{181}

APPENDIX

“PRIMITIVE RELIGION”

The foremost idea about how religions are born, quite inveterate in many minds, consists in saying that all religions come from a single religion, which has diversified itself. Let us be clear, this is totally a priori with no fundament at all. It is the idea of a “primitive religion”, which has found its latest support in the ethnologist, W. Schmidt, who is simply brilliant as an ethnologist. Father Schmidt, studying the ethnology of the present primitive peoples, some living in a phase of Neolithic civilization, and others Paleolithic, has been able to detect a trace of what might have been mankind as a primitive man. From these would proceed the first revelation of a religion which afterwards became diversified, and more complicated during the course of history. Needless to say no Catholic is obliged to accept Schmidt’s conception. Besides, it is quite problematic.

In the first place, ethnologically, there is no doubt there is an enormous gap between the present primitive men, and the original primitive man. Even placing primitive man at the beginning of the Cro-Magnon civilization —about fifty thousand years ago—, What has been happening all this time up to the present pigmies? It cannot be denied that in any form of conception, and in any hypothesis, many of the present primitive peoples represent a collateral branch of mankind. Clearly, {182} human history has not issued from it. The richness of history just could not start from a branch, which actually has been living in a corner at the margin of history. The least one can say about it is that it has become grounded, and while in this grounding, it has modified.

In the second place, there is the appeal to “primitive revelation”. However, primitive revelation is not accessible to history. In fact, the historian does not encounter primitive revelation. At any rate, let us suppose that someone approaches primitive revelation from the perspective of a theologian. One may ask, then, what that primitive revelation was. Certainly, it was a theological elevation of man, which consisted in the fact that man was actually invited, and destined to an intimacy with God through what the New Testament and theology have later called “grace”. However, Did this involve a revelation, which may transcend the limits of what I have just pointed out? Not at all. The content of that revelation escapes the mind of the best theologians. There are few theologians that would dare to say that Adam received a revelation of the Trinity. We do not know what was the precise extent of that primitive revelation. Furthermore, not only do we not know its content, but also we cannot say purely and {183} simply —as Schmidt does when presenting the matter— that the content of religion was revealed in the sense of a teaching from God. That would constitute an enormous historical extrinsicalism even including Adam. The elevation to the theological order is the elevation of something, which man constitutively is. How can we possibly say that it has been purely and simply an extrinsic dictation to the conscience of Adam? Lastly, we also do not know what became of it. There is no record anywhere showing what became of that minuscule, but real, primitive revelation. It is not mentioned in any part of the Biblical text —and reasonably so— that polytheism may represent a corruption of monotheism; this is a thesis many historians have developed. Because the truth is that neither polytheism has issued from monotheism nor monotheism has issued from polytheism, but rather they are ways —as I will immediately explain— congeneric and radical in the natural tendencies of man. The appeal to primitive religion —or primitive revelation— as a germinal origin of all religions in history is, regardless of the perspective taken on the matter, scientific or theologic, a complete fantasy.

It might well be thought, then, that at least, this is a case of what has been called the “natural religion” belonging to man. It is the same story repeatedly told with respect to natural rights and many other naturalities attributed to man. However, this involves an important equivocation: What do we understand by “natural religion”? Is it a set of conceptions and beliefs, which man has? Where is that set? Actually, in the best of the hypotheses, an attempt has been made to find this set through a comparative study of religions. With this, of course, what has been obtained is not a natural religion, but, as someone remarked with excellent acumen, an Esperanto of religions. What can be understood by natural religion is not a minuscule natural religion —sit venia verbo—, but something completely different: that it is natural for man to have religion. And on this point, as long as we are not told in what naturality consists, nothing has been said at all. Still, religion does not belong to human nature, but to the personal being of man, because religation is not natural religion, but a formally constitutive moment of the personal being as such. Consequently, religation does not enlighten us in any way about the origin of the different religions.

{184} Finally, therefore, from the point of view of religions, history encounters the original fact, beyond which one cannot go. The fact that religion presents itself as multiple right from the start. At least, from the time and from the sphere to which man’s historical investigation can access.


{185}

§ 2

THE INTRINSIC HISTORICITY OF A RELIGION

Up to this point I have described in a summary way the historical occurrence of religions. Now a second question arises: In what does their intrinsic historicity formally consist? This is a more delicate matter. Up to now I have indicated that religions are in history, and share the vicissitudes and changes of the same. But the question is to know if religion is historical simply because it occurs in history or if religion, rather, occurs in history because it is intrinsically historical. From my perspective, religion belongs to history because it is intrinsically historical. In order to justify that assertion it will be necessary to consider the following.

In the first place, What is historicity?
And, in second place, In what does that historicity of religion consist?


I. What is historicity?

Historicity consists, from my perspective, in the realization of a possibility. And that realization is precisely what we call an event, in contradistinction to fact, which consists purely and simply in the actuation of some potencies or faculties, which realities have. In the case of man, something is at the same time a fact and an event. If I eat, if I take a {186} certain type of food, it may be because a doctor has prescribed it for me; in that sense it is a historical fact; it is an event. But evidently I take that food through a series of anatomical and physiological actions that as such do not have the characteristics of events, but of biological facts. Now then, the truth is that the same act, which is “to eat”, is at the same time fact and event. What happens is that it is not event by the same reason it is fact. It is event if it is the result of a diet that the doctor has prescribed; it is a fact if it is the result purely and simply of the activity of biological potencies. Historicity, therefore, consists in the realization of possibilities.

1) Therefore, reality is actualized in the intelligence as something, which is de suyo in a primary truth we call “real truth”.

2) But the characteristic of reality transcends from a thing, and takes us inexorably to others beyond the first. And this “beyond” is what makes a problem out of truth. Real truth is not formally problematic in itself: it is so exclusively in the measure it remits us to something beyond itself. And that something to which it remits us, the other reality to which it remits us, is constitutively something, which is “towards”, and is problematic.

3) Furthermore, this taking us beyond, for example, has two dimensions. It can take us beyond, for example, to select a diet among others. One can take certain foods and not take others because a selection of diets lies within the existing possibilities for our health to be recovered or normalized. This is absolutely true. But not all possibilities, which reality offers man in its turning towards a “beyond” have this characteristic. There are some possibilities —and these are the ones, which are decisive in our problem— in which reality remits beyond, but not beyond {187} outside itself, but towards a more profound stratum of itself. In other words, possibilities are opened for an intellection of the internal structure of the real, which I have in front of me, but in a deeper and more profound way. And these possibilities are the ones we are dealing with in this case. They are possibilities in order to understand the internal intellection of reality.

4) These possibilities, like all possibilities, come to light in the situation in which man finds himself with things. But a situation, which is not constituted purely by intellectual dimensions, but by the integral reality of the whole man in all his dimensions. I will return to this idea presently².

5) This taking us beyond —which is problematic— offers different possibilities of intellection, different possibilities to perforate to the ultimate reality of a thing. And these differing possibilities, seen now from the point of view of the thing, which offers them, and insofar as they take us towards an interior “beyond”, and more profound of the thing itself, signify that truth is not only constituted by what the thing formally presents to us. If this were not so, we would not go beyond. The truth is also present, inchoatively, in each of the different possibilities. Each possibility actualizes the real inchoatively. Reality suggests different possibilities of intellection. Until a decision is made about them, they inchoatively represent a thing, i.e., one or another mode of being, among which man has to choose. The inchoative dimension of thinking is anchored precisely in the transcendental dimension of real truth, and manifests itself in the offer of different possibilities of intellection, which man encounters from his situation.

{188} 6) When we choose one of these possibilities, and see that things are not going well, we discard it. But there is another possibility or perhaps several, which actually fit in the thing. Then we say that intellection, which initially was an inchoative intellection, changes now into a truthful formal intellection. Truth, from this point of view, is the fulfillment in the thing of a possibility inchoatively offered by it in a situation³.

7) Still, any realization of a possibility is precisely an event. An event is something intrinsically historical; this is what the intrinsic historicity is, precisely. Therefore, the discovery of the most internal structure of the real is, from this point of view, strictly an event. This is what the truth is as event, as fulfillment of some possibilities. The truth that follows the first real truth is, therefore, intrinsically and formally historical.

8) Nevertheless, this does not impede, but radically demands that truth be founded logically. “Logic” here not only means a deductive reasoning; it can be factual proofs, a new inspection of reality. We shall continue to call it logical to have some indication of the organic structure of scientific knowledge. To be an event does not impede, but —just the opposite— demands that this truth be founded logically in reality. And, actually, reasoning —in the wide sense I have just indicated— is precisely the way of arriving to see that a possibility is actually fulfilled in reality. The moment of fulfillment of a possibility is given by a reasoning or by a direct appeal to reality, either way.

{189} 9) From this follows that between logic and history there is no opposition. Truth always has these two dimensions from which it can be considered. First, as realization of some possibilities for the intellection of reality, and then truth is the fulfillment of a possibility, it is event. Second, as something, which is absolutely or relatively founded —depending on the certainty of the truth— in the logical architecture, which decides its fulfillment. By the first, truth is event. By the second, it is logical. And I refer to this, as I might refer to human actions, that the same truth is not event through that by which it is reasoning. And this has application not only to very complicated truths, but also simply to the very structure of mathematical thinking. For example, in order to understand certain properties of fractional numbers, man has approached this mathematical being with a certain possibility: to understand it from the point of view of the fraction of a oneness. But mathematics has reached out for other different possibilities. For example, to understand rational numbers as reasons or as proportions. This was also not enough; a different conception of the rational number was needed.

At any rate, a range of possibilities has been opened within which a rigorous reasoning is inscribed. Once the problem of this possibility is set up, only reasoning will be able to decide; the appeal to the origin of possibilities will never do. Yet, this presents no obstacle for the conclusion of this reasoning (which is the only one that exclusively decides about a truth) to be logical, and at the same time historical. It is logical because it has the necessary fundament; it is historical because of what it has of realization and fulfillment of a possibility. While by the first moment of reasoning truth is a logical “conclusion”, by the {190} other aspect it is the “fulfillment” of some possibilities, which emerge from the real thing itself on the life of man, and constitute precisely the dynamism of his intellectual life. Logical conclusion is not the same as intellectual life. In the intellectual life possibilities for the intellection of things are being enlightened and obturated, which only reasoning can decide. Of course, this is valid only for founded truths. Because the first truth, which is the real one, is unquestionable: it is neither logical nor historical; it is purely and simply the real truth as a block. Therefore, the truth in history is purely and simply the intrinsic historicity of the truth⁴.

Due to this, our thinking continues to enlighten and obturate possibilities. Even up to the point where, including in that obturation, man has never completely eliminated (perhaps not knowing it), those possibilities to which he inchoatively aimed at the starting point, and afterwards left behind. How many times the history of thought —in some occasions genial— has consisted in returning to that inchoative point to accept possibilities, which were discarded originally, and this way put new possibilities in motion. The return to the origins and foundations with this purpose in mind is not archeology, it is simply and purely the internal recuperation of the system of possibilities, which constitutes the stepping march of thought. Finally, every comprehension has an intrinsic and formally historical characteristic. Comprehension is truth founded on a founding truth, which is the immediate actualization of the real facing the mind. Every founded truth, every comprehension, is intrinsically and essentially historical. Then we ask: In what does the historicity of religion consist? That is the second point.


{191}

II. The historicity of religion

Religion, above all, is historical because religion is the molding of religation. The molding is, as I said, the information of the surrender of man to the divine reality through faith, or the characteristic of faith to become concrete in the surrender of man to the divine reality. It is the molding of a religation, which constitutively and formally the human person has, through the power of the real, in order to constitute his substantive I, his relative absolute being. Still, this is nothing but the realization of some possibilities. The power of the real appears as ultimate possibility, and possibilitating. Therefore, its accomplishment is essentially, intrinsically, and formally something historical. It is historicity. I have mentioned somewhere else that it is not that man may have a problem of God, but that man formally consists in the problem of God itself⁵, i.e., the stepping march towards the fundamentality of his own substantive being. To be I is precisely the radical historicity.

In addition it is not only radical historicity, but also formal. Because religion has something more than just personal life, even though this may be what is essential to it. Religion is a personal life activated in a social body given to it. Indeed, this body is a body because precisely because it constitutes a system of particular possibilities, which defines and circumscribes the religious life of each of its persons. As a system of possibilities it is formally inscribed in what historicity is. For this reason religion is not historical because it occurs in it, but rather it is the occurrence {192} of the very being of man, of the absolute being, insofar as it is made by him. Religion is formally historicity, and in a way much more radical than any other human event.

Thus, religion, as any historical fact, is made appropriating some possibilities and discarding others. By appropriation of possibilities ways are constructed. And this is the central question. A way is the appropriation of some possibilities geared towards the intellection and encounter of a reality. A way is, in this case, the appropriation of the possibilities that starting from the power of the real lead to God in order for me to be what I am. These ways are the way of dispersion, the way of immanence, and the way of transcendence. In the previous chapter the ways were important not inasmuch as ways, but inasmuch as they lead to three ideas: the polytheist idea, the pantheist, and the monotheist. Now the problem is different. We are trying to articulate what these ways may consist of insofar as ways. If a way is an appropriation of a possibility in order to comprehend a reality, and in this case to be able to step from the immediate power of reality to the supremacy in which the divinity consists, this would mean that real and empirical things, in one form or another involve the enigma of the ultimate fundament of the power of the real. I reject here the term “mystery”, so much abused by saying everything is mysterious, etc. Because not even the mysteries of Christianity are mysteries, in the sense of incomprehensible, but are decisions of the arcana of the will of God, something quite different. In this sense, I will say that the way consists in the appropriation of a possibility offered by the enigma —or by the mystery, in the colloquial sense of the expression— in the operation of the surrender to God. The way consists in that.

Taking these three ways —dispersion, immanence, and {193} transcendence— as ways, I consider the three congeneric and contemporaneous. Many times in the XIX, and XX century an attempt has been made to show, motivated by useless pro-Catholic or anti-Catholic polemics, that they are not congeneric, for example, that polytheism has proceeded from a degeneration of monotheism. The religion of Adam has been put forth as an example, something quite problematic from every point of view. It is said that the religion of Adam stems from faith. But faith tells us nothing about what kind of faith Adam had. To think that polytheism is a degeneration of monotheism has been the easy way out for apologists, who are quite numerous on this planet, but who have never been useful in advancing one iota the subjects under apology. On the other hand, that has been the position in our time of the ethnological school of W. Schmidt, for whom the comparative study of religions leads to accept a primitive monotheism. It would be a reflection of the primitive religion of Adam, as if from Adam to the pigmies there was only a four-hour span. Polytheism does not stem from monotheism. There has been an attempt to prove, towards the end of the last century and well into the present one, above all in the English philosophy of religion, that monotheism proceeds from an internal evolution of polytheism. A society would begin by substantivating only certain large forces of nature. Afterwards, it would conceive these forces of nature as if they were spirits: this is animism. Later these spirits would turn into devils: the polydemonism. These would again change into personal entities, thus constituting polytheism. This polytheism would continue to be honed taking the form of a henotheism, which continues to adopt a certain scheme until reaching a supreme God who in the end is the only one that matters, and this would constitute monotheism. This is sheer fantasy. It has absolutely no sociological reality and no historical reality at all.

{194} The truth is that polytheism does not proceed from monotheism and monotheism does not proceed from polytheism: they are really two dimensions, two possibilities inchoatively congeneric in the initial radical act of molding religation into a surrender to a divinity. The same must be said of the third way, the way of immanence. There, the difficulty seems to be different, because it is quite clear that this way of immanence has existed only relatively late in the history of religions. In Greece, it is the case of Stoicism, and there is no need to mention the types of European pantheism. Buddhism belongs to the VI century BC; prior to it the polytheist religion of Brahmanism existed. Confucianism, inasmuch as it shares this condition has a long history as a polytheist religion. However, no religion, neither monotheist nor polytheist, has dismissed this dimension, which relates to the cosmic-moral order, proper to the way of immanence. The idea of one or several gods as organizers of the universe and supporting a morality is something inchoatively congeneric to every religion.

These three ways, therefore, are congeneric, and additionally they are such in an inchoative manner: we must take note of this carefully. How many times has there been a desire to defend the historical monotheism of the Patriarchs saying that the presumed monotheistic tendencies of the religions surrounding them are pure fantasies. On the contrary: every polytheist religion intrinsically and essentially has monotheist tendencies. Just as every monotheist religion has a tendency towards a certain pluralism of one form or another. For the moment we shall put aside what type of order this might be. The monotheist and polytheist tendencies belong inchoatively to the very moment in which man is going to choose for a way, among others, in his stepping march towards the divinity. Nevertheless, How are we to understand the choice for one and not for another? The question has {195} two senses. One is the antecedent question: How has man been moved to make such a choice? For that there is no answer, neither in this case or any other. For example, tons of paper have been written on the origin of Greek thought and Greek philosophy. All the social, historical, etc., factors have to be accounted for. But the moment arrives when we have to recognize that other nations were in similar conditions, and, yet, Thales of Miletus and Parmenides were not born there. Obviously, the option, which leads in an antecedent way is not clarifiable. However, once it has been chosen, it is a different matter: it can be understood a posteriori. Now the historical and philosophical effort can be formulated to see how that possibility had actually been chosen. From this point of view, the history of religions is essentially, by that intrinsic historicity of religion, the inchoative actualization, afterwards appropriated in the form of a way, of the three possibilities, which are open to religation in its ascension towards the divinity⁶. For this reason, in the history of religion it is not the case that religion has history, but rather that history is precisely religion in act. However, these three ways are not equivalent. And that is the third point of the question: the fundament of this historicity.

_________________
¹ This appendix comes from the 1965 Madrid seminar.
² Cf. the appendix that follows entitled “Situation and Mentality”.
³ Zubiri notes on the margin: “truth as encounter”.
⁴ From this point on we follow the text of the 1971 seminar.
⁵ Zubiri refers here to the first part of the seminar. Cf. El hombre y Dios (“Man and God”), op. cit., pp. 12-13. Also, in the first chapter there appeared a similar affirmation concerning the experience of deity.
⁶ In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri added “and, which are fulfilled in the objective field of religion”.