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CHAPTER III
THE DIVERSITY OF RELIGIONS
The question here is not to describe, not even summarily, in what this diversity consists. That would be the subject matter for an entire course on the history of religions. It is a question of purely and simply arriving at a concept of diversity qua diversity.
For this it is necessary, in the first place, to quickly recall some dimensions of the fact of diversity itself.
In the second place, we must ask in what does the structure of this diversity of religions consist, but in a more formal manner.
In the third place, even in a deeper way, beyond structure, we must investigate in what does the essential difference of religions consist.
Finally, in the fourth place, we must find out in what do the characteristics of this essential diversity itself consist.
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§ 1
THE FACT OF DIVERSITY
The fact of diversity is quite well known. However, we must refine some characteristics in order that this diversity may acquire a certain sense. Truly, religions are diverse, but they do not appear at random on Earth. Religions exist on Earth in a concrete manner. It seems prehistoric men had some form of religion: we notice the early appearance of amulets, figurines, rock paintings, burials, etc., which makes us think that those men had some idea of the powers superior to man, and of the existence of a beyond. Well into the historic phase, the ethnologists classify the different civilizations into several stages or strata, which although not yet strata rigorously speaking, they may be called as such in order not to complicate the exposition.
A) In the first place we have the stratum of the primitive civilizations, which only live by gathering the products of the fields, generally in charge of the women, and from the stalking hunt of animals, both large and small, in charge of the men. This type of primitive civilization, based simply on collecting, exists fundamentally in four different cultural cycles: the Equatorial cycle, the Southern cycle, the Arctic cycle, and the Boomerang cycle. These primitive civilizations appear to have in some way the idea of a supreme being, and in this sense they have a true monotheism, which certainly is not incompatible with the existence of many superior {117} transmundane beings, but among them there seems to be one superior being. Many of these primitive peoples believed that this divinity lived among men for a while, taught them the fundamental things of life and death, and afterwards left them, according to some for the heavens, according to others for the Orient, etc.
B) In the second place there are primary civilizations. These civilizations do not live by gathering, but by production1. This production outlines three different types of civilization and cultural cycle. In the first place, the patriarchal hunters, creators of the urban civilization in which totemism and the cult of the Sun were born. Therefore, totemism (the idea of some blood ties between members of this civilization with certain animals, the idea of a sacred animal, etc.) is not, as Durkheim naively proposed, the elemental form of religious life. This thesis today is no more than a memory.
In addition to the patriarchal hunters, we have the agricultural civilizations, which are matriarchal. They are not urban civilizations, but agrarian. And in this agrarian civilization something different from totemism has appeared, animism. Animism is not a religion, but a mentality, a way of interpreting things, not only of the other world, but also of this one. Animism can incorporate many religions, and the same religion can be lived through different mentalities, one of which is the animist. In these civilizations of matriarchal farmers there are two fundamental cults: one is to the fertility of Mother Earth, {118} and the other is the cult of the Moon, which rules the cycles of the seasons, etc.
There is a third group, different from the urban and agrarian civilizations, the one of the nomadic shepherds, which has at least three different cultural cycles. One is the Ural-Altaic group. Another, the primitive Indo-European. And another, the primitive Hamito-Semitic. These nomadic shepherds ambulate through the steppes, more or less in the open, and live under the sky. It is natural for them to have a completely different type of religion. They live under the open sky, which serves as the seat of the only divinity they have, and who is accompanying them in their nomadic movements. Through the contact with certain urban civilizations they have an association with Mother Earth, and then some complex figures may appear, such as the Zeus páter2 associated to Deméter, Mother Earth, as it happens in the primitive sediments of the Indo-European civilization in the Mediterranean basin.
C) There are, in the third place, the secondary cultures, constituted by a free matriarchy or by a free patriarchy, wherein are born, by further elaboration, things as different as fetishism or the cult of the manes, primarily.
D) Finally there are some tertiary civilizations, which are called —without entering into ethnological complexities— superior civilizations. Mentioning them in their order of antiquity as verified historically, we have in first place the civilization of the Semites. Later on, in the Far {119} East, towards the XVII or XVI century B.C., the civilizations of China and Japan appear. Afterwards, coming from the Indo-Europeans, the more or less sedentary Europeans appear, as well as the Hindus from the Indus valley, the Iranians on their way to India, the Greeks and Romans, etc. After this, the first manifestations of the religion of Israel appear, which is going to resonate in Christianity. Towards the VI century B.C., when during the time of Isaiah the great reform of Israel takes place, two very important events occur: on the one hand the appearance of Buddhism in India, and on the other, the appearance, not of the first Iranians, but rather the reform of Zarathustra. And finally, around the VI and VII centuries A.D., Islam appears.
Here we have, in broad strokes, the great diversity of religions or, if you will, the main titles under which we would have to place the great diversity of religions. Then, we ask ourselves, In what does the formal structure of this diversity consist?
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§ 2
THE FORMAL STRUCTURE OF THIS DIVERSITY
This diversity is inscribed in a religious situation perfectly particularized. Anything else would be sheer fantasy. Men do not surrender to God in the abstract, by virtue of their prime matter and substantial form, but as absolutely concrete entities, as individuals, and also as individuals that live in a group, immersed in a religious situation. The fact of diversity occurs there. Each religion is inscribed in its religious situation, which is essential not to loose from sight. Therefore, In what does the diversity of these situations consist, and consequently, what determines each situation formally?
On the one hand there is the diversity of social bodies, the relevance of which is undeniable. I understand social bodies as things that are absolutely concrete. The social body of an urban civilization is not the same as the social body of an agrarian civilization, or the social body of the nomads, etc. They are absolutely different social bodies, and it is natural, at least at first sight, that they should lead to different religions. I say at first sight, because in the fact of the diversity of religions the social bodies are not the only ones that intervene, but also what I have called the cycles, i.e., the type of life they lead. Therefore, it is not just a flaunting of erudition to distinguish among the various types of life, which ethnology recognizes. The style of life is just as essential for the constitution of a religion as the social body may be. This is confirmed by the fact that totally {121} incommunicated social bodies such as the Arctic cycle, or the one belonging to the Tasmanians in Australia have the same type of life and with it a religion, which basically could be recognized as being the same. The different nomads, be they Ural-Altaic, the primitive Indo-Europeans or the primitive Semites who ambulated through the steppes, have a certain type of oneness in their religion. It is something similar to what occurs with languages, apparently very different, but disclosing a certain oneness or a structural similarity.
At any rate, even though it may be rather complex to say what makes one religion different from another, it is indubitable that one must take into account not only the social body, but the type of life as well. The difficulty precisely rests on the fact that both things do not coincide: absolutely incommunicated social bodies may have the same type of life, and with it a very similar type of religion. Conversely, the same type of social body may have different types of life, and consequently a succession of different religions. For this reason it was necessary to insist, as all ethnologist do, in the existence of the cycles, since not only the social body, but also the type of life is essential to understand the formal structural difference of the different religions. The result, if both these aspects of the problem are taken at the same time, is that a religion is always essentially and formally our religion. The religion of a people, and of someone. This is essential. Religion as something hanging from heaven has no existence whatsoever. Religion is always our religion: the religion of the nomadic pastors, the religion of the hunters, in the urban civilizations, etc. By “ours” is understood that first and above all it belongs to this people. That is what constitutes its difference, its formal structure. No religion makes exception to this in history. Not even {122} the religion of Israel. The religion of Israel is universal only at the end, shortly before Christ. No Israelite from the time of Jeremiah or from the time of the previous prophets would have thought that Yahwism is a religion to which the whole world must access. To the contrary: it is their religion, of Israel. Only towards the end there appears a certain universalism, and in a very precise form: the case of a universalism whose center is precisely Israel itself. Even Christianity, as we shall see, makes no exception to this. The life of Christ upon Earth was not a “comedy”. Christ wanted to convince the Israelites of his function and his person. If they had believed in Him, the function of the religion of Israel would have been essentially different from the one it has been afterwards. No religion makes exception to this characteristic of being our religion.
From this follows that it is extremely difficult to say where the difference in religions resides. The difference is not in the social body if different social bodies have the same type of life. Also, it is not in the type of life, since in turn it can be incarnated in different social bodies, or the same social body can have different types of life. It is extremely difficult to proceed from this point of being our religion, to say what the essential difference in religions is. This is the third issue we must investigate.
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§ 3
THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE OF RELIGIONS
The reader will now understand why I insist in the adjective “essential”. If all religions are taken with all the characteristics they can have historically when they are our religion, religions can undoubtedly be very different. Needless to say, without any doubt, the Phoenician religion of the Semites of the West is very different from the religion of the Semites of the East. As a historical phenomenon it is indubitable: enough to remember that Hammurabi conquers Babylon, and enthrones the god Marduk who comes from the West. But, Can one say the Phoenician religion, and the Assyro-Babylonian are two essentially different religions? I would reply in the negative. Unquestionably there are important differences. For example, for an Amorite the supreme divinity is Marduk, for another it may be Assur, etc. And there are serious differences, such as the fact that the Phoenician religion incorporates human sacrifices, but the Assyro-Babilonian and the Israelite do not. The episode of Abraham and Isaac is there precisely to remind us that the possibility for human sacrifice is abolished a radice in the religion of Israel. While in Greece, and among the Assyro-Babilonians, there is sacred prostitution, we find none in Rome, etc.
Yet, When are these differences truly essential? If it were only a question of taking these differences as social institutions, they would be important, but they would not resolve our question. The important point is that these differences, when they are essential, they are so precisely because {124} they are not arbitrary, but are somehow associated to the idea describing the divinity, which in these particular religions exists. The matter is clear now. The essential difference between religions is based on the gods they have. Here is where the problem resides, in the divinity.
Anyone who has a religion —our religion— understands that his religion is true3. In one form or another, every religion encompasses this intrinsic moment of truth, the truth of religation in the deity, insofar as it is molded precisely in a divinity. Here is where the question begins: What is it that makes a religion true? Every religion has three moments: a conception about the gods, a cultic community, and an eschatology. But then, the cultic community is a commemoration. Of what? Of certain acts of the gods. It is a communication. With what? With those powerful realities called gods. It is an eschatology. In what sense? In drafting the precise way to that destiny, which the gods have chosen for man. Regardless of the point of view with which we approach the question, the whole oneness of the objective issue depends essentially on the gods to which it refers, whether it is in the form of ascribing a reality to the divinity, or in the form of a cult in its triple dimension of commemoration, communication, and eschatology, or in the form of personal prosecution of a certain destiny. The fundamental element, which makes a religion true or not is precisely the divinity, God or the gods. Therefore, the diversity of religions is a diversity, which in the last resort, must rest on a diverse conception of the gods.
One might say that this is infinite. Not quite. It is difficult, for example, to determine the essential difference between {125} the Phoenician religion and the Assyrian religion. The cultic forms can be very different. Phoenician religion admitted human sacrifices; the Assyrian would not. But this is not the essential. The essential concerned the gods. Phoenician religion had a pantheon that is nominally quite different from the Babylonian pantheon, but in the end is more or less of the same type and has the same nature. Which means that differences among religions grow pale before an essential difference, such as the type of divinity, the kind of gods that men venerate in that divinity, those with whom they communicate in it, and the destiny they have inscribed in it4.
By true religion it is meant that, in one form or another, the god that serves as the pivot for the whole of that religion is a true one; to him man surrenders in faith; from him he determines his theology and his mundology (mundología), and in him each one lives his own religious life. The god is precisely what makes a religion true. Our religion is characterized precisely by having its god. This god is not only an absolute reality, but also a god essentially religious, i.e., a god in whom the life of each one of the individuals is founded as an ultimate, possibilitating, impelling fundament, and in addition a god religator of the whole social body to which the entire particular civilization belongs. It is a god essentially and formally religious. And this religious god is conceived from a perspective we could call, without further implications, religious thinking. Men belonging to a particular civilization, in a particular social body, with a particular type of life, have a way of thinking, which allows them to think, truthfully, what divinity is. However, in order to explain this we must answer three questions.
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In the first place: In what does religious thinking consist?
In the second place: What is the religious idea of God?
And, in third place: In what does the alleged truth of this religious thinking consist?
I. What is religious thinking?
Above all, it is a thinking, which is immersed, buried, in a religious situation. It is not the case of a thinking about a religious situation, but from a religious situation. Consequently, it is a thinking determined by and for a religious situation. And because this is a religious situation in the fullest sense of the term, man has in it the lived experience of his religion, to which his thought immersed in this experience is going to provide a profile for the idea of God. But yet, In what does the character of religious thinking consist?
From the beginning we must insist that it is a matter of thinking. I have always maintained the idea that thinking is precisely to think of the possibilities with which something can and should be understood, both in itself and as a function of the living situation in which one finds oneself immersed. From this point of view to think is not univocal: Are we going to compare the thinking of prehistoric men or primary civilizations —for example, the pigmies— with what our thinking is? Levy-Bruhl initiated the thesis that it is a question of two types of thinking: one, the logical, which is ours; and the other pre-logical, which is the one these early people would have in their heads, arranged in a different way5. Now, I have always thought that this is simply absurd. Thinking is always the same. What {127} happens is that all differences are placed under another perspective.
In order not to lose ourselves with vague speculations let us take one example only: the idea of cause. It is said that it is the case of a concept inside the head of all the Greeks, of all the Europeans. etc.; and that it would be senseless to talk about causes to a pigmy. Quite true. But we should examine this carefully. Every concept, even the most abstract, has its base in something I would call scheme. We are dealing with a scheme of this concept, which does not coincide with the concept itself. Kant, for example, was right in thinking that —at least from the point of view of science— the scheme of causality is succession. I must suppose that Kant knew what he was going to say in his Critique of Practical Reason, i.e., that not all causality belongs to the succession type, for example, in the case of what a free will determines. At any rate, independently of what Kant may have thought, succession and determinism are precisely the scheme of causality, but they are not causality. From this follows the profound error of those who think freedom is the derogation of causality. No: it is the derogation of one scheme of causality, which is what determinism is; something toto cælo different. Every concept has a formal scheme.
Now then, I have always thought that radically, and at the base of every concept there are not only formal schemes, but, in addition, more or less subterranean schemes, which I would call material. Let us return to the idea of cause. We say that the cause tends to produce an effect. Production is already a scheme. Even ignoring that this may be so, Who is unable to see that the material and basic scheme with which the ancient and rustic man thinks causality is precisely generation? The generative scheme is precisely {128} the material and schematic base of the thought we call the thinking of causes. That is why, for example, when in ancient civilizations we find androgynous gods, we cannot eliminate this detail so quickly. If one takes the idea of generation as base and schematic substratum of the idea of causality, there is no doubt that a god who produces everything by himself is at the same time man and woman, is androgynous. There is no conception about the gods, which may be rigorously generative in the literal sense of the term, but it is also quite difficult that there be a conception of causality that in one way or another may not allude to these generative dimensions of the problem. There is a precise and concrete case: in the beginnings of the history of the Church this confusion between generation and production had its radical expression with Arius, culminating in the Council of Nicea. Today we still pray in the Credo of the Mass genitum non factum; generated, but not made, not produced. It is absolutely impossible to eliminate the schemes I would call “phantasmic”.
This phantasmic way of thinking is at the base of not only mythologies, but also in all the elemental theologies. Next to it is the other type of reasonable thinking done within a logical framework, belonging to the one that thinks he is thinking only with abstract thoughts, when in reality the phantasmic thought and the reasoning thought are purely and simply two slopes of the selfsame reality, which human thinking is. A type of thinking perhaps more accentuated in primitive men, the other more accentuated in our modern civilizations. At all events, religious thinking transcends these, and other possible modes of thinking. Religious thinking qua religious may adopt all these diverse forms without in the end resting upon any one of them exclusively. The movement of religious thinking {129} as a thinking towards the divinity is essentially transcendent, not only by reason of its terminus, but also by its own structure, because it is not ascribed to any of the concrete forms of thinking. Ultimately that is what we express when we say: “that is what they wanted to say, what they wanted to think”. That moment of the wanted expresses the transcendence of thinking with respect to the concrete forms, which that selfsame thinking may possess.
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1 In the 1965 (Madrid) seminar Zubiri added: “naturally, this production, necessary for their livelyhood, implies essentially a turning towards ultimateness, towards the ultimate things that are decisive for their existence”.
2 From the Indo-European dyeu-pater (“father heaven”), as in the case of the Roman Iupiter, of the Vedic Dyaus-Pitr, the Illiric Dai-patures, the Scythian Zeus-Papaios, etc.
3 From this point on we follow the text of the 1965 seminar in Madrid.
4 From this point on we again follow the 1971 seminar.
5 Cf. L. Levy-Bruhl, La mentalité primitive, Paris, 1922.