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Edited by
Steven Engler
Kim Knott
P. Pratap Kumar
Kocku von Stuckrad
Advisory Board
b. bocking — m. burger — m. despland — f. diez de
velasco — I. S. gilhus — g. ter haar — r. i. j. hackett
t. jensen — m. joy — a. h. khan — g. l. lease
e. thomassen — a. tsukimoto — a. t. wasim
VOLUME 113
Comparing Religions
Possibilities and Perils?
Edited by
BRILL
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2006
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
BL41.C583 2006
200.7—dc22
2006048992
ISSN 0169-8834
ISBN (10) 90 04 15267-9
ISBN (13) 978 90 04 (15267-0)
The Editors
Part One
Anthony J. Blasi
I. Introduction
1
See Berger, The Sacred Canopy, pp. 96–97.
4 anthony j. blasi
2
Blasi, “General Methodological Perspective,” p. 72.
3
For studies of syncretism, see Bastide, The African Religions of Brazil; Nielsen,
“Civilizational Encounters in the Development of Early Christianity”; and Ralston,
Christian Ashrams. For a study of desyncretism see Blasi, A Sociology of Johannine
Christianity, pp. 275–92.
6 anthony j. blasi
4
Montgomery, The Lopsided Spread of Christianity.
5
See Durkheim, “Concerning the Definition of Religious Phenomena,” pp. 81ff.
6
See Bendix, “Concepts and Generalizations,” p. 176.
comparison as a theoretical exercise 7
7
On direct observables, indirect observables, and constructs, see Kaplan, Conduct
of Inquiry, pp. 54–56.
8
Bendix, “Concepts and generalizations,” pp. 180–81, presents these “contri-
butions’ of comparisons.
9
Note this parallel in textual interpretation: “A person who is trying to under-
stand a text is always performing an act of projecting. He projects before himself
a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the
text. Again, the latter emerges only because he is reading the text with particular
expectations in regard to a certain meaning. The working out of this ore-project,
which is constantly revised in terms of what emerges as he penetrates into the
meaning, is understanding what is there.” (Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 236).
10
Baltzell, for example, stretches the meaning of “Protestant ethic,” a concept
taken from Weber; see Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, and Weber,
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
8 anthony j. blasi
11
For example see Ducey’s development of types of ritual in his Sunday Morning.
Aspects of Urban Ritual.
12
A more exact term than “folk type” would be “ethno-concept.” What is at
issue is not the non-elite status of the believers but their not being engaged in aca-
demic comparative religious studies.
13
See Ammerman et al., Congregation & Community, where Christian congregations
are examined, with several congregations each representing different trajectories of
pluralization in contemporary society.
14
For example, Bouthoul notes the importance of distinguishing between the
Christianity of intellectual elites such as theologians and the lived Christianity of
the masses. See Bouthoul, Traité de Sociologie, pp. 514–15.
comparison as a theoretical exercise 9
15
Balch, “Paul’s Portrait of Christ Crucified (Gal. 3.1).”
16
This is to disagree with Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, p. 75, who would
have definitions have external characteristics as criteria.
10 anthony j. blasi
17
James, Pragmatism, p. 78.
18
Herbert Blumer, “What is Wrong with Social Theory?” pp. 148–49.
19
Glaser and Strauss, Discovery of Grounded Theory, pp. 21ff.
comparison as a theoretical exercise 11
20
See Clark, Church and Sect in Canada, where concepts derived from European
religious history by Ernst Troeltsch are applied to Canada. Liebman and Cohen
look at twentieth century Judaism in Israel and the United States, in Two Worlds
of Judaism.
21
Magnani, Religione e religioni. Dalla monolatria al monoteismo profetico and Magnani,
Religione e religioni. Il monoteismo.
12 anthony j. blasi
22
Weber, Economy and Society, pp. 399ff., and Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism. The latter volume is a more complete set of Weber’s “Protestantische
Ethik” essays than the earlier Scribner’s edition.
comparison as a theoretical exercise 13
23
Staples, “Structuralism and Symbolic Universe.”
24
See Schutz, “Common-sense and Scientific Interpretation.” On the “natural
attitude” (perhaps it would have been better termed “naturalist stance,” borrowing
some terminology from the art world), see Schutz and Luckmann, Structure of the
Life-World.
16 anthony j. blasi
George Weckman
many traditions.”1 In light of this shift, one must ask: Does the stain
of condescension and proselytism remain today with the term and/or
the practice of ‘comparison’—does the name and the practice still
imply superiority?
The late Ninian Smart was shy of the term “comparative” too.
In his introductory textbook Worldviews he notes that “a strange divi-
sion arose between religious scholars who belonged largely to Christian
faculties of theology or divinity schools, and scholars engaged in the
comparative study of religion.” The latter dealt with non-Christian
religions because it was thought “that Christianity is unique and can-
not seriously be compared to other religions.” He says that it was
not until the 1960s that the modern study of religions began to look
“at Christianity, too, as a ‘world religion’.” Nevertheless he concludes
his discussion by affirming that “the whole enterprise of crosscultural
understanding is comparative.”2 The first issue to resolve, therefore,
is the lingering aura of favoritism in religion studies when the term
“comparative” is used. It may be that the term is too tainted and
must be abandoned. The practice, however, would seem to be
inevitable.
Religious Judgmentalism
1
Ernst, Following Muhammad, p. 48.
2
Smart, Worldviews, pp. 15, 16.
questions of judgment in comparative religious studies 19
Secular Judgmentalism
3
Wach, Comparative Study of Religions, p. 9.
4
Gibbs and Stevenson (eds.), Myth and the Crisis of Historical Consciousness, pp.
97–107.
20 george weckman
5
Wach, Comparative Study of Religions, p. 8.
6
Wach, Comparative Study of Religions, p. 9.
7
In Patton and Ray (eds.), A Magic Still Dwells, p. 24.
questions of judgment in comparative religious studies 21
to A Magic Still Dwells, that “we may take issue with our modernist
forbears without embracing the rhetoric of certain of our postmod-
ernist contemporaries.”8
As I suggested earlier, it may well be that the study of religions
cannot usefully be called “Comparative Religion” today. Nevertheless,
the methodology of comparison is inevitable and beneficial. The trick
will be avoiding pitfalls such as the presumed superiority of one,
especially one’s own, religion. This does not mean, however, that
value judgments can or should be avoided. How these judgments
can be made judiciously and helpfully is the second theme of the
comparative methodology I wish to present here.
Making Judgments
8
Patton and Ray (eds.), A Magic Still Dwells, p. 4.
9
Wach, Comparative Study of Religions, p. 9.
22 george weckman
are being compared. Returning to the jewel example, one must ana-
lyze and reflect on one’s conception of jewelness. Are there simply
better or worse jewels? Or can a judgment be determined more pre-
cisely? We need to see whether and how the emerald might be
thought to be a better jewel than the ruby.
If value in jewelness is based on or measured by color brilliance,
the emerald has more jewelness and is therefore better, than the
ruby, while the reverse judgment would result from color saturation
as a determinant. Note that the blank statement of one jewel’s supe-
riority to the other hides the presumed value upon which the judg-
ment has been made. Once that measure of value is explicit, the
process of evaluation may or may not proceed to favoring one scale
of value over another. Therefore, one might reasonably end up say-
ing: because I take greater pleasure in color brilliance, I value the
emerald more than the ruby, admitting that others may favor color
saturation and come to the alternative conclusion.
A problem is brought to mind by the fruit example. “Fruit” in
botanical analysis refers to seed-bearing parts of plants. This differs
from culinary usage that both limits the seed-bearing plant products
to the edible ones and expands it to include seedless plant parts. At
the same time, “fruit” can be a different culinary category from “veg-
etable” if the latter includes only leaves, roots, and other non-seed-
bearing parts of plants. And then there is the confusion about tomatoes,
on which the cook and the botanist part ways. The moral of these
reflections on jewels and fruits, again, is the warning to examine
one’s categories and values in comparison.
Judgment in Terminology
term for “magic,” and for the same reason. Magic was defined by
James George Frazer as an alternative to religion. For him it was
practical and proto-scientific. For the average person it is associated
with trickery and entertainment. Can it ever appropriately or effectively
be used for ritual practice which is believed to be effective ex opere
operato? If the comparativist teacher uses this term a not so subtle
put-down of sacramental theologies is justifiably suspected.
Obviously one should be suspicious when the pejorative word is
used of some religious traditions and not of others or one’s own. Do
some religions tell myths and practice magic while others do not?
Do we taint some historical accounts by putting them in the cate-
gory of myth; do we foreclose on some rituals if we stress their pre-
sumed effectiveness in changing the world? I would suggest a reflexive
glance at favored or unlikely applications of such negative termi-
nology as a way of demonstrating the ubiquity of such phenomena.
In the comparative study of myths and magic modern and popular
examples should be included. My favorite example of mythology is
the lore around George Washington, and for magic, astrology. Yet
other examples, especially Christian in most U.S. classrooms, can
serve to adjust and expand the potentially judgmental terminology.
In discussions of morality, a quick comparison judgment is often
called “prejudice.” As with “myth” and “magic,” “prejudice” is the
negative term for something that can have a more positive name.
When a prejudice is justified and helpful in understanding it is bet-
ter named a “generalization.” As such it is an inevitable feature of
abstract thought. Items of thought must be categorized, often in var-
ious ways, or else they remain unusable. The point at which such
generalization deserves to be condemned as prejudice changes for
each person as generalizations become indicators of lazy thinking,
obvious contradiction, or cruel intention. Instead of wholesale gen-
eralizations one needs specific summaries of specific information, to
whatever extent that is possible.
Comparative Structures
Daniel Brown, in his New Introduction to Islam, raises the issue of gen-
eralizations about Islam in the face of so many different islams. Using
the analogy of a language, he promotes the notion that even a large
religious tradition will have a common vocabulary, a kind of grammar,
24 george weckman
10
Brown, New Introduction to Islam, p. xii.
11
Klostermaier, Survey of Hinduism, pp. 151–305.
questions of judgment in comparative religious studies 25
Conclusion
David Cave
1
Charles Kimball refers to the way absolutist truth claims perpetuate evil acts,
in his When Religion Becomes Evil. Jessica Stern, terrorism expert at Harvard University,
describes how young people come to accept leaders and claims as authoritative,
unquestionably buying into them to the point where these young people are will-
ing to strap bombs to their chest to kill themselves and others. See her Terror in
the Name of God.
28 david cave
2
Ward, Religion and Revelation, pp. 304–06.
3
Lincoln, Authority, pp. 1–2.
4
Lincoln, Authority, pp. 116–17. Lincoln argues, however, that authority is not
an “entity,” but an “effect,” which I will speak to below.
the role of the authoritative in the comparative 29
5
Lincoln, Authority, p. 4.
6
Lincoln, Authority, p. 2.
30 david cave
7
Lincoln, Authority, pp. 4–6.
8
Lincoln, Authority, pp. 116–17.
9
Lincoln, Authority, p. 4.
10
Lincoln, Authority.
11
Lincoln, Authority, p. 7.
the role of the authoritative in the comparative 31
not only through symbols and rituals.”12 So, for Catholics, the Pope
need not speak in order for him to get respect. The pageantry, the
vestments, St. Peters, are enough to communicate authority. For
Protestants, the Bible need not be opened or heard to be perceived
as having authority. Its gold leaf pages, abnormally large size, place-
ment on the pulpit with a bookmark parament, all communicate
authoritativeness. The Guru Granth Sahib, the sacred book of the
Sikhs, in the Golden Temple at Amritsar, is wakened, fanned, and
put to bed each day, legitimizing its authoritativeness for Sikhs.13
The Pope, the Bible, the Granth Sahib do not have the same level
of authoritativeness, if at all, to an outsider as they do to a Catholic,
Protestant, and Sikh, respectively. Even then, the authoritativeness
of the Pope is conditional to certain Catholics, and Protestants dis-
agree among themselves on the inerrancy of the Bible. What or who
is deemed an authority, therefore, is relative to a specific audience.
The audience has a role in determining authority as much as the
quality and theatrics of the speaker.
Turning now from defining authority generally to defining reli-
gious authority specifically, Lincoln says what makes authority reli-
gious authority is when the claims to truth lie outside the human
realm.
Religious claims are the means by which certain objects, places, speak-
ers, and speech-acts are invested with an authority, the source of which
lies outside the human. That is, these claims create the appearance
that their authorization comes from a realm beyond history, society,
and politics, beyond the terrain in which interested and situated actors
struggle over scarce resources,” and so, these claims are “beyond the
possibility of contestation.14
Religious claims appeal to the highest form of epistemic and exec-
utive authority. By basing its claims outside the human realm, the
pronouncements of religious authority can never be tested, and its
executive authority is removed from being questioned: “Who is this
12
Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, p. 24.
13
One can see this staging in the non-religious, political realm of Mao Zedong,
when, with his leadership challenged, he solidified his authority through various cal-
culated moves to remind the working class of his peasant upbringing and sacrifices
on their behalf. See Spence, Mao Zedong, pp. 93–95.
14
Lincoln, Authority, p. 112.
32 david cave
15
Ward, Religion and Revelation, p. 8.
16
Lincoln, Holy Terrors, pp. 6, 111 n. 16.
17
Lincoln, Authority, p. 112 and Ward, Religion and Revelation, pp. 10–11.
the role of the authoritative in the comparative 33
18
Holdrege, Veda and Torah, p. 2.
19
Lincoln, Holy Terrors, pp. 5–6.
20
Lincoln, Holy Terrors, pp. 6–7.
34 david cave
Let us now look at how the role of authority is at play in the act
of comparison, asking ourselves first how authority and comparison
tie together generally and then turning to the example of compar-
ing the authoritativeness of scripture.
As stated earlier, we cannot know something except through com-
parison. “Comparison is a fundamental element of human rational-
ity,” says Robert Neville, giving justification for the “Comparative
Religious Ideas Project,” a three-year project devoted to comparing
religious ideas, across Chinese, Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, and Christian
traditions.22 Most people compare implicitly. Comparativists are more
deliberate, methodical, programmatic, and self-conscious in the act
of comparison. Comparison in this case centers around four princi-
pal components: motive (why compare? What larger ends do we
want to advance?); material (what religious data do we compare?
And upon what sources and people do we rely?); method (how do
we do it? What assumptions do we address, steps do we take?); and
21
See Lincoln’s chapter “Symmetric Dualisms: Bush and Bin Laden on October
7” in Holy Terrors and see also, Phillips, American Dynasty, pp. 230–33.
22
See Neville (ed.), Religious Truth, p. 204, and the other two volumes of the pro-
ject, both also edited by Robert Neville. The Human Condition, and Ultimate Realities.
See also Barbara Holdrege’s reference to Jonathan Z. Smith’s comments on the
limits yet inevitability of comparison as a means of knowledge. Four types of com-
parison are identified: ethnographic, encyclopedic, morphological, evolutionary, nei-
ther of which, according to Smith, is adequate however. Holdrege, Veda and Torah,
pp. 19–21. For the original essay by Smith on comparison, “In Comparison a
Magic Dwells,” and discussions in response to its assertions on comparison, see A
Magic Still Dwells, Patton and Ray, eds.
the role of the authoritative in the comparative 35
23
Sharpe. Comparative Religion, p. 2. Also see Neville, Ultimate Realties on the four
points that comparison must take into account: 1) “Comparison requires under-
standing all sides to be compared in their own terms,” 2) “Comparison is more
than assembling accurate representations of the things to be compared; like a ‘third
term’ it says how the things relate to one another, how they are similar and different,”
3) “Comparisons are claims that aim to be true in what they assert about the rela-
tions among religious ideas and they need to be grounded in processes that test
them according to relevant criteria,” and 4) “Claims to the truth of comparisons
ought not fade in the face of critical qualifications but should amend themselves as
improved,”
pp. 190–191.
24
See Brooks, “Taking Sides and Opening Doors,” pp. 817–830.
25
Eric Sharpe says that, historically, comparative religion has been used to advance
three purposes: apologetic, to show that all religions are fulfilled in Christianity; for
a perennial philosophy, to show the unity of all religions; and for anthropologi-
cal/ethnological reasons, to show the differences and similarities of cultures. Sharpe,
Comparative Religion, pp. 265–66. See also Lincoln in Holy Terrors on how compara-
tive religion can be used to exercise dominance of one religion/culture/civilization
over another for destructive ends, p. 82.
26
The thematic issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion on Hinduism
specifically addresses these questions on the relation between authority and the study
of religion, or, in this case, Hinduism. Vol. 68, 4 (December 2000). On this last
point, “subject,” see Haq, “Human Condition in Islam,” pp. 160–61, in which Haq
refers to looking for the “proper parts” of a religion, so as to make comparison
between two religions less ambiguous. Says he, “In comparisons . . . we must first
36 david cave
examine how two given elements from two given systems function within the sys-
tem to which they each belong, and whether they each form a proper part of that
system; only then will we be in a position to compare them meaningfully.”
27
Lincoln, Authority, 12. The Germanic, or Norse, Thing, was a place or institu-
tion in Scandinavian society where legal disputes were brought for resolution,
p. 56.
28
Lincoln, Authority.
29
Lincoln, Authority.
30
See above n. 26.
the role of the authoritative in the comparative 37
31
Caldwell and Smith, “Who Speaks for Hinduism?”, in Journal . . ., p. 706.
32
Brooks, in Journal . . . p. 120.
33
Brooks, Journal . . ., p. 822. Italics mine.
38 david cave
say. The scholar trusts the voice of the context in order to carry
out valid comparisons between differing sets of believers; d) then
there is the scholar, who is the speaker, and his authority comes, or
is given to him, by the audience. The authority of the audience
bears upon the scholar; for should the scholar disqualify the ratio-
nale of the believers, reduce it to what the audience does not rec-
ognize, the scholar loses her voice, her authority to speak for the
tradition. The scholar gains authority as speaker when the scholar,
the comparativist, honors the authority of the believers; scholar and
believers, speaker and audience operate in a mutually reflexive manner.
It seems, therefore, that in the comparative enterprise, in the act
of comparing one aspect in a religion with the same aspect in another
religion to come to a greater understanding of a vaguer category,
that those who are speaking authoritatively for the religion will have
their words taken at face value (hence the truth claims are not ques-
tioned), but at the same time their words will be evaluated against
the context to which they are being applied, in order that the aspects
being compared are placed in their proper contexts, and, thus, receive
their appropriate and authentic meaning.34 This anchoring of the
speaker’s words in context is not to demand that the speaker per-
suade the audience, which, in Lincoln’s words, would reduce the
speaker’s authoritorial status. It is just that the audience, the con-
text, now as authoritative, is respected for what makes for relevant
or appropriate or contextually authentic speech. Comparison is not
unilateral, but a dialogue between two authorities, between speaker
and audience.
To see how authority relates to the comparative process, it may
be best to walk through the comparative process to see where it
comes into play.
When we compare, we take an aspect or category of religion and
look at how that aspect or category is found in another religion.
Then, from studying how these aspects or categories compare and
contrast, we shed light on a broader, encompassing third variable
that we wish to understand better.
In the “Comparative Religious Ideas Project,” to which I have
referred, Robert Neville and Wesley Wildman define comparison this
way:
34
Refer again to Nomanul Haq. See footnote 26.
40 david cave
35
Neville and Wildman, Religious Truth, p. 4.
the role of the authoritative in the comparative 41
36
Wilfred Cantwell Smith probes the assumptions of believers and scholars on
the provenance of the Qur’an and the Bible in his essay, “Is the Qur’an the World
of God?” in Smith, Religious Diversity.
42 david cave
37
Holdrege, “The Bride of Israel,” in Levering, ed. Rethinking Scripture, p. 182.
38
Holdrege, “The Bride of Israel.” She adds that this ranking does not always
hold in practice. p. 240, n. 3.
39
Neville, Religious Truths, p. 3.
the role of the authoritative in the comparative 43
itative for those within a tradition without every having been read,
understood, or even opened? That is, what is the material significance
of sacred texts?”, we would not get much insight if we merely, and
straightaway, said, “Because believers claim these texts to be of divine
origin.” It would be more insightful and productive if we first stud-
ied the perceptions of text, writing, codices, and canon, etc. in the
history of the tradition before moving to the texts’ divine prove-
nance, to the rationale most believers would give for these texts’
authoritative status.
On the other hand, it is better at times to go straightaway to what
is preponderant in a tradition, passing over secondary components,
if we are to get at the authoritative, at the most consequential. Wendy
Doniger, in comparing Western to Indian views of myth and dreams,
draws on “the most dramatic (and often the most extreme) antithe-
sis within each culture.”40 For, she adds, “to show the contrast between
what most people think and what philosophers think, not only in the
West but in India, and . . . to show the contrast between what most
people think in India and what most people think in the West . . . one
is necessarily led to concentrate on the famous Western credos,”41
that is, on what is most broadly authoritative.
Focusing on sacred texts in the comparative process is an oft chosen
way to look for the authoritative in a given religious tradition.42
Miriam Levering identifies four ways by which scriptures or sacred
texts are distinguished from all other texts within a tradition, thus
qualifying them as authoritative: Scriptures are authoritative, 1) for
the allegations made about their origin and ontological status. “. . . they
are believed to be revealed by transhuman powers, to convey eter-
nal truths, or to replicate the speech of the gods;” 2) for their func-
tional purposes: “they are used as normative or authoritative bases
for communal life . . .;” 3) for how they are regarded: “they are
treated as ‘sacred,’ that is, powerful and inviolable;” 4) for the way
they are received: for the way “people respond to the texts, the uses
they make of them, the contexts in which they turn to them, their
understandings of what it is to read them, or to understand them,
40
Doniger O’Flaherty. Dreams, Illusions and Other Realities, p. 9.
41
Doniger O’Flaherty, Dreams, Illusions and Other Realities.
42
That is why the Comparative Religious Ideas Project chose to focus on the
principal scriptures of the traditions being studied. Neville, Religious Truths, xviii.
44 david cave
and the roles they find such words and texts can have in their reli-
gious projects.”43
Sacred texts can also transmit their authority through their iconic
status as a material object. The Qur’an, the Lotus Sutra, the Torah,
Veda, the Bible, the Guru Granth Sahib, have expressed iconic sta-
tus throughout history. The texts need not be read, understood, even
opened to convey authority.44
Within and among religious traditions, there are, in addition, other
or different authoritative “texts,” particularly when we consider non-
literate cultures. Aside from the oral tradition, Larry Sullivan refers
to other non-textual transmitters of authority—such as music, canoe
making, pottery, house construction, dreams, weeping, sounds and
shadows, and the human body.45 Determining the locus of author-
ity within a religious tradition is part of the comparative process as
we try to find the most compatible vocabulary and components
between two religions. So, for instance, as a center of authority, it
is more accurate to equate the Qur’an with Jesus and the Hadith
with the New Testament than it is to equate the Qur’an with the
Bible and Jesus with Mohammed.46
When we compare religious texts, then, we evaluate their author-
itativeness and look at how the perception of their authoritativeness
has been upheld in the respective tradition. We also look at how
43
Levering, “Scripture and its Reception,” in Levering, Rethinking Scripture, pp.
58–59. It is not merely the content, then, which makes the sacred text authorita-
tive, but how the text functions within the community. Barbara Holdrege makes
this point strongly in her Veda and Torah, by emphasizing scripture’s “cosmological
dimension,” meaning that scripture gets its authority for how it “embodies” the
divine as a “living aspect,” and also, on a more mundane level, for how it articu-
lates the structure of reality, the order of society and its performances, through the
“divine language” of the text. Holdrege, Veda and Torah, pp. 16–17. The text is
authoritative for what it represents and constructs, not so much for what it says or
who happened to have “written” it. Holdrege wants to move away from the text
simply as holy writ and as oral, pp. 3–5.
44
We find this iconic status in Buddhism well expressed in the following guide,
found in the back of a book on Tibetan Buddhism that advises the reader on the
care of Dharma books: “Dharma books contain the teachings of the Buddha; they
have the power to protect against lower rebirth and to point the way to liberation.
Therefore, they should be treated with respect—kept off the floor and places where
people sit or walk—and not stepped over. They should be covered or protected for
transporting and kept in a high, clean place separate from more ‘mundane’ mate-
rials,” and continues, Dalai Lama, World of Tibetan Buddhism.
45
Sullivan, “Seeking an End to the Primary Text,” in Beyond the Classics?, Reynolds
and Burkhalter eds., p. 58.
46
Smith, Religious Diversity, p. 24.
the role of the authoritative in the comparative 45
47
Said, “Traveling Theory,” in Edward Said Reader, Bayoumi and Rubin, eds.,
pp. 195ff.
48
See Smith’s essay on this polarization, “Is the Qur’an the Word of God?” in
Smith, Religious Diversity.
46 david cave
49
Jonathan Z. Smith frames the issue as when religious phenomena are claimed
to be “unique.” See his study, Drudgery Divine, p. 35ff.
50
Rene Gothoni, writing on the comparative enterprise, speaks of the network
of associations that come into play when one seeks to understand a religious ori-
entation, and when comparing another religion with it. So when he studies Jewish
and Buddhist monks, he aims as much as possible, using a range of tools, to enter
into their world, and determine how he feels within in, and, if he would, to remain
in it, Attitudes and Interpretations, pp. 38–41.
the role of the authoritative in the comparative 47
51
Ward, Religion and Revelation, p. 8. Italics Mine.
52
Bruce Lincoln speaks of the inherent precariousness of authority that gets its
validation from religious truth claims. For if a religious truth claim is undercut, the
legitimacy of the authority is undermined. Lincoln, Authority, p. 113.
53
Bellow, Adventures of Augie March, p. 3.
54
Smith, “Comparative Religion,” in History of Religions, Eliade and Kitagawa,
eds., p. 48.
55
Smart, Worldviews, p. 20.
56
Brooks in Journal, p. 818, and Neville and Wildman, in Religious Truths, p. 205.
48 david cave
of the text, of the authority, to act upon the scholar, are so critical
in the comparative process. It is not that we are to buy into truth
claims (for that is beyond the province of the history of religions).
Rather, the authoritative, in acting upon us, can help us come to a
new understanding of our own experience, of our own categories,
and of the vocabulary we use. The comparative process, Neville and
Wildman remind us, is ongoing. It is a circular path of even more
refined and probing understandings.57
There are problematics with focusing on the authority. By zero-
ing in on the authoritative we may not be sufficiently prepared to
deal with it meaningfully. It is approached with less than a full quiver
of appropriate methodologies, facts, and perspectives. We get over-
whelmed. It is too unwieldy. So our efforts become futile and frus-
trating. If we were to compare the Qur’an with the Lotus Sutra on
the subject of the text as a symbol, an icon, a material, self-authen-
ticating authoritative source within a religious tradition, it does not
serve to go straight to comparing the Qur’an as the literal word of
God and the Lotus Sutra as the embodiment of the Divine Law.
To compare at this level is to take on the authorities straight out,
to deal squarely with what is uncompromising. Instead, we can look
first at the ways each text has been expressed within its tradition,
how each has been upheld as authoritative, and the references in
the text that sustain this view. The Qur’an says three hundred times
that it is a text to be recited.58 The Lotus Sutra says that one is to
“accept, uphold, read, and recite” it, “memorize it correctly, prac-
tice and transcribe it . . .”59 So in the Nara and Heian periods in
Japan, it was the most copied Buddhist text of any other.60 Comparing
the way in which the Qur’an and the Lotus Sutra articulated their
authoritativeness through cultural means, rather than by comparing
whether and how they are true in the metaphysical sense, enables
the comparative process to deal with each text as an authority, show-
ing how authoritativeness is articulated through culture.
57
Neville, Religious Truths, p. 4.
58
See Graham’s essay, “Earliest Meaning of Qur’an,” in which he says that the
earliest meaning of the Qur’an is that which was meant to be recited “aloud,” such
that the “recurring imperative Qul!, “Say,” occurs three hundred times; in, Qur’an,
Style and Contents, p. 165.
59
The Lotus Sutra. Trans. by Watson, p. 323.
60
Kornicki, Book in Japan, pp. 83, 87.
the role of the authoritative in the comparative 49
61
Sharma, “What is Reductionism?” in Religion and Reductionism, Idinopulos and
Yonan, eds., p. 137.
50 david cave
1
See Sharpe, Comparative Religion and Bouquet, Comparative Religion.
2
This point of keeping quiet about one’s religious faith is stressed by Kierkegaard
in Fear and Trembling and Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
52 thomas athanasius idinopulos
3
Müller, Introduction to the Science of Religion, cited in Sharpe, Comparative Religion,
p. 31.
4
Sandmel, We Jews and Jesus, p. 111.
5
This anecdote was related to me by my colleague Wayne Elzey, Professor of
Comparative Religion, Miami University of Ohio.
the mothering principle in the comparison of religions 53
6
On classifying as an inevitable method of rendering religion rationally intelli-
gible see Smith, Drudgery Divine, especially chapter two; and Jastrow, The Study of
Religion, p. 94.
the mothering principle in the comparison of religions 55
tory; eternity and time; prophecy and priesthood; infinite and finite;
knowledge and ignorance; error and truth; sin and salvation; divine
and human; location and dislocation; sacred and profane. I should
say that religion is recognizable as religion and that religions (which
are otherwise unique in their content) can be compared as to same-
ness and differences according to how these binaries actually have
shaped the contents of any given religion. An understanding of these
binaries in religion would be achieved empirically, through descrip-
tion of the actual practices of the religion. My approach to religion
here is genuinely phenomenological in combining both historical-
empirical (descriptive) and interpretive functions of inquiry. The methods
of such an inquiry must include epoche (as Joachim Wach talked about
it) and the pursuit of eidetic vision or intuitive sense of the whole
as shown in the works of M. Eliade and G. van der Leeuw.7
Further it seems to me that there need be no quarrel in religious
study between area studies specialists and religious studies compar-
ativists because both endeavors are basically descriptive. I would sug-
gest that more adequate comparison of religion is possible the more
one knows empirically about religions. This means that area studies
logically should precede comparison as “data” upon which the com-
parativist draws. What is to be avoided is methodological imperial-
ism, as I would call it. Methodological imperialism occurs when a
scholar presumes to stand above religions, personally committed to
none, and “value-free,” when the scholar presumes to decide which
religion best exemplifies the formal elements. Imperialism occurs
when, for example, “spirit” or “sacred” or “infinite” goes beyond a
descriptive category of meaning and becomes a controlling value in
an evolutionary schema of religions.
II
7
See Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion; Van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and
Manifestation; Wach, Sociology of Religion; and Long, Significations.
8
See Bouquet, Comparative Religion.
56 thomas athanasius idinopulos
9
See the preface of James, The Ancient Gods.
CHAPTER FIVE
William E. Paden
1
As described by Saler, in Conceptualizing Religion. Methodological issues of apply-
ing religious concepts to different historical cultures are examined in depth in the
three-volume Comparative Religious Ideas Project, ed. by Robert Cummings Neville
and published by the State University of New York Press (2001).
60 william e. paden
2
This essay extends and amplifies an earlier sketch of these points published as
“Universals Revisited,” 276–289, and anticipates a book-length treatment of the
subject. I have been much inspired in this by Burkert’s ground-breaking Creation of
the Sacred. Earlier influences included Fox’s work on “behavioral repertoires” and
“grammars of behavior,” as in The Search for Society, 20ff., 116ff.; and Lopreato,
Human Nature and Biocultural Evolution. Most books on human ethology, though, have
little to say specifically about religion, for example, Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s immense com-
pilation, Human Ethology. An exception is Hinde’s Why Gods Persist. The newer “cog-
nition and religion” movement is of course also related to this approach, as in
Atran’s In Gods We Trust, or Boyer’s Religion Explained, though they and other cog-
nitivists focus more on the level of psychological computation and inference than
on behavior. Although concentrating on explanatory issues, and thus different than
my focus on comparative patterns, Sweek also calls for an ethological approach to
religion in “Biology of Religion,” 196–218. An excellent overview of developments
as they might concern the field of religious studies, is Geertz, “Cognitive Approaches
to the Study of Religion,” 347–400.
3
I use the term “interpretive” deliberately. I do not enter into the huge jungle
of scientific debates about the relative role of culture or learning in evolution, or
about any particular evolutionary theory. I do try to shift some of our hermeneu-
tical repertoire in a way that indicates points of continuity between the history of
religions tradition and the findings of the natural sciences.
panhuman contexts for comparative religion 61
Getting behind the cultural level to the human level means taking
a big-picture, evolutionary view, stepping back from the particular-
ities of religious contents and styles and looking at some of what
seem to be our persistent behavioral infrastructures. This is not to
limit our subject matter in some simplistic way: Humans not only
select mates, defend territories, and make tools, but also construct
and transmit language worlds, and accordingly build systems of sci-
ence, art, and religion. We are world makers. “Behavior” in the
broadest sense then means not just specialized actions such as canoe
building but also includes the larger, “silent” group behaviors related
to the formation of cultural worlds.4 In this panoramic scope, all civ-
ilization, including religion, is a theater of behavior, and we are its
actors.
Cross-cultural or macro-evolutionary patterns are invisible to the
normal, culture-bound insider. It is natural to see the world through
the boxed, insular categories of one’s own daily language. Even if
our students are science majors, they live in a society that keeps sci-
ence and religion in separate lexicons and compartments. Yet, aware-
ness of the patterns that underlie cultural behavior, as studied by
the evolutionary sciences, will help contextualize some of the other-
wise kaleidoscopic variety that we see in the history of religion. These
are the stabilizing and interactive patterns of social world building
and communication.
Among these panhuman, infrastructural commonalities is world-
making itself.5 In naturalistic language, worldmaking is habitat making
and environment formation. Habitative behavior is a mark of any
organism. It provides stability and continuity by forming a relatively
controlled environment over against an otherwise chaotic universe.
4
In referring to “group behaviors” I mean 1) the collective activities of sets of
individuals for common causes and the precipitates of those activities in the form
of language, values, technologies, and material culture that in turn significantly
influence, motivate or constrain individual behavior, and 2) the sociality of the brain
that is predisposed to collective loyalty, conformity, submission to authority, reci-
procity, etc., as these all form relationships between one or more individuals. This
does not imply that cultural contents are simply downloaded into individual minds.
5
I take the term partly from Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, whose philosoph-
ical considerations about “world versions” I share, but develop it in terms of social,
religious, and ethological considerations.
62 william e. paden
In this sense, the many human cultures and subcultures are all vari-
ants of the activity of environment selection, each with its language,
social expectations, position in space, collective memory, and skills.
Seeing cultures as habitats allows us to describe them both as nat-
ural eco-systems that are part of an evolutionary history and as sys-
tems of values and practices that have rich and interesting contents
as experienced by their insiders. Looked at from the naturalistic, out-
sider’s viewpoint they appear as niches, enclaves, ecological popula-
tions, hives, versions of hominid environments—but from the insider’s
viewpoint they are the world itself. From the outside, they look like
stagings; from the inside, they are the stage, they are reality. This
double perspective on worldmaking allows us to acknowledge the
very great difference between the insider’s and comparativist’s view-
points. To the inhabitant, the world is a singular experience and has
an absoluteness; to the observer, it is an instance of common processes
of construction and function. In this sense I find “worldmaking” an
effective interpretive concept in the teaching process, providing a
connective middle ground between the humanities and the natural
sciences. Two realities are joined and become homologous in this
notion: first, our biological inheritances as habitative life forms and
social creatures who build niches in environments, and, second, our
cultural inheritance as peoples who inhabit lived worlds of meaning
(phenomenological notions of “life worlds” have a long and impor-
tant pedigree here, and a relevant application). As humans, our roots
are in both. We are hominids and we are also Muslims and Pure
Land Buddhists; we are organisms, and we are also Ukrainians and
Chinese.
Worldmaking, then, is not just a matter of building something,
but also of inhabiting something, as beavers build dams and inhabit
them, and as bees build hives and structure their society within them.
We make worlds, and having made them, become players in them.
The worlds are then at once human products but also environmental
objectivities that leverage styles of cognition and responsiveness.6 They
6
That a social construction can come to function as an objectivity, an ontology,
is a basic concept in the sociology of knowledge, as summarized in Berger, The
Sacred Canopy, chapter one. From a different, but very promising, cognitive science
point of view, Day also examines ways cultural artifacts and practices can play a
role in generating and maintaining religious cognition. See his “The Ins and Outs
of Religious Cognition,” 241–255.
panhuman contexts for comparative religion 63
world affairs can often relate. Referencing a god and holy scripture
is exactly what was going on in the minds and piety of the 9/11
hijackers,7 not to mention various abortion clinic bombers.
7
Lincoln, Holy Terrors, 1–18, which analyzes the instructions found in the lug-
gage of Mohamed Atta.
8
Kin selection is a well-known theory in evolutionary science, in essence show-
ing that individual animals (and social insects are a representative illustration) will
be willing to sacrifice their individual lives (and hence genes) for others to the extent
that the genes are the same. In mainstream evolutionary thought, though, the
emphasis has been on individual self-interest rather than on group self-interest. A
concise summary of the issue of individual vs. group “selection” is Borrello, “The
Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Group Selection,” 43–47. The relevance of kinship
“belief ” for understanding religion is drawn out in MacIntyre, “Was Religion a
Kinship Surrogate,?” 653–694.
66 william e. paden
9
For interesting empirical research on the adaptational value of “costly” behav-
iors that “signal” group loyalty see Sosis and Alcorta, “Signaling, Solidarity, and
the Sacred, 264–274.
10
Rappaport develops this notion of sanctified objects as “functional replace-
ment(s) for genetic determination of patterns of behavior,” in his Ritual and Religion,
418.
panhuman contexts for comparative religion 67
and ritually. The sacred objects are immunized from harm by way
of protective laws, ritual taboos, or other sanctions.
Religious worlds form around these manifestations of the gods. In
interaction with them arise many of the kinds of religious behaviors
with which we are familiar: e.g. pilgrimages, worship, festivals, and
personal interactions such as vows and prayers. One can even speak
of the revelatory function of these objects, just as one could of the
“stuff ” of any cultural formation such as music, philosophies, liter-
ature, theoretical science, or human relationships.
Here “the sacred” is not a matter of theology, but of ethology—
the study of behavior, animal and human, in an evolutionary con-
text. Attributing sacrality or prestige to objects is evidently a form
of species behavior. Technically speaking, it is a manifestation of
what is called the human phenotype—the expression of our genes,
the genotype, relative to social environments. Again, I am here
extending Durkheim’s secular treatment of “the sacred.”11
Making pasts. Human worlds “have” pasts, but those pasts are
“made” in acts of transmission just as worlds are. Someone, some
“kin” group, put them there and keeps them there, as its family
album, as its memory of key persons and events. As with the con-
struction of sacred objects, forming a history is a natural group
behavior. Past-making takes place through mnemonic acts of oral
recitation, ritual and festivals, icons and chants, shrines, writing, read-
ing, and styles of education. At those junctures, pasts are given mean-
ing and interpretation. These “histories” are major ingredients—or
in the present context, major behaviors—of religious worlds, and
weigh heavily on them. Each group transmits its history of the world
in a way that reflects and grounds its place in the world. The his-
tories function as repertoires of exemplary figures or precedents for
legitimizing or inspiring one’s behavior. They are memories that must
be recalled and re-selected, or the world they held together would
vanish. No past, no culture; no past, no religion.
The sacred histories, the origins, are therefore remembered through
their re-enactments. This collective mnemonics relies on repetition,
whether of a constant reiteration, or in periodic, great festival times
with their marked choreographies and often vivid displays, special
11
As previously described in Paden, “Creation of Human Behavior,” 15–26; and
“Before ‘The Sacred’ Became Theological, 198–210.
68 william e. paden
foods and music, and other forms of body memory. Religions are
in this sense elaborate memory machines, and nation states often
parallel them in the way they transmit their traditions.12
Maintaining order, punishing its violations. Humans protect their worlds,
as any organism will. A good deal of religious behavior, in fact,
seems to be maintenance behavior: keeping to the existing order,
enforcing tradition, obeying the precepts, avoiding infractions of the
laws, performing ordained social roles, attending the rituals, bestow-
ing or receiving punishment for any infractions of the order. Most
religions have terms for sacred order, for example, Dharma in
Hinduism, T’ien or T’ien-li in Confucianism, or Sharia in Islam.
Incentives for moral behavior and disincentives for immoral behav-
ior rule the social world.
Protective behavior also entails regulating or re-balancing—in some
cases, purifying—the system when there is transgression. Every soci-
ety has its rules, but also its punishments. Keeping violation away
is one thing, but dealing with it after it is present is another. The
historical, cultural and situational varieties here are endless—every-
thing from public executions to mild apologies, from excommunica-
tion to bathing, from exorcising to repentance. Rules of purity and
the removal of impurity keep social orders intact, and religions often
require concentrated forms of these practices. In short, religions
become instances of a rule of nature: system regulation.13
Submitting to Status and Hierarchy. In-groups not only evoke loyalty,
but within them often evoke submission to rank.14 Dominance and
submission relative to status are found throughout the human and
pre-human worlds. In the case of religions, not only religious lead-
ers, but also gods and religious heroes can take on the attributes of,
so to speak, “alpha” beings. Like the queen bee, humans who are
esteemed as kings and saviors have the identical genetic make-up of
any of their kindred beings—the difference is simply that the group
12
An excellent treatment of collective past-making, with examples from both sec-
ular and religious cases, is Zerubavel, Time Maps. On group memory and body
memory see also Connerton, How Societies Remember, and on the active nature of
history construction, Tonkin, Narrating Our Pasts.
13
For a fuller study of the concept of sacred order see Paden, “Sacrality as
Integrity, 3–18.
14
Burkert’s treatment of hierarchy in Creation of the Sacred, op. cit., ch. 4, is a mas-
terful treatment of submission behavior.
panhuman contexts for comparative religion 69
cultivates them, through special behaviors, for their special social role
in the system. Again, in many religions, the disposition to respond
to “status” seems to sometimes be blended with the disposition for
allegiance to the group, particularly where the god of the group is
both an object of status and authority, and a guarantor of the group’s
tradition itself. Displays of subordination, humility, deference, sacrificial
acts and respect are of course the very stuff of large swaths of reli-
gious behavior and history of spirituality. Depending on their types
of social structure, religious groups naturally vary in the way in which
social respect for leaders and gods is displayed.
Reciprocity behaviors. The disposition for reciprocal interaction, the
heart of sociality, is also one of the great domains of evolved human
behavior generally and is the subject of extensive research that may
bear on the study of religion.15 Human life, and hence religious life,
is lived in relationships and mutuality, and this includes giving and
receiving, trust and confidence, communication, negotiation and
appeasement, and in general, accountability. In religion, this mutuality
is seen in relations with gods.
Readiness for relationship, readiness to relate to objects as if they
were person-like, readiness to talk to and listen to someone “out
there,” seem to represent a kind of default setting of the socially
constructed human mind. From the earliest age, infants begin inter-
acting and bonding with their caregivers, and one’s first love is indeli-
ble. Relationship is so important that humans will invent it if necessary,
with pets, dolls, cars, angels and other imaginary beings. We are
prone to listening to the world and making a conversation with it,
prone to bonding and forming stable relationships, prone to making
and receiving signals. Enter, the gods. Indeed, some cognitive anthro-
pologists have noticed that spoken language is based on dialogue,
and that this “dyadic premise” may be the foundation for the social
construction of unseen powers, i.e. gods.16 Onto these culturally trans-
mitted objects, the gods, we attribute human, social minds—and cog-
nitivist research, again, explains much about our disposition to perceive
15
A representative account of social reciprocity from the point of view of evo-
lutionary psychology is Cosmides and Tooby, “Cognitive Adaptations for Social
Exchange,” 163–228.
16
On this see Goody, ed., Social Intelligence and Interaction, especially Goody’s chap-
ter, “Social Intelligence and Prayer as Dialogue,” 206–220.
70 william e. paden
17
Examples include: Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds; and Boyer, Religion Explained.
panhuman contexts for comparative religion 71
18
Deacon, The Symbolic Species.
19
On the co-evolution of language and the development of social culture, see
Donald, Origins of the Modern Mind.
20
A strong case for studying religions as semantic universes is made in Jensen,
The Study of Religion in a New Key.
72 william e. paden
Concluding Points
This has been a brief review of some kinds and aspects of behav-
ior that figure into religion and how their roots may be linked with
our scientific knowledge of the history of the species. Naturally there
are endless kinds of evolutionary dispositions and social categories
connected to religious behavior—and one could mention research
on subjects such as attachment,21 ritual form,22 imitative behavior,23
emotion,24 and memory25—but the above are basic and illustrative.
Religion builds on, improvises on, and interacts with such mental
and social hardware.
Nature does not speak English. It speaks behaviors. We need to learn
that language, just as previous generations of comparative religion
scholars thought they needed to learn the language of hierophanies
and symbols. There is nothing in the above behaviors—admittedly,
characterized in broad strokes—that is not biological and that would
not be understood by evolutionary science, and there is nothing about
these behaviors that should be unfamiliar to historians of religion.
Nor is there anything about them, at least in my mind, that tilts
towards any particular ontology.
The study of religious behavior feeds into our general under-
standing of human behavior, and the other way around. Nature, I
imagine, makes no such distinction as religious vs. nonreligious. Not
only are there resemblances between Tenrikyo pilgrims taking home
a thread from the kimono of their founder, Hindus taking home dirt
from Govardhana hill, and Hajjis taking home water from the sacred
well at the Kaaba, but there are resemblances between these and
their secular analogues, where fans (of music, sport, or politics) bring
home souvenirs and mana-laden emblems connected with their objects
of devotion.
21
Kirkpatrick, Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion.
22
McCauley and Lawson, Bringing Ritual to Mind.
23
Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition.
24
Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens.
25
Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity.
panhuman contexts for comparative religion 73
26
For a review of issues in the modern comparative study of religion see Paden,
“Comparison in the Study of Religion,” 77–92.
74 william e. paden
27
Poole’s essay on controlled, aspectual comparison remains a cogent analysis of
the epistemological basis of comparative method: “Metaphors and Maps,” 411–457.
Part Two
Wesley J. Wildman
Introduction
1
Neville, ed., Ultimate Realities. This essay is a significantly revised and expanded
version of ch. 9 of Ultimate Realities. I owe a great deal to other members of CRIP,
but especially to Robert Neville, with whom I collaborated closely throughout the
project, co-writing many chapters, including the one profoundly revised here. Though
I was first author on the original chapter and Neville’s contributions were minor,
it is impossible to overstate his influence on the way I understand comparison of
78 wesley j. wildman
religions. In particular, the seeds of the CRIP approach to comparison were planted
in Neville’s earlier works, especially Normative Cultures. Neville has given his permis-
sion for me to rethink and rewrite the original chapter; I take full responsibility for
the result.
2
Smith, “In Comparison a Magic Dwells,” The paper was initially presented to
the History of Judaism section of the American Academy of Religion, 1979.
3
There are many useful surveys to which those seeking more comprehensive and
less quarrelsome coverage can turn. Other ways of summarizing approaches to the
study of religion and the comparison of religious ideas include Sharpe, Comparative
Religion; Ringgren, “Comparative Mythology,” Smart, “Comparative-Historical
Method”; Tracy, “Theology: Comparative Theology”; Capps, Religious Studies; and
Clooney, Seeing through Texts.
comparing religious ideas 79
What is Comparison?
shelf life, flavor, and what our kids will eat. We shift with ease among
these various respects of comparison as our interests dictate and we
think little of it because nothing of intellectual or moral significance
seems to be at stake. But this is not always so; sometimes important
moral or intellectual issues are at stake in the comparisons we make.
The vagueness and interestedness of comparative categories can
combine in unexpected ways to produce bad comparisons. Specifically,
we conceive categories poorly (a) when they lead to uninteresting
comparisons, (b) when we fail to make them vague in just the right
ways to accommodate the things we are interested in comparing, or
(c) when they depend on mistaken theories about aspects of reality.
I will give examples of all of these in what follows.
(a) “Rind texture” is vague in just the right way to handle the
varied surface characteristics of fruit, but it is not especially inter-
esting in isolation from some theoretical account of why fruits have
rinds and why the rinds vary in character. “Large-scale segmenta-
tion” is not much use as a comparative category if we are interested
in comparing apples and oranges because the category only succeeds
in registering apples negatively, as not having any large-scale seg-
mentation. In fact, if we are not properly attentive, we may con-
clude that apples have no segmentation at all because they do not
have the segmentation we see in tangerines and oranges, and our
attention is focused only on large-scale segmentation. If we were to
consider the broader category of “segmentation,” we might happily
make comparisons between apples and oranges with respect to sev-
eral different kinds of segmentation (large-scale, sub-structure scale,
seed-scale, surface bump patterns, etc.) We handle vagueness of the
“segmentation” category by specifying subordinate categories to flesh
out the dimensions of meaning of segmentation that the data demand.
(b) There is nothing inherently wrong with comparative categories
lacking the ideal level of vagueness. But two practical problems can
arise, especially when we unthinkingly adopt existing categories for
new purposes. On the one hand, too much vagueness gives undue
freedom to our overactive pattern-recognition skills, permitting us to
see similarities and differences that suit our interests, whether or not
those interests are ideologically innocent. Thus, sometimes it may
suit us to compare apples and oranges in respect of their reminding
us of glorious summer holidays in the south of France. Far less inno-
cent comparisons of the same sort are possible, though perhaps not
in the domain of fruit. On the other hand, our comparisons can
82 wesley j. wildman
4
Witness the impact of Carl Linnaeus’s famous taxonomy of animals and plants.
The first edition of Linnaeus’s taxonomy, Systema Naturae, was published in 1735
and it subsequently went into many editions, growing from a slender pamphlet to
a multi-volume work. It is still in use today, though with many changes and expan-
sions. This is but one example of the many taxonomies and classifications in use
our age, from product catalogues to types of religion.
5
The criticisms of Linnaeus’ taxonomy are legion but the deepest problems with
the taxonomy arise when morphological similarity makes organisms seem related
yet genomic information suggest evolutionary distance, thereby clouding the very
concept of species, which is one of the most crucial comparative categories of the
classification.
comparing religious ideas 83
6
See Aristotle, Physica 1252b; Generation of Animals, I 728a (Loeb Classical Library).
7
See Plato’s Republic, in which Plato allows women a role in the ruling class.
But in Timaeus 90e, the best that women can hope for in the process of rebirth is
to become a man.
84 wesley j. wildman
The lesson here is that special interests interfere with the refinement
of comparative categories. Interested comparison is inevitable but
bad interested comparison is not. We can control for interests by
seeking correction and refinement of our comparative categories. We
can strive both to make them sensitive to the variations in the data
for comparison (as when we have to avoid unconscious rigidity in
our understanding of segmentation in fruit) and to give them mean-
ing through embedding them in superior theoretical frameworks (as
when we have to have accurate theories of reproduction if we are
to avoid Aristotle’s mistakes in wielding the category of the inde-
pendence and completeness of intellective soul).
This discussion of interested comparison drives home the some-
times-overlooked fact that behind every act of comparison there lurks
an interpreter with only partially conscious interests, incomplete
knowledge of the world, and an enormous capacity for making del-
icate discriminations to suit ruling interests, to rationalize desired
actions, and to bring comfort and assurance that the “other” is com-
prehensible and controllable rather than terrifying. The neurological
conditions for comparison are important here. Human beings have
highly developed pattern recognition skills, which are especially use-
ful for recognizing the significance of facial expressions.8 These skills
misfire from time to time in interpreting faces. They also lead us to
expect patterns where none exist, or at least none at the level we
seek. This is one of the great liabilities that human beings bring to
observation and inquiry, and psychologists have documented its effects
in great detail.9 It is equally a liability in comparison, where untrained
human beings are too ready to find similarities on the basis of a
quick glance. This maximizes vulnerability to error due to over-
confidence, and marginalizes the careful observation and analysis of
theoretical frameworks that we need to save comparative conclusions
from becoming victims of casual hubris borne of over-active pattern-
recognition skills.
To summarize, comparison is a cognitive activity that involves
8
See Brothers, Friday’s Footprint.
9
There are many compendiums of errors due to biological limitations on human
rationality and overactive pattern recognition, including examples of the ways that
unscrupulous people exploit such vulnerabilities for their own profit and amusement.
See, for example, Gilovich, How We Know What Isn’t So; Piatelli-Palmarini, Inevitable
Illusions; Plous, Psychology of Judgment; Randi, Flim Flam; Sagan, The Demon-Haunted
World; Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things.
comparing religious ideas 85
10
Perhaps the most compelling account of the CRIP approach to comparing
religious ideas is Neville and Wildman, “On Comparing Religious Ideas”.
86 wesley j. wildman
Comparison as Impossible
11
For example see Wiebe, Religion and Truth; Beyond Legitimation.
comparing religious ideas 89
12
Doniger, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts; Dreams, Illusion and Other
Realities.
13
Eckel, To See the Buddha.
14
Clooney, Theology after Vedanta; “Comparative Theology,” 521–550.
15
Smith, Imagining Religion; Smith, Map is Not Territory.
16
See Ultimate Realities, ch. 8, where such causal explanations appear.
92 wesley j. wildman
achieve gives it time and opportunity to learn from its many mis-
takes and to generate new approaches and new forms of coopera-
tion. The outcome remains an intriguing question. I bet on the mob.
17
See, among numerous others, Rahner, “Christianity and the Non-Christian
Religions,” 115–134; Pannenberg, “Toward a Theology of the History of Religions,”
pp. 65–118.
comparing religious ideas 95
18
For example, see Huxley, Perennial Philosophy; Schuon, Transcendent Unity of
Religions; Smith, Forgotten Truth.
19
For example, see Campbell, The Masks of God Eliade, Cosmos and History; Eliade,
Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries; Eliade, Images and Symbols; Eliade, Sacred and the Profane;
Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion; Eliade, History of Religious Ideas.
20
For example, see Hick, An Interpretation of Religion.
21
The fruits of this research effort are especially evident in Smith, The World’s
Religions.
96 wesley j. wildman
22
Frazer, Creation and Evolution; Frazer, The Golden Bough; Spencer Harrison, Nature
and Reality of Religion; Tylor, Primitive Cultures.
23
Durkheim, Elementary Forms; Lévi-Straus, Totemism; Lévi-Straus, Structural Anthropology;
Douglas, Natural Symbols; Douglas, Implicit Meanings.
24
Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; Weber, Essays in Sociology;
Weber, The Religion of China; Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures; Geertz, “Deep Play,”
Berger, The Sacred Canopy; Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality;
Berger, ed., The Other Side of God.
25
Jaynes, Origin of Consciousness; Ashbrook, The Human Mind; d’Aquili, Laughlin,
and McManus, The Spectrum of Ritual; d’Aquili and Newberg, “Religious and Mystical
States,” 177–99; d’Aquili and Newberg, “The Neuropsychological Basis of Religions,”
190–91.
26
Boyer, Religion Explained; Boyer, Naturalness of Religious Ideas; Wilson, Darwin’s
Cathedral; Atran, In Gods We Trust.
27
Freud, Future of an Illusion; Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents; Erikson, Young
Man Luther Rizzuto, The Birth of the Living God.
98 wesley j. wildman
28
Hegel, Lectures. Also see Toynbee, An Historian’s Approach to Religion.
comparing religious ideas 99
29
This criticism is made forcefully in Smith, Imagining Religion.
100 wesley j. wildman
30
For example, see van der Leeuw, Religion; Kristensen, The Meaning of Religion;
Jastrow, The Study of Religion.
31
Sharpe, Comparative Religion; Sharpe, Understanding Religion; Smart, The Phenomenon
of Religion; Smart, “Comparative-Historical Method,” Smith, Faith and Belief; Smith,
Towards a World Theology.
32
One of the most pervasive suppliers and reinforcers of comparative categories
should be mentioned under this heading, though it is less systematic than any of
the examples so far mentioned: the almost universally used classification system of
the United States Library of Congress. See Library of Congress Classification Schedules
Runchock and Droste eds.
33
Otto, Idea of the Holy. Also relevant here are Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil;
Ricoeur, Conflict of Interpretations.
comparing religious ideas 101
34
See Watson, Architectonics of Meaning; and Dilworth, Philosophy in World Perspective.
35
Tillich, Systematic Theology.
102 wesley j. wildman
36
Husserl, Ideas; Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.
37
Dennett, “A Method for Phenomenology,” pp. 66–98.
comparing religious ideas 103
38
For one account of how neurophysiology might make such a contribution to
the study of religious experience, see Wildman and Brothers, “A Neuropsychological-
Semiotic Model of Religious Experiences”.
39
Also see Ultimate Realities, ch. 8, and the summary in ch. 1 of that volume. A
fuller account is furnished in several parts of The Human Condition. For a more
detailed presentation, though lacking some of the insights accrued during the CRIP
process, see Neville, Normative Cultures.
40
Lakatos, “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes”.
41
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
104 wesley j. wildman
42
Feyerabend, Against Method.
43
Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent.
44
Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
comparing religious ideas 105
tive theories are also needed for guiding the relating of data to the-
ory, and for picking out essential features of the gathered masses of
data. Most important is the way that the data, already multiply inter-
preted in these ways, can have an impact on the central hypothe-
ses that guide the research program. No good scientist would ever
throw over a well-tested hypothesis because of one piece of con-
traindicating evidence. Rather, attempts would be made—frantic
attempts, perhaps—on the one hand to test the data by replicating
an experiment or confirming theories of instrumentation, and on the
other hand to explain the data with an auxiliary hypothesis that
effectively protects the central hypotheses from falsification. It is partly
the extension of theories to new data, even to potentially threaten-
ing data, by means of auxiliary hypotheses that helps to make research
programs in the natural sciences seem progressive. Another sign of
a progressive research program is its ability to predict novel facts.
Of course, if novel facts are no longer forthcoming and explanations
of threatening data seem contrived and merely face-saving, then the
operative research program would be judged, sooner by its critics
than by its advocates, to be degenerating.
What is true in the natural sciences is no less true in the study
of religion: the relationship between data and theoretical terms, in-
cluding comparative categories, is exceedingly complex.45 Most of
the views I have discussed recognize this. Determined recognition of
complexity is the precondition for resisting the extremes of data-
blind enthusiasm and theory-blind confusion. This acknowledge-
ment also involves a discriminating appreciation of similarities and
differences among the various kinds of inquiries we see around us. The
subject matters of religious studies are very different from those of the
natural sciences or economics or literature. Nevertheless, Lakatos’s
methodology of research programs, when appropriately generalized,
fairly describes the way effective inquiry works in any context from
the natural sciences to the humanities and even to common sense
problem solving. The same characteristics are crucial: a conservative
approach whereby a feasible hypothesis is relinquished reluctantly,
and a sense of adventure that prizes vulnerability to correction by
whatever means are available given the nature of the inquiry.
45
Lakatosian research programs have been proposed as models for the study of
religion in Clayton, Explanation from Physics to Theology; and Murphy, Theology in the
Age of Scientific Reasoning. They are used in Wildman, Fidelity with Plausibility.
106 wesley j. wildman
46
Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief,” Dewey, Logic.
47
Peirce, Essays in the Philosophy of Science.
48
For more details on the general theory of inquiry suggested here, see Wildman,
“The Resilience of Religion in Secular Social Environments”.
comparing religious ideas 107
49
See Smith, Imagining Religion.
110 wesley j. wildman
50
On this mater, see the discussions in Neville, ed., The Human Condition, chs.
1–2; and Neville, Normative Cultures, pp. 74–84.
51
Smith, Imagining Religion, p. 21.
52
Smith, Imagining Religion, p. 25.
comparing religious ideas 111
Pedagogical Implications
The pedagogical implications of all this are now close to the sur-
face. The CRIP approach absolutely demands a community of inquiry
that stabilizes comparative judgments for investigation, capitalizes on
diverse insights and types of expertise, and introduces novices into
procedures and habits of thinking that facilitate effective comparison
of religious ideas. In fact, the CRIP project was explicitly designed
with these pedagogical considerations in mind. The four-year effort
53
See the appendices to each of the volumes of the CRIP project for my account
of the CRIP process.
112 wesley j. wildman
1
This essay began as the 2002–2003 Wabash Lecture at the Divinity School of
the University Chicago, presented on November 1, 2002 as part of the Chicago
Forum on Pedagogy and the Study of Religion and now published in the Martin
Marty Center Occasional Papers, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Divinity School,
2005), pp. 18–33, 54–55. I am grateful to Lucy K. Pick for that invitation, and to
faculty and students at Chicago for their response to the lecture. I am also grate-
ful to colleagues, students, and friends in New York and elsewhere who reacted to
the essay as it was taking shape: Courtney Bender, Christian Novetzke, Rebecca
Mermelstein, Laurie Patton, Matt Weiner, and my wife Laura Shapiro. My indebt-
edness to the many students with whom I have worked at Columbia and Barnard
will become plain in the course of the essay itself. It will be a pleasure to be able
to mention at least a few by name and to cite their writings. I have secured their
permission to do so and am grateful for that privilege.
116 john stratton hawley
2
I realize that this simplifies a more complex history in the case of both insti-
tutions. At comparativist Harvard, George Foot Moore entitled his influential two-
volume masterwork History of Religions while at historicist Chicago A. Eustace Haydon
held a professorship from 1919 to 1945 that was dedicated to the field “compara-
tive religion.”
comparative religion for undergraduates: what next? 117
3
Asad, “Reading a Modern Classic,” pp. 205–222. In characterizing Asad’s argu-
ment in this way, I am adopting a shorthand that may not be entirely defensible.
I am seeing Asad’s comments on the particular sort of “residual essentialism” (217)
that animates Smith’s writing about faith and personhood in relation to the obser-
vation he makes about the congruence between Smith’s approach and “the mis-
sionary’s standpoint” (216). These, in turn, I am relating to Asad’s earlier and
intriguingly similar criticism of Geertz’s understanding of belief as an overly “mod-
ern, privatized Christian” point of view (Genealogies of Religion, p. 47). The connec-
tion is ironic, of course, given Smith’s own critique, on similar grounds, of the
notion of belief, but it seems to me this irony is just what Asad is getting at in his
charge of “residual essentialism.”
Smith enunciated his personalist point of view in many publications. Two are
particularly noteworthy: “A Human View of Truth,” pp. 6–24; and “Comparative
Religion—Whither and Why?,” pp. 31–58; reprinted with abridgements in Willard
G. Oxtoby, ed., Religious Diversity: Essays by Wilfred Cantwell Smith (New York: Harper
and Row, 1976), pp. 138–157; see especially p. 142. As to his awareness of the
special centrality of the notion of personhood in Christianity, see for example “The
Study of Religion and the Study of the Bible” in Oxtoby, ed., Religious Diversity,
p. 45. If I were to respond more at length to Asad’s response to Smith, I would inves-
tigate a series of antinomies that seem to me to appear persistently in Smith’s work.
Three of these, as I sketch them to myself, are historicism vs. personal, subjective
faith; formal verbiage vs. “interior” personhood; and Smith’s polemic against Protestant
belief vs. his crypto-Protestant emphasis on faith as a generic reality.
118 john stratton hawley
4
Had the course been given in Europe, one might have started with the First
and Second Congress(es) of Orientalists held in Paris in 1873 and London in 1874.
See Girardot, “Max Müller’s Sacred Books,” pp. 213–250 and especially 222–225.
5
One should not jump to the conclusion that the Parliament’s organizers placed
those other religions on an equal footing with Christianity. John Henry Barrows,
minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago and chairman of the general
committee on religious congresses of the World’s Congress Auxiliary, said the fol-
lowing in his preface to the published version of the Parliament’s proceedings:
This Book will also be read in the cloisters of Japanese scholars, by the shores
of the Yellow Sea, by the watercourses of India and beneath the shadows of
Asiatic mountains near which rose the primal habitations of man. It is believed
that the Oriental reader will discover in these volumes the source and strength
of that simple faith in Divine Fatherhood and Human Brotherhood, which,
embodied in an Asiatic Peasant who was the Son of God and made divinely
potent through Him, is clasping the globe with bands of heavenly light.
Barrows, The World’s Parliament of Religions, p. ix.
6
E.g., Tiele, “Religions,” pp. 381–382. Tiele was worried about (or perhaps
rejoiced in) “national” traces that survived in Islam and made it “little better than
an extended Judaism,” by contrast to the supranational claims that made it appear
a “world religion” comparable to Buddhism and Christianity. Masuzawa discusses
the larger contours of this dilemma in “The Question of Universality,” which was
the Lester Lecture on the Study of Religion, 2000. An earlier example is to be
seen in Clarke’s widely read Ten Great Religions, where Christianity and “Moham-
medanism” are set apart from the others as religions not “limited to a single nation
120 john stratton hawley
or race” and therefore unworthy to be called “ethnic religions”; yet Islam fails to
attain the pleroma or Geist that makes Christianity truly universal (pp. 30–31). For
this reason Clarke was hesitant to class Christianity as a religion in the same sense
that the others were—in his schema, it was the ten of them plus Christianity. Yet
the number ten seems to have retained its magical aura all the way to the Chicago
Parliament. Roman religion, which Clarke included on his list somewhat hesitantly
(he omitted it from his introductory diagram), was also omitted at Chicago on
account of its not being in current practice. This moved us back from eleven great
religions to ten. Historically speaking, then, it seems to have been no historical acci-
dent that the Parliament’s inaugural bell tolled ten times, as we are told.
comparative religion for undergraduates: what next? 121
Prefatory:
Katherine K. Young, “World Religions: A Category in
the Making?” in Michel Despland and Gerard Vallee, eds.,
Religion in History: The Word, the Idea, the Reality (Waterloo,
Ont.: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1992), pp. 111–130.
On Chicago:
Cherry, Hurrying toward Zion, chapter 2, pp. 54–86.
Joachim Wach, The Comparative Study of Religions (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1958), preface, intro-
comparative religion for undergraduates: what next? 125
7
A major resource for such a course would be Michelle Sorensen’s paper for
the “World Religions” course: “ ‘World Religions’ and the Performance of Peace”
(September, 2001).
8
See anon., Convention of Religions in India.
9
The Dabistan is the subject of a stimulating essay by Aditya Behl: “Pages from
comparative religion for undergraduates: what next? 131
I could go on, but one may fairly ask: How is all of this going to
fit into an introductory sequence for undergraduates? In two possi-
ble ways, I hope. On the one hand one could design a lecture course
on the “invention of world religions” theme that would stand along-
side introductory courses that are historical or comparative in a “sub-
stantive” way. That course might be some sort of version of this
one. But what about undergraduates who take only a single course,
a question to which Jonathan Z. Smith has drawn urgent attention?10
That raises a second possibility: to write a concern about the history
of the history of religions into existing “substantive” introductions.
The question “Whose history is this, and how did it get made?”
would always be near the forefront of consciousness. Given time con-
straints, that might mean dipping very selectively into the bowl I’ve just
laid on the table. But given the equally important constraint imposed
by doing comparative work at all, this seems to me unavoidable—
even if it’s just to supply those in-class guerillas with another weapon.
The project of historicizing the history of religions is huge, but
progress is being made.11 I’m sure we’re going to see great things
coming out of a group recently formed at the American Academy
of Religion by Robert Orsi (of Harvard) and Leigh Schmidt (of
Princeton) called “The Cultural History of the Study of Religion.”
In describing their project, they emphasize “the grittiness that comes
from cultural historical studies: the on-the-ground collisions and col-
lusions of missionaries, traders, and [pointing the disciplinary finger]
anthropologists.”12
As for my own work, I have begun charting out a project I call
“the history of bhakti as history.” I am trying to understand the pro-
cess by which the idea of bhakti (variously translated as love, devotion,
13
On this point I am indebted to a discussion with Diana Eck (Cambridge, April
2000).
comparative religion for undergraduates: what next? 133
14
Carla Bellamy, “Introduction to Hinduism,” Columbia University, May 2002.
15
Andrea Pinkney, “Introduction to Indian Religion,” Columbia University, May
2002.
134 john stratton hawley
16
See Niebuhr, “Pilgrimage as a Thematic Introduction,” pp. 51–63.
comparative religion for undergraduates: what next? 135
ductory issues that were sure to arise if one took pilgrimage as, in
their terms, a “microcosm of religion.” At that point the syllabus moved
into the visual dimension by showing the film “To Find Our Lives,”
thus making Huichol pilgrimage the first broadly shared “experience”
of pilgrimage in the course. From there it was “Pilgrimage in the
‘Western’ Traditions” and “Pilgrimage in the ‘Eastern’ Traditions,” with
the quotation marks right there on the syllabus. The course ended
with Basho in Japan, and along the way, in its well-funded Harvard
manner, it had the advantage of enlisting three instructors, three
knowledgeable TAs, and a guest lecturer. My problem was how to
do anything like that in Seattle.17
First of all, I worried about students’ expectations. I wanted to intro-
duce five religious traditions, as had been done at Harvard, and sus-
pected students would want some sort of thumbnail descriptions—“Jews
believe x, y, and z; Muslims believe z, y, and x.” Rather than entirely
fending off that urge, I decided to accommodate it right up front,
letting such a unit supplant the fancy “introductory issues” segment
of the Harvard syllabus. I conscripted the Smith Brothers—Huston
and Wilfred (no, not Jonathan!)—to do the “beliefs” job at home,
while in class I concentrated on five experiential metaphors for each
of the traditions we would be considering. I looked for metaphors
that would relate to the dominant theme of pilgrimage in different,
mutually reinforcing ways, and ended up with darsan, the bo tree,
pesah, the Magnificat, and the hajj. Then I took up the Wittgensteinian
challenge—family resemblances—and actually asked the class to sketch
out a family portrait of the five traditions, justifying their choices as
to size, proximity, gender, perspective, and shared traits. Too hokey?
Frankly, I doubt I’d have the nerve to do it today.
Instead of turning to the Huichol film for an early, common visual
experience that would stand apart from the “world religions” para-
digm and thereby do some more generic work, I chose “The Wizard
of Oz.” I hoped that would get us to see something familiar in a
new way, and I hoped it would expand the lens on the question of
where one ought to look to see pilgrimage today—not just by sub-
ject but by medium. I asked at the outset how many people in the
class had seen “The Wizard of Oz” before, and was amazed to see
every single hand go up, all 100 of them. Lots of people had seen
17
See Hawley, “Pilgrimage,” pp. 65–79.
136 john stratton hawley
it more than once. So I did the teacher thing: I asked why. Once
we got to the actual screening, our theoretical pilgrim guide was
Victor Turner—who else?—so over our popcorn, we talked of such
things as liminality and horses of a different color.
I tried to customize the Harvard course in various ways, hoping
to make contact with the sorts of comparative midsets I thought
might already be in place among UW undergraduates. Having started
nearer to home than they did at Harvard, I began the thematic part
of the course farther away—with Hindus—and moved gradually
closer, dismantling the East/West rubric along the way. This enabled
me to situate “America as pilgrimage” at the end, and keep moving
west from Cambridge and the pilgrims toward the dream of California
and to local pilgrimages in the Pacific Northwest (lots of mountains).
I regret that I didn’t find time to keep going—into science fiction.
I’ve called this Cambridge-to-Seattle process transplanting, customiz-
ing, and comparativizing. The last is doubtless a little grand, but you
can see what I mean. The comparative frame I adopted did not depend
entirely on experiences I imagined these Seattle students would have
in common—presumably we were describing the world as many
other people had seen it—but I did want the students in this particular
group to feel that in some way the course began and ended with them.
Their own life situations had forced them to do plenty of comparative
work before they walked in the door, and those “positionalities” mat-
tered to the way they’d take on the job announced in the course
title: comparing religions.
Much to my surprise, I found myself teaching pilgrimage again many
years later—in spring, 2002, and this time back on the East Coast.
It happened because I had asked my Barnard colleague Max Moerman
to lecture on Japan in our introductory Asian Religions course the
year before, and he explored the mandala motif in scrolls depicting
pilgrims and produced for pilgrim consumption at Shinto and Buddhist
shrines. He also spoke about scrolls that represented Jambudvipa—
that is, India—as a landscape for mental journeying. That got us
talking, with the result that Max and I decided to mount a joint
upper-level undergraduate seminar called “Pilgrimage in Asian
Practice.” The narrower scope, higher level, and seminar format allowed
for many contrasts with the Seattle course; many of these moved in
the general direction of “comparativizing.”
First, we were able to deal much more intensively with various
indigenous categories—Japanese and Indic—and bring them into
comparative religion for undergraduates: what next? 137
18
Discourses of the Vanishing (1995). A yet more circumscribed approach to the
theme of pilgrimage—but still comparative—is a course recently given at Eugene
Lang College of the New School University under the direction of yet another
Columbia graduate student in Religion: Annabella Pitkin’s “Pilgrimage in Buddhist
Practice.”
138 john stratton hawley
19
Mermelstein, “Navigating Identity at Beth-El: An Investigation of the Authority
Structures and Influences in Messianic Judaism,” in “Religious Worlds of New York”
course, Barnard College and Columbia University, December, 2000. I am indebted
to Rebecca Mermelstein for additional insights that emerged in an e-mail exchange
on October 29, 2002.
20
In this context, what is the instructor’s or the researcher’s comparative respon-
sibility? Is it necessary, appropriate, or even ethical to align the anti-conversionist
sensibilities of this group with the sorts of controversies about conversion that have
recently emerged in India? Recently, for example, Jayalalitha, the Chief Minister
of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, issued an ordinance to the effect that “no
person shall convert or attempt to convert, either directly or otherwise, any person
from one religion to another by the use of force or by allurement or by any fraud-
ulent means . . .” on penalty of up to Rs. 50,000 and a jail term as long as three
years. (Tamil Nadu Ordinance no. 9 of 2002, Tamil Nadu Government Gazette, October
5, 2002.) That quickly became a human rights issue, which was featured on the
list-serv of the Religions of South Asia Section of the American Academy of Religion.
comparative religion for undergraduates: what next? 139
21
Avani Patel, “Comparative Jewish Religions: The Differing Observances of the
Laws of Kashruth,” in “Religious Worlds of New York” course, Barnard College
and Columbia University, December, 1996.
22
Hannah Budnitz, “An Ecclesiastical Peculiar,” in “Religious Worlds of New
York” course, Barnard College and Columbia University, December, 2000.
140 john stratton hawley
As I think back over these projects and the discussion that sur-
rounded them, I am impressed at how naturally yet how complexly
they entered the comparative domain. A recurrent theme, for example,
was the one on which Stephen Warner has worked so intensively:
the congregation as the “natural” form of religious life in the United
States.23 Why natural? Projects on individuals and groups who identified
themselves in some way as “New Age” often brought this to the
table, as did intergenerational and immigrant ones or studies of, say,
a bodega. And here’s another comparative angle, this time focused
on content rather than form: Surprisingly often, students wanted to
work on inter- or multi-religious “congregations”—or occasionally on
groups whose identities challenged certain common conceptions about
what constitutes religion in the first place, like Adam Shapiro’s prob-
ject on Ethical Culture in the Bronx.24
More than anything, perhaps, we learned over the course of four-
teen weeks that comparison is always positioned comparison. Sooner
or later it became clear not just how interesting but also how inter-
ested each project was, and in an amazing variety of ways. Often class
discussions about holes into which particular projects had descended
and how they might be rescued involved one student suggesting to
another how his or her own particular preconceptions and preoccupa-
tions might be getting in the way.
23
Warner, “The Place of the Congregation,” pp. 54–99.
24
Adam Shapiro, “’Where All Meet to Seek the Highest . . .’: A Study of the
Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture,” in “Religious Worlds of New York”
course, Barnard College and Columbia University, December, 2000.
comparative religion for undergraduates: what next? 141
25
It is enlightening to read what Wilfred Smith wrote on that subject almost
fifty years ago in Islam in Modern History.
142 john stratton hawley
26
The Web site of the Interfaith Center of New York is http:/www.interfaith-
center.org. Matt Weiner, one of its principal leaders, has described aspects of its
activities in “Urban Interfaith: Applied Interfaith as a Pragmatic Moral Orientation”
(unpublished paper, 2002).
CHAPTER EIGHT
1
For the general nature of this assumption, see Zander, The Purposes of Groups
and Organizations.
144 james constantine hanges
2
The classic statement belongs to Max Weber, see The Sociology of Religion, pp.
46–59. Weber’s focus on the individual innovator produces a range of types (e.g., the
mystagogue, the teacher, etc.), but none more important to the study of religion than
the prophet, the one who announces the break with the status quo, paradigmatically
with the powerful, “It is written—but, I say to you,” formula familiar to us from the
so-called “antitheses” in Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” (Matt 5–7). Weber describes
two kinds of prophets, the exemplar who embodies a higher way of living to be
imitated by others, and the ethical prophet, who demands dutiful conformance to
some kind of external normative order. Weber saw behind these two types, two
contrasting systems of legitimation; the exemplary prophet is the vessel of the divine,
personally connected to the gods, while the ethical prophet is on a mission from
God, a tool not a vessel, whose authority stands outside the proclaimer. The first
offers participation, the second demands obedience. As Weber sees it no distinction
is workable between the religious reformer and the “founder of religion.”
3
The series is published by Ulysses Press, Berkeley, California. For a far more
serious comparison, see Karl Jaspers’ four volumes, The Great Philosophers, in the first
volume of which he deals with the “paradigmatic figures” of Socrates, the Buddha,
Confucius, and Jesus.
socrates and jesus 145
4
I note here Werner Jaeger’s comment, “[t]he parallel of Socrates and Christ
runs through the entire work [ Justin’s Apologia],” Early Christianity and Greek Paideia,
p. 28, n. 5. Also see Droge, “Justin Martyr and the Restoration of Philosophy.”
5
Cf. Strawser, “How Did Socrates Become a Christian?” All citations of Greek
Church Fathers are taken from the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, Socrates foreshadows
Christ most powerfully for Justin as an ideal martyr. Justin argued that Socrates
used true wisdom and critical questioning (lÒgƒ élhye› ka‹ §jetastik«w) to recog-
nize the demonic in polytheism and to lead humans away (épãgein t«n daimÒnvn
toÁw ényr≈pouw) from these errors for which he became the paradigmatic martyr
(tª kak¤& ényr≈pvn §nÆrghsan …w êyeon ka‹ éseb∞ épokte›nai) in the quest for
truth—a precursor of the fate of Christ (Apologia 5.3). Justin makes Socrates and
Jesus functional equivalents—one for the Greeks, the other for the Barbarians (i.e.,
the Jews)—for the revelation of the truth about the divine (Apologia 5.4). In fact,
according to Justin, because he lived “with Reason = Logos,” Socrates was a
Christian before the coming of Christ (ofl metå lÒgou bi≈santew Xristiano¤ efisi,
Apologia 46.3). Socrates is to be admired for his truthfulness and integrity (Apologia
secunda 3.6), one who suffered an unjust fate at the hands of evil demons (Apologia
secunda 7.3). Socrates’ quest for truth inevitably brought him to Christ, the Logos,
whom he knew in part, and for this he was killed for introducing a new deity.
Socrates prepared the way for what would be revealed in full by Christ (Apologia
secunda 10.5–8); on his martyrdom cf. Gregory Nazianzus (329–389), Epistula 32.11.
6
E.g., the powerful shadow of Socrates hangs over bishop Athanasius of Alexandria
(296–373) when he found it strange that even Plato and Socrates would go to wor-
ship at an Artemis sanctuary (Contra gentes 10.33–37; cf. Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica
13.14); the Alexandrian theologian Didymus Caecus (313–398) also appears to attribute
to Socrates the best moral nature among the pagans (see the fragmentary Commentarii
in Ecclesiasten 37.12). That this was the stereotype is clear even in the midst of the
sarcastic ridicule of Greeks as defenders of pederasty and adultery in the Jewish
Christian, Pseudo-Clementine, Homilia 5.18, which repeats Apollo’s claim that Socrates
is “éndr«n èpãntvn . . . sof≈tatow,” who nevertheless hid the young Alkibiades
under his robe; among the Greeks the adulterous Zeus is the greatest of the gods,
and the pederast, Socrates, the greatest of philosophical men (5.19).
146 james constantine hanges
his fellows away from the errors of idolatry and moral weakness
(Stromata 2.20–22; 5.14); he was the source for all later Greek state-
ments of the unity and incomparability of God (Protrepicus 6.71).7
Eusebius has much to say about Socrates in exactly the work one
would expect to find it, his Praeparatio evangelica. There we count over
one hundred occurrences of the name. Eusebius assumes, like others
before him had done, that Socrates was ı pãntvn ÑEllÆnvn sof≈tatow
(the wisest of the Greeks), leading people away from idolatry and
toward a virtuous life—a truly great man whose views on the nature
of God commend the Christian view (15.61). Eusebius makes the
Greeks responsible to the gospel because Socrates had prepared them
for it by convicting them of the error of polytheism (1.8); he was a
model ascetic, totally unmoved by material gain, and unalterably
committed to the pursuit of virtue, goodness, and beauty (8.14). The
problem with Socrates for Eusebius was that he had been appro-
priated by heretics as support for their doctrines (10.2). And like
Clement and Justin before him, Eusebius also commends Socrates’
integrity in death (13.4).8 The Christians’ habit of comparing their
best to Socrates was apparently such a commonplace that Lucian of
Samosata picked up on it when he described the hood-winked
Christian admirers of Peregrinus calling this fraud a “new Socrates”
(kainÚw Svkrãthw, De morte Peregrini 12.16). As we might have guessed,
given this ancient tradition, the practice of measuring all things by
this Athenian gadfly seems to have become no less common in the
modern period. Simplistic modernizing comparisons of Jesus and
Socrates are unfortunately far too common, and often serve trans-
parently apologetic purposes, as for example in the case of Peter
Kreeft’s heuristic dramatic placement of Socrates in the Harvard
Divinity School. Kreeft’s strategy of symbolizing in Socrates the pri-
oritizing of reason in the search for truth follows a long tradition in
7
Clement can even cite Socrates alongside Paul on a point about the Mosaic
Law (Stromata 4.3); such “proof texting” can even be used to support Clement’s
views on specific, Christian dogmatic statements, e.g., Stromata 5.2,11.
8
E.g., Clement, Stromata 5.14, citing as examples of those who “heard Moses,”
Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato; Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica 13.13. Of course, in
all this the Christian writers are taking their cue from Jewish apologists, and accord-
ingly tend to account for the similarities between Socrates and Plato and their own
master in terms of the Greeks’ borrowing from the biblical sources; for the Jewish
practice, see Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem, esp. 189–90.
socrates and jesus 147
9
See Socrates Meets Jesus. Edwin Hatch once described this comparative tendency
as rooted in the presumption on the part of Christian apologists of a “kinship of
ideas” between Christianity and Greek philosophy (The Influence of Greek Ideas on
Christianity, p. 126). We recall here the famous Jesus and Socrates Compared, first pub-
lished by Joseph Priestly in 1803, and the cause for so much excitement for Thomas
Jefferson. Also notable is the comparative relativization of a range of great religious
founders, including Jesus, by Lippmann, A Preface to Morals. In both of these cases
the figure of Jesus is compared with Socrates with both men being conformed to
the highest values of the comparing author; i.e., for both Priestly and Lippmann
refer to non-supernatural, moral and ethical religion.
10
It is not being argued here that Socrates is a founder of a new religion. Even
given the nature of the charges made against him at his trial, we can say little more
than that he, through his own behavior, challenged and invited his contemporaries
to consider an alternative piety; see Plato, Apologia Socratis 24b8–c1; cf. Diogenes
148 james constantine hanges
Laertius 2.40; Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.1.1–2.5; Plutarch, De genio Socratis 580B. The
charges consist of three elements, Socrates’ failure to pay respectful recognition to
the gods of the state (oÓw m¢n ≤ pÒliw nom¤zei yeoÁw oÈ nom¤zvn); his introduction of
other and new divinities (ßtera d¢ kainå daimÒnia efishgoÊmenow); and his [conse-
quent] corruption of the youth of Athens (édike› d¢ ka‹ toÁw n•ouw diafye¤rvn). For
a discussion of the charges, see Brickhouse and Smith, Socrates on Trial, pp. 30–37.
11
See McPharren, The Religion of Socrates.
12
Of course, in his defense before the jury, Socrates actually denies that he ever
really served as a “teacher” to anyone, and this essentially on the grounds that he
never demanded payment for his philosophizing (Plato, Apologia Socratis 19d8–e1;
20c1–3; 23b9–c1; 31b5–c3; 33a5–b8); the denial proves the common perception
despite Socrates’ (or is it Plato’s?) objection. Of course, there is also ambiguity in
the references to Jesus. In all the gospels he is called teacher or rabbi (rabbi 12
times in Mark and John), but in the overwhelming majority of instances not by his
disciples; e.g., in Matthew he is called rabbi only by Judas the betrayer, the final
time in the very act of betraying him (26:25 and 26:49 [par. Mark 14:45] respec-
tively). Jesus forbids the disciples calling themselves teachers (Matt 23:7); and of the
13 occurrences of that title, at least 10 are by others referring to Jesus. In Matt
10:24–25 [par. in Luke 6:40]; 23:8; 26:18 [par. Mark 14:14; Luke 22:11] Jesus
appears to refer to himself as the teacher. The use of didãskalow is parallel in
usage, only twice in Mark [once a self-reference], Luke [twice a self-reference], and
John [twice a self-reference] is it used by a disciple.
socrates and jesus 149
13
A characterization commonly used by scholars involved in the current search
for the historical Jesus, e.g., Crossan, The Historical Jesus, especially pp. xxvii–xxxiv,
427–66; Crossan and Reed, Excavating Jesus; Kloppenborg, Excavating Q ; Kloppenborg,
The Formation of Q. This kind of literary excavation is not common to questions of
the “historical” Socrates; cf. the tone of the contributions in Vander Waerdt (ed.),
The Socratic Movement. McPherran raises the issue, but believes that Plato’s early dia-
logues present an essentially accurate picture of Socrates religious views; also cf.
Vlastos’s quest of the historical Socrates in Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher.
150 james constantine hanges
legacy of the founder, nevertheless betray the traces of the great dis-
tance that exists between these founders and the communities that
lay claim to them. In the process, it will become clear that our com-
parative exercise will necessarily divest our students of the privilege
of thinking that we have sufficiently distinct and detailed pictures of
each of the historical figures who stand behind these traditions to
justify describing them as ciphers for communities. Students will dis-
cover the troublesome reality that in most cases with respect to the
discussion of the founder of a specific religious movement the sur-
viving records are frustratingly incomplete, and usually not autobio-
graphical. The modern scholar is left with the problem of sifting
through the accounts of various, and not disinterested interpreters,
analyzing their characteristics in the hope that some order can be
made out of them, on the basis of which to reconstruct a usefully
accurate historical picture of the individual of interest. With that we
begin with Socrates.
It is necessary to set the stage for our proposed reading of the text
at hand with at least a bare outline of its context in the history of
scholarship, where in fact most discussions of the ambiguities in
Plato’s recollections of Socrates begin with his Apologia Socratis. In
contrast, we shall begin our discussion with a look at the choice Plato
presents the reader in the Symposium between the model of Socrates
and that of his presumed beloved, Alkibiades.14 We must necessarily
presume in the present context a common knowledge on our reader’s
part of the dialogue’s basic outlines and themes; these would of
course have to be presented to one’s students as a prerequisite to
the use of our interpretation of the text. We should point out in this
context that while the Symposium is generally seen as a later dialogue
which contributes little to the historical problem of Socrates’ trial, I
would treat this temporal distance as an important adjunct to our
students’ comprehension of the authorial creativity and freedom Plato
enjoyed.
14
The common debate is over the accuracy of Plato’s account of Socrates’ trial
in comparison with Xenophon’s and in light of the historical reconstruction of the
situation in Athens before and during the trial, see, e.g., Brickhouse and Nicholas,
Plato’s Socrates, pp. 1–10.
socrates and jesus 151
15
See her essay, “The Speech of Alcibiades: a Reading of the Symposium.”
16
Fragility of Goodness, pp. 169–70, 199.
17
Fragility of Goodness, pp. 197–98.
18
Cf. Eliade’s notion that the escape from the “terror of history” into myth is
the assimilation of the individual to the archetype, i.e., transcendence requires the
obliteration of the individual (The Myth of the Eternal Return, pp. 36–47).
152 james constantine hanges
19
Vlastos, Platonic Studies, p. 31.
20
Mitchell, The Hymn to Eros: A Reading of Plato’s Symposium, “the god [Dionysos]
himself appears,” p. 175.
21
Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, pp. 166–67.
22
Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, p. 195.
socrates and jesus 153
23
Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, p. 198.
24
Mark presents an interesting problem, do they or do the disciples not under-
stand Jesus? In 4:10 Jesus responds in private to a question asked by those around
him together with the Twelve (ofl per‹ aÈtÚn sÁn to›w d≈deka) about the parable of
the sower he had just given without explanation to a large crowd (4:1–9). Jesus
explains to those in this smaller audience that the mystery ( tÚ mustÆrion ,
v. 11) of the kingdom has been given to them, while to those outside (¶jv) everything
is given in parables so that they will not understand (v. 12). Yet, Jesus must then
ask that very audience, possessors of the mystery, whether they have actually failed
to understand the parable, since if they do not understand this parable they can-
not hope to understand all the parables. How shall we resolve this paradox? Are
we to assume that what Jesus neglected to say, but what must be inferred, is that
the mystery of the kingdom is actually the key that unlocks the holder’s under-
standing of the otherwise illusory parables that, now, were not given only to the
outsiders (as Jesus explicitly said earlier) but to all? With no explicit change in audi-
ence we then find in 4:33–34 that Jesus did in reality speak in parables not just to
those outside, but to all, and that in private he explained his parables to his own
disciples (cf. 7:17–19, para. Matt 15:15–17a; also related to the problem of under-
standing are, Mark 8:14–21; Matt 16:5–12; Luke 12:1). Peter is explicitly credited
with divine revelation in identifying Jesus’ true nature (8:29–30, knowledge that
Jesus commands thereafter to be keep silent, cf. 9:9–10; Matt 17:9), and then is
immediately shown not to have drawn the proper conclusion from that knowledge
(8:31–33). Jesus repeatedly tells his disciples plainly about his immediate future, but
they continually fail to understand him and are even afraid to ask about it (9:32).
Mark’s use of silence commands by Jesus raises a problem, which Wrede’s famous
“messianic secret” hypothesis was designed to explain, i.e., the silence commands,
e.g., following Peter’s confession of Jesus’ Christhood, 8:29–30 (also see e.g., 1:25,
34; 3:12; 5:43), are part of the writer’s strategy to account for the tension between
his recognition that Jesus made no messianic claims for himself and the fact that
such claims were clearly being made for him by the “Markan” church. As a strat-
egy, however, having Jesus command the silence of humans and demons regard-
ing his true identity does not actually attribute misunderstanding to the disciples.
Instead, they do in fact know the truth; they were simply charged not to reveal
what they knew until after the resurrection (9:9). Of course, if we accept Wrede’s
hypothesis of the strategy, then we must assume that the very existence of the strat-
egy presupposes that, in fact, Jesus was fundamentally misunderstood by his earli-
est followers (e.g., Luke 24:13–35; cf. the problem of the abandonment of Jesus at
his arrest by disciples who should have known what to expect, Mark 14:50 = Matt
26:56, cf. Mark 8:31–32; 9:30–32; 10:32b-34; Matt 14:33; 16:16). See Wrede, Das
Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien, critiqued strenuously by Räisänen, especially in the
revision of his German original, The ‘Messianic Secret’ in Mark.
154 james constantine hanges
25
E.g. Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Symposium; Gagarin, “Socrates’ hybris and Alcibiades’
Failures.”
26
Cf. Sheffield, “Alcibiades’ Speech: A Satyric Drama.”
27
We cannot here deal with the details of the debate continuing over the impor-
tance to Socrates’ trial of his previous associations with characters like Alkibiades;
on this issue see Brickhouse and Smith, Socrates, pp. 18–24. Also, even though the
Symposium is a later work, we cannot dismiss the portrayal of the relationship between
Alkibiades and Socrates in this work as wholly literary fiction.
28
Cf. Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, p. 168. Of course, we must keep in mind
that it is the dramatic scene set sometime before Socrates’ trial and death; we are
socrates and jesus 155
told this particular symposium took place “quite a long time ago” (pãnu . . . êra
pãlai, 173a7). Even so, is it to be rejected outright that in Plato’s mind the prob-
lem raised by Socrates’ relationship with Alkibiades still burns intensely well after
Socrates’ death?
29
Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, p. 166.
30
Of course, we use the phrase “social products” here rather loosely, as if speak-
ing for Socrates’ critics who saw the disastrous activities of Socrates’ students and
acquaintances as the direct result of the latter’s connection to the former.
31
Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, p. 171.
156 james constantine hanges
32
Aristophanes use of fÊsiw ( phusis) includes both, 192e9–10, cf. 191c and 210a7;
210d5; 212a.
33
Nussbaum rightly says that Alkibiades represents a love which is “an integrated
response to the person as a unique whole” (Fragility of Goodness, p. 191).
34
Of course, the occasion for the recounting of the symposium is the desire to
hear of the lÒgoi t«n §rvtik«n (“the speeches about love” offered by the attendees,
172b6; 173e6; 177d1–2; most of the occurrences of lÒgow in the dialogue refer to
the speeches made by the symposiasts), and Alkibiades is certainly interested in
Socrates’ lÒgoi (lÒgoi kalo¤ are what lovers exchange and generate according to
Diotima, 210a6–a8, 210b8–c3; 210d3–d6), but this does not change the focus in
the former’s references to the latter. The beautiful, however, is not found in some
specific argument, rationale, or speech (tiw lÒgow) or some bit of knowledge (tiw
§pistÆmh, 211a7; the lÒgoi of Socrates and Diotima can also be “arguments” (201e6)
or “reasons” for believing something (202a5). Plato gives us lÒgoi that are mythic
in character, like Aristophanes’ story (205d10–e1). Through it all, Socrates says
Alkibiades is always victorious in lÒgoi (213e3–e4).
socrates and jesus 157
35
Even the inner pain that Alkibiades feels can only be expressed in terms of
physical images. He is snake-bitten but of a kind the pain of which is felt only in
the heart and soul (217e6–218a5).
36
Socrates is like the Sileni, who within their ugly shell contain divinity (215a6–b3).
158 james constantine hanges
37
Nussbaum rightly criticizes Vlastos for seeing Plato only behind the speech of
Diotima. She argues, and I agree, that Plato also stands behind Alkibiades’ speech
(Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, p. 167).
38
As Socrates claimed earlier to know ¶rvw (199a1; a7–b5) while no one else
did, so Alkibiades now claims to know Socrates as no one else does; he alone can
reveal Socrates (214e6; 215a6; 216c7–d1; 216e5–7); he shall be the mystagogue, as
Diotima once was for Socrates.
39
Rosen, Symposium, p. 279.
40
Notice that Alkibiades frames the moment in his speech as the moment of
decision for a jury (219c5–c6).
41
Gagarin, “Socrates’ hybris,” p. 23.
socrates and jesus 159
acter arises from the ironical fact that he is the supreme student; in
other words, consistent with the scenario laid out by Diotima, Socrates
has made his ascent and has left behind mundane concerns.42 This
is clearly the force of the elaborate descriptions of Socrates’ behav-
ior which Alkibiades offers. Rosen goes a step further, arguing that,
based on the analogy with Diotima’s speech, Socrates takes on the
role of Beauty itself once Alkibiades has arrived on the scene, “Socrates
is loved, but he does not love or desire in return.”43 The lover of
course, is now Alkibiades, Eros incarnate.44
Socrates’ hybris can be seen as the interpretation of his ascent by
those who are unaware of the experience themselves, or by those,
like Alkibiades, who perceive his ascent from the perspective of their
own earlier stage in the process. In other words, Alkibiades may be
describing Socrates’ ascent from the perspective of the §r≈menow, the
“one being loved” but only in passing.45 This is also an interpreta-
tion to which Plato ascribes validity. Whether we think of the sol-
diers on campaign with Socrates (220c1), or his present host, Agathon
(175e8), all respond to him with the same accusation of hybris.46 His
hybris establishes a gulf between Socrates and other human beings,
one which Socrates himself apparently felt no genuine compulsion
to bridge. Again to quote Rosen, “His (Socrates’) hybristic indifference
is justified in the sense that he is in fact superior to all other men.
At the same time, it is unjustified or defective, because it impairs
his effectiveness on behalf of philosophy among the non-philoso-
phers.”47
In his primary accusation of hybris, Alkibiades describes a superior
Socrates who looked down in scorn on the approaching lover; he
was a mocker of the one who would ascend, the one who desired
to beget in the beautiful that he discovered in Socrates (219c3–5).48
Yet, Alkibiades must bear a great part of the responsible for his own
42
Gagarin, “Socrates’ hybris,” p. 28, cf. Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, p. 183.
43
Rosen, Symposium, p. 286; cf. Gagarin, “Socrates hybris,” p. 28.
44
Gagarin, “Socrates’ hybris,” p. 288.
45
Scott, “Socrates and Alcibiades in the Symposium,” suggests that we should
assume that Socrates was Alkibiades’ lover, §rastÆw, at the stage in his ascent where
he was a lover of souls, only briefly focused exclusively on the individual soul of
Alkibiades (especially pp. 33–34).
46
Gagarin, “Socrates’ hybris,” p. 31; this air of superiority is described by Alkibiades
as Socrates’ usual manner, 218a6–7; 216e4–5.
47
Rosen, Symposium, p. 294; see also Gagarin, “Socrates’ hybris,” pp. 29–30.
48
Cf. the use of katafrone›n in 210b5–6; 216d8; 220b7–22c1.
160 james constantine hanges
49
Gagarin, “Socrates’ hybris,” p. 34.
50
Cf. Sheffield, “Alcibiades’ Speech: A Satyric Drama,” who, in pointing out all
the elements of Socrates’ speech parodied in Alcibiades’ “satryrical” encomium to
Eros-embodying Socrates, describes Alkbiades’ frustrated attempt to seduce Socrates
as a paradoxical instantiation of Socrates’ myth of Penia’s seduction of the sleep-
ing Poros to conceive Eros (p. 201).
51
Memorabilia 1.2.14f. In fact, according to Xenophon if Alkibiades had approached
Socrates rightly motivated, he would have remained with him and avoided politics
altogether.
52
Of course, the older view is that Alkibiades’s speech served as Plato’s apology
for Socrates; Alkibiades relieves Socrates of responsibility by claiming all of the
blame for himself, e.g., in Bury, The Symposium of Plato, see Bury’s Introduction.
socrates and jesus 161
the ascent from the side of those who loved Socrates.53 The problem
is that had he wished only to defend Socrates, Plato could have
avoided re-raising Aristophanes’ issue of human wholeness, as well
as the portrayal of Socrates hybris, and especially the fact that Alkibiades
claims exclusively to know the inner Socrates.54
This brings us to the promised reading of Plato’s intention in this
dialogue. I would suggest that what Plato wrestled with was a conflict
of credibility, and that this conflict of credibility can serve as a com-
parative category in the comparison of portrayals of religious mas-
ters or founders by their later devotees.55 In the process of struggling
with Socrates’ legacy, Plato has portrayed the character of Socrates
in both its brilliance and its impenetrability. To portray this impen-
etrability Plato deals openly with the perception of Socrates’ hybris,
and links this directly to the frustration and failures of Alkibiades.
Plato also presents his audience with a serious picture of ¶rvw as it
is actually experienced by human beings, especially in the portrayal
of one specific individual. The idea that Socrates has failed Alkibiades
is not uncommon among modern interpreters, as Gagarin’s work
demonstrates; we might think of the failure of Socrates as his failure
to imitate Diotima, a guide, or master, who was willing to reach
back to those at the bottom of the staircase, and who, in fact, never
lost sight of Socrates the individual.56 According to Gagarin, Diotima
53
Dover, Symposium/Plato, and Scott, “Socrates and Alcibiades,” respectively.
54
Contra Bury, Symposium, p. xx. Also, e.g. Xenophon defends Socrates by dis-
tancing him from Alkibiades. Plato does not see the situation so simply. He does
not avoid the truth; Alkibiades is correct, he does know Socrates as none of those
present do (216c7).
55
This is not to deny that the tension between traditions and the way this tension
is handled by later authors or redactors may provide an opportunity to say something
about the historical figure who constitutes the focus of the conflicting traditions.
56
Even though she has reservations about Socrates’ capacity for initiation, she
nevertheless says that she will hold back nothing of the final steps. She accommo-
dates Socrates in the words, “Try to follow to the degree you are able” (210a1–4).
Of course, Diotima is associated with prophecy (Diotima could mean “honored by
Zeus” or “Zeus-honoring”). Women initiating others into mysteries or new cults is
certainly well-known in this period (e.g., Glaukothea in Demosthenes, De Corona
126–130; 259–260; De falsa Legatione 281), cf. McPherran, Religion, pp. 295–96. The
issue of whether the association with prophecy affects our characterization of the
issue we have here raised is beyond the scope of this chapter; it is sufficient to say
that her reference to enlightenment as revelatory vision (210e2–e6) is not unlike
Plato’s own description in the allegory of the cave in the Respublica; the enlightened
one must be forcefully compelled by an external agent, dragged up the ascent to
the light, where the last step in the philosopher’s quest appears to be revelatory
(Resp. 515c6–515d1; 515d4–516a3; 516b4–b7); on the “extra-rational” in Socrates
see McPherran, Religion, pp. 9, 177–90; 194–201; 208–29.
162 james constantine hanges
57
While pedagogical terminology is used in the speech of Diotima as the ascent
to the beatific vision is described (there are steps to be ascended one by one,
211c2–3; there is the need for a guide, 210a7). Yet for Socrates the journey is, in
practice, a solitary climb with each individual climber climbing, growing ever more
isolated, up from the mundane. As Vlastos so aptly describes it, “The high climatic
moment of fulfillment—the peak achievement for which all lesser loves are to be
‘used as steps’—is the one farthest removed from an affection for concrete human
beings,” (Studies, p. 32).
58
Gagarin, “Socrates’ hybris,” p. 35.
59
Cf. Rosen, who suggests that Socrates’ failure is his coldness to the love of
others. This coldness prevents or thwarts any attempt “to beget in the beautiful.”
socrates and jesus 163
63
Conzelmann, Jesus, p. 16; the translation and expansion of the well-known
article in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Of course, this principle is prob-
lematic because it describes its objects only negatively; since Jesus is most assuredly
what everything else is not, be it Jewish or Christian; for a recent critical reflection
on the application of this principle, see Allison, Jesus of Nazareth, pp. 1–10. What
we shall focus on is in some ways related to the criterion of embarrassment, also
discussed in Allison, but we shall not pursue this connection here.
166 james constantine hanges
64
We should here acknowledge the recent reconfiguration of the comparison of
Jesus and Socrates in terms of five innovative comparative categories by Gooch,
Reflections of Jesus and Socrates.
65
E.g., Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, p. 159, citing the
sayings source, Q , Luke 13:29 = Matt 8:11–12, among others. What this saying
about people coming from the four (two in Matthew) directions to sit at the table
with the Jewish patriarchs means to the respective gospel writers is the question.
Of course, Matthew’s version has been taken to mean that the Gentiles will dis-
place Jews, the sons of the Kingdom, in the new age.
socrates and jesus 167
66
On this debate, see, e.g., Byrne, “The Messiah in Whose Name ‘the Gentiles
will Hope’ (Matt 12:21),” with Sim, “Matthew and the Gentiles: a Response to
Brendan Byrne.”
67
E.g., Segal, “Matthew’s Jewish Voice,” especially pp. 6–11; Dunn, The Partings
of the Ways, p. 118. One could also argue that Gentiles are probably included in
Matthew’s community (or that possibility is clearly at hand), otherwise the tensions
within the gospel are difficult to explain (see Hummel, Die Auseinadersetzung Zwischen
Kirche und Judentum Im Matthäusevangelium, p. 32). Against the Jewish social context
of Matthew see Hare, “How Jewish is the Gospel of Matthew?”
68
Davies, “The Jewish Sources of Matthew’s Messianism,” pp. 502–503; and
Davies, Jewish and Pauline Studies, p. 318.
168 james constantine hanges
69
Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, p. 192.
70
On this see Scott, Plato’s Socrates as Educator, pp. 15–23.
socrates and jesus 169
71
Sanders, Figure of Jesus, p. 192; also pp. 217–18.
72
Segal, “Matthew’s Jewish Voice,” especially pp. 6–7, 22–25.
170 james constantine hanges
73
See Betz, Essays on the Sermon on the Mount.
74
This epitome presents a particular picture of Jesus as the authoritative inter-
preter of the Torah, a Jewish religious teacher and critic, spokesman for a distressed
community in competition with the Pharisees within the broader Jewish community.
75
“The Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:3–7:27): Its Literary Genre and Function”;
“The Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:3–12): Observations on
Their Literary Form and Theological Significance”; “The Hermeneutical Principles
of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:17–20)”; cf. Kloppenborg, Formation of Q ,
pp. 171, 317–22; the “sapiential instructions” of which the “Sermon on the Mount”
is an example “represent the formative literary component” of Q (p. 322).
76
See another of Betz’s preliminary articles, “Matthew 5:17–20 and the
Hermeneutical Principles of the Sermon on the Mount”; Jesus’ challenge to the
false understanding that he has come to destroy the law can be correlated most
naturally with the “law-free” gospel of the Gentile mission, cf. the Lukan correla-
tive in Acts 21:20b–21; also Betz, The Sermon on the Mount, pp. 184–89.
77
E.g., Kloppenborg makes only a passing reference to Betz’s argument that the
Sermon on the Mount is a pre-Matthean arrangement (Formation of Q , p. 171, n. 2).
It is clear that he pays little serious attention to the details of Betz’s ideas except
where Betz’s work shows the relationship between sayings material and wisdom tra-
socrates and jesus 171
ditions (p. 189, n. 78). In contrast, note the heavy use of Betz’s contributions on
the Sermon on the Mount by Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, pp. 167–71, 327.
For more recent criticism of this hypothesis in Betz’s magisterial 1995 commentary
on the Sermon on the Mount, see Allison’s review in the Journal of Biblical Literature.
78
Kloppenborg, Formation of Q , pp. 117–21. To solve the problem of these various
pictures of Jesus, some scholars have simply eliminated Matt 5:17–20 from Q , along
with similar statements such as Matt 10:5–6 and 23:3, claiming that this material
is a product of Matthean redaction (Kloppenborg, Formation of Q , pp. 78–79).
79
Kloppenborg, Formation of Q , p. 171.
80
An implication which Koester fully appreciates, Ancient Christian Gospels, pp.
167–70.
172 james constantine hanges
81
Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, p. 167.
socrates and jesus 173
1
Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 95.
176 thomas athanasius idinopulos
2
Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 379.
3
Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 372.
christianity’s emergence from judaism 177
4
Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 374.
5
Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 390.
178 thomas athanasius idinopulos
text of his preaching of the Gospel of Messiah Jesus.6 Had Paul been
a native-born Judean, one of Jesus’ earliest disciple like Peter or James
the Lord’s brother, then he (Paul) might never have advanced his
own ideas about the ultimate significance of Jesus’ life and death.
Had Paul been one of the original disciples, then perhaps the Jesus
fellowship would have amounted to little more than an obscure Jewish
messianic sect, one of the several sects that did not outlive the destruc-
tion of 66–73 CE.
But Paul was not one of the original disciples from Judea. As Saul
he was originally a persecutor of the Jesus’ fellowship and was inspired
to join the fellowship after his conversion experience, which “expe-
rience” provides ample evidence of his truly original and indepen-
dent caste of mind. Moreover Paul/Saul was not a Judean, a Jewish
subject of Roman-governed Palestine; he was a Jewish-born Roman
citizen from the cultured city of Tarsus in Asia Minor, where he (as
Klausner stresses) could not help but come under the influence of
Greco-Roman philosophical and religious ideas.
Paul’s main audience for his preaching of the message of Messiah
Jesus was predominately the Gentile pagans of the towns and cities
he visited in his three missionary journeys occurring between 43 and
64 CE. Klausner takes the view that precisely because he was preach-
ing increasingly to Gentile pagans Paul shaped his message of Messiah
Jesus to stress the moral over the ritualistic aspects of law and also
to emphasize the divinity of Jesus. A Judean Jewish hearer of Paul’s
message would have demurred at Paul’s depreciation of the ritual
requirement of circumcision; he would also have found Paul’s notion
of Messiah Jesus as a dying-and-rising god atoning for human sins
strange and unacceptable. But, according to Klausner, it would have
been the opposite for Gentile pagans longing for contact with a god
redeeming them from sin through the sacrificial death of his own
son. Moreover, Paul’s message of redemption in Messiah Jesus would
also have been made more appealing to Gentiles by his easing of
the ritual requirement of circumcision.7
That Christianity emerged and developed as a religion separate
from Judaism has to do with the way in which Christianity shaped
itself distinctly as a religion: by stressing the moral over the ritual
6
Klausner, From Jesus to Paul.
7
Klausner, From Jesus to Paul, pp. 6, 30–31, 40, 48–49.
christianity’s emergence from judaism 179
II
8
Klausner, From Jesus to Paul, pp. 486–95.
9
Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 376.
10
Susan B. Hoenig, Preface to Klausner’s Jesus of Nazareth, p. lx.
11
Hoenig, Preface to Klausner’s Jesus of Nazareth, p. ii.
180 thomas athanasius idinopulos
Introduction
1
For a recent critical analysis of Smith’s views on comparison see, e.g., Urban,
“Making a Place to Take a Stand, pp. 339–78.
2
Smith’s emphasis in “Introducing Durkheim,” in Teaching Durkheim, p. 6.
3
I shall also refer regularly to the following: “In Comparison a Magic Dwells,”
“What a Difference a Difference Makes.”
182 james constantine hanges
4
I choose this descriptor recognizing that this type of comparison serves both
offensive and defensive purposes; it levels both accusations and denials through the
juxtapositions employed. To my knowledge there is no accepted technical termi-
nology for the structural elements in a comparison. For the sake of convenience I
shall tentatively suggest the following shorthand: a comparandum is the object being
compared to a referendum (that “with respect to which” the comparison is carried
out). The structural extension I shall propose for the apologetic comparison requires
two comparanda and two referenda. The two elements in each pair of comparanda and
referenda are valued oppositely, one positively and one negatively. In the case of the
comparanda, the comparing agent (or group) is always the positive member of the pair.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 183
We begin with our promised backdrop. Smith sets the stage for his
critique by taking the reader into the private correspondence between
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two men who after decades of
animosity managed in their final years to reconnect over a range of
subjects. Especially prominent among these topics was their shared
concern for the corruption of the true religion of Jesus by Trinitarian
Christianity. Jefferson and Adams were both admirers of Joseph
Priestley’s critical analysis of the Platonisms that had been allowed to
infest the pure and simple faith of Jesus by his later philosophically-
minded and power-hungry devotees.5
Smith’s narrative tells us how Jefferson argued that the real teach-
ings of Jesus were too plain to require a priesthood to interpret them.
So, those desirous of acquiring priestly power created an artificial
system, fabricated from the stuff of Greek mysteries and the incom-
prehensible doctrines of Plato and his disciples.6 As Smith shows, the
strategy used by Priestley and his admirers for dealing with this cor-
ruption was a specific kind of comparison. This comparative struc-
ture was inherited from the Reformers,7 and was an extension of
their apologetic and polemical comparison of Reforming Christianity
and Roman Catholicism, carried out with respect to a third element
presumably held in high esteem by both communities, i.e., “origi-
nal” or New Testament Christianity.8 The referenda and the values
5
According to Jefferson, Jesus himself was intent only on reforming Judaism in
harmony with “reason, justice, and philanthropy,” Smith, 1990, p. 4. The Platonic
intrusions toward which Jefferson directed his contempt included the incarnation,
the immaculate conception, Jesus’ divine nature, the role of the Christ-Logos in
creation, Jesus’ miracles, his resurrection and ascension, his subsequent presence in
the eucharistic host, the Trinity, the doctrines of original sin, of vicarious atone-
ment, of regeneration, of elections, and of hierarchical orders. All these were the
later inventions of a developing Christian priesthood that stood in stark contrast to
the simple faith of Jesus. But the most “pernicious” of all these imposed Platonisms
was the doctrine of the Trinity; see Smith, 1990, pp. 4–7 for more on Jefferson’s
distinction between Jesus’ religion and Trinitarian orthodoxy.
6
Smith, Drudgery Divine, pp. 8–9. For Priestley’s intellectual lineage, see: Schofield,
The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley.
7
Smith, Drudgery Divine, p. 13.
8
The tertium comparationis, or third factor, links or serves as the common ground
between the two elements in the comparison, a referendum presumed to be of value
to both those who initiated the comparison (Deists like Priestley, Jefferson, and
Adams) and those against whom the comparison is targeted (orthodox Trinitarians,
both Catholics and Protestants).
184 james constantine hanges
9
Obviously, despite a difficult struggle, Roman Catholicism was able to find a
level of compatibility with a great part of Greek philosophy, e.g., see on the difficulty
of incorporating the full Aristotelian corpus into the curriculum at Paris between
1120 and 1277, Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages, esp. pp.
26–28; Luscombe, The School of Abelard, esp. pp. 105–10 on the condemnation of
Abelard; Van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West; Kretzmann, “The Culmination of
the Old Logic of Peter Abelard,” pp. 488–511.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 185
paring agent (in this case Reformed Christianity) is also being com-
pared, this part of the comparative equation is often carried out
implicitly.
Despite their proximity and continuity, it goes without saying that
the comparing agent presumes that the two primary elements, or
comparanda, are fundamentally different and that this difference is a
matter of value. This value judgment is determined by comparison
with the referenda.10 For a developing sectarian group, this means that
it must show itself to exhibit a higher degree of continuity with what
it describes as the true, the authoritative, or the original impulse
than the parent group, whose relationship with that heritage has
been corrupted. In summary, the keys to the successful application
of this type of comparative enterprise are: first, the plausible assump-
tion (the plausibility of which is grounded in proximity) that both
the comparing agent and the compared “other” share the values
attributed to the referenda; second, the appropriate correlation of the
respective descriptions of each of the comparanda by the comparing
agent. This four-part, complimentary structure is not only evident
in Smith’s example, but also in the example I will discuss below.
On the basis of what follows, I shall suggest that the introduction
(explicitly or implied) of the fourth element, a second comparandum,
deserves further inquiry to determine whether it may be character-
istic, perhaps even definitive, of comparisons intentionally constructed
to serve an apologetic function in group formation. Given the ultimate
two-part goal of the comparison, the Reformers’ reconstruction of
idealized, pristine Christianity bore an uncanny resemblance to then
coalescing Protestantism on behalf of which they had taken up the
self-definitional comparative task.11 Reformed Christianity was like
10
To be sure, that these valuations are, in fact, shared by both of the two com-
munities represented by the primary elements in the comparison is, of course, the
presupposition of the comparativist, but if the intended outcomes (both apologetic
and polemic) are to be achieved there must be a minimum level of credibility to
the suggestion that these values are common. In other words, it must be at a basic
level true that Roman Catholics, just as their Protestant counterparts, would reject
being likened to pagans, and believe the age of the apostles to be paradigmatic.
11
As Smith himself points out, the very act of comparing Roman Catholicism
positively, or inclusively, to the negatively-valued Greco-Roman cults implied a cor-
responding discontinuity, or exclusive comparison, with the ideally-valued image of
pure nascent Christianity—the Christianity that the Reformers claimed to recon-
struct from the pages of the New Testament alone. For the use of the categories
“inclusive” and “exclusive” to describe types of comparisons, see the essay by Blasi
in the present volume. Both types are used positively and negatively. The proximate
186 james constantine hanges
other from which the comparing community wishes to distinguish itself is included
in a negatively-valued category, and excluded from a positively-valued category,
while the comparing community is conversely excluded from a negatively-valued
category and included in a positively-valued category.
12
To flip the coin, insofar as it was similar to New Testament Christianity,
Protestantism was equidistant from paganism and therefore the Roman church.
13
Of course, this presumption is for Jefferson and his colleagues rooted in the
work of the Reformers. See on Luther, Oswald Bayer, “Luther as an Interpreter
of Holy Scripture,” trans. Mark Mattes in Donald K. McKim, ed., The Cambridge
Companion to Martin Luther (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
2003), pp. 73–85; Friedrich Beisser, “Luthers Schriftverstandnis,” in Peter Manns,
ed., Martin Luther: Reformator und Vater im Glauben, Veroffentlichungen des Institut für
europaischen Geschichte, Mainz 18 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1985), pp.
25–37. On Calvin’s appreciation of the Old Testament, see, David L. Puckett, John
Calvin’s Exegesis of the Old Testament, Columbia Series in Reformed Theology (Louisville,
Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).
14
Smith, Drudgery Divine, p. 17.
15
See Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,” pp. 5, 45–48, echoing
an idea and terminology expressed earlier by Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict,
p. 70.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 187
16
Smith, Drudgery Divine, pp. 17, 19–23. Jefferson’s disdain for Plato, according
to Sanford, Thomas Jefferson and His Library, p. 125, cannot be interpreted as a rejec-
tion of Greek philosophy or the Classics. In fact, the opposite is true; Jefferson had
original language copies of writers such as Aeschines, Appian, Aristotle, Augustine,
Boethius, Cato, Cicero, Clement of Alexandria, Dio Cassius, Diogenes Laertius,
Epictetus, Eusebius, Felix Minucius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Herodotus, Hierocles,
Ignatius, Julius Caesar, Justin Martyr, Marcus Aurelius, Maximus of Tyre, Origen,
Philo, Philostratus, Plato, Plutarch, Seneca, Tacitus, Tertullian, Theophrastus,
Thucydides, and, Xenophon (Thomas Jefferson, pp. 119, 134). Jefferson’s library cat-
alogue lists 300 titles of Greek and Latin authors, Peden, “Some Notes Concerning
Thomas Jefferson’s Libraries,” 270–71; also Chinard, The Literary Bible of Thomas
Jefferson, pp. 5–18. Enlightenment thinkers generally held the classical tradition in
high regard, and Jefferson was no exception, Gay, The Enlightenment, pp. 31–32.
Jefferson recommended reading classical authors in the original languages for stu-
dents of the University of Virginia, Jefferson, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 16:124. As
for Adams, his appreciation for the classical historians and philosophers is obvious
from his study of the “science of government.” As a Harvard graduate, he too read
these writers in Greek and Latin, see Thompson, John Adams, pp. 41–43; 136–47;
229–34; Ostrander, Republic of Letters, pp. 10–20.
17
Smith, Drudgery Divine, pp. 36–37. See, e.g., Sharpe, Comparative Religion, pp.
256–66, who distinguishes three types of goals behind academic comparison in reli-
gion: Christian apologetic, philosophical (a perennial philosophy showing the unity
of all religions), and anthropological-ethnological (to show the differences and sim-
ilarities of disparate cultures). Yet the distinctions are not solid because an apolo-
getic concern can appear in the guise of the other two types.
18
As we said, the referenda are always the creation of the apologist. It is rarely
the case that the targeted group would agree without qualification to the value
188 james constantine hanges
assigned to each of the referenda used in the comparison, e.g., Roman Catholics have
never agreed with the Protestant or Deist presumption that institutional structure,
authority, and order negate charisma. Nevertheless, as we have suggested, while the
referenda are imposed on the comparison by the apologist, the values ascribed to
them must have some plausibility to be effective. This is confirmed by Roman
Catholic responses to Protestant and Deist inclusive comparisons of such aspects of
Roman Catholicism as its ecclesiastical structure, its reverence for the saints, its
sacramental rites, or its priesthood to pagan cult precedents, e.g., the reaction to
Sohm’s Kirchenrecht, which elevated Reformation Protestantism by equating it with
the initially pure spiritual impulse of the earliest church, in contrast to Roman
Catholicism, whose organization and worship life Sohm inclusively compared with
either Greco-Roman paganism or Judaism. The fourfold comparative structure is
found here: on the other side of the equation, Sohm compared Protestantism exclu-
sively to the despised forms of paganism and Judaism, and compared Roman
Catholicism exclusively to the true spirit of earliest Christianity. On the controversy,
see James Tunstead Burtchaell, From Synagogue to Church: Public Services and Offices in
the Earliest Christian Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp.
87–135.
19
Smith, Drudgery Divine, p. 34. Smith gives examples of twentieth-century cri-
tiques by Protestant authors of Roman Catholicism that are cast as historical com-
parisons and do just what he had described previously, Drudgery Divine, pp. 44–45.
20
Smith, Drudgery Divine, pp. 13–14.
21
See Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem, pp. 29–63. Having outlined the illicit
nature of the Christian apologists’ transfer from the ontological model (the claim
for the ontological uniqueness of Jesus and Christianity) to the historical claim for
the unique status of Christianity in contrast to all other religions, Smith goes on
to argue that the same structural arrangement is used to define primitive or Pauline
Christianity as unique against all other manifestations of Christianity. This is what
he calls the “Protestant historiographic myth: a ‘uniquely’ pristine ‘original’ Christianity
which suffered later corruptions,” Drudgery Divine, p. 43.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 189
22
Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,” p. 46: To speak of absolute
uniqueness is to deny the possibility of speaking of something at all, which is exactly
what conservative Christians want to deny, i.e., the possibility of comparison with
what is not biblical. As Smith points out, this view is found in Otto’s project of
defining the essence of religion.
23
For the purposes of the classroom, I have included in the following survey a
number of exemplary sources available on-line; students can easily access a range
of examples of pro- and anti-“tongues” websites that clearly apply the comparative
structure described here.
190 james constantine hanges
while on the other hand, claiming both ancient and modern tongues-
speaking to be totally incomparable to any non-Christian phenomena
touted as analgous by social scientists, and “explained” by social sci-
ence theories of one sort or another.24 On the first point, a simple
visit to the official website of any Pentecostal denomination provides
confirmation. For example, the Assemblies of God website provides
a summary of this equation:
All believers are entitled to and should ardently expect and earnestly
seek the promise of the Father, the baptism in the Holy Ghost and
fire, according to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ. This was
the normal experience of all in the early Christian Church. With it
comes the enduement of power for life and service, the bestowment of
the gifts and their uses in the work of the ministry . . . The baptism
of believers in the Holy Ghost is witnessed by the initial physical sign
of speaking with other tongues as the Spirit of God gives them utterance.25
These selections make clear, through the citation of multiple New
Testament passages without the need for explanatory commentary,
the Assemblies of God position that the New Testament is not only
the normative source of authority, but that what it describes in the
days of the first Christians is yet available to the contemporary
believer.26 That the modern believer is to “expect and earnestly seek”
this phenomenon implies that neglecting to do so is to refuse to fol-
low the paradigmatic New Testament example or God’s will as
expressed therein. Again, to quote from the same website:
A comparison of the Book of Acts with what is happening in the mod-
ern outpouring of the Spirit reveals striking similarities in pattern and
purpose. The impact of the early church, newly equipped by the power
of the Holy Spirit, changed the world of that day. Similar changes are
being made in human lives today through Spirit-filled servants of God.
Christ is preached. Sinners are saved. The sick are healed. The kingdom
24
Kelsey, Speaking with Tongues; Horton, The Glossolalia Phenomenon; MacDonald,
Glossolalia; Barnett and McGregor, Speaking in Tongues.
25
See ag.org/top/beliefs/truths.crm#7 and #8.
26
In the section entitled “Questions about the Baptism in the Holy Spirit,” the
Church assures the visitor to the site that “[t]here is no indication in Scripture that
tongues would cease at the end of the first century. Tongues are to be a part of
the life of the church in every generation until Christ returns to set up His perfect
kingdom. Paul’s perception was that spiritual gifts would be operational until that
day (1 Corinthians 1:7, 8),” see the page address, ag.org/top/beliefs/baptism_hs/
baptmhs_12_tonguescease.cfm.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 191
27
See: ag.org/top/beliefs/baptism_hs/baptmhs_14_biblicaltoday.cfm.
192 james constantine hanges
28
Spittler, “Are Pentecostals and Charismatics Fundamentalists,” p. 106.
29
Cartledge, “The Nature and Function of New Testament Glossolalia,” 141,
e.g., Behm, “gl«ssa, •terÒglvssow,” 1:719–27, especially pp. 722–25.
30
E.g., Behm, “gl«ssa, •terÒglvssow,” 1:22–725. For Pattison, tongues is a part
of a broader syndrome of trance states; the way in which it is interpreted is culturally
determined. It is not caused by the supernatural, but it is often spiritually meaningful,
“Behavioral Science Research,” pp. 75–85; also see Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, pp.
232–39; Forbes, “Early Christian Inspired Speech,” pp. 257–70. A different route
is taken by Barrett, who simply refuses to explain the phenomenon, the First Epistle
to the Corinthians, pp. 286, 299–300, 316, 326–28.
31
Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 234; Beardsworth, A Sense of Presence, p. 103. Of
course, not all critical scholars are so confident of the Greco-Roman parallels, see:
Wedderburn, Baptism and Resurrection.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 193
32
May, “A Survey of Glossolalia,” pp. 75–96; Pattison, “Behavioral Science
Research,” pp. 75–85; Goodman, Speaking in Tongues, still the seminal investigation;
Williams, “Glossolalia in the New Testament,” pp. 25–45. According to Mills, no
examples of an unlearned utterance of a known language, xenoglossia, have been
documented, Mills, “Glossolalia as a Sociopsychological Experience,” p. 428; cf. also
pp. 431–32.
33
E.g., the transparently apologetic examination by Forbes, Prophecy and Inspired
Speech, which throughout disallows any comparison between the New Testament
phenomena and non-Christian or even Jewish parallels on often the most tenden-
tious of criteria.
34
There are those who defend the “non-ecstatic” nature of tongues-speaking, esp.
as this is manifested in contemporary charismatic worship, see Massyngberde Ford,
“Towards a Theology of Speaking in Tongues,” pp. 3–29.
35
Volume 10 (1989): 203–23, especially pp. 219–20, citing Forbes, “Christian
Inspired Speech,” cited above, n. 10. That Grace Theological Journal is commonly rec-
ognized as a conservative journal is clear from the fact that the widely-advertised
Theological Journal Library (CD Rom) includes Grace Theological Journal among its col-
lection of the “best conservative, scholarly, evangelical journals,” (as described in
advertising copy at www.discountchristian.com).
194 james constantine hanges
36
Acts of the Apostles, p. 83. Other attempts to alleviate problems have included
symbolic interpretation of the Lukan account, e.g., Beare, “Speaking with Tongues,”
pp. 229–46.
37
See Lienesch, Redeeming America.
38
“Report of the Tenth Annual Convention of the World’s Christian Fundamentals
Association” (1928): 9, cited by Spittler, “Are Pentecostals . . . Fundamentalists,”
p. 109; see Trollinger, God’s Empire. For more recent examples of this critique, see:
Bradfield, Neo-Pentecostalism, especially pp. 16–19; for the fundamentalist response in
general, Cox, Fire From Heaven, pp. 73–78, 151; Percy, “The City on a Beach”, pp.
205–28, esp. 206. Note the similarities and differences in the history of reception
of Pentecostal experiences among American and Southern Baptists, Schenkel, “New
Wine and Baptist Wineskins, pp. 152–67.
39
See McDonnell, ed., Presence, Power, Praise, 2:114–16.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 195
40
“Speaking in Tongues,” available at www.bible.org/docs/theology/pneuma/
tongues.htm.
41
See ag.org/top/beliefs/truths.cfm#1, and the link labeled, “The Bible—The
Word of God.” The Assemblies of God offer a specific resource from this web page,
Bridges, ed. The Bible: The Word of God, containing essays by six contributors, all
leaders in the Assemblies of God, which clarifies the denomination’s deep com-
mitment to biblical inerrancy.
42
“The supernatural phenomenon which took place at Pentecost was the exer-
cise of a gift whereby many people from many countries, gathered at Jerusalem,
heard God’s message in their own language. This was indeed a miracle of God.”
196 james constantine hanges
43
This criticism remains essentially the same even where the author is otherwise
much more sympathetic to the goal of spiritual renewal represented by Pentecostalism,
e.g., Lederle, “Be Filled with the Spirit of Love,” pp. 33–48, for whom renewal
can occur, but the phenomena associated with Pentecostalism cannot be equated
with the events in Acts, “the historic, unrepeatable experience of the outpouring of
the Holy Spirit” (p. 40).
44
Notice his interpretation of 1 Cor 13:10, “But when that which is perfect is
come, then that which is in part shall be done away” (KJV). He explains that
“[t]he word perfect is in the neuter gender, and therefore refers to the perfect (finished
or completed) Word of God. If the word perfect referred to Christ it would be in
the masculine gender (author’s emphases).” Strauss has, of course, conveniently failed
to acknowledge the obvious fact, based on Paul’s usual practice, that the under-
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 197
stood appositive in this case would have to be the masculine word lÒgow (logos), the
“word” in Paul’s phrase “word of God” (see: 1 Cor 14:36, also Rom 9:6; 2 Cor
2:17; 4:2; Phil 1:14; 1 Thess 2:13).
45
Spittler, “Are Pentecostals and Charismatics Fundamentalists?,” p. 108.
46
For another example of this type of critical rhetoric from a fundamentalist, see
MacArthur’s critique, Charismatic Chaos, the title of the first chapter of which asks,
“Is Experience a Valid Test of Truth?” His answer is predictably negative; expe-
rience must be subjected for evaluation to the scriptures (MacArthur, of course,
conveniently dispenses with any serious engagement with the fact that the voice of
the scriptures can never really be more than the voice of the interpreting subject’s
hermeneutical tradition, and in that sense the resulting interpretation can only have
a relative degree of validity, if any at all).
47
Even those who have had positive encounters with the Charismatic movement,
may still express reservations concerning the degree to which Pentecostal assump-
tions about the significance of personal experience relate to the normative author-
ity of the scripture, e.g., Culpepper, Evaluating the Charismatic Movement.
198 james constantine hanges
48
Davies, “Pentecost and Glossolalia,” pp. 228–321. That glossolalia in the New
Testament was the miraculous gift of actual human languages is a view that occurs
very early in the history of the critique of Pentecostalism, e.g., Carver, The Acts of
the Apostles, p. 16. For Carver, Pentecost was a “one-time” event.
49
We should note a compromise position that is often found among critics who
recognize the incompatibility between the glossolalia described in Acts 2 and that
found in 1 Corinthians which describes the Pentecost event as a “one-time” mira-
cle, but the Corinthian glossolalia as selfishly-motivated and problematic ecstatic
utterances to which modern Pentecostal and Charismatic glossolalia may well be
likened, see Ashcraft, “Speaking in Tongues, pp. 60–84.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 199
50
Miller holds a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University in Speech Communication,
but lists no credentials or academic training in biblical studies.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 201
51
See above n. 44. Of course, Paul is using the neuter form of the adjective
here as a substantive. As we said above, it cannot then stand in apposition to ı
lÒgow toË YeoË, “the word of God.” Paul does use a neuter noun (grãmma) in his
references to the scriptures (at least the Pentateuch, Roman 7:6, possibly also 2:27,29;
2 Cor 3:6–7). However, Paul’s most important references to the scriptures use the
noun grafÆ, a feminine noun (Rom 4:3; 9:17; 10:11; 11:2; Gal 3:8,22; 4:30), some-
times in the plural (Rom 1:2;15:4;16:26; 1 Cor 15:3–4), which would demand the
form ≤ tele¤a [= grafÆ] in 1 Cor 13:10, not the neuter that the apostle used.
Therefore, the theory that Paul is referring to the coming of the fixed New Testament
canon founders on grammatical grounds, and reveals the author’s determinative
bias in the construction and application of the comparison.
52
So Strauss, regarding the selfish motivations of Pentecostals, above p. 204.
202 james constantine hanges
53
In 1975, Preus, then President of Concordia Theological Seminary, Lutheran
Church-Missouri Synod, USA, led a movement to end the dissension being caused
in Missouri Synod congregations by placement of clergy who had become involved
in the Charismatic movment. Preus issued a policy statement that essentially banned
from ordination any seminarian who admitted to accepting charismatic claims about
the baptism of the Holy Spirit and glossolalia, for the text see: McDonnell, ed.,
Presence, Power, Praise, 2:16–22.
54
“Tongues,” pp. 277–293, quotation, 277. Klemet Preus is presently Pastor of
the Glory of Christ Lutheran Church, Plymouth, MN, whose website declares its
endorsement of biblical inerrancy, www.gloryofchristlutheran.org, “[t]he Bible is the
inspired Word of God. The Bible is free from all error and contradiction in all
that it says.” Concordia Theological Quarterly is a publication of the faculty of Concordia
Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The Seminary is affiliated with the
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
55
Tongues, p. 277.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 203
56
In fact, Preus argues that Pentecostals deny the very authority of the para-
digmatic New Testament by their practice of glossolalia (“Tongues,” p. 278, n. 5.
57
Preus, “Tongues,” pp. 278–79. Preus actually goes further than Strauss, citing
published examples of Pentecostal appeals to experience to back up his claim.
58
Preus, “Tongues,” p. 278, n. 6.
204 james constantine hanges
from a different perspective. Their studies have shown that the tongues
phenomena can be explained on psychological, sociological, physio-
logical and linguistic ground alone.59
Tongues, according to the scientist, says Preus, is a factor of altered
mental states.60 Preus explicitly cites cross-cultural, anthropological
studies, quoting, e.g., Felicitas Goodman’s work in support of the
claim that the tongues speaker is in a dissociative state of mind, in a
“hyper-aroused trance.”61 Preus goes on to add a range of sources, each
describing the natural origin of glossolalia in some kind of altered
mental state, an abnormal and potentially destructive condition.62
In the midst of his social-science guided dismantling of contem-
porary glossolalia, Preus makes an interesting and clever rhetorical
move. To quote him again:
In defense of the psychologists cited, I should point out that all but
one (Felicitas Goodman) confess to be Christian, some of them (Oates,
Cutten) with reputable theological credentials. These people have no
“axe to grind” with religion in general or even with Christianity.63
The cleverness of Preus’ caveat lies in the fact that while his state-
ment is true with respect to religion in general and perhaps Christianity
in general, it is not true with respect to Pentecostalism in particular.
Preus and his Christian sources are denominationally invested in
communities struggling with and opposing the inroads of Pentecostalism.
He and those he cites emphatically do appear to “have an axe to
grind” where Pentecostalism is concerned. These writers are all con-
veniently selective in their handling of the evidence; biblical tongues
were a miraculous gift from God to the apostolic church, while con-
temporary tongues, practiced by those who are “not-us,” are not
59
Preus, “Tongues,” p. 280.
60
Here Preus cites other non-Pentecostal writers, such as Wayne E. Oates,
Christian psychologist, who co-edited along with Frank Stagg and E. Glenn Hinson,
the collection of essays, Glossolalia: Tongue Speaking in Biblical, Historical, and Psychological
Perspective (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1967). Oates, Stagg, and Hinson were all fac-
ulty members of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. It
is important to note that Preus follows their lead in using social-scientific criticism
to draw the negative comparison between contemporary glossolalia and abnormal
or non-Christian phenomena, thereby devaluing any claim for a unique, supernat-
ural origin for the contemporary experience.
61
Preus, “Tongues,” p. 280, citing Speaking in Tongues (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1972), pp. 59–60.
62
Preus, “Tongues,” pp. 280–81.
63
Preus, “Tongues,” p. 281.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 205
valid because they cannot be equated with the biblical model that
Preus and his allies uphold and which they have defined according
to their own interpretive criteria.64
Like Strauss, Preus offers an explanation of why so many Christians
seek the experience of glossolalia. He cites some of the same authors
he had already cited in support of several causes, e.g., the natural
craving for release from tension, similar to a sexual orgasm or the
relief one gets from the cessation of stomach cramps. He cites some
who account for tongues as a way to reassure persons plagued by
guilt that God has counted them acceptable (reminiscent of the
Jamesian “sick soul” scenario). Preus cites his sources to say that in
the overwhelming number of cases investigated, a crisis of some mag-
nitude preceded the individual’s glossolalic experience.65 Of course,
the last observation would also seem to include in this category the
fearful disciples of Jesus huddling together in the upper room trying
to make sense of the loss of their master prior to their experience of
glossolalia, if it were not for the fact that their experience was
recorded in the paradigmatic, therefore inerrant, text of the Acts of
the Apostles. Even so, the implication for Preus is clear; contempo-
rary glossolalia can be explained in rational, bio-psychological terms
and is therefore neither supernatural nor unique. Consequently, it
fails comparison with the absolutely valued scriptural examples and
cannot be judged a valid expression of Christian experience.
Next, Preus argues that present-day tongues speakers are not man-
ifesting a divine gift simply because glossolalia is learned behavior.66
His sources provide evidence that tongues-speakers simply follow the
leader; the leader sets the pattern for the glossolalia exhibited by the
followers.67 Preus derives the context of this learned behavior from
Goodman’s cross-cultural studies, linking the prerequisite to the induc-
ing stimuli of “rhythmic music, hand-clapping, loud persistent prayers
in a strongly accented pattern, loud incessant glossolalia which is
rhythmic and patterned, and persistent shouted directions to the
64
Of course, none of the commentators cited in this regard have conducted crit-
ical and repeatable clinical research on the subject nor have any experienced glos-
solalia for themselves, citing Kildahl, Psychology of Speaking in Tongues; Oates,
“Socio-Psychological Study,” pp. 76–99; Bergsma, Speaking with Tongues; Cutten,
Speaking With Tongues; Samarin, Tongues of Men and Angels; Smith, Tongues in Biblical
Perspective.
65
Preus, “Tongues,” pp. 281–82.
66
Preus, “Tongues,” pp. 283–86.
67
Preus, “Tongues,” p. 283.
206 james constantine hanges
68
Here Preus is referring to Goodman’s notion of “driving” by the tongues-
speaking group leader who tries to establish the conditions under which individu-
als can successfully experience glossolalia (Preus, “Tongues,” p. 284, citing Goodman,
Speaking in Tongues, p. 79). Preus also includes hyperventilation as one of the pre-
ferred strategies for inducing glossolalia.
69
See above, pp. 189–195.
70
Preus, “Tongues,” pp. 283–86.
71
Preus, “Tongues,” pp. 286–87.
72
Preus, “Tongues,” p. 287. He has already cited Oates’s crudely condescend-
ing essay, “A Social-Psychological Study of Glossolalia” (see above n. 60), in which
tongues-speakers are equated with children, speaking the “cradle speech” of infants;
as children’s language begins with “ego-centric” babbling (here Oates relies on
Piaget), so, by implication, Pentecostal tongues-speakers pratice a self-centered form
of infantile gratification, 84–90; cf. also Mills, “Glossolalia as a Sociopsychological
Experience,” pp. 430–32.
73
Here we recall the quotation from Spittler given above on p. 204.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 207
74
Preus, “Tongues,” p. 289.
75
Cartledge, “New Testament Glossolalia,” pp. 135–50.
76
Cartledge, “New Testament Glossolalia,” p. 142, citing, e.g., Gundry, “ ‘Ecstatic
Utterance’,” 299–307. The unworkable methodological principle proposed by Cartledge
is common among conservative Christian apologists; the protection of the unique
origins of Christianity and its miraculous claims demands the abandonment of the
historical-critical principle of analogy in the study of Christianity, thus innoculating
the Christian phenomena against serious critical investigation.
208 james constantine hanges
77
Cartledge refers to Pentecostalism explicitly only in footnotes 74, 84 (65 implic-
itly), and always to add a corrective to the Pentecostal viewpoint. Cartledge seems,
in my view, to give away his theological hand when he writes at this point, “[t]he
idea that Paul could have lumped together xenolalia [the miraculous gift of the
ability to speak unlearned human languages] and the modern unintelligible phe-
nomenon of glossolalia is, of course, possible, but it is beyond any kind of empir-
ical investigation and therefore must remain speculative” (see p. 149).
78
Cartledge, “New Testament Glossolalia,” pp. 143–44.
79
See above, n. 31.
80
I shall here repeat at many points the critique of Forbes so ably presented in
Martin, “Tongues of Angels”, pp. 547–89.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 209
81
Forbes, Prophecy and Inspired Speech, p. 228.
82
Johnson, “Glossolalia,” 116–17. Johnson removes Luke’s account on historical
grounds arguing that it narrates a hearing miracle, not a speaking one, thus demon-
strating that Luke has no awareness of the type of experience occurring in the
Pauline churches, p. 117.
83
1 Cor 14:23, cf. 12:2; ma¤nomai can refer to both negative states of rage, or
being carried away with anger, e.g., Euripides, Bacchae 359, and to positive states
of possession by a deity, Herodotus 4.79; Euripides, Bacchae 298–301; Plato, Phaedrus,
259a. Johnson, “Glossolalia,” p. 119 sees Greek mantic prophecy as a parallel to
the Christian evidence, this form of prophecy was “. . . so complete a possession
(enthysiasmos) by the divine spirit ( pneuma) that the mind of the prophet (mantis) was
inoperative, and the oracles were literally spoken by the god.”
210 james constantine hanges
prophecy do not employ the mind (the noËw, 1 Cor 14:14). The
Corinthian tongues addressed God and per se edified only the speaker
(1 Cor 14:2,4,28), not the congregation. Therefore, they are prop-
erly of private provenance (cf. 1 Cor 14:18–19,28). All this, says
Johnson, is consistent with both the ancient and modern parallels.84
More importantly for our purposes, Johnson addresses the ques-
tion of what is at risk in the debate over glossolalia. In line with
our suggestion that the comparative enterprise is inherent in the self-
definitional process for competing Christian communities, Johnson
points out that the questions about the nature of glossolalia in the
New Testament and its relation to both modern parallels within
Christianity and those drawn from non-Christian sources are inti-
mately related to the issue of authenticity grounded in a perceived
continuity between modern and ancient Christians.85 The compar-
ing group constructs a comparison through which it can claim greater
continuity between itself and an ideal that should be determinative
for the group with which it is in competition and from which it
wishes to distinguish itself. Johnson also recognizes the necessary
counterpart to the positive comparison when he discusses the con-
troversy over the question of whether tongues is a uniform or plu-
riform set of phenomena. If either New Testament or modern
Pentecostal tongues-speaking can be classed without significant dis-
tinction, for example, in a general category of dissociative states, the
question is raised as to whether these types of equivalencies support
the likelihood that Christian glossolalia is unique or that contempo-
rary Christian practice is the same as ancient.86
Johnson also correctly notes that the contemporary, anti-Pentecostal
conservative must preserve ancient Christian experiential uniqueness
in order to leave room for divine intervention in the form of a mir-
acle of language, while simultaneously denying any parallel structures
or features equating the ancient, “true” Christian practice with what
modern Pentecostals are doing. The latter, on the one hand, can safely
be paralleled and explained in terms of all sorts of contemporary
cross-cultural explanations. On the other hand, the Pentecostal
response, which must necessarily respond in terms of the categories
used to construct the comparison, must insist on the continuity
84
Johnson, “Glossolalia,” p. 118, cf. pp. 120–21.
85
Johnson, “Glossolalia,” p. 114.
86
Johnson, “Glossolalia,” p. 115.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 211
This essay has not been concerned with how comparison might help
us interpret glossolalia. Instead, it has explored the way comparing
comparisons might complicate our view of the dynamics of group
self-definition as an integral part of group formation, and aid our
understanding of the relations between proximate groups that might
be revealed in the way they construct comparisons.87 I have tried to
illustrate how the comparative enterprise may be used for specific
and targeted polemic and apologetic. In these terms, the examples
of Strauss, Preus, Cartledge, and Forbes amply demonstrate how,
even when cloaked in scholarly robes, comparative studies that impose
the definitional criteria of one comparandum on the other easily serve
the “other-negating,” group self-defining purposes of competing prox-
imate communities.
By asking our students to compare comparisons they must deal
with Smith’s description of the comparative enterprise in terms of
investment and risk, i.e., politics.88 Difference becomes important to
the degree that the perceiver, the comparing agent, has something
at risk; specifically, the more distinctive of one’s self-definition a per-
ceived difference is, the greater the investment in emphasizing it. To
say “they are like that” is to place the first item in a position of
being determined by the second item—it is inherently hierarchical.89
If that second item is a negatively-valued referendum, the comparison,
87
We may take it for granted that prima facie it is extremely unlikely that any-
one, either modern or ancient (including the earliest Christians), has ever spoken
through a supernatural endowment a linguistically intelligible language they did not
already know. As a critical scholar of early Christianity, I must assume as altogether
likely that the phenomena preserved for us in the New Testament is a factor of psy-
chological and sociological forces, and is therefore comparable to empirical pheno-
mena categorized as religious ecstasy and spirit possession, see Lewis, Ecstatic Religion.
To do otherwise without extraordinary justification would be to abandon the prin-
ciple of analogy and along with it the possibility of historical-critical explanation.
88
Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,” pp. 4, 47.
89
Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,” pp. 9–10.
212 james constantine hanges
90
Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,” pp. 4–10, 15.
91
Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,” p. 15; what Smith has called
a “privileged comparison,” Drudgery Divine, p. 74.
92
Contrast Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,” p. 41.
93
The positioning of the other, and especially in this case, where that position
is relative to a shared touchstone such as religious tradition, is in reality a self-
definition, Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,” p. 47.
94
Smith, Drudgery Divine, p. 52, also p. 115 (Smith’s emphasis).
95
Smith, Drudgery Divine, pp. 42, 47, here citing To Take Place: Toward Theory in
Ritual, Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987), p. 14.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 213
96
Smith, Drudgery Divine, p. 143, his manifesto: “The history of the comparative
venture reviewed in these chapters has been the history of an enterpreise under-
taken in bad faith. The interests have rarely been cognitive, but rather almost always
apologetic. As such, no other purpose for comparison has been enterteined but that
of genealogy . . . the old Reformation myth, imagining a ‘pristine’ early Christianity
centred in Paul and subjected to later processes of ‘corruption,’ has governed all
the modulations we have reviewed. As in the archaic locative ideology, the centre
has been protected, the periphery seen as threatening, and relative difference per-
ceived as absolute ‘other.’ The centre, the fabled Pauline seizure by the ‘Christ-
event’ or some other construction of an originary moment, has been declared,
a priori, to be unique, to be sui generis, and hence, by definition, incomparable. The
periphery . . . is to be subjected to procedures of therapeutic comparison. This is
exorcism or purgation, not scholarship. The mythic model of radical conversion,
that of wholly putting off the ‘old man’ and wholly assuming the ‘new,’ has been
inapropriately projected into the historical realm.”
97
E.g., Gager, Reinventing Paul, p. 17; Davies takes issue with the notion of anti-
Judaism in the New Testament, esp. as formulated by Ruether, and immediately
links it to the question of the parting of the ways between Christianity and Judaism,
“Paul and the People of Israel,” pp. 19–20; Idinopulos and Ward, “Is Christology
Inherently Anti-Semitic?,” 193–214.
214 james constantine hanges
98
E.g., Dunn, Partings of the Ways.
99
Stendahl, “Religion in the University,” pp. 521–528.
100
Boyarin, Dying for God, pp. 2–6.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 215
101
Dunn, Partings, pp. 1, 17.
102
Dunn, Partings, beginning at p. 18, Dunn calls these pillars “core Judaism,” a
“common heritage” behind the spectrum of various Judaisms,” cf. Sanders similar
construction, “common Judaism,” the body of belief shared by all self-confessed
Jews, Judaism, pp. 47, 256–57; more recently, “Common Judaism and the Synagogue
in the First Century,” in Fine, ed., Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue,
pp. 1–17. That we should presume such common ground is a not a methodolog-
ical concern for students of the New Testament alone, see, e.g., Yunis’s study, A
New Creed, especially pp. 38–58.
216 james constantine hanges
103
Smith, Drudgery Divine, pp. 116–18, the quotation is from p. 118 and is based
on Smith’s Map is Not Territory, pp. 253–54, citing Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia,
p. 274; cf. Drudgery Divine, pp. 52–53.
interpreting glossolalia and comparison of comparisons 217
104
In the end, it seems that both Ruether and her critics recognize that the
problem with Christian anti-Judaism lies in the normative model. For Ruether the
model is flawed and therefore to be rejected, for her critics, the model is merely
misunderstood. The apologetic motivation behind the comparisons used to argue
the latter seems, at least at this preliminary stage of the critique, hard to miss. The
question in this case may be whether the end justifies the means, a question about
which students comparing comparisons need to make critical judgments.
105
Dionysos claims to be returning once again to the land of his birth, but he
comes fresh from his conquests in the mysterious lands of the east, ll. 1–2a; 13–20
(line numbers refer to the text presented in, Euripides’ Bacchae, 2nd ed., trans. and
ed. E. R. Dodds [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970]).
106
The king complains that he has returned home to find Theban wives caught
up in the sham ecstasies of a new-fangled claimant to divinity, ll. 215–25.
107
E.g., though Pentheus styles theirs a cultic novelty having no history, the two
old cultists counter that they are, in fact, following ancestral tradition, ll. 201–202a.
218 james constantine hanges
108
See, n. 2 above.
Part Three
Arvind Sharma
1
See Sharpe, Comparative Religion.
2
Brandon (ed.), A Dictionary of Comparative Religion, p. 202.
3
“The modern comparative study of religion reflects a cross cultural perspective”
[but] “prior to the middle of the nineteenth century . . . European explanations of
human religiousness was devoted largely to considerations of European culture”
(Oxtoby [ed.], World Religions: Eastern Traditions, p. 496).
4
De Vries, The Study of Religion.
5
Sharma (ed.), The Sum of our Choices, pp. 3–4.
222 arvind sharma
6
Sharpe, Comparative Religion, chapter 2; Oxtoby (ed.), World Religions, p. 496;
Brandon (ed.), A Dictionary of Comparative Religions, pp. 83ff.
7
See Heisig, “Psychology of Religion.”
8
See Sharma, To the Things Themselves. The phenomenological method involves
the questioning of the evolutionary paradigm of the nineteenth century in a major
way; see Kristensen, The Meaning of Religion, pp. 13–15.
orientalism and the comparison of religions 223
II
9
Said, Orientalism. It is a tribute to the impact of this book that “Once the study
of ‘Oriental’ or Near Eastern and Asian Languages and literatures, Orientalism is
now taken to mean the Western domination and exploitation of the East, the West
viewing the East as alien, as ‘the other.’ ” (Smith, Hinduism and Modernity, p. 86).
10
“Five distinct senses of the word have crystallized over the last two centuries:
the Scholarly Study of the languages and texts of the Orient (initially conceived as the
Middle East but later encompassing all of Asia); a late 18th century policy of the East
India Company favouring the preservation of Indian languages, laws and customs; the
adoption of an artistic style and subject matter associated with East; a discourse of power
fashioned in the West and deeply implicated in European imperialism; a corporate
institution harnessed to the maintenance of the ideological and political hegemony
of Europe throughout Asia.” (Oldmeadow, Journey’s East, pp. 6–7).
11
This might be a hitherto unanticipated way of doing comparative religion in
a new way; see Patton and Ray (eds.), A Magic Still Dwells.
224 arvind sharma
12
Oldmeadow, Journey’s East, p. 11.
13
Oldmeadow, Journey’s East, p. 11.
14
Oldmeadow, Journey’s East, pp. 11–12.
15
Oldmeadow, Journey’s East, p. 11.
orientalism and the comparison of religions 225
III
16
Sugirtharajah, Imagining Hinduism, p. 142.
17
Sugirtharajah, Imagining Hinduism, pp. 142–43.
226 arvind sharma
18
Panikkar, The Foundations of New India, p. 68.
orientalism and the comparison of religions 227
19
Panikkar, The Foundations of New India, pp. 68–69.
20
Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism, p. 12.
21
Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism, p. 13.
228 arvind sharma
22
Lewis, Islam and the West, pp. 123–24.
23
Lewis, Islam and the West, pp. 126–30.
24
Lewis, Islam and the West, p. 112.
25
Lewis, Islam and the West, pp. 111–12.
26
Lewis, Islam and the West, p. 112.
27
Cited in Lewis, Islam and the West, p. 113.
orientalism and the comparison of religions 229
28
Lewis, Islam and the West, p. 101.
29
The same issues surface in the structuralist post-structuralist context as follows:
From the 1960s through the 1980s in several fields of cultural studies, ‘structuralist’
approaches were popular. The term ‘structuralism’ was multifaceted, its specific
sense depending on the field in which one was working, whether anthropology,
developmental psychology, linguistics, or literary studies. But a recurring feature of
efforts termed ‘structuralist,’ such as those of the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-
Strauss (b. 1908), was that the structures proposed had validity if they made sense
in the mind of the investigator, regardless of whether they were understood in the
minds of tribal populations or were the overtly declared intent of literary texts.
James Frazer had thought he knew better than his subjects what they were doing.
So had Freud. And so did Lévi-Strauss.
The poststructuralist era emerging in the 1980s in a sense took the assumption ‘We
know better than you what you are doing’ and turned it on the stance of the inves-
tigator itself. Twentieth-century scholarship has undergone a kind of politicization, in
which the motives of the investigator are analyzed as socially and economically deter-
mined. Intellectuals are seen as slaves to their political, racial, class, and gender pref-
erences. Scholars are portrayed as career-driven rather than thirsting for understanding.
230 arvind sharma
IV
Where one might have assumed a kind of free will in the history of ideas, one is
now confronted with a kind of determination in the sociology of knowledge. To
overstate the developments only slightly: people do not seek truth, but act out of
interests (Oxtoby (ed.), World Religions, pp. 500–501).
30
The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1992)
Vol. 20, p. 529.
31
Renou, Hinduism, p. 16.
32
See Halbfass, India and Europe, p. 407.
33
Inden, Imagining India, p. 38.
orientalism and the comparison of religions 231
In other words, the challenge to the West also came in the way
it had defined Hinduism as a passive religion. Alongside these descrip-
tive developments, however, evaluative procedures of the evolution-
ary kind had also been put in place. India had been colonized and
by this criterion its own major religion, Hinduism, had failed the
evolutionary test. It therefore had to be low down on the evolu-
tionary totem pole of religions—which meant that it had to be poly-
theistic.34 When it was discovered that the description polytheism in
its usual acceptance did not quite fit it, the term henotheism was
coined.35 But henotheism also represented a stage inferior to monothe-
ism, which had only been reached by the religions of the West, spe-
cially Christianity. From this perspective the Hindu response was to
argue that Hindu religious thought had found its culmination in
monism, which is a step above monotheism.
This is how Advaita Vedanta emerged as a theological challenge to the West,
a fact which can be directly related to the Orientalist take on Hindu philosophy.36
The Orientalist reconstruction of Buddhism emphasized its ratio-
nal and altruistic character. The fact that Buddhism was a non-the-
istic religion was a crucial factor in the projection of Buddhism as
a rational religion. Belief in God came to be looked upon virtually
as a superstition, or close to it, as the scientific approach gained
ground in the West. When the West thus discovered a religion with-
out belief in God, it projected it as the supreme example of a ratio-
nal religion, even though Buddha’s life, and that of his disciples’
abounds in the performance of miracles37 and even though belief in
spirits is an integral part of Buddhism as it is lived, as for instance,
in Burma.38 The rational presentation of Sri Lankan Buddhism is
said to be one of the great achievements of Colonel Olcott.39
Thus identification of Buddhism with rationality played a major
role in the Buddhist encounter with the West. The success of Zen
in the West can be explained at least in part in these terms; the
purpose of Zen is to break down the mind. The mind contains many
dimensions but human beings identify maximally with its reasoning
34
Murty, Vedic Hermeneutics, p. 10.
35
Klostermaier, A Survey of Hinduism, p. 130.
36
Oldmeadow, Journey’s East, p. 80.
37
Thomas, The Life of the Buddha in Legend and History, pp. 98ff.
38
Spiro, Buddhism and Society.
39
Ellwood, “Buddhism in the West,” p. 437.
232 arvind sharma
faculty and, as homo sapiens, identify themselves with it. Zen thus sets
out to destroy a human being’s confidence in the rational faculty by
bringing the mind to an impasse through the Koan. Such rational
(i.e.: non-theistic) spirituality thus appeals to the West.40 Tibetan
Buddhism is more tolerant of the ceremonial cloak which rests on
the shoulders of the tradition but the dialogue forged by the Dalai
Lama with the scientists once again harks back to rationalism.
The non-theistic character of Buddhism at the level of philosophy
led to its orientalization as a religion which has not evolved to the
idea of ‘gods’ from the spirits on the one hand and as nihilistic in
its philosophy on account of its doctrine of Emptiness, which also
emptied the world of God. However, with the disenchantment of
the world after the Enlightenment, this too fit in snugly with the
modern mentality. The ascendancy of scientific materialism also
helped image Buddhist thought in a positive way.41
The challenge to the West then which Buddhism posed was also one of a
rational spirituality consistent with science.42
The Orientalist reconstruction of Islam emphasized its militant
character. It would be tempting to attribute this to the facts of his-
tory. The three main empires in the world in the East at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, apart from the Chinese, were the
Moghol Empire in India, the Safavid Empire in Iran and the Ottoman
Empire in Turkey. By the early decades of the twentieth century
they were effectively gone, having lost out militarily to the West.
Islam then could have been orientalistically reconstructed as a defeated
passive religion. The reason this did not happen could partly be
attributed to the militant origin of Islam. Comparative religion in its
early phase was immensely interested, even obsessed, with the issue
of the origins of a religion. Hindu tolerance and Buddhist rational-
ism were similarly identified in the context of the search for origins.
This identification of militancy with Islam as original to it, in this
sense, must be clearly borne in mind, for medieval Islam, under the
influence of the Sufi silasilahs had also acquired an extraordinarily
tolerant dimension.43
40
Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, p. 111.
41
See Zaehner, “Conclusion,” in his The Concise Encyclopedia of Living Faiths, pp.
407, 415–16.
42
Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, passim.
43
Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, pp. 105ff.
orientalism and the comparison of religions 233
The challenge to the West which Islamic militancy now poses then may be
related to its own Orientalist construction,44 as a boomerang effect of it, if
you will.
At the level of philosophy, Islam was attacked for possessing a rig-
orous but less than compassionate theism. But while the West thus
attacked it on the basis of theism, Islam counterattacked with the
prophetic principle. All the three Abrahamic religions are founded
on the word of God, but none except Islam on the literal word of
God. Here Islam was able to turn the developments of biblical crit-
icism on their head by claiming that such criticism deconstructs the
basic texts of Judaism and Islam, while the Qur’an emerges virtu-
ally unscathed for this intellectual baptism.
IV
44
It is worth noting that once these orientations had been established, even the
developments within these religions came to be understood in these terms. Thus
any rational development within Hinduism was attributed to Buddhist influence and
any militant development to Islamic influence. In the case of Buddhism, any non-
rational development was traced to Hindu influence and militant developments often
to Islamic influence. The ‘domestication’ of Islam in India was attributed to Hindu
tolerance.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Russell T. McCutcheon
1
For background on the problem. see McCutcheon, The Insider/Outsider Problem
in the Study of Religion.
circling the wagons 237
case, if there is some big picture that we will recognize only after a
considerable amount of inductive data gathering—and how to demon-
strate its existence is, of course, the $64,000 question!—then I can
at least understand what compels many teachers to presume that we
all have a story to share and thus to construct their courses as pro-
viding differing peoples with their fifteen minutes of fame (what other-
wise goes by the name of courses on religious autobiography). But
if there is no such beast, if the blind men are truly blind, each grop-
ing without the benefit of the omniscient narrator who is required
to make that proverb work, then teachers are disingenuous in invit-
ing everyone to tell their story as part of a quest for a common
human denominator, for I suspect that—like those students in my
anecdote—neither we nor our students are prepared to listen patiently
and appreciatively to everyone who might come out of the darkness
to tell their tale.
To understand the problems with the insider/outsider problem we
should first note that there are many academic fields in which com-
parative analysis is not motivated by the quest for similarity and in
which there is therefore nothing equivalent to the insider/outsider
problem that we use to mediate between what may very well be a
profusion of voices. These are fields in which teachers feel no guilt
when they offer participant disclosures as data that is then subjected
to theoretical analysis. In once comparing the scholar of religion to
the doctor whose efforts to understand the workings of the human
body require no input whatsoever from the comatose patient, Robert
Segal, of Lancaster University, once took an obviously provocative
stand on this issue, one seldom adopted by scholars of religion for
fear of offending the people whom they study. That some members
of the audience at the conference where he struck upon this anal-
ogy were, to put it mildly, aghast suggests that the study of religion
is not one of the fields that somehow escapes the insider/outsider
problem.2 But why is this?
The common answer draws on the sharp split between the so-
called sciences of the spirit and those of nature. Insomuch as humans
are thought to possess independent consciousness, we are free, moral
beings. Therefore, unlike the predictable behavior of physical objects
2
Segal’s comment was made as part of a presentation he gave at the 1995
Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR), held
in Mexico City, Mexico. See Segal 2000 for an elaboration on this topic.
238 russell t. mccutcheon
3
Shapiro, “Autobiography and Ethnography: Falling in Love with the Inner
Other,” p. 193, quoting Andaluza, Borderlands/La Frontera, p. 37.
circling the wagons 239
4
Speer, Inside the Third Reich; Speer, Spandau.
240 russell t. mccutcheon
Whether or not one agrees with how scholars have used Speer’s
memoirs, we must at least note that their goal has not been to search
for commonality and neither has it been to avoid doing violence to
his self-disclosures—as if participants set the bar for how their behav-
iors ought to be understood. Instead of trying to identify with or
protect his authorial voice, their goal has been to explain why some-
one as seemingly educated and cultured as Speer would understand
his own behavior in a way that differs so dramatically from how we
understand it. Because we have such confidence in the superiority
of our own systems of morality and our own understanding of his-
tory—because any comparison of his world to ours is lost in the all
too obvious differences we cannot help but see when we look back
on mid-twentieth-century German politics—no apologies are needed
when our conclusions regarding self-deception trump Speer’s own
protestations of his well-meaning political naiveté.
It would appear, then, that we have no need of this thing we call
the insider/outsider problem to mediate between the competing dis-
closures and differing commitments whenever we study our enemies,
for they are simply wrong, lying, or brainwashed. All we have are
the differences between us and our interest is in explaining why
someone can’t help but see how wrong they are. So the question
arises: when does the suspension of first person interpretive authority
of the people we study qualify as an instance of epistemic violence
and when does a failure to suspend it amount to an offensive, traitorous,
or immoral act?5
To answer my own question, it strikes me that the so-called
insider/outsider problem is an opportunity for uncovering core sim-
ilarities and achieving mutual understanding only when the teacher
and students already have some sort of affinity for the behaviors under
study. When beliefs and behaviors with which we disagree make their
way onto the syllabus, when the differences are all too apparent to
us, we lose no sleep whatsoever when we offer an analysis that con-
tradicts participants’ own self-understandings and suspends their right
to add their voice to our conversation. For instance, pick up virtually
any of the many syllabi on religion and violence and, despite the best
intentions of the empathetic professor, the point of studying this topic
is not to be “in touch” with those people who use coercive violence
5
On the topic of first person interpretive authority, see Godlove, “Religious
Discourse.”
circling the wagons 241
to achieve practical ends. Sooner or later the other shoe drops when
the teacher adopts an explanatory framework in order to determine
why anyone would do such a thing —which, of course, is the first step to
getting them to stop doing it. We seek understanding in order to
change their understandings as well as their actions, not to be in
dialogue with them.
I therefore see teaching qua conversation as having profound political
motivations and ramifications; it is a social engineering technique
used by specific groups to establish tactical coalitions by using the
classroom to selectively smooth over what, for the purpose of some
anticipated coalition, are perceived to be relatively minor differences,
all in an effort to circle the wagons against the onslaught of the
significant differences that threaten some apparent “us” and “our”
interests. Recognizing and then trying to address seemingly competing
commitments by means of the insider/outsider problem therefore
arises only when an empirically diverse and possibly conflicting
“many” is, for whatever reason, presumed by its members to be sub-
ordinated to a common, non-empirical “oneness” (call it human
nature, nationality, religious experience, spirituality, gender, or ethnicity).
That this triumphant oneness, achieved by means of establishing
mutual understanding, turns out to be anything but an inclusive con-
versation must not go unnoticed.
For instance, consider how all of this works in a recent British
collection of essays entitled Theorizing Faith: The Insider/Outsider Problem
in the Study of Ritual. The various chapters in this book—on the com-
parative study of such diverse groups as British Muslims, New Religious
Movements, Soka Gakkai in the UK, British Quakerism, and British
Wicca—set about addressing the problem of differing perspectives
by presuming that there exists some “big picture” to which participants
and observers alike have limited yet complementary access. This is
phrased in the book’s conclusion as follows:
All of this is rooted in an epistemology . . . in which no single ‘voice’ has
the capacity for the whole truth, but in which every voice is a potential
source of fact and insight, and in which valid conclusions and adequate
interpretations are more likely, when the multiple voices are sensitively
heard and considered. . . . If we can build multiple perspectives into our
research project, whether through team research in the field, sharing at
conferences, or other forms of collegial discourse, we are blessed.6
6
Arweck and Stringer, eds., Theorizing Faith, p. 159.
242 russell t. mccutcheon
greater than the sum of its individual and seemingly conflicting parts.
It is a profoundly anti-historical attitude that strikes me as most trou-
blesome in the work of those who use the insider/outsider problem
to mediate between differing viewpoints and commitments. For,
instead of presuming that historical existence is shot through and
through with competing interests, the rhetoric of “full understand-
ing” that propels the desire to keep in touch with some of the peo-
ple we study and which prompts some of us to think that all so-called
deeply held beliefs can find a place at the our seminar tables, bypasses
the requirements (and thus the risks) of public persuasion; in bypass-
ing these requirements it shows itself to be based on anything but
a humble epistemological foundation. Instead, it provides a pas-
sive/aggressive means to portray some local as the self-evident uni-
versal without ever really considering that interests and viewpoints
might be incommensurable or contradictory. I think here of Jonathan
Kirsch’s recent book, The Woman Who Laughed at God: The Untold
History of the Jewish People (2001), which stands as a useful example
of a writer coming to grips with the fact that, at least in the case
of Judaism, the only so-called core value is diversity and disagreement.
Thus, all we seem to have is a host of differing Judaisms all talking
with each other. But in dropping the singular in favor of the plural,
we find a subtle argument that naturalizes but one sort of liberal
Judaism as opposed to those other contenders for normative status
that might contest whether the apparent variety has anything significant
in common. In other words, the old “unity in diversity” nugget is
a political rhetoric doing its own sort of group building in compe-
tition with other mutually exclusive conceptions of the group, some
of which don’t particularly want to gain entry into the big tent.
The rhetoric of the big picture that propels many of the classes
that utilize the comparative method may therefore be one of the
most powerful political techniques we’ve yet come up with to silence
just some voices while amplifying others. For, as phrased in a rhetor-
ical question posed by Slavoj ¥i≥ek in his critique of “The Matrix”—
a film very popular with the generation we find ourselves now
teaching: “What if ideology resides in the very belief that outside
the closure of the finite universe, there is some ‘true reality’ to be
entered?”7 For, as afficionados of this film will recall, outside the
7
¥i≥ek, “The Matrix, or the Two Sides of Perversion,” p. 214.
244 russell t. mccutcheon
8
¥i≥ek, “The Matrix, or the Two Sides of Perversion,” p. 215.
9
Bourdieu, Practical Reason, p. 137.
10
¥i≥ek, “The Matrix, or the Two Sides of Perversion,” p. 217.
11
Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society, p. 10.
circling the wagons 245
12
Cornell, “A Muslim to Muslims,” p. 93.
13
Cornell, “A Muslim to Muslims,” p. 92.
circling the wagons 247
To sum up, we can draw on the work of the French political the-
orist Dominique Colas, who was himself commenting on the politi-
cal utility of the slippery rhetorics of “civil society” and “fanatic,”
and conclude that seeing the classroom as a place where we share
personal disclosures and work toward massaging difference and estab-
lishing mutual understandings is a political problem because it “tends
to present political issues as problems of management rather than
as conflicts between various powers and groups with divergent or
antagonistic interests.”14 And it is precisely the limits of meaning and
social identity that we are attempting to manage with our efforts to
prompt students to converse with just some others—efforts that ensure
specific groups remain within arm’s reach while others are kept
securely at arm’s length.
Perhaps you can now understand why I see classes that seek the
goal of conversation, dialogue, self-expression, and mutual under-
standing to be entirely suspect: they leave their descriptive data unthe-
orized and, leaving it untheorized, they implicitly reinforce the object
of study’s status as self-evidently meaningful and sensible. Now, by
“theorize” I simply mean studying all human artifacts, such as par-
ticipant self-reports, as instances of data in need of historicization
and explanatory analysis, and not simply appreciation or dismissal;
for our roles as scholars and teachers is not to be “in touch” with
the people under study, and not to feel their pain, whether or not
we have affinity for them. Failing to subject the descriptive data to
theoretical analysis results in simply adopting uncritically someone
else’s view of themselves and their place within their world. Then,
so long as it complements or enhances our own interests, we merely
perpetuate it uncritically by offering our own story that serves merely
as a repetition of what the participants have already said for them-
selves. Despite the apparently good intentions that inspire those who
seek to be “in touch” with the people they study, scholarship as
repetition strikes me as chauvinistic insomuch as it presumes that
what the speakers have already said for themselves requires our
authorization.
Because I tend to think that our responsibility qua teachers is first
and foremost to that circle of wagons called the discourse of acad-
emia, I advocate a far more humble project for scholarship on human
14
Colas, Civil Society and Fanaticism, p. 40.
248 russell t. mccutcheon
15
Lightstone, The Commerce of the Sacred, p. 5.
16
Masuzawa, “From Theology to World Religions: Ernst Troeltsch and the
Making of Religionsgeschichte,” p. 164.
17
Lincoln, “Theses on Method,” p. 227.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Robert Segal
In the field of religious studies there are four main positions on the
comparative method.
Postmodernism
1
Rosenau, Post-Modernism, pp. 97, 105–6.
2
Taylor, ed., Critical Terms for Religious Studies, p. 14.
3
Taylor, introduction to Taylor, ed., Critical Terms for Religious Studies, pp. 14–15.
postmodernism and the comparative method 251
4
Taylor, ed., Critical Terms for Religious Studies, p. 15.
5
Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, p. 25.
6
Geertz, After the Fact, p. 23.
252 robert segal
Controlled Comparativism
The second position, less radical and much older, allows for com-
parisons, but on only a regional or local rather than worldwide scale.
The comparisons permitted are called “controlled” comparisons.9
This kind of comparativism regularly takes place among, for exam-
ple, scholars of the ancient Near East, where ancient Israel is com-
pared with ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia—but not with some place
in Asia. Thus even though biblicist S. H. Hooke is prepared to use
7
Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 43.
8
On Geertz’s interpretivism, including his fluctuating position on generalizations,
see my Explaining and Interpreting Religion (New York: Lang, 1992), pp. 77–101; “Weber
and Geertz on the Meaning of Religion,” Religion 29 (1999): 61–71; and “Clifford
Geertz’s Interpretive Approach to Religion,” in Selected Readings in the Anthropology of
Religion, edited by Stephen D. Glazier and Charles A. Flowerday (Westport, CT:
Praeger, 2003), pp. 17–34.
9
See Eggan, “Social Anthropology, pp. 743–63; p. 754.
postmodernism and the comparative method 253
10
Hooke, “Myth and Ritual Pattern,” pp. 1–14; pp. 1–2.
11
Hooke, “Myth and Ritual Pattern,” pp. 2–3.
254 robert segal
New Comparativism
12
Hooke, limiting himself to Frazer’s later, intellectualist, anti-ritualist view of
“primitives” and of myth, sets his own view against Frazer’s. But in fact Hooke’s
whole myth and ritual pattern comes from earlier, ritualist Frazer. On Hooke’s
actual beholdenness to Frazer, see my edited Myth and Ritual Theory, pp. 5–7, 83.
13
Egyptologist Henri Frankfort stresses the differences between Egypt and
Mesopotamia: “It is now, I hope, also evident that the similarities between Egypt
and Mesopotamia are by no means more important than their differences” (The
Problem of Similarity, p. 17). See also his Kingship and the Gods.
14
Among those responding to Hooke, Mowinckel argues for a weaker case of
Hooke’s pattern in Israel: see his The Psalms; He That Cometh, ch. 3. Albright
differentiates Israelite monotheism from the conceptions of god in all surrounding
cultures, including the worship of Akhenaten, and attributes the distinctively Israelite
conception to the genius of Moses: see his From the Stone Age to Christianity, pp. 249–72.
To ensure the avoidance of theological miscegenation, Albright rejects evolution as
the source of Israelite monotheism. In so doing, he reinforces the linkage between
postmodernism and the comparative method 255
old comparativism and evolution. Wright puts forcefully his Albright-inspired rejec-
tion of, at once, old comparativism and evolution: “The purpose of the lectures is
to examine and lay emphasis upon those central elements of Biblical faith which
are so unique and sui generis that they cannot have developed by any natural evo-
lutionary process from the pagan world in which they appeared. . . . It is the con-
tention of this monograph that the faith of Israel even in its earliest and basic forms
is so utterly different from that of the contemporary polytheisms that one simply
cannot explain it fully by evolutionary or environmental categories” (The Old Testament,
p. 7). Undeniably, for Frazer comparativism is tied to evolution, but old compar-
ativism per se is not, so that old comparativism cannot be facilely rejected, as it
often is, on the grounds that some practitioners of it assume evolution: see my “In
Defense of the Comparative Method,” pp. 339–74; pp. 346–47.
15
Paden, “Elements of a New Comparativism,” pp. 5–14; pp. 8–9.
16
Smith, To Take Place, pp. 13–14.
256 robert segal
Old Comparativism
17
Smith, To Take Place, pp. 34–35.
18
Eilberg-Schwartz seeks to revive the comparison of ancient Judaism with “prim-
itive” religions. Yet the brand of comparativism that he proposes amounts to new
comparativism, albeit with as much emphasis on similarities as on differences. See
his The Savage in Judaism.
postmodernism and the comparative method 257
politically incorrect and presumed that the Greeks alone were civi-
lized and that all others, especially Persians, were barbarian, but it
was the differences that he nevertheless sought. Furthermore, he did
not simply note the differences but accounted for them: the superi-
ority of Greek, or at least Athenian, culture stemmed from its demo-
cratic form of government, whereas the inferiority of its nemesis,
Persia, stemmed from its tyranny.
Somewhat closer to our time, new comparativism was practiced
magisterially more than a century ago by William Robertson Smith.
In his Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889) Smith compared
ancient Semitic religion with “primitive” religion to show at once
the similarities and the differences. Where the younger, if still old-
style, comparativist Frazer sought to show only the similarities between
primitive religion and Christianity, new-style comparativist Smith
sought to show the differences as well. He wanted to show how far
Christianity, which in its ancient, pre-Christian, Semitic form was
primitive-like, had advanced beyond its primitive roots. And he, too,
accounted for the differences—by a mix of internal and external fac-
tors. Contrary to some new comparativists, the new comparativism
did not arise merely a few decades ago in reaction to Mircea Eliade’s
presumably old-style comparativism.
19
See my “In Defense of the Comparative Method,” pp. 363–72.
258 robert segal
20
See my “In Defense of the Comparative Method,” pp. 359–62.
21
The following section is a revised version of my “In Defense of the Comparative
Method,” pp. 348–58.
postmodernism and the comparative method 259
Morocco when, after things had settled down again in the seventies,
I returned, not without trepidation, to Indonesia, than I would have
by confining myself, as beginning to find my feet in another civiliza-
tion, I was tempted to do, thenceforth to North Africa.22
The comparative method can thus be used by those who seek differ-
ences—postmodernists and new comparativists—as well as by those
who seek similarities—controlled comparativists and old comparativists.
22
Geertz, After the Fact, p. 28. See also Geertz, Islam Observed.
260 robert segal
23
Frazer, “The Scope and Method of Mental Anthropology,” pp. 580–94; p. 588.
24
Frazer, “The Scope and Method of Mental Anthropology,” p. 590.
25
Frazer, “The Scope and Method of Mental Anthropology,” p. 590.
262 robert segal
26
On the connection between categorization and explanation see Mayr and
Ashlock, Principles of Systematic Zoology, pp. 124–25; Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation,
pp. 453–57. A most helpful example of the connection between the two is that of
medical diagnosis, which is cited by not only Hempel and others but also Geertz,
who, however, ironically invokes it as a would-be illustration of sheer categoriza-
tion—one of the ways he tries to distinguish interpretation from explanation: see
The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 26–27.
postmodernism and the comparative method 263
27
The locus classicus of this view of explanation is Popper, The Logic of Scientific
Discovery, section 12. The locus classicus of the view that the explanation of human
events is of the particular is Collingwood, The Idea of History. For decades, the
generalist Hempel and the particularist William Dray debated. For references, see
my “In Defense of the Comparative Method,” p. 355 n. 28.
264 robert segal
by animal sacrifices, they will do so. If one replies that not all peo-
ples who believe that their gods’ favor can be won by animal sacrifice
proceed to practice it, then the explanation is inadequate even for
people X. For something else must be at work to account for why
people X proceed with the sacrifices when other peoples who share
the belief in the efficacy of animal sacrifice do not. What must be
added can range from, say, the desperation of people X to win their
gods’ favor to the inexpensiveness of their sacrifices. Whatever else
suffices to account for the case of people X does so only if it also
suffices to account for the sacrifices of other peoples in the same cir-
cumstances as well.
Several anticipated objections can readily be met. It might be
argued that other peoples offer animal sacrifices for different rea-
sons. Suppose a study of people Y reveals that they offer animal
sacrifices out of duty rather than out of a calculated payoff. But that
discovery is no argument against the proposed explanation for peo-
ple X, for the claim made about them is intended to provide only
a sufficient, not a necessary, explanation. The claim is not that the
only reason for animal sacrifice is the calculation that it pays but that
whenever the calculation exists, there will be animal sacrifices. Most
explanations of human behavior and even of physical events are
intended to be at best merely sufficient, not necessary, ones.28 Ordi-
narily, there are too many possible causes of the same behavior to
be able to stipulate necessary ones. People may revolt for many rea-
sons. They need not be famished to do so.29
Conversely, it might be argued that even would-be sufficient gen-
eralizations invariably fail to suffice. Suppose a study of people Z
discloses that they, like people X, believe that animal sacrifices will win
28
To be sure, some explanations of human behavior claim to be only necessary.
Émile Durkheim’s sociology of religion is so much more extreme than Max Weber’s
because Durkheim claims to be providing sufficient as well as necessary causes of
religion, where Weber claims to be providing only necessary ones. David Hume
maintained that explanations must be necessary as well as sufficient. John Stuart
Mill argued that they need only be sufficient.
29
Franz Boas’ objection to the comparative method is exactly that, according to
him, it presumes to provide necessary as well as sufficient causes. Boas insists that
the same effects often stem from different causes, so that no one cause is necessary.
See “Limitations of the Comparative Method,” pp. 901–8; (rpt. Boas, Race, Language,
and Culture [New York: Macmillan, 1940], pp. 270–80).
postmodernism and the comparative method 265
their gods’ favor, are desperate to gain that favor, and can readily
afford the sacrifices. Yet suppose that even so, they, in contrast to
people X, do not make the sacrifices. Obviously, the explanation of
people X thereby proves insufficient and must be supplemented to
account for their proceeding to make sacrifices. But suppose, further,
that no matter how many additions are made, the explanation still
fails to account for the difference between people X’s behavior and
people Z’s. The proper conclusion to be drawn is not that the reasons
for people X’s behavior are mysterious but that the reasons are so
numerous or so complex that no other people will likely share them
all. Most explanations of human behavior and even of physical events
are intended as less than sufficient ones.30 Most often, they are offered
as merely probabilistic.31 The claim is that whenever the conditions
named occur, the behavior will likely, not inevitably, occur, and the
degree of likelihood can even be less than 50%. No matter how
famished people are, not all and maybe not even most will revolt.
Finally, it might be argued that even necessary and sufficient gen-
eralizations are irrelevant because the behavior itself is unique. Suppose
that only people X offer animal sacrifices. Or suppose that only peo-
ple X offer sacrifices of a particular animal, one found only in their
locale. But the uniqueness of their case is merely a historical con-
tingency. The explanation offered of their unique case would still
have to hold, even if as less than a sufficient explanation, for any
other people in the same circumstances who also offered animal
sacrifices, of any kind or of a specific kind. The comparative method
is often confused with the assumption of universals—as if it stands
30
As Ernest Nagel writes, “The search for explanations is directed to the ideal
of ascertaining the necessary and sufficient conditions for the occurrence of phenomena.
This ideal is rarely achieved, however, and even in the best-developed natural sci-
ences it is often an open question whether the conditions mentioned in an explanation
are indeed sufficient” (“Some Issues,” pp. 162–69; p. 167).
31
As Wesley C. Salmon writes of modern physics, “Some first-rate physicists are
presently working to find a deterministic theory to replace the current quantum
mechanics, one by which it will be possible to explain what now seems irreducibly
statistical by means of ‘hidden variables’ that cannot occur in the present theory.
No one can say for sure whether they will succeed; any new theory, deterministic or
indeterministic, has to stand the test of experiment. The current quantum theory
does show, however, that the world may be fundamentally and irremediably inde-
terministic, for according to the best currently available knowledge, it is” (“Determinism
and Indeterminism, pp. 321–26; p. 321).
266 robert segal
committed to similarities not merely across any cultures but across all
cultures. In actuality, the method requires the search for multiple instances
of a phenomenon but allows for the discovery of even just one. Still,
unless the explanation given of people X would apply to any other
people in kindred conditions who did offer these sacrifices, the expla-
nation fails to explain even the sole case to date of people X.
In short, the way to understand people X is not merely by myopi-
cally studying them more and more. It is also by studying other peo-
ples as well. One cannot, in postmodern fashion, ignore other peoples
and focus only on people X. One cannot say blithely that one cares
only about people X or, like Geertz, that the differences between
people X and other peoples are more profound than the similarities.
Even if one is interested only in the particular, similarities are indis-
pensable, both in categorizing, for example, the French Revolution
as a revolution and in accounting for it. Geertz himself employs sim-
ilarities even in the effort to articulate the distinctiveness of the cul-
tures he has studied. Without such favorite categories as culture,
ethos, world view, ritual, social change, ideology, revolution, nationalism,
politics, person, art, and law, he would be rendered speechless.
The comparative method amounts to more than the juxtaposition
of phenomena. It means the identification of a common category
for those phenomena. That identification spurs either the application or
the discovery of a common explanation of that category. While the com-
parative method can be used to find differences as well as similarities,
the method itself seeks similarities and finds differences only where the
similarities cease. Put another way, new comparativists must be old
comparativists as well. And postmodernists must be comparativists, too.
and explanation of a few such relics of ruder times, as they are preserved
like fossils in the Old Testament, that I have addressed myself in the
present work. . . . The instrument for the detection of savagery under
civilization is the comparative method. . . .32
Frazer’s procedure is to note some odd belief, practice, or incident
in the Bible that the Bible itself fails to explain. He then turns to
comparable cases around the world, makes sense of them, and applies
that “solution” to the biblical case. Only the similarities, not the
differences, between Israelite and primitive religion faze him. Because
the similarities are with primitive religion, Israelite religion is reduced
to a primitive religion and, even more, to the yet earlier practice of
magic.
For example, Frazer is struck by the Israelite fear of a census in
2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21, which recounts 2 Samuel. While
on other occasions the census is not feared, in 2 Samuel God is said
to be angry with Israel beforehand and orders King David to con-
duct a census in retaliation. Not only God but also David and his
general Joab know that harm will thereby befall Israel. Joab objects
to his king’s order but is overruled. No sooner is the census com-
pleted than David himself regrets the deed and asks God, who had
instructed him to undertake the census, for forgiveness for having
undertaken it! God offers David three forms of punishment, and
David chooses one: three days of plague, which kills 70,000 Israelites.
A true Hobson’s choice! To quote 2 Samuel 24.1–15:
Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited
David against them, saying, “Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.”
So the king said to Joab and the commanders of the army, who
were with him, “Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to
Beer-sheba, and take a census of the people, so that I may know how
many there are.” . . . So Joab and the commanders of the army went
out from the presence of the king to take a census of the people of
Israel. . . . But afterward, David was stricken to the heart because he
had numbered the people. David said to the Lord, “I have sinned
greatly in what I have done. But now, O Lord, I pray you, take away
the guilt of your servant; for I have done very foolishly.” When David
rose in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad,
David’s seer, saying, “Go and say to David: Thus says the Lord: Three
things I offer you; choose one of them, and I will do it to you.” So
32
Frazer, Folk-lore, I, pp. vii–viii.
268 robert segal
Gad came to David and told him; he asked him, “Shall three years
of famine come to you on your land? Or will you flee three months
before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’
pestilence in your land? Now consider, and decide what answer I shall
return to the one who sent me.” Then David said to Gad, “I am in
great distress; let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is
great; but let me not fall into human hands.” So the Lord sent a pesti-
lence on Israel from that morning until the appointed time; and sev-
enty thousand of the people died, from Dan to Beer-sheba.
David then performs a triple penance, and God ends the plague. In
the version of the incident in Chronicles it is Satan, not God, who
prods David into taking the census. God there merely punishes Israel
for the census and does not initiate it.
Incontestably, Frazer skirts many aspects of the event: why either
God or Satan is angry with Israel; why God or Satan resorts to the
census as the way of getting back at Israel; why David, knowing bet-
ter, nevertheless carries out the census; why God offers David a
choice of punishments; and why David chooses the punishment that
he does. But Frazer does not claim to be answering these questions
and so cannot be faulted for failing to answer them. He claims to
be answering only one central question: why the census is feared.
He cites case after case in which primitive and peasant peoples fear
that counting something will lead to the loss of it:
The objection which Jehovah, or rather the Jews, entertained to the
taking of a census appears to be simply a particular case of the gen-
eral aversion which many ignorant people feel to allowing themselves,
their cattle, or their possessions to be counted. This curious superstition—
for such it is—seems to be common among the black races of Africa.
For example, among the Bakongo, of the Lower Congo, “it is con-
sidered extremely unlucky for a woman to count her children one,
two, three, and so on, for the evil spirits will hear and take some of
them away by death. The people themselves do not like to be counted;
for they fear that counting will draw to them the attention of the evil
spirits, and as a result of the counting some of them will soon die.”
. . . Similar superstitions are to be found in Europe and in our own
country to this day. . . . On the whole we may assume, with a fair
degree of probability, that the objection which the Jews in King David’s
time felt to the taking of a census rested on no firmer foundation than
sheer superstition, which may have been confirmed by an outbreak of
plague immediately after the numbering of the people.33
33
Frazer, Folk-lore in the Old Testament, II, pp. 557–63.
postmodernism and the comparative method 269
Ivan Strenski
1
Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, p. 173.
2
Lukes, Emile Durkheim, p. 451.
272 ivan strenski
3
Sarana, The Methodology of Anthropological Comparisons, chapter 3.
the only kind of comparison worth doing 273
4
Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschicht; Hubert, “Introduction B
la traduction française.”
the only kind of comparison worth doing 275
5
Evans-Pritchard, A History of Anthropological Thought, p. 173.
6
Evans-Pritchard, A History of Anthropological Though, p. 173.
276 ivan strenski
society’s place in it were true, and if all societies moved through the
same objective evolutionary levels of development, then the analo-
gies Tylor offered would have been rooted in the nature of things.
They were true because he thought there was a material necessity in
which the cultural differences seen round the world participated.
Veneration of spirits, no matter what various names they bore in
different cultures, was still the property of a particular level of uni-
versal evolutionary development. The historical classification of stages
of this developmental movement and the place a particular society
occupied in it were held to be objectively true. Societies, cultures, and
their contents were natural “phenomena”; they were “there” in the
same sense animal species and their features were “there.” Small
wonder then that when the arguments of Boas against cultural evo-
lution gained strength that the fortunes of the “strong program” of
comparative studies declined. Resting as it did on evolutionary bases,
the “comparative method” as a “strong program” would either have
to be abandoned or re-invented. The Boasians chose to abandon it.
As we will see, the Durkheimians sought to re-invent it.
When “comparative method” shows the kind of ‘strength’ of which
it is more than capable, religious folk resisting comparison have a
good deal to fear from it. Ninian Smart often would joke, half seri-
ously, that “comparative study of religion tends to make one com-
paratively religious.” Using this particular kind of approach to
comparison, many pioneers in the field of comparative study of reli-
gions indeed sought—overtly or cryptically—to support certain sub-
versive theses about the general nature of religion, and ultimately
against Christianity in particular. Sir James George Frazer, Edward
Burnett Tylor, and other British anthropologists of the day practiced
what they called, somewhat imperialistically, the “comparative method.”
Frazer, for instance, clearly sought to argue—at times implicitly, at
times explicitly—that there were significant and substantial parallels
between so-called “pagan” myths and Christian motifs. For Frazer,
this meant that the vaunted uniqueness of Christianity was simply
false. Frazer’s arguments for the existence of “Pagan Christs” in the
Mediterranean world, for example, were not meant to argue for
some apologetically satisfying praeparatio evangelium, but rather for the
thesis that Christianity had an ultimately ‘pagan’ nature, because its
historical and cultural roots were “pagan.” For Frazer and other
19th-century evolutionists, this condemned religion (and Christianity
in particular) as having a ‘primitive’ character—a characterization
the only kind of comparison worth doing 277
for an evolutionist like Frazer that put Christianity ‘in its place’ as
a crude and uncivilized thing. On top of this, Christianity’s claim
to trans-historical revealed truth was therefore laid bare as bogus,
since key imagery of the Christian tradition could be found in the
pagan religions preceding Christianity! Indeed, pagan religions shaped
the very spirituality of Christianity, such as, for example, the ideal
of the resurrection foreshadowed in Mediterranean images of the
dying and rising god. As a latecomer on historical scene, Frazer and
others alleged, Christianity had borrowed freely from these base and
‘primitive’ non-Christian sources.
Ironically, one of the greatest defenders of the integrity and value
of religion, including Christianity, Mircea Eliade, employed the same
logic of “comparative method” but turned its implications on its
head, so to speak. As a classic anti-evolutionist, Eliade saw the ‘prim-
itive’—“archaic religious” humanity—as anything but crude and base.
Indeed, from Eliade’s perspective archaic religious consciousness was
the supreme form of religious consciousness, and from it all subse-
quent forms of spirituality evidence a definite de-evolutionary decline.
The struggle of the moderns is precisely to try to recapture and live
the archaic vision, after having degenerated for many years in terms
of their spirituality. By contrast, therefore, Eliade’s comparisons —his
citation of likenesses between Christian and ‘pagan’ images was meant
to ground Christian spirituality in some trans-historic, or “ab-original,”
“archaic” religiosity of great value. That, for instance, the ‘tree’ of the
crucifixion could be compared (likened) to the archaic, ‘ab-original’,
archetypal “World Tree” or the tree from which the ‘pagan’ deity,
Attis, was hung was only further evidence that Christianity was rooted
in an archaic spiritual experience.
Comparison, however cryptically used by Eliade for the purposes
of testing and finally proving such hypotheses to be true, fell into
line with the methods of the 19th-century evolutionist enemies of
religion. At its best, Christianity succeeds in perpetuating archaic
religiosity, despite claims to Christian uniqueness made by the ‘ortho-
dox.’ And, thus for Eliade, comparison had a kind of force—
“strength”—that informal—“weak”—comparisons, such as mere pairing
or even an intellectually playful setting into ‘comparative perspec-
tive,’ could never achieve. This, albeit typically unemphatic, use of
comparison by Eliade is one reason, one might suggest, for the force
of his influence. However shrouded in obscure language were his
plans and purposes in making comparisons, Eliade was putting forth
278 ivan strenski
7
Bloch, “A Contribution Towards a Comparative History of Euorpean Societies,”
p. 47.
280 ivan strenski
8
Köbben, “Comparativists and Non-Comparativists in Anthropology,” p. 593.
282 ivan strenski
9
Smelser, Comparative Methods in the Social Sciences, chapter 3.
the only kind of comparison worth doing 283
10
Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, p. 157.
11
Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, chapter 6.
284 ivan strenski
Why, however, does this set of proposals for comparative study count
as a call for a “strong” program in comparative studies, and from
whence does its “strength” derive. To what extent, if at all, does the
strength of this program derive from sources other than those empow-
ering evolutionist “comparative method”—even as Durkheim indi-
cates in point (5) that he believes it does?
Overall, Durkheim believes the “strength” of his comparative pro-
gram is evident from the fact that he is convinced it will eventuate
in sociological “laws”—the ultimate test of success in hypothesis-test-
ing, the discovery of ‘causes.’12 These laws were for him assured by
the objective reality of the evolutionary process of the development
of societies that Durkheim assumed from his earliest works, such as
the Division of Labor in Society and the developmental classification of
societies found there.13 Even in his late work, such as in Elementary
Forms of the Religious Life, Durkheim identifies certain phenomena to
be compared within well-drawn “primitive” contexts (e.g. aboriginal
Australia), by comparing the ‘same’ phenomena within another well-
drawn “primitive” contexts, (e.g. native North America, (points 3, 4
above), in order to test a hypothesis of “concomitant variation”14
(Point 1 above)—to discern laws or law-like relationships. “As soon
as we have proved that in a certain number of cases, two phenomena
vary with each other, we may be certain we are confronted with a
law,” he notes emphatically.15
Mauss later identified this method of Durkheim’s with Darwin’s
method of doing experiments governed by the certainties of the evo-
lutionary process, and therefore as a method with avowed scientific
intentions. This, Mauss described as the method of “indirect exper-
iment”—indirect hypothesis-testing, since like Darwin in the matter of
the causal genesis or the demise of species, the social scientist lacked
the ability to perform “live” experiments, the ability to test directly
theses regarding many sorts of human subjects.16 Durkheim would
therefore have found congenial what Radcliffe-Brown said many years
later about the role of comparison in the formulation of a scientific
investigation: “without systematic comparative studies, anthropology
12
Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, p. 153.
13
Durkheim, Division of Labour in Society.
14
Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, pp. 151–3.
15
Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, p. 153.
16
Karady, Marcel Mauss, pp. 170–71.
the only kind of comparison worth doing 285
17
Radcliffe-Brown, Method in Social Anthropology, p. 110.
18
Strenski, Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century.
286 ivan strenski
19
Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, p. 81.
20
Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, p. 69.
21
Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, p. 76.
the only kind of comparison worth doing 287
22
Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, p. 61.
288 ivan strenski
23
Strenski, “The Ironies of Fin-de-Siécle Rebellions against Historicism”; and
Strenski, Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice.
24
Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, pp. 111–12.
25
Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, p. 158.
the only kind of comparison worth doing 289
26
Gieryn, “Durkheim’s Sociology of Scientific Knowledge,” pp. 122–23.
27
Walker, “Review Essay: Marc Bloch’s Feudal Society”; Walker, “A Note on
Historical Linguistics”; Sewell, “Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History.”
290 ivan strenski
from Germany.28 Bloch and his collaborators realized this new style
of comparative history by means of several methodological innova-
tions not utterly foreign to the Durkheimians, but neither embraced
by them consistently. These are the role of interpretation or hermeneu-
tics in knowledge, the place of theory and problematic with respect
to data, and the sense in which comparisons could and should be
disciplined in order to achieve maximum effect, and thus ‘strength.’
The end result of the conception of comparative history achieved
by the Annalistes was to create, firstly, “comparative” historical stud-
ies that drew their “strength,” in part at least, from the explanatory
fruitfulness of the interpretive process in history. In their magisterial
article “History” in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1932), Henri
Berr and Lucien Febvre develop this proper and essential role of
“imagination”—of subjective factors—in history writing. “While phys-
ical phenomena would be known even without the intervention of
someone to describe and classify them, the historical past is only
known to the extent that there is an image of it—in other words,
to the extent that it is created by the mind.”29 Against any positivist
“objectivism” Berr and Febvre say clearly, “[t]he historical fact is by
no means always ‘given.’ Very often the historian must in some
degree create it with the aid of hypotheses and conjectures, by delicate
impassioned labor.”30 As a result, it is not “facts” that autonomously
determine research but the “selection” of facts. And, in this “selectivity”
even the natural sciences partake. Once more, Berr and Febvre: “It
is to pretend that the histologist, has only to put his eye to the lens
of a microscope to discover immediately definite facts which can be
utilized as they are, while in truth the essential portion of his labor con-
sists in creating and interpreting the objects of his observation with the aid of
singularly complicated techniques.”31 For the Annalistes, then, interpre-
tation was essential to the task of doing history, comparative or not.
Secondly, Bloch also made a “strong program” in comparative
studies possible by introducing another methodological feature, half-
heartedly embraced by Durkheim, and not followed consistently.
28
Craig, “Sociology and Related Disciplines”; Perrin, “L’Oeuvre historique de
Marc Bloch.”
29
Berr and Febvre, “History,” p. 363.
30
Berr and Febvre, “History,” p. 363.
31
Berr and Febvre, “History,” p. 363 (my emphasis).
the only kind of comparison worth doing 291
32
Bloch, “Une étude régionale,” p. 81.
33
Bloch “Une étude régionale,” p. 48 (my emphases). See also confirmation in
Walker, “Review Essay,” pp. 247–48.
34
Rhodes, “Emile Durkheim and the Historical Thought of Marc Bloch,” p. 47.
292 ivan strenski
35
Bloch, “A Contribution Towards a Comparative History of European Societies,”
p. 48.
36
Bloch, “A Contribution Towards a Comparative History of European Societies,”
p. 48.
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310 bibliography
Aborigines, Australian 222, 282, 284 Christianity and the Encounter with World
Abrahamic traditions 24, 233 Religions (Tillich) 126
Acts of the Apostles 189, 195, 205 “Christianity Judging Itself ” (Tillich)
Advaita Vedanta xv, 231, 233 126
Afro-Caribbean religions 142 Colonialism 225, 251
Animal sacrifice 260–65 Comparative Religion (Sharpe) 121
Annales School 272, 289 “Comparative Religion” (W. C. Smith)
Anthropology 97, 275, 284 126
Anti-semitism 213–14 Comparative Study of Religions, The (Wach)
Apologia Socratis (Plato) 150 19, 124
Archaic religion (Eliade) 277 Concept, exclusive 6–9, 12
Asceticism, inner-worldy (Weber) 12 Concept, inclusive 6–1, 13
Asia in the Core Curriculum (deBary et al.) Confucianism 68, 118, 127, 221
127 Conservative Christianity 181, 189,
Assemblies of God 190, 195 191–93, 218
Authority (Lincoln) x, 28–33, 36, Controlled comparativism (Segal) 252,
38–39, 41, 47 n. 52, 257, 259–60, 270
Corinthians 201, 207
Bacchae (Euripides) 209 n. 83, 217 CRIP (Crosscultural Comparative
Baha’i 6 Religious Ideas Project) xi–xii,
Baptists 194–96, 199–201 77–79, 85–87, 89–93, 95, 102–03,
“Believing Myth as Myth” (Weckman) 106–13
19 Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Taylor,
Bhagavadgita 230 ed.) 132
Bhakti 24, 131–32 Cultural Studies 127
Bible ix, 31, 40–42, 44–45, 141, 186, Curators of the Buddha (Lopez) 123
191–92, 195, 199–201, 203, 267,
269–70 Daoism 87, 118
Book of Chronicles 267–68 De morte Peregrini (Lucian of Samosata)
Book of Job 32 146
Book of Samuel 267 Deism 186
British Discovery of Hinduism, The Dharma 24, 68
(Almond) 122 “Dialogue and Method” (Eck) 126
British Discovery of Hinduism . . ., The Discourse (Lincoln) 29, 33–34, 41
(Marshall) 122 Discourses of the Vanishing (Ivy) 137
Buddhism ix, xi, xiv–xv, 6, 44, Dissent from the Homeland (Cornell) 246
56–57, 92, 98, 118, 123, 129, 221, Division of Labor in Society, The
223, 225, 227–28, 231–33, 245 (Durkheim) 284
Drudgery Divine ( J. Z. Smith) xiv, 181,
Charisma 28, 63, 66 212
Chinese religions 34, 40, 118
Christianity xi, xiii–xiv, 9, 12, 15, 18, Elective affinity (Weber) 12–13
24, 34, 40, 41, 42, 46, 53, 55–57, Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, The
117, 119–20, 126, 138, 144, 147, (Durkheim) 284, 288, 291
166, 172, 175, 177–80, 183–89, Encyclopedia of Religion, The (Eliade, ed.)
193–95, 199, 204, 207, 210–11, 125
213–17, 221, 230–31, 254, 257, 260, Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, The
274, 276–78 (Berr and Febrve, eds.) 290
318 index of subjects
Roman Catholicism 31, 183–85, Theorizing Faith (Areck and Stringer) 241
187–88, 206 “Theory of Religion and Method . . .”
Rules of Sociological Method, The (Byrne) 125
(Durkheim) 291, 296 Therevada Buddhism 92–93, 123
“Theses on Method” (Lincoln) 248
Sacred and profane (Eliade) 112 Tibetan Buddhism 232
Sacred Books of the East, The (Müller, “To Find Our Lives” (film) 135
ed.) 122, 221 Torah (Hebrew Bible) ix, 32, 33, 44,
Sacred objects 66–67 167, 170, 177
Sacred space 63, 140 Totemism 282–83, 286–87
Sacred time 63, 140 “Trial of Pagans, The” (Dhareshwar)
Sacred tree xi, 53, 285 123
Sacred, the 67 Trinitarianism 12, 183–187
Sacrifice 40, 288
Sacrifice (Hubert and Mauss) 288 Ultimate Realities (Neville) 77
Savage Systems (Chidester) 121
Scripture 40, 64–65, 186, 190, Vedas 24, 32, 33, 44
199–200, 203, 206-07, 212
Sermon on the Mount 170–71 We Jews and Jesus (Sanmel) 52
Shi’ism 130 “What the New York World’s Fair . . .”
Shinto 118, 136 (Todd) 124
“Sick soul” (Wm. James) 205 “Who Invented Hinduism?” (Lorenzen)
Sikhism 31, 133–34 122
Social sciences 75, 97, 111, 251, 283 “Wizard of Oz, The” (film) 28, 135
Sociology 97, 206, 230, 283, 291 Woman Who Laughed at God (Kirsch) 243
Soteriology 24, 45 Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical
Spirit of capitalism (Weber) 7, n. 10, Beasts (Doniger) 125
12, 13 World Parliament of Religions
Spirit possession 207, 245 123–25, 136, 145
Stromata (Clement of Alexandria) 145 World religions 56–57, 117–18,
Student’s Guide to the Long Search 124–25, 127, 129–31, 246
(Bouwsma and Gentle) 129 World Religions in Boston (Eck, ed.) 126
Structuralism 229 “World Religions” (Young) 124
Symposium (Plato) 149–72 Worldmaking (Paden) xi, 59–75
Syncretism 5 World’s Parliament of Religions, The
Systema Naturae (Linnaeus) 84 (Barrows) 120
Worldview 47, 101, 246
“Taking Sides and Opening Doors” Worldviews (Smart) 18
(Brooks) 37
Talmud 177 Zen Buddhism 232