Additional material: https://cchu9014.weebly.com/additional-material5.html
Objectives for week 11
- To complete the study of Bellah’s typology of four ways of understanding reality, with a focus on the “conceptual”;
- To identify the distinguishing features of the new teachings of the “Axial Age” and how they differ from “pre-Axial” forms of religion;
- To appreciate how Axial figures such as the Hebrew prophets, Buddha, Confucius and Socrates, and also Jesus and Mohammad, challenged the social and religious conventions of their day, leading humans to a transcendental ideal;
- To explain how the teachings of these Axial figures became new social conventions, upheld by religious institutions embedded in systems of political power, and how this “decline” of the original spirit has led to internal debates and reform movements within the religious community;
Introduction
Two weeks ago, we talked about pre-conventional morality. People who practice this type of morality only think about themselves. They may act morally towards other people, but only for self-protection and self-interest. Then, we looked at further stages of moral development, from the conventional to the post-conventional. The highest stage is one in which peoples’ moral reasoning is derived from their sense of spiritual connection to all beings. This is a process of transcendence. Each stage of moral development represents a higher level of self-transcendence.
But how do you surpass yourself? How do you go beyond your concern with only your own ego and your own body? How does religion draw people into transcendence? Two weeks ago, we talked about the ideas of connection with an ultimate or absolute, transcendent reality. All these terms – God, Dao or the Buddha-Dharma – are words to describe a transcendental reality. These religious traditions try to help people to transcend themselves by connecting them to this transcendent reality.
Apart from this level of self-transcendence, there is another level of transcendence, which is to transcend one’s own community or society. How can we look at the world in a way that is different from the conventions, customs, practices, and mind-sets of the society that we are living in? In other words, how can we advance to a “post-conventional” perspective on our own society?
In the process of the history of religion, we are able to observe the appearance, the evolution and the decline of these two types of transcendence – individual and collective transcendence. Indeed, during the course of evolution, humans have acquired the capacity to survive and reproduce through high levels of group communication and cooperation. Religion has played a crucial role in transcending individual self-interest, structuring and facilitating group cooperation, by providing groups with a ritual framework for social life, a source of sacred authority, and common moral norms and identity. Religion has acted as the stabilising glue for what would otherwise be inherently unstable and transient assemblages of individuals. Great religious figures such as Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad, however, challenged existing group identities, hierarchies and religio-political structures. They affirmed the vanity of worldly political power, domination and identity, and offered visions of universal love, compassion, justice and brotherhood, transcending boundaries of race, ethnicity, class and caste.
These concepts and practices of transcendence have appeared at specific times and places in the course of the human history – during an era that scholars have called the “Axial Age”, ca. 500 BC,[1] and marked by the lives of emblematic figures in the history of religion and philosophy: Confucius, Laozi, Buddha, Socrates and the Jewish prophets. Later, Jesus and Mohammad set in motion further “axial” transformations.
In this lecture, we consider these “Axial figures” in their social and historical context, showing how they challenged the existing social and religious structures of their day, how they opened spaces for individual reflexivity and transcendence, and how they created the possibility for transcending local loyalties and for imagining a universal human community. Finally, we will consider how the axial impulse was gradually lost, leading religion to become firmly embedded in conventional orthodoxy and political structures.
But how do you surpass yourself? How do you go beyond your concern with only your own ego and your own body? How does religion draw people into transcendence? Two weeks ago, we talked about the ideas of connection with an ultimate or absolute, transcendent reality. All these terms – God, Dao or the Buddha-Dharma – are words to describe a transcendental reality. These religious traditions try to help people to transcend themselves by connecting them to this transcendent reality.
Apart from this level of self-transcendence, there is another level of transcendence, which is to transcend one’s own community or society. How can we look at the world in a way that is different from the conventions, customs, practices, and mind-sets of the society that we are living in? In other words, how can we advance to a “post-conventional” perspective on our own society?
In the process of the history of religion, we are able to observe the appearance, the evolution and the decline of these two types of transcendence – individual and collective transcendence. Indeed, during the course of evolution, humans have acquired the capacity to survive and reproduce through high levels of group communication and cooperation. Religion has played a crucial role in transcending individual self-interest, structuring and facilitating group cooperation, by providing groups with a ritual framework for social life, a source of sacred authority, and common moral norms and identity. Religion has acted as the stabilising glue for what would otherwise be inherently unstable and transient assemblages of individuals. Great religious figures such as Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad, however, challenged existing group identities, hierarchies and religio-political structures. They affirmed the vanity of worldly political power, domination and identity, and offered visions of universal love, compassion, justice and brotherhood, transcending boundaries of race, ethnicity, class and caste.
These concepts and practices of transcendence have appeared at specific times and places in the course of the human history – during an era that scholars have called the “Axial Age”, ca. 500 BC,[1] and marked by the lives of emblematic figures in the history of religion and philosophy: Confucius, Laozi, Buddha, Socrates and the Jewish prophets. Later, Jesus and Mohammad set in motion further “axial” transformations.
In this lecture, we consider these “Axial figures” in their social and historical context, showing how they challenged the existing social and religious structures of their day, how they opened spaces for individual reflexivity and transcendence, and how they created the possibility for transcending local loyalties and for imagining a universal human community. Finally, we will consider how the axial impulse was gradually lost, leading religion to become firmly embedded in conventional orthodoxy and political structures.
Conceptual knowledge
Earlier in this course, I introduced Robert Bellah’s four modalities of knowing – the unitive, the enactive, the symbolic and the conceptual. According to Bellah, each of these four modalities of knowing appeared at different stages in human evolution. If we look at the history of humanity, it would be impossible to know when the unitive modality first appeared. The enactive modality of knowledge, on the other hand, probably appeared very early in human societies, even before symbolic knowledge. Bellah’s conclusion is based on the fact that even animals have some kind of enactive rituals. Even before human beings had symbols, it is likely that we were able to communicate and understand the world through the movement of our bodies. According to Bellah, then, ritual is the first thing that came in the history of religion.
Next, symbolic thinking occurred. Cave paintings have been discovered in Lascaux of France and some other places, that were created tens of thousands of years ago. On these paintings, we can see beautiful depictions of wild animals such as buffaloes and horses, as well as hunters. We assume that these paintings have symbolic meanings, although it’s impossible for us to decipher them. We can be sure that the symbolic modality of knowing appeared rather early in the history of humanity. In most of the tribal societies that anthropologists have studied, we can find both enactive and symbolic knowledge together in ritual and mythology. Prior to 800 BC, most human societies probably lived in a form of animistic worldview, using unitive, enactive and symbolic knowledge. They had rituals in which they engaged with other beings in an enactive way. They had all kinds of mythologies in which they told the stories of the tiger, the lion, the sun spirit, the mountain spirit, and so on – using symbolism that they never theorised about.
Then, at a certain point in history, conceptual or theoretical thinking appeared. Philosophers started to appear and analyse things with abstract concepts. Religious figures appeared, who discussed things in abstract terms. These thinkers introduced conceptual thinking, which brought about a revolution in religion and human society at large. Conceptual thinking appeared in what scholars have called the “Axial Age”, during the period from 800 to 200 BC, which saw the birth of most of the world's major religious and philosophical systems including Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Upanishadic Hinduism, Judaism (the root of Christianity and Islam) and Greek philosophy. Each of these "Axial" systems looks at the self from a self-transcending spiritual perspective, although each does so in a different way.
When the German philosopher Karl Jaspers first called this the “Axial Age”, he described a time of reflexivity and transcendence. During this age, people in different civilisations started to reflect critically and conceptually about transcendence. They criticised the religious values and practices of the societies that they lived in, and proposed something transcendental for the individual and the collective. For the first time, they advocated a “post-conventional” morality.
In Robert Bellah's scheme of four types of understanding, the fourth modality of understanding is the “conceptual”, which can also be called “rational” or “theoretic”. Here, understanding is based on abstract concepts, logically connected with each other, and described with language. In this modality, thought is also depersonalized; the world is considered from beyond the self, our own self becomes an object of knowledge. Self-reflexivity, self-knowledge and self-criticism appear.
The “Axial Age”
The first axial breakthrough may have been with Moses, who is said to have lived around 1300 BC. That’s earlier than the Axial Age, although the Biblical story of Moses was written down, based on earlier oral tales, during the Axial Age. In that story, Moses split the Red Sea, and freed the Hebrew slaves of Egypt from the pharaoh, the emperor of Egypt. According to the story, the Egyptian pharaohs had enslaved the Hebrews. Moses received a revelation from God, who told him to bring his people to freedom in the Promised Land. God commanded him to take his people out of Egypt into the “land of milk and honey.” Moses replied to God, “How am I going to do that? I have nothing. I am just a slave.” God assured him that he only needed to have faith in God, with which he would be able to overcome the Pharaoh and lead his people to freedom. That’s what he did.
Moses is considered to be one of the leading prophets of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. What is revolutionary about the story of Moses is that all societies at that time had their respective gods – which is called “polytheism”. In China, for example, even now, each village has its own “Earth god” (tudi gong 土地公). In the village where I did my research, villagers not only worship their own Earth god, but they also have their own local gods. One of the local gods is called “Aunty Cao’ (caozu niangniang 曹祖娘娘), who is a goddess worshipped in a few villages in that region. The villagers also worship pangu dawang (盤古大王), who is a god known all over China, but only in some parts of China do people worship him as one of the most important gods. The point here is that in a polytheistic society, every place has its specific gods. The god worshipped in one village may not necessarily be worshipped in other villages. In all different polytheistic societies around the world, this is how it works – every tribe, city, and empire has its own local gods.
When I went to a tribal area in western Africa some 25 years ago, I spoke to a local man there, who told me, “I envy you for your God, because your God is the God of the whole universe, so that you will not be scared wherever you go. I have my god under my house. In my house, I feel very safe, because I can worship my god who is underground. However, the further I go away from my house, the less safe I feel. If I go travelling on a business trip or go to the market, I start to worry a little. If I go a little further, I worry even more. If I go very far, I’m sure that I will get sick and may even die – because it’s too far for my house god to protect me. So, I’m very scared to go very far away from my house. However, your God is everywhere. Wherever you go, he is with you. I have noticed that you European people are never scared, as you come so far from your homes, all the way to Africa, and you don’t seem to be scared of anything at all.”
This is one of the ideas that Moses brought: there is a God, who is not the petty god of only one place, but the God of the whole universe. Thus, it doesn’t matter where you go, God is there, and He can protect you. When God said to Moses, “Leave Egypt, and go to the Promised Land, and I will be with you”, that was unheard of. If you moved to a different place, you'd have to deal with other gods over there. So, the God of Abraham and of Moses is a God who transcends all villages, tribes, localities, and empires. This is one of the aspects of collective transcendence expressed by Moses: the people of God, the Hebrews, were tied only to God and not to any specific place.
Another revolutionary idea conveyed by the story of Moses is that this God is actually superior to the Emperor. In Egypt, just like in ancient China, the Pharaoh was himself considered to be a god. The Chinese emperor, at the time, was the “Son of the Heaven” (tianzi 天子). He himself was as powerful as a god – even more so was the Egyptian pharaoh.
In this type of religion, it is considered that the more powerful a person is politically, the greater blessing this person receives from the gods. If a person has a lot of power or money, it means that the gods are blessing this person. He must be blessed – that’s why this person is so powerful or wealthy. Some kind of invisible power is coming to you that is giving you prosperity, happiness, material wealth, social status, and everything like that – these are signs that the gods are on your side. According to that mind-set, the gods don’t like the poor and the weak. If they are poor, enslaved or weak, it’s because the gods don’t like or care about them – or because their gods are weak. Instead, the gods – or the most powerful gods -- are helping and protecting the emperor. That the emperor has great power and wealth, is because he is favoured by the gods, or even because he is a god himself. This is a widespread idea in traditional polytheistic religions around the world.
In the story of Moses, the logic completely changes. The supreme God is actually on the side of the enslaved and the poor, and is against the pharaoh. God says, “Even the most powerful emperor in the world is nothing compared to me, the supreme God.” This God can protect the weak, and can defeat the emperor. The spiritual reality of God transcends any political powers, empires, communities, or social classes. Regardless of being rich or poor, powerful or powerless, people are all the same in front of God. This is a powerful notion of collective transcendence. Whether or not such a God actually exists, the concept has certainly been incredibly powerful: the thousands of gods of Egypt and Palestine that were worshipped by people in ancient times, as well as the dozens of nations and tribes that worshipped them, have completely disappeared and are forgotten by everyone but archaeologists and historians. But over two thirds of all humans, including all Jews, Christians and Muslims, consider themselves to be followers of the God of Moses.
Moses signalled perhaps one of the earliest appearances of a transcendent type of religion, which was reinforced during the Axial Age with the Hebrew prophets of Israel. The Old Testament contains many stories of these prophets, who are said to have lived around the Eighth Century BC. These prophets, such as Isaiah, were always criticising their society in the name of God. They told people that the way they were doing things was wrong, that they were immoral and corrupt. They even criticised their religious practices, such as the way in which people slaughtered animals to worship God. They criticised people for being hypocritical – they always tried to show off that they were pious, but they were not in their hearts at all. In general, these prophets were critical of the customs, religion and political system of their own society. They criticised the conventional morality of the people. Instead, they emphasised the importance of believing in something else – in the future, people would have a beautiful and peaceful world. For this reason, people should have hope and faith, because God would bring peace and prosperity to humanity. This is another aspect of transcendence, in terms of time – to transcend the misery of the here and now, and instead, to situate yourself in the long vision of history.
Around the same time that the Israeli prophets reiterated their vision of divine transcendence to the Hebrew people, Shakyamuni, the Buddha, in India brought the teaching of Buddhism. According to the story, Gautama Buddha was born a prince. A soothsayer had predicted that he would become a holy man. His father, the king, was afraid that he would renounce his throne, and thus provided him with whatever he would possibly want – luxuries, comfort, food, women, etc. – and did not allow him to leave the comfort of his palaces and gardens.
But Shakyamuni burned with curiosity to see the world outside the palace. Once he escaped, and he saw the suffering of the world – illness, ignorance, and death. He was deeply moved by these sufferings, and decided to leave the palace forever to find the source of the suffering of the world. First, he tried many ascetic practices, which were common in India at that time, as methods to attain spiritual detachment. For example, he hardly ate anything for months, and inflicted pain on himself. But those practices led him nowhere. Hence, he decided to give up on these ascetic practices of self-mortification, and to meditate under a tree until he could discover the truth about the reason for the existence of suffering. The story goes that he achieved enlightenment under the tree. He finally understood the truth of the reason for suffering, the truth of the whole universe, and the path of deliverance from suffering.
Shakyamuni taught that human suffering was the result of attachment to the things of this world. We want things, and thus suffer from not getting them. But we also suffer when we get what we want, because what we have obtained will not last forever, or we now want something else. All the time, we are tormented by our desire, and we suffer as a result. The Buddha taught that the solution to the problem of suffering is that we have to let go of our desires. Our ego – our attachment to our own selves – is the key thing that we should let go of. Basically, the Buddha talked about transcendence from the self and the practices of the society in which we live. We should transcend ourselves from the desire for luxury, wealth, and high social status.
The Buddha also criticised the religious practices of his day. He taught that popular religious practices of his time such as pain-inflicting self-mortification, were unnecessary. His teachings also implied that the rituals, and even the social and political systems of his day, were of no value, simply the product of peoples’ worldly desires for money, status and power. In a sense, the Buddha radically challenged the conventional morality of his day.
In China, Confucius lived around the same time as the Buddha. He also challenged conventional morality. He criticised many of the rituals and customs of his day, that were based on self-interest. He advocated that everybody could become a gentleman, through following moral and ethical principles. He was very critical of the way in which people conducted ritual. Therefore, he talked a lot about rituals, conventions, and etiquette – the so-called li (禮). In the Chinese society of his day, people conducted all kinds of rituals and sacrifices for worshipping gods. Confucius felt, however, that the moral development of the people was very low. People were selfish and petty. He tried to make people transcend their selfish interests, and consider the interest of the whole world. He urged people to give a higher and noble meaning to the customs, conventions and rituals. So, from the perspective of post-conventional morality, Confucius was very critical of different religious practices of his day.
Many people consider that Confucius was not a religious man, but I disagree. Confucius still believed that people should worship heaven and the ancestors. He just opposed people being obsessed with spirits, ghosts and things like that. What was more important for him was the moral transformation at a personal and social level that could be effected through rites conducted in the proper spirit. So Confucius wanted to transform the customs and religious practices of his day. That people should transform their hearts and elevate their visions to cover the whole world. This is the type of transcendence that Confucius was talking about.
Next, let’s talk about Socrates in ancient Greece. In his day, in Greece, there were all kinds of mythologies, rituals and religious customs. Socrates considered that the most important thing, however, is to use the power of reason so as to know ourselves. This is more important than any conventional morality. That’s why he said that he followed the voice in his own mind, and went against the conventions of his day, so much so that he was finally sentenced to death. Through the power of reason and argument, people can acquire knowledge of the world and the self. In this way, rational philosophy emerged from Socrates’ teaching.
Jesus Christ, 500 years later, also brought a new form of transcendence, through universal love derived from the love of God for all His creatures. Through this principle, he challenged the conventional social divisions of the Jewish people of his day. He showed love to beggars and prostitutes. He even showed love to tax collectors, who were the most hated people at that time. According to conventional morality, beggars, prostitutes and tax collectors were the most despicable and morally reprehensible people in the world, and no good person should be friends with them. But for Jesus, all people are the children of God, regardless of their social status. Thus, he showed universal love to everybody, and transcended all social divisions.
Jesus also criticised the religious practices of his day. He found that people were too proud of their ceremonies and rituals, and were practising the outward form and laws of their religion. They had lost the true spirit of their religion. So Jesus deliberately broke some of the religious laws, such as the law of Sabbath. According to the book of Exodus, it is commanded by God to be kept as a holy day of rest, in the same way that God had rested after the seventh day of creation. But Jesus broke the law of Sabbath, which shocked the priests and religious leaders of his day. It was because Jesus broke the conventional morality that they persuaded the Roman governor of Palestine to crucify him.
Another 600 years later, Muhammad appeared in Arabia. He also preached a teaching of transcendence. The Arabian people, at the time of Muhammad, worshipped their own tribal and clan gods. Muhammad said that above these gods, there is one great God, who will dispense justice to everyone. Everyone is equal before this great God. He asked people to self-examine themselves all the time, and to imagine themselves facing the judgement of God. No matter their race, their tribe, their nation or their social status, the judgement of God would apply equally to them. Through the teachings of Muhammad, these tribes in Arabia transcended their divisions, and became a large and rapidly growing civilisation.
Most of these figures lived in the period called the Axial Age. Now, some scholars have said we should talk more about Axial Revolutions or Axial Moments, because figures like Jesus and Muhammad lived centuries after the so-called Axial Age. But no matter when they lived, these figures all introduced, in a different way, the notion of reflexivity, which means we should look into ourselves and judge our motivations and actions in relation to a transcendental principle, rather than blindly follow the customs of the society that we live in. This post-conventional self-reflexivity is one of the core dimensions of spirituality.
Prior to the Axial Age, it would have been hard to talk about something called “spirituality”, because religion was primarily concerned with conducting the proper rituals and conforming to the social norms -- doing what is expected of you and following the social conventions; there wasn’t much idea of stepping back from them and looking critically at social conventions and at oneself. All of these figures – the prophets of Israel, the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus and Muhammad –all of them introduced new religious teachings; they were religious revolutionaries. They told people to step back from their current society and religious practices, so as to look into and eventually transcend their own self. They also told people to transcend their social groups – to think beyond their own tribes or countries – and to think of the wellness of the whole world under God, Heaven, or the Dharma.
These figures broke with the religious traditions of their time, and out of their lives and teachings, new religious traditions gradually came into being. Buddhism emerged out of the teachings of the Buddha. Christianity emerged out of the life and teachings of Jesus. Islam emerged out of the new laws revealed by Muhammad in the Qur’an. The entire Western philosophical tradition emerged out of Socrates. In a sense, a core component of the Chinese religious and philosophical tradition emerged out of the teachings of Confucius. All of these figures were the origins of new traditions.
These Axial figures thus introduced innovation, reflexivity and even a critical view of the world around them. Because they did that, they started a process of disenchantment, which I talked about a few weeks ago. It’s ironic that to some degree, disenchantment was set in motion by the founders of the great world religions.
In the animist worldview that we talked about a few weeks ago, everything is alive, and has its own consciousness or agency. Therefore, we always have to relate to these beings – to communicate or to have relationships with them. But then, the God of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad says, “God is supreme – don’t worship other things in nature. They are nothing but God’s creatures.” The Buddha says, “Never mind those things, because they are nothing. Don’t be attached to all these beings. They are just as ephemeral and transitory as you are. Transcend all of that.” Confucius says, “Don’t be obsessed with all these spirits, ghosts and so on.” In this sense, these Axial figures all started the process of disenchantment, of being critical of all the powers, beliefs and customs of the world. Their teachings contain the seed of reflexivity and criticism of enchanted worldviews.
But weren’t they living in an enchanted world of their own? Yes, absolutely. They lived in a transcendental enchantment. What these Axial figures taught was to connect with a transcendental spiritual reality – something that is far beyond what we can imagine in the world that we live in today. They wanted to draw people into a connection with the supreme God, Dao, Heaven or Dharma, which is higher than the lesser idols, gods or ghosts of their locality. In a sense, the enchanted reality that they talked about was a transcendental one. They tried to bring humanity to a higher level of transcendence. By doing that, they also led humanity to a certain type of critical and reflexive detachment from the things of this world, including many popular beliefs and religious practices.
Moses is considered to be one of the leading prophets of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. What is revolutionary about the story of Moses is that all societies at that time had their respective gods – which is called “polytheism”. In China, for example, even now, each village has its own “Earth god” (tudi gong 土地公). In the village where I did my research, villagers not only worship their own Earth god, but they also have their own local gods. One of the local gods is called “Aunty Cao’ (caozu niangniang 曹祖娘娘), who is a goddess worshipped in a few villages in that region. The villagers also worship pangu dawang (盤古大王), who is a god known all over China, but only in some parts of China do people worship him as one of the most important gods. The point here is that in a polytheistic society, every place has its specific gods. The god worshipped in one village may not necessarily be worshipped in other villages. In all different polytheistic societies around the world, this is how it works – every tribe, city, and empire has its own local gods.
When I went to a tribal area in western Africa some 25 years ago, I spoke to a local man there, who told me, “I envy you for your God, because your God is the God of the whole universe, so that you will not be scared wherever you go. I have my god under my house. In my house, I feel very safe, because I can worship my god who is underground. However, the further I go away from my house, the less safe I feel. If I go travelling on a business trip or go to the market, I start to worry a little. If I go a little further, I worry even more. If I go very far, I’m sure that I will get sick and may even die – because it’s too far for my house god to protect me. So, I’m very scared to go very far away from my house. However, your God is everywhere. Wherever you go, he is with you. I have noticed that you European people are never scared, as you come so far from your homes, all the way to Africa, and you don’t seem to be scared of anything at all.”
This is one of the ideas that Moses brought: there is a God, who is not the petty god of only one place, but the God of the whole universe. Thus, it doesn’t matter where you go, God is there, and He can protect you. When God said to Moses, “Leave Egypt, and go to the Promised Land, and I will be with you”, that was unheard of. If you moved to a different place, you'd have to deal with other gods over there. So, the God of Abraham and of Moses is a God who transcends all villages, tribes, localities, and empires. This is one of the aspects of collective transcendence expressed by Moses: the people of God, the Hebrews, were tied only to God and not to any specific place.
Another revolutionary idea conveyed by the story of Moses is that this God is actually superior to the Emperor. In Egypt, just like in ancient China, the Pharaoh was himself considered to be a god. The Chinese emperor, at the time, was the “Son of the Heaven” (tianzi 天子). He himself was as powerful as a god – even more so was the Egyptian pharaoh.
In this type of religion, it is considered that the more powerful a person is politically, the greater blessing this person receives from the gods. If a person has a lot of power or money, it means that the gods are blessing this person. He must be blessed – that’s why this person is so powerful or wealthy. Some kind of invisible power is coming to you that is giving you prosperity, happiness, material wealth, social status, and everything like that – these are signs that the gods are on your side. According to that mind-set, the gods don’t like the poor and the weak. If they are poor, enslaved or weak, it’s because the gods don’t like or care about them – or because their gods are weak. Instead, the gods – or the most powerful gods -- are helping and protecting the emperor. That the emperor has great power and wealth, is because he is favoured by the gods, or even because he is a god himself. This is a widespread idea in traditional polytheistic religions around the world.
In the story of Moses, the logic completely changes. The supreme God is actually on the side of the enslaved and the poor, and is against the pharaoh. God says, “Even the most powerful emperor in the world is nothing compared to me, the supreme God.” This God can protect the weak, and can defeat the emperor. The spiritual reality of God transcends any political powers, empires, communities, or social classes. Regardless of being rich or poor, powerful or powerless, people are all the same in front of God. This is a powerful notion of collective transcendence. Whether or not such a God actually exists, the concept has certainly been incredibly powerful: the thousands of gods of Egypt and Palestine that were worshipped by people in ancient times, as well as the dozens of nations and tribes that worshipped them, have completely disappeared and are forgotten by everyone but archaeologists and historians. But over two thirds of all humans, including all Jews, Christians and Muslims, consider themselves to be followers of the God of Moses.
Moses signalled perhaps one of the earliest appearances of a transcendent type of religion, which was reinforced during the Axial Age with the Hebrew prophets of Israel. The Old Testament contains many stories of these prophets, who are said to have lived around the Eighth Century BC. These prophets, such as Isaiah, were always criticising their society in the name of God. They told people that the way they were doing things was wrong, that they were immoral and corrupt. They even criticised their religious practices, such as the way in which people slaughtered animals to worship God. They criticised people for being hypocritical – they always tried to show off that they were pious, but they were not in their hearts at all. In general, these prophets were critical of the customs, religion and political system of their own society. They criticised the conventional morality of the people. Instead, they emphasised the importance of believing in something else – in the future, people would have a beautiful and peaceful world. For this reason, people should have hope and faith, because God would bring peace and prosperity to humanity. This is another aspect of transcendence, in terms of time – to transcend the misery of the here and now, and instead, to situate yourself in the long vision of history.
Around the same time that the Israeli prophets reiterated their vision of divine transcendence to the Hebrew people, Shakyamuni, the Buddha, in India brought the teaching of Buddhism. According to the story, Gautama Buddha was born a prince. A soothsayer had predicted that he would become a holy man. His father, the king, was afraid that he would renounce his throne, and thus provided him with whatever he would possibly want – luxuries, comfort, food, women, etc. – and did not allow him to leave the comfort of his palaces and gardens.
But Shakyamuni burned with curiosity to see the world outside the palace. Once he escaped, and he saw the suffering of the world – illness, ignorance, and death. He was deeply moved by these sufferings, and decided to leave the palace forever to find the source of the suffering of the world. First, he tried many ascetic practices, which were common in India at that time, as methods to attain spiritual detachment. For example, he hardly ate anything for months, and inflicted pain on himself. But those practices led him nowhere. Hence, he decided to give up on these ascetic practices of self-mortification, and to meditate under a tree until he could discover the truth about the reason for the existence of suffering. The story goes that he achieved enlightenment under the tree. He finally understood the truth of the reason for suffering, the truth of the whole universe, and the path of deliverance from suffering.
Shakyamuni taught that human suffering was the result of attachment to the things of this world. We want things, and thus suffer from not getting them. But we also suffer when we get what we want, because what we have obtained will not last forever, or we now want something else. All the time, we are tormented by our desire, and we suffer as a result. The Buddha taught that the solution to the problem of suffering is that we have to let go of our desires. Our ego – our attachment to our own selves – is the key thing that we should let go of. Basically, the Buddha talked about transcendence from the self and the practices of the society in which we live. We should transcend ourselves from the desire for luxury, wealth, and high social status.
The Buddha also criticised the religious practices of his day. He taught that popular religious practices of his time such as pain-inflicting self-mortification, were unnecessary. His teachings also implied that the rituals, and even the social and political systems of his day, were of no value, simply the product of peoples’ worldly desires for money, status and power. In a sense, the Buddha radically challenged the conventional morality of his day.
In China, Confucius lived around the same time as the Buddha. He also challenged conventional morality. He criticised many of the rituals and customs of his day, that were based on self-interest. He advocated that everybody could become a gentleman, through following moral and ethical principles. He was very critical of the way in which people conducted ritual. Therefore, he talked a lot about rituals, conventions, and etiquette – the so-called li (禮). In the Chinese society of his day, people conducted all kinds of rituals and sacrifices for worshipping gods. Confucius felt, however, that the moral development of the people was very low. People were selfish and petty. He tried to make people transcend their selfish interests, and consider the interest of the whole world. He urged people to give a higher and noble meaning to the customs, conventions and rituals. So, from the perspective of post-conventional morality, Confucius was very critical of different religious practices of his day.
Many people consider that Confucius was not a religious man, but I disagree. Confucius still believed that people should worship heaven and the ancestors. He just opposed people being obsessed with spirits, ghosts and things like that. What was more important for him was the moral transformation at a personal and social level that could be effected through rites conducted in the proper spirit. So Confucius wanted to transform the customs and religious practices of his day. That people should transform their hearts and elevate their visions to cover the whole world. This is the type of transcendence that Confucius was talking about.
Next, let’s talk about Socrates in ancient Greece. In his day, in Greece, there were all kinds of mythologies, rituals and religious customs. Socrates considered that the most important thing, however, is to use the power of reason so as to know ourselves. This is more important than any conventional morality. That’s why he said that he followed the voice in his own mind, and went against the conventions of his day, so much so that he was finally sentenced to death. Through the power of reason and argument, people can acquire knowledge of the world and the self. In this way, rational philosophy emerged from Socrates’ teaching.
Jesus Christ, 500 years later, also brought a new form of transcendence, through universal love derived from the love of God for all His creatures. Through this principle, he challenged the conventional social divisions of the Jewish people of his day. He showed love to beggars and prostitutes. He even showed love to tax collectors, who were the most hated people at that time. According to conventional morality, beggars, prostitutes and tax collectors were the most despicable and morally reprehensible people in the world, and no good person should be friends with them. But for Jesus, all people are the children of God, regardless of their social status. Thus, he showed universal love to everybody, and transcended all social divisions.
Jesus also criticised the religious practices of his day. He found that people were too proud of their ceremonies and rituals, and were practising the outward form and laws of their religion. They had lost the true spirit of their religion. So Jesus deliberately broke some of the religious laws, such as the law of Sabbath. According to the book of Exodus, it is commanded by God to be kept as a holy day of rest, in the same way that God had rested after the seventh day of creation. But Jesus broke the law of Sabbath, which shocked the priests and religious leaders of his day. It was because Jesus broke the conventional morality that they persuaded the Roman governor of Palestine to crucify him.
Another 600 years later, Muhammad appeared in Arabia. He also preached a teaching of transcendence. The Arabian people, at the time of Muhammad, worshipped their own tribal and clan gods. Muhammad said that above these gods, there is one great God, who will dispense justice to everyone. Everyone is equal before this great God. He asked people to self-examine themselves all the time, and to imagine themselves facing the judgement of God. No matter their race, their tribe, their nation or their social status, the judgement of God would apply equally to them. Through the teachings of Muhammad, these tribes in Arabia transcended their divisions, and became a large and rapidly growing civilisation.
Most of these figures lived in the period called the Axial Age. Now, some scholars have said we should talk more about Axial Revolutions or Axial Moments, because figures like Jesus and Muhammad lived centuries after the so-called Axial Age. But no matter when they lived, these figures all introduced, in a different way, the notion of reflexivity, which means we should look into ourselves and judge our motivations and actions in relation to a transcendental principle, rather than blindly follow the customs of the society that we live in. This post-conventional self-reflexivity is one of the core dimensions of spirituality.
Prior to the Axial Age, it would have been hard to talk about something called “spirituality”, because religion was primarily concerned with conducting the proper rituals and conforming to the social norms -- doing what is expected of you and following the social conventions; there wasn’t much idea of stepping back from them and looking critically at social conventions and at oneself. All of these figures – the prophets of Israel, the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus and Muhammad –all of them introduced new religious teachings; they were religious revolutionaries. They told people to step back from their current society and religious practices, so as to look into and eventually transcend their own self. They also told people to transcend their social groups – to think beyond their own tribes or countries – and to think of the wellness of the whole world under God, Heaven, or the Dharma.
These figures broke with the religious traditions of their time, and out of their lives and teachings, new religious traditions gradually came into being. Buddhism emerged out of the teachings of the Buddha. Christianity emerged out of the life and teachings of Jesus. Islam emerged out of the new laws revealed by Muhammad in the Qur’an. The entire Western philosophical tradition emerged out of Socrates. In a sense, a core component of the Chinese religious and philosophical tradition emerged out of the teachings of Confucius. All of these figures were the origins of new traditions.
These Axial figures thus introduced innovation, reflexivity and even a critical view of the world around them. Because they did that, they started a process of disenchantment, which I talked about a few weeks ago. It’s ironic that to some degree, disenchantment was set in motion by the founders of the great world religions.
In the animist worldview that we talked about a few weeks ago, everything is alive, and has its own consciousness or agency. Therefore, we always have to relate to these beings – to communicate or to have relationships with them. But then, the God of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad says, “God is supreme – don’t worship other things in nature. They are nothing but God’s creatures.” The Buddha says, “Never mind those things, because they are nothing. Don’t be attached to all these beings. They are just as ephemeral and transitory as you are. Transcend all of that.” Confucius says, “Don’t be obsessed with all these spirits, ghosts and so on.” In this sense, these Axial figures all started the process of disenchantment, of being critical of all the powers, beliefs and customs of the world. Their teachings contain the seed of reflexivity and criticism of enchanted worldviews.
But weren’t they living in an enchanted world of their own? Yes, absolutely. They lived in a transcendental enchantment. What these Axial figures taught was to connect with a transcendental spiritual reality – something that is far beyond what we can imagine in the world that we live in today. They wanted to draw people into a connection with the supreme God, Dao, Heaven or Dharma, which is higher than the lesser idols, gods or ghosts of their locality. In a sense, the enchanted reality that they talked about was a transcendental one. They tried to bring humanity to a higher level of transcendence. By doing that, they also led humanity to a certain type of critical and reflexive detachment from the things of this world, including many popular beliefs and religious practices.
Axial tensions: the paradox of religious institutions
In spite of the critical self-reflexivity made possible by the Axial figures, their teachings gradually became social conventions. They became traditions that people merely followed out of habit or self-interest. Gradually, new ideas, interpretations and practices evolved that had little in common with the original teachings. Later on, some people within those traditions started to criticise these customs and ideas, that often had little to do with the teachings of the Founding figure. They would say, “We have gone away from the original teachings.” Years later, many Christians would say, “We have strayed far from the teachings of Jesus.” Many Muslims would say, “We have ignored the teachings of Qur’an.” Some Chinese people would say, “We have lost the spirit of Confucius.” So there is a tension inside these traditions. These great world religions start with a radical innovation, a break from tradition. But they gradually become another social convention and tradition; until reformers propose new innovations with the aim of going back to the original spirit. So new sects and innovations are always appearing within these traditions.
In class we will watch a video clip titled “Why I hate religion but I love Jesus.”[2] It reflects that tension between the spirit at the origin of the religion, and the institutions that claim to embody and represent those teachings. In the video, Jefferson Bethke claimed that “Religion is man searching for God, but Jesus is God searching for man.” He claims that “The church made people blind, but Jesus made them see” -- The church is blinding people through all kinds of dogmatic doctrines and rules, rituals and self-righteousness, that obscure people’s souls. On the other hand, Jesus gives spiritual life. When people believe in Jesus and have relationship with him, they “see” things clearly, that is to say, they understand the truth about their life, the world and God; they are no longer blind. So Bethke is saying that Jesus makes you see; but the church makes you blind. He also said, “Religious says do, but Jesus says done.” One way of understanding this is that the church says “do this and do that”, whereas Jesus says “done”, that is to say, he gives unconditional love. You love Jesus — that’s it. And Jesus loves you — that’s it -- done for all eternity. The point of the video can be summarised as the hypocrisy of the church. He asked, “They build so many lavish and magnificent churches, but where are they feeding the poor?” He criticised that people wear their religion like a badge or sports jersey – just showing off that they are religious and belong to certain churches. But that’s only an external thing. They show their piety on Sundays, but they do the opposite on Saturdays by getting drunk at parties. He said that religion is like “perfume on a casket.” A casket is a coffin. What he meant was that the church is dead, but people are trying to make it smell nice by putting perfume on it – while the core of the church has gotten completely rotten and smelly. Bethke’s criticism of the church is the same criticism that Jesus made of the religion of the Jewish people in his day.
Bethke’s video prompted a lot of online debate and controversy, and some people made videos to refute him. I’m going to show one such rebuttal, produced by a Catholic.[3] Before I continue, it is important to clarify some terms. In the Chinese language, Christianity is one name (jidu jiao 基督教), and Catholicism is another name (tianzhu jiao 天主教), which sound like two completely different religions. But in the English language, as well as in the history of Christianity, this is not true. The Roman Catholic Church is a branch — in fact, the largest branch — of Christianity. So Christianity should be better translated as jidu zongjiao (‘基督宗教). The Chinese term tianzhu jiao (天主教) is, in the English language, a branch of Christianity, rather than a different religion independent from it.
What Chinese often call “Christians” (jidu jiao 基督教) are called “Protestants” in English. The reason is as follows. In the 16th century, some Christian thinkers and preachers in Europe, notably Martin Luther and John Calvin, made similar criticisms of the church that were made in Bethke’s video. The followers of Luther and Calvin broke off from the Catholic church, and formed their own communities, which became new churches. This is called the “reformation” of Christianity, and those new churches were called “Protestant” – that is to say, “those who protest”. Literally, then, Protestantism could be translated fandui jiao (反對教) or dikang jiao (抵抗教). They were protesting precisely against what Bethke talked about — about the corruption of the church as an institution. They considered that they upheld the true spirit of Christ, while the Catholic church was “false”, because it had lost the original spirit. Instead, they created many new churches — thousands of Protestant sects.
So, the second video is a rebuttal of Bethke’s video, by a Catholic, Patrick Gothman. He claims that without the church – without “religion” -- there would be no Bible, and therefore no access to the Christian teaching. Indeed, the Bible was compiled by the early church Fathers. The preservation and transmission of these teachings require a certain kind of institution. If there were no such institution to protect, teach, transmit and educate people in the teachings of Jesus, they would have disappeared. He also argues that Jesus hated sin, but not religion: it is not the religion that is guilty; instead, it is the human beings in the church who are committing sin. The sinful side of human nature comes out, even amongst members of the religious community. That’s why he said it was not the fault of the church, but of individual human beings within the church.
Gothman also made an important point about religion’s contribution to many aspects of civilisation. He talks about hospitals. It was the Church that originated the first hospitals as institutions, particularly for the poor. Before that, only the rich and powerful had their private physicians. The Church established the hospital as a form of charity where anybody could go. The modern hospital of today is actually derived from the charity hospitals of the Church.
He also talks about the idea of education for all. The idea of a school that is open to everybody, also came from the Church. Before that, education was also restricted to the elite. Again, it was the Church that opened schools to the poor as a form of charity. The idea of the school as an institution, he says, came from the church. Even the most famous colleges and universities in Europe began as theology schools for training priests. For example, the Sorbonne University, the oldest university in France, where I got my Ph.D., started of as a theology school. So were the other major universities like Oxford and Cambridge. These universities all started as institutions for the transmission of religious knowledge.
Gothman also claims that science itself owes its existence to the Church. During the Middle Ages, which some people called the Dark Ages, where was knowledge preserved when most people were living in ignorance? It was precisely in the monasteries, where monks copied old texts, acquiring education, learning logical reasoning, and applying logical reasoning to the study of the Bible. Logic and rationality, which later were applied in the scientific method, was taught in those churches and monasteries.
Through these examples, Gothman argues that religious institutions have played a fundamental role in the development of civilisation. Therefore, we can’t just throw them away. On the one hand, then, Bethke’s video clip argues that religion lacks a true spirituality, or rather, the true spirit of Jesus. On the other hand, Gothman’s clip argues that it is those religious institutions that ensured that the spirit of Jesus could be spread throughout society, and contributed to the advancement of civilisation.
This is not an issue specific to Christianity. In China, for example, some Buddhist monks are deeply engaged in commercial activities. They have turned their temples into profit-making businesses. This phenomenon has become very controversial. For instance, the Abbot of Shaolin Temple, has been accused of living an extravagant lifestyle, violating moral standards of Buddhism. So, on the one hand, the Buddha taught people to become detached from their material desire, yet these Buddhist monasteries and temples really seem to be lucrative businesses. Many people also burn incense at temples for selfish purposes. Where is the compassion that the Buddha taught? So, some people might also say, “I hate religion, but I love Buddha.” The same kind of argument and discussion can also be found among Muslims. There is a widespread feeling among many Muslims that Islamic societies and leaders today have strayed far from the justice and peace advocated by Mohammad.
This issue speaks to the paradox of the emergence of religious institutions. Religious institutions have arisen to preserve, protect and transmit the teachings of the Axial figures, such as the Buddha and Jesus. But during the course of their development, many religious institutions became completely intertwined with all kinds of political and economic interests. Therefore, the religious institution became inseparable from the web of social, economic and political power. In the next few minutes, in a very simplified way, I’m going to go over the problem of understanding this dynamic process of religious transformation.
What existed prior to the Axial Age was totally localised religion. Each tribe had its own religion, each village had its own gods. In these communities, religious practices were completely inseparable from the customs and culture of the local community. Then, the axial figures appeared, such as Jesus, Mohammad, the Buddha, Confucius and Socrates. Those figures had universal and teachings, which transcended local concerns and spread beyond a single locality or ethnic group. Their followers came from a variety of backgrounds and communities; they started to acquire a trans-local identity, which was no longer purely local or tribal.
This is what happened, for example, in the Roman Empire. At the time of Jesus, the Roman Empire was a multi-ethnic domain. People of many different ethnicities became Christian. They acquired a new religious identity, which transcended their local and ethnic identities. The same happened in the world of Islam. Mohammad lived in Arabia, where people had strong tribal identities, and were always at war with each other. But after they followed Mohammad, they acquired a new identity as Muslims, which transcended their tribal affiliations. Within a few centuries, millions of people from Spain to Indonesia had acquired a transnational common Islamic identity, forming the ummah, the community of Islam. The same thing can be said of Buddhism in Asia. Confucianism, as well, in China, provided the overarching framework that started to integrate Buddhism, Daoism and the local customs, cults and religious practices in the Chinese world.
So new religious identities were created around those axial figures and their teachings. But shortly after the death of those religious founders, people had different interpretations of their teachings. For example, what did Jesus or the Buddha come to say, exactly? Who is Jesus, anyway? Was he a normal human? Was he God? Was he the son of God? All kinds of divergences and different understandings arose. Some disciples had deeper understanding and elaborate interpretations; others had a strong personality. The different understandings started to crystallise around certain leading disciples. The rest of the followers simply went along with the leading disciples near to them. But great differences and debates took place between those leading disciples. Sometimes, they split into different sects and branches emerged. Around each of these sects, a distinctive organisation started to emerge. It might be as simple as different master-disciple lineages, or monastic communities, or churches.
As the religious organisation came into being, it needed material resources. It might have started with just a few disciples sitting around a tree. But after a while, as it grew, it needed a building. Land was needed for the building. The land and building needed to be maintained. All kinds of material issues needed to be dealt with. The community might also need permissions or support from the king. So it needed to establish relationships with the political authority. But the king might favour one sect over another. On the other hand, the kind might rely on religious groups for support and legitimacy. Since the religious group had some connection with divine and moral authority, the king might seek the blessing and support from this type of authority. Some religious groups said, “If you support us, we will say that you are the king, because God has anointed you.” Or they might say, “if you don’t support us, you will suffer from the wrath of God”. Thus, political associations and relationships between religious and political forces began. Kings started to rely on religious institutions for legitimacy.
Thus, religious leaders and institutions gave sacred legitimacy to the ruler, while the ruler could give resources and protection essential to the development of the religious institution. Such alliances emerged in most societies, leading to the creation of a religio-political structure, in which the religious and the political dimensions became hard to separate. This is what happened in most large empires and kingdoms, in different forms — whether in Europe, with the Church conferring divine authority on kings; or in China, where Confucianism became the imperial ideology, and Buddhism also maintained close ties with the state. Similar configurations occurred in Islamic and Hindu kingdoms and empires. Some kind of inseparable religio-political structure became the feature of religious organisations and institutions in all kingdoms and empires.
Within one political entity, typically, one religion or sect was favoured or dominant to the exclusion of others. Thus, gradually, in different political units, different religions became dominant. For this reason, a configuration arose in which, in different parts of the world, we would find one dominant religion supported by the state, in which religious institutions were heavily tied with politics and economic resources.
At the beginning, the teachings of the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Mohammad arose at the margins of the political system – the Buddha deliberately rejected the political world; Confucius wandered from one kingdom to another, while no prince fully took to heart his teachings on virtue; Jesus was a mere carpenter in a remote province of the Roman Empire, sentenced to death by its governor; Mohammad was but a merchant in an isolated oasis, lost in the deserts between the Byzantine and Persian empires, persecuted by the clan and tribal chiefs of his own society.
But the universal relevance and transcendence of the teachings of these figures facilitated their spread beyond their original social context. Over the centuries, the communities of their followers became deeply embedded into political systems and structures. Political and economic interests accelerated the division of religious communities by sect, by ethnic group, by nation and by social class. While they had begun as challenges to conventional social structures, morality and authority, they ultimately became the very foundation of social convention and tradition.
Indeed, the followers of these Axial figures formed new social groups, which often fell back into the same patterns of sacralising group identity and politics. In their craving for stable identity and structure, human groups have desperately used religion and quasi-religious political and nationalist ideologies to artificially reinforce social hierarchies and boundaries between insiders and outsiders, generating endless wars and ethnic and religious conflicts.
Such was the condition of religion in most of the world at the dawn of modernity. It was this condition which led to religion being deeply criticised, both from the inside and from the outside, in modern times. The big challenge facing religious communities today, in our increasingly interdependent world is this: will they help people to transcend their differences, or will they reinforce conflicts and divisions between people? The question then became, should religion be reformed, abolished, or renewed? We will consider these questions next week.
In class we will watch a video clip titled “Why I hate religion but I love Jesus.”[2] It reflects that tension between the spirit at the origin of the religion, and the institutions that claim to embody and represent those teachings. In the video, Jefferson Bethke claimed that “Religion is man searching for God, but Jesus is God searching for man.” He claims that “The church made people blind, but Jesus made them see” -- The church is blinding people through all kinds of dogmatic doctrines and rules, rituals and self-righteousness, that obscure people’s souls. On the other hand, Jesus gives spiritual life. When people believe in Jesus and have relationship with him, they “see” things clearly, that is to say, they understand the truth about their life, the world and God; they are no longer blind. So Bethke is saying that Jesus makes you see; but the church makes you blind. He also said, “Religious says do, but Jesus says done.” One way of understanding this is that the church says “do this and do that”, whereas Jesus says “done”, that is to say, he gives unconditional love. You love Jesus — that’s it. And Jesus loves you — that’s it -- done for all eternity. The point of the video can be summarised as the hypocrisy of the church. He asked, “They build so many lavish and magnificent churches, but where are they feeding the poor?” He criticised that people wear their religion like a badge or sports jersey – just showing off that they are religious and belong to certain churches. But that’s only an external thing. They show their piety on Sundays, but they do the opposite on Saturdays by getting drunk at parties. He said that religion is like “perfume on a casket.” A casket is a coffin. What he meant was that the church is dead, but people are trying to make it smell nice by putting perfume on it – while the core of the church has gotten completely rotten and smelly. Bethke’s criticism of the church is the same criticism that Jesus made of the religion of the Jewish people in his day.
Bethke’s video prompted a lot of online debate and controversy, and some people made videos to refute him. I’m going to show one such rebuttal, produced by a Catholic.[3] Before I continue, it is important to clarify some terms. In the Chinese language, Christianity is one name (jidu jiao 基督教), and Catholicism is another name (tianzhu jiao 天主教), which sound like two completely different religions. But in the English language, as well as in the history of Christianity, this is not true. The Roman Catholic Church is a branch — in fact, the largest branch — of Christianity. So Christianity should be better translated as jidu zongjiao (‘基督宗教). The Chinese term tianzhu jiao (天主教) is, in the English language, a branch of Christianity, rather than a different religion independent from it.
What Chinese often call “Christians” (jidu jiao 基督教) are called “Protestants” in English. The reason is as follows. In the 16th century, some Christian thinkers and preachers in Europe, notably Martin Luther and John Calvin, made similar criticisms of the church that were made in Bethke’s video. The followers of Luther and Calvin broke off from the Catholic church, and formed their own communities, which became new churches. This is called the “reformation” of Christianity, and those new churches were called “Protestant” – that is to say, “those who protest”. Literally, then, Protestantism could be translated fandui jiao (反對教) or dikang jiao (抵抗教). They were protesting precisely against what Bethke talked about — about the corruption of the church as an institution. They considered that they upheld the true spirit of Christ, while the Catholic church was “false”, because it had lost the original spirit. Instead, they created many new churches — thousands of Protestant sects.
So, the second video is a rebuttal of Bethke’s video, by a Catholic, Patrick Gothman. He claims that without the church – without “religion” -- there would be no Bible, and therefore no access to the Christian teaching. Indeed, the Bible was compiled by the early church Fathers. The preservation and transmission of these teachings require a certain kind of institution. If there were no such institution to protect, teach, transmit and educate people in the teachings of Jesus, they would have disappeared. He also argues that Jesus hated sin, but not religion: it is not the religion that is guilty; instead, it is the human beings in the church who are committing sin. The sinful side of human nature comes out, even amongst members of the religious community. That’s why he said it was not the fault of the church, but of individual human beings within the church.
Gothman also made an important point about religion’s contribution to many aspects of civilisation. He talks about hospitals. It was the Church that originated the first hospitals as institutions, particularly for the poor. Before that, only the rich and powerful had their private physicians. The Church established the hospital as a form of charity where anybody could go. The modern hospital of today is actually derived from the charity hospitals of the Church.
He also talks about the idea of education for all. The idea of a school that is open to everybody, also came from the Church. Before that, education was also restricted to the elite. Again, it was the Church that opened schools to the poor as a form of charity. The idea of the school as an institution, he says, came from the church. Even the most famous colleges and universities in Europe began as theology schools for training priests. For example, the Sorbonne University, the oldest university in France, where I got my Ph.D., started of as a theology school. So were the other major universities like Oxford and Cambridge. These universities all started as institutions for the transmission of religious knowledge.
Gothman also claims that science itself owes its existence to the Church. During the Middle Ages, which some people called the Dark Ages, where was knowledge preserved when most people were living in ignorance? It was precisely in the monasteries, where monks copied old texts, acquiring education, learning logical reasoning, and applying logical reasoning to the study of the Bible. Logic and rationality, which later were applied in the scientific method, was taught in those churches and monasteries.
Through these examples, Gothman argues that religious institutions have played a fundamental role in the development of civilisation. Therefore, we can’t just throw them away. On the one hand, then, Bethke’s video clip argues that religion lacks a true spirituality, or rather, the true spirit of Jesus. On the other hand, Gothman’s clip argues that it is those religious institutions that ensured that the spirit of Jesus could be spread throughout society, and contributed to the advancement of civilisation.
This is not an issue specific to Christianity. In China, for example, some Buddhist monks are deeply engaged in commercial activities. They have turned their temples into profit-making businesses. This phenomenon has become very controversial. For instance, the Abbot of Shaolin Temple, has been accused of living an extravagant lifestyle, violating moral standards of Buddhism. So, on the one hand, the Buddha taught people to become detached from their material desire, yet these Buddhist monasteries and temples really seem to be lucrative businesses. Many people also burn incense at temples for selfish purposes. Where is the compassion that the Buddha taught? So, some people might also say, “I hate religion, but I love Buddha.” The same kind of argument and discussion can also be found among Muslims. There is a widespread feeling among many Muslims that Islamic societies and leaders today have strayed far from the justice and peace advocated by Mohammad.
This issue speaks to the paradox of the emergence of religious institutions. Religious institutions have arisen to preserve, protect and transmit the teachings of the Axial figures, such as the Buddha and Jesus. But during the course of their development, many religious institutions became completely intertwined with all kinds of political and economic interests. Therefore, the religious institution became inseparable from the web of social, economic and political power. In the next few minutes, in a very simplified way, I’m going to go over the problem of understanding this dynamic process of religious transformation.
What existed prior to the Axial Age was totally localised religion. Each tribe had its own religion, each village had its own gods. In these communities, religious practices were completely inseparable from the customs and culture of the local community. Then, the axial figures appeared, such as Jesus, Mohammad, the Buddha, Confucius and Socrates. Those figures had universal and teachings, which transcended local concerns and spread beyond a single locality or ethnic group. Their followers came from a variety of backgrounds and communities; they started to acquire a trans-local identity, which was no longer purely local or tribal.
This is what happened, for example, in the Roman Empire. At the time of Jesus, the Roman Empire was a multi-ethnic domain. People of many different ethnicities became Christian. They acquired a new religious identity, which transcended their local and ethnic identities. The same happened in the world of Islam. Mohammad lived in Arabia, where people had strong tribal identities, and were always at war with each other. But after they followed Mohammad, they acquired a new identity as Muslims, which transcended their tribal affiliations. Within a few centuries, millions of people from Spain to Indonesia had acquired a transnational common Islamic identity, forming the ummah, the community of Islam. The same thing can be said of Buddhism in Asia. Confucianism, as well, in China, provided the overarching framework that started to integrate Buddhism, Daoism and the local customs, cults and religious practices in the Chinese world.
So new religious identities were created around those axial figures and their teachings. But shortly after the death of those religious founders, people had different interpretations of their teachings. For example, what did Jesus or the Buddha come to say, exactly? Who is Jesus, anyway? Was he a normal human? Was he God? Was he the son of God? All kinds of divergences and different understandings arose. Some disciples had deeper understanding and elaborate interpretations; others had a strong personality. The different understandings started to crystallise around certain leading disciples. The rest of the followers simply went along with the leading disciples near to them. But great differences and debates took place between those leading disciples. Sometimes, they split into different sects and branches emerged. Around each of these sects, a distinctive organisation started to emerge. It might be as simple as different master-disciple lineages, or monastic communities, or churches.
As the religious organisation came into being, it needed material resources. It might have started with just a few disciples sitting around a tree. But after a while, as it grew, it needed a building. Land was needed for the building. The land and building needed to be maintained. All kinds of material issues needed to be dealt with. The community might also need permissions or support from the king. So it needed to establish relationships with the political authority. But the king might favour one sect over another. On the other hand, the kind might rely on religious groups for support and legitimacy. Since the religious group had some connection with divine and moral authority, the king might seek the blessing and support from this type of authority. Some religious groups said, “If you support us, we will say that you are the king, because God has anointed you.” Or they might say, “if you don’t support us, you will suffer from the wrath of God”. Thus, political associations and relationships between religious and political forces began. Kings started to rely on religious institutions for legitimacy.
Thus, religious leaders and institutions gave sacred legitimacy to the ruler, while the ruler could give resources and protection essential to the development of the religious institution. Such alliances emerged in most societies, leading to the creation of a religio-political structure, in which the religious and the political dimensions became hard to separate. This is what happened in most large empires and kingdoms, in different forms — whether in Europe, with the Church conferring divine authority on kings; or in China, where Confucianism became the imperial ideology, and Buddhism also maintained close ties with the state. Similar configurations occurred in Islamic and Hindu kingdoms and empires. Some kind of inseparable religio-political structure became the feature of religious organisations and institutions in all kingdoms and empires.
Within one political entity, typically, one religion or sect was favoured or dominant to the exclusion of others. Thus, gradually, in different political units, different religions became dominant. For this reason, a configuration arose in which, in different parts of the world, we would find one dominant religion supported by the state, in which religious institutions were heavily tied with politics and economic resources.
At the beginning, the teachings of the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Mohammad arose at the margins of the political system – the Buddha deliberately rejected the political world; Confucius wandered from one kingdom to another, while no prince fully took to heart his teachings on virtue; Jesus was a mere carpenter in a remote province of the Roman Empire, sentenced to death by its governor; Mohammad was but a merchant in an isolated oasis, lost in the deserts between the Byzantine and Persian empires, persecuted by the clan and tribal chiefs of his own society.
But the universal relevance and transcendence of the teachings of these figures facilitated their spread beyond their original social context. Over the centuries, the communities of their followers became deeply embedded into political systems and structures. Political and economic interests accelerated the division of religious communities by sect, by ethnic group, by nation and by social class. While they had begun as challenges to conventional social structures, morality and authority, they ultimately became the very foundation of social convention and tradition.
Indeed, the followers of these Axial figures formed new social groups, which often fell back into the same patterns of sacralising group identity and politics. In their craving for stable identity and structure, human groups have desperately used religion and quasi-religious political and nationalist ideologies to artificially reinforce social hierarchies and boundaries between insiders and outsiders, generating endless wars and ethnic and religious conflicts.
Such was the condition of religion in most of the world at the dawn of modernity. It was this condition which led to religion being deeply criticised, both from the inside and from the outside, in modern times. The big challenge facing religious communities today, in our increasingly interdependent world is this: will they help people to transcend their differences, or will they reinforce conflicts and divisions between people? The question then became, should religion be reformed, abolished, or renewed? We will consider these questions next week.
[1] Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History.
[2] You can view the video clip here: https://youtu.be/1IAhDGYlpqY
[3] You can view the video clip here https://youtu.be/8dqnfz4y8uA
[2] You can view the video clip here: https://youtu.be/1IAhDGYlpqY
[3] You can view the video clip here https://youtu.be/8dqnfz4y8uA
References
Jaspers, Karl. The Origin and Goal of History. 1953. Reprint, Routledge, 2011.