-
2. Theory and the Deus Evanescens: Can There Truly Be a “Science” of Religion?
- University of Virginia Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
2 THEORY AND THE DEUS EVANESCENS Can ThErE TrULy BE a “SCiEnCE” of rELiGion? ■ The god-stuff roars eternally, like the sea, with too vast a sound to be heard. —D. H. Lawrence Postmodern philosophy has tirelessly and for way too long been accused of being reckless and contrary to the “rational,” including the various templates of rationality that often go by the name of “science .” It might be assumed that the postmodernist movement has ground to rubble once and for all the idea of a Religionswissenschaft, a science de religions, or a “science of religion,” for which the nineteenth century yearned. But such a concept of science was entrapped by the Enlightenment notion of a pure method buttressed through universalizing propositions, or covering laws, that could explain in some observer-neutral and subject-independent fashion what could once-and-for-all be indicated as the “religious” in all possible circumstances . Such a venture proved impossible, largely because the method of description and generalization demanded by empirical scientific protocol turned out to be awkward and complex. It became completely impractical to disentangle the ideal of observer neutrality from certain theological or antitheological presuppositions. Scientism in the study of religion found its default in a taxonomical essentialism that later came to be named the “phenomenology” of religion, which rarely had anything to do with the supposedly “rigorous” philosophical approach invented by Husserl. T H E O R Y A N D T H E D E U S E VA N E S C E N S 35 With postmodernism we have moved way beyond essentialism, but we have substituted for it an uncritical and weakly theoretical descriptivism, combined with a methodological particularism, that seeks to preserve the innocence of the immediate evidence gathered rather than foster conceptual innovations that might challenge the self-referentiality of the academic practices themselves. The persistence of the nomenclature of religious inquiry as “religious studies” telegraphs this means of “playing it safe” when it comes to theorizing about religion. But we must ask ourselves at this point: can there indeed be a bona fide Religionswissenschaft that compasses and comprehends the whole of what the ancient Romans first identified as the religiones? The problem of the religiones for the Romans, who provided a name for the peculiar phenomenon we now call “religion,” derived from the unique character of their own practices and rites. religion and the Paralogical As has been observed by ancient scholars, Roman religion was neither monotheistic nor imaginatively polytheistic as its Greek counterpart had been. Roman republican religion was centered on networks of family loyalties and bonds as well as contractual exchanges between mortals and deities. With the coming of empire this focus on reciprocal obligations morphed into the notorious system of Caesar worship along with a centralized state polity. Rome, famous for its emphasis on religious “tolerance,” viewed religious belief and commitment in much the same way as Rousseau did almost two millennia later. Religion was always a form of “civil religion” that was principally ethical and social with the key function of ensuring the responsiveness and political fidelity of the republic’s citizens. If on occasion the Romans did construe the content of religious beliefs and observances other than in pragmatic terms, they were constantly confronted with the force of religion, those sorts of “fanaticisms” such as they encountered in Judea, when they encountered or subdued certain peoples that did not buy into the idea that loyalty to God and loyalty to the imperium itself should be indistinguishable. There were those religiones , such as the monotheistic and separatist passions that sparked the Jewish revolts of the first two centuries or the dark and secretive human sacrificial rites they attributed to the Celts. Roman piety was self-consciously public, not private. And it was this “civic” anxiety about the dangers of secret practices and convictions that compelled Roman emperors from the second century onward to suppress, or even ban, the “mysteries” which were very popular [23.20.220.59] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 13:28 GMT) T H E R E V O L U T I O N O F T H E S I G N 36 among the people, especially those immigrants from the East. Roman suspicion and hatred of early Christianity can be explained by simple but widespread perceptions of it as a strange “cult” from the East, which mostly reflected their inability to comprehend anything that did not fit their model of civil religion. Christianity was...