towards the dimension of the sacred (das Heil). Maybe this is the only Unheil”⁹, the only and radical misfortune of our times.

Nonetheless, one must make a few philosophical reflections about this conception. Let us begin with the history of religions itself just as Mircea Eliade describes it. Certainly, it is perfectly legitimate for each historian to choose the perspective from which he is going to contemplate the objects of study. This is essential to all historians. The perspective that Eliade has chosen is absolutely valid, and besides, it has produced, as I said, splendid results. It is true that Eliade, in addition to talking about religious values, i.e., of hierophanies, does not exclude from them those things, which are really subjects or, at least, accompany those hierophanies. For example, speaking about the sacralization of life he tells us: “Strength and life are nothing but epiphanies of the ultimate reality” (his own emphasis)¹⁰. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Eliade does accentuate the sacred as a value. And although a historian is certainly allowed to talk in non-formal terms, {25} simply employing the usual ones, it is no less certain that a philosopher has to formulate on his own, rigorously and with total precision, the problem of the precise formal concept of the religious.

From that point of view we must say, in the first place, that all this exchange from the sacred to the profane is certainly an absolutely true historical observation. There is not the smallest doubt about it. Now, the philosopher may ask: Why? Why is it that everything profane can be sacralized? In the second place, it is said that the whole history of religions is a dialectic of hierophanies. That in the history of religions there may be a dialectic of hierophanies is unquestionable, and is a conclusion of enormous consequences. However, Is the description, which Eliade presents of the dialectic of hierophanies in the example of Elijah, and in the encounter of Yahweh with Moses in the burning bush correct?

Starting with the last hierophany, we read in the Exodus text: “Yahweh said, ‘Come no nearer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. I am the God of your father,’ he continued, ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.’ Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Ex 3:5-6). “But,” said Moses to God, “when I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ if they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?” (Ex 3:13). God replied: hayah ‘amar hayah, “I am who am” (Ex 3:14). I put aside the translation and meaning of this phrase for the time being; will return to it later. Clearly, we do not have a simple hierophany here, we have a theophany. It is true that the place is sacred, but it is sacred because Yahweh is there. It is not the case of a direct sacredness at all. It is a hierophany —Yahweh himself tells him the place he is standing on is sacred—, but it is so because He is there, i.e., because there is a theophany. In the Ba‘al episode the text says “Yahweh’s fire came down and consumed the holocaust, wood, stones, and dust, and it lapped up the water in the trench. Seeing this, all the people fell {26} prostrate and said, ‘Yahweh is God, Yahweh is God’ ” (1 Kgs 18:38-39). Indeed, Who will deny that this is not the triumph of a hierophany, but of a theophany? It is the triumph of the truth of a living God against a dead god who neither sees, nor hears, nor understands, nor comes to one’s aid. What takes place there is not the triumph of a sacredness, but the triumph of a God, the triumph of Yahweh.

The fact is that any hierophany is either the immediate manifestation of a theophany, or a kind of a mediated theophany; for example, in the case of Ba‘al, a fire sent by God. Or it is a hidden theophany, or even a theophany relegated to the oblivion and anonymity of the god from whom it proceeds. This is why Eliade is correct when he tells us that for the ancients “everything unusual, singular, new, perfect or monstrous becomes the recipient of magic-religious forces, and depending on the circumstances, an object of veneration or fear, by virtue of that ambivalent feeling which the sacred always evokes”¹¹. But the Greeks never called it hierón, sacred, they called it theión, divine. Because, ultimately —we shall later see why— the profane is not formally opposed to the sacred, rather it is opposed to the religious. In other words: the sacred is certainly something, which belongs to the religious, but it belongs to it consequentially, because it is religious. The sacred is not that which constitutes the formal characteristic of the religious as such. The history of religions is not a history of sacred values, but a history of the relationships of man with God.

Unless it were to be said that this God who functions in the theophanies is the sacred itself. This is the second thesis, the thesis of Heidegger. It is true that the gods are sacred: {27} there is no doubt about it. That sacredness is a value of the gods: that also cannot be doubted. But no reality has a value unless it is a function of the properties it possesses. It would be sheer fantasy to think that reality is an external support of values, making them extraneous to the real properties it has. Just the reverse, things have values because of the properties they have. The gods are sacred because they are gods, they are not gods because they are sacred. Once again, the sacred is consequent, but not constitutive of the divinity as such.

One might say that, the specific difference of the religious falls, with respect to the divinity, upon the sacred dimension, and that there is a religious relationship with the divinity only insofar as it rests upon the sacredness of the gods. But this is totally untenable. In the first place, the ratio cognoscendi is being confused with the ratio essendi, i.e., the reason by which a phenomenon is distinguished from another is being confused with the reason by which the phenomenon is, positively, what it is. It amounts to saying that colors are distinguished from heat in that the first are perceived by sight, and the second by touch. Yes, this is evident. But it says nothing to us about color or heat. Every relationship with the gods, in fact, is purely and simply religious. There is just no other relationship with the gods, because God is that reality which is not only majestic, but the one to whom we address, for example, our supplications, which are not necessarily addressed to a majestic reality. Ultimately, there is no other relationship with God —I repeat— than the religious relationship. And consequently, to try to find the religious in the sacred is again to follow a false path. The sacred, to be sure, fulfills its function in the relationship with the gods, but it is a quality of the religious relationship. The religious relationship is not such because it is sacred.

{28} Finally, these brief considerations bring us to the idea that the sacred is not that which is primary about religion. Out of this whole discussion, the problem of the religious as such has been preserved perfectly intact, especially if we keep in mind what Otto decidedly favors, according to which the act in which the sacred is presented to us, and consequently the specifically religious act, is an act of sentiment. But this is an abstraction. Does the sacred intervene only as a form of sentiment? Indubitably, there are religious acts of volition, and intellectual religious acts. It is true that other acts could be proposed in opposition to sentiment, but these oppositions would be equally false. Because the truth is that the religious as such is something that belongs to the whole man, and not simply to one of his dimensions. It is not a question of some acts being either sentimental, volitive, or intellectual; it is a relationship involving the whole man. And, in second place, neither is it a state in which the whole man finds himself, but is something completely different: it is an attitude. From this it follows that we must embark on a third way, which will make us see in what the religious attitude consists.

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¹ The Introduction and the beginning of chapter one (§1 and §2) stem from the 1965 Madrid seminar concerning “The philosophical problem of the history of religions”.
² Cf. E. Durkheim, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, Paris, 1912.
³ Cf. R. Otto, Das Heilige. Über Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalem, Breslau, 1917.
⁴ Cf. M. Eliade, Traité d’histoire des religions, Paris, 1949. Zubiri quotes from the Spanish translation by A. Medinaveitia, cf. Tratado de historia de las religiones, Madrid, 1954.
⁵ M. Eliade, Tratado de historia de las religiones, op. cit., p. 18.
⁶ Ibid., p. 436.
⁷ Ibid., p. 440.
⁸ M. Heidegger, “Brief über den humanismus” in Platons Lehre von der Warheit, Berlin, 1947, p. 102.
⁹ Ibid., p. 103.
¹⁰ M. Eliade, ibid. p. 43.
¹¹ M. Eliade, ibid., p. 27.