{95}
§ 2
WHAT IS RELIGION SPECIFICALLY?
On the previous pages, concerning the Durkheim critique, I was pointing out that we must distinguish in a radical way what religion comprises as a religious institution —not in the sense of Durkheim, but in the most inoffensive sense of the word— and what it comprises as a personal life. As an institution, that which is called “religion” is in reality the body of religion. On the other hand, personal religious life is that which quite properly and rigorously must constitute the very spirit of religion.
I. The body of religion
In the first place: What is religion as a body?
And, in second place: What is the structure of that body?
A) Religion as a body. Why is religion a body? As an institution religion falls within the domain of those facts that since Hegel have been called “moments of the objective spirit”. That is an ill-fitting name because the objective spirit is not, strictly speaking an objective spirit, but an objectivized spirit, which is a totally different thing1.
Basically, what the statement wishes to express is that the objectivized spirit does not identify itself with the spirit of each one. {96} However, it is neither outside the spirit of each one. What is happening here is something similar to the famous distinction of Rousseau between the volonté générale and the volonté de tous. The objective spirit does not in any way identify itself with the spirit of each individual, or with the coincidence of all individuals. The thesis that it is an objectivized spirit does not mean that it is the terminus of a process of objectivation. There is no process, but it concerns something quite different: a structure into which every individual is immersed from birth. And that structure consists in the fact that each individual, by the mere fact of being an individual human being, and for no other reason, finds himself affected by the other individual human beings that exist around him. Every person, by the mere fact of living with other persons, and coexisting with them, finds himself in one measure or another affected precisely by these other persons in his very own way of dealing with things. This way of being affected impresses a way of being in the spirit of each, in each person. It is the case of a way of dealing with things determined by the other persons surrounding him. This way of dealing with things is what the Latins called habitudo, and the Greeks héxis: a way of dealing with things, and even including a way of being determined by these other things. Inasmuch as it is a héxis, it is different from the individuals; but inasmuch as it is a héxis, it is not outside them.
Hence, this héxis, this otherness, this habitude one has of being affected by the other, can be realized in different directions. In the first place, it is possible that the other person is affecting me precisely qua person. That is a dimension which does not concern us here. It could be, in the second place, that I may be affected not as much for what the other has as person, but by the qualities that other person has, {97} independently that it may be a person. By person I understand here the substantive reality whose properties are formally his. If we ignore the fact that they may be his, this whole system of properties is affecting me in an héxis, in which the other person intervenes as depersonalized. And precisely that depersonalized characteristic of the person is what is called “depersonalization”. When it is often said in present-day philosophy that man is reified, we are never given the explanation in what this alleged reification consists, and one always thinks about the idea of substance. That is not the case. From my point of view the objectivation consists purely and simply in depersonalization. And thus, when that habitude, that héxis, is not determined by someone in particular, but by anyone, and in addition by all those “anyone” taken as a set, it is then that we can really say we have an objective spirit. One can have a friend, but that alone is not a form of the objective spirit. It must be anyone, and in addition taken as a set. We have been accustomed since Hegel to conceptualize that the set of men forming the objective spirit is formed by all the individuals of the human species. That is totally inexact, and also insufficient. That set is much more limited. For example, the citizens of Athens of the time of Pericles felt themselves under the protection of Pallas Athena. There that set of citizens is circumscribed by a periphery, by a circle which determines it —regardless of the form— that all be precisely the polítai of the city of Athens. It is not the case of a set within the human species, but the concrete historical profile which some particular groups of individuals have.
And so, taking the objective spirit in that way, religation religates to the objective spirit. With this I do not intend to say that religation religates to the totality of the objective spirit, and much {98} less to support the absurd thesis that the State is the supreme personification of the objective spirit. What happens is that religation religates the whole man, including the objective dimension of his spirit. In this dimension, religion is the molding of religation into objective spirit. And this molding constitutes a body precisely because it objectively defines and circumscribes the ambit of religious life. By virtue of depersonalization, the other is not just his own, but rather is a more or less objectivized reality which delimits in a definitive and even a circumscribing way the system of possibilities with which each one has to accomplish his own life. It is in this sense that objectivized spirit is, and formally must be called “body”, social body. The objective spirit is objectivized spirit, and objectivized spirit is the social body. Religion, in its first dimension, as institution, belongs to a social body. After all, from the vital point of view, not the structural, sóma circumscribes and defines all the possibilities of every human life2.
B) The structure of that body. In what does religion consist as an objective body, as a social body?
1) In the surrender of man towards divinity, he is continually elaborating an idea about that divinity. Every religion, as an objective body, involves a concept, a series of ideas about the divinity, a theology. Religion {99} actually has a god. I shall deal further on with those religions about which it is said they have no god. This is true in the sense given by the phrase, but not in the sense I am giving it here. Every religion has its god. And, naturally, the god of a religion is not identified with the God to which pure intellection accedes, because it clearly has many more characteristics. Precisely those which man continually discovers and deposits on the god to whom he appeals from the concrete reality of his life. That god is a supreme reality, which does not mean there are no other subordinate entities. However, the supremacy confronting those other entities is not a mere supremacy of organization. As seen from the outside, of course, every pantheon is an organization, but that is not the essential point. Let us take the case of a pantheon which has had a great historical influence: the Phoenician pantheon, and in general the one belonging to all Semitic religions. In these religions, the generic name “god” is indeed ’el: it appears in the term “Alláh” of the Arabs, ’ilu of the Babylonians, and ’elohim of the Hebrews. It is a generic name which means the divinity of all those realities which are gods. But in this pantheon there is a single god in whom everything is concentrated of what in a plenary and exhaustive way constitutes divinity. In that case, he is the pre-eminent ’El. And then “God” is a proper name. He appears as such, for example, at the head of the Phoenician pantheon of Ras Shamra, or in the ’Elohim of the Old Testament. It is not a question, then, of an organization: it is always about the apprehension of a supreme reality which in its absolutely absolute characteristic concentrates on itself all the characteristics which man in a particular society assigns to divinity. The very name of ’El probably means “the powerful”, “the most powerful”. {100} Powerful, naturally, in the triple dimension of being the ultimate reality, the ultimate possibility of man, and also an impelling reality.
2) In addition, every religion sees the world essentially from that divinity. It is a theology and also a mundology3 . This mundology is not arbitrary. God has appeared as the ultimate, possibilitating, and impelling fundament of the whole of human life. But then, this human life is made with things, with the rest of men, and with one’s own reality. Hence, theological mundology —the vision of the world from God— implies, in the first place, a vision of the radical and fundamental origin of all things with which man elaborates his life in God: this is a cosmogony. In the second place, a vision of the oneness of men with respect to God: this is an ecclesiology in the sense I describe below. In the third place, a vision of the reality of each in the future development of his own life: this is an eschatology, if I may be permitted the expression. These three moments, which taken at one and the same time, constitute the body of religion, have a certain stability. The man that is born finds himself with something already established, namely, the religion into which he was born. And that establishment is precisely what the term and concept of “tradition” expresses. Mundology therefore comprises a cosmogony, an eschatology, and a tradition. What are these four things?
a) In the first place, in every religion there is a cosmogony. Any religion answers the question as to how the world has been formed, and how it has been made.
Here the theme of the gods as makers of the world appears. It is not {101} mentioned anywhere that the absolutely supreme reality is a maker. That this reality may be so is another question, but it is not necessary that this reality be the one that makes the world without mediation. In the case of at least all ancient religions, the making of the world is a subordinate function of a demiurge. Clearly the demiurge is a demiurge by virtue of the supreme reality, which does not detract from the radical supremacy of divine reality. But this divine reality has subordinate beings who make the world. This is not the most primitive conception. It is not metaphysically impossible for creation ex nihilo to be the terminus of a being previously created by God. It might be the case, and it is true, that because of their nature no created being is a creator. However, this does not mean that a created being cannot have a rigorously creating function ex nihilo sui et subjecti. In the case of the maker gods, the term “maker” leaves a sufficient margin that allows us to speak about them without delving into distinctions that do not belong to the essence of religion, but to certain religions.
Not only do we have maker gods, but we also have in the vision of the world from God that this world has several zones. God not only shows Himself as maker of the world, but also as owner, as its lord. The Semitic term used for the god Ba‘al means precisely that: owner or lord in the sense of domination. Because of this, one could say that, as we shall see in more detail when we discuss religious diversity, each people has a religion of their own, where to have their own religion means primarily that it has the god who protects the territory of the population in question. In the case of nomads, of course, this refers to the god who accompanies them in their migrations. There is always their-god.
{102} Besides zones within the world there is the great double zone of the worldly and the transworldly. Often the term “supernatural” has been applied in a hasty and precipitous manner to this zone of beings that would be different from the world. I think it is preferable to call them “transworldly” in the sense that they form part of another world. These beings have led to an internal dialectic within religions. And I take the example of the religion of Israel, to avoid the appearance of this being questionable. ‘Elohim is the name of God, but it also signifies that whole array of transworldly beings to which also the soul of the dead properly belongs. When Saul wishes to know the will of God he appeals to a female necromancer, who conjures the presence of the spirit of Samuel. And the text recounts that the woman saw an ‘elohim ascending from the earth; it was precisely the spirit of Samuel (1 Sam 28:13). In the Hebrew text of Psalm 82, for example, Yahweh confronts the other ‘elohim, reproaching their injustice. The Septuagint found this a bit harsh and translated it as dáimones, demons. But the Hebrew text writes ‘elohim. They may be evil, that is a separate question, but indubitably they belong to that transworld. It is in both worlds, that other transworld and this world divided into zones, that the action of God occurs.
b) In the second place, God is not only fundament of the world —cosmogony— but also of the oneness of those who believe in Him. It is the case, in one form or another, of an ecclesiology: it is a vision of the faithful from God. Nonetheless, this concept of ecclesía is confusing and ambivalent. What I am trying to say is that it is not essential for a religion to have what we call a church, an association, etc. There are many religions which lack or have lacked that. The Greeks never had an ecclesía in the sense of community, and much less of organization. What is {103} essential to every religion, from my point of view, is something different. Each individual, by the mere fact of having faith in his God, participates in one way or another in the faith that other individuals have with respect to the same God. This participation is the only thing that really, thematically, and radically —for any religion— must be called ecclesía. It is a question of participating in the same faith, not of having an organization or a reunion in the form of an assembly. Persons are the ones who have the same religious attitude towards the same God. And it is a religious attitude which not only in fact everyone has, but in addition each one knows the others have it, that it is shared. The Athenians of the time of Pericles did not have an ecclesía in the sense of organizations and assemblies, but there is no doubt everyone knew they were protected by Pallas Athena, and were indebted to her. This is the only sense I give to the word ecclesía at this moment: the participation in a common faith. The existence of a religious community is a different matter. It is an essential distinction in the problem. From it will come the clarification to the questions I had previously addressed to the Durkheim conception.
Facing this conception I had asked before, What does Durkheim do with individual religious acts or with persons who only have an individual religion? I understand by individual religion the opposite to what Durkheim pretends: a community or a body of faithful. Still, a body of faithful is not something universal, as I have just indicated. What then is that alleged individual religion? The term is quite confusing. It could mean the religion of someone who does not belong to the community, who is at the margin of the same. To be at the margin, if not of the community, of the gods of the State, is in what kategórema consisted, the accusation of the judges against Socrates. But individual religion {104} may simply mean the fact that religion is practiced individually, and personally. Consequently, it has nothing to do with the fact that it may or may not be shared with other persons. It is the case, with respect to them, of participation in the very same faith, and not belonging to the same community. It is not essential for any religion to have a community, but it is essential for religion and faith that it may be —or at least have the capability to be— shared. From this follows that every religion, in an initial and radical way, does have an ecclesial dimension in the sense I have just described.
Of course, when the community exists as such, then it is performing certain activities, which are the ones that should be called cultic. These are activities more or less symbolic which are performed by the community when facing the gods. Many religions, although not even all remotely, have specialized personnel to perform these functions, which is what the priesthood is, in its double function of being the performer of the acts of cult, and the mediator in the access to the divinity. These activities of the community —or even the activities of the individual in the sense mentioned above— are ecclesial actions in the radical sense of the word, actions which are inspired in the participation of all individuals or of a group of individuals in one same faith, and they have three essential dimensions:
aa) In the first place, these activities refer to the gods, but not in the same manner as we refer to the stars which simply are there. The gods have made the world or, as in the old traditions, have built the cities. Some peoples, like the Greeks, had the experience that this was not completely accurate: the cities of the Greek colonies were not made by the gods, but by themselves. Leaving the cities aside, any religion, including the Greek religion, has incorporated {105} the idea that in one way or another, God or the gods have made the world. And then to address God as maker is not simply to address —as Aristotle would say— a first cause, which is right there in front of your eyes. We are dealing with something that existed at the beginning of the world, something that happened in illo tempore. This is the dimension of anámnesis, proper to every cultic action. Let us remember, for example, that in the New Year festivities, in the bit akitu the Babylonians would reread the Enuma Eliš, the Creation Poem. In reality, the first dimension of the cultic activity is remembrance. This remembrance does not consist solely in remembering, but indeed has a strictly religious aspect. It is not only the case of remembering what took place in illo tempore, but that what happened in illo tempore is now reactualized in one form or another in the cultic activity now taking place. The beginning of time in the New Year is in a certain way the reactualization of what was in illo tempore the origin of the world and of all time. Insofar as reactualizing, the cultic activities have an anamnesic dimension.
bb) In the second place, cultic activities not only remember and reactualize what happened: man also enters into an actual communication with a god or with some gods that are there. For example, many of the rites performed during springtime, the harvest, and the planting have the characteristic of entering into communication with the mother goddess, with the fertility itself of the earth. It is not just the fact of remembering that in illo tempore somehow the fertility of the earth began, but that one enters into a communication with the gods that in one form or another can provide that fertility or, on the contrary, disable it.
cc) In the third place, the cult not only commemorates and communicates with the gods, but precisely in that {106} reactualization and this communication —two dimensions that cannot be separated— a third dimension is simultaneously carried. That communication with the gods, reactualizing what they were as makers of the world, is also in one way or another the trusting surrender which man offers to them. And this surrender in some way includes the promise or the guarantee that their land, their world, and their life are not going to end there, but are going to continue. In this sense the reference to the gods is not simply the reactualization of what happened at the beginning of time, not simply the communication with the gods which are being faced, but it is also a pledge that supplicates and guarantees the continuation of the future.
The cult has the ability to reach for the three moments of time simultaneously: the past as reactualization, the present as communication, and the future as a guarantee for what is going to come. These three dimensions, at one and the same time, is what constitutes the religious unity of time. In it one of the most radical and profound dimensions of ecclesiology is manifested.
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1 Concerning this dialog with Hegel at the level of 1968 please refer to Xavir Zubiri, Estructura dinámica de la realidad (“The Dynamic Structure of Reality“), Madrid, 1989, p. 271. Years later Zubiri will discard the very term of “objectivation”.
2 In the Madrid 1965 seminar, Zubiri writes on the margin that what body defines and circumscribes is “the objective characteristic of the three dimensions of religious life”, referring to ultimateness, possibilitation, and impellence. He also adds, “these possibilities constitute an organic, systematic structure; religion is not only body because it circumscribes and defines the possibilities of religious life, but because in addition it forms an organic structure. And that is so because religion is nothing but the objectivation of religation”.
3 In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri talked unitarily, as we saw in the first chapter, about “theo-cosmology”. [Tr. note: Zubiri writes mundología, literally “world-logy”. The neologism mundology is taken from the Latin mundus, world. The term “cosmology” would not have reflected the distinction Zubiri makes between “world” and “cosmos”. The term “world” refers to all real things qua real, and would include our cosmos and all other kósmoi]