The logic of religion

X. The Unity of Religious Experience

 THE UNITY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE The focus of this study is Western religion. Its salient features, however, are analogously present in Eastern religion and other cultural expressions. Considerations of Eastern religion and primitive religion are instructive, indeed indispensable, in understanding the logic of religion. Yet the far greater mass of material available for the study of Western culture leads naturally to its exemplar status as we consider the distinctive features of religion. Our knowledge of the West is more intimate and internal as is evident from the authors who are considered in this discussion. The other great world cultures have achieved their own synthesis between religion and life, but Western civilization, as Christopher Dawson has shown in his classic study of medieval civilization, has been the great ferment of change in the world. The achievements of modern science and technology arose in the West for reasons inherent in the Christian culture that supplanted that of Greece and Rome.1 Commentators, philosophers, and historians through the ages have recognized that religion begins with the acceptance of a set of beliefs, intellectual in character, the implications of which imme-  . Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (New York: Doubleday , ). diately find their way into the practical order. In every generation religion is inherited, but its distant origins can usually be traced to a founder or founding revelation. The great monotheisms of the West present themselves as the conduits of divine revelation. Recorded or synthesized, that revelation creates a sacred literature that preserves a basic teaching for subsequent generations. As presented in Judaic, Christian, and Muslim texts, God is thought to have disclosed himself in human history and to have proposed a set of laws for universal human observance. Those texts, while adding revealed knowledge, subtract nothing from the wealth of classical learning used to unlock and to develop their meanings. In the case of Christianity it is to be remembered that the New Testament was written in Greek, not in the Hebrew of Moses and the prophets, nor in the Aramaic of Jesus and His disciples, nor yet in the Latin of Imperial Rome, but in the Greek of Socrates and Plato. Personal assent to revelation or to the teaching of a master entails both an intellectual and an affective response. This is particularly true of Christianity where revelation is found in the GodMan Christ whose person as well as teaching is disclosed in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles. The kings and prophets of ancient Israel are personages that at once lend themselves to art and literature and create an affective bond between the hearer and the message. Many today, young and old, carry the names of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Sarah, Rachel, Susanna, Ann, and Daniel. Following a common acknowledgment of revealed truth or of the truth of a master’s teachings, a community of believers naturally emerges. Common acknowledgment in the case of the biblical religions leads to both individual and communal acts. Acknowledgment of the divine origin of human life and the brotherhood of mankind generates in the practical order beneficent activity which extends even beyond the community of believers. These Aquinas called “the secondary acts of religion,” acts such as charity, the care                           of the sick, the elderly, widows, and orphans. Worship in its various manifestations such as prayer and sacrifice Aquinas recognized as primary. Common acknowledgment inevitably leads to visible institutions , temples, synagogues, and churches that not only serve as centers of worship and homage but as conservers of doctrine. Historically , Christianity has inspired some of the greatest artistic achievement the world has known in architecture, painting, and music, appreciated by believers and nonbelievers. Much of the classical architecture and statuary admired today has its origin in reverence for the gods and the eternal verities perpetuated in classical literature. The temples of ancient Greece and Rome, the cathedrals of medieval Christendom, and the mosques of Islam draw tourists and pilgrims from around the globe. Museums throughout the West prominently display sculpture from the classical period and paintings inspired by the biblical narratives as well as contemporary artifacts which draw upon those traditions. Nonbelievers can be as appreciative of religious art as believers. Auguste Comte appreciated the ritual traditions of Christianity. George Santayana loved to meditate while seated in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, the pope’s own Church, amidst the baroque Titans lining its columns...