The Science of Religion: A Defence (Supplements to Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 12) 9004381805, 9789004381803

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The Science of Religion: A Defence

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Supplements to Method & Theory in the Study of Religion Editorial Board Aaron W. Hughes (University of Rochester) Russell McCutcheon (University of Alabama) Kocku von Stuckrad (University of Groningen)

Volume 12

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/smtr

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The Science of Religion: A Defence Essays by Donald Wiebe

Edited, Introduced, and Critiqued by

Anthony J. Palma

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Cover illustration: Artwork by Celina Johnson. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wiebe, Donald, 1943- author. Title: The science of religion : a defence : essays by Donald Wiebe / edited, introduced, and critiqued by Anthony J. Palma. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2019. | Series: Supplements to method & theory in the study of religion, ISSN 2214-3270 ; Volume 12 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018035502 (print) | LCCN 2018038651 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004385061 (Ebook) | ISBN 9789004381803 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Religion–Methodology. Classification: LCC BL41 (ebook) | LCC BL41 .W54 2018 (print) | DDC 200.71–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018035502

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2214-3270 ISBN 978-90-04-38180-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-38506-1 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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In Memory of R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (1924-2015) Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mentor and Friend

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Contents Citations

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Introduction 1 Anthony J. Palma

Part 1 Religion, Religious Studies, and Science 1

Explanation and the Scientific Study of Religion Donald Wiebe

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2

Is a Science of Religion Possible? Donald Wiebe

3

Theory in the Study of Religion Donald Wiebe

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Beyond the Skeptic and the Devotee: Reductionism in the Scientific Study of Religion 93 Donald Wiebe

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Postscript: on Method, Metaphysics, and Reductionism Donald Wiebe

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63

102

Part 2 Conceptual Debates in the Academic Study of Religion 6

The Role of Belief in the Study of Religion: a Response to Wilfred Cantwell Smith 115 Donald Wiebe

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Disciplinary Axioms, Boundary Conditions, and the Academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals and Dawson 130 Donald Wiebe

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On the Transformation of ‘Belief’ and the Domestication of ‘Faith’ in the Academic Study of Religion 143 Donald Wiebe

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‘Understanding’ in Religious Studies: a Gnostic Aberration in the Modern Study of Religion? 163 Donald Wiebe

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Beyond Thick Descriptions and Interpretive Sciences: Explaining Religious Meaning 191 Donald Wiebe

Part 3 In Defence of a Science of Religion 11

‘Why the Academic Study of Religion?’: Motive and Method in the Study of Religion 213 Donald Wiebe

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‘Taking Religion Seriously’: Eric Sharpe’s Comparative Religion – History as Apology 230 Donald Wiebe

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On Theological Resistance to the Scientific Study of Religion: Values and the Value-Free Study of Religion 238 Donald Wiebe

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Dissolving Rationality: the Anti-Science Phenomenon and Its Implications for the Study of Religion 256 Donald Wiebe

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Transcending Religious Language: towards the Recovery of an Academic Agenda 274 Donald Wiebe Conclusion. An Encroaching Spirituality: What Hope Remains for a Science of Religion? 283 Donald Wiebe

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Critique. The Preconceptions of a ‘Science of Religion’ Anthony J. Palma

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Reply. Preconceptions about a Science of Religion? My Response to Anthony Palma 322 Donald Wiebe Index

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Citations Part 1 – Religion, Religious Studies, and Science 1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

“Is a Science of Religion Possible?” Studies in Religion, 7, 1978; 5-17. “Explanation and the Scientific Study of Religion,” Religion, 5, 1975; 33-52. “Theory in the Study of Religion,” Religion, 13, 1983; 283-309. “Beyond the Sceptic and the Devotee: Reductionism in the Scientific Study of Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 52, 1984; 157-165. (Reprinted in T. Idinopulos and E. Yonan [eds], Religion and Reductionism, [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994; 108-116]). “Postscript: On Method, Metaphysics, and Reductionism,” T. A. Idinopulos and E. A. Yonan (eds), Religion and Reductionism: Essays on Eliade, Segal, and the Challenge of the Social Sciences for the Study of Religion, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994; 117-126).

Part 2 – Conceptual Debates in the Academic Study of Religion 6. 7. 8.

9.

10.

“Disciplinary Axioms, Boundary Conditions, and the Academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals and Dawson,” Religion, 20, 1990; 17-29. “The Role of Belief in the Study of Religion: A Response to Wilfred Cantwell Smith,” Numen, 26, 1979; 231-249. “On the Transformation of ‘Belief’ and the Domestication of ‘Faith’ in the Academic Study of Religion,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 4, 1992; 47-67. “‘Understanding’ in Religious Studies: A Gnostic Aberration in the Modern Study of Religion,” Fu-Jen Religious Studies, 2002.6; 15-56 (Chinese translation - 57-85). “Beyond Thick Descriptions and Interpretive Sciences: Explaining Religious Meaning,” René Gothóni (ed.), How to do Comparative Religion: Three Ways, Many Goals, (Berlin: Walter DeGruyter, 2005; 65-82).

Part 3 – In Defence of a Science of Religion 11. 12.

“Taking Religion Seriously: Eric Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History as Apology,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 1, 1989; 71-79. “Why the Academic Study of Religion? Motive and Method in the Study of Religion,” Religious Studies, 24, 1988; 403-413. (Reprinted, with a new concluding commentary, in Mikael Rothstein and Tim Jensen

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Citations

13.

14.

15.

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[eds], Secular Theories of Religion: A Selection of Recent Academic Perspectives, [Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen Tusculanum Press, 2000; 261-279]). “On Theological Resistance to the Scientific Study of Religion: Values and the Value-Free Study of Religion,” Człowiek i Wartości, A. Komendera, R. Padola, and M. Sliwa (eds), (Krakow: Wydanictwo Naukowe WSP, 1997; 131-145). “Dissolving Rationality: The Anti-Science Phenomenon and Its Implications for the Study of Religion,” J. S. Jensen and L. H. Martin (eds), Rationality in the Study of Religion, University of Aarhus Press, 1997; 167-183. “Transcending Religious Language: Towards the Recovery of an Academic Agenda,” Ugo Bianchi (ed), The Notion of ‘Religion’ in Comparative Research Proceedings of the XVIth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, (Rome: L’Erma Di Bretschneider, 1994; 905-912).

Conclusion 16.

“An Encroaching Spirituality: What Hope Remains for a Science of Religion” in Eva-Maria Glasbrenner and Christian Hackbarth-Johnson (eds.), Einheit der Wirklichkeiten: Festschrift anlässlich des 60. Geburtstags von Michael von Brück, Munich: 2009; 302-318.

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Introduction Anthony J. Palma

Structure The present collection of essays – The Science of Religion: A Defence – is divided into three parts. Part I identifies pertinent connections and/or disconnections between ‘Religion,’ ‘Religious Studies,’ and ‘Science.’ Part II explores conceptual debates in the academic study of religion. Part III outlines a series of arguments in defence of a scientific study of religion. By way of conclusion, ‘An Encroaching Spirituality: What Hope Remains for a Science of Religion?’ offers some final remarks on how, notwithstanding its future limitations, the quest for a science of religion can best be renewed. There is a logical progression to the ordering of these parts. We see a gradual movement from a sympathy for a more ‘theological’ approach to Religious Studies; to a questioning of foundational terms (e.g. ‘belief,’ ‘understanding,’ and ‘meaning’); to a firm commitment to a more ‘scientific’ methodology; to a final realization that academic disciplines outside the boundaries of Religious Studies are better positioned at advancing the cause of a true ‘science of religion.’ The steps along this path are clearly and thoughtfully articulated. If the test of intellectual honesty is the capacity, without betraying one’s core convictions, to revisit the assumptions that legitimate one’s premises and conclusions – to refine and accept corrections to one’s arguments on account of more persuasive reasoning and/or evidence – then Professor Wiebe is in good standing. A brief summary of the contents of The Science of Religion: A Defence follows.

Part I: Religion, Religious Studies, and Science Part I of The Science of Religion: A Defence identifies pertinent connections and/or disconnections between ‘Religion,’ ‘Religious Studies,’ and ‘Science’ and includes, in chronological order, ‘Explanation and the Scientific Study of Religion’ (1975), ‘Is a Science of Religion Possible?’ (1978), ‘Theory in the Study of Religion’ (1983), ‘Beyond the Sceptic and the Devotee: Reductionism in the Scientific Study of Religion’ (1984), and ‘Postscript: On Method, Metaphysics, and Reductionism’ (1994).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_002Donald

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We begin, then, with Professor Wiebe’s 1975 essay on ‘Explanation and the Scientific Study of Religion.’ His primary focus here is with a scientific study of religion that moves beyond mere description and classification to explanation and theory. The question of explanation cannot be evaded since “without explanation there is no understanding and without understanding one has no science.” Explanation for the sake of explanation is insufficient, then; what is needed is explanation for the sake of “understanding” – a term not yet unpacked. “Explanations,” he writes, “are ‘reasoned accounts’ of initially puzzling aspects of the world.” For Wiebe, strong explanations are objectively grounded in logical or quasi-logical criteria, whereas weak explanations are subjectively grounded in personal or psychological criteria. Wiebe’s terminology indicates a clear preference for the former over the latter – but not without qualification. He further distinguishes between participant explanations and observer explanations, noting that the former “are not always preferable” and “must always be seen, in the first instance, as legitimate rivals” to the latter. Wishing to avoid a philosophical reductionism, Wiebe is more than willing to admit theological explanations as genuine explanations. A paradox emerges, however. If a science of religion is to proceed, it must, on the one hand, be ‘critical,’ yet if it is to do justice to its subject matter, it cannot, on the other hand, adopt an a priori reductionistic framework. As Wiebe puts it, “[a]lthough a phenomenological description of religion – of various religious traditions – may require a bracketing of valuation, judgment, issues of truth and falsity and the like, these issues cannot in the final analysis be left out of the picture.” Philosophy remains a key factor in the scientific study of religion in determining the legitimacy of various explanations – both theistic and atheistic. Wiebe’s 1978 article ‘Is a Science of Religion Possible?’ represents one of his earliest attempts to bring methodological cohesiveness to a science founded but not yet fully conceived, nearly a century ago, by Max Müller, Cornelis Tiele, and Chantepie de la Saussaye. Wiebe admits agreement on three points: “first, that the science of religion is not itself a religious enterprise or undertaking and is, consequently, radically distinct from theology; second, that the science of religion is an autonomous discipline alongside the other social sciences; and third [that] the other social sciences as applied specifically to religious phenomena form an essential ‘aspect’ of the ‘science of religion.’” One detects a certain ‘anxiety of influence’ between Wiebe and two of his interlocutors throughout his text, between the explicit, anti-scientific theology of Wilfred Cantwell Smith of McGill University and the implicit, pro-scientific theology of Ninian Smart of Lancaster University, both comparative religionists, the former a rival, the latter a mentor. At this early stage in his academic career, Wiebe was not yet prepared to depart from Theology altogether. “To define Re-

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Introduction

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ligious Studies as a science so as to exclude all theological ‘elements,’ it seems to me,” he asserts, “is no more justifiable than the positivist attempt to define all philosophy so as to exclude metaphysics.” He adds, however, in a partial foreshadowing of his future position, “[t]hat [if] the study of religion is properly characterized as ‘theological,’ in the broad sense of the term, [this] does not, however, imply that it is uncritical.” The truth of religion and the truth about religion are not synonymous. The primary point of ‘Is a Science of Religion Possible?’ is that the possibility of truth rests in both reductionistic and supernatural accounts of religion, and that neither of these two world views should have cognitive superiority over the other. ‘Theory in the Study of Religion’ (1983) examines the place, value, and future of ‘theory’ in the discipline of Religious Studies. Wiebe argues that the ongoing debates in the field, between the historians/phenomenologists and the ‘theoreticians,’ are largely methodological. As outlined in Eric Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History (1975), whereas Darwinian evolution was once thought to be the principle of unity in Religious Studies, today, there is no single methodological approach accepted by all. According to Wiebe, one obstacle for the realization of ‘a science of religion’ is a certain ‘theory-shyness’ on the part of many scholars of religion who, in some cases, “entirely eschew theoretical accounts or explanations of religions and religious phenomena.” Wiebe, on the side of the ‘theoreticians,’ holds that the academic study of religion is simply incomplete without theory. He writes polemically that attacks on reductionism by historians and phenomenologists are “becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from apologies for transcendence.” Combined with a certain methodological frustration, a bolder, more pronounced commitment to ‘a science of religion’ is revealed here. Wiebe laments the loose connotation associated with the term ‘theory’ in the Humanities and Social Sciences, (e.g. “a solution to a problem or a generalization that ‘goes beyond the facts’”) and points to a more precise usage of the term in the Natural Sciences, one that accords with empirical observation, testability, and explanation. ‘Theories’ for Wiebe are “more general kinds of explanations that account for empirical generalizations and laws which, in turn, account for ‘the facts.’” Inasmuch as religion is embodied in social life, it is intersubjectively available to cognitive exploration; theory in Religious Studies, he argues, “is, and must be, social scientific theory.” Though Wiebe admits that there is little agreement on either the place or value of ‘theory’ in the discipline, he nonetheless maintains that there are theoretical elements (e.g. classifications, typologies, generalizations, etc.) in the academic study of religion, that successful explanatory theories of religion have and continue to be formulated by students of religion, that there is every indication that fruitful theoretical pursuits will continue in the future,

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and that humanistic attempts to squash the natural process toward greater scientific systematization in the field seem futile at worst, a sad misunderstanding at best. Wiebe turns to Carl-Reinhold Brakenhielm’s How Philosophy Shapes Theories of Religion (1975) for help in establishing credible criteria for a scientific (i.e. theoretical) study of religion. Such a study: “i) ought to be built upon an acceptable general philosophical view, ii) ought to be intersubjectively testable, iii) ought to be consistent and tenable, iv) ought to be simple, v) ought to have wide scope, and vi) ought to embrace a correct analysis of religious beliefs belonging to the scope of the theory.” Wiebe concludes, with a dose of realism, that he does not expect such a proposal to gain wide acceptance or to escape critical analysis. Wiebe’s ‘Beyond the Sceptic and the Devotee: Reductionism in the Scientific Study of Religion’ (1984) examines Robert Segal’s ‘In Defense of Reductionism’ (1983). Wiebe summarizes Segal’s position as arguing that “the only proper scientific study of religion is a reductionistic one.” While in sympathy with Segal’s methodological stance, Wiebe dissents from Segal’s defense of the sceptic over against the devotee insofar as it assumes an asymmetry between reductionist and nonreductionist accounts of religious phenomena. Wiebe contends that the reductionist-nonreductionist debate can be ‘bracketed-out’ of the search for a theoretical framework for the scientific study of religion. “[A] defense of reductionism in the study of religion need not assume such an asymmetry; it need only be shown to be a possibility both for devotees and for sceptics,” he writes. Segal doubts whether reductionistic interpretations are possible for believers, or conversely, whether nonreductionistic interpretations are possible for nonbelievers. Though Wiebe agrees that the psychology of commitment is similar on both sides of the fence, he points out that Segal’s argument that reductionist and nonreductionist accounts of religious phenomena are incommensurable only holds under the assumption that sceptics are to remain nonbelieving interpreters and that devotees are to remain believing interpreters. If ‘apostasy’ is an option for the devotee, then so too is ‘going native’ an option for the sceptic. Both options are possible. Wiebe views Segal’s naturalism as not only methodologically atheistic, but as “atheism tout court.” Put differently, Wiebe rejects the claim that atheism is itself a necessary prerequisite for methodological atheism, and affirms the claim that methodological atheism is available to both the sceptic and the devotee. He ends with the recognition that “I do not, at least for the present, see the reductionist approach in the study of religion to be superior in every respect to the nonreductionistic one, although it has some peculiar advantages that must not be ignored (italics mine)” adding that “I think the reductionist approach shows a great deal of promise for the future of the academic study of religion.”

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Wiebe’s ‘Postscript: On Method, Metaphysics, and Reductionism’ (1994) is the ‘hinge’ in Part One, and marks a clear shift from his prior commitment to methodological pluralism, (as evidenced in the aforementioned four pieces), to a new commitment to methodological monism (i.e. reductionism). The word ‘postscript’ in the title refers to the article at hand being a rejoinder to his ‘Beyond the Sceptic and the Devotee: Reductionism in the Scientific Study of Religion’ (1984). Wiebe acknowledges certain shortcomings with his arguments in ‘Beyond the Sceptic and the Devotee’ in light of Segal’s published criticism of them in the reprinting of ‘In Defense of Reductionism’ in Religion and the Social Sciences: Essays on the Confrontation (1989). Wiebe discloses at the outset that he wrote ‘Beyond the Sceptic and the Devotee,’ in part, to refute “vehement opposition to all reductionist approaches to the study of religion by the majority of students presently working within the field” and that “the point of [his] argument was, and still is, that the student of religion must, ideally speaking, bracket all questions of commitment and advocacy on entering the profession and therefore is, as an academic student of religion, neither a believer (devotee) nor a nonbeliever (sceptic).” After addressing the interpretive ambiguities, internal incoherence, and seeming inconsistency of a number of Segal’s counter-arguments, (particularly Segal’s tendency to dwell on psychological/metaphysical concerns at the expense of methodological concerns), Wiebe reveals that “it seems to me now, as will soon become apparent, that only such a reductionistic framework is appropriate for the scientific study of religion. On this score I am in agreement with Segal, although I would put the matter differently than does he. I would not, that is, differentiate believer from nonbeliever but rather talk of rules of method that would apply to all students of religion indifferently.” These statements stand in marked contrast to Wiebe’s earlier support for methodological pluralism. They indicate a turn in his thinking. “[W]e have more work to do before we can consider the problem properly resolved,” he adds.

Part II: Conceptual Debates in the Academic Study of Religion Part II of The Science of Religion: A Defence explores conceptual debates in the academic study of religion and includes, in chronological order, ‘The Role of Belief in the Study of Religion: A Response to W.C. Smith’ (1979), ‘Disciplinary Axioms, Boundary Conditions, and the Academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals & Dawson’ (1990), ‘On the Transformation of Belief and the Domestication of Faith in the Academic Study of Religion’ (1993), ‘Understanding in Religious Studies: A Gnostic Aberration in the Modern Study of Religion’

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(2002), and ‘Beyond Thick Description and Interpretive Sciences: Explaining Religious Meaning’ (2005). In ‘The Role of Belief in the Study of Religion: A Response to W.C. Smith’ (1979), Professor Wiebe defends the use of the concept of ‘belief’ in the scholarly study of religion against the methodological arguments put forward by Wilfred Cantwell Smith in Belief and History (1977). Smith makes two claims in rejecting the interpretive category of ‘belief’: i) that the concept of ‘belief’ is not a biblical concept and is thus inapplicable to Christianity and ii) that the original meaning of ‘believing’ was ‘having faith,’ not ‘holding an opinion.’ On his reading of Smith, Wiebe sees both of these claims as supporting an essentially subjective understanding of religion, one relying on the personal experience of the individual rather than on objective criteria such as rites, rituals, social institutions, and/or doctrines. According to Smith, faith is a gift from God, whereas belief, which follows faith, is given by one’s culture. “To have reversed this order is a modern and tragic heresy,” he writes. Smith associates faith with ‘recognition,’ ‘awareness,’ and/or ‘insight.’ These terms are too tendentious, too esoteric, too unclear for Wiebe’s scientific liking: “Faith is from God – the expression of that faith [i.e. belief] from one’s culture [according to Smith]. But the paradox is obvious – how can we know that the expressions are in fact expressions of the faith? How ‘faithful’ (i.e. accurate) must those expressions be to the real inner faith to be expressions of that faith? It is difficult to conceive, if expression has any intrinsic connection to the faith it expresses, how faith and expression have such different sources.” Whereas God-given faith is subjective and closed to scientific analysis, culture-given belief is objective and open to scientific analysis. As Wiebe puts it, “[s]cientific analysis, that is, can treat religion only but cannot get at faith, for faith is not an object that can be examined.” Other scholars of religion, such as Robert Bellah, argue that the interpretive category of ‘belief’ fundamentally distorts the metaphysical essence of religion. Wiebe finds this claim equally wanting. “Christian thought,” he observes, “has always had a theoretical character – a concern for the articulation of a set of beliefs explanatory of the world in which it finds itself.” These beliefs, in turn, are adopted in particular lifestyles and/or behavioral dispositions that are empirically observable. In other words, both the theory and practice of Christianity are academically accessible within a naturalized epistemological framework. In the end, Wiebe finds the paradigmatic substitution of the category of ‘belief’ with that of ‘faith’ “counter-intuitive” and “unwarranted.” “Indeed,” he warns, “the dangers of subjectivism inherent in this kind of approach to the study of religion are very real.” If the purpose of the academic study of religion is “the accumulation of intersubjectively testable knowledge of religions,” as Wiebe assumes, the interpretive category of ‘belief’ must be maintained. Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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In ‘Disciplinary Axioms, Boundary Conditions, and the Academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals & Dawson’ (1990), Wiebe critiques attempts by Daniel Pals and Lorne Dawson to bridge the gap between humanistic and scientific approaches to the study of religion. While both are in agreement that a retheologizing of Religious Studies hinders such a rapproachment, they are equally concerned about Wiebe’s arguments in support of the scientific study of religion. Wiebe is left unpersuaded by either critique, however, and is convinced that his original arguments are “essentially sound even if in need of further clarification and extension.” Both Pals and Dawson characterize Religious Studies as methodologically autonomous from other disciplines in the academy in that Religious Studies assumes the existence of and encounter with transcendental realities. Wiebe rejects this differentiating assumption, on the basis that “the postulation of some transcendent, supernatural reality, (whether explicitly or implicitly), [would] distort the academic study of religion.” For Wiebe, Religious Studies is a structurally distinct science rather than an autonomous academic discipline radically different from other disciplines in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences. The claim that Religious Studies is concerned with understanding supernatural phenomena, that is, with transcendent realities ‘beyond’ the material world, would exclude, according to Wiebe, a priori the possibility of reductionistic explanation. Such an exclusion would render Religious Studies virtually indistinguishable from Theology. Rather than facilitating a convergence and/or rapproachment between humanistic and scientific approaches to the study of religion, the arguments put forward by Pals and Dawson, would, on Wiebe’s account, lead, instead, to the unwitting convergence of Religious Studies and Theology and to “the academic legitimation of a variety of crypto-theologies under the banner of Religious Studies.” The one academic boundary Wiebe is prepared to defend, it would appear, is that which separates Religious Studies from Theology. ‘On the Transformation of Belief and the Domestication of Faith in the Academic Study of Religion’ (1993) revisits Wiebe’s article on ‘The Role of Belief in the Study of Religion: A Response to W.C. Smith’ (1979) and Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s published reply to it in ‘Belief: A Reply to a Response’ (1980) where he argued that Wiebe’s critique was based on a “massive misunderstanding” of his position. Wiebe makes use of the opportunity to correct such misunderstanding, while admitting that genuine differences still remain. A clarification of the role of ‘belief,’ he argues, “could make an important contribution to determining how the academic study of religion ought to proceed.” According to Wiebe, Smith had argued in Belief and History (1977) that the meaning of ‘belief’ had radically changed over time, (i.e. from a medieval connotation of ‘having faith’ to a modern connotation of ‘holding an opinion’), that the true meaning of religion is to be found in the former meaning not in the latter, Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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and that an excessive preoccupation by students of Religious Studies with the modern connotation of ‘belief’ is positively misguided because ‘belief’ as ‘holding an opinion’ was never a central concept in traditional religions. Whereas Smith interprets the change in meaning as “degeneration,” Wiebe interprets the change as “development” unless, he adds, “one assumes a particular ontology in which the essence of religion precludes such development a priori.” Though Wiebe is in agreement with Smith that an ambiguous use of the concept of ‘belief’ is detrimental to the academic study of religion and that the modern meaning of ‘belief’ as ‘holding an opinion’ was, for the most part, peripheral to traditional religious self-understanding, he disagrees with Smith that the modern concept of ‘belief’ is somehow useless or misleading. “Even if believing in the modern sense is not a religious act or injunction,” writes Wiebe, “it is still nevertheless something religious people do. And it is wholly appropriate, therefore, for students of religion to take account of this fact; and they cannot do that if the use of the concept of belief is prohibited.” Wiebe attributes the divergence on the question of ‘belief’ between he and Smith to differing epistemological assumptions. There is no sharp dichotomy between knowing and believing for Wiebe, as there is for Smith. Wiebe interprets Smith as espousing a classical notion of truth, (antithetical to the modern sciences), where ‘truth’ is a moral and spiritual disposition found in persons, not only in propositions. From Wiebe’s vantage point, Smith is the consummate insider when it comes to the academic study of religion insofar as he implies that an understanding of ‘religious truth’ is only accessible to the devotee who has privileged access to its meaning and that outsider understandings of religious phenomena by the sceptic are, by implication, excluded. Wiebe reinforces this claim with a reference to The Meaning and End of Religion (1962) where Smith writes that “the whole path and substance of religious life lies in its relation to what cannot be observed,” and that “the student’s first responsibility is to recognize that there is always and in principle more in any man’s faith than any other man can see.” According to Wiebe, if religion is reduced to what cannot be observed, (notwithstanding that what cannot be observed could amount to misperception, illusion, and/or delusion), then the academic study of religion “disappears in favour of discourse about the Transcendent,” and inevitably renders Religious Studies indistinguishable from Theology (i.e. from ‘faith seeking understanding’). Just as science and religion are “incommensurable modes of thought” for Wiebe, so too are Religious Studies and Theology. ‘Understanding in Religious Studies: A Gnostic Aberration in the Modern Study of Religion’ (2002), the lengthiest piece in this volume, argues that the concept of ‘understanding’ used in modern Religious Studies is a cognitive aberration in that it is primarily gnostic, rather than epistemic, in nature. Pro-

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fessor Wiebe opens his paper with a bit of intellectual history, distinguishing between pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment conceptions of reason, between reason as ‘a right path to virtue’ and reason as ‘a non-moral instrument of empirical inquiry – knowledge for the sake of knowledge.’ Wiebe sees the latter post-Enlightenment conception of reason as critical of traditional authority (i.e. of Theology) and as paving the way for “an objective, neutral, and universalistic discourse [or mode of inquiry] about the world, both natural and social, that now characterizes science in the modern academic setting.” He then writes, revealingly, about how the shift in academic nomenclature, since the 1960s, from the ‘Sciences of Religion’ to ‘Religious Studies,’ has affected contemporary university curricula, and how the two aforementioned conceptions of reason are at stake in the shift. By ‘Sciences of Religion,’ he adds in a footnote, he is referring “to the various disciplines ‘used’ in making sense of religious phenomena, including (but not limited to) history, philology, archaeology, and anthropology.” This term was, he implies, far clearer than the more ambiguous designation of ‘Religious Studies’ which “has been employed so broadly that it appears to include virtually every kind of study of religion undertaken in any and every post-secondary institution of education – religious or secular – while simultaneously suggesting that it is a new kind of academic enterprise, methodologically distinct from those ‘Sciences of Religion’ already in existence in the university curriculum before Religious Studies arrived on the scene.” The fact that ‘Religious Studies’ continues to be used interchangeably with ‘the academic study of religion’ and/or with ‘the scholarly study of religion,’ the fact that the main institutional apparatus of the discipline in North America, the American Academy of Religion (A.A.R.), welcomes, in a post-modern spirit, a wide range of epistemic ‘interest groups,’ the fact that dictionaries and encyclopedias of religion offer little clarity on what ‘understanding’ religious phenomena ought to be, and the fact that recent books, such as Steven M. Wasserstrom’s Religion After Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos (1999), confirm the extent to which influential post-war historians of religion have, by way of their meta-historical and religio-theological agendas, abandoned, and indeed undermined, the scientific study of religion around the world, only heightens the overall confusion. What is fundamentally at stake here, Wiebe contends, is the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of two kinds of ‘knowing’ – ‘gnostic knowing’ and ‘epistemic knowing.’ According to Wiebe, gnostic knowing “is special in that it does not rest simply upon one’s study and investigation but upon revelation from a transcendent knower, and it requires the human knower to be especially prepared in order to receive it” whereas ‘epistemic knowing’ “is not esoteric and does not involve a ‘rite of passage’ in the sense indicated above, for in this

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mode attention is centred on what is known rather than on the knower.” For Wiebe, only “propositional claims about states of affairs in the world [are] genuine knowledge claims.” While he is strongly committed to epistemic knowing in Religious Studies, he is well aware that the vast majority of scholars in the field operate within a gnostic paradigm. In lieu of a disciplinary framework that encompasses both kinds of knowing, the gnostic and the epistemic – a framework that in Wiebe’s mind is contradictory and therefore intellectually incoherent – Wiebe sees the new goal of ‘understanding’ in contemporary Religious Studies as a false reconciliation. Differently put, ‘understanding’ in Religious Studies cannot be ‘in-between’ gnostic knowing and epistemic knowing. “[T]his ‘in-between’ notion of understanding,” he argues, “is gnostic in character [and] therefore inappropriate to the modern academic study of religion … such ‘understanding’ is indistinguishable from religious ‘knowledge’ itself.” ‘Beyond Thick Description and Interpretive Sciences: Explaining Religious Meaning’ (2005) considers whether the disenchantment of the world through scientific reductionism can properly account for ‘meaning’ in religion or whether the transition from mysterious affirmation to mundane explanation ‘explains religion away.’ Citing Mark A. Schneider’s Culture and Enchantment (1993), Wiebe points to the anthropological works of Clifford Geertz (on Balinese ritual) and Claude Lévi-Strauss (on Orphic mythology) as exemplars of “methodological vacillation between naturalism and edification, in which the meaning or significance of a cultural phenomenon is and is not referential.” The academic study of religion does not relate well to such vacillation, argues Wiebe. He places the matter at hand in historical perspective. Following the work of Eric J. Sharpe, Wiebe acknowledges Charles Darwin as the true founder of the modern scientific study of religion. It was Darwin who transformed the study of religion “to the altogether this-worldly categories of history, progress, development, and evolution,” and, by way of his theory of evolution, offered “a guiding principle of method.” Evolution as a guiding principle of method, however, was discredited in the early decades of the twentieth century. As Steven Pinker puts it in The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, “Darwin’s theory of evolution was commonly misinterpreted as an explanation of intellectual and moral progress rather than an explanation of how living things adapt to an ecological niche.” This, for Wiebe, left the scientific study of religion open to a variety of “religious, ethical, and political agendas,” including those championed by critical social theorists more committed to “human liberation” than to “the search for knowledge.” These scholars of religion have, according to Wiebe, betrayed the Darwinian cause. A rediscovery of the evolutionary principle in the academic study of religion is needed, he argues, to counter an anti-intellectual activism. Promis-

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ing pathways into Darwinian explanations of scientific phenomena remain ill explored. Wiebe recovers Jane Ellen Harrison’s essay on ‘The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion’ (1909) to map the way forward. Harrison had connected Darwinism to the primitive-to-civilized social evolution of religion (i.e. to evolutionary psychology) and to the emergence of a religious worldview from the development of human mental capacities (i.e. to cognitive science). “We have henceforth to ask,” writes Harrison, “not when was a religion revealed or what was the revelation, but how did religious phenomena arise and develop.” Wiebe rejects the sharp divide, traditionally held, between the Naturwissenschaften and the Geisteswissenschaften, between the Natural Sciences and the Humanities. He suggests that the concept of ‘meaning’ is subsumed when both scholarly dispensations are integrated. The potential for causal and epistemological integration is echoed in Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995) and E.O. Wilson’s Consilience (1998). Dennett writes that “all the achievements of human culture – language, art, religion, ethics, science itself – are themselves artifacts [of] the same fundamental process … and all their powers must have an ultimately ‘mechanical’ explanation.” Wilson writes that “[t]he main thrust of the consilience world view … is that culture and hence the unique qualities of the human species will make complete sense only when linked in causal explanation to the natural sciences [especially] [b]iology [which] is the most proximate and hence relevant of the scientific disciplines.” As advised by Dennett and Wilson, the crossing of disciplinary boundaries is a necessary condition for what Wiebe refers to as “a proper understanding of mind and culture.” In short, in striving for theoretical sophistication and academic credibility – and, in the process, further demarcation from the realm of Theology – the future of the scientific study of religion ought to recognize its deep dependency on the Natural and Social Sciences.

Part III: In Defence of a Science of Religion Part III of The Science of Religion: A Defence outlines a series of arguments in support of a scientific study of religion, and includes, in chronological order, ‘Why the Academic Study of Religion? Motive and Method in the Study of Religion’ (1988), ‘Taking Religion Seriously: Eric Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History as Apology’ (1989), ‘Transcending Religious Language: Towards the Recovery of an Academic Agenda’ (1990), ‘On Theological Resistance to the Scientific Study of Religion: Values and the Value-free Study of Religion’ (1997), and ‘Dissolving Rationality: the Anti-Science Phenomenon and its Implications for the Study of Religion’ (1997).

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In ‘Why the Academic Study of Religion? Motive and Method in the Study of Religion’ (1988) Professor Wiebe argues that one’s motivation in the academic study of religion is closely intertwined with one’s methodology, and that this bears important implications for the way in which the subject ought to be taught in a university setting. Referencing Max Weber’s Science as a Vocation – a piece much admired by Wiebe – Wiebe argues that the academic study of religion is and ought to be a vocation, that is, a scientific vocation. Such a study has pragmatic value in itself, is open to all (including, for example the ‘Marxist atheist’), and does not depend upon (or renounce) a devotee’s belief that the claims of a given religion are cognitively ‘true.’ A student of the academic study of religion may very well have the search for ‘ultimate meaning’ as his/her primary motive, but that search ought not to be intended for, projected onto, or take the place of, the methodological requirement of what is, in essence, a scientific discipline. While it is certainly true that the rights of the student must be respected, it is also true that the framework of scientific understanding within which the academic study of religion takes place must be similarly respected. Unlike Theology, the academic study of religion does not presuppose ‘faith seeking understanding.’ Neither is a department of Religious Studies, in the words of philosopher Bryan Magee, “a department of Magic.” If science, as defined by Weber, is the “self-clarification of ideas and knowledge of interrelated facts,” then the science of religion must be similarly disposed. It must, according to Wiebe, aim at “public knowledge of public facts,” and not be used as an instrument “in the achievement of [idiosyncratic] religious, cultural, political, or other ends.” A scientific ‘understanding’ of religion as a human activity involves the collection, description, classification, and analysis of particular religious data (e.g. beliefs, rituals, art, music, architecture, etc.), as well as general explanations that account for that data mediated through intersubjectively testable statements. No student should have ‘privileged access’ to the data at hand. [The interior experience of the religious believer, for example, need not be excluded from the conversation, (as in positivistic discussions of Skinnerian behaviouralism), but it must nonetheless be made publically available]. Wiebe argues that there is an “epistemic morality” implicit in the scientific study of religion that concerns the internal structure of knowledge itself, and not the “external effects of knowledge” or “the way knowledge is put to use.” A commitment to an ‘epistemic morality’ has pedagogical implications. “The lecture rooms of the university are wholly inappropriate for the propagation of either one’s political or religious agendas,” asserts Wiebe. In the end, Wiebe’s methodological end game is ‘objectivity.’ He sees this end not only as most appropriate for the scientific study of religion, but as a bulwark against radical relativism in the modern academy.

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‘Taking Religion Seriously: Eric Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History as Apology’ (1989) constitutes a short book review of Sharpe’s influential history of the field’s representative scholars, debates, movements, associations, societies, and journals. Wiebe reads Sharpe’s account as an “apology of sorts” despite the acknowledgement in Sharpe’s preface that his history is primarily a “multi-disciplinary and non-confessional approach to the study of religion,” one that views religions as “phenomena to be observed, rather than as creeds to be followed.” According to Wiebe, Sharpe appears supportive of past attempts at reconciling Theology and Religious Studies in the academy, holds out the possibility for a desecularization and/or resacralization of the latter, and is rather ambiguous on the intellectual boundaries that should properly distinguish the two. Notwithstanding Sharpe’s support for the abandonment of institutional religious tests for academic employment, Wiebe argues that Sharpe’s historical narrative both implies “the necessity for belief in the existence of a supernatural or transcendent reality” and laments the neutralization of “personal religious conviction” in the academic study of religion. Sharpe is less concerned overall, then, with “gaining knowledge about religion” than he is with “seeking ‘religious knowledge,’” and his history of the study of religion is reflective of the current “crisis of identity” afflicting not only scholars working in the field of Religious Studies, but the very field itself. ‘Transcending Religious Language: Towards the Recovery of an Academic Agenda’ (1990) deepens Wiebe’s commitment to the recovery of a scientific agenda for the academic study of religion. On the way to said recovery he quotes, interestingly, from the rules for participation in the published Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions held in Oxford in 1908: “If any reader or speaker … contravenes the fundamental rule of the Congress which excludes confessional and dogmatic discussions, the chairman of the meeting shall promptly intervene.” Wiebe includes this excerpt as an indication of how the future of the academic study of religion can learn from its past. His historical spadework includes further critique of Eric Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History (1986). Though Wiebe approves of Sharpe’s account of the institutional legitimation of the scientific study of religion as having been effected by a break from a traditional surrender to transcendental (i.e. theological) authority, and of Sharpe’s observation that the current trend in Religious Studies is to ignore that such a break had ever occurred, Wiebe is less enthusiastic about Sharpe’s claim that secularization was never essential to the character of a scientific study of religion or distinguishable from the cause of ‘liberal religion’ because the field had never been “consistently de-theologized.” Wiebe reads this claim as support for a convergence between the scientific study of religion and Theology. “Though

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Sharpe himself may not have an overtly confessional agenda there is a general concern with the continued welfare of religion which it is assumed is essential to the continued welfare of humanity,” adds Wiebe. The implications of such an argument are especially significant in countries like the United States where public funding of religious instruction is constitutionally prohibited. The recovery of a scientific agenda for the academic study of religion extends further to the raison d’être of the field’s main institutional apparatus, the International Association of the History of Religions (I.A.H.R.). “There is need of serious reconsideration,” writes Wiebe, “of the insistence over the years that the Association remain an association of historians of religion and that the foundational methods remain philological, historical, and phenomenological and, therefore, essentially descriptive (idiographic) rather than theoretical (nomothetic).” Wiebe sees a persistent commitment to the former as opening the floodgates to a host of unwarranted “crypto-theological” agendas. As detailed in J. Samuel Preus’s Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud – a text Professor Wiebe continues to make use of in his course teaching alongside Eric Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History – were it not for the naturalistic framework of the 18th century Enlightenment, which allowed for the free criticism of religion, the academic study of religion would not have been born. For Enlightenment thinkers, religion is an aspect of culture like any other and can be studied in the same methodological light of the Natural Sciences. Religious Studies, in other words, was never a completely autonomous field; it largely grew out of a post-Enlightenment paradigm deeply wedded to the Natural Sciences. Wiebe notes that many scholars of religion have entered Religious Studies unaware of (or at least unclear about) the methodological implications of said historical development for their own teaching and research in the field. One of the ways in which the recovery of a scientific agenda for the academic study of religion can be realized, he suggests, is for contemporary scholars (and, indeed students) of religion to familiarize themselves with the history of the discipline to which they belong. ‘On Theological Resistance to the Scientific Study of Religion: Values and the Value-free Study of Religion’ (1997) critiques the views of Francis Schüssler Fiorenza on the role of theological discourse in the academic study of religion as expressed in two essays – ‘Theological and Religious Studies: The Contest of the Faculties’ (1991) and ‘Theology in the University’ (1993). Where Fiorenza sees a natural affinity between Theology and Religious Studies, Wiebe sees a clear demarcation between them. While Wiebe admits that Theology “does currently play a role in the academic study of religion in the modern university and especially so in North America,” it is a role he nonetheless rejects.

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He argues that the contemporary university should concern itself with what the Germans have called Wissenschaft (i.e. scientific knowledge) rather than with Bildung (i.e. moral formation). A concern for both objectives – a view articulated by Schüssler Fiorenza in his support for a complementary relationship between “methods of explanation” and “modes of understanding” – is intellectually incoherent, adds Wiebe. “The theologian,” writes Wiebe, “is not simply concerned with matters of description and explanation of religions or aspects thereof, but with engagement in the religious life in its interaction with the world in which it exists on the assumption that religion is, in some sense or other, true and good.” Wiebe adds that ‘religious life’ presupposes the existence of a transcendent reality, a reality beyond the reach of scientific investigation. Schüssler Fiorenza defends the distinctiveness of the Humanities and Social Sciences on the basis of a ‘double hermeneutic’ not found in the Natural Sciences, that is, whereas the Humanities and Social Sciences study both the externalities of embodied human behavior as well as the internalities of self-interpretation, the Natural Sciences do not. Wiebe rejects the ‘double hermeneutic’ distinction, and holds that it does not preclude an objective scientific study of religion. [In an interesting aside, he points to Fred Inglis’s Cultural Studies (1993) and the claim there that some Humanities disciplines – English literature, for example – have actually replaced Theology as culturally unifying forces in the secular, post-war university]. Wiebe’s reading of Schüssler Fiorenza involves a further distinction between an ‘engaged’ and ‘non-engaged’ study of religion, where an engaged study of religion is occupied with “meaning (i.e. salvation),” “virtue and justice,” and “the appropriation of visions of how to be human … which are always pervaded with personal judgments of value,” and a ‘non-engaged’ study of religion which is occupied with “an effort to understand the world as it is independent of human aspirations.” Schüssler Fiorenza finds the ‘non-engaged’ study of religion “truncated” whereas as Wiebe finds Schüssler Fiorenza’s ‘engaged’ study of religion “arbitrary.” A university professor is neither a guru nor a prophet, argues Wiebe, only a teacher. Ideological entanglements ought to be avoided in the modern research university since “the plurality of visions of the world available for promulgation are such as to overwhelm the university with perpetual ideological strife as the competing visions vie for the hearts and minds of students.” Wiebe wonders aloud about the dangers of giving equal voice to every possible vision of the world on university campuses with no criteria to judge which vision is more reasonable than another. The implication here is that a scientific disposition in the academic study of religion is more likely than a non-scientific (i.e. ideological) disposition to integrate the diverse intellectual pursuits of both students and faculty.

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‘Dissolving Rationality: the Anti-Science Phenomenon and its Implications for the Study of Religion’ (1997) reviews a number of recent studies on the postmodern critique of science by prominent intellectuals and the effect that critique has had on the academic study of religion. Wiebe argues, in the face of such critique, that the crisis for Religious Studies is no longer the maintenance of a scientific identity, but the loss of such an identity altogether. According to the postmodern critique, the practice of science is not a disinterested search for objective knowledge, but a political exercise that excludes socially marginalized groups. Wiebe’s review of the literature is exhaustive. According to Wiebe, Tom Sorell’s Scientism: Philosophy and the Infatuation of Science (1991) argues that ‘scientism’ is epistemologically arrogant and insensitive to broader cultural concerns such as meaningful participation in society. Mary Midgley’s Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and its Meaning (1992) claims that science, as one of many epistemological frameworks, neglects the need for spiritual understanding and a connection to what is ultimate. Steven Seidman’s and David G. Wagner’s Introduction to Postmodernism and Social Theory (1992) counsels that social scientists ought to abandon the search for theoretical explanation and instead turn to the writing of moral, social, and political studies, narratives of social development, and assorted genealogies. Jeffrey Alexander’s Fin de Siècle Social Theory (1995) contends that the duty of the social theorist is not merely to explain the world, but to interpret it, and that the tasks of explanation and interpretation are mutually inseparable. Wiebe sees Sorell, Midgley, Seidman, Wagner, and Alexander, as reflective of a general intellectual malaise in the culture, a malaise committed to an anti-science bias, one that invariably undermines a scientific study of religion. Wiebe’s analysis includes evaluation of the postmodern critique of science by three additional scholars – Huston Smith, Armin Geertz, and Ernest Gellner – who, unlike the aforementioned, directly relate postmodern theory to the study of religion. Wiebe is more persuaded by Gellner (his intellectual mentor) than he is by Smith or Geertz. In Wiebe’s reading, Smith’s ‘Postmodernism’s Impact on the Study of Religion’ (1990) defends a chastened form of science that has learned, from religious traditions, to respect the hybridity of reason and revelation. Geertz’s ‘Global Perspectives on Methodology in the Study of Religion’ (2000) proposes power-free ‘ethnohermeneutics’ as a conversational ‘third way’ between the ‘emic’ and the ‘etic’ (i.e. between a study of the subjective elements of culture and a study of the objective elements of same). Wiebe finds the efforts of both Smith and Geertz wanting in that the conjoining of both humanistic and scientific approaches to the study of religion only exacerbates the methodological challenges of postmodernism. Wiebe is more encouraged by Gellner’s analysis in Postmodernism, Reason, and Religion (1992), where Gell-

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ner writes that the postmodern critique of science, amounts “in effect [to] the abandonment of any serious attempt to give a reasonably precise, documented, and testable account of anything.” According to Wiebe, “Gellner goes on the attack against postmodernists and their claims that the search for objective, scientific knowledge is little more than a cunning trick of dominators. The postmodern project of replacing such scientific knowledge with hermeneutic truth, he argues, provides not liberty, but logical permissiveness, relativism, and pluralist obscurity; clarity, he insists is definitely not one of the attributes of postmodern thought.” By implication, then, a movement toward postmodern contestation and away from the authority of modern science is intellectually unjustified. Wiebe closes his essay with three suggestions for a refutation of postmodernism: i) that “it can be shown that postmodernists appeal to the same canons of judgment that their arguments set out to condemn,” ii) that “the clarification of the notion of modern science and of scientific rationality as a search for knowledge rather than a search for meaning or truth,” is much needed, and iii) that “the provision of a careful history of the emergence of science as a peculiar sort of value in, and for, Western culture, namely the quest for knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone” is long overdue.

Concluding Essay By way of conclusion, ‘An Encroaching Spirituality: What Hope Remains for a Science of Religion?’ (2009), perhaps the most controversial piece included in this collection, offers some final remarks by Professor Wiebe on how, notwithstanding its future limitations, the quest for a science of religion can best be renewed. The piece is retrospective in nature, meant as an update to his widely cited essay, written a quarter of a century earlier, on ‘The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion’ (1984). Wiebe laments a noticeable “decline” in the profession since his prior survey of the field. He claims, for example, that it is difficult to distinguish many departments of Religious Studies from liberal Protestant seminaries, that a “blurring of objectives not only continues, but is getting worse,” and that the resistance against scientific reductionism in the academic study of religion can be attributed, in large measure, to the protection of religious belief. There are palpable signs of hope, nonetheless, however. This is particularly true, he argues, in the methodological shift he has witnessed in Religious Studies, from descriptive accounts of religious phenomena to more explanatory accounts of same. Wiebe is especially inspired by new developments in the cognitive science of religion, by monographs such as Ilkka Pyysiäinen’s How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Re-

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ligion (2001), by periodicals such as The Journal of Cognition and Culture, by centres such as Oxford’s Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, and by associations such as the International Association for the Cognitive Study of Religion. Though all exciting developments for Wiebe, they do not offset the negative trends that have impacted the field. “The resurgence of religion in society and its infiltration into the heart of the research university,” he writes “often draws many scholars of religion away from their primary responsibilities into sociopolitical agendas involving futile metaphysical debate, or encourages scholars to engage in what I will henceforth call compatiblist and accommodationist [i.e. dualist] theorizing. Such activities compromise the research we undertake, and the institutions in which we work.” [Wiebe cites Rodney Stark’s Acts of Faith (2000) and Justin Barrett’s Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (2004) as prime examples of an encroaching spirituality and of methodological error in the scientific study of religion.] To right the ship, a full review of the defining ends of the public university may be needed, he adds. Wiebe points out that though the university is increasingly under pressure to serve the spiritual needs of a multicultural and multireligious society, in theory and in practice such service can actually divert the university from its intellectual responsibilities – a provocative claim to be sure, particularly for universities who pride themselves on promoting “unity in diversity.” C.T. McIntire, a retired member of the University of Toronto’s Department for the Study of Religion, and former colleague of Wiebe’s, strongly dissents from this assertion in a 2007 issue of Academic Matters highlighting the topic of ‘God on Campus’: “Students have no interest in keeping their religion out of the religious studies classroom,” he writes. “The dichotomy ‘secular and religious’ misses the mark of understanding the place of religion in their lives and their families’ lives. They chose to study religion precisely because their religion belongs to their lives. Many find it incomprehensible that religious studies should impede them from connecting their study of religion with their experience of religion.” McIntire argues, moreover, that the scientific study of religion treats religious people as “specimens” rather than as “persons.” Though he is neither surprised nor shocked by such views, Wiebe fears they are “egregious” and “inimical to the very idea of a university,” an institution meant for the production and distribution of knowledge about the natural world. Official university statements supporting the “spiritual development” of students in the classroom further worry Wiebe. He sees such statements as infringements on academic freedom: “To require that professors not offend students (or colleagues) who bring religion to bear on their research and teaching is a constraint that effectively undermines the principle of criticism and therefore the integrity of our teaching and research,” he explains. What are the future prospects for the scientific

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study of religion, then? Wiebe ends his reflections on the state of the discipline with the recognition that a humanistic approach to the study of religion still predominates, that it is the “scholar-devotee who ‘calls the shots,’” and that teaching and research is governed, for the most part, by a “crypto-theological” agenda. In other words, there are too many hidden agendas, too many vested interests in the academic study of religion, as it stands. “If there is any hope at all for a science of religion,” he concludes, provocatively, “it will have to be found, ironically, outside of departments officially given over to the academic study of religion.”

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Part 1 Religion, Religious Studies, and Science

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Chapter 1

Explanation and the Scientific Study of Religion Donald Wiebe

I shall assume in this paper that a scientific study of religion must concern itself with more than the description of religious phenomena, that it must move beyond mere description and classification to explanation and theory if it is to provide us with an understanding of the phenomenon of religion.1 Collection and description of data, that is, no more constitute a science when concerned with ‘religious data’ than when concerned with natural or social phenomena. Thus Penner and Yonan, in assessing the possibility of a science of religion, rightly point out that: what is needed is a serious concern for explicit theories of religion that can be tested. We should not fear the possible reduction of such theories, for it is precisely the construction of theories which continues to improve a science and its explanatory status. To remain theory-shy is to give up the very idea of Religionswissenschaft.2

1 According to Hempel and Oppenheim (‘The Logic of Explanation’ in H. Feigl and M. Brodbeck (eds.), Readings in the Philosophy of Science, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953, p. 319): “To explain the phenomena in the world of our experience, to answer the question ‘Why?,’ is one of the foremost objectives of all rational inquiry; and especially, scientific research in its various branches strives to go beyond a mere description of its subject matter by providing an explanation of the phenomena it investigates.” Space does not permit further delineation of the distinction between description and explanation here. One might, however, profitably consult on this matter Harre, R., An Introduction to the Logic of the Sciences, Macmillan, 1960, chapters 1, 3 and 5. 2 Penner, Hans H. and Yonan, Edward A., ‘Is a Science of Religion Possible?,’ Journal of Religion, 52, 1972; p. 131. (I admit, however, that I still fear the reductionism involved in their understanding of this move to theory for reasons that will soon become obvious. See notes 9 and 12). See also Penner’s ‘The Poverty of Functionalism,’ History of Religions, 11, 1971, p. 91, for a similar plea. Others also call for such a move beyond description and phenomenology: E. R. Goodenough, ‘Religionswissenschaft,’ Numen, 6, 1959; p. 93: Reinhard Pummer, ‘Religionswissenschaft or Religiology,’ Numen, 19, 1972; p. 121: Hideo Kishimoto, ‘Religiology,’ Numen, 14, 1967; pp. 85, 86: H.J. W. Drijvers’ ‘Theory Formation in Science of Religion and the Study of the History of Religions’ in Th. van Baaren and H. Drijvers (eds.), Religion, Culture and Methodology, Mouton, 1973; espec. pp. 62f: and the introduction by Bolle to Jan de Vries’ The Study of Religion: A Historical Approach, Harcourt, 1967; espec. pp. vii-xiii.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_003Donald

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The intention of this paper is to set out as clearly as possible the nature and role of explanation (and theory)3 in the ‘science of religion’ and the implications it has for our understanding of religion. Perhaps part of the reason for the recent neglect of explanation in the study of religion lies in the feeling on the part of many that to explain religion is to ‘explain it away’ — a reaction not totally unjustifiable in the light of the host of simplistic reductionistic theories of religion that made it ‘nothing but’ the projections of man and the ‘discovery’ of the ulterior motives that lay behind much of the early ‘scientific’ study of religion.4 In any event, the explanation of religion seemed to imply a denial both of the autonomy of the subject matter — the gods, to put it crudely — and of any specific discipline appropriate to its study. Yet without explanation there is no understanding and without understanding one has no science. The question of explanation in the study of religion, therefore, cannot be evaded.5

3 I shall be speaking in this essay primarily of explanation although, quite obviously, the issues raised here concern theory as well. To delineate the precise relation of explanation and theory is a task that goes beyond the scope of this paper. However, on this point, see, among others, C. G. Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science, Prentice-Hall, 1966, chapter 6; E. Nagel, The Structure of Science, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961, chapter 5; and R. B. Braithwaite, Scientific Explanation, Harper and Row, 1960, chapter 11. (It must be kept in mind however that as the understanding of explanation espoused by these men changes under criticism, so also will their understanding of theory change.) 4 Evans-Pritchard, in discussion of early nineteenth century theories of primitive religion, wisely points out that “we should… realize what was the intention of many of these scholars if we are to understand their theoretical constructions. They sought, and found, in primitive religions a weapon which could, they thought, be used with deadly effect against Christianity. If primitive religion could be explained away as an intellectual aberration, as a mirage induced by emotional stress, or by its social function, it was implied that the higher religions could be discredited and disposed of in the same way” (in Theories of Primitive Religion, O.U.P., 1965; p. 15. See also his Aquinas lecture for 1959, ‘Religion and the Anthropologist,’ in his Essays in Social Anthropology, Faber and Faber, 1962). Smart in his The Phenomenon of Religion, (Macmillan, 1973; p. 37) recognises the danger that religion might in fact be ‘explained away’ in the move beyond description but does not take it seriously enough. (In the light of this, one might well suggest that one ought to seek for a theory about those who propounded, and still propound, theories about religion.) 5 This conclusion, however, is still not universally accepted. Some scholars in the field of religion have thrown out all possibility of moving beyond description to explanation and theory. This is clearly implied, for example, in W. Cantwell Smith’s rejection of the very category of religion (The Meaning and End of Religion, Macmillan, 1962). The same is implied in his discussion of the truth of religion when he claims that religions are not the sorts of things one can become well enough informed about to make such a judgment. The same, it seems, would hold for those who attempt to formulate theories about it. (Questions of Religious Truth, Gollancz, 1967; ‘A Human View of Truth’ and ‘Conflicting Truth Claims …’ in Truth and

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On one reading of what it means to go beyond description in the study of religion it seems that religion is reduced to something not itself. Religions, that is, are clearly anthropomorphic and so are legitimately subject to a ‘reductionist’ analysis for, as Evans-Pritchard rightly points out, a science of religion must concern itself with a relational analysis at any point where religion is in a functional relation to any other social fact — moral, economic, juridical, aesthetic, scientific, etc. “All this amounts to saying,” he writes, that we have to account for religious facts in terms of the totality of the culture and society in which they are found, to try to understand them in terms of what the Gestalt psychologists called the Kulturganze.6 However, on another reading of what it means to go beyond description one seems to be left with mutually exclusive yet apparently exhaustive understandings of religion. Religions may indeed be anthropomorphic but they also have, according to some, what one might refer to as a sui generis character.7 Religion, that is, is for both the believer and unbeliever a part of social life, but for the believer it is also something more, making the believer’s understanding of religion different from that of the unbeliever. Once again Evans-Pritchard: As far as a study of religion as a factor in social life is concerned, it may make little difference whether the anthropologist is a theist or an atheist, since in either case he can only take into account what he can observe. But if either attempts to go further than this each must pursue a different

Dialogue, edited by John Hick, Sheldon Press, 1974.) Smith’s objections however seem to me to be of a pragmatic rather than a theoretical nature and are not, consequently, insuperable. Further discussion of this issue must however be postponed. (Some response to Smith on this matter can be found in R. Baird’s Category Formation and the History of Religions, Mouton, 1972, and in John Hick’s ‘The Outcome: Dialogue into Truth’ and Ninian Smart’s ‘Truth and Religions’ in John Hick, op. cit., 1974.) 6 op. cit., Evans-Pritchard, 1965; p. 112. For a similar position carried even further see C. Geertz’s ‘Religion as a Cultural System,’ in M. Banton, (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, Tavistock, 1966: “The anthropological study of religion is a two-stage operation; first, an analysis of the system of meanings embodied in the symbols which make up the religion proper, and second, the relating of these systems to social-structural and psychological processes.” (p. 42); and Th. P. van Baaren’s ‘Science of Religion as a Systematic Discipline: Some Introductory Remarks,’ in van Baaren and Drijvers, (eds.), op. cit., 1973; pp. 36, 37. 7 See, for example, John Y. Fenton’s ‘Reductionism in the Study of Religion,’ Soundings, 53, 1970 and F.J. Streng’s ‘The Objective Study of Religion and the Unique Quality of Religiousness,’ Religious Studies, 6, 1970. The classic locus of such a doctrine is to be found, however, in R. Otto’s Idea of the Holy, Oxford, 1926.

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Wiebe path. The non-believer seeks for some theory — biological, psychological, or sociological — which will explain the illusion; the believer seeks rather to understand the manner in which a people conceive of a reality and their relations to it.8

Whether these two understandings could ever be complementary or which of the two is to be preferred if they are not is another matter — indeed, the heart of the matter — on which, it is hoped, an analysis of explanation will shed some light. I shall proceed therefore, with a critical examination of the concept of explanation and in particular of how that concept has been understood by those concerned with the methodology of ‘religious studies.’

1

What Is Meant by ‘Explanation’?

The first question that needs to be raised is, quite simply ‘What is to count as an explanation?’ The debate which that question has sparked vis-à-vis the natural sciences alone is a long and complicated affair, and not one that can be looked into at any great length here. Nevertheless, a proper understanding of the concept of explanation in the natural and social sciences is essential to an understanding of its use in the science of religion; especially if such use is to avoid the danger of becoming completely arbitrary.9 The aim of a philosophical discussion of explanation, and particularly of explanation in science, is to establish what one might refer to as an ‘operational’ understanding of the concept. By this I mean that the concept be so

8 op. cit., Evans-Pritchard, 1965; p. 121. His point here is simply that even a full sociological explanation cannot of itself provide the understanding of religion which is sought for by the science of religion for such an account explains religion only insofar as it is a factor in social life — only in one of its anthropomorphic aspects. Whether religion is something more than this is another matter entirely. 9 This is especially important in light of Penner’s and Yonan’s uncritical application of the understanding of explanation in the natural sciences to the science of religion (op. cit., 1972). The argument here may at times become complicated but it is essential, I think, that the student of religion is clearly aware of how the notion of explanation is understood both in the natural and social sciences and the reasons for the differences and similarities of that understanding in these various disciplines before he proceeds to its use in his own discipline. If in fact the science of religion is to be a science, explanation within it will have to bear some resemblance to its counterpart in the other sciences. But what ‘proper explanation’ is in these disciplines is seldom clearly stated. My intention throughout the first two sections of this paper, therefore, is to delineate as precisely as possible an understanding of explanation that is applicable to both the physical and the social sciences.

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defined or delineated as to permit one to distinguish between good and weak explanations in a non-subjectivistic way — that is, by means of logical or at least quasi-logical criteria rather than merely personal and psychological ones. If, for example, an explanation is explanatory only if it removes the obscurity of the matter under analysis for some particular person then the notion of explanation becomes psychologically relativized. The result of the search for a structure of explanation amongst many philosophers of science is the adoption of a strictly logical understanding of explanation, taking their lead from the analysis presented in C. G. Hempel’s discussion of the Deductive-Nomological (D-N) model of explanation.10 According to Hempel, explanations must display the form of a subsumptive argument. That is, the explanandum sentence must be entailed by the explanans sentences. Thus something or some event has only been explained when it has been subsumed under, accounted for, by a law, when it can be shown to have occurred according to some general regularity. The implications of such a model of explanation for the study of religion are obvious. There are, it is quite evident, no such laws formulable in the study of religion that would permit the student to deduce the explanandum, just as there are no such laws by which the historian or the sociologist can explain events in history or aspects of social behaviour. Consequently, if the D-N model provides an acceptable understanding of the nature of explanation, the so-called science of religion is either pseudo-science, or at best, proto-science. However, as anyone who knows the literature on this subject is aware, the subsumptive model presented by Hempel and others is far from being accepted across the board — particularly by scholars in the human disciplines. One of the most cogent and persuasive replies to it has come from historians and the philosophy of history. Dray, quite rightly I think, points out the very restricted notion of explanation implied in the adoption of the D-N model. He writes: It seems to me that what covering law theorists have done is to seize on (and … to misinterpret) a necessary condition of (some kinds of) explanation which is so closely connected to the purpose of science — control — that it has been mistaken for a sufficient condition. ‘Explanation,’ as covering law theorists use it, is a technical term; and, as such terms so often do, it abstracts from a term in ordinary use the aspect which is of most interest in the kind of inquiry for which it is redesigned. Provided we realize what we are doing, there is no harm in such redefinition of

10

op. cit., Hempel, 1966. See also his Aspects of Scientific Explanation, Macmillan, 1965.

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Wiebe terms. But if scientists, for their own legitimate purposes, redefine ‘explain’ so that it means roughly what covering law theorists say it does, then we are quite justified in advertising our awareness of what has been done by saying that, in fact, scientists do not seem to be much interested in explanation; they care only for ‘explanation’ (as technically defined). If the purpose of science is indeed the elaboration of predictive mechanisms rather than (as is still sometimes believed) an attempt to ‘understand the world,’ then the technical term ‘explain’ will be very useful; it will allow us to indicate in a convenient way phenomena the form of which has been captured by some scientific law or theory. What the philosopher of history must resist is any attempt to force the new concept into currency in situations where the job is to explain rather than merely ‘explain.’ And this we may with some justification suspect covering law theorists of having done.11

The point brought out here by Dray is of particular importance. There is no question of the legitimacy, as I have already intimated above, of the philosopher’s attempt to provide some explicit criteria of explanation so that what counts as an explanation is not wholly dependent upon the state of mind of the person for whom the explanation is provided. But to admit that such nonpsychological criteria do exist is not to imply that a proper understanding of explanation will or can provide strictly logical criteria which alone will enable one to make the choice between or among alternative explanations in a somewhat mechanical fashion. Dray’s emphasis upon ‘understanding’ therefore is of critical significance, for it recognizes the triadic structure of the verb ‘to explain’ that is, of someone explaining something to someone. ‘Understanding’ he insists is not merely a heuristic device but a necessary element in a logical analysis of historical explanation.12 Thus, in response to Hempel’s criticism of the Verstehens Methode in history, Dray writes: … in recognizing the mixture of psychological and methodological elements in many statements of the idealist position (i.e. of the Ver11 12

Dray, William, Laws and Explanations in History, O.U.P. 1957, pp. 77-78. The criticism against Verstehen as of mere heuristic value has been around for some time; see for example, T. Abel, ‘The Operation Called Verstehen,’ American Journal of Sociology 54, 1948. Abel’s criticisms are ably countered by M. L. Wax in ‘On Mis-understanding Verstehen: A Reply to Abel,’ Sociology and Social Research, 51, 1967 as is admitted in Abel’s ‘A Reply to Professor Wax’ in the same issue. It is strange in the light of this altercation that Penner and Yonan (op. cit., 1922, p. 125) can invoke Abel’s 1948 article in support of their almost identical criticism of the Verstehens Methode.

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stehen approach to history), and in denying that these amount to an analysis of logical structure, these theorists fail to notice what it is about explanations of human actions in history which make the idealist want to say what they do — albeit in a quasi-psychological and quasimethodological way. And what is left out, I wish to maintain, should properly be taken into account in a logical analysis of explanation as it is given in history.13 And to do this, he insists, is not to assume that the historian’s explanation somehow goes beyond the limits of empirical inquiry and thereby becoming unverifiable or unfalsifiable in principle. Dray develops, that is, a model of ‘rational explanation’ that is scientific in the broad sense of being reasonable but which is not of the character of the D-N model. As he puts it: As I have pointed out already, it [i.e. ‘rational explanation’] has an inductive, empirical side, for we build up to explanatory equilibrium from the evidence. To get inside Disraeli’s shoes the historian does not simply ask himself: ‘What would I have done?’; he reads Disraeli’s dispatches, his letters, his speeches, etc. — and not with the purpose of discovering antecedent conditions falling under some empirically validated law, but rather in the hope of appreciating the problem as Disraeli saw it. The attempts to provide rational explanation is thus — if you like the term — ‘scientific’ explanation in a broad sense; there is no question of the investigator letting his imagination run riot. Indeed, many ‘empathy’ theorists have expressly guarded against such a misinterpretation of their views. To Butterfield, for instance, historical understanding is not a deliberated commission of the sin of anachronism; it is a “process of emptying oneself in order to catch the outlook and feelings of men not like-minded with oneself.”14 Explanation in history then, it is obvious, is not completely psychologically relativized; and yet neither does it have the character of the subsumptive model of the Hempelians. Understanding here means more than simply entailment by law-like statements and yet is not simply equivalent to whatever frees the individual from puzzlement. Nevertheless whether or not an explanation does resolve someone’s puzzlement over some state of affairs or other is of critical significance to the notion of explanation. Furthermore this is so not only 13 14

op. cit., Dray, 1957; p. 121. Ibid., pp. 129-130.

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for the historical sciences, but for the natural sciences as well. The subsumptive model, that is, does not even apply to the physical sciences themselves, at least not in any strict sense. What is meant by “explanation” even here, according to Scriven, is a gain in “understanding.”15 As he puts it, the mistake of the Hempelians lies in the supposition that by subsumption under a generalization one has automatically explained something, and that queries about this ‘explanation’ represent a request for further and different explanation. Sometimes these queries merely echo the original puzzlement, and it is wholly illicit to argue that the original matter has been explained.16 Space does not permit analysis of Scriven’s arguments here.17 The essential point has nevertheless been established. Explanations, that is, are ‘reasoned accounts’ of initially puzzling aspects of the world. They are arguments to the effect that the event in question, given all the information available connected with the event, is precisely what one ought to expect without, however, being strictly deductive arguments.

2

Observer vs. Participant Explanations

The point of the abstract discussion of the preceding section of this paper might be brought home with more force by raising the question as to how the social sciences are to proceed in explaining human behaviour — in particular, one’s own behaviour. Is a causal account really on the books? The point at issue here is simply this. If the D-N model of explanation is applicable to all scientific enquiries then the observer of my behaviour will be required, if his study is to be scientific, to search into the causal antecedents of my behaviour. He would not, or at least should not, be interested in decisions I make as ob15

16 17

Scriven, that is, refuses to equate or identify explanation with prediction whereas the D-N model seems to imply it (see for example R. B. Braithwaite, op. cit., 1965; pp. 335-337). The symmetry thesis is undermined, I think, by the analyses offered by S. Toulmin (Foresight and Understanding, Harper and Row, 1961; pp. 38f and 60f.) and N. R. Hanson (‘On the Symmetry Between Explanation and Prediction,’ Philosophical Review, 68, 1959; pp. 353-354) as well as by Scriven (see note 16). Scriven, Michael, ‘Explanation, Predictions, and Laws’ in Brody, Baruch, A. (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Science, Prentice-Hall, 1970; p. 97. I have discussed Scriven’s critique of the D-N model at greater length in my doctoral dissertation, ‘Science, Religion and Rationality: Problems of Method in Science and Theology,’ University of Lancaster, 1974.

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jects of evaluation, that is, as proposals he ought perhaps himself to ponder. All such decisions and proposals are there only as effects of certain kinds of causes. But if this is really the case, the social researcher finds himself in a curiously difficult position in that he will no longer be able to distinguish between the explanation of ordinary behaviour and extraordinary or abnormal behaviour — a distinction both common and of great significance to our ‘prescientific’ understanding of man. On it rests, quite obviously, a host of moral and legal issues in society. But for the observer no such distinction is possible, for all behaviour, normal and abnormal, must equally be accounted for in terms of causes.18 However, unlike causal explanations of natural events and processes, causal explanations of human activities and behaviour have rivals. Human agents, that is, often explain their own behaviour in non-causal terms. Indeed, as Dixon points out, … plausible or acceptable explanations of human behaviour are not generally cast in ‘law-like’ form nor do they employ the notion of ‘cause’ in an uncontaminated sense. All explanations of human behaviour involve reference either directly or parasitically to the concept of what it is deemed ‘rational’ for men to engage in.19 Individuals, that is, account for their own behaviour in terms of reasons and motives, in conformity with their beliefs, etc. And such explanations are preferable to causal accounts in all cases — except where the behaviour is irrational in the sense of ‘incongruent with accepted beliefs’ or where behaviour is in accordance with beliefs that are themselves irrational. How the latter issue is to be settled is a difficult problem which I shall not comment on for the moment. The point here, and it is one of critical importance, is that observer explanations are not always preferable to agent explanations. Even Ryan admits the point despite his attempt to press the D-N model into service in the social sciences. He quite readily admits that if the observer always regards my decisions as events to be causally explained and never as proposals to be rationally evaluated, it must either be the case that he regards them all as pathological symptoms to be treated causally, or else 18 19

All these issues are recognized by A. Ryan in his The Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Macmillan, 1970, but are not, as I shall soon show, adequately resolved. Dixon, Keith, Sociological Theory: Pretence and Possibility, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973; p. 66.

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Wiebe that for some other reason he has decided that he and I should not enter into normal human relationships. Normally the agent’s view of himself and the observer’s view of him are integrated in the sense that we adopt the same perspective or decisions, choices or whatever; and where we do not, it is usually because the process of ‘stepping-back’ and asking causal questions reflects our belief that there is something quite amiss with the agent’s behaviour.20

In terms of our understanding of ‘other cultures’ or sub-cultures such as religious communities and the like, we have here, I suggest, a good analogy — an acceptable model — for a similar distinction between internal and external understanding.21 Observer explanations (accounts) of a particular community in terms of a causal analysis are no more readily acceptable than are participant explanations (accounts) in this case than in the case of accounts of individual behaviour — of my behaviour. In terms of Dixon’s analysis, either we see that the culture or sub-culture under investigation holds to irrational beliefs or aims at irrational goals or else we consider seriously the explanations they themselves proffer to account for their beliefs, practices, behaviour, etc. And that such primitive cultures are irrational I shall maintain, contrary to Dixon, is not always self-evidently the case. What is required is a good deal of philosophical argument which can only be provided after a thorough understanding of the culture in question is achieved. I can agree with Dixon therefore that the investigator assumes, a priori, the superiority of his own intellectual world but would deny that “such an a priori commitment… is compatible with any degree of intellectual humility and willingness to attend to participant explanations.”22 The arrogance of Dixon’s stance is obvious enough to those who know the relevance of anthropic or ideological factors in the formation of one’s own intellectual world. The debate over the sociology of knowledge and the validity of its claims is not one that can be entered into 20 21

22

op. cit., Ryan, 1970; p. 118. I use these terms here, with only slight modification, as they are to be found in Peter Abell’s discussion of sociological explanation in his Model Building in Sociology, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971; pp. 30-37. As will become plain in the discussion to follow, particularly as it relates to reductionism and explanation, I am not arguing for what Abell calls a “radical internalism” but only that explanations in terms of concepts immanent to the group under investigation are not to be rejected without argument. That this has been, and probably still is the case with too many observers of religion, is clearly evident in Robert N. Bellah’s confessions (see his ‘Confessions of a Former Establishment Fundamentalist’ in the Bulletin of the Council of the Study of Religion, 1, 1970; especially p. 3). op. cit., Dixon, 1973; p. 85.

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here.23 However, as I have already intimated, causal accounts or explanations of ‘other cultures’ can only be accepted where they are obviously irrational. And that, it seems to me, is hardly ever the case when a real understanding of the culture under study is achieved — when it is understood as the participant understands it. Thus participant explanations must always be seen, in the first instance, as legitimate rivals to observer or causal explanations. To make this claim is, I recognize, to rest on the strengths (or weaknesses) of the old Verstehen approach to the study of culture but that approach, I suggest, has been revitalized and fortified by a renewed understanding of the role of the participant observer in the social sciences. The point of the participant observer is, according to many sociologists, crucially significant both for the collection of data and for its interpretation. The collection of relevant data is obviously facilitated by having an inside track, so to speak. Indeed, in many situations, no access to the needed information is available unless one gains the favour and trust of certain influential people within the community, and this is greatly facilitated by becoming a member of the community, even if one is only on the periphery of it. The question of chief importance arises however over the point of the interpretation of the data. Does a participant observer really come closer to an adequate understanding of the data than the wholly external observer? In one sense he does; that is, in the sense that he obtains more information; the more pieces he has to the puzzle the easier it becomes to ‘fill in’ what is missing. But the question to ask is whether such interpretation is not facilitated by the fact that the investigator also has a clearer understanding of the categories of thought used by the members of the community under investigation. This would be a benefit over and above that gained by access to a wider range of data — a benefit deriving from an ‘insider’s understanding’ of the data. According to Vidich and Bensman there are some doubts about the value of such an ‘inside view’ since, in their minds, the participant observer is not really a committed participant: If the participant observer seeks genuine experience, unqualifiedly immersing himself and committing himself in the group he is studying, it may become impossible for him to objectify his own experience for research purposes; in committing his loyalites (sic) he develops vested interests which will inevitably enter into his observations.24 23 24

The literature on the problem of ideology and the sociology of knowledge is not in short supply and a cursory reading will make my point here, I think. Vidich, A. J., and Bensman, J., Small Town in Mass Society, Princeton U. Press, 1968; p. 354.

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Thus, for professional reasons, the participant observer has only a marginal position in the group under study: … conscious conformity…, at best, is ‘artificial,’ for the participant observer does not commit himself to the point of genuine partisan action. In the interests of objectivity this is necessarily the case. In failing to make genuine commitments, he reveals his socially marginal position and the outside standards upon which he acts.25 The tension in Vidich and Bensman is obvious. They wish to suggest, it seems, that there is some positive value to be gained vis-a-vis the interpretations of other cultures by becoming ‘professionally’ assimilated. And in this there is some hint of a return to the Verstehens Methode as discussed in Dray above. Yet it is only a hesitant move in that direction, for, paradoxically, in abstracting from full participation the participant observer reveals his non-participation. One has here, then, the same uncritical assumption of the a priori superiority of the investigator’s form of reference and judgment as is to be found in Dixon above. There is a total failure here to see that the observer’s form of reference constitutes but one possible set of commitments to which the observer might commit himself.26

25 26

Ibid., pp. 355, 356 (my emphasis). There is a nest of problems here which it is impossible to treat within the confines of this paper but which must, nevertheless, be noted. This can be seen most clearly, I think, in Michael Novak’s attack upon the commitments of the professional academic in the study of religion (Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove: An lnvitation to Religious Studies, Harper and Row, 1971, see, for example, pp. 73, 113, 114, et passim.). In response to the charge that he too has left the academic community for the religious community and personal commitment (see R. E. Crouter, ‘Michael Novak and the Study of Religion,’ Journal for the American Academy of Religion, 40, 1972) he responds with a tu quoque argument. He writes (in ‘The Identity Crisis of Us All: Response to Professor Crouter,’ Journal for the American Academy of Religion, 40, 1972): “Ascent argues that all such (professional academic) things are instrumental to the personal voyage of each participant. Religious studies are unified by one ratio formalis sub qua and one alone: the voyage of persons in their development, in the context of the communal voyage of cultures. No matter how recondite and obscure the technical discussion within any speciality, the legitimate methodology central to religious studies properly posits the question: What does that have to do with who we are? What does it tell us to perceive, notice, do? If such questions are not raised, a crucial part of the subject matter for inquiry is overlooked. Worse, the part overlooked is the very one that functions as the lens through which everything else is perceived. In religious studies there is no neutral place on which a referee may stand; every human being without exception is a player on the field.” (pp. 75, 76). And again: “The sole road to understanding religion is not external, objective, academic. On the contrary,

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S. T. Brüyn in ‘The New Empiricists: The Participant Observer and Phenomenologist’ corrects this uncritical assumption. The participant observer, he insists, searches for the essential relations that exist in the symbolic data he studies. This can only be attained, he claims, in a kind of insight borne of empathy — an insight that goes beyond reason and sensory observation alone

professionals need to know the limits of their own personal voyage, the distorting effects of those limits — and how to enter vicariously (both critically and sympathetically) into the voyages of others who differ from them in person and in culture. There is a way of becoming an ‘insider’ without becoming a ‘communicant.’” (p. 77). What Novak is attempting to say, then, is that just as the a priori assumptions of the academic are a challenge to the communicant so the a priori assumptions of the communicant present a challenge to the observer-scientist. In a sense, then, Novak raises again the problems raised in the understanding of other cultures that have ‘raged’ since Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science, (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958). Yet Novak bases his approach to religion on some profound work in methodology done by Fr. B. Lonergan, as David Burrell explains in ‘Method and Sensibility: Novak’s Debt to Lonergan,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 40, 1972. Similar criticisms of an ‘objectivist methodology’ is to be found in Michael Polanyi (see esp. his Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, Harper and Row, 1958) which I have discussed, in another but similar context, in ‘Comprehensively Critical Rationalism and Commitment,’ Philosophical Studies, 21, 1973. An easy acceptance of Dixon’s assumptions as to the superiority of the observer’s frame of reference therefore is, I suggest, nowhere in sight. (See also, on this issue, chapter one of J. Wach’s The Comparative Study of Religions, Columbia U. Press, 1958; M. Eliade’s The Quest (op. cit., 1969); and more recently Robert N. Bellah, op. cit., 1970 and J. C. McLelland’s ‘The Teacher of Religion: Professor or Guru?,’ Studies in Religion, 2, 1972. The point is made repeatedly, of course, by Cantwell Smith, op. cit.) This discussion is not meant to imply that Novak’s proposals are any easier to accept. This is wittily underlined by Robert Michaelson in ‘The Engaged Observer: Portrait of a Professor of Religion,’ Journal for the American Academy of Religion, 40, 1972: ‘One wonders if the cultural despisers of religion have merely been replaced by the religious despisers of culture’ (p. 422). Along the same lines see: Pummer, op. cit., 1972, pp. 121, 122; Smart, op. cit., 1973, chapter one; and the collection of articles in Th. van Baaren and H. J. Drijvers, (eds.), op. cit., 1973. A possible alternative to this apparent stalemate might be found in E. R. Goodenough’s suggestion (op. cit., 1959; p. 85): ‘The hope of reviving study of the science of religion lies, I believe, not in courting the traditionalists and theologians, but in coming to recognize that science itself is a religious exercise, a new religion, and that science and religion have fallen apart largely because traditionalists have done what they have always done, failed to recognize a new approach to religion as it has formed itself in their midst, challenging thereby old conceptions and comfortably formulated adjustments.’ If Langdon Gilkey’s analysis in Religion and the Scientific Future (Harper and Row, 1970) is anywhere near the mark then there may indeed be something in this suggestion. There are however nagging doubts. Gilkey’s analysis rests largely on insight gleaned from scholars like Lonergan and Polanyi, which suggests a close similarity of his thought to that of Novak.

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even though it still rests on them both. Here is gained a knowledge beyond that achieved in a mere increase of data alone. Participation spawns an insight produced unintentionally through the researcher’s unconscious encounter with the symbolic nuances of data…. The researcher discovers new meanings in his data as he knowingly participates in the process of social communication which reflects the symbolic life of the people he studies. If he perceives this symbolic life accurately in his role as a participant observer he is rewarded by finding new perspectives cast on his data.27 Verstehen then, is not, as considered here, an operation or an instrument that can be employed like other tools but is rather, as Wax pointed out, a precondition for gaining knowledge. Wax perceptively links the concept with that of secondary socialization or resocialization: “In such investigations, the sociological researchers have undergone — as participating or semi-participating observers — some degree of resocialization and been rewarded by a corresponding degree of Verstehen.”28 Participation therefore is an important hermeneutical tool — an important aspect of the search for explanations and theories that is too easily overlooked by much contemporary anthropological/sociological research. And where societies under investigation are critically aware of the possibility of alternative interpretations and explanations of their practice and behavior, the significance of the participant explanation is greatly increased and cannot be dismissed lightly. This I suggest is very often the kind of situation to be found in the explanation of religion and religious behaviour.

3

Ninian Smart on Religious ‘Explanation’

The preceding discussion has made abundantly clear, I think, that the D-N model of explanation is far too restrictive to be of value to researchers in the field of religion. The study of religion is obviously, like the other social sciences, in need of a concept of explanation that will do justice to the phenomena under investigation. And the critique of the D-N model that accompanies the above discussion legitimates a search for such an enlarged understanding 27 28

Brüyn, S. T., ‘The New Empiricists: The Participant Observer and Phenomenologist,’ Sociology and Social Research, 51, 1967; pp. 320, 321. op. cit., Wax, 1967; p. 328.

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of explanation. The problem that arises now concerns the question whether the study of religion need seek for or accept a kind of explanation that not only differs from the D-N model but which is also distinctive from the kinds of explanations provided by the other social sciences. It is this very difficult and complex question to which I turn now. The easiest way of tackling this problem is, I think, by means of a close analysis of recent proposals offered by Ninian Smart. In The Phenomenon of Religion Smart invokes two basic kinds of explanation to be used in coming to an understanding of religion which he dubs ‘intra-’ and ‘extra-religious’ explanations. He defines them as follows: An internal explanation typically involves trying to show the explanatory connection of an item or items in one dimension [of religion] with an item or items in another dimension [of religion]. External explanations … try to show how religious items are shaped by structures not in themselves falling wholly within the territory marked out by the definition of religion.29 This basic typology however seems to me to become somewhat complicated in specifying the object of explanation. The nature and plausibility of the explanation, that is, appears to change depending upon whether the object or event explained is an aspect of a particular historical religious tradition, or a particular tradition as a whole, or Religion as such. Where the object of explanation is a particular aspect of a religious tradition, the emergence and/or development of some particular doctrine or dogma within that tradition, little problem emerges. It seems, that is, that certain developments in religious thought can only be accounted for in terms of other aspects within the religious tradition itself. Smart points this out clearly, for example, in an analysis of the Trikăya (three-body) doctrine of Mahăyăna Buddhism. He shows, that is, how the emergence and development of this doctrine is very largely a result of the valuation the Mahăyăna tradition places upon the contemplative experience as over against the bhakti (devotional) experience. Thus he writes: 29

op. cit., Smart, 1973; pp. 43 and 44 respectively. Smart is not consistent with his terminology however. In his later work, Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge (Princeton U. Press, 1973a) he uses ‘extra-religious explanation’ to designate an entirely different function. He writes: “We also need to think of the possibility of extra-religious explanations, ones where there is a religious explanation of something not prima facie a religious state of affairs” (p. 111). Yet in providing an extra-religious explanation of the three-body doctrine in Mahayana Buddhism he reverts to the earlier usage (lbid., p. 127). I concern myself only with the first usage of the concept.

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Wiebe I have appealed to the respective internal structures of the two kinds of experience and attitude, namely to the undifferentiated quality of the contemplative experience and the polarity of the numinous and of devotion. The subject-object character of bhakti means that the Buddhas as gods are ‘over there’ or ‘up there,’ but there is no such quasi-spatial contrast in the experience of the Void. I have, however, suggested that the very idea of non-duality implies the idea of something to be identified or united with. This means that, in describing the highest experience as advaya, the Mahăyăna builds in some interpretation. Hence I have used phenomenological structures as the basis for explaining some features of doctrines.30

On the other hand, there seem also to be certain doctrinal developments that cannot be accounted for simply in terms of other features of the tradition. This point is well made by Küng’s analysis of the doctrine of infallibility in the Roman Church. According to Küng, We shall never understand the definition of papal infallibility merely by analysing the text of the Council’s Constitution in Denzinger’s Enchiridion, or even by studying the Council documents in Mansi’s great collection. The issue was largely decided before the Council met. Would papal infallibility ever have been defined in 1870 if the majority of the Council of Fathers had not grown up in the period of political restoration and the anti-Enlightenment and the anti-rationalist romanticism of the first half of the century? In the age that followed the chaos and excesses of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic period, Europeans longed for peace and order, for the good old days, and looked back longingly to the ‘Christian Middle Ages.’ Who better than the Pope could offer a religious basis for the maintenance or restoration of the political and religious status quo?31 It is obvious, moreover, that these two types of explanation might well be complementary, that is, both intra- and extra-religious explanations being required in order to account adequately for a particular doctrine. This seems to be the case, for example, in the emergence and maintenance of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in orthodox Christian thought. In a paper recently delivered to the Society for the Study of Theology, Professor G. C. Stead points out that 30 31

op. cit., Smart, 1973 a; p. 126. Küng, Hans, Infallible?, Collins, 1971; p. 73.

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The problem of Trinitarian origins is rather like the problem of Gnostic origins. In each case we have a pattern of thought which emerges pari passu with Christian thought, but which has close affinities with preChristian or non-Christian thought, while the evidence of first-century Christian documents is scanty and enigmatic, so that we can hardly be certain that the doctrine is exclusively, or even predominantly, a product of Christian inspiration.32 Stead is not ruling out the role of early Christian experience of awe both in respect of the life of Jesus and the experience of Pentecost in the emergence of this doctrine but simply claims that this alone can hardly account for the adoption of a trinitarian formulation, say, over a binitarian one. As he puts it, “it leaves one still wondering whether the facts of early Christian experience would have suggested a confession of just three divine Persons and no more unless there had been some tendency to think in Trinitarian terms.”33 Consequently he seeks for explanatory factors in possible innate tendencies to favour a triadic over a diadic theology in Old Testament and other Jewish trinitarian patterns of thought and whether such trinitarian patterns of thought can be found in influential Greek sources, etc. This kind of explanation in the study of religion is hardly problematic. Indeed, as the foregoing discussion clearly indicates, the explanations are straightforwardly historical explanations (except where intra-religious explanations do not seek for further explanations of the deeper structures of religious experience making such intra-religious explanations barely distinguishable from ‘theological explanation’) without which, surely, no adequate (or exhaustive) account of a religious tradition and its dynamic character can ever be provided. This makes it very difficult to see why, then, Smart refers to them as “religious explanations.”34 Smart distinguishes “religious explanation” from “theological explanation” in suggesting that the latter, unlike the former, involves some reference to the transcendent as if the transcendent actually existed. In The Phenomenon of Religion, for example, he refers to such explanation as “supernatural explanation”: … theology may attempt to incorporate some sort of explanation of events; for example, the success of the early church in establishing it32 33 34

Stead, G. C., ‘The Origins of the Doctrine of the Trinity,’ unpublished paper delivered to the Society for the Study of Theology, in Cambridge, March, 1974; p. 1. Ibid., p. 3. op. cit., Smart, 1973 a; p. 110.

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Wiebe self and carrying on the works of Christ was due to God’s power working in men.35

Such theological explanations can however be reduced to what Smart refers to as a “phenomenological explanation,” that is, an explanation in which the controversial question of the existence of the transcendent reference is “bracketed out” of the discussion. He brings out the nature of this “reduction” by means of the example of Paul’s conversion. The scientist can, he insists, remain agnostic about God’s part in it and yet recognize the power of Paul’s conversion. Thus he writes: To this extent the religionist’s (or historian’s) account is compatible with the theological explanation of faith, namely that it was through the power of God that early Christianity was established. Though compatible however, it differs from the theologian’s description. The historian is not uttering any kind of faith statement: he is not, qua historian, speaking as a Christian. Rather he is accepting a phenomenological description of the focus of Paul’s experience, and recognizing that Paul’s actions were highly influenced by what he (Paul) took to be the object of his experience. The historian is also recognising that such an experience has its own validity as power, as a force (to put it crudely) in the determination of the affairs of mankind.36 Although Smart suggests that the theological and the phenomenological explanations are not in tension, I have referred to the latter as strictly nonreligious and reductionistic since it explains the same data in terms of human belief whereas the former claims the data inexplicable without reference to some transcendent entity.37 ‘Phenomenological explanations’ therefore must be classed as ‘extra-religious’ in the final analysis. 35 36 37

op. cit., Smart, 1973; p. 129. Ibid., pp. 136, 137. See here, for example, Ducasse’s implied reductionism in the comment that “… in order to be capable of performing the social or the personal functions distinctive of religious beliefs, beliefs having contents suitable for those functions need not be objectively true nor even clear; they need only be fervently held. If so held, they will work, no matter how vague, crude, or even absurd they may happen to be” (A Philosophical Scrutiny of Religion, Ronald Press, 1953; p. 178). Here again Smart appears somewhat ambiguous for there is a sense in which he is far from reductionistic. Similar comments about a ‘theological’ framework in Smart’s approach to religion can be found in K. E. Yandell’s Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Religion (Aliau and Bacon Inc., 1971; pp. 132-145), and more recently in Julie Gowan’s ‘Religion, Reason and Ninian Smart,’ Religious Studies, 9, 1973. Both discus-

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“Religious explanation,” Smart then goes on to say, is somehow bound up with the notion of the autonomy of religion as it is to be found, for example in Joachim Wach. Yet this, it appears to me, comes close to a theological explanation, since for Wach “the religious” is irreducible to other social data.38 But that this is not what Smart in fact intends is clear from his definition of “religious explanation”: … in speaking of religious explanations, I refer rather to the way in which particular or general features of religion explain either features both of religion itself and/or of something contained within another aspect of human existence.39 The definition however differs very little from the combined meanings of the definitions with which I opened this section of the paper — leaving one still with the puzzlement therefore as to how such explanations really differ from other straightforwardly historical or sociological or psychological types of explanation. I shall return to this problem later. The question that arises now with respect to the historical explanations discussed thus far is whether any combination of them can provide us with an explanation (or account) of a particular religious tradition or of Religion, that is, whether it can clear up our puzzlement as to why it exists and persists in just the fashion that it does. Is the science of religion interested primarily in the exhaustive summary of intra- and extra-religious explanations of all the various facets of a particular religious tradition? Would such a summary provide us with an understanding of Religion, (or a particular religious tradition)? If one rules out any possibility of reading intra-religious explanations as theological explanation, as does Smart, this might seem highly plausible. The question that arises however is whether intra-religious explanation then really differs, in the last analysis, from extra-religious explanation. That it does not becomes clear in a closer reading of Smart’s discussion of the Trikãya doctrine

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sions rest largely on an analysis of Smart’s Reasons and Faiths (Routledge and Kegan Paul 1958) and are plausible interpretations of that work. That they are so reveals, I suggest, a deep tension between Smart’s earlier philosophical work vis-à-vis religion and his later methodological ones. It may be a tension that reveals a good deal about the nature of the study of religion but, unfortunately, cannot be taken up here. See for example Wach’s ‘The Meaning and Task of the History of Religions’ (in Eliade, M. Kitagawa, J. and Long, C. (eds.) The History of Religion: Essays in the Problem of Understanding, U. of Chicago Press, 1967) pp. 2, 4, et passim; and chapter 2 of The Comparative Study of Religions, op. cit. op. cit., Smart, 1973a, p. 111.

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in Buddhism. Although he explains the development of the doctrine in terms of another feature of the religious tradition — namely contemplative experience — he nevertheless goes on to explain this aspect of religion in terms of other extra-religious cultural factors. He writes: … why does Buddhism take the contemplative life to be the commanding height of the tradition? The answer is doubtless in a rather brute way historical, namely that Buddhism rose out of a milieu which stressed yoga and contemplative techniques. One can supplement this by pointing to the tension existing between Brahmanism and the various mendicant groups which served as a background to the rise of early Buddhism. One can also remember that the region in which Buddhism rose and flourished was experiencing something of a social and economic revolution in a context where the culture was but imperfectly Sanskritized. Also of some importance historically was a modified opposition to the system of classes (varnas).40 To provide such an account then as exhaustive would be, I suggest, to provide a reductionistic account of religion — an observer-oriented and hence causal kind of explanation that rules out participant explanation in terms of the realities and influence of ‘religious objects’ on the assumption, presumably, that such beliefs are obviously absurd or at least implausible and are themselves in need of causal explanation. But to rule out participant explanation here is no less implausible than it is in the case of one’s explanation of his own behaviour in terms of reasons and motives — particularly where the religious group concerned has, as is often the case, developed an elaborate ‘compatibility system,’ i.e. the attempt to explain one’s religious beliefs and behaviour in terms of reasons and motives in the face of alternative causal models of explanation. The point I am trying to make then is that unless theological explanations — explanations in terms of concepts internal to the group — are admitted as genuine explanations one has adopted, uncritically, a philosophical reductionism.41 The alternative assumption is made then, it seems to me,

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Ibid., p. 127. I find it strange in this regard that Penner and Yonan (op. cit., 1972; p. 130) find it so easy to dismiss the issue of reductionism as of little significance to the science of religion claiming that reduction has to do with theories and not with phenomena. Surely Durkheim, for example, is right in rejecting Tylor’s animism as reductionistic in a psychologistic direction in such a fashion that it denies the reality of religion. (Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Allen and Unwin, 1971; p. 69. See also p. 2). And a similar indictment, it has

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that adequate explanations can be arrived at only by resorting to concepts that are external to the group. Durkheim makes the assumption explicit when he writes: That which science refuses to grant to religion is not its right to exist, but its right to dogmatize about the nature of things and the special competence which it claims for itself for knowing man and the world. As a matter of fact, it does not know itself. It does not even know what it is been suggested by Aron, might be made against Durkheim: Aron, Raymond, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, Penguin Books, 1967, Vol. 2; p. 56. (It is for this reason that Berger, then, speaks of a ‘methodological atheism’ and that Smart sees an atheism tout court.) There is, to be sure, a sense in which every explanation is reductionistic as Fenton points out, (op. cit., 1970; p. 63) but the reductionism there is not absolute. Penner and Yonan refer to Fenton’s paper but fail to note his warning about a reduction of the phenomena. As Fenton puts it: “There is… nothing wrong with reductionism in the study of religion, unless the investigator does not self-consciously realize that he is reductionistic, unless the reductionistic scholar thinks that his discipline alone allows him to isolate the essence of religious phenomena from their accidents, unless he over-extends his method beyond its legitimate scope.” (p. 64). According to Fenton, that is, one must ‘recognize’ the religious life to have a qualitatively different character to other aspects of culture. (This of course is to come very close to adopting the ‘holy’ or the ‘sacred’ as a priori religious categories and hence adopting a ‘theological’ or at least quasi-theological approach to religion à la R. Otto in The Idea of the Holy or M. Eliade in Patterns of Comparative Religions). This point has been taken up recently by F. J. Streng in his ‘The Objective Study of Religion and the Unique Quality of Religiousness,’ Religious Studies, 6, 1970 in which he concludes: “What is crucial for the investigator, then, is to assume the reality of the numinous which makes itself known in all truly religious forms from the ‘daemonic dread’ in primitive religious experiences to the Christian view of atonement.” (p. 211). This would certainly cut across the reductionism of which Penner and Yonan write — but it also, seemingly, puts Streng into the ‘theological’ camp. Whether Streng is here making a truth-claim on behalf of religion is difficult to discern for he may in fact have in mind a distinction between the existence of the Focus of a religious belief or rite and its reality as is proposed by Smart in The Phenomenon of Religion (chapter 2). Whether such a “bracketed realism,” as Smart calls it, can really resolve the tension between a theological and a reductionistic stance however is somewhat doubtful since it, admittedly, doesn’t even raise the question central to the search for an explanation of religion (see p. 62). That is, insofar as Smart leaves open (in an a priori fashion) even the possibility of the existence of the focus, he is in the same boat with Streng for in doing this he rules out, a priori, any possibility of adopting a hard-line reductionist understanding of a religious tradition or of religion in general. Smart’s phenomenology appears then to be as congenial to the religiously committed as that described by W. G. Oxtoby in ‘Religionswissenschaft Revisited’ [in J. Neusner (ed.) Religions in Antiquity, Brill, 1968; pp. 598, 599]. There is, I think, still a great deal of value in Smart’s analysis, but discussion of his proposals in this regard must be postponed.

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Wiebe made of, nor to what need it answers. It is itself a subject for science, so far is it from being able to make the law for science! And from another point of view, since there is no proper subject for religious speculation outside that reality to which scientific reflection is applied, it is evident that this former cannot play the same role in the future that it has in the past.42

But this, as I have already intimated above, appears to write off religion from the start — without resort to philosophical argument of any sort to show that in fact there really is “no proper subject for religious speculation.” The same holds for the ‘methodological atheism’ of Peter Berger which, as Smart points out (I think correctly), is indistinguishable from atheism tout court.43 lan Hamnett makes the same point in his ‘Sociology of Religion and Sociology of Error’ when he writes: Both ‘believing’ and ‘unbelieving’ sociologists are given to building into the sociology of religion that set of anti-religious presuppositions which flows from the ‘sociology of error’ approach.44 Theological supernatural explanations, therefore, appear to be no more elements of expression (faith, commitment), as Smart puts it, than are the atheological explanations of the radical externalists — it is merely a matter of their emergence from a different centre of commitment; from a different Weltanschauung.

4

Reductionistic vs. Non-Reductionistic Frameworks

The question with which one is left now is quite simply ‘How is the science of religion to proceed?’ If we are in fact to have a science of religion it is obvious, from what I have already said, that its students must move beyond description to explanation. But it is precisely in that move that the ‘how’ of the procedure seems to elude us for to be scientific the study must be critical as over against theological (i.e. working simply from theological precepts, norms, etc.) and yet, if it is to do justice to its subject matter, it cannot adopt, a priori, a reductionistic framework. As Fenton points out, even if religion is in some sense 42 43 44

op. cit., Durkheim, 1971; p. 430. op. cit., Smart, 1973; p. 59. Hamnett, Ian, ‘Sociology of Religion and Sociology of Error,’ Religion, 3, 1973; p. 3.

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sui generis it is still, nevertheless, also anthropomorphic and so explicable in terms of other aspects of human culture — hence explicable, at least in part, reductionistically. (He is also right, in the light of this anthropic character, in claiming that an explanation of religion that concerns itself only with the sui generis aspect of it is equally ‘reductionistic’ although it must be noted that the meaning of the term ‘reduction’ here is changed substantially.) The possibilities open to the ‘scientific’ student of religion then seem to be a search for some combination of ‘supernatural’ explanation45 combined with ‘natural’ explanation or a (fully) reductionistic account of religion that relies on ‘natural explanations’ alone (e.g. Durkheim). It seems to me, that is, contrary to the position adopted by Smart, that only if ‘supernatural’ explanations are invoked can one speak of a ‘religious explanation,’ as over against a non-religious or reductionistic one. ‘Religious explanations’ are provided only when there is a real alternative to the reductionism of a mere sociological, psychological, etc., approach to religion. Whether or not the ‘religious explanation’ provided is acceptable (plausible, justifiable) can never be settled in an apriori fashion — each explanation must be considered on its own merits. Theology, Buddhology, etc., must therefore be taken seriously. The assumptions that such ‘religious explanations’ are always to be preferred or always to be rejected (i.e. being themselves in need of explanation) are both to be avoided.46 The implications of this for the study of religion are obvious. Although a phenomenological description of religion — of various religious traditions — may require a bracketing of valuation, judgment, issues of truth and falsity and the like, these issues cannot in the final analysis be left out of the picture. An

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Such ‘supernatural’ explanations might well be divided into two classes. There are, for example, explanations about ‘the world’ in terms of religious hypotheticals that either rival or complement non-religious or scientific explanations. See in this regard, among others, George Woods, Theological Explanation, James Nisbet, 1958; M. Slote, ‘Religion, Science and the Extraordinary’ in Rescher, N. (ed.) Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell, 1970 and F. Berthold Jr., ‘Empirical Propositions and Explanation in Theology’ in Meland, B. (ed.) The Future of Empirical Theology, U. of Chicago Press, 1969. The other order of ‘supernatural explanation’ and the one with which I am concerned here is that invoked by religious believers to account for their beliefs and lifestyle, etc. Pummer seems to me far too optimistic in this regard when he claims that “history of religion (sic) is one way of studying religions, theology another, psychology of religion a third way, and so on — all these different kinds of religious studies complement each other and contribute to a fuller knowledge of what religion means to man” (op. cit., Pummer, 1972; p. 116). A similar optimism is to be found in R. A. McDermott’s ‘Religion as an Academic Discipline’ in Cross Currents, 18, 1968, p. 25. On the other hand, however, Kishimoto (op. cit., 1976), seems to rule out any possibility of such ‘complementarity’ too quickly.

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explanation of religion as illusion will be vastly different from the explanation of religions as a true picture of reality. To provide an explanation of it then one must judge first whether it (religion) is, to put it bluntly, right or wrong, true or false, a vision of reality or a mere projection of the human mind. Until issues of this kind are sorted out, final explanations are certainly ruled out of the question. Only if philosophical argument can be provided that will undermine or weaken the theistic or atheistic (the sui generis stance or the reductionistic stance) can such final explanations that will reveal the truth about religion and so provide us an understanding of religion be arrived at.47 In this sense, philosophy remains a key factor, I suggest, in the scientific study of religion. 47

Questions about Religion, religions, and truth are extremely complex and too involved to take up here. Further discussion of this matter must await another paper. I must point out here, however, that when I speak of philosophical argument and the truth of religion I do not have in mind any idea of its demonstration or proof (or the opposite). What is required, rather, is the sort of ‘cumulative argument’ of which Basil Mitchell speaks in The Justification of Religious Belief (Macmillan, 1973). It must be admitted however, despite the tendency of such cumulative arguments, that various tentative theoretical proposals might be valuable in the study of religion regardless of the direction of such cumulative arguments as is pointed out in the ‘counter-inductive’ proposals set out by P. Feyerabend in his ‘How to be a good Empiricist: A Plea for Tolerance in Matters Epistemological’ in B. Baumrin (ed.) The Delaware Seminar in Philosophy of Science, Interscience, 1963; and elsewhere.

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Chapter 2

Is a Science of Religion Possible? Donald Wiebe

To discuss the possibility of a science of religion at a time when the study of religious phenomena is being vigorously carried out and departments of religious studies are emerging and growing rapidly in most of our universities might appear somewhat puzzling. Indeed, with the establishment of the study of religion as an ‘autonomous discipline’ within numerous universities since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it might even appear absurd. But the mere fact that religious phenomena have become the subject of academic and scholarly investigation hardly implies the existence of a ‘science of religion’ — unless by that phrase one means simply the growth of a body of knowledge, the accumulation of factual data, about particular religious traditions. Moreover, despite the apparently healthy state of the ‘discipline,’ and its now venerable age, there is surprisingly little, if any, agreement in detail as to the nature and structure of the ‘new science.’ I shall argue in this paper that the reason for this profound and pervasive methodological confusion lies in the fact that such a science does not and cannot exist.

1

‘Science’ and ‘Religion’

The claim that a ‘science of religion’ is impossible is not new. It has often been pointed out by scholars in the field that the use of the concepts ‘science’ and ‘religion’ seems to involve sets of assumptions inimical to one another. According to some, for example, it is questionable whether religion — or at least faith — is a phenomenon at all, and yet it is, supposedly, the object of a scientific (empirical) scrutiny. Real religion (or faith), as opposed to the external tradition, it is argued, is a ‘matter of the heart,’ a question of inner experience and decision which involves persons in a relationship to that which is Ultimate. Consequently it is not the sort of thing that can be the object of detached scrutiny as can other aspects of the physical world. The arguments of Cantwell Smith in this regard are well known.1 Smith refuses to countenance

1 For example, in his The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1962).

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the categorial schemes of the academic study of religion as of any value in understanding faith (or real religion) although he admits its value in the scrutiny of ‘external tradition.’ To study religion/faith, then, one would have himself to be, in some sense at least, religious, for there is a uniqueness in the religious experience that is impossible to capture in rational, scientific concepts. Thus Smith insists that “one of the things needed in a comparative study of religion is an ability to see the divine which I call faith.”2 And Otto opens his great psychological study of religion with the advice that he who knows no moments of deeply-felt religious experience should proceed no further, for it is futile, he claims, for such a person ever to understand religion on the basis of the principles of explanation he presently possesses.3 The unique religious experience, it is admitted, finds expression in a variety of forms that comprise the ‘traditions’ of particular societies, but, it is warned, one must not mistake a study of that external expression for a knowledge or understanding of religion.4 There are then, Otto insists, at least two radically distinct approaches to the study of religion: the phenomenological that treats religion as a phenomenon like any other, subject to examination from without, and the theological that approaches an understanding of religion from within.5 And there is no question for Otto that without the latter no understanding of religion can ever be achieved. A scientific understanding of religion, it appears then, is radically inadequate. The detached, objective, and empirical study that it enjoins can be applied only to the elements of expression of religion/faith and even there only partially since they emerge from faith for, as Smith puts it, “a preliminary insistence [in the study of religion] must be that when any of these things is an expression of religion (faith), then it cannot be fully understood except as an expression of religious faith.”6 An honest study of religion, it appears then, is open only to the company of the (religiously) committed and in this conclusion Smith wholly supports Otto’s proposal for a ‘theological’ study of religion: The practitioner of religion, then, I am suggesting, may become no longer an observer vis à vis the history of the diverse religions of distinct or even closed communities, but rather a participant in the multiform religious history of the only community there is, humanity. Comparative religion

2 3 4 5 6

Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Faith of Other Men (Toronto: CBC Learning Systems, 1962), 46. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 8. Ibid., 4. Rudolf Otto, ‘In the Sphere of the Holy,’ Hibbert Journal 31 (1932-33), 413. Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion, 171.

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may become the disciplined self-consciousness of man’s variegated and developing religious life.7 Such argumentation about the substance of religion, however, has not laid to rest talk of a ‘science of religion.’

2

The ‘New Science’

The phrase ‘science of religion’ in early and recent methodological discussions is, usually, quite clearly distinguished from the phrases ‘the sciences of religion’ and ‘the scientific study of religion.’ The latter two phrases are generally taken to refer to the application of the methodologies and techniques of the various social sciences (psychology, anthropology, sociology, etc.), with their attendant assumptions and presuppositions, to religious phenomena. The phrase ‘science of religion,’ on the other hand, is meant to indicate another discipline altogether which is methodologically distinct from the other social sciences and hence quite autonomous despite making use of ‘results’ obtained by other sciences. The distinction is suggested, although somewhat obliquely, by Waardenburg in his introduction to Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion8 where in the section entitled ‘The Study of Religion Established as an Autonomous Discipline’ he explicitly distinguishes the work of the founders of this ‘new science’ (Max Müller, Cornelis Tiele, and Chantepie de la Saussaye) from the work of anthropologists and sociologists doing research on religion as a specific subject. Philip Ashby in an historical review of the academic study of religion in America accepts a similar distinction as central to an understanding of the meaning of ‘science of religion.’9 The development and growth of the ‘history of religions,’ he suggests, is a sign of the rise of a discipline concerned peculiarly with the description and interpretation of religious data of the past and present. He includes as predecessors of this discipline theology, 7 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, ‘Comparative Religion: Whither and Why?,’ in Mircea Eliade and Joseph M. Kitagawa (eds.), The History of Religions: Essays in Methodology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 55. For a similar position expounded at length see Michael Novak, Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove: An Introduction to Religious Studies (New York: Harper & Row, 1971). See also his ‘The Identity Crisis of Us All: Response to Professor Crouter,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 40 (1972), esp. 75, 76. 8 Jacques Waardenburg, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion: Aims, Methods and Theories of Research, Vol. I (The Hague: Mouton, 1973). 9 Philip H. Ashby, ‘The History of Religions,’ in Paul Ramsey (ed.), Religion: The Princeton Studies (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965).

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philosophy, classics, and history and claims that the contributions of scholars in these fields “combined to create a basis upon which, with growing distinction between areas of humanistic study, it was thought a new discipline could be erected… [one] distinct in its own right because of the wider range of its inquiry and the necessary development of a methodology peculiar to its own total needs.”10 The ‘science of religion,’ that is, is a unified science and so not to be identified with any of the other social sciences or any combination of them for then it would not, as a distinct pursuit, “… have attained the needed scholarly approach to the complexities and varieties of religion, nor would it be capable of achieving the total insight and knowledge without which religion continues to be more unknown than known.”11 Ashby admits, however, that the nineteenth-century hope for this unified science has not yet fully materialized and speaks of it, therefore, as a “not yet fully conceived science.”12 More recently, and from a philosophical rather than an historical perspective, Professor Smart has also written of a ‘science of religion’ with an ‘inner logic’ of its own.13 Although his terminology is somewhat loose in that he uses the phrases ‘science of religion,’ ‘the study of religion,’ and ‘the scientific study of religion’ virtually synonymously, he nevertheless emphasizes the distinction between ‘the scientific study of religion’ and ‘the social-scientific studies of religion.’ After distinguishing ‘science of religion’ from theology (the latter concerned with the truth of religion and the former with the truth about religion) he proceeds to distinguish it also from the other social sciences concerned with religious phenomena as one with an ‘overall strategy,’ even though not yet fully worked out.14 Ashby’s claim that this new science is not yet a fully conceived science and Smart’s comment that the strategy of the science of religion has not yet been fully worked out are understatements, to say the least. It is a well-known fact that this area of study displays little or no methodological cohesiveness despite almost a century of discussion and debate. The methodological uncer-

10 11 12 13

14

Ibid., 6. lbid., 41. Ibid., 3. See Ninian Smart, ‘What is Comparative Religion?,’ Theory to Theoria I (1966): ‘The Principles and Meaning of the Study of Religion,’ University of Lancaster, Department of Religious Studies, Inaugural Lecture (Lancaster, 1968); The Phenomenon of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1972); and The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). Smart, The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge, 4.

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tainty in this area, as Pummer points out,15 is obvious even in the great variety of names used to refer to the so-called discipline. Amongst others he lists: Religionswissenschaft, Science(s) of Religion(s), Comparative (Study of) Religion(s), History of Religions, Religion, Religious Studies, and Religiology. The terminological problem is only compounded by the debate as to the divisions — historical, systematic, etc. — within the ‘discipline’ itself, seemingly making the ‘science of religion’ a discipline of disciplines, or as Smart would have it, a polymethodic discipline.16 But is such a polymethodic discipline not merely a combination of the methods of the other social studies and specialized area studies without anything left over, so to speak, that is peculiar — in a methodological sense — to the ‘science of religion’? Is ‘polymethodism’ itself really a method? Such a method, if that it be, appears merely a contemporaneous use, by the same investigator, of the various social disciplines as research tools so that a student of the new science is, in Kitagawa’s phrase, a ‘comprehensive scientist of religions.’17 The methodological peculiarity of the new science would be, then, wholly in the general comprehensiveness of the study, which is to say, I think, that it lacks a specific methodology peculiar to itself. Talk of a science of religion then would simply be a category mistake. Furthermore, as Kitagawa wisely points out, in the light of the development of the social sciences involved, it seems exceedingly unlikely that a student of religion could claim to be such a ‘comprehensive scientist.’ Consequently the methodology of the ‘new science’ would be such that it would effectively undermine the practical possibility of the very ‘discipline’ it supposedly characterizes. In the light of such problems, then, it is little wonder that, as Pummer informs us, “at the 12th International Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions in Stockholm, in 1970, it was decided to hold a study conference on the methodology of the history of religions in Turku, Finland, in 1973.”18 The results of the conference, however, were meagre: “Those who came to Turku with the expectation that presently confused methodological issues will [sic] be clarified certainly did not see their expectations fulfilled.”19 15

16 17 18 19

Reinhard Pummer, ‘Religionswissenschaft or Religiology?,’ Numen 19 (1972); ‘The Study Conference in “Methodology of the Science of Religion” in Turku, Finland,’ Numen 21 (1974); and ‘Recent Publications on the Methodology of the Science of Religion,’ Numen 22 (1975). Smart, ‘The Principles and Meaning of the Study of Religion.’ Joseph M. Kitagawa, ‘Theology and the Science of Religion,’ Anglican Theological Review 39 (1957). Pummer, ‘The Study Conference in “Methodology of the Science of Religion” in Turku, Finland,’ 156. Ibid., 157.

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Pummer himself concludes from those proceedings that since “… there is no agreement with regard to terminology, methodology, etc., there is no agreement either in the answer to the question: What is the science of religion or history of religion or Religionswissenschaft?”20 It is possible, one must admit, to infer from this century and more of methodological uncertainty, as does Smart, for example, not that the new science does not or cannot exist, but that it is, and perhaps will always remain, rather ‘soft’ and ‘chaotic.’21 But it must also be admitted that one might equally well — and perhaps even with more justification — query the very existence of such a science, for surely there is something amiss in labelling what must of necessity and perpetually remain rather soft and chaotic ‘science.’ Perhaps, therefore, the question ‘Is there a science of religion?’ — avoiding the existential assumption of the question ‘what is the science of religion?’ — might prove more fruitful in resolving the methodological debates and disputes of the last hundred years. But this may be to move too quickly to a critique of the debate, for although there is confusion as to the detail of the structure of the ‘discipline’ there are also, nevertheless, some broad areas of agreement as to its general nature, as the discussion in this section of the paper itself illustrates, which it is important to examine more closely.

3

Methodological Assumptions of the ‘New Science’

Most discussions of the science of religion and historical surveys of the methodological debate reveal agreement, it seems to me, on only three points: first, that the science of religion is not itself a religious enterprise or undertaking and is, consequently, radically distinct from theology; second, that the science of religion is an autonomous discipline alongside the other social sciences; and, third (and implied by the second), that the other social sciences as applied specifically to religious phenomena form an essential ‘aspect’ of the ‘science of religion.’ All three claims are essential to a characterization of the new science; whether they are compatible, however, is another matter entirely and one to which little attention has been paid to date. It is extremely important to note, first of all, that almost all reference to the ‘science of religion’ is primarily a way of referring to a definite break on the part of the early academic students of religion from a narrowly theological

20 21

Ibid., 158. Smart, The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge, 141.

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perspective in the study of religious phenomena.22 That break from the theological perspective was (and still is) seen to be a much needed move towards an intellectual openness and honesty in the treatment of religious traditions other than one’s own; an attempt to be fair, impartial, and objective and hence to be ‘scientific.’ Werblowsky, for example, refers to this new discipline (under the title ‘Comparative Study of Religions’) as emerging “from dubious and shady beginnings”23 and elsewhere24 claims adamantly that the failure to make the distinction between an “approach to religion” (i.e. theology) and an “approach to the study of religion” (i.e. science of religion) constitutes a genuine crisis for the new study. The threat today, he suggests, is the general Eastern complaint that the modern Western approach to religion is too analytical, detached, and scientific and consequently irreligious. The complaint would attempt to reintroduce the theological concerns that marked the early Western study of religion, and to take it seriously, he suggests, would be to set back the academic study of religion by a hundred years or more, for the comparative study of religion, he argues, contrary to the Otto/Smith thesis described above, is a wholly anthropological discipline and not a theological one at all.25 Similarly Pummer, after laboriously documenting the methodological confusion in the area of religious studies, accepts the non-theological nature of the discipline as central and certain: Religionswissenschaft is in no way to be identified with religiology (i.e., a ‘theological’ approach to the phenomenon of religion).26 Even Smart who, as I shall point out below, is highly skeptical of the objectivity of the social scientific understanding of religion, takes great pains to distinguish ‘science of religion’ from theology. Smart suggests, in fact, that theology and therefore the ‘theological’ study of religion is itself a datum for the science of religion and not an alternative to it.27 22 23 24 25

26 27

See, for example, Ashby’s comments in this respect in ‘The History of Religions’ (see n. 9 above), 39-40. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, ‘Revelation, Natural Theology and Comparative Religion,’ Hibbert Journal 55 (1956-57), 278. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, ‘Marburg — and After?,’ Numen 8 (1960). Ibid., 260. See also his ‘On the Role of Comparative Religion in Promoting Mutual Understanding,’ Hibbert Journal 58 (1959). It is both interesting and puzzling, in the light of these contributions, to find Werblowsky listed as a contributing editor of the Journal of Dharma which “proposes a search for dharma, spiritual truth… a serious scholarly effort at clarifying man’s realization of the activity of the spirit within the various religions of humankind…” CSR Bulletin 6/3 (June 1975), 14. Pummer, ‘Religionswissenschaft or Religiology?’ (see n. 15 above), 121-22. Smart, The Phenomenon of Religion, ch. 1, and The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge, ch. 1 (see n. 13 above).

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The ‘science of religion’ is, then, a label intended primarily, it seems, to designate that attitude on the part of certain scholars to treat religion, insofar as that is possible, free of (theological) bias or prejudice (prae + judicium: a judgment that has been passed before the issue has been subjected to test or trial). It suggests then that the foundations of the study of religion must be intellectual rather than practical or, as Smart puts it, they must be concerned with the truth about religion and not the truth of religion.28 The claim that the science of religion is autonomous and independent of the other social sciences is the second broad area of agreement as to the nature of the new science and has already been discussed at some length above. Some further comments, however, are required here. It is self-evident, I think, that any talk of a science of religion involves a distinction of that science from the other social sciences — else one might simply contrast the social scientific studies of religious phenomena (whether from a psychological, anthropological, or sociological perspective) with the theological interpretation of the phenomena. The reasons for this distinction and the unwillingness of the students of religion to be content to talk simply of the sciences of religion or the scientific study of religion are, however, not at all clear. Waardenburg, in an examination of the methodological debate, traces that unwillingness to the difference perceived by religion scholars between the search for understanding and the search for explanation. Understanding (Verstehen, Einfühlung), they insisted, involved a grasping of the essence of religion, whereas explanation, concerned only with the surface and periphery of religion, involved explaining it away. Understanding, therefore, provided knowledge beyond the opposition of subject and object in that it provided a knowledge of the meaning of religion.29 In that sense, then, the science of religion goes beyond the explanations of the social scientists of religion. Kristensen, for example, interpreted such ‘understanding’ to mean that “if the historian tries to understand the religious data from a different viewpoint than that of the believers, he negates the religious reality” which he is trying to understand.30 Understanding requires “an imaginative reexperiencing of the 28

29

30

Smart, The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge, 4, 8. I find this a very hazardous distinction and one, moreover, of dubious value to the academic study of religion, as will become more evident below. I have provided a more thorough appraisal of the question of truth in the study of religion elsewhere, however. See Donald Wiebe, ‘Truth and the Study of Religion’; Philosophical Studies 25 (1977). Waardenburg, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion, see n. 8 above), 53-54, 77. See also his ‘Research on Meaning in Religion,’ in Th. P. van Baaren and H. J. Drijvers (eds.), Religion, Culture and Methodology (The Hague: Mouton, 1973). W. B. Kristensen, The Meaning of Religion (The Hague: Mouton, 1960), 7.

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religious situation itself” if the “absolute character of faith” is to be obtained. There is needed, then, a peculiar emotional condition as a personal ‘tool’ in the study of religion.31 Such reliance upon Verstehens Methode, Einfühlung, participant observation, and the like, however, also characterizes the other social sciences. As I have pointed out elsewhere,32 the social sciences, as much as the ‘science of religion,’ find the Deductive-Nomological model of explanation as used in the natural sciences far too restrictive. I therefore raised the question whether the study of religion needs to seek a kind of explanation that not only differs from the Deductive-Nomological model of the natural and physical sciences but is also distinct from the kinds of explanation provided by the other social sciences. My answer was somewhat ambiguous: the study of religion is in fact distinguished from the other social sciences in that it allowed for the possibility of a distinctive kind of explanation, namely, ‘religious’ or ‘supernatural’ explanations (by which I meant, simply, explanations that included concepts with transempirical reference); to leave open this possibility, however, is not so much a methodological distinction as a philosophic one, as is clearly pointed out by Professor Smart.33 Smart sees the ‘need’ for a science of religion not only to free the study of religion from theological bias and distortion but also to ‘free’ it from the naturalistic (atheistic) assumptions (i.e. bias) of the other social sciences (allowing at most only a partial autonomy to religion) that also must, inevitably, distort one’s understanding of religion. In this respect he insists, “It has not been easy for the human sciences to rid themselves of an explicitly theological position.”34 According to Smart, then, the social sciences of religion can no more be considered ‘science of religion’ than can theology for they too, in their being anti-theological (i.e., in their naturalistic assumptions), are in fact

31

32 33 34

See also Ashby, ‘The History of Religion’ (see n. 9 above), 45. The methodological importance of an examination of motivation in the academic study of religion is too easily overlooked. Some pertinent comments on that topic can be found in, amongst others, Clyde A. Holbrook, Religion, A Humanistic Field (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 69f.; Willard Gordon Oxtoby, ‘Religionswissenschaft Revisited,’ in J. Neusner (ed.), Studies in the History of Religions (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 598-99; Robert N. Bellah, ‘Confessions of a Former Establishment Fundamentalist,’ CSR Bulletin 1 (1970); Ralph W. Burhoe, ‘The Phenomenon of Religion Seen Scientifically,’ and Roland Robertson, ‘Religious and Sociological Factors in the Analysis of Secularization,’ in Allen W. Eister (ed.), Changing Perspectives in the Scientific Study of Religion (New York: John Wiley, 1974). Donald Wiebe, ‘Explanation and the Scientific Study of Religion,’ Religion 5 (1975). Smart, ‘The Principles and Meaning of the Study of Religion’ (see n. 13 above). Smart, The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge (see n. 13 above), 23.3

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‘theological’ and hence not objective in the required sense. Smart states his aim in the discussion of the ‘science of religion’ then as follows: The aim of the book is to investigate the nature of the science of religion and to show that such a scientific study does not reduce religion away…. This discussion will attempt to bring out the way in which it is legitimate to hold that the study of religion is not merely about human beings and their beliefs.35 The autonomy of the new discipline then, it seems, is tied to the knowledge of the autonomy of its subject matter. It either assumes the ‘truth/value’ of a particular religion or at least allows for the possibility of its ‘truth/value.’ The third area of agreement to be noted is that the science of religion, although not reducible to any one of the social sciences of religion, nor to any combination of them, nevertheless includes them as an essential aspect of its own makeup. Exactly what this agreement means, however, is unclear. It does not and cannot mean, for example, that all the conclusions and interpretations of religious phenomena proffered by the social sciences must be accepted by the science of religion. Neither can it mean, as I have already pointed out, merely that the combined methods of the various sciences constitute the science of religion. What seems to be implied, minimally at least, is that the methods, procedures, results, and conclusions of these sciences cannot be uncritically ignored by the ‘new science.’

4

The Problematic Status of the ‘New Science’

The assumptions involved in the talk of a science of religion, as I have outlined them above, do not seem to be entirely consistent. Assumptions one and two in particular seem to require contradictory mental stances on the part of the would-be ‘scientist of religion.’ In distinguishing the science of religion from theology there is the hope of making the study of religious phenomena more objective and more scientific in the sense of being free from prejudice. Yet in its proponents’ attempts to distinguish the new science methodologically from the other social sciences — particularly in their inability to specify the nature of that methodological difference — something other than strict ‘scientific objectivity’ seems to be enjoined. This sentiment is clearly evinced in the desire of the new discipline to go beyond the understanding provided by 35

Ibid., 3, 23.

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the social sciences. The distinction in fact suggests that the social sciences are merely the study of the outward, empirical expressions of faith whereas the ‘science of religion’ is concerned with the unique quality of religiousness that makes such expressions religious phenomena; it suggests that the patterns of meaning within the historical and psycho-social data are not self-explanatory and require a peculiar, non-empirical methodology to retrieve their true meaning. And this, it seems to me, is to assume a peculiar quality for things religious that makes them other than ordinary cultural data. The science of religion, it seems then, is open to the possibility that the self-interpretation of the data from within the religious context may be acceptable and even preferable to external explanations of the data. In the final analysis the second assumption underlying talk of a science of religion undermines the intention of the first, namely, to show its affinity to the already established social sciences, for it is obvious that the explanations that emerge from the new science could well conflict with those arising from the other social sciences. In this respect the ‘methodological assumptions’ of the new science seem to take on very much the colour of the positions advanced by scholars like Otto and Smith, for this new study is, as Kitagawa put it some time ago (and as a methodological dilemma in the study of religion in America), “caught between theology and the social sciences.”36 In a later essay Kitagawa soft pedals the dilemmacharacter of the new study claiming simply “that the discipline of Religionswissenschaft lies between the normative disciplines on the one hand and the descriptive disciplines on the other.”37 This ‘description,’ however, contributes little, if anything, to a clarification of the nature of the ‘science’ or to a resolution of the methodological problem, for it seems to say that the science of religion is both descriptive and normative and hence detached, objective, scientific and theologically oriented in that its detachment and objectivity are other than that found in the other social sciences. Indeed, because of the new science, claims Kitagawa, we must now speak of “two kinds of sociology of religion, one derived from sociology and the other from Religionswissenschaft.”38 The former he regards as operating from a scientific perspective and the latter from a ‘religio-scientific’ perspective. The same “observations,” he goes on to say, “can be made regarding the relation of Religionswissenschaft to other disciplines,”39 but surely such a claim, or such an interpretation of the nature

36 37 38 39

Kitagawa, ‘Theology and the Science of Religion, (see n. 17 above), 39. Joseph M. Kitagawa, ‘The History of Religions in America,’ in The History of Religions: Essays in Methodology, (see n. 7 above), 19. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 21.

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of the science of religion, throws into doubt the scientific character of the whole enterprise, as Oxtoby rightly points out: … it is this question of the extent to which the variegated hues of Religionswissenschaft can be assorted into primary colors — detached, hortatory, derogatory, antiquarian — which has left the status of the discipline as a ‘science’ open to debate in spoken and written symposia in the decade since [the formulation of Kitagawa’s definition].40 On Kitagawa’s interpretation of the ‘assumptions’ of a science of religion, they are, simply, self-contradictory; the one requires a kind of detachment and objectivity that the other undermines or denies. Indeed, the very assumption that a science of religion is required over and above the social sciences, then, is not so much one of methodology or one of research technique as it is one of philosophical stance or attitude. Unlike the social sciences it leaves room for the possibility of the truth — self-interpretation — of the religious phenomena and does not, in a priori fashion, assume the intellectual superiority of the scientists’ world.41 That difference in the set of assumptions is clearly expressed in the way Smart characterizes the difference between his own ‘methodological agnosticism’42 and Peter Berger’s ‘methodological atheism.’43 The difference between the two, stated rather crudely, comes to leaving open in one’s study of religions the possibility of their ‘transcendent significance’ and hence the possibility of a religious critique of the scientific mindset to scrutinize them. It seems to me, therefore, that Heiler’s perceptive comment, in his The Manifestation and Essence of Religion, that “any study of religion is, in the last analysis, theology, to the extent that it does not concern itself with psychological and historical phenomena only, but also with the experience of transcendental realities,”44 is well borne out in this analysis, and that one is forced to conclude that a science of religion, conceived as I have described it 40 41

42 43 44

Oxtoby, ‘Religionswissenschaft Revisited,’ (see n. 31 above), 595. This assumption has in recent years, of course, come under heavy criticism. See amongst others, Robert Bellah, ‘Confessions of a Former Establishment Fundamentalist’ (see n. 31 above) as well as his Beyond Belief (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Werner Stark, ‘Humanistic and Scientific Knowledge of Religion: Their Social Context and Contrast,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 38 (1970); Robert W. Friedrichs, ‘Social Research and Theology: End of Détente?,’ Reviews of Religious Research 15 (1974). Smart, The Phenomenon of Religion. Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1967). Friedrich Heiler, The Manifestations and Essence of Religion, reprinted in part under the title ‘The Scholarly Study of Religion’ in Waardenburg, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion, (see n. 8 above), 474.

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above, is in fact impossible. This is not to say, however, that there has not been, and does not now exist, a peculiar kind of approach to or study of religion that is neither ‘sectarian’ nor biased in a narrowly theological way, nor reductionistically scientific; but it seems to me that it is, as Smart has suggested, rather malleable and chaotic and so best tagged with a label other than ‘science of religion.’ This might at least prevent more futile years of labour in search of a methodological clarification of a science that does not exist. Holbrook’s suggestion that we speak of a ‘field of studies’ rather than a ‘discipline’ seems to me preferable and much more fruitful.45 A similar conclusion to the methodological debate is suggested by King in his claim that the study of religion is more an ‘interpretative art’ than a science.46 To define religious studies as a science so as to exclude all theological ‘elements,’ it seems to me, is no more justifiable than the positivist attempt to define philosophy so as to exclude all metaphysics. Just as the latter itself implies a metaphysic, so the former involves, although perhaps only implicitly so, a religiously significant Weltanschauung.47

5

The Critical Study of Religion

That the study of religion is properly characterized as ‘theological,’ in the broad sense of the term, does not, however, imply that it is uncritical. I have 45 46 47

Holbrook, Religion, A Humanistic Field, (see n. 31 above), 38. Winston L. King, Introduction to Religion: A Phenomenological Approach (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 7. Eugene Combs and Paul Bowlby, however, seem to me to go too far in the theological direction: ‘Tolerance and Tradition,’ SR 4 (1974-75). Similar suggestions for a move in that direction are to be found in Stanley O. Yarian, ‘Walking the Tightrope: Experimental Exercises in Religious Studies,’ CSR Bulletin 5/3 (June 1974), and William Nicholls, ‘Truth in Religion and the Study of Religion,’ unpublished paper read to the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, Edmonton, 1975. Other recent discussions on the relation of theology to religious studies that are less reactionary and yet seem to point to conclusions similar to my suggestions here are Charles Davis, ‘The Reconvergence of Theology and Religious Studies,’ SR 4 (1974-75); Carl-Martin Edsman, ‘Theology or Religious Studies?,’ Religion 4 (1974); A. D. Galloway, ‘Theology and Religious Studies — The Unity of our Discipline,’ Religious Studies, special AHR issue (1975); and Paul O. Ingram, ‘Method in the History of Religion,’ Theology Today 32 (1976). See also Frederick J. Streng, ‘The Objective Study of Religion and the Unique Quality of Religiousness,’ Religious Studies 6 (1970); Eric J. Sharpe, ‘Some Problems of Method in the Study of Religion,’ Religion 1 (1971); Joseph C. McLelland, ‘The Teacher of Religion: Professor or Guru?,’ SR 2 (1972); and Robert Michaelson, ‘The Engaged Observer: Portrait of a Professor of Religion,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 40 (1972).

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shown elsewhere48 that the ‘detached objectivity,’ or better, intersubjectivity, that characterizes the other sciences does not involve an abandonment of all commitment but rather only a rejection of ‘ultimate commitment’ in the sense of a position adopted uncritically and never again opened up to further evaluation or assessment. Scientific objectivity, I argue there, is quite compatible with and even dependent upon prior commitment. In the light of this, the assumption of the sui generis nature of religion, as it seems to characterize the ‘field’ of religious studies, is not at all in conflict with the demand for intellectual honesty in the study of religion so long as that ‘understanding’ is held open to future reassessment and alteration (and even, perhaps, abandonment) in the light of the accumulation of new evidence about the nature and function of religion. King’s talk, therefore, of the study of religion as a study that proceeds from ‘the detached within’ — i.e., from a point of view within the circle of faith but not of any one particular religious tradition — is entirely acceptable.49 If the ‘critical stance’ is peculiarly scientific, as some have suggested, then it seems to me entirely acceptable to suggest that the study of religion, even if not a ‘science’ in and of itself, is, nevertheless, ‘scientific’ in attitude. But by the same token it follows that theology and philosophy are also, or at least can be, critical and hence ‘scientific.’50 Furthermore, it is quite feasible that what I have referred to above as the sciences or social sciences of religion might well be characterized as unscientific if the framework of naturalistic assumptions and presuppositions within which they operate were to be held forever closed to further assessment and evaluation, for they would then be held uncritically, and potentially irrationally. My point, then, is simply this: the study of religion, if it is to be characterized as ‘scientific,’ must proceed without the assumption of the intellectual, or perhaps better, cognitive superiority of the world view of either the ‘outsider social scientist’ or of the ‘uncritical inner participant.’ Whereas the former excludes any possibility of the truth of the ‘supernatural explanations’ of religion (i.e., religion’s interpretation of itself by means of reference to transempirical realities), the latter rejects all possibility of the correctness or truth of the ‘reductionistic explanations’ of the social sciences. Critical study here rather sees the ‘possibility’ of the truth of both the reductionistic accounts and of the ‘supernatural’ accounts of religion and religious experience. Such a

48 49 50

Donald Wiebe, ‘Comprehensively Critical Rationalism and Commitment,’ Philosophical Studies 20 (1973). King, Introduction to Religion (see n. 46 above). I have argued this at length in my doctoral dissertation, ‘Science, Religion and Rationality: Problems of Method in Science and Theology’ (University of Lancaster, 1974).

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position, I suggest, is adopted by the ‘critical inner participant’ which constitutes, as much as does the participant observation of the outsider, the proper study of religious phenomena. Study in this field must then proceed in a ‘counter-inductive’ way and must involve, rather than an attempt at theoryneutrality or ‘bias-neutrality’ (which is in any case impossible), theory- or ‘biasproliferation’ as a means of coming ultimately to the truth.51 And because of the nature of the theories involved, evaluation cannot be limited to empirical ‘arguments’ but must resort to philosophical assessment.

6

Postscript: from Metascience to Theology?

Klaus Klostermaier, proposing a move ‘from phenomenology to metascience,’ has made yet another attempt to supply the ‘discipline’ of religious studies with an identity of its own.52 Klostermaier’s proposal has a Kantian ring about it: since a ‘science of religion’ exists it must have an underlying unity that makes its existence possible. “We have to have our method and through it our identity,” he writes, for “otherwise there is no ground for a separate discipline” (554). This, however, is to beg the question, for we can assume at most only that we have independent university departments concerned with the study of religions and not that they constitute a discipline. ‘Our identity’ might well be merely a political one like, say, that of any other university department concerned with area studies such as Slavic studies, Sino-Russian studies, etc. The circularity of his reasoning here is further marred by pervasive ambiguity in his description of metascience. We hear of metascience as framework and as method, as well as metamethod. It is ‘described’ negatively as opposed to traditional ontologies and as a critique of modern science, but we are never really told just what this amounts to. Positively, we find only that it consists in articulating “at one and the same time the most intensely felt practical need and the widest visible horizon” (562). Beyond that we have mere promises that somehow and somewhere the unity of this approach will emerge. We are given assurances that the method will be developed in detail, although the same 51

52

Further suggestions can be found in Paul K. Feyerabend, ‘How to be a Good Empiricist: A Plea for Tolerance in Matters Epistemological,’ in B. Brody (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Science (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970), and ‘Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge,’ in M. Radner and S. Winoker (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 4 (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1970). Klaus Klostermaier. ‘From Phenomenology to Metascience: Reflections on the Study of Religions,’ SR 6 (1976-77), 551-64.

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breath expresses the vague hope that such a method might emerge “in a process of interaction with different intersecting programs of metascience” (563). Despite such vague argumentation, Klostermaier does provide some indication as to the character of that future development. He suggests, surprisingly, given his earlier rejection of theology as a scientific approach to the study of religion, that the ‘dialogue of religions’ will take a dominant place (and ought to) in the development of the new method, for it “has a contribution to make in our present search for a meaningful future of mankind” (563). It is surprising because it is a deliberate step from the ‘circle of religion scholarship’ into the ‘theological circle.’ Its ‘dogmatic’ flavour is only heightened in his attempt to forestall any such criticism by claiming that disagreement with him, at this point, is to become “academic in the worst sense of the word.” Klostermaier, I suggest, here confuses metascience with philosophy and expects of metascience results that have been traditionally aimed at, but never achieved, by philosophers. To argue that a science of religion depends for its identity on achieving such a unified vision of the world is to admit, I think, that no such identity is likely to be found. Other weaknesses also plague Klostermaier’s proposal. Without argument of any kind, other than a passing reference to one work, he puts forward — as a kind of support for the call to metascience — an extremely contentious claim that the natural sciences are moving away from empiricism. Similarly, he suggests that a unity of the sciences is already visible — a dubious generalization to say the least, and again without argument — as if the mere claim that this is so points unambiguously in the direction of a metascience that can provide ‘religious studies’ with an identity. Klostermaier is quite right, in his rather contentious claim in the opening paragraph, that the scholar whose concern in studying world religions is directed to non- or extra-scholarly or epistemological ends will meet with hostility. I do not, however, find this surprising, for what his proposal really amounts to is a request for those bent on establishing a ‘science of religion’ to give up one of the fundamental axioms of the ‘new science’ — that is, their intention to see its emancipation from theology. If Klostermaier’s ‘metascience has a name,’ that is, its name is ‘theology.’ His reflections, I suggest therefore, illustrate the extremely paradoxical, if not contradictory, character of the attempt to establish an autonomous science of religion.

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Chapter 3

Theory in the Study of Religion Donald Wiebe

My aim in this paper is to assess the role of theory in ‘religious studies.’1 The task is a general one and will not concern itself with evaluating any specific theory or theories of religion but rather with the appropriateness of the very notion of ‘a theory of religion.’ It will not, however, be an easy undertaking, not only because of its generality but also because of its paradoxical character. To admit of the existence of theories of religion and yet raise the question of the ‘possibility’ of such theories is somewhat odd to say the least. The history of the study of religion, I suggest however, forces us both to the admission and to the question.

1

The Place of ‘Theory’ in Religious Studies

The place of theory in ‘religious studies’ has had a rather chequered history. Theory, it seems, lies at the centre of the formation of this so-called ‘new science’ in the form of what Eric Sharpe in his history of the ‘discipline’ refers to as the ‘Darwinian-Spencerian theory of evolution.’ In concluding a survey of the antecedents of ‘comparative religion’ (i.e. the ‘new science of religion’ of Max Müller) he writes: … with Comte, Darwin and Spencer we have come to the threshold of the hundred years of comparative religion which we are to survey. We have seen something of the variety of approaches to the religions of mankind which could be held before the coming of evolutionism: the Christian

1 My attention in this paper will be focused primarily on the emergence of the study of religion as an academic discipline (i.e., a ‘university subject’) with the rise of the ‘phenomenologists.’ The ‘phenomenologists,’ I would argue, constitute a dominant tradition in the history of the scholarly study of religion. (See Wiebe, 1981b, especially the introduction and chapter 2). The human/social sciences, although more theoretically oriented in their study of religious phenomena, had little impact, as I shall show, on the members of the community of scholars more directly concerned with research and study of those phenomena.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_005Donald

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Wiebe theological approach… the philosophical approach… and… the scholarly approach, that of the philologists, historians, archaeologists and others who were content to cultivate a limited area intensively…. What was lacking in all this was, however, one single guiding principle of method which was at the same time able to satisfy the demands of history and of science. Evolution was — or seemed to be — precisely that principle (Sharpe, 1975; 26).

Of the fact that theory dominated the early scholarly study of religion, there can be little doubt. This is not, of course, to suggest that historical/empirical research was not carried out, for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were in fact rich in new discoveries. Nevertheless, as de Vries points out in his The Study of Religion: A Historical Approach (1967), such discoveries were seldom considered in their own right; seldom allowed to ‘speak for themselves.’ As de Vries puts it: “The nineteenth-century scholar made abundant use of the new materials. In fact, they were perhaps even too eager and hurried. As soon as some puzzling new phenomena were found, a new theory was proposed” (de Vries, 1967; 220). Indeed, a cursory reading of de Vries would suggest that no one theory provided the guiding principle of method for the new study of religious phenomena, for he talks of philosophical, ethnological, psychological, sociological, historicist and symbolist theories. Other historical accounts of this incredibly active period of research and study of religion(s) provide similar pictures. E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s Theories of Primitive Religion (1965); A. F. C. Wallace’s Religion: An Anthropological View (1966); A. de Waal Malefijt’s Religion and Culture: An Introduction to Anthropology of Religion (1968); amongst others, provide a range of types of ‘theories of religion’: psychological and sociological theories for Evans-Pritchard with sub-species such as rationalist, irrationalist, and structuralist theories; evolutionary, devolutionary, psychoanalytic, and anxiety-reducing theories for Wallace; linguistic, rationalistic, sociological, psychological, phenomenological, and migration/diffusion theories of religion for Malefijt. Although there is little agreement amongst historians of the scholarly study of religion in how they characterize and label the early theorists, a close reading will only confirm that, in fact, the major theoretical thrust was inspired by the biological evolutionary model. Sharpe is entirely justified, therefore, in claiming not only that theory dominates the early study of religion but precisely that the Darwinian-Spencerian theory of evolution dominates that early study. Such privileged status for theory was, it appears however, rather short-lived. According to Sharpe, the ‘evolutionary method’ dominated the comparative

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study of religion from the time of Müller’s lectures on the science of religion to the Royal Institute in London in 1870 — the point from which Sharpe dates the origin (i.e. founding) of the new discipline of ‘comparative religions’ — to the earliest chronicle of the new subject by Luis H. Jordan in 1905. But, writes Sharpe, “… the seventy or so years which separate us from the world of 1905 has seen its virtual abandonment. No new method accepted by all has risen to take its place” (Sharpe 1975; xii). Of course the waning influence of evolutionary thought on the academic study of religion did not entirely spell the end of theory in the study and interpretation of religion — the histories referred to above make that abundantly clear. The works of Durkheim, Weber, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, Freud, and others in the early part of this century were, if anything, theoretical interpretations of the nature or meaning of religion. The theoretical/methodological unity underlying the work of ‘early’ scholars such as Tylor, Lange, Marett, Spencer, Frazer, et al., it must be admitted however, is lacking. Theory in general seems to have become suspect and energy and attention was focused more upon religions in their historical forms — the aim of the new science became little more than the recovery and description of forms of religious expression and, in general, the elements of the historically accessible tradition. Consequently ‘religious studies’ (‘comparative religion,’ ‘the science of religion’), to all intents and purposes, became identified with philology, history, and phenomenology, each intent upon providing ‘an accurate apprehension of the phenomena,’ in whole or in part. The work of G. van der Leeuw, especially in his Religion in Essence and Manifestation (1938) sets a new pace for study of religion in its clear and determined opposition to theory: “… I have tried,” he writes, “to avoid, above all else, any imperiously dominating theory, and in this volume there will be found neither evolutionary, nor so-called antievolutionary, nor indeed any other theories” (van der Leeuw, 1938; 10). The search for ‘phenomenological understanding,’ then, replaced that for ‘theoretical explanation’ (understanding) and was taken up by W. Kristensen and C. J. Bleeker whose work has dominated twentieth-century ‘religious studies’: their criterion of understanding which is closely bound up with the ‘selfunderstanding’ of the believer clearly demarcates the phenomenological study from theories based on biological/psychological/sociological grounds which are alien to the believer’s self-understanding.2 Thus, according to Bleeker,

2 It is against this new hegemony in religious studies that the authors of Religion, Culture and Methodology (1973; eds. Th. P. van Baaren and H. J. W. Drijvers) find themselves arrayed. H. J. W. Drijvers in his ‘Theory Formation in Science of Religion and the Study of the History of

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Wiebe The scientific approach is characterized by its method: it aims at an unbiased and critical compilation of religious data with a view to ascertaining their religious meaning. This implies that attempts are made to understand a religion, even in its strange and less attractive aspects, as it stands, viz. as a testimony to an encounter between people and a superhuman reality. The purpose is to attain insight into the belief of the believers. This approach, which does not permit any explanations attributing religion to non-religious factors, as for example to psychological or social forces, is customarily referred to as the phenomenological method… (Bleeker, 1966; 62, 63; emphasis is mine.)

The reasons for the collapse of early evolutionary theory, and theory in general, in ‘religious studies’ are not altogether clear. E. E. Evans-Pritchard maintains that “… it was because explanations of religion were offered in terms of origins that these theoretical debates, once so full of life and fire, eventually subsided” (Evans-Pritchard, 1965; 101).3 He, quite correctly, points out that neither verification nor falsification of hypotheses concerned with origins or essences is possible, although his claim that the causal explanations implicit in such theorizing was (and is) in conflict with modern scientific thought is less convincing. However, more profound reasons seem to be at work, for EvansPritchard argues that theoretical studies of religion were ideological undertakings intended to discredit religion and were bound, therefore, to be found

Religions’ is representative: “It has long been the fashion in comparative science of religion, especially in the branch called phenomenology, to be content with the understanding of religious structure (Verstehen). Since for the practitioners of the phenomenological method, G. van der Leeuw, C. J. Bleeker and others, religion is the revelation of the ultimate and supreme meaning of human existence, whose secret cannot be fathomed because it pertains to a different order, this epistemological view correlates to a theological conception” (64). 3 S. G. F. Brandon, in his chapter on ‘The Origin of Religion in Theory and Archaeology’ (in his Religion in Ancient History, 1969), writes: “The many and diverse theories, advanced during this period by reputable scholars to account for the origin of religion, are generally impressive for their learning and ingenuity. They were mostly patterned on the evolutionary principle, which has dominated Western thinking since the nineteenth century” (10). R. W. Brockway in an article entitled ‘The Victorian Origins of Religion Debate – An Academic Myth’ challenges the truth of the claim that early theoretical discussions of religion were intent upon searching out origins. He writes: “I challenge this [claim] not only as a cliché, but as a fallacy, and maintain that it is an academic fiction created by the mood of antievolutionism which overtook the biological and social sciences during the era between the two world wars” (1977; 15). Time does not allow for an exploration of this matter here. A more detailed analysis than the one provided by Brockway would, however, be needed to establish his claim.

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to be inadequate/illegitimate (Evans-Pritchard, 1965; 15-17). Although EvansPritchard, in summarizing his position, does not entirely reject the possibility of a general theory of religion (Evans-Pritchard, 1965; 113), he does nevertheless, seem to espouse the phenomenological impatience with and fear of theory as inimical to religion not only as explanation for the demise of theory in religious studies but also as his own standpoint for a proper study of religious phenomena: … if they [religions] are to be regarded as complete illusions, then some biological, psychological, or sociological theory of how everywhere and at all times men have been stupid enough to believe in them seems to be called for. He who accepts the reality of spiritual beings does not feel the same need for such explanations, for inadequate though the conception of soul and God may be among primitive peoples, they are not just an illusion for him. As far as a study of religion as a factor in social life is concerned, it may make little difference whether the anthropologist is a theist or an atheist, since in either case he can only take into account what he can observe. But if either attempts to go further than this, each must pursue a different path. The non-believer seeks for some theory – biological, psychological, or sociological – which will explain the illusion; the believer seeks rather to understand the manner in which a people conceives of a reality and their relation to it. For both, religion is part of social life, but for the believer it has also another dimension (EvansPritchard, 1965; 121). According to R. N. Bellah (1970), even though the early 1920s witnessed the emergence of the elements necessary for an adequate theory of religion it was “just at this point that the primary preoccupation with religion displayed by most of the great social scientists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries disappeared and other issues occupied the centre of attention” (Bellah, 1970; 9). “Even today,” he continues, “a theoretical concern with religion is only gradually reviving as a central issue in social science” (Bellah, 1970, 9). He seems, like Evans-Pritchard, to attribute that ‘collapse’ of theoretical interest to the growth of a kind of theological counter-revolution in religious studies – although he does not describe it as such – a nonrationalist tradition in the study of religion that emphasized the sui generis quality of religion which precludes all possibility of explaining religion. Explanation and theory, it appears, were taken to be tantamount to ‘explaining away’ religion. Bellah writes: “… we may say that while the nonrationalist tradition jealously guarded the specific nature of religion but eschewed any explanation of it, the rationalist tradition

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provided a number of ways of explaining religion which in the end explained it away” (Bellah, 1970; 6). Consequently, even though scholars like Durkheim and Weber seemed to break through ‘the rationalist-positivist tradition,’ as Bellah refers to it, and provided at least the elements for a theoretical account of religion without denying either its centrality or its irreducibility (i.e. its sui generis character), there was no withstanding the ‘collapse’ of theory in the rejection of the evolutionary hypothesis. Svein Bjerke in a recent discussion of method in the study of religion argues that the collapse of the evolutionary theory in religious studies has created a ‘nomothetic anxiety’ amongst scholars that has sent them into retreat “behind the safe bastions of historical particularism and relativism” (in Honko, 1979; 242). Indeed, it seems that it may in fact have catapulted the study of religion back to its ‘pre-scientific’ (i.e. pre-Müller) days and its domination by a theological agenda. Hans Penner and Edward Yonan (1972) for example, maintain that it is such ‘theory-shyness’ that presents the main obstacle to the realization of a ‘science of religion’ and their claim finds some support, I think, in the ubiquitous and never-ending methodological debates to be found within the field of religious studies. A perusal of the detailed proceedings and discussion of the first methodology conference held under the auspices of the IAHR in 1973 (Honko, 1979) reflects a profound polarization between historical and non-historical orientations in the study of religion. By far the greater emphasis is to be found upon the former orientation and it finds its most forceful expression in Kurt Rudolph’s ‘The Position of Source Research in Religious Studies’: Since the religions in their historical form, with all their historically accessible tradition and forms of expression are the primary object of religious studies (as a disciplinary description), then insofar as they wish to be taken seriously as scholarship, they must first work with the customary philological and historical methods (in Honko, 1979; 100). Rudolph’s main target is not, however, theoretical studies, or, as he calls them, comparative/systematic studies but rather the anti-theoretical backlash to be found in phenomenological/history of religions studies, which involve themselves, he claims, in a ‘hermeneutic circle’ that far from providing understanding simply prevents objective perception – such irrationalisms making “a mockery of scientific verification, which can only operate in terms of articulated and demonstratable judgements” (in Honko, 1979; 105). Nevertheless, the comparative/systematic studies seem to be limited by Rudolph to a merely heuristic role (in Honko, 1979; 109).

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The second conference on methodology held in Warsaw in 1979, again under the auspices of the IAHR, reflected the same nervousness about theory.4 There seemed to be, especially with respect to Hans Penner’s ‘Structural Analysis as a Method for the Study of Religion’ (1979), a tension between the historians (and phenomenologists) of religion and the ‘theoreticians.’ The ensuing discussions in many respects paralleled the much older debate between the historians of religion and the theologians a century or more ago at the emergence of the study of religion as an academic enterprise. With respect to the increasing pressure for more theoretical studies it seems to me that the historians and phenomenologists will, more and more, take over the role once occupied by the theologians – their determined attacks upon the reductionism of theoretical studies becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from apologies for transcendence. The caution with which matters of theory are broached by the older historians of religion can be seen especially in the coining of a new vocabulary. Not wishing to deny theory any role at all in religious studies, yet fearing the reductionism implicit in such an approach, a hybrid terminology has found its way into the literature in the hope of evading both horns of the dilemma implicit in the debate. As far as I have been able to determine it, this ‘move’ in religious studies was first taken by Joseph Kitagawa (1959) in his distinguishing the sociology of religion, which operates from a purely scientific perspective, from ‘religio-sociology’ that operates from a ‘religio-scientific’ perspective that avoids reductionistic explanations of religious phenomena. Ugo Bianchi similarly argues for the necessity of a ‘religio-anthropological’ approach to religious studies since it, unlike anthropology pure and simple, is likely to show a “sensitivity to the religious fact as such” (in Honko, 1979; 300). According to Bianchi, that is, such a ‘religio-anthropology’ “correctly excludes the programmatic reduction of the ‘religious’ to the social or the psychological …” (in Honko, 1979; 300). Ake Hultkrantz also reverts to such hybrid terminology in his ecologically oriented research on religious phenomena. In several articles (1974, 1979) he takes up the concerns of the implications of the environmental integration of religions and finds himself attributing a decisive influence to the environment in the organization and development of religious forms. He is swift on each occasion, however, to disclaim materialist and other deterministic assumptions in his work – a disclaimer which is obvious also in the switch from ‘ecology of religion’ in the titles of his papers to ‘religio-ecology’ in

4 The proceedings of this conference are not yet available, but are soon to be published by the Polish Society for the Study of Religion.

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the texts. Such a ‘religio-ecology,’ he insists, “investigates religion in its general environmental framing and should not be evaluated as a tool for economic determinism” (in Honko, 1979; 223/4). Such extreme caution appears to amount to a rejection of theory on ‘religious grounds.’ Further analysis of Hultkrantz’s position will, I think, substantiate that claim. According to Hultkrantz, the aim of ‘ecology of religion’ is to discover (or generate) the ‘mechanism’ whereby (especially primitive) religions develop and change. The ‘subsistence activities’ of a people, he maintains, is the most important means for identifying types of religion. Despite such a search for causal connections between environment and religion, Hultkrantz warns that this is not to be taken as a sign of a materialist interpretation of religion (Hultkrantz, 1974; 5). He attempts to avoid the apparent reductionism by drawing a distinction between ‘form’ and ‘meaning’ (or essence, content) in religion: “We do not touch,” he writes, the religious values as such – they have their anchorage in the psychic equipment of man. We find, however, that the forms of a tribal religion may be meaningfully described in their interactions with the ecological adaptation of the culture as a whole and, as a matter of fact, that they are partly produced by this process (Hultkrantz, 1974; 3). The separation between form and content in this fashion suggests that the environmental conditions give shape to the outer form of religion without involving any change in ‘religious value.’ Somehow, but inexplicably, such value is safe from change even though the forms that clothe them do undergo change and development. The precise nature of the relationship is never clearly addressed; Hultkrantz simply states: “We perceive that the forms and patterns of religion often depend on exterior conditions and that much of what we usually conceive to be genuine expressions of religious content is actually fortuitous manifestations” (Hultkrantz, 1974; 10). Consequently the ‘ecological theory of religion’ can account for the mundane in religion without affecting, so to speak, its transcendental character. That which is most important about religion, therefore, can never be accounted for in a merely theoretical approach to the phenomena.5

5 In correspondence with Professor Hultkrantz about the shift from ‘ecology’ in the title of the paper to ‘religio-ecology’ in the text, he responded by saying: “The import of the title, ecology of religion: there are no assumptions associated with the title of the paper except

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The contrast between W. C. Smith and M. Harris in their treatments of ‘the case of the sacred cow,’ I suggest, illustrates the internal tensions in the kind of positions advocated by Hultkrantz, et al. I set out the contrast here without further comment. W. C. Smith, an ardent opponent to theoretical studies of religion as I shall point out below, arrives at conclusions on this matter that would be, it seems, entirely acceptable to the ‘religio-scientific’ researchers in the field. According to Smith: Religion and modern culture may not be a cosmic issue for us… but we cannot handle it even as a ‘scientific’ question (in the European sense) if we do not understand that, and how, it is a cosmic question for those whom we are studying, for those because of whom it is a question at all. Let no one imagine that the question of what is happening to Islam in Pakistan is anything other than the question of what is happening to man in Pakistan. And even this does not mean only, what is happening to Pakistanis in Pakistan: it is rather, what is happening to mankind in Pakistan – Let no one imagine that the question of the cow in India, is anything less than the question of how we men are to understand ourselves and our place in the universe. The Buddhist’s involvement in politics in Vietnam is a political question but also a question of our relation to eternity – yours and mine as well as his. Every time a person anywhere makes a religious decision, at stake is the final destiny and meaning of the human race. If we do not see this, and cannot make our public see it, then whatever else we may be, we are not historians [students?] of religion (in Sharpe, 1975; 284; my emphasis). Marvin Harris, contrariwise, attempts to understand the meaning of the sacred cow by means of a theory of the origins of the Hindu taboo – a theory that could easily find support in Hultkrantz’s ecological analysis of religion. Harris, that is, searches for the probabilistic causes of the taboo; a nomothetic explanation of it in terms of practical, mundane, and adaptive processes of

that religion is, in certain aspects, dependent on ecological aspects. Not religion as such, but the outer forms and structure of religion. I fail to see that this is a materialist assumption.” Of course Professor Hultkrantz is correct in denying a materialist assumption for it is, in fact, an a priori ‘theological’ assumption that prevents him from taking seriously the implication of his theory that ecological analysis may in fact account for not only ‘outer religious forms’ but for ‘religion as such.’

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a community to its environment. He sets out to explain, causally, specifically why religions that rejected (or at least restricted) the consumption of animal flesh would have developed in India – especially since it involved a conversion from earlier meat-eating practices (Harris, 1979; 251). According to Harris the conversion can be accounted for in wholly non-religious terms: it simply became too costly as food “as a result of fundamental changes in the ecosystem and the mode of production” (Harris, 1979; 252). Thus, like the pig in other contexts, the cow became the focus of ritual restrictions. Harris then proceeds to point out why in India the cow is venerated whereas in Mesopotamia the pig became an abomination. Harris writes: The explanation is this: cost-benefits of the pig involve only its utility as meat. When that meat became ecologically too expensive, the whole pig becomes an abomination because it was useless – worse than useless, a danger in its entirety. But when beef in India became too expensive ecologically, the animal in its entirety did not lose its value. On the contrary, the slaughter and beef-eating taboos actually reflect the indispensability of cattle as a source of traction under conditions of high preindustrial population densities and rainfall agriculture. Hence, the cow became holy rather than dirty in order to protect its vital function as the mother of the bullock. As Mohandas K. Gandhi once explained: “Not only did she give milk, but she also made agriculture possible” (Harris, 1979, 252/3). The Smith and Harris accounts of the ‘meaning’ of the sacred cow are, obviously, mutually exclusive or incompatible. Nevertheless, it is to precisely such conclusions – to be held simultaneously – it appears to me, that one is driven by the ‘religio-scientific’ approaches to religious studies advocated by scholars such as Kitagawa, Bianchi, Hultkrantz and others. There are some in the field of religious studies today who, it appears, entirely eschew theoretical accounts or explanations of religions and religious phenomena. Michael Novak’s introductory Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove (1971) enters a plea for a kind of ‘existential’ approach to religious studies that will transcend theory. Indeed, he advocates action as the starting place of inquiry: “Action reveals being. Action is our most reliable mode of philosophizing” (Novak, 1971; 46). The category of ‘story’ is proposed as an interpretive tool instead of abstract theory for it “… cannot be reduced to a set of principles or criteria. The reason is that man is a dramatic animal. His actions are larger, more comprehensive, and more complex than his capacity for analysis” (Novak, 1971; 63). Consequently, “whether a person counts a theory

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as true, or relevant, or useful depends upon his or her own autobiography for only through autobiography do theories touch ground” (Novak, 1971; 86). D. Z. Phillips more recently in his Religion Without Explanation (1976) also rejects any possibility of a theoretical interpretation of religion. He maintains that theoretical accounts of religion are reductionistic and, consequently, fail to come to a true understanding of the nature of religions (i.e. of religious discourse). He argues that such accounts are influenced and shaped by an uncritical acceptance of Hume’s philosophical legacy – that is, by the adoption of a view of religious discourse as ‘referential’ and explanatory. In light of modern science, of course, such ‘explanations’ are seen to be without reality – to be mere, even though important, fictions and as fictions, themselves in need of explanation. The reductionist creed of theoreticians, he writes, can be summed up as follows: … (a) religion is a fiction; (b) we can understand its genesis; (c) religious beliefs can be restated in the language of the realities which produced them; (d) all talk of religious factors can thus be eliminated (Phillips, 1976; 139) If Hume’s assumptions about the referential character of religious discourse are challenged, however, both the ‘explanatory character’ of religious beliefs and its need of explanation, according to Phillips, evaporate. In a further discussion of certain ‘projectionist’ theories of religion he insists that the important questions that need raising are: What if talk about a supernatural being does not entail the problematic inference from the world to God which, as we have seen, gives rise to insurmountable logical difficulties? What if talk about the supernatural does not entail the postulation of two worlds, one of which is beyond the one we know in the sense Hume found so objectionable? What if talk of being in the world and yet not of it does not entail the kind of dualism that philosophers find so objectionable? (Phillips, 1976; 97). Such questions, he argues, can only be answered properly by looking at the role which such ideas have in the context of religious belief. If one is careful to do this it can be shown, he maintains, that religion (or magic or metaphysics for that matter) cannot be construed as a mistake or a blunder. Religious discourse is a different kind of activity to that of explaining which, when noticed, can make sense of people, putting it rather paradoxically, ‘believing’ what it does not make sense to believe. In asking about the sense of such a possibility

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Phillips comments: It is important here to resist the temptation to answer in the negative, just as it is important not to deny that the metaphysician means what he says. It is not that these people do not mean what they say. They do. The point to emphasize is that what they want to say cannot be said. Further, the reason why they want to say these things cannot be explained by revealing an error (Phillips, 1976; 109). Theories, then, are ‘shortcuts’ to understanding that in the final analysis mislead rather than enlighten us. The error lies in our accepting ‘Hume’s legacy’ and failing to pay close attention to the use of language generally, and religious discourse in particular. Phillips summarizes his position, therefore, as follows: The use of language is of particular interest because it shows that certain theories about what constitutes rational behaviour are inadequate and too narrow. What is needed, however, is not to replace the narrow theory with a wider one, but to stop theorizing about what conditions must be fulfilled for behaviour to be rational. Instead of stipulating what must constitute intelligible uses of language, one should look to see how language is in fact used. If one does, one comes across the use of language found in magical and religious rites and rituals. Such language is not based on opinions or hypotheses, but is expressive in the ways I have tried to indicate. Faced by it, the philosopher’s task is not to attempt to verify or falsify what he sees, for that makes no sense in this context. His task is a descriptive one; he gives an account of the uses of language involved. He can only say that these language-games are played (Phillips, 1976; 41). R. H. Bell under the same philosophic influence argues a similar claim in his ‘Understanding the Fire-Festivals: Wittgenstein and Theories in Religion’ (1980). Bell, like Phillips, points out that Wittgenstein’s aim in understanding is “to come to some personal satisfaction regarding the disquieting situation [and that] therein lies the understanding… in the experiences we have which bring our hearts and minds to rest” (Bell, 1980; 122). More fully, he writes: Whether there be an explanation or not, nothing is lost, all is contained in the act. Understanding the fire-festivals is like that – they aim at nothing other than the satisfaction of those who participate in them. We understand them in so far as we have acted in similar deep, and perhaps sinister ways, within our own particular form of life (Bell, 1980; 123). Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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A search for a theoretical understanding of religion in the light of this is seen, then, to be an evasion of responsibility, an easy detour, but, at the same time, a fundamental distortion of ‘the truth.’ As Bell puts it: … it shifts the burden of the investigation on to an abstract level and away from the level where the symbolizing process, the myth or the ceremonial act, is doing something, i.e. its job. The burden of understanding is shifted from ourselves onto a theory (Bell, 1980; 116). W. C. Smith mounts perhaps the most vehement attack against theory in the study of religion.6 In a symposium on method in the study of religion, he castigates H. Penner’s attempt to develop a semantic theory of religion, claiming that Penner ought rather to have tried to understand religion than to explain it. To theorize is to fail to see that meaning resides in persons and consequently de-personalizes the study of religion, or, as Smith would have it, ‘religious persons.’ He writes: The scientific enterprise, as I understand it, is deliberately, successfully, an attempt to de-personalize. It strains, struggles, strives to construct statements whose meaning and whose truth will be independent of the person who makes them, that will be interchangeable among everybody concerned. And this de-personalization works spectacularly well in the understanding of molecular chemistry and spectacularly badly in the understanding of human life (in Baird, 1975; See also 105). The use of ‘abstract theory’ rather than concern for ‘concrete reality’ and the search for ‘universal generalization’ rather than concern with ‘particular fact’ shows how much the application of ‘science’ to the study of religion destroys the object of that study: “To subordinate one’s understanding of man to one’s understanding of science is inhumane, inept, irrational, unscientific” (in Baird, 1975; 9). Here, and implicitly throughout most of his work, which unfortunate-

6 Professor Smith’s stand against a scientific and ‘generalizing’ study of religion is the dominant theme in most of his work from The Meaning and End of Religion: A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind (1962) to his Belief and History (1977) and Faith and Belief (1979). Although I concentrate here on his comments in the Iowa Symposium on method in the study of religion (in Baird, 1975), both in his paper ‘against method’ and in his response to Penner, one might equally well consult his ‘Objectivity and the Humane Sciences: A New Proposal’ (1975), an address delivered before the Royal Society of Canada (and reprinted in abridged form in Religious Diversity: Essays by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, ed. by W. G. Oxtoby, 1976).

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ly cannot be presently submitted to examination,7 Smith charges that anything less than – perhaps better, ‘more than’ – a personalist (non-theoretical) approach is not only ill-suited to the subject matter but blasphemous. In the humanities… and for that matter in the social sciences the subjectmatter is greater than the student. It is blasphemous to deny this or to ignore it; it is intellectually an error not to recognize it; it is morally wrong to wish that it were not so. We must recognize, accept, and deal with this over-riding fact (in Baird, 1975; 21). Before dispensing with this ‘sketch’ of the role of theory in religious studies, it is necessary to reiterate that, nomothetic-anxiety or not, theory has always been and still is an important element in the history of religious studies, not only in the sense of the generalizing nature of comparative religious research with its typologies and classificatory work but also in the sense of the formulation of specific empirical theories to account for either some aspect or other of religion or a particular religious tradition or of religion in general. Ninian Smart correctly points out: that some degree of theory is unavoidable in the study of religion is fairly plain if we attend to the following points: first, the use of general categories (such as the terms numinous, sacrifice, god and so forth) faces us with decisions of classification… that includes a theoretical component, second, historical explanations involve some theoretical elements (such as views about patterns of human motivation, the likely effects of certain kinds of experience and so forth); and third, there is a laudable, but admittedly sometimes rash, nisus to see whether cross-cultural and other resemblances in the field of religions can be explained (Smart, 1978; 172). And it is difficult to see why the task of ‘generalizing’ and ‘systematizing’ ought to stop here. To deny theory a role in interpreting religion simply because it is an ‘extra-religious explanation’ is insufficient. Th. P. van Baaren remarks on behalf of a systematic/theoretical study of religion are appropriate: The first remark vis à vis religion as a cultural phenomenon is not meant to deny religion its own specific character within the framework of a 7 I have subjected Smith’s views to closer and critical analysis in ‘The Role of Belief in the Study of Religion: A Response to W. C. Smith’ (1979a), in ‘Does Understanding Religion Require Religious Understanding?’ (1979b), and in a review of his Faith and Belief (1981a).

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culture, neither would I neglect the fact that most religions claim a supercultural cause for their existence. However, giving attention to what a religion proclaims about its own existence, does not mean that science of religion has to accept these statements without criticism as the ultimate source of our knowledge for the religion in question. Science of religion has no reason to accord higher value to what a religion states about itself than to a report by others, because it is not at all sure that in all cases self-understanding is essentially better than the understanding others may have (van Baaren and Drijvers, 1973; 37). This is not, of course, to justify all theorizing about religion. Hans Penner, for example, who is most emphatic in the call for a greater emphasis upon the theoretical study of religion, takes issue with broad, untestable theories (see Penner, 1971; 1979). The ‘functionalist theories’ of religion which Penner finds unacceptable have, of course, been a part of the religious studies scene since its emergence and are still with us, in anthropology, for example, with A. F. C. Wallace’s Religion: An Anthropological View (1966) or Annemarie de Waal Malefijt’s Religion and Culture: An Introduction to Anthropology of Religion (1968); or in Sociology with J. Milton Yinger’s The Scientific Study of Religion (1970). However, these are not the only theoretical proposals to have been made. Hans Mol’s Identity and the Sacred: A Sketch for a New Social Scientific Theory of Religion (1976), for example, adds refinements to older functionalist themes. And John Bowker’s work, both in The Sense of God (1973) and The Religious Imagination and the Sense of God (1978), in interpreting religions in terms of communication theory as systems of constraints revitalizes the evolutionary hypothesis in the study of religion.8 Furthermore, a renewal of ‘intellectualist’ theories of primitive religions is to be found in the work of Robin Horton and others and ‘symbolist’ theories, such as is to be found in John Beattie’s work, as alternatives have gained a wide hearing. An analysis of this work in J. Skorupski’s Symbol and Theory: A Philosophical Study of Theories of Religion in Social Anthropology (1976) is helpful and enlightening.

8 It is interesting to note here that Bowker, who although a theologian, like many of the critics of ‘theory in religion,’ sees no necessary conflict between a theoretical interpretation of religion and a theological one: “The development of this theory, therefore, does not in any way eliminate or make unnecessary ontological question and comment. Indeed, when one surveys also the continuity of the sense of God beyond the ruin of particular characterizations, such comment seems to be demanded, at least in the phenomenological sense of asking what would have to be the case for such appearances to occur as do occur, particularly in the widely reported human experience of responsive transcendence…” (1978; 27).

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Of even more importance than these large scale attempts at theoretical interpretation are the ‘micro-theoretical’ studies that allow for greater precision and testing. As examples of such theoretical work one might point to E. Thomas Lawson’s ‘The Explanation of Myth and Myths as Explanation’ (1978) in which, following a critique of emotivist, intellectualist, symbolist, and functionalist theories of Myth, he attempts to formulate a structuralist theory of myth. In applying his structuralist analysis within a limited range of empirical phenomena he hopes to provide a basis for broader claims. ‘There is no reason,’ he writes, why such progress cannot now be made in empirical studies in the field of religion in general and myth and ritual in particular. We may be on the verge of finally developing causal explanations of religious behaviour of a genuinely theoretical kind without having to settle for outmoded models including models which accept myths at their face value… (Lawson, 1978; 519/20). Hans Penner’s ‘Creating a Brahman: A Structuralist Approach to Religion’ (1975) and ‘Structural Analysis as a Method for the Study of Religion’ (1979), in which he applies the analysis to an interpretation of caste in India, are further examples of similar work. H. Byron Earhart’s recent ‘Towards a Theory of the Formation of the Japanese New Religions: A Case Study of Gedatsu-Kai’ (1980), although with few pretensions for broader analysis, makes a similar theoretical (although non-structural) contribution. It is obvious, given this picture of present research activity in the field of religious studies, that, despite the ‘nomothetic-anxiety’ that admittedly exists, theoretical studies of religion are by no means dead or fruitless.

2

The Value of ‘Theory’ in Religious Studies

The foregoing observations have not been intended as a systematic historical treatment of the role of theory in the study of religion. Nevertheless they do present something of the difficult context within which any discussion or analysis of ‘theory’ for students of religion must be undertaken. Neither an easy acceptance or rejection of theory in this area of research, quite obviously, will be possible. I shall attempt to argue in the remainder of this paper, however, that without theory the scholarly or academic study of religion is simply incomplete. I do not expect the argument to be conclusive. What I hope to do, however, is to clarify somewhat the notion of theory and to delineate some of the implications of its application in the field of religious studies. Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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A review of the use of the concept of theory in the literature discussed in the first section reveals a lamentable ambiguity. Even a cursory reading produces a bewildering variety of meanings for ‘theory’: ‘theory’ is used synonymously, or nearly so, with method, conjecture, approach, perspective, hypothesis, model, paradigm, explanation, view, way of understanding, conceptual scheme/framework, interpretation, etc. ‘Theory’ is often used in so loose a manner that it means little more than a solution to a problem or a generalization that ‘goes beyond the facts.’ On the other hand, it is also used in so broad a sense as to be indistinguishable from metaphysics and speculative philosophy. Indeed, so confused is the present discussion that the term ‘theory’ is applied to incommensurable positions taken up by the protagonists. Penner and Yonan, for example, in accounting for the theory-shy nature of most contemporary study of religion suggest that the reticence is due to the acceptance of theories of religion “which speak of religion as sui generis and, therefore, irreducible” (Penner and Yonan, 1972; 110). Yet such theorists are really anti-theorists, it would appear, since according to them “the ‘something’ which must be understood cannot in principle be given a definition or a theory” (Penner and Yonan, 1972; 132). And Larson in his Prolegomenon to a Theory of Religion (1978) can refer to W. C. Smith’s position with respect to the study of religion as something of a ‘conversation-stopper’ while also referring to R. Otto and M. Eliade – whose ‘positions’ are, in that regard, indistinguishable from Smith’s – as ‘theoreticians in Religious Studies.’ Indeed, Larson even includes G. van der Leeuw, self-confessed anti-theorist as I have pointed out above, amongst the theoreticians. Nor does this confusion in the great ‘theory/anti-theory debate’ lie simply on one side of the dividing line. W. C. Smith, in his reaction to the scientific approaches to the study of religion, lashes out at theory in general and, in particular, attacks H. Penner’s attempt to develop a semantic theory of religion. And yet even Smith consciously acknowledges that such theories of religion are possible and not, as he had suggested, internally incoherent: “… scientists who look at human affairs that way,” he writes, “are disproving my point that it can’t be done. It can be done, and it strikes me as disastrous” (in Baird, 1975; 105). Nevertheless, hard on the heels of this admission he reasserts the incoherence of the theoretical enterprise and does so, it seems, on the basis of a (religious?) theory of persons: I am against the application of what looks to be scientific method – natural science method – to human affairs… to the study, the understanding of human affairs. The application of what seems to be the natural science method, in the study of human affairs, insofar as it is impersonalism… is intellectually calculated to miss what it’s attempting to understand, beDonald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Wiebe cause, I think, on theoretical grounds, that you cannot understand persons if you don’t recognize that they’re persons (Baird, 1975; 106).

Consequently Smith’s objections to theory seem to amount to a ‘theory’ against theories of religion – a paradoxical and perplexing result. Further discussion of theory in the study of religious phenomena is unlikely, I am afraid, to provide enlightenment. Given the present complexity and confusion of opinions already available as to the value of theory in understanding religion it might be wisest simply to remain silent. However, I think there might be some benefit to set about an analysis of the concept of theory where it is most at home, namely, in the natural sciences. Although even in this context there is no unanimity of opinion, some agreement as to the essential character and function of theory can be found which is bound to be of some assistance in analyzing its role in religious studies. In a strict sense theory in science is a logical structure – a formula or calculus ‘applied’ to the world either in the sense of ‘interpreting’ the world or being ‘imposed upon’ the world.9 Such theory is usually introduced in science only after study has already revealed uniformities in the field of research that can be expressed in the form of empirical laws. Theories, that is, are not invoked to explain particular events but rather whole categories of events and empirical uniformities. Such explanation is achieved ‘deductively’ by pointing to basic entities and processes that constitute the necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the occurrence of the phenomena in question. Although it appears from this account that theories emerge by inductive inference on the basis of the empirical laws derived from ‘observation,’ this need not in fact be so. As I shall point out below, it is more likely that theories are the result of the creative imagination in attempting to account for the facts and empirical laws in hand – a kind of reasoning that has been dubbed ‘abductive inference.’ The statements characterizing the basic entities and processes invoked by the theory can be expressed as a formal system. Theories are not, however, purely formal systems reduced simply to a syntax. They require a semantic dimension because it is intended that the world should be known in such systems of propositions. The semantic element allows for an interpretation of the system by means of ‘bridging principles’ or ‘correspondence rules’ that link the processes envisaged by the theory to the empirical phenomena under consideration. It is precisely such principles that make the theory testable. 9 This discussion of theory in the sciences is based largely on the philosophy of science to be found in Karl Popper, although keeping in mind Popper critiques such as those to be found in T. S. Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and others.

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The assumptions made by scientific theory about the underlying processes, however, must be carefully and clearly specified in order to permit the derivation of specific implications concerning the phenomena that the theory is to explain. The concepts involved must not only deliver a sense of being familiar or ‘at home’ with the phenomena but must explain presently known empirical uniformities and allow prediction of yet unknown facts. In fulfilling the task of explanation and prediction it becomes obvious that theories are not mere images of the world – not merely a set of particular explanations of particular events – but rather a conjectural reconstruction of reality that represents a kind of foreunderstanding of reality. Indeed, only in this latter sense are theories of any heuristic value for they go beyond the mere task of accounting for the present data. Indeed, theories have an important role to play in making even observation possible, as recent discussions of the theory-ladenness of observation show quite clearly. Consequently the theory does not derive from observation (i.e., by some inductivist procedure) but is rather the result of a priori reasoning – although not, obviously, without acquaintance with the phenomena. Because of its formal or logical structure, it is provisionally taken as valid and true but must be empirically tested. It is important to point out here that complete formalization of theory is not possible since that aim conflicts with other goals of theories such as empirical testability. (As it has already been stated, empirically testable theories have a semantic component and are not purely syntactical.) This holds true for theories in the natural sciences as in any other field of research. Furthermore, as Richard Rudner maintains, full formalization, although providing deductive clarity, may not be good, for especially in the early stages of theory formation, great rigor might stultify rather than assist inquiry and, he continues, “the disproportionate allocation of scientific energies available to this one facet of the scientific enterprise might result in the neglect of other equally important aspects of that enterprise” (Rudner, 1966; 52). In any event, it is important to recognize that “the overwhelming majority of extant scientific theories, especially theories in social science, are not at present susceptible of fruitful or easy full formalization” (Rudner, 1966; 11). It is not likely that the notion of ‘scientific theory’ outlined here will find favour in the eyes of the ‘humanistic’ students of religion adverted to above, and that for obvious reasons. Nor would it be difficult for such anti-theorists to marshal adequate evidence to show that students of religion have not been able to supply any such fully, or even nearly fully, formalized theory of religion. This would not itself be surprising given that even the theories in the natural sciences have not achieved such status and that the social sciences are almost destitute of theory. Furthermore, W. G. Runciman in his Social Science and Po-

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litical Theory (1971) persuasively argues that not only is there no general social theory – there being just too many facets of human existence and behaviour to be accounted for – but that it would be a waste of effort to search for one. He writes: … to wish to lump them [i.e. all aspects of human behaviour] all together under a single explanatory heading is to adopt a kind of pre-Socratic approach. Only in the very early days of natural science was it reasonable or interesting to suggest, like Thales of Ionia, that everything is water; and only in the very early days of systematic social science was it reasonable or interesting to suggest, like Marx and Engels, that every social act, institution, or relation is basically economic (Runciman, 1971; 3/4). Despite such recognition of the shortcomings of ‘social scientific theory’ and his abandonment of general theorizing by bracketing it with the philosophy of history, Runciman does not entirely give up his notion of a social science. Talk of a social science, he insists, can still be relevant and fruitful if a particular area of human activity is isolated and subjected to examination aimed at a search for ‘general explanatory statements’ of that behaviour. Such statements, he suggests, will take an ‘if… then’ form that will bear some analogy to theories in the natural sciences. The religious behaviour of mankind, it seems to me, is one such particular area of human behaviour that may be susceptible of such a theoretic interpretation. Indeed, little sense can be made of the notions of either ‘a science of religion’ or ‘a scientific study of religion’10 unless and until some generalizations about such behaviour are achieved – i.e. a set of interrelated concepts and propositions from which religious behaviour can be, in a suitably weakened sense, deduced (i.e. ‘made intelligible’). I would argue, that is, that the mere collection and description of data no more constitutes a ‘science of’ or ‘scientific study of’ when concerned with religious phenomena than when concerned with natural or social phenomena. It is for this reason that I have suggested elsewhere (Wiebe, 1974) a crucial role for explanation in the scholarly study of religion and argue the same importance for theory here. The essential connection between explanation and theory is obvious in that each bears the same logical structure. Moreover, the primary function of theories 10

I have elsewhere (Wiebe, 1977) argued that there is no peculiar discipline of ‘the science of religion,’ but the term, nevertheless, still has wide currency. I have attempted here to refer to the field of studies implied by that term as, simply, ‘religious studies’ of which the social scientific studies form one aspect.

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is to make available to the scientist its lawlike statements so as to make possible further and more profound explanatory arguments that go beyond mere empirical classifications and associations. Theories, that is, are simply more general kinds of explanations that account for empirical generalizations and laws which, in turn, account for ‘the facts.’ The plausibility of any proposal for a theory of religion, it seems to me, will require a clarification of three central issues: the character of social phenomena, the character of religious phenomena, and the aims of both social and ‘religious’ inquiry. It has often been argued, for example, that because of the vast difference between natural and social phenomena, a method wholly different from that for the natural sciences is required for an understanding of the latter. Similarly, it has been suggested, and sometimes argued, that a vast difference exists between ordinary social phenomena and religious phenomena that requires of the student of religion something ‘other’ or ‘more than’ a merely social scientific understanding. The aims of science and the nature of scientific understanding, furthermore, have often been misread in light of these ‘debates.’ I shall comment on each of these issues in turn. According to some, the ‘self-conscious’ subject matter of the social sciences requires of its study a peculiar discipline or, at the very least, special methodological adjuncts to normal scientific procedures. Self-consciousness, that is, raises questions of meaning and meaningfulness that renders social phenomena idiosyncratic and not subsumable under empirical laws. And the uniqueness of historical events excludes any possibility of theoretical generalization. The arguments, however, are not entirely persuasive. Without rehearsing that complex and heated debate here, I think it not entirely implausible, in the light of my earlier analysis of the role of explanation in social studies (Wiebe, 1975), to suggest that the difference between natural and social phenomena can readily be acknowledged without denying the possibility of explanation – of some form of generalized statement about human behaviour. ‘Rational accounts’ of human behaviour that can be put to empirical testing can still be provided. It is possible, without requiring predictive capacity, to formulate general kinds of propositions about the conditions under which certain kinds of behaviour can be expected to occur; statements which can be used to interpret some specific historical action or other. W. G. Runciman in adverting to the same matter, although in a different context, summarizes the point I am attempting to express here, rather succinctly: General causal explanations have validity; but history is not reducible entirely to determinate instances of fully articulated sets of laws. The historian (and therefore the social scientist) can never be a thorough-

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Wiebe going positivist; but he must, once he has realized this, still try to behave up to a point as though he were (Runciman, 1971; 11).

The difference, therefore, is to be acknowledged as a problem for theorists in the social sciences; however, there must be neither an assumption of complete discontinuity between natural and social phenomena nor must the differences that do exist be ignored as if they were of negligible significance. Such ‘acknowledgement’ means a giving up of the ideal of full deductive explanation of human behaviour for a ‘reasonable account’ that provides us with some possibility of testable generalization. This, obviously, imposes limits on a completely positivist approach in the social sciences without, however, landing us in the relativism of ‘personal insight’ or in mere ‘intuitionism.’ I can do no better in summarizing this matter than to quote Runciman once again: I have been agreeing with those who maintain that positivistic claims for the social sciences are a priori wrong because of … crucial features which distinguish the natural sciences from the social. But the history of science is cluttered with the corpses of arguments of just this kind. The only safe prediction to make about a branch of knowledge is that it is bound to change one way or the other, and probably in a direction that few of its practitioners at a given time would suspect (Runciman, 1971; 19/20). The assumption that religious phenomena are ‘more than’ mere social phenomena presents a further and more serious obstacle to serious consideration of talk about a theory of religion. As I have already pointed out above, religious studies scholars are quick to point out that religion is, for both the ‘believer’ and the ‘unbeliever,’ a part of social life (and as such accessible to the ‘tools’ of the social sciences), but that for the ‘believer’ it is also (claimed to be) something more, making the believer’s understanding of it different from that of the nonreligious observer. As Evans-Pritchard, noted above, remarks, the student of religion whether atheist or believer can understand religion as a factor in social life. However, if either tries to understand religion as it really is in itself – essentially or ultimately – their paths must diverge drastically; the atheist seeking theories that will explain the illusion and the believer attempting to understand ‘alongside,’ so to speak, the subject matter under examination (Evans-Pritchard, 1965; 121, as quoted above). It appears that the understanding of the believer derives, then, from either a special technique (other and more than ‘Verstehens Methode’ pure and simple, although such method may bear some analogy), that delivers special meanings that lie beyond mere so-

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cial meanings, or from some kind of privileged status of the believer (such as his/her being the recipient of ‘special revelation,’ for example). If it is the latter that is argued, it would appear that we do not, then, have a scholarly study of religion at all for the very condition supposed that would make such study possible is itself, paradoxically, a religious phenomenon and, hence, a datum. The circularity involved in such a situation would obviously invalidate any conclusion drawn. On the other hand, faith is sometimes referred to as a special technique of discovery open not only to believers but to all students of religion. No clear characterization has ever been provided of it however and it appears, in most discussions, to be indistinguishable from intuition, with the consequence that, if invoked, it would undermine the public and testable character of religious studies. Furthermore, there is no recognition that a technique for discovery, a heuristic device, is not self-validating. To ‘discover,’ for example, the real meaning a particular ritual, rite, or belief has for some devotee or other is not to ‘validate’ it, or to confirm its truth, or guarantee or ground its explicit or implicit value claim. And if the faith that is such a technique is not distinguishable from religious faith, it would appear, again, that in order properly to study religion one must be religious. If it is distinguishable from religious faith, it is difficult to see how it can, at the same time, be clearly and specifically differentiated from ordinary ‘Verstehens Methode’ as invoked in the other social sciences. It would seem, given this analysis, that a strong claim to the differences between religious social phenomena and nonreligious social phenomena would make any and all academic study of religion impossible – a conclusion that even the most conservative and theologically oriented scholar would find it impossible to accept. Students of religion need not, however, preclude a priori the existence of such a ‘religious dimension’ of the peculiar social phenomena under investigation – a quality that might well make religious phenomena somewhat elusive. If that esoteric religious quality were wholly inexpressible, however, we would not have what we presently refer to as religious social phenomena as distinct from nonreligious social phenomena. But insofar as that ‘religious dimension’ of life does find ‘embodiment’ in various social expressions it becomes available to intersubjectively testable cognitive exploration – and it does so, it appears, without need for any special tools beyond those available to the social sciences. (There is, of course, a sense in which the so-called religious dimension of life is inaccessible because it is a matter of personal experience. But in that case the religious element in (any particular) life would be inaccessible both to the ‘believing’ and ‘non-believing’ religious researcher. That kind of ‘religiousness,’ for lack of a better term, is not ‘cognitively available.’)

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In conclusion it might just be pointed out that the often heard claim that in the field of religious studies a researcher’s life must be changed by his investigation of religion in ways that it would not be changed in other studies is entirely unsubstantiated. Nor is there any good reason to see why this ought to be the goal of such research. That this might in fact occur is another matter entirely but in that event would find some analogue in the possibility of anthropologists ‘going native.’ The question of the aim of science and the nature of scientific understanding may find an appropriate hearing at this point in this discussion. Although most everyone recognizes that the function of science is not literally to reproduce the ‘world’ it studies, it seems that many still assume that ‘true’ scientific statements will, in some sense, convey the very experiences they describe and explain. This seems to be especially so with regard to the social sciences and, as I have just been at pains to show, particularly so with the academic or scientific study of religion. Richard Rudner points out, however, that it might … be argued that this is a function of art – of poetry or painting – but [that] it seems scarcely tenable that this should be an aim in the formulation of scientific statements; for the very thrall in which experiences so conveyed may hold us might be quite incompatible with, and is surely irrelevant to, our predictive, explanatory, or other systemizing uses of such statements (Rudner, 1966; 69). It is not the task of science, therefore, so Rudner quotes Einstein, to give us the taste of the soup. Nor is the task of religious studies to provide us with a transforming religious experience. This is not, obviously, to deny that one can taste soup and/or undergo a transforming religious experience and that a kind of understanding comes along with each process, but neither is it creditable to suggest that this is the only understanding that can be achieved or the only understanding towards which the academic/scientific study ought to be directed.

3

The Future of ‘Theory’ in Religious Studies

It is obvious from the foregoing discussions that no clear-cut conclusions as to the value of theoretical studies in religion can be drawn. At best, agreement seems possible only for the claim that there is little agreement as to its nature and/or its value and that given that inherent ambiguity in the analysis, (both historical and philosophical), any further conclusions drawn must be tentative and subject to review. Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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It is the further tentative conclusions that one might draw from the discussion above that I set out for consideration here. They are modest, and yet, if found to be ‘acceptable,’ have far-ranging implications. Firstly, and least objectionably, there can be little doubt that all academic study of religion involves some kind of theoretical element even if not outright theories. Even the historian of religion and phenomenologist, who, according to some methodologists, are not theorists, generalize in the use of typologies, classificatory schemes, etc. Secondly, as this account has shown, many students of religion have attempted to formulate theories of religion and have found such theories, if not complete explanatory successes, of great heuristic value. Furthermore, there is every indication that such theoretically oriented research will be carried on in the future. To attempt to undermine or block such work in the name of ‘humanistic research,’ therefore, seems to be not only futile but a sad misunderstanding of the wider meaning of the academic or scholarly study of religion. If the first two concluding observations are anywhere near the truth it would seem that the search for theories proper in religious studies, and even for a theory of religion in general, is inevitable. If religion is, so to speak, ‘cognitively available’ to the academic community – as even the work of the historian and phenomenologist indicate that it is – it is in principle capable of theoretical interpretation. And it is only natural that there should be such an impetus to proceed toward greater systematization in the study of religion, as in other scientific disciplines, by bringing under a general law or theory the classifications, typologies, and other ad hoc generalizations of the historians and phenomenologists. This allows not only for explanation of that of which we are already aware, but also provides a guide to further research. A further conclusion which we are forced to draw, I suggest, and this one more controversial than the preceding, is that theory in religious studies is, and must be, social scientific theory. There is no such animal as ‘autonomous theory of religion,’ as some might be tempted to refer to it, for, as I have shown here and elsewhere (Wiebe, 1977), there is no peculiar and autonomous discipline such as ‘the science of religion’ that somehow hangs suspended between theology and the social/human sciences. It has been shown that there really are no good reasons for the claim that ‘cognitively available religious phenomena’ are radically different from or ‘more than’ nonreligious social phenomena susceptible of ‘normal social analysis.’ On this score H. Penner is quite right to claim that “the study of religion is an aspect of the study of man and this means that we have no need for unique theories, methods, or intuitions” (in Baird, 1975; 60). It must be admitted that religious studies do not provide us with fully formed theories. Indeed, the theories in the whole of the social/human sciDonald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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ences come nowhere near the logical rigor or empirical testability of theories in the natural sciences. Some, in fact, would argue that not only are our theories here few and far between, but that they are also, in general, so loosely structured as to be indistinguishable from philosophy or speculative metaphysics. This certainly appears to be the case, for example, with M. Eliade’s so-called phenomenological theory of religion. ‘Evidence’ such as this might be thought, then, to lend some support to the reticence on the part of the ‘humanist scholars’ in the field to recognize a role for theory in religious studies. However, even though I agree with the general ‘rule of thumb’ that it is unwise to put all one’s eggs into a single basket and therefore wish to keep an open mind about the value of ‘humanist studies,’ the difficulties of theoretical analysis do not constitute a conclusive argument against it. That we cannot provide Deductive-Nomological explanations of religious (or any other kind of) behaviour is not grounds for jettisoning the search for explanation or for opting for a (psychologically) relativistic personalist interpretation of that behaviour. Similarly, the fact that no fully formed, subsumptive theory of religion or religious behaviour has yet been formulated hardly constitutes sufficient ground for the rejection of a search for something weaker yet still a reasoned, systematic account of how things must be if the behaviour under examination is to be properly understood. There is a lot of truth to M. Harris’ response to those who would, for lack of perfection, replace theory and controlled observation with a supposed knowledge gained by undisciplined experience or some kind of personal inspiration. He writes: “Failure to achieve complete predictability does not invalidate a scientific theory; it merely constitutes an invitation to do better” (Harris, 1979; 11). The task of the ‘scientist of religion,’ therefore, is a difficult but not an a priori impossible or unfruitful one. An obvious aid, as I have noted above, is the basing of general theories of religion on what one might refer to as ‘micro-theoretical’ work – theoretical analyses of limited areas of human behaviour and limited even to areas of human religious behaviour that can more easily be tested against empirical reality but which can later become the focus of more general and bolder theorizing. Because of the ‘softer’ character of theory in the social as opposed to the natural realm one ought to expect both that a greater number of theories are likely to be proposed and that they will be more difficult to assess and evaluate. However, here again it must be recognized that even though scientific judgment is difficult, it is not necessarily impossible. Philosophical reflection, as C. Brakenhielm points out (1975) can help in forging conceivable criteria for any acceptable theory of religion. Without attempting to be exhaustive, he suggests six criteria, which, if applied in the situation described here, would be immensely helpful in establishing credibility for a scientific (theoretical)

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study of Religion. According to Brakenhielm, the criteria can be stated in the following six ‘ought-statements’: 1. An acceptable theory of religion ought to build upon an acceptable general philosophical view. 2. An acceptable theory of religion ought to be intersubjectively testable. 3. An acceptable theory of religion ought to be consistent and testable. 4. An acceptable theory of religion ought to be simple. 5. An acceptable theory of religion ought to have wide scope. 6. An acceptable theory of religion ought to embrace a correct analysis of religious beliefs belonging to the scope of the theory (Brakenhielm, 1975; 183). Although Brakenhielm’s suggestions emerge from an analysis of philosophical theories of religion, a discussion of such criteria as these might well form at least the basis for more fruitful dialogue between the ‘humanist’ and the more ‘scientific’ scholars in religious studies. The first of the criteria, especially, would provide a kind of ‘neutral ground’ for such a discussion. One might, for example, following suggestions to be found in M. Harris’ Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture (1979), debate the ‘research strategies’ that underlie the ‘humanist’ and the ‘scientific’ approaches to religious studies. That metatheoretical task, however, cannot be undertaken here. I do not expect the conclusions arrived at here, given their hesitant and unsystematic character, to be widely accepted, nor would I wish to have them escape critical debate. And I have little illusion as to the general persuasive force of the arguments that have been set out in their support. I recognize that the potentiality of theory to distract from or in any way diminish the ‘transcendent meaningfulness’ of Religion will, for many, count powerfully, if not decisively, against it. Nevertheless, without sound reason for believing that ‘religious understanding’ (and commitment) must necessarily be right everywhere and always (or, necessarily, even anywhere or at any time) there is no good reason for assuming ‘scientific understanding’ to be necessarily wrong. Just as ‘Religion’ has, in the past, found itself in possible and actual conflict with the findings of science so ‘Religion’ can, potentially, (and does so ‘actually’ in a number of cases) find itself in conflict with the scientific understanding of religion. Consequently, even though the arguments here may not be entirely persuasive, they do nevertheless provide some grounds for the conclusions drawn even should they lead to conclusions that might ‘undermine’ religion. Further work will need to be done in clarifying, in relation to theory, other key concepts in the study of religion such as definition, reduction, meaning, model, etc., if those grounds are to be strengthened. Analysis and evaluation of existing theories in the field may also prove helpful in this regard, perhaps

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providing a typology of theories that would allow comparison of explanatory successes and failures. Whether the argument here, then, is entirely persuasive or not, it seems to me that all the signs point in the direction of future research in the field of religious studies being increasingly theoretical, and, concomitantly, increasingly fruitful.

Bibliography Th. P. van Baaren and H. J. W. Drijvers (eds.), Religion, Culture and Methodology, Mouton, 1973. Th. P. van Baaren, ‘Science of Religion as a Systematic Discipline: Some Introductory Remarks,’ in Religion, Culture and Methodology, ed. by van Baaren and Drijvers, Mouton, 1973. Robert Baird (ed.), Methodological Issues in Religious Studies, New Horizons Press, 1975. John Beattie, Other Cultures: Aims, Methods and Achievements of Social Anthropology, Cohen and West, 1964. Richard H. Bell, ‘Understanding the Fire-Festivals: Wittgenstein and Theories in Religion,’ Religious Studies, 14 (1978). Robert N. Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World, Harper and Row, 1970. Ugo Bianchi, ‘The History of Religion and the Religio-Anthropological Approach,’ in Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology, ed. by Honko, Mouton, 1979. John Bowker, The Sense of God: Sociological, Anthropological and Psychological Approaches to the Origin of the Sense of God, Oxford University Press, 1973. John Bowker, The Religious Imagination and the Sense of God, Oxford University Press, 1978. Carl-Reinhold Brakenhielm, How Philosophy Shapes Theories of Religion, CWK Gleerup, 1975. S. G. F. Brandon, Religion in Ancient History, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969. R. W. Brockway, ‘The Victorian Origins of Religion Debate – An Academic Myth,’ Religious Humanism, 11 (1977). Svein Bjerke, ‘Ecology of Religion,’ in Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology, ed by. Honko, Mouton, 1979. H. J. W. Drijvers, ‘Theory Formation in Science of Religion and the Study of the History of Religion,’ in Religion, Culture and Methodology, ed. by Van Baaren and Drijvers, Mouton, 1973. H. Byron Earhart, ‘Towards a Theory of the Formation of the Japanese New Religions: A Case Study of Gedtsu-Kai,’ History of Religions, 20 (1980).

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E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion, Oxford University Press, 1965. Marvin Harris, Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture, Random House, 1979. C. G. Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science, Prentice-Hall, 1966. L. Honko, Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology, Mouton, 1979. Ake Hultkrantz, ‘Ecology of Religion: Its Scope and Methodology,’ Temenos, 4 (1974) and in Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology, ed. by Honko, Mouton, 1979. Joseph Kitagawa, ‘The History of Religions in America,’ in The History of Religions: Essays in Methodology, ed. by Eliade and Kitagawa, Chicago University Press, 1959. Gerald Larson, ‘Prolegomenon to a Theory of Religion,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 66 (1978). E. Thomas Lawson, ‘The Explanation of Myth and Myth as Explanation,’ Journal of The American Academy of Religion, 66 (1978). G. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, Allen and Unwin, 1938. Annemarie de Waal Malefijt, Religion and Culture: An Introduction to Anthropology of Religion, Macmillan, 1968. Hans Mol, Identity and the Sacred: A Sketch for a New Social-Scientific Theory of Religion, The Book Society of Canada, 1976. M. Novak, Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove: An Invitation to Religious Studies, Harper and Row, 1971. W. G. Oxtoby, Religious Diversity: Essays by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Harper and Row, 1976. Hans Penner, ‘The Poverty of Functionalism,’ History of Religion, 11 (1971). Hans Penner and E. A. Yonan, ‘Is a Science of Religion Possible?,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 52 (1972). Hans Penner, ‘Creating a Brahman: A Structural Approach to Religion,’ in Methodological Issues in Religious Studies, ed. by Baird, New Horizons Press, 1975. Hans Penner, ‘The Problem of Semantics in the Study of Religion,’ in Methodological Issues in Religious Studies, ed. by Baird, New Horizons Press, 1975. Hans Penner, ‘Structural Analysis as a Method for the Study of Religion,’ Paper read to the second Conference on Methodology, Warsaw, 1979. D. Z. Phillips, Religion Without Explanation, Basil Blackwell, 1976. Richard Rudner, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Prentice-Hall, 1966. Kurt Rudolph, ‘The Position of Source Research in Religious Studies,’ in Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology, ed. by Honko, Mouton, 1979. W. G. Runciman, Social Science and Political Theory, Cambridge University Press, 1971. E. J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History, Duckworth, 1975. John Skorupski, Symbol and Theory: A Philosophical Study of Theories of Religion in Social Anthropology, Cambridge University Press, 1976. Ninian Smart, ‘Beyond Eliade: The Future of Theory in Religion,’ Numen, 25 (1978).

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W. C. Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion: A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind, Macmillan, 1962. W. C. Smith, ‘Methodology and the Study of Religions: Some Misgivings,’ in Methodological Issues in Religious Studies, ed. by Baird, New Horizons Press, 1975a. W. C. Smith, ‘Objectivity and the Humane Sciences: A New Proposal,’ in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada, 1975b. W. C. Smith, Belief and History, Virginia University Press, 1977. W. C. Smith, Faith and Belief, Princeton University Press, 1979. Jan de Vries, The Study of Religion: A Historical Approach, Harcourt, 1967. A. F. C. Wallace, Religion: An Anthropological View, Random House, 1966. Donald Wiebe, ‘Explanation and the Scientific Study of Religion,’ Religion, 5 (1975). Donald Wiebe, ‘Is a Science of Religion Possible?,’ Studies in Religion, 7 (1977). Donald Wiebe, ‘The Role of Belief in the Study of Religion,’ Numen, 26 (1979a). Donald Wiebe, ‘Does Understanding Religion Require Religious Understanding?,’ Paper read to the second Conference on Methodology, Warsaw, 1979b. Donald Wiebe, ‘Review of W. C. Smith’s Faith and Belief,’ Studies in Religion, 10 (1981a). Donald Wiebe, Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm of the Study of Religion, Mouton, 1981b. J. Milton Yinger, The Scientific Study of Religion, Macmillan, 1970.

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Chapter 4

Beyond the Skeptic and the Devotee: Reductionism in the Scientific Study of Religion Donald Wiebe

Robert Segal has recently argued (1983) that the only proper scientific study of religion is a reductionistic one. His defense of reductionism in the study of religion is salutary in light of assumptions sometimes made by those who insist that the study of religion is a distinct and autonomous discipline.1 And Segal’s choice of Eliade as exemplar of ‘nonreductionism’ as foil to his own argument is, I think, beyond criticism, for Eliade is, without question, one of the major influences on the academic study of religion. Despite an essential methodological agreement with Segal regarding the role of explanation and theory in the study of religion, I find myself forced to dissent from an important, even if largely hidden, element of his argument. He argues, it seems to me, for the a priori validity of a reductionist account of religious phenomena and in doing so himself adopts, although in a negative register so to speak, the same stance as that of the nonreductionists. On the metaphysical issue at stake in religious claims, he comes down firmly on the side of the sceptic and against the devotee. And like his opponents, he does so without benefit of logical assessment or philosophical argumentation. “Whether or not reductionistic interpretations themselves preclude the reality of God,” he writes, “nonbelievers by definition do not accept that reality and so cannot employ interpretations which presuppose it” (1983: 116). But in proceeding in this fashion, Segal attempts to prove more than he needs to prove in his defense of reductionism in the study of religion; all he need have shown is the possibility of reductionist accounts of religions and not their necessity. Consequently, I will suggest that the establishment of a framework for the scholarly and scientific study of religion requires neither a defense of the devotee over against the sceptic nor vice versa, but rather merely an agreement that methodological assumptions in such a study prescind from that metaphysical debate altogether.

1 I have discussed the reasons in Wiebe, 1981.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_006Donald

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There is no question in my mind that Segal is right to attack the uncritical assumption of the existence (not merely ‘reality’)2 of the transcendent referents of religious discourse (i.e. belief) and symbolic import of ritual and moral behaviour that is espoused by Eliade and other like-minded students of religion. Such accounts of religion quite obviously adopt the stance of the devotee as over against the sceptic on the metaphysical issue, for example, of the existence of the gods. Phenomenological accounts that ‘take religion seriously’ in the sense of interpreting religion ‘religiously,’ therefore, only fulfill their appropriate academic role by providing (or attempting to provide) the outsider (or nondevotee) with the meaning of religion to or for the believer. This constitutes the ‘descriptive’ aspect of the study of religion which is entirely unproblematic as long as it is not assumed to constitute the sum and substance of the scientific study of religion.3 It is for this reason that Segal is right to insist that what is right/true for the believer or devotee is not necessarily right or true per se.4 That would be to confuse understanding religion with endorsement. But Segal himself, as it will soon become apparent, is guilty of a similar confusion, for he seems to me to imply that, since Eliade’s argument fails, it must be the case that religion is necessarily false and therefore necessarily requires a reductionistic account in order to make sense of it. He writes: “If Eliade fails to prove that a nonreductionistic interpretation is alone proper, he also fails to prove that for a nonbeliever, it is even possible” (1983: 109). From showing the inadequacy of Eliade’s nonreductionistic account of religion Segal seems to conclude not only that nonreductionistic accounts are not necessary but that they are not even possible; at least they are not possible as explanatory, scientific accounts of the truth of religion although they may do as descriptions of the meaning of religion for the devotees. As he puts it, “a reductionistic interpretation of religious phenomena is the only one possible, at least for a nonbelieving interpreter” (1983: 109). The meaning of Segal’s attack on Eliade and others and the full meaning of his own alternative theoretical framework for the study of religion are obscured somewhat by his use of reflexive language. Segal himself complains that there is a great deal of ambiguity in the language of students of religion when attempting to set out the aims of their study. Nonreductionists, he points

2 For a full discussion of the meaning and import of this distinction see N. Smart, 1973a. 3 I have argued against such a “descriptivism” elsewhere; see Wiebe, 1981: 1-6. 4 It is important here, however, to recognize that the phenomenological injunction that the student of religion ought (à la W. B. Kristensen, 1960) to operate by the principle that “the believer is always right” is (or at least ought to be) purely a methodological rule and not a philosophical doctrine that requires a priori acceptance.

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out, use a reflexive language that allows them to focus their attention on understanding what religion means to or for the religious believers themselves instead of focusing on “understanding religion in general.” That is particularly the case with historians of religion, comparativists, and phenomenologists. The nonreflexive use of language, on the other hand, is concerned with the ‘real’ or ‘objective’ meaning of religion in itself and so ought to supersede what we might refer to as the subjective quality of ‘reflexive understanding.’ Thus, according to Segal, “[t]he issue is whether the true meaning of religion is its conscious meaning for believers” (1983: 103). And that it is, he insists, Eliade (and by implication all nonreductionists) fails to show. Consequently, Eliade ought to recognize the possibility of an alternative framework for the understanding of religion that does not make an a priori assumption of the identity of the “true meaning” of religion and the “conscious meaning of religion for believers.” Implicit in this argument lies an assumption on Segal’s part that there is an asymmetry between his defense of reductionism and Eliade’s defense of nonreductionism. Segal suggests that nonreductionist accounts of religion are possible only for devotees (since sceptics, unlike the devotees, see that the true meaning of religion is not the conscious meaning it has for devotees), whereas reductionist accounts are possible for both devotees and sceptics (because devotees, presumably, can be helped to recognize not only the distinction perceived by the sceptic, but the truth of the sceptic’s alternative explanation). That is, I would maintain, the burden of his argument against Eliade and for the superiority of reductionism, despite his rather surprising suggestion, in the final paragraph of the essay, that “reductionistic interpretations may be impossible for believers” (1983: 116). Yet all of this is, in one sense, jettisoned by Segal’s own use of reflexive terminology – by limiting his defense of reductionism to its use only by “nonbelievers” (i.e. sceptics). If taken seriously, such a suggestion would, surely, make a mockery of his attack on Eliade and the nonreductionists and would amount to a rejection of his central claim concerning the superiority of the questions of the “real truth” of religion as over against the merely “conscious meaning” it has for the devotee. Furthermore, Segal’s concession here to the devotee is really too little; for, psychologically, reductionistic interpretations of religion are necessarily impossible for the devotee in the same sense that nonreductionistic interpretations are necessarily impossible for the sceptic. The psychology of commitment, so to speak, must be the same for the devotee as it is for the sceptic. Despite the ambiguity of some of his remarks that is created by his use of a reflexive mode of speech, Segal’s argument in structure and intent is primarily logical rather than psychological. That argument amounts to the claim that

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it is impossible for nonbelievers to explain religious phenomena in religious terms and also that it is unnecessary for anyone to do so. It is both possible and necessary for nonbelievers and permissible for anyone to explain religious phenomena in the nonreligious, reductive terms of the social sciences. In contrast to Segal, however, I have already intimated that a defense of reductionism in the study of religion need not assume such an asymmetry; it need only be shown to be a possibility both for devotees and for sceptics. Such an argument would deliver all that Segal needs in order to bring about the broadening of the program of research for students of religion that he seeks while avoiding unnecessary ‘political wrangling’ within that body of scholars over a stronger and much more ‘threatening’ argument. It would, however, have (for Segal) the undesirable side effect of allowing, by a kind of parity of argument, nonreductionism as a possible form of explanation and theory to which both devotee and sceptic would have to be open in principle. Segal’s case for reductionism, therefore, is simply too tight. It now remains for me to show how in this way Segal jeopardizes the initial purpose and intent of his argument against the nonreductionists. There is no question that Segal is right to claim that reductionistic interpretations of religions are the only ones possible for sceptics (i.e. nonbelieving interpreters) if they are to remain nonbelieving interpreters. However, this argument cuts both ways: the opposite holds for the devotees if they are to remain believers. It is strange, therefore, to hear Segal castigate Eliade for his supposedly question-begging procedures: “All he does is continually assert… that reductionistic interpretations of religion are either irrelevant or secondary because they skirt the conscious, irreducibly religious meaning of religion for believers. But he thereby begs, not answers, the key question: whether the conscious, irreducibly religious meaning of religion for believers is the true meaning of religion, which means the true one for them” (1983: 103). This is a restatement of an earlier attack on Eliade to be found in Segal’s review of his Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religions: “Eliade’s arguments are dubious. To assert that religion is irreducible because it is irreducible for believers is to beg, not answer, this question raised by psychology, sociology and other disciplines, that is, whether the conscious meaning of religion for believers is its true meaning” (1977: 332-33). Surely, there is no difference of structure here in his argument for reductionism that maintains that the study of religion must be reductionistic because for the sceptic religion must be nothing but yet another mundane social phenomenon. Indeed, this is simply to reiterate a point made long ago that too much sociology of religion is undertaken as a ‘sociology of error’ which accepts quite uncritically enormous metaphysical assumptions (see Hamnett, 1973). In this respect, Segal’s

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naturalism is not simply a ‘methodological atheism’ à la Peter Berger (1967), but an atheism tout court.5 Thus Segal too begs all the important questions for there are no persuasive a priori reasons, other than nonreductionistic explanations of religions themselves, given to show that scholars ought to remain nonbelieving interpreters of religion. A further problem in the reductionist position here concerns Segal’s objection that those who attempt to provide a nonreductionistic understanding of religion take on the character of the devotee in that they limit themselves to using concepts indigenous to the community studied. According to Segal, their use of indigenous concepts and categories indicates that their theories of religion presume a prior “religious understanding” – a kind of knowledge of religion from the inside that (illicitly) illuminates their so-called scientific theories. Their talk of understanding religion should, he therefore insists, be seen as, or taken to mean, “endorsing” or “reduplicating” the religious belief. He writes: “Would not a believer say that to appreciate its meaning is to accept it? How then, can a nonbeliever profess to be appreciating its reality for a believer without accepting it himself” (1983: 110)? Understanding differs from endorsement, then, by implication, only if interpretations of religion are provided in terms of concepts not indigenous to the religious community. But if the only concepts the sceptic can use in understanding religion are external to the religious discourse of the studied community while the devotees’ understanding is entirely in terms of concepts that are internal to that discourse and community, then, surely, the two discourses are incommensurable. But if they are so, then it would seem that understanding religion would be incompatible with scepticism.6 Consequently, if “apostasy” must be a possibility for the devotee, as it must be (or at least, in the reflexive mode, could be) according to Segal, so then “going native” must be a possibility for the sceptic. However, Segal could hardly accept such a reductio; nor does he really espouse such a position in the final analysis of his argument. Not only are the two sets of discourse: “talk of the gods” and “talk about the talk of the gods” commensurable for him, they are incompatible: “Those [social scientific] explanations, as rival ones to God, do challenge the reality of God” (1983: 116). The scientific student of religion does in fact understand the “religious claim” as a meaningful epistemic utterance and rejects it, not only on the grounds of psychological difficulty of achieving the “mind set” of the devotee but chiefly 5 On the matter of “atheism” in Peter Berger and its relevance to religious studies see N. Smart, 1973a. See also R. Segal, 1980. 6 This is argued by D. Z. Phillips (1970). The argument here is reminiscent of MacIntyre’s similar argument for a diametrically opposed conclusion (1964).

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on logical and epistemic grounds. The logic however is circular, for Segal merely reiterates his earlier truism here, namely, that the nonbeliever must, if (s)he is to satisfy the devotee, imagine a belief which (s)he not merely does not have but, by virtue of being a nonbeliever, logically cannot accept. He writes: “The nonbeliever, it is taken for granted, wants to understand religion in the believer’s own terms. The problem is that he logically, rather than psychologically, cannot, and all the open-mindedness, sincerity, and will power he can muster are therefore to no avail” (1983: 112, see also 118 n. 25). Segal’s language here is confusing, however, for he mixes, quite uncritically, the psychological validity of his reflexive language with logical validity, but refuses to allow the devotee to do the same. His intention in this somewhat muddled talk is, nevertheless, quite clear. He means to suggest that religion is simply false and therefore needs explaining in terms of concepts that have a reality not present in religion/religious concepts. But that suggestion is a cavalier adoption of rather momentous philosophic conclusions without the benefit of philosophical argument (even by way of authority). It is arguable, I would think, that the claim that all religions are false is intuitively obvious or that it even possesses an initial plausibility that would justify the stance Segal takes. This is especially so in light of the development of so-called compatibility systems in the major world religious traditions, although space does not permit elaboration of that matter here.7 A methodology so presumptuous, I suggest, is hardly likely to gain support in the community of scholars to which it is directed, nor do I think it should. An argument for the possibility of reductionism, on the other hand, would make substantially the same assumptions, but wittingly so, and on methodological grounds only, and not on metaphysical/philosophical grounds that are still open to debate.8 It is important in this regard, I think, to emphasize a point of which Segal is aware but misses, perhaps, the full significance. He knows that naturalistic social scientific theories are not only numerous but that they are often mutually exclusive in their accounts of the same phenomena. Furthermore, their logical and scientific status is often in serious question (e.g., functionalism) or the evidence in their favor rather weak and unconvincing. Certainly, here and in much of his earlier work (1977, 1980), he admits that they are partial and inadequate. Now, none of these characteristics appear to be grounds to

7 An elaboration of the argument implicit in this claim can be found in Wiebe, 1978. 8 I have in mind here the counterintuitive moves in the methodology of P. K. Feyerabend (1975). I have attempted to spell out the implications of such a methodology for religious studies elsewhere (1981).

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inspire a prolonged espousal of and use of such theorizing. Using the terminology of recent discussions in the philosophy of science (see Lakatos, 1978) one might even plausibly suggest that we have here an unmistakable indication of a “degenerating paradigm shift” and that we ought therefore to give up the “naturalistic paradigm” and either forgo explanatory/theoretical accounts of religion altogether, as does Donald L. Dougherty in his ‘Is Religious Studies Possible?’ (1981), for example, or to seek for radically new types of explanations and theories – perhaps even nonreductionistic ones.9 I find the former suggestion unacceptable, as, I think, would Segal, but some support for the latter claim might be provided that could have an initial plausibility even for him. Such support might be found in several sources. First, it could be argued that the extraordinary quality of the religious phenomena provided, so to speak, by historians and phenomenologists, calls for extraordinary explanations if they are to be fully understood. M. Slote’s ‘Religion, Science and the Extraordinary’ (1970), for example, provides some, even if not wholly persuasive, grounds for such a move. Secondly, it appears that we might well be able to argue coherently for the possibility of the inclusion of nonnaturalistic assumptions in what has thus far been conceived to be an exclusively naturalistic enterprise. Some suggestions of that order can be found, for example, in R. Morris’s ‘The Concept of the Spiritual and the Dilemma of Sociology’ (1964), Daniel L. Hodges’s ‘Breaking a Scientific Taboo: Putting Assumptions About the Supernatural into Scientific Theories of Religion’ (1974), and W. R. Garrett’s ‘Troublesome Transcendence: The Supernatural in the Scientific Study of Religion’ (1974). On the pluralistic methodological grounds of which I have spoken above, such possibilities must be taken seriously in light of the present difficulties of the purely social scientific accounts of religion. If there is even a reasonable possibility that such counterinductive procedures might prove true, and I think there is, then rival religious (i.e. nonreductionistic) explanations that provide a more persuasive account of religious phenomena than do present naturalistic accounts might be forthcoming and may even prove their worth if given the “breathing space” they require in order to “generate” the evidence needed to persuade. Further, and despite Segal’s comments on Verstehens Methode and the study of religion, the philosophical arguments in favor of the autonomy of the Geisteswissenschaften may yet undermine the strict naturalism of Segal’s position. This debate is far from over, as Segal admits, and, should the assumption of

9 Interesting suggestions that show some sympathy for such an argument can be found in Donald Crosby, 1981.

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the unity of the physical and social sciences be undermined, there would be further solid grounds for the student of religion to seek for nonreductionistic explanations. (This is not the place to take up that debate, however; but whether such “Verstehens Methode explanations” would be nonreductionistic in the sense required by Eliade’s theory of religion is not a foregone conclusion.) Finally, the philosophical argument in favor of a radical distinction between faith and the “cumulative tradition” (e.g., Smith, 1962) would, if sound, undermine Segal’s position radically. Since it is a position widely adopted, Segal, it seems to me, needs to argue its inadequacy and not simply assume it. To conclude this brief response to Segal’s paper, I must reiterate that I am in sympathy with his intention to defend reductionism in the study of religion. Unlike Segal, however, I do not see reductionism as the only possible approach to the scientific and scholarly study of religion – not even for the sceptic, the nonbelieving interpreter. Even s(he) needs to be willing, I have suggested, to move in counterinductive and counterintuitive ways when well-trodden paths seem to lead nowhere. Furthermore, I do not, at least for the present, see the reductionist approach in the study of religion to be superior in every respect to the nonreductionistic one, although it has some peculiar advantages that must not be ignored. Indeed, I think the reductionist approach shows a great deal of promise for the future of the academic study of religion.

Bibliography Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, New York, Doubleday and Company Inc., 1967. Donald A. Crosby, Interpretive Theories of Religion, The Hague, Mouton Publishers, 1981. Donald L. Dougherty, ‘Is Religious Studies Possible?,’ Religious Studies, 17 (1981), pp. 295-309. Paul K. Feyerbend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, London, New Left Books, 1975. W. R. Garret, ‘Troublesome Transcendence: The Supernatural in the Scientific Study of Religion,’ Sociological Analysis, 35 (1974), pp. 167-79. Ian Hamnett, ‘Sociology of Religion and Sociology of Error,’ Religion, 3 (1973), pp. 1-12. Daniel L. Hodges, ‘Breaking a Scientific Taboo: Putting Assumptions About the Supernatural into Scientific Theories of Religion,’ Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, 13 (1974), pp. 393-408.

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W.B. Kristensen, The Meaning of Religion, Tr. by J. B. Carman, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1960. Imre Lakatos, ‘Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,’ in The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, ed. by J. Worrall and G. Currie, pp. 8-101, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978. Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘Is Understanding Religion Compatible with Believing?,’ in Faith and the Philosophers, ed. by J. Hick, pp. 115-33, London, Macmillan, 1964. Rudolph Morris, ‘The Concept of the Spiritual and the Dilemma of Sociology,’ Sociological Analysis, 25 (1964), pp. 167-73. D. Z. Phillips, ‘Faith, Scepticism, and Religious Understanding,’ in D. Z. Phillips, Faith and Philosophical Enquiry, pp. 13-33, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970. Robert Segal, ‘Review of M. Eliade’s Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashion: Essays in Comparative Religions,’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religions, 16 (1977), pp. 332-33. Robert Segal, ‘The Social Sciences and the Truth of Religious Belief,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 48 (1980), pp. 403-13. Robert Segal, ‘In Defense of Reductionism,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 51 (1983), pp. 97-124. Michael A. Slote, ‘Religion, Science and the Extraordinary,’ in M. A. Slote, Reason and Scepticism, pp. 188-215, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1970. Ninian Smart, The Science of Religions and the Sociology of Knowledge: Some Methodological Questions, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1973a. Ninian Smart, The Phenomenon of Religion, London, Macmillan, 1973b. Wilfred C. Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion: A New Approach to the Religions of Mankind, New York, Macmillan, 1962. Donald Wiebe, ‘Science and Religion: Is Compatibility Possible?,’ Journal for the American Scientific Affiliation, 30 (1978), pp. 169-76. Donald Wiebe, Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion, The Hague, Mouton Publishers, 1981.

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Chapter 5

Postscript: on Method, Metaphysics, and Reductionism Donald Wiebe

An essential weakness of my ‘Beyond the Sceptic and the Devotee: Reductionism in the Scientific Study of Religion’ is the fact that the title of the essay promises more than it delivers. Whereas the title suggests the elaboration of a fully developed understanding of the notion of reductionism and the way it functions in the natural and social sciences, including the study of religion, in point of fact, I concern myself essentially with a critique of Robert Segal’s ‘In Defense of Reductionism.’ Nor is this the only problem with the essay, as is clear from Segal’s critical response to it in the reprinting of his essay in Religion and the Social Sciences: Essays on the Confrontation.1 Given these acknowledged shortcomings it might well be asked why I have allowed the essay to be reprinted here. The reasons are simple. First, and foremost, I think that within the structure of my critique of Segal’s defense of reductionism I not only outline a less confusing, and less polemical, approach to the topic but I also suggest more persuasive lines of analysis. Republication of the essay with additional comment here will allow me to bring that into clearer view. Furthermore, although I have much sympathy with Segal’s criticisms of my essay, for the most part his critique consists of objections to what he claims are misconstruals of his position and attempts to clarify the intentions of other claims in his defense of reductionism which leave untouched the essential correctness of the central argument of my essay – which I admit is largely implicit in support of reductionistic approaches to the study of religion and religions. Though I cannot here provide a full elaboration of that implicit argument, I can at least show what kind of framework is required for its proper discussion and delineation. And, finally, it seems to me that there is room for disagreement with several of the objections Segal raises against my treatment of his views, the discussion of which may help clarify the nature of the reductionism in the study of religion each of us supports. I shall begin my supplementary comments to

1 Robert Segal, Religion and the Social Sciences: Essays on the Confrontation, (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), pp. 5-28.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_007Donald

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‘Beyond the Sceptic and the Devotee’ with Segal’s criticisms for that seems to me the easiest entry point to a complex debate of an obviously elusive subject,2 and then proceed, in reverse order, to elaborate on the other reasons given for reprinting the essay here. Segal summarizes his response to my critique in eight brief statements to which I shall make reference, by number, below. Whether Segal actually claims intellectual superiority for reductive over nonreductive analyses in Religious Studies (claim 1), or that reductive analyses alone are proper in the academic study of religion (claim 6), or that a reductive approach to the study of religions constitutes a (Lakatosian) progressive research program (claim 8), or that religion is false (claim 4), or that nonbelievers can never become believers and vice versa (claim 7), are matters of interpretation. Though it is not possible to enter into a lengthy exegetical exercise here, neither is it really necessary since Segal’s disclaimers, so it seems to me, are not even justifiable in terms of the expressed intent of his essay. Indeed, some of his criticisms here seem internally incoherent – his claim regarding the truth or falsity of religion, for example (claim 4). Denying that he ever claimed religion to be false, he nevertheless also admits that reductive analyses of the object of religion, which he sees as permissible, assume the falsity of religion. Nor is this the only point at which this problem of consistency emerges as will soon become evident. With respect to the question of the superiority of reductive analyses, for example, it seems to me that the asymmetry he establishes between reductive and nonreductive accounts of religion concerning their acceptability to believers and nonbelievers (claim 1) amounts to more than a mere practical superiority, which notion in any event, unfortunately, is not clearly analyzed. The practical advantage that one does not have to be a believer to accept reductive analyses of religion surely constitutes an intellectual superiority over nonreductive analyses in that it requires the adoption of fewer arbitrary assumptions. Reductive analyses, that is, would not contravene the principle of Occam’s razor as nonreductive analyses appear to do and that, in my opinion, constitutes a kind of intellectual superiority. Segal’s denial that reductive analyses alone are proper in the academic study of religion (claim 6) is similarly odd. If Segal does not claim that reductive analyses alone are proper, in the sense Eliade claims nonreductive analyses alone are acceptable, he seems to imply that reductive and nonreductive analyses are complementary. But on the face of it, those kinds of analyses

2 For comment on the elusiveness of this problem see I. Strenski, ‘Reductionism and Structural Anthropology,’ Inquiry, Vol. 19, 1982.

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are mutually exclusive. Given Segal’s assumption (in claim 2) that believers, like nonbelievers, could accept reductive analyses of the origin, function, and meaning of religion, but, unlike nonbelievers, not of the object of religion, some complementarity between reductive and nonreductive analyses is possible, but only for the believer. Segal gives no indication as to how it might be possible for the nonbeliever to accept both reductive and nonreductive analyses of religion. Furthermore, Segal also notes (in claim 2) that the falsity of religion is assumed not only in reductive analyses of the object of religion but also in similar analyses of its origin, function, and meaning. After this admission it is difficult to know what Segal’s claim that all other reductive analyses “are open to believers as well as nonbelievers” really amounts to. That Segal denies having claimed that reductive analyses are adequate (claim 8) is also somewhat odd, and especially so in his denial that the reductive approach to the study of religion constitutes a (Lakatosian) progressive research program. Without such claims, his ‘defense’ of reductionism is, I think, incredibly weak. Yet he seems to want to argue the matter more forcefully in that he maintains that he had argued for the necessity of reductive analyses, whereas I had argued only for the possibility of reductive analyses (claim 3). The only way in which he can reduce the tension between these claims is to insist that his strong argument regarding the necessity of reductive analysis applied only to the nonbeliever. Such relativization of the force of his argument, however, greatly reduces the methodological significance of his defense of reductionism for the student of religion, for methodological injunctions cannot be held to apply differentially to believers and nonbelievers. In the two remaining criticisms Segal spells out, the issues in question are essentially concerned with whether or not believers and nonbelievers can understand one another and come to adopt (convert to) one another’s positions (claims 5 & 7). Neither of the criticisms, however, really affects the point I made in ‘Beyond the Sceptic and Devotee’ to the effect that there is no essential asymmetry in the relationship of the believer (devotee) to reductionistic explanations and the relationship of the nonbeliever (sceptic) to nonreductionistic explanations. As long as each wishes to remain what (s)he is – devotee or sceptic – neither can accept a form of analysis that denies or assumes what cannot, by virtue of their commitments, be either denied or assumed. But the point of the debate over reductionism is methodological rather than psychological, and the point of my argument was, and still is, that the student of religion must, ideally speaking, bracket all questions of commitment and advocacy on entering the profession and therefore is, as an academic student of religion, neither a believer (devotee) nor a nonbeliever (sceptic).

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So much by way of direct comment upon Segal’s specific criticisms of ‘Beyond the Sceptic and the Devotee.’ It remains now for me to clarify the central thrust of my critique of his defense of reductionism and the nature of the support I was attempting to provide him. It is clear to me that, in part, my response to Segal was not only critical and analytical but also an attempt to respond to a political problem, namely, the vehement opposition to all reductionistic approaches to the study of religion by the majority of students of religion presently working within the field. It seemed to me at the time that if an argument for the possibility of reductionistic approaches to the study of religion would, to use Segal’s phrase, “spawn the open competition between nonreductive and reductive analyses” I envisioned (claim 3) that there was no need to irritate unnecessarily the majority of the students of religion by arguing for the necessity of such a reductionism. Though I still hold to that political sentiment, if that is what it is, it seems to me now, as will soon become apparent, that only such a reductionistic framework is appropriate for the scientific study of religion. On this score I am in agreement with Segal, although I would still put the matter differently than does he. I would not, that is, differentiate believer from nonbeliever but rather talk of rules of method that would apply to all students of religion indifferently. Though I would not deny that many of the reductionistic explanations and theories of religion that have been proposed are weak and unconvincing, I do not think nonreductionistic theories can be adopted without simultaneously abandoning that naturalistic framework within which modern western science finds its home.3 Consequently I now reject the following claim I espoused in ‘Beyond the Sceptic and the Devotee’: “On the pluralistic methodological grounds of which I have spoken above, such possibilities (i.e., of nonreductionist theories of religion) must be taken seriously in light of the present difficulties of the purely social scientific accounts of religion.”4 A nonreductionistic account of religion may in fact be true but that does not mean that it would therefore be a scientific account of religion. To maintain that that would just be too bad for science, so to speak, would no doubt be on the mark in one respect, but it is also precisely the point I am trying to make

3 I have argued this, indirectly, in several places including my ‘The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion,’ Studies in Religion, Vol. 13, 1984; pp. 401-422 and ‘The Academic Naturalization of Religious Studies: Intent or Pretence?,’ Studies in Religion, Vol. 15, 1986; pp. 197-203. I also adverted to it in two essays published in Religion, ‘Explanation and the Scientific Study of Religion,’ Vol. 5, 1974: pp. 33-52 and ‘Theory in the Study of Religion,’ Vol. 13, 1983; pp. 283-309. 4 See above. (In original it is on p. 163).

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here, namely, that the nonreductionistic account would be accepted on other than scientific grounds. The significance of this matter will become clearer, I think, in the comments to follow. Another aspect of my critique of Segal concerned the degree of confusion he created by his use of a reflexive language of ‘believers’ and ‘nonbelievers.’ As I pointed out in my original critique, he unnecessarily complicates, and therefore obscures, his argument by failing to distinguish matters of logical and methodological validity from those of psychological validity. Surely his concern in defending reductionism ought to have been with questions of methodology that apply to all academic students of religion whether or not they are believers – whether, that is, they are sceptics or devotees. Instead of focusing attention on the ‘logic’ of the study of religion, however, Segal chose to concern himself with an account of the psychological states of believers and nonbelievers with respect to their responses to reductionistic accounts of religion; adjudicating when and why the believer or nonbeliever is justified in the position each adopts. And in doing that he has, in effect, involved himself, at least to some degree, in a metaphysical debate. In focusing upon purely methodological issues in my critique, I argued that the academic student of religion escapes such metaphysical involvements and therefore stands beyond both the sceptic (nonbeliever) and the devotee (believer) in not having to plump for either one position or the other. Unfortunately, I myself crossed the boundary into the metaphysical realm, I think, in my response to the partiality and weaknesses of reductionistic theories of religion, in suggesting that those limitations permit the scientific student of religion to espouse, scientifically, nonreductionistic explanations and theories. It is obvious, however, that such an intellectual move would in fact push the student beyond scientific modes of argumentation that rely on the positive testing of hypotheses and into the vaguer realm of philosophical and metaphysical argumentation. The student of religion who finds the latter kind of argumentation persuasive, that is, would have abandoned the presumptions that make scientific thought what it is. I now, consequently, no longer find myself in disagreement with Segal who, as it seemed to me then, saw ‘reductionism’ as the only acceptable framework for the academic study of religion. And his rejoinder, unfortunately, appears to undermine his original defense of reductionism which was, in my opinion, headed in the right direction. In making this claim about the essentially reductionistic character of the scientific study of religions it will, no doubt, be argued that I have again jumped into a metaphysical argument, even if the argument is wholly implicit. I would dispute the claim, however, on the grounds that the naturalism that scientific thought presumes is a methodological naturalism and not a subDonald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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stantive metaphysical claim. However, this matter cannot be argued at length here.5 To some extent, my differences with Segal emerge because of a lack of clarity as to what exactly each of us means by ‘reductionism.’ This becomes obvious in light of Segal’s denial that he ever claims “that non-believers alone can accept reductive analyses of the origin, function, or meaning of religion” (claim 2). Segal claims, that is, only to have argued “that nonbelievers alone can accept reductive analyses of the object of religion,” although he admits that he has since come to see that the falsity of religion may be implied as much by the former reductive analyses as by the last. My only concern, on the other hand, was with explanations and theories of religion that accounted for religion in nonreligious terms which, therefore, appear to ‘reduce’ the gods (the supranatural) to something more mundane – i.e., that appear to ‘explain away’ religion in terms of ‘things’ not religious. It is this aspect of reductionistic theories of religion that accounts for the broad appeal that attacks on reductionism have had amongst students of religion and not the logical and technical problems connected with issues of intertheoretical change and theories about the growth of knowledge connected with such change. It is especially significant in this regard that Segal should have assumed that I would see such noncognitivist philosophers of religion as R. B. Braithwaite and D. Z. Phillips (claim 2) as believers and, therefore, as nonreductionists in their understanding of religion. The ‘intentionalist theory’ of religion for example, if I may so refer to Phillips’s theory, though intended to save religion from a reductionistic explanation – hence Phillips’s title: Religion Without Explanation6 – is nevertheless itself reductionistic in that it assumes that the foci of attention of the devotee, (i.e., the transcendent religious realities to which the devotee devotes him/herself), need only be intentional realities and need not exist outside of the beliefs and ritual behavior of the community of devotees. But the devotee believes in the extra-mental and extra-social existence of those realities (even if they don’t really so exist) and, therefore, is as much affected by Phillips’s theory as by that of Freud or Durkheim. Wayne Proudfoot puts the matter correctly and forcefully: “Phillips erroneously attributes to the subject of an experience or belief an indifference with regard to the existence of the object of that experience or belief that is an appropriate stance for the analyst. If accurate, this move would protect religious belief from the results of inquiry, but it does not adequately capture the role of those beliefs in the religious life.”7 5 I have discussed this matter in other essays to which I have referred in note 3 above. 6 D. Z. Phillips, Religion Without Explanation, (Oxford: Basic Blackwell, 1976). 7 Wayne Proudfoot, ‘Religion and Reduction,’ Union Seminary Quarterly Review, Vol. 37, 1981-82, pp. 13-25; p. 22.

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Phillips, consequently, provides a reductionistic account of religion at the level of description even though he does not ‘reduce’ religion by explaining it – i.e. by ‘explaining it away’ in nonreligious terms. A final, brief, comment on this matter is called for. It appears that the central concern on the part of most opponents of reductionism is a religiotheological one. It is not an interest in the meaning of ‘reduction’ in philosophy of science debates, or the technicalities of homogeneous or inhomogeneous intertheoretical reductionism or the like, upon which they focus their attention. Their concern is with the implications that a reductionist account of religion holds for the devotee. And until that theological – or at least cryptotheological – matter is cleared up, no genuine clarification of the function of ‘reductionism’ in the scientific study of religion is likely to occur. This is not simply to ignore Proudfoot’s claim that warnings against (i.e. the attacks against) reductionism derive from a genuine insight on the part of its critics – namely, that there is a failure on the part of the student of religion to comprehend descriptively the nature of a religious phenomenon when there is a “failure to identify an emotion, practice, or experience under the description by which the subject identifies it.”8 Both Segal and I would agree with Proudfoot not only that the student of religion must distinguish descriptive reductionism from explanatory reductionism, but also that descriptive reductionism is unacceptable. We would agree with Proudfoot, that is, that “[t]o describe an experience in non-religious terms when the subject himself [herself] describes it in religious terms is to misidentify the experience, or to attend to another experience altogether.”9 But that is not to accept a religious explanation or theory of religion that may somehow be implied in the description of the experience by the subject of the experience; accepting the description is not the same as endorsing it and all that it implies, nor does it preclude an alternative explanation of what is described. Proudfoot, no doubt, is on the mark in suggesting that some students of religion will fail to note the difference between descriptive and explanatory reductionism and so assume that the student of religion must participate in and endorse the experience that is under scrutiny but this, as he is fully aware, is no justification for a rejection of explanatory reductionism. To apply what is appropriate criticism of descriptive reductionism to all reductionist analysis of religion, I suggest, indicates the presence of a lingering religio-theological bias.10 8 9 10

Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 16. Daniel Pals, it should be noted, seems to suggest that explanatory reductionism may well involve a descriptive reductionism. In a discussion of why religious believers would find

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I think it should be noted here that not all students of religion who oppose reductionism are necessarily defending a religio-theological agenda. Daniel reductionist theories disturbing, he points out that it is simply because what they believe religiously stands in contradiction with the explanation. This may also be a part of what bothers the scholar – if the scholar is a believer – but in addition, he argues, the scholar would claim such an account scientifically problematical. With reference to the work of R. Otto and M. Eliade, he writes: “… as scholars they may also be disposed to reject religious reductionism for the same reason that biologists might oppose physicalchemical reduction. They might simply feel that such explanation furnishes an inadequate description of the things under study; it misses crucial features of religion as we commonly experience it. To use a distinction found in some of the scientific literature, believers oppose ‘ontological reductionism,’ the reduction of their beliefs to something other than the result of their free personal assent to truth. Scholars oppose ‘theoretical reductionism,’ the claim that religion can be explained without any help from theories unique to the field of religious studies” (in his ‘Reductionism and Belief: An Appraisal of Recent Attacks on the Doctrine of Irreducible Religion,’ The Journal of Religion, Vol. 66, 1986; pp. 18-36-p. 23). This passage, unfortunately, is rather confused for in comparing physical-chemical reduction to religious reduction Pals seems to believe that theoretical discussion of the reduction of organismic biology to molecular biology and so, in effect, to the physical-chemical level of scientific discussion implies that descriptive accounts of the molar behavior of organisms is no longer acceptable. That, it seems to me, is simply absurd. The molecular biologist describes the object of explanation in the same fashion as the organismic biologist although s/he does not use the same conceptual framework for explaining the behavior described. Furthermore, Pals confuses here the concern with descriptive – or ontological, as he prefers to call it – reductionism with intertheoretical reductionism which does not help in seeking a resolution of our differences regarding the value of reductionistic approaches to the study of religious phenomena. E. H. Pyle in ‘Reduction and the Religious Explanation of Religion,’ (Religion, Vol. 9, 1979; pp. 197-214) raises a criticism of a different order which seems to transcend all such religio-theological concerns. Like Pals, Pyle has developed his argument with reference to the biological sciences and the notion of teleological and teleonomic behavior. He argues that a frontier between two domains of explanation can be defined by whether or not the concepts of purpose and teleology are or must be employed. In biology and psychology, he argues, such teleology is necessary and therefore demarcates these sciences from those upon which they rest, namely, physics and chemistry. With the extension of this notion of teleology, he thinks it possible that a domain of explanation peculiar to the study of religion and religions might well be defined. He writes: “Extend this (notion), and we have the concept of a purposiveness which is not that of any individual human or group of humans, nor that of a living organism or collectively of such organisms. This might be exemplified by the notion of a more-than-human quasi-purposer… (or) as the purposiveness of a wider collectivity, involving humans and their non-human environment, loosely indicated by some such phrase as ‘cosmic purposiveness’” (205). Pyle admits that such a description might still appear theological or metaphysical but argues that it need not. I cannot here submit his claims to critique. I do wish to point out, however, that contemporary environmental science and its concerns for the ‘teleology’ of ever more complex ecosystems might with more justification be seen as the science envisioned by Pyle than is ‘Religious Studies.’

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Pals, for example, argues strenuously that his opposition to the reductionist approach to religion is more concerned with salvaging the discipline than it is with promoting religion. Admitting that religious believers would find reductionist theories of religion disturbing because they undermine their beliefs, he argues that scholars like R. Otto and M. Eliade would have additional nonreligious reasons for such opposition, namely, that such an approach to the study of religion would in effect undermine that study as a separate discipline. He writes: “So far as it claims to be an independent discipline, then, the study of religions does face at least a potential threat from reductionist theories. The reduction of biological explanations to physical-chemical ones would not put an end to living organisms, but it might well put an end to biology, at least as a separate science. Similarly, reducing faith solely to the interaction of psyche and society need not spell doom for religion, but it might well bring the demise of Religionswissenschaft.”11 However, I find this kind of argumentation entirely wanting, but because I have given attention to its weaknesses elsewhere, I shall not elaborate here. I wish to note here simply that even if that were the case, that does not constitute grounds upon which one can reasonably preclude reductionist explanations for it presumes that our present disciplinary arrangements in the university are somehow sacrosanct. Pals seems to espouse a kind of essentialism here which insists that if there exists a discipline within the university context, there must be a reality outside the university to which it conforms.12 Such a position is also utterly naïve with respect to theories of the growth of scientific knowledge by means of intertheoretical reductions. LeviStrauss, for example, looked upon the possibility of such a reduction of structural anthropology to neurophysiology as an advancement of his science. For him, the present condition of his discipline was but “a period in purgatory beside the social sciences” which could be endured “because it does not despair of awakening among the natural sciences when the last trumpet sounds.”13 Similarly Alexander Rosenberg quite rightly points out that work in sociobiology should not be interrupted simply because, were it wholly successful, it would preempt the social sciences.14 11 12

13 14

Ibid., Pals, p. 25. For a similar kind of argument see Klaus K. Klostermaier’s ‘From Phenomenology to Metascience: Reflections on the Study of Religion,’ Studies in Religion, Vol. 6, 1976-77; pp. 551-64 and my response to Klostermaier in my ‘Is a Science of Religion Possible?’ (in a postscript entitled ‘From Metascience to Theology?’) Studies in Religion, Vol. 7, 1978; pp. 5-17. Quoted in Strenski, op. cit., p. 86. See Alexander Rosenberg, Sociobiology and the Preemption of Social Science, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980.)

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It is obvious from the foregoing comments, and from the nature of the scholarly discussion on reductionism in this field of study in general, that there is as yet little convergence of opinion, for lack of a better locution, as to what it means for us as academic students of religion. What I have suggested here is that the question of reductionism has, for the most part, and often unawares, been discussed and debated as a religio-theological and metaphysical claim. I have attempted to argue, therefore, though by no means definitively, that the question should be discussed essentially as a matter of methodology. Understanding the notion of what it means to take up a scientific approach to the study of religious phenomena, that is, cannot be determined without clarifying the notion of reductionism. Many of the analyses provided to date, some of which have been referred to here, have contributed significantly to that clarification but we have more work to do before we can consider this problem properly resolved.

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Part 2 Conceptual Debates in the Academic Study of Religion

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Chapter 6

The Role of Belief in the Study of Religion: a Response to Wilfred Cantwell Smith Donald Wiebe

Study of religion has recently come under heavy criticism from various quarters. The concept of belief, it is argued, is not merely useless in the task of interpreting the meaning of the historical religious traditions, but rather is positively misleading. Consequently, a ‘call’ is issued to students of religion to move beyond belief in their attempts to understand the religious dimension of man’s existence. The ‘call’ has been sounded in the past in such work as R. Bellah’s Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World, (1970); and R. Needham’s Belief, Language and Experience, (1972); and more recently in D. Z. Phillip’s Religion without Explanation, (1976); and W. C. Smith’s Belief and History, (1977).1 It is not an easy matter to classify and analyze the arguments raised against ‘belief’ in these and other works. They are often confused in such a way that it is difficult to determine whether the criticism is the product of empirical reasoning, philosophical argument, or intuitive or religious insight. It is extremely important, to respond, however, for the ‘call’ to move beyond ‘belief’ amounts to a ‘call’ for a revolution in the study of religion – for a radical change of paradigm for interpreting the meaning of religious phenomena.2 And like most revolutions, the undertaking would be costly. The initial step in such a response, given the presently irresolvable complexities in the multi-faceted attack on the category of belief, can be taken in focusing critical attention on the arguments of Wilfred Cantwell Smith in Belief and History, for Smith’s central concern there is methodological.

1 I wish to acknowledge here my indebtedness to my colleague Dr. T. Day for his critical reading of an earlier draft of this essay. 2 The ‘imagery’ here, of course, is drawn from T. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). I first suggested its applicability in this kind of context in a critical review article of R. Needham’s Belief, Language and Experience (1974) – to his suggestion there that anthropology (and consequently the anthropological study of religion) rests on an unacceptable assumption about the nature of the human mind arising out of our uncritical use of the word (concept of) ‘belief.’

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_008Donald

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My intention in reviewing Smith’s Belief and History, therefore, is to argue in defence of ‘belief.’ ‘Belief’ has been a ubiquitous feature of our discussions of religion, and still is today. To abandon its use as an interpretive category in the study of religion entails a wholesale reassessment of our generally accepted knowledge about religion in general and our generally accepted understandings of the various historical religious traditions specifically. Indeed, a rejection of ‘belief’ would involve an outright rejection of numerous works on the nature, function, and meaning of religious thought. It would further entail setting aside as of little value to our understanding of religion the many analyses of the truth or falsity of their (alleged?) beliefs and belief systems. Much Western philosophy of religion and philosophical theology, one would have to conclude, is concerned with a pseudo-problem, that is, with a nonexistent ‘something called religious knowledge.’ Such consequences, however, constitute a cost of such enormous character as would constitute a kind of argument against the proposal to eliminate the concept from ‘religious studies.’ This is not in itself an adequate argument against the proposed revolution but it does make the proposal appear counter-intuitive and counterproductive. Further, a call for a change of approach in the study of religion that demands so much of those to whom it appeals must be extraordinarily well delineated and supported. But I shall show in my review/analysis of Smith’s arguments in Belief and History that it is not well argued. My critique of Smith, therefore, will lend credence, I think, to the contrary claim that it is not possible to write an adequate ‘history of religion(s),’ or to undertake a ‘comparative study of religion’ without use of the concept (or category) of belief.

1

W. C. Smith’s Conception of ‘Belief’

Smith’s arguments against ‘belief’ as an interpretive category in the study of religion are, in a sense, disarmingly simple. We have, it seems, been bewitched in our use of the concept of belief. ‘Believing,’ Smith claims, originally meant “having faith,” not “holding an opinion,” and the change of meaning that now equates ‘believing’ with ‘opining’ is illegitimate and has simply gone undetected (Smith, 1977; 40). This ‘lexical argument’ is then supported by what one might refer to as a ‘biblical argument’ – that is, according to Smith, the concept of belief is not a biblical concept and so is inapplicable in the interpretation of biblical religion and, by implication, of all of Christianity (Smith, 1977; 77). Indeed, Smith suggests that similar analyses of the use of the word in other scriptural literature will yield the same conclusions.

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Both of these arguments are raised in support of an apparently self-evident truth, namely, that religion is something essentially personal and esoteric and so a matter of the subjective experience of the individual (i.e., that it is a matter of ‘faith’) and not objectifiable (i.e., a matter of rites, rituals, social institutions, belief systems, etc., or any combination of them). The arguments I shall show are inadequate. Smith’s intuition as to the essential nature of the ‘religious phenomenon,’ however, does have value, but not, I shall argue, in the sense he thinks it does. Smith’s lexical argument runs as follows: what it means today ‘to believe’ is not what it used to mean. ‘Believe’ used to mean ‘to pledge allegiance, to commit oneself, to give one’s loyalty’ so that the phrase ‘belief in God’ did not mean for the medieval religious what it means to us today. He admits that the ‘belief’ of the medieval presupposes God’s existence, but that it is not a presupposition in the modern sense of that term. The creed for the medieval believer, consequently, was repeated ‘performatively’ and not as a description of some super-world, and yet Smith claims that such a believer “participated as did his fellows in an intellectual world-view that included the concept of ‘God’” (Smith, 1977; 42). But if this is the case, then surely the concept of ‘belief’ (in the modern sense) is necessary in an analysis of medieval religion. And Smith seems himself to recognize this, for he admits that one of the tasks of the student of religion is to infer and state the presuppositions of the religious, and that once stated, it makes sense to refer to them as beliefs (Smith, 1977; 54). Nevertheless, Smith also suggests that such belief is a mere form of unconscious presupposing. The medieval religious person’s belief in God, however, is surely not merely a tacit or unconscious presupposition. Smith may be right to claim that when such a ‘believer’ said ‘I believe in God’ that he did not say it in our twentiethcentury sense, or mean it in that sense, for he/she meant it in the sense of committing oneself to God. (In the terms of language analysis, the illocutionary force of his/her utterance was commissive). But I think it obvious that if such a ‘believer’ had been asked whether s/he believed (in the twentieth-century sense) that God existed, s/he would have understood the question and would have answered it in the affirmative. To ask him/her such a question would have been puzzling, since God’s existence was obvious. The question would be odd in the sense of the oddity of asking a modern man whether or not his wife really exists. The acceptance of the existence of one’s wife is not a matter of ‘weighing up pros and cons’ but neither is it a tacit, unconscious ‘pre’- supposition. It is simply a part of the generally accepted background knowledge with which we function. Smith’s difficulty in recognizing this lies, I suggest, in his somewhat naïve epistemology. For Smith, knowledge is distinct from belief –

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a difference of kind and not merely in degree. And faith implies knowledge rather than belief. ‘Knowledge’ means certainty, whereas ‘belief’ designates a hesitant state of mind (Smith, 1977; 56f). Indeed, Smith claims that ‘belief’ has in fact come to connote falsehood (Smith, 1977; 65, 77). Since the ‘belief’ of religious believers is an act rather than a state of mind – namely an act of total surrender and commitment – it requires an absolute intuition of reality; of that to which surrender is made. This intuition Smith recognizes as a conceptual component of faith but he does not see it to involve any ‘belief’ in the modern sense of that term. He consequently insists that “so far as its purely conceptual aspect is concerned, which for some thinkers loomed larger than for others, it signified not ‘to believe’ but ‘to recognize’” (Smith, 1977; 41). To claim, however, that the ‘believer’ (medieval or otherwise) ‘recognizes,’ ‘sees,’ ‘discerns,’ or ‘knows’ the reality to which he commits himself is extremely tendentious. If true, every ‘believer’ lives in a different universe – each true because it is the object of an intuition and not a mere belief – but then, as Smart has pointed out, “the ontological firmament becomes heavily populated, and rather inconsistently” (Smart, 1973; 6o). Smith becomes pluralistic here but not, I am afraid, without becoming entirely relativistic (Smith, 1977; 29). The tension at this point in his thought, however, is easily overcome when it is recognized that knowing and believing are not distinct activities of the mind – that knowing is nothing more than believing (with subjective certainty, or near certainty) plus, so to speak, firm intersubjectively testable evidence attesting the claim to knowledge. It is no wonder, therefore, “… that it is extraordinarily taxing for a modern not to hold that a medieval who ‘believed in God,’ in the sense of actively giving Him his allegiance, was also and therein believing in Him in today’s sense of opinion that he is…” (Smith, 1977; 42). This epistemological naïveté, as I shall point out, also bedevils Smith’s ‘biblical argument’ against the use of ‘belief’ as a category in the interpretation of religion.3 According to Smith, ‘belief,’ in the modern sense of that term, is simply not a Scriptural concept. There is no need here to examine at length his interpretations of the use of the word (concept) in specific biblical passages. He maintains that the word is never used in the modern twentieth-century sense, and suggests that translations of pistis read ‘faith’ rather than ‘belief’: “It is not to 3 Space does not allow a rehearsal of the arguments here in support of an alternative and more adequate epistemology. I have done this to some extent, however, in my ‘Comprehensively Critical Rationalism and Commitment’ (1973) and in ‘Is Religious Belief Problematic?’ (1977a). The possibility of a cognitivist interpretation of religion is also taken up in my ‘Explanation and Theological Method’ (1976).

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be supposed that the point I am making is trivial; or is merely linguistic. Faith precedes belief. To have reversed this order is a modern and a tragic heresy” (Smith, 1977; 78). And yet he recognizes, as this passage itself indicates, that such faith has an intellectual component; but he again refers to that aspect of faith as ‘recognition,’ ‘insight,’ ‘discernment,’ etc. (Smith, 1977; 80). The only way Smith can deny, then, that there is an element of believing here is to claim that the ‘intellectual component’ is knowledge (i.e., epistēmē as opposed to mere doxa) – absolutely certain knowledge. Smith wants to make such a claim and yet seems more hesitant about it here than in the context of his ‘lexical argument.’ The difficulties in which he finds himself embroiled over this matter become obvious in the following passages: The person in the New Testament who is primarily the focus of faith and the centre of the new concept is, of course, Christ. Many writers have set forth this, and I have nothing new to add – except perhaps once again to subtract rather, a matter of believing anything; and to substitute, at the propositional level, the thesis about recognizing. The Christian movement arose not as a body of persons who believed that Jesus was the Christ, but as an upsurge of a new recognition in human history: a sudden awareness of what humanity can be … the dawning of a new insight …. Participants in this movement did not think that they believed anything. And while their new vision of the world and of themselves was articulated in quite an array of new conceptual symbols, I am not sure that an historian wishing to apprehend what was going on should concentrate on those symbols, except as clues to something much deeper and more personal. It is not what they believed that is significant, but the new faith that the beliefsystem [?] gave a pattern to, and was generated by. (Smith, 1977; 88 my emphases). However, a few pages further on Smith talks freely of an ‘unexpressed ideational content’ of the faith in terms of ‘belief’ that expands upon the last passage just quoted: For the first time we arrive at something to which the word ‘believe’ might seem legitimately to apply; although after our discussion in the last chapter one may understand my malaise at using that overworked word for this realm. We would however, allow it in and still retain my suggestion of a new translation of the Bible quite omitting the tendentious term. The concept of believing does not occur within the Bible even if some matters do appear there that the twentieth-century critic may

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Wiebe accuse the Biblical writers of tacitly believing… Obviously, if one thinks about it, one realizes that they believed in this sense all sorts of things that we do not; and that we believe in this sense all sorts of things that our grandchildren will not. In this sense, one might toss out an aphorism: one’s faith is given by God, one’s beliefs by one’s century. (Smith, 1977; 95, 96 my emphasis).

In the first of these passages, Smith suggests an intimate connection, (perhaps a kind of causal connection) between ‘faith’ and the belief system whereas in the latter there is, seemingly, no connection at all. Smith recognizes that religion – the religious experience, personal faith – invariably finds itself expressed in propositional form (as well as in other ‘externalizations’ such as rites, ritual, practice, social institutions, etc.) and yet wishes to maintain that an understanding of religion cannot be achieved through an understanding of such expressions of the faith. Faith is from God – the expressions of that faith from one’s culture. But the paradox is obvious – how can we know that the expressions are in fact expressions of the faith? How ‘faithful’ (accurate) must those expressions be to the real inner faith to be expressions of that faith? It is difficult to conceive, if expression has any intrinsic connection to the faith it expresses, how faith and expression have such different sources. Smith’s injunctions here against the category of belief seem to be a recapitulation of his concerns expressed in his earlier attack on the concept of ‘religion.’ In The Meaning and End of Religion (1962) he insisted that the concept ‘religion’ be replaced by the two concepts of ‘cumulative tradition’ and ‘inner faith.’ Real religion, he insists there, concerns the inner faith of the individual person and not the external expression, for religion is a matter of inner experience and decision that involve persons in a relationship to that which is Ultimate. ‘Religion,’ he proceeds to argue, originally meant something like ‘piety’ or ‘personal religious vision,’ etc. For Augustine, for example, religion is not, he claims, a system of beliefs and practices but personal confrontation with God – an inner attitude and transcendental orientation. With the gradual loss of such experience, he suggests, attention was focused rather on the ‘products’ of such ‘religion,’ thus inaugurating what he calls ‘the process of reification’ which made of religion an objective entity. He admits that in Islam the concept of religion as a system of beliefs is, in part, written into the ‘vision’ but denies that Islam is on that account a counter-example to his thesis, for even here the ‘pre-reifying’ interpretation of ‘islam’ means not system but personal experience: “If we look carefully at the Qur’an, we find, first of all that the term islam there is relatively much less used than are other related but more dynamic

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and personal terms and, secondly, that when it is used it can be, and on many grounds almost must be, interpreted not as the name of a religious system, but as the designation of a decisive personal act” (Smith, 1962; 110). For Smith, then, the concept of religion is inadequate both for the believer and for the observer/student. It is so for the believer because the concept focuses on the mundane rather than upon the supernatural and so distracts from the religiousness it was meant to ‘reveal.’ It is inadequate for the observer, on the other hand, for “the observer’s concept of a religion is by definition constituted of what can be ‘observed.’ Yet the whole path and substance of religious life lies in its relation to what cannot be observed” (Smith, 1962; 136). Smith’s problems here resemble those generated by his attack on ‘belief.’ Scientific analysis, that is, can treat religion only but cannot get at faith, for faith is not an object that can be examined. Yet faith is the origin of tradition and although it cannot itself be studied directly, it would seem that knowledge of the tradition based on it would provide us clues about the nature of faith. But this is not the case, Smith argues, for “a preliminary insistence [in the study of religion] must be that when any of these things is an expression of religious faith, then it cannot be fully understood except as an expression of religious faith” (Smith, 1962; 171). If Smith’s conception of ‘religion’ as ‘faith plus tradition’ is true, then the scholarly study of religion is impossible for on this account either religion is totally esoteric and hence not open to objective (i.e. ‘scientific’ or ‘intersubjective’) study, or, because we want to undertake a scholarly study of religion we wind up ‘objectifying’ what is essentially subjective and thereby fundamentally distorting what it is we wish to understand and so, again, wind up not studying religion. But Smith himself is not ready to accept such a conclusion for he in no way wishes to deny the possibility of a scholarly and even ‘scientific’ study of religion. He is forced therefore to give way somewhat on his radical distinction between faith and tradition. He does it however in such a way that the retreat is hardly noticeable. Nevertheless, the change of position is there. In The Meaning and End of Religion, for example, he claims that tradition is an expression of faith and that, further, what goes on “in the mind and heart of another can be known,” that is, it can be known through an understanding of the tradition (Smith, 1962; 188/9). And in Belief and History he finds himself talking of the demand of faith laid upon one to conceptually elucidate the faith; it is “an inescapable obligation” (Smith, 1977; 99). Such conceptual elucidations are the ‘stuff’ of traditions and the ‘stuff’ of traditions, as history shows us, is belief. Reference to such concepts then, both by the believer in the elucidation of the faith and by the student of religion as a means whereby he might probe more deeply into the nature of faith indicates, I think, the importance of the con-

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cept of belief religiously and for the interpreter of religion. Critical discussion, I suggest therefore, would have been more appropriate if Smith had applied it to clarifying the meaning and range of application of the concept rather than in an attempt to dissuade us from its use.

2

Robert Bellah’s Conception of ‘Belief’

It is not only Smith’s arguments against belief that are found wanting. It may be instructive here to take a brief look at the proposals urged upon the student of religion by Robert Bellah (1970), for Bellah also argues that the retention of the concept in the interpretive schema of the scholar inevitably involves one in a fundamental misapprehension of the essential nature of the religious phenomenon. This ‘truth’ it seems is intuitively obvious requiring little or no argument. Yet in making the claim Bellah does make passing reference to ‘empirical facts’ – to the degeneration of original (esoteric?) Christian thought in the West (under the influence of Greek philosophy), for example, and to the non-cognitive character of Oriental religion. Whether such empirical claims stand up to scrutiny and support Bellah’s intuition, however, is another matter altogether. Bellah’s argument reads as follows: It is my contention that what I would call ‘the objectivist fallacy,’ namely the confusion of belief and religion which is found only in the religious traditions deeply influenced by Greek thought – Christianity and Islam – and is almost completely missing in China and India, involves a fundamental misapprehension of the nature of religion, both the religion of the masses and of the cultural elite…. A great and influential religion like Zen Buddhism, for example, denied the value of any beliefs at all, and Taoism showed the same tendency (Bellah, 1970; 220, 222). Bellah’s claim that the significance of the concept of belief in the Christian West indicates a degeneration of Christian faith and his further claim as to the non-cognitive character of Oriental belief constitute a kind of empirical argument against the scholar’s use of the category of belief. However, his suggestion begs a very important question or two, even given his assessment of the nature of both Western and non-Western religions. No argument, for example is given for the assumption that the change of ‘style’ in the Christian tradition is degeneration rather than development. Similarly, no argument is provided for the assumption that Zen Buddhism is a better measure of what is truly religious than Christianity, medieval or modern. It would seem that

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Bellah proceeds here on an intuitive rather than an empirical basis. Be that as it may, Bellah’s assumptions and argument find little support from historical and scientific or phenomenological studies of religion and religions. According to Smart, (1969) for example, all religions seem to reveal a complex structure involving at least six different factors, two of which are mythology and doctrine. All religious practices and rites, it appears, are intimately associated with stories or myths and “doctrines are an attempt to give system, clarity and intellectual power to what is revealed through the mythological and symbolic language” (Smart, 1969; 19). Indeed, Smart goes on to claim that the distinction between myth and doctrine is of critical significance for the student of religion, “because the world religions owe some of their living power to their success in presenting a total picture of reality, through a coherent system of doctrines” (Smart, 1969; 19). To claim that such a concern with explicit belief is an illegitimate, because late, development is a non-sequitur. Surely at most one can argue that early and late Christian thought represent two kinds of Christian responses to religious experience and not that one is pure and the other degenerate – unless of course some assumption of the purity of the primitive state is unconsciously adopted, or, worse, one assumes that any concern on the part of religion with cognitive matters rather than spiritual and personal matters is a degeneration; but that would simply be a begging of the question at hand.4 There are good grounds for supposing the cognitive concern of late Christian thought not to be a change of direction from the concerns of the primitive Christian community. Robin Horton, (1973) for example, argues persuasively that the intellectual and speculative interest has always been a central facet of Christian thought. Christian thought, that is, has always had a theoretical character – a concern for the articulation of a set of beliefs explanatory of the world in which it finds itself (Horton, 1973; 299).5 4 On this point see R. L. Wilken’s The Myth of Christian Beginnings: History’s Impact on Belief, (1971). 5 Intellectualism of this sort has often been attacked in recent years by symbol-oriented anthropologists: J. Beattie’s discussion in Other Cultures (1964) is representative. An excellent analysis of the intellectualist’s position is provided by J. Skorupski in Symbol and Theory: A Philosophical Study of Theories of Religion in Social Anthropology (1976). See also I. Jarvie, The Revolution in Anthropology (1969). In an attack on the intellectualist position in anthropology R. Needham, in Belief, Language and Experience (1972), argues that the approach is unacceptable because there are societies in which the concept of belief does not appear. Even though Needham applies this argument to traditional rather than world religions, his thesis, if established, would very much strengthen the attack on ‘belief’ under discussion here. I have subjected that argument to critical scrutiny in a review article (1974) and, I think, have shown his conclusions to be unwarranted.

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A fuller argument from the non-cognitivist quarter suggests that religion is not concerned with cognitive matters at all, but rather with personal matters and that, consequently, belief is of little or no concern to the religious person.6 There is no question but that religion is concerned with uncovering ‘a way of life’ and not merely with ‘science.’ And yet its concern with that way of life is simultaneously a cognitive concern. As one philosopher puts it, “religion has an intellectual as well as a moral component. It is not a way of life imposed upon a state of affairs; it is a way of life with a conviction about a state of affairs built into it” (Gibson, 1970; 12). Religious thinking then, to be sure, has other concerns besides epistemological ones but it seems that the ‘other’ concerns are inextricably bound up with our relationship to a reality beyond ourselves; that the ‘reality interest’ (Farmer, 1942) is central to ‘the way of life.’ One might legitimately refer to assertions of belief by a religious person, therefore, as expressions of commitment, but that ‘description’ would be elliptical, for ‘commitment’ merely points to an attitude a person takes up with respect to a particular belief or set of beliefs. As John Hick, in an analysis of faith and knowledge (i.e. belief) points out, “Faith as trust (fiducia) presupposes faith (fides) as cognition of the object of that trust” (Hick, 1966; 4). An examination of religion(s) indicates then that the effect of religious experience, in general, induces or confirms belief. As McPherson points out in his Philosophy and Religious Belief (1974), it would not be possible to give an account of religious experience without also being able to say what it was an experience of (McPherson, 1974; 4). And William Christian, in a profoundly detailed analysis of religious discourse, makes a similar remark vis à vis the non-cognitivist who emphasizes the fact that religious discourse is largely, or perhaps even wholly, made up of non-propositional expressions (Christian, 1964; 136 and 141).7 The conclusion seems inescapable; to talk of religion is to talk of commitments as well as ideas, interpretations, and doctrines.

6 I have subjected the non-cognitivist interpretation of religion to close analysis in a recently completed book manuscript entitled Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion. Some of this material appears in a less detailed form in my ‘Truth and the Study of Religion’ (1977b). 7 Time does not allow detailed study of the relation of belief to the question of the truth of religion here. I have attempted elsewhere (see my above mentioned 1977b) to show that the truth question is, in a very important sense, meaningless outside a cognitive conception of religion, a crucial issue, as I point out there, that is overlooked by Professor Smith. For a similar argument about Christian thought in particular see, inter alia, W. Pannenberg’s Theology and the Philosophy of Science (1976).

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Some comments about Bellah’s remarks as to the non-cognitive character of Oriental religions is also called for. It seems to me that no religion, or people, as I have argued above, ever ceases to think and that religious experience inevitably finds itself embodied in rational reflection. I do not mean by this to suggest that religion can be simply identified with some straightforward metaphysical position so that a simple refutation of doctrine would lead to the ‘refutation’ of a religion. Religious beliefs in any case, because of their extreme complexity and the mysterious nature of the reality (‘the totality of meaning’) with which they are concerned, are extremely hard to ‘refute,’ as is to be expected. To claim therefore that Oriental religions are difficult to ‘refute’ would cause no problem, but to claim that these religions involve no metaphysical views whatsoever and so are not at all open to some kind of ‘refutation’ (falsification) is quite another issue. Indeed, as Hocking noted some years ago, “one of the most striking traits of the Far Eastern religions as distinct from those of the Near East is their reflective character.” He goes on to point out that “the religions of China are at the same time philosophies [and that] from the time of the Upanishads the Indian scriptures move in the atmosphere of thought and argument” (Hocking, 1940; 94). And a cursory perusal of that literature shows metaphysics to constitute a central portion of it. Such a description does not, of course, adequately apply to all Oriental religions. Certainly the Buddhism of Nāgārjuna or the later developments of Chan and Zen in China and Japan give some support to Bellah’s claim, namely that we have here argument without metaphysics and, consequently that religion is beyond cognition. But I think, nevertheless, that Bellah’s understanding of these traditions is faulty. Although Nāgārjuna in his fourfold negation of ‘views,’ for example, has the explicit intention of decimating all views and so, at least on the surface, seems to refrain from replacing that decimation of views with yet another view, the catuskoti nevertheless does point to ‘something’ beyond all views that requires a specific kind of response on the part of the reader of the kārikās. Nāgārjuna’s ‘position,’ that is, is easily distinguished from Nihilism pure and simple. The action, commitment, transformation or whatever is expected suggests a ‘world-view,’ if even only in implicit form and perhaps even ‘inexpressible,’ that is radically different to that of the Nihilist. Nāgārjuna’s negation, then, is no Nihilism; it does not point to nothingness but rather to the Nothing, to Voidness (Sūnyatā). What we have in Nāgārjuna therefore might, perhaps, be called a ‘formless supernaturalism’ (Hocking, 1940; 72, 73). It would seem that Zen Buddhism, in its attempt to break the control of language and thought over the mind, constitutes an obvious case of noncognitivist religion. But again the question arises as to the rationale of the in-

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stitutional expression of such an anarchic ‘view’ in the structure and activity of the Zen Community. One might reasonably suppose that such an institutionalized rejection of language and thought is meant to show something of peculiar significance about the ‘world’ in which men live. Nor is it entirely unreasonable, I think, to ask whether the ‘claim’ that all language and thought distorts the true nature of ultimate reality (or perhaps better, distorts our knowledge as to the true nature of ultimate reality), is itself a cognitive claim about the true nature of ultimate reality – namely that ultimate reality lies beyond the bounds of sense and thought. I find it necessary here to repeat my claim that I have no intention of denying the point that many of the non-cognitivists wish to make, namely that religion is not simply a cognitive interest in ‘the world.’ The understanding of religion in the East as primarily a call to a particular form of life is entirely reasonable. Religion is convictional and a matter of praxis as has so often been pointed out by philosophers and theologians, but this acceptance of the practical nature of religious commitment does not necessarily preclude its cognitive character. Indeed, I have been arguing that the conscious adoption of a particular lifestyle, whether Zen-like or of any other character, if it is not to be entirely arbitrary and irrational, involves, even if only implicitly, the acceptance of a ‘theory’ or ‘understanding’ of the nature and meaning of the universe. Religion, that is, as a kind of valuing, is a conscious activity that finds its expression in the ideational aspect of a man’s life which indicates that ‘doctrine,’ even if it turns out to be derivative from other aspects of the religious phenomenon, is still of the essence of religion. One can agree that belief as conscious mental assent does not make the ‘adherents’ of any particular tradition religious without denying that belief is still a significant element of being religious, for belief exists not merely as conscious mental state but can also exist as disposition.8 To utter the phrase ‘God is love’ may be less a proposition in search of assent than an indication of an attitude toward life. But it is obvious that it could be both. Indeed, it is hard to say exactly what one means unless it is both. Furthermore, it is equally obvious that one might adopt the same attitude (acquire the same disposition) without ever consciously entertaining the proposition.9 Consequently one might be a believer in disposition, rather than in mind. To have ‘faith’ therefore, even in Smith’s sense of the word, is to believe, but to believe is not a sufficient condi-

8 See for example R. J. Ackerman’s Belief and Knowledge (1972) or H. H. Price’s Belief (1969). 9 See here M. Yinger’s distinction between doctrinal and non-doctrinal belief in his ‘Substructures of Religion’ (1977).

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tion of faith.10 Thus the religious may not emphasize this aspect of ‘faith’ at all, or may even quite deliberately ‘de-value’ (de-emphasize) it, but the task of the philosopher of religion, as Ferré points out for example, is to “extract unformulated propositions from practices and make clear the implied belief claims on which the reasonableness of religion depends” (Ferré, 1967; 89). And McPherson, in similar vein, points out that “to describe a belief as a commitment or an affirmation of trust, or something of the sort, does not in itself preclude the raising of questions about the grounds of that belief” (McPherson, 1974; 121).

3

The Category of ‘Belief’ in the Academic Study of Religion

It has become obvious in the process of the analysis of the arguments against ‘belief’ undertaken here, that the proposal to ban the use of the category in the scholarly study of religion is not only counter-intuitive but is, in fact, unwarranted. And the counter-proposal to use more personalist, non-objectifying categories, (e.g. faith) shows little promise of bearing fruit.11 Indeed, the dangers of subjectivism inherent in this kind of approach to the study of religion are very real. Relativism would be inevitable for understanding the religion of another within such a personalist framework for it seems to require the student to undergo conversion to the tradition being examined. In terms of the aim of the academic study of religion, namely the accumulation of intersubjectively testable knowledge of religions, therefore, this call for a radical change of paradigm governing such study must be rejected as being counterproductive. The objection that use of objective categories involves a naïve subservience to positivism in the study of religion has just not been borne out in the argument against belief.

10

11

See for example the story of the sheep and the goats in the Gospel of Mathew (Chapter 25), as well as Baillie’s reference to Bertrand Russell as an atheist at the top of his head but a Christian in the depth of his heart in his Our Knowledge of God (1939). See also Ignace Lepp’s last chapter, ‘The Unbelief of Believers’ in his Atheism in Our Time (1963) and chapter 9 of M. E. Marty’s Varieties of Unbelief (1964). Some possibility of reclaiming Smith’s ‘personalist approach’ to the study of religion has been suggested in a recent paper by T. Day on ‘Paradigms of Religion’ (1978). Day’s talk of ‘model persons’ would help avoid the worst subjectivism and relativism implicit in Smith’s approach to religion. I am afraid, however, that Smith would find the proposal unacceptable because of the structure of such an approach and its inherent ‘objectification’ of religion.

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R. J. Ackerman, Belief and Knowledge, Macmillan, 1972. J. Baillie, Our Knowledge of God, O.U.P., 1939. J. Beattie, Other Cultures, Cohen and West, 1964. R. N. Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Traditional World, Harper and Row, 1970. W. A. Christian, Meaning and Truth in Religion, Princeton University Press, 1964. T. Day, ‘Paradigms of Religion: An Analytical Exercise in Buddhist Models,’ Read to the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, 1978. H. H. Farmer, Toward Belief in God, SCM, 1942. F. Ferré, Basic Modern Philosophy of Religion, Scribner’s Sons, 1967. A. B. Gibson, Theism and Empiricism, SCM, 1970. J. Hick, Faith and Knowledge, Cornell U. Press, 1966. W. E. Hocking, Living Religions and a World Faith, George Allen and Unwin, 1940. R. Horton, ‘African Traditional Thought and Western Science,’ in Rationality, ed. by B. Wilson, Blackwell, 1970. I. C. Jarvie, The Revolution in Anthropology, Gateway Press, 1969. T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago U. Press, 1962. I. Lepp, Atheism in Our Time, Macmillan, 1963. M. E. Marty, Varieties of Unbelief, Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1964. T. McPherson, Philosophy and Religious Belief, Hutchinson U. Library, 1974. R. Needham, Belief, Language and Experience, Blackwell, 1972. W. Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1976. D. Z. Phillips, Religion Without Explanation, Blackwell, 1976. H. H. Price, Belief, Allen and Unwin, 1969. N. Smart, The Religious Experience of Mankind, Fontana, 1969. N. Smart, The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge, Princeton U. Press, 1973. W. C. Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion, Macmillan, 1962. W. C. Smith, Belief and History, U. of Virginia Press, 1977. D. Wiebe, ‘Comprehensively Critical Rationalism and Commitment,’ Philosophical Studies, 21 (1973). D. Wiebe, ‘Review Article of Rodney Needham’s Belief, Language and Experience,’ Philosophical Studies, 22 (1974). D. Wiebe, ‘Explanation and Theological Method,’ Zygon, II (1976). D. Wiebe, ‘Is Religious Belief Problematic?,’ Christian Scholar’s Review, 7 (1977a). D. Wiebe, ‘Truth and the Study of Religion,’ Philosophical Studies, 25 (1977b).

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D. Wiebe, Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion, Mouton Publishers, 1981. R. L. Wilken, The Myth of Christian Beginnings: History’s Impact on Belief, Doubleday, 1971. M. J. Yinger, ‘A Comparative Study of the Substructures of Religion,’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 6 (1977).

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Chapter 7

Disciplinary Axioms, Boundary Conditions, and the Academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals and Dawson Donald Wiebe

In their essays in Religion, and elsewhere, Daniel Pals and Lorne Dawson quite independently submit to critical scrutiny the methodenstreit that has come in recent years to characterize the scholarship of ‘Religious Studies.’ Both are concerned, as Dawson (1988) puts it, to close the gap between the humanistic and scientific conceptions of the study of religious phenomena. And they agree in the judgement that the anxieties that some theorists have shown over the reintroduction of theological concerns into the ongoing discussion of the nature of Religious Studies has created an atmosphere likely to hinder achieving a rapproachment of the two. Both, moreover, see my arguments against a retheologizing of Religious Studies and for a scientific conception of the academically institutionalized study of religions as contributing to that atmosphere rather than clarifying the central methodological problems of this field of research and scholarship. Although I have not found their analyses of these, and other, arguments to be wildly off the mark, and even though at points they have provided penetrating insight into the general problem, I am left unpersuaded that they finally carry the day in this debate. Reconsideration of my position, prompted by the critical scrutiny to which they have put it, leaves me convinced that my original arguments are essentially sound even if in need of further clarification and extension. However, rather than simply reiterating here, or even reformulating my position in yet another essay in the hope of persuading the critics, I think a resolution of our difference might better be achieved if I raise, in a brief list of comments and queries, what I see to be the essential weaknesses of their critiques and the central problems with the conception of Religious Studies they propose for adoption.

1

Questions of Interpretation

Pals’ central concern in ‘Autonomy, Legitimacy and the Study of Religion’ revolves around the question whether the adoption of the assumption that Re-

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_009Donald

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ligious Studies constitutes an autonomous science – the doctrine of autonomy – represents a movement aimed at retheologizing the academic study of religion. And he attempts to argue here that a notion of autonomy can be formulated that will allow for the development of a legitimate academic discipline for the study of religions but which does not necessitate a theological complement to it, although it may, it appears, allow for such a development. Unfortunately, in making use of my argument against the direct importation of theology in Religious Studies departments in our universities as a stagingpoint for his own quite different, though not unrelated agenda, he fails, I think, to take seriously my obvious intention to subject to scrutiny the unsubtle attempts to return to Religious Studies an ultimately religio-theological intent. Regardless of the value of his own arguments in favour of a doctrine of autonomy, to which I will turn attention momentarily, Pals’ arguments in no way undermine the thesis set out in my Religion essay or in ‘The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion’ to which he also refers, which is essentially historical and political. He seems, in fact, to be unaware that my discussion of ‘the doctrine of autonomy’ is of a doctrine that involves an implicit claim about the nature of religion that is but one element of an explicitly nonphilosophical and non-theological approach to the study of religions originally meant to ground a demarcation between theology and the academic study of religions which has, of late, been invoked as grounds for an explicit reintroduction of theology into that study. Consequently my central claim in these essays that such a consciously retheologized study of religion has no greater credibility in the university setting than ‘scientific creationism’ which is the product of a retheologized biology, in being ignored in favour of the adoption of a different understanding of the doctrine of autonomy, is left untouched by Pals’ critique. Furthermore, in abstracting the doctrine of autonomy debate from its wider context of the principle of the epoche, it seems to me that Pals also misunderstands the real nature of my argument against the earlier subtle, (and sometimes unconscious), importation of a theological agenda into the field of Religious Studies. The principle of the epoche and its corollary doctrines, I argued, allowed for the demarcation of Religious Studies from theology, but only in a fashion that left the ‘new discipline’ (i.e. Religious Studies), radically incomplete – it allowed only a ‘Religious Studies’ that permitted conclusions that were consistent with Religion’s perception of itself, so to speak, and therefore, open only to a religio-theological complement. The ironical character of that doctrine of autonomy is not difficult to see from our present vantage point. That it excludes a priori, specific kinds of study of religious phenomena – namely, theoretical analyses that permit explanations of the phenomena that conflict with Religion’s self-understanding and

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which are, therefore, reductionistic – indicates that the principle was much more than a mere methodological proposal. I had argued that the primary intention of the principle of the epoche had been political in that it was intended to allow for the establishment of an apparently new and different discipline in the university curriculum without threat to existing political structures in the university whose concern (i.e. subject-matter) was religion. And I further argued that that principle, and its corollary doctrine, are now being used as the grounds on which to reintroduce theology into Religious Studies and so to undermine the demarcation it was meant to undergird. Indeed, the grounds for demarcating Religious Studies from theology so as to allow for a political existence of the former undertaking in the university context was now being used, I argued, for establishing theology within the university curriculum in North American universities from which it had always been excluded. And it is this historical/political argument that Pals fails to countenance in my essays and his criticisms are in consequence, I suggest, considerably wide of the mark. So much for matters of exegesis and interpretation. I turn now to comments on Pals’ methodological interpretation of the doctrine of autonomy abstracted from the context of the principle of the epoche and the modifications of Pals’ proposal offered by Dawson. My intention here is not to provide an exhaustive systemic analysis or to provide an alternative interpretation of the doctrine of autonomy. My remarks are meant rather to draw attention to salient features of his proposal and to indicate what contribution it makes, and what difficulties it presents, to those intent on understanding not only the history of the emergence of Religious Studies as a part of the modern university curriculum, but also the nature of that study as a legitimate element of that curriculum.

2

Autonomy and the Principle of Epoche

Pals’ discussion of the doctrine of autonomy as disciplinary claim and descriptive assertion, and the priority he gives to the former, indicates, I think, a failure to understand the theologico-political nature of the principle of epoche of which the doctrine is an integral part. The problem here is not, as he suggests, a matter of whether the presiding interest of the founding figures of the scientific study of religion was to defend an academic discipline or a particular view of religious phenomena. They were aware rather, I have argued, that they could not defend one view without reference to the other, although the doctrine of autonomy as a descriptive assertion, to use Pals’ phrase, concerned more a view of the essence of religion that underlies religious phenomena. It is quite clear in Gerardus van der Leeuw for example, that the doctrine of au-

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tonomy as a methodological claim flows from a substantive claim about the essence of religion as a sui generis reality implying the existence of some distinct (even if invisible) ontological reality whose existence alone could in the final analysis provide a creditable explanation of religious phenomena. The ultimate subject-matter of Religious Studies for the founding figures of that field is not, as Pals seems to suggest, religious phenomena but rather the reality of religion – what Ninian Smart has referred to as the Focus of religion (1973), which though embodied in the phenomena, also transcends the phenomena. And only if such a reality exists, ontologically irreducible to some more basic elements, is the autonomy of the discipline dedicated to studying it by means of analysis of its appearance in the phenomena guaranteed. In a recent essay, ‘Phenomenology of Religion as Religio-Cultural Quest: Gerardus van der Leeuw and the Subversion of the Scientific Study of Religion’ (included in the proceedings of the Conference ‘The History of Religions and Critique of Culture in the Days of Gerardus van der Leeuw, 1890-1950’), I have been able to show how this important idealist distinction between appearances and reality characterized the thought of the early figures in this field and how the doctrine of autonomy that emerged from it could not really be extricated from a theological, even if only crypto-theological, structure. Given that a new academic department was founded on the basis of such a notion of autonomy, those who now wish to argue for the necessity of a doctrine of autonomy, on the basis of the existence of departments of Religious Studies, argue in a circular fashion. Although Pals regrets that no examples of such circular reasoning were provided in my essay I did in fact provide analysis of one such argument in an addendum to my essay ‘Is a Science of Religion Possible?’ (1978) to which he made reference. I showed there that Klaus K. Klostermaier (1977), in reflecting on Religious Studies as an academic discipline, was concerned with the question of its autonomy in both the senses discerned by Pals. He maintained that if this ‘new discipline’ was to have its own identity, it would have to satisfy two requirements. As Klostermaier puts it, it must have “a task whose importance is recognized and whose execution is not being carried out by another discipline and a method appropriate to the task…” (1977; p. 552). Klostermaier was not unaware that religious phenomena are the subject matter of various social-scientific disciplines. But he seems to have assumed that, given the existence of departments of Religious Studies, the methods of analysis used in the social-scientific understanding of religions were inadequate. This is clearly reflected, I think, in his rejection of Ninian Smart’s characterization of Religious Studies as ‘polymethodic.’ If that description of the field were true, he argued, it “would make ‘the study of religions’ as a separate discipline redundant” (1977; p. 554). And that was not a conclusion

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he was willing to countenance in face of the existence of academic departments devoted to the study of religious phenomena. Consequently, according to Klostermaier, “we have to have our method and through it our identity [for] otherwise there is no ground for a separate discipline” (1977; p. 554). Klostermaier’s suggestions as to what such a method might look like are, however, disappointing for they really appear to be theological in nature. That method cannot simply be academically rule-governed as are the other social sciences, but must be guided by a conviction that religion “has a contribution to make in our present search for a meaningful future of mankind” (1977; p. 563). In this Klostermaier merely echoes van der Leeuw and others of the founding figures of Religious Studies. What both Klostermaier and Pals, and their old-world forebears of course, refuse to consider seriously is the possibility that the ‘identity’ of Religious Studies may well be political rather than methodological – that is, that it is grounded in particular politico-historical interests. Members of a department of Slavic Studies, for example, have a kind of unity but not, obviously, a methodological one; nor are they in dire need of a common methodology to unite them. They are united by a common interest in a common set of phenomena which they wish to explain/understand. Failure to consider the possibility that students of religion are united in their ‘discipline’ for analogous reasons, namely an interest in understanding a particular set of phenomena, has encouraged the search for a transcendental ground of unity in the existence of some ontological reality expressed in or through the phenomena and therefore determining the methodological parameters to be adopted for properly understanding those phenomena. (Whether the subject-matters of Political Science, or Economics, or other similar studies, are sufficiently different so as to distinguish them structurally rather than merely substantively from academic units like Slavic Studies, is a question to which I give some attention below.)

3

Assertive Autonomy and the Problem of Reductionism

There is serious difficulty, I think, in accepting Pals’ discussion of the doctrine of autonomy in its assertive form and especially so of his attribution of that form to Chantepie de la Saussaye and C. J. Bleeker. I agree with Pals that Bleeker’s doctrine of autonomy precludes “a ‘reduction’ of religion to things nonreligious,” and that Bleeker calls for explanation of religious phenomena only in terms of humanistic categories. I find problems however, in Pals’ interpretation of both these ‘implications’ of Bleeker’s assertive autonomy. What Pals

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sees as a negative implication, namely the a priori rejection of reductionism, itself rests upon a substantive belief about the nature of religion and is not purely methodological or disciplinary. It can be shown that for Bleeker, as for van der Leeuw before him, social phenomena are, or can be, religious only because they are expressions (embodiments) of the reality of religion itself; that is, it is only because of the existence of some transcendent non-human and extra-cultural reality that religious social phenomena are distinct from simply social phenomena and that, in consequence, all possibility of a purely socialscientific explanation of religious phenomena is precluded. In other words, an adequate account for the existence and nature of religious phenomena as religious (Bleeker’s methodological axiom of autonomy), would require invoking the existence of a reality other than and ontologically distinct from the phenomena themselves and their complex interrelationships with other natural and cultural states of affairs in the world (Bleeker’s substantive or doctrinal assumption). This is hinted at even in the very brief quotations from Bleeker which Pals provides us, though exegesis of them is not possible here. If religious phenomena could be explained with reference only to other natural and socio-cultural phenomena then, as Klostermaier put it in his attack upon those ready to approach the study of religion scientifically, the study of religion as a separate discipline would be redundant and reductionism will have triumphed. What I have suggested here, however, is that neither Pals nor Klostermaier nor their forebears can exclude that possibility without, so to speak, incurring certain ontological debts or commitments that will make it virtually impossible to distinguish their ‘new discipline’ from the ‘old theology,’ or at least from the old ‘crypto-theology.’ And I have shown in my essay on the possibility of a science of religion already referred to, that their unquestioned assumption that the existence of a department of Religious Studies bespeaks the existence of a peculiar or special discipline, methodologically distinct from other social-scientific disciplines, housed within the department is simply without ground. I showed there that a substantive definition of the notion of the religious phenomena itself was sufficient to grounding Religious Studies as a scientific undertaking and that there was no need to refer to some transcendent reality expressed in the phenomena when they are defined as religious by virtue of a cultural postulation of the transcendent.

4

Assertive Autonomy and the Structure of Explanation

Pals’ discussion of the second implication of assertive autonomy is also very problematic. He maintains that such autonomy demands “essentially human-

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istic explanations” of the phenomena – that is, demands providing an explanation of religious phenomena in terms of such categories as thought, action, and feeling. As Pals puts the point: “In the technical language of explanatory theory, it affirms the value of agent-intentional forms of interpretation.” Although Pals refers here to the technical language of explanatory theory, there is very little clarity or precision in his own discussion of explanation. It appears that he uses the notion of ‘humanistic explanation’ to characterize the work done in departments and disciplines other than the natural sciences. And I presume, for he does not tell the reader, that such explanation characterizes the social sciences as well as the humanities disciplines. Were he to exclude the social sciences from this characterization, as he seems at times to do, one would be forced to class the social sciences with the natural sciences and argue that they operate with a (modified) Deductive-Nomological model of explanation. I do not think Pals espouses such a conclusion in the final analysis, however, and I conclude therefore that his use of the notion of ‘humanistic explanation’ rests upon the general assumption that a clear distinction can be drawn between the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and the socio-cultural sciences and humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) on the basis of the differences in the (logical) structures of explanation that characterize them. On this account, history, literary criticism and other disciplines, including the social sciences that operate in terms of humanistic explanations, are irreducible to the natural sciences. Although that is a debatable matter which I have discussed elsewhere (1975), I shall not raise objection to the claim here. What I do wish to point out is simply that Pals talks not only of ‘humanistic explanations’ but also of ‘humanistic religious explanations’ without letting the reader know whether in doing so he means to be pointing to a structurally unique form of explanation that distinguishes Religious Studies as a discipline as radically different from the social sciences and humanities as they are from the natural sciences. It is quite possible, on the other hand, that he uses that phrase merely to refer to a distinct set of socio-cultural data (phenomena) that, like other sets of socio-cultural data, are amenable to ‘humanistic explanatory treatment.’ I should doubt that he means here to be pointing to a structurally unique mode of explanation for he makes no attempt to specify the differences of structure between the two kinds of humanistic explanation and he recognizes that, whether the phenomena are merely social or religiosocial, it is the same set of ‘humanistic categories’ (thought, action, and feeling) that are employed in the explanations provided even though the tone and colour, so to speak, of the categories may vary. It appears, then, that for Pals, Religious Studies is an autonomous academic subject matter rather than a structurally distinct science. Religious Studies

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might still be compared, however, to ‘disciplines’ like Political Science or Economics, for it, like they, is created in the process of isolating a particular set of behaviours of the human community for scrutiny and understanding. Pals could argue, that is, that ‘humanistic religious explanation’ is of the same order as ‘humanistic political explanation’ or ‘humanistic economic explanation.’ Now if that is all that Pals means to be asserting it appears to me that there is no real quarrel between us for I do not see that ‘humanistic political explanations’ or ‘humanistic economic explanations’ designate structurally different types of explanations – different from each other or from ‘humanistic explanation.’ Nevertheless, I am not entirely convinced that that is all Pals is looking for and I am quite certain that his predecessors – and especially so scholars like Chantepie de la Saussaye, Gerardus van der Leeuw, and C. J. Bleeker – and most of his contemporaries in the field expect more. Should this be all that Pals means to assert he would be no less reductionist vis-à-vis the position of the religious devotee, for example, than Werblowsky, Segal, or me. The ‘religious explanations’ provided by devotees to account for their own belief and behaviour would be as much in conflict with Pals’ ‘humanistic religious explanations’ as they are with other sociologically reductionist accounts of religion. (‘Religious explanations’ would differ from ‘humanistic religious explanations,’ it appears, not structurally but only in involving reference to transcendent realities.) Pals then, like other reductionists, would have ‘explained away’ religion though he would not have ‘explained away’ religious phenomena. Pals’ concern in some sense to reify religious phenomena seems to me, therefore, without much point if Religious Studies, like Political Science or Economics, emerges simply as a result of human interest in explaining a specific set of activities.

5

‘Humanistic Religious Explanation’ and Theology

Though Dawson is working essentially the same program proposed by Pals, there is a fundamental divergence between him and Pals on the question of the structure of ‘humanistic religious explanation’; Dawson appears to believe that it is possible to differentiate its structure from ordinary ‘humanistic explanation’ and, therefore, to distinguish Religious Studies as a distinct science from the other social sciences. For Dawson, following a suggestion from Anthony Giddens, explanation in the social sciences involves a double hermeneutic which distinguishes it from explanation in the natural sciences. Explanation in Religious Studies, he continues, involves a triple hermeneutic and so introduces a third element into the interpretive process which differentiates

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it from the sciences involving only a double hermeneutic. Whereas the social scientist, unlike the natural scientist, attempts to understand phenomena that are already the products of human interpretation, the academic student of religion, unlike the ordinary social scientist, attempts, it appears, to understand ordinary reality “in the light of” other extraordinary and supernatural realities (p. 43). Dawson sees his proposal as axiomatic, in Pals’ sense, because it has an intuitive plausibility, (i.e. its truth appears self-evident), and superior to Pals’ purely formalistic axiom in that it more clearly provides a clear indication of the scope of the science. I can follow Dawson’s reasons for amending Pals’ notion of the axiomatic basis for the academic study of religion but I am afraid that Dawson’s proposal really fails to live up to the promises it gives. It is true that Dawson, unlike Pals, demarcates religious phenomena from the larger realm of reflexive phenomena but he does so on a substantive rather than on genuinely formal or methodological grounds; he does not, that is, really produce a third interpretive element as promised. Furthermore, his more substantive axiom does not have the intuitive plausibility to allow it to function axiomatically. He argues that his axiom, “reference to the transcendent,” focuses attention “on the presence of an act of cognition…,” but he is unaware of the seriously questionable ontological implications that claim contains. There is, moreover, no need for him to talk here of an act of cognition because reference to a presumed act of cognition and a culturally postulated transcendent to which reference is made by the religious devotee would provide him with all that he needs for characterizing Religious Studies as he does. By giving more than he needs, Dawson’s qualified idealist proposal carries theological implications of which he is, I think, entirely unaware. Religious phenomena understood to involve reference to culturally postulated transcendent realities (i.e. religious experience, thoughts, and beliefs), cognition of which is presumed are, phenomenologically speaking, the same as such phenomena taken to be the product of encounters with such transcendent realities. Finally, it seems to me that Dawson’s talk about the definition of religion which he provides as an axiom that ascribes a conceptual autonomy to a subject-matter is inflated rhetoric. A preliminary definition of the subject is necessary in all socio-cultural disciplines; such definition helps to isolate that set of activities for which one wishes an explanation. I undertook precisely such a task in chapter 1 of my Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion (1981) but did so not with the rhetoric of axioms, but rather seeing the definition as a proto-theory to be improved upon with further study.

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From Theology to Crypto-Theology

In light of the comments above it should not be difficult to clarify my claim that to presume that religion cannot be explained away is to attribute to religion an ontological reality it may not really have. The devotee’s opposition to the search for an explanation of religion is that all explanations other than those of the devotee (whether explicit or implicit) makes religion out to be something other than what the devotee takes it to be. The devotee explains her/his religion in terms of an encounter with a reality that is ‘beyond’ the everyday, ordinary world – a reality ontologically distinct from this world. Social-scientific explanations of religion clash with such supernaturalistic explanations and, in providing an explanation of the devotee’s belief in the supernatural without invoking the supernatural, ‘explain away’ what is most important to the devotee but without denying the existence of the devotee’s belief in the supernatural. To exclude, a priori all possibility of such a reductionistic explanation, on the other hand, is to assert that the belief of the devotee is either wholly inexplicable, and therefore irrational, or must necessarily be explained in terms of the existence of some ontologically distinct supernatural reality. The reductionist, it should be clear then, does not suggest that the religious phenomena, i.e. the devotee’s beliefs, become unreal or do not exist but rather that the ontologically distinct supernatural realities the beliefs point to may not exist. For the religious devotee, any view that does not see a transcendent, sacred reality, ontologically distinct from the reality of the everyday world, as source and cause for the religious experience from which all religious expression (i.e. religious phenomena) ultimately flows, is reductionistic. On this ground not only are the sociological explanations of the Durkheim variety or psychoanalytical explanations of the Freudian type reductionistic but also the ‘humanistic accounts’ suggested by Pals, if they assume that religion is a product of purely human thinking. Devotees who see a humanistic, agent-intentional account of their beliefs and behaviour grounded in the mundane world alone will reject the account as reductionistic as readily as they reject Durkheim and Freud. And to attempt to qualify that humanism so as to avoid such reductionism is, I think, to involve one in smuggling back theology – of espousing a crypto-theology – that even though not amounting to a Confessional stance is but another version of ‘small c’ confessionalism as I described it in my failure of nerve article referred to above. If Pals wishes to distinguish his ‘humanistic religious explanations’ structurally from ‘supernaturalistic explanations’ then he, like other reductionists, will be guilty of ‘explaining away’ religion and making it unreal (in the

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eyes of the devotees). To refuse the distinction, of course, suggests a cryptotheological quality to ‘humanistic religious explanations’ in the sense I have complained of in the several articles to which Pals refers.

7

The Import of Boundary Conditions

I find it rather interesting that Pals should refer to the science of biology as providing an analogy for his arguments about disciplinary axioms in Religious Studies. He is quite right to argue that explanations in biology are not reducible to chemistry and physics. There is no objection therefore to his claim that the explanations of the cellular biologist “transcend explanations solely by molecular physics.” But this does not imply that explanations in biology operate wholly independently of chemistry and physics. Those sciences set the boundary conditions for the explanations of biological phenomena which means that even though we have here emergent realities that require explanations that go beyond those of chemistry and physics, they cannot contradict those more basic explanations. Assuming that Pals does not see Religious Studies as wholly independent of other sciences, it is important to determine just what disciplines present boundary conditions for it. Only then are we likely to understand properly how ‘humanistic religious explanations’ transcend ‘humanistic explanations.’ It will be important in future methodological discussion, I think, to focus more attention on this matter of the boundary conditions of the scientific study of religions. To refer to biology again, had the vitalists been successful in their account of how biology transcends chemistry and physics, the metaphysical belief in the existence of some ‘life-force’ ontologically distinct from the reality of living organisms would have prevented much fruitful research in the biological sciences and, indeed, would have prevented the development of molecular biology as distinct from organismic biology and the partial reduction of the latter to the former. My own use of biology as analogue to Religious Studies was invoked to illustrate the problems just adverted to. I argued, not only in the essay Pals uses as a staging-point for his account of the doctrine of autonomy, but elsewhere (e.g. 1985), that the postulation of some transcendent, supernatural reality, (whether explicitly or implicitly) would similarly distort the academic study of religion. Our refusal to legitimate scientific creationism, I suggested therefore, speaks against a study of religion similarly imbued with supernatural belief claims. Unfortunately, Pals makes no response to this use of the analogy.

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Questionable Assumptions?

Though I do not wish to make much of it here, it is necessary at least to register some concern about Pals’ reference to innocuous anthropological assumptions being made in his defence of the doctrine of autonomy. The assumption that human thought, action, and feeling are self-explanatory and are never themselves in need of explanation is far from self-evident. Agentintentionality may itself require explanation as Ernest Gellner (e.g. 1974) and others have ably argued. It is a fruitful assumption in several disciplines, that is, that others may better account for the behaviours of some persons than can those persons themselves.

9

Reductionism Again

A further comment upon reductionism is in order, I think, before bringing this discussion to a close. It seems to me that one ought not argue against a possible reduction of their field of research to another on purely a priori grounds. The ‘reduction’ of celestial motion and terrestrial motion in the middle ages to a common set of principles was surely an advance in our understanding of motion. The partial reduction of biology to the molecular level is also an advancement of understanding. And if the sociobiologist could account for all the data that would make sociological explanations redundant – finding ‘gay genes,’ for example, in the search for an explanation of homosexuality – then so be it. Or, if psychology can account for, without remainder, social institutions, events, etc., then surely we ought not blindly to hold to ‘sociological’ and other extra-psychological accounts of the data. The claims of sociologists and social historians however, amongst others, has been that psychological explanations (and the assumption of methodological individualism) do not adequately account for the social facts, but they present argument and evidence to show why they hold this position; they do not make the claim simply on ‘disciplinary grounds.’ Christopher Lloyd’s recent argument (1986) is a good case in point. Though a similar case could be made for Religious Studies, I am not persuaded that Pals has made it. Pals maintains that when the doctrine of autonomy is rightly conceived, it need not intrude theology into the study of religion. But that remains so only if the ‘residue’ that is left over after non-humanist explanations of religion have been provided is only ‘agent-intentionality,’ because then, as Dawson correctly points out, the social sciences can account for religion as they do for other human/cultural institutions. That means that

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Religious Studies, like Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, etc., is a social science and, like them, is, from the religious perspective, reductionistic. To argue for a Religious Studies that is different – more than – just another humanistic study, structurally like the others, assumes more than mere agentintentionality which would be difficult to distinguish from the subject-matter of Theology.

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A Subtle Insinuation of Theology

Given the preceding comments, I do not think Pals has really undermined the recent critiques of those who claim to have established an autonomous science of religion. His counter-criticism will, I am sure, force a more careful reformulation of the understanding of Religious Studies as a scientific undertaking that is essentially naturalistic, but it will not undermine that understanding. Consequently, it seems to me that the effect of the position that Pals espouses is essentially supportive of the critics of those who would bring about a convergence of Religious Studies and theology; it too will undermine the unsubtle return of theological interests to Religious Studies. Without further reformulation and clarification of his arguments, however, it can only contribute to the further subtle insinuation of theology into this field and to the academic legitimation of a variety of crypto-theologies under the banner of Religious Studies.

Bibliography Lorne Dawson, Reason, Freedom and Religion, New York, Peter Lang, 1988. Christopher Lloyd, Explanation in Social History, Oxford, Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1986. Ernest Gellner, Legitimation of Belief, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1974. Klaus Klostermair, ‘From Phenomenology to Metascience: Reflections on the Study of Religions,’ Studies in Religion, 6 (1977), pp. 551-564. Ninian Smart, The Phenomenon of Religion, London, Macmillan, 1973. Donald Wiebe, ‘Explanation and the Scientific Study of Religion,’ Religion 5 (1975), pp. 33-52. Donald Wiebe, ‘Is a Science of Religion Possible?,’ Studies in Religion (1978), pp. 5-17. Donald Wiebe, Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion, The Hague, Mouton, 1981. Donald Wiebe, ‘A Positive Episteme for the Study of Religion,’ Scottish Journal of Religious Studies (1985), pp. 78-95. Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

Chapter 8

On the Transformation of ‘Belief’ and the Domestication of ‘Faith’ in the Academic Study of Religion Donald Wiebe

More than a decade ago, Professor Smith and I were involved in what we both thought was a significant difference of opinion about the nature of the academic study of religion. In a paper on ‘the role of belief in the study of religion’ I tried to show how important the concept of belief is to that enterprise, despite the increasing recognition by scholars in the field that religion is a great deal more than simply a catalogue of doctrines and beliefs held consciously in mind by the devotee. Given my decision to present my views on this matter to the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion,1 it seemed appropriate to contrast my position primarily with that of Professor Smith, whose views had been widely disseminated in his The Meaning and End of Religion and had been elaborated in his then recently published Belief and History.2 Not satisfied with the very limited discussion available to the thesis in that setting, I sought further response by having the paper published. It appeared in Numen under the title ‘The Role of Belief in the Study of Religion: A Response to Wilfred Cantwell Smith’3 in 1979 and Professor Smith, who had been a respondent to the paper at the Canadian Society meeting, published a rejoinder the following year under the title ‘Belief: A Reply to a Response’4 in which he argued that my critique of his views were based on a “massive misunderstanding” of his position, suggesting thereby that if his views had been properly understood, a case for the role of belief in the academic study of religion could not have been seriously mounted. I was not convinced by Professor Smith’s arguments in that ‘Reply’ and I scribbled out the structure of a response. I did not, however, continue the 1 This took place at the Learned Society meetings held in London, Ontario, in 1978. 2 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion: A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind, (New York: Macmillan, 1962) and Belief and History, (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1977). 3 Donald Wiebe, ‘The Role of Belief in the Study of Religion: A Response to Wilfred Cantwell Smith,’ Numen 26 (1979): 234-249. 4 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, ‘Belief: A Reply to a Response,’ Numen 27 (1980): 247-255.

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public discussion of our difference of views at that time. I had expected, or at least hoped, that others might enter the debate and in extending the discussion make possible greater clarification of the issues involved. That expectation however went unfulfilled for the most part, there being, to my knowledge, but one essay published on the theme by Colin Grant under the title ‘Smith’s Discovery and the Ethics of Belief.’5 But Grant’s concern, unfortunately for me, was less with the theoretical differences between Smith and me than with practical questions concerning the relationship between Professor Smith’s discovery about the role of belief in religion to the ‘ethics of belief’ – where the latter notion is understood by Grant not in terms of the question of the structure of believing but rather with the consequences that the holding of particular beliefs might have more generally in society. Put more succinctly, where my concern was with what might be termed the internal morality of belief or the epistemic justification of belief, Grant concerned himself with the moral effects of religious believing and beliefs. Grant’s paper, moreover, seems to me to have misconstrued the most significant aspect of Professor Smith’s ‘discovery’ with respect to the relation of belief to religion and therefore failed, to some extent, to understand the thrust of my critique of Smith. According to Grant, Smith’s ‘discovery’ concerns simply “the radical nature of the change in meaning of belief”6 even though such transformations of the meanings of words in the growth and development of all languages is common fare. Although Professor Smith does at one point in his ‘Reply’ suggest that the essence of his ‘discovery’ is the transformation in the meaning of ‘belief,’ he nevertheless makes it clear throughout that essay that the essence of his discovery is more than that. My concern, on the other hand, was and is simply a logical and epistemological one regarding the implications Smith’s ‘discovery’ holds for our understanding of the natures of ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ and their relation to each other. Grant’s essay tempted me to re-enter the debate with Professor Smith but work on other projects made that impossible at the time. This conference, however, seems a suitable occasion on which to raise again the question of the role of belief in the academic study of religion, the resolution of which I think could make an important contribution to determining how the academic study of religion ought to proceed. Furthermore, this occasion provides me an opportunity to try to correct any misunderstandings or distortions of Professor Smith’s position that I may inadvertently have introduced into the discussion of his work. 5 Colin Grant, ‘Smith’s Discovery and the Ethics of Belief,’ Studies in Religion 13 (1984): 461-477. 6 Ibid., 470.

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Revisiting Smith’s Arguments

I direct my attention first, then, to the matter of my exegesis and interpretation of Professor Smith’s work. It is not that I wish now to prove to Professor Smith, or to anyone else, that he actually said what I claimed he said but rather to be as fair as I can in coming to a determination not only as to the meaning of his explicit claims but as to what I think those claims entail. In that regard however, I should like to acknowledge here that there may well have been some ground for Professor Smith’s disappointment with my treatment of his arguments regarding belief. Certainly the brevity of my analysis of his nuanced argument, which had seen considerable refinement in various publications, hardly permitted doing full justice to the exposition of all facets of Smith’s position regarding faith, belief, and the academic study of religion. Smith’s careful style of argumentation, which involves piling qualification upon qualification, provides fertile soil for misreading him, as he seems himself to admit in giving consideration in his ‘Reply’ to the possibility of berating not only me but also himself “for having set forth that thesis without, apparently, making it at all clear.”7 Despite the note of irony in this comment, it did appear to me then as it does now, that Professor Smith so qualified his initial claims regarding belief and faith that he often ended up espousing not only those initial claims but also their contradictories, thus accounting for his shock at my surprise at his admission that there was not only an ideational component to faith but also that precisely that ideational element was of considerable importance to the student of religion. Furthermore, my concern to treat the views of other scholars as well as those of Professor Smith, combined with limitations on the length of articles usually permitted by journal editors, made a rather ‘blunt’ treatment of Professor Smith’s position a necessity. Despite the essay’s shortcomings however, for which I apologise, such a ‘blunt’ treatment may not be entirely without merit, for it may allow, I think, for the achievement of a degree of focus and specificity that will permit us to put Professor Smith’s claims to some kind of test. There is a further contributing factor, I think, to Professor Smith’s profound sense of my having misread and even distorted his argument which it seems to me requires some comment here for I do not wish to back away from it. It appears that my attempt to unwind the intricate intertwining of theological, moral, and methodological concerns in his argument is considered by Professor Smith to constitute a distortion of it whereas I see it as a necessary task to

7 Smith, op. cit., 1980; 247.

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that of assessing its cogency. Whether separating those elements as aspects of Professor Smith’s position constitutes proper analysis or a misrepresentation of his argument is itself a philosophical question about the nature of philosophical analysis and not a simple matter of description. I shall not here, however, take up that debate, but will rather suggest that my argument then, as well as now, be recognized for what it is, namely, a critique of his views from within a widely accepted Cartesian analytical framework of thought. Having acknowledged the difficulties that make interpreting Professor Smith’s work somewhat hazardous, it still seems to me, upon re-examination of our dispute, that my description of his position was, and is, essentially fair and on the mark. At the very least, as Professor Smith himself noted in his ‘Reply,’ I properly understood the implications of his position, although he also insisted that I made improper use of that knowledge. The truth of that latter claim, in my opinion, is a matter of dispute but not one to pursue if the goal is to come to some determination regarding the value of belief to the academic study of religion. And it is primarily that issue to which I wish to give attention here.

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Questioning the Concept of ‘Belief’

My central concern in the disputed essay was the claim that the concept of belief is not merely useless in the task of interpreting and explaining the meaning of religion but rather positively misleading. I argued that such a claim is radical and counter-intuitive and, in order to be successful, would have to be extraordinarily well argued. I made reference to the case against ‘belief’ in the work of several authors but paid particular attention to its formulation in the work of Professor Smith in an attempt to show that such a well argued case had not, in fact, been made. It is obvious that I did not persuade Professor Smith of that ‘fact’ ten years ago, but it seems to me that it is worth another try, and that in taking up this task again, I am accepting his invitation to join him and his colleagues, as he put it in his ‘Reply,’ in the “demanding task of rethinking our basic interpretive categories.”8 The foundation of Professor Smith’s argument against ‘belief,’ which he considers to be of fundamental significance for any methodological proposal regarding the nature of the study of religion, flows from what he calls his “major empirical discovery.9 This discovery, as I have already intimated in my remarks 8 Ibid., 255. 9 Ibid., 248.

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on Grant above, is more than a simple discovery of the change of meaning in the use of the word ‘belief.’ To put it in a nutshell, his discovery is that in the traditions he has examined, religious persons did not ask anyone to believe anything; that is, that believing, in the modern sense of the term, was not a central religious category. From an awareness of the change of the meaning of the word belief then, claims Smith, it can be seen that, until recent times, no one affirmed that it was religiously important to hold certain beliefs (i.e., doctrines, dogmas). If this is true, Smith continued, it requires of the student of religion to adopt a new way of looking at religious life; it requires an approach that does not involve the use of the concept of ‘belief.’ Since ‘belief’ is of little or no value to the faith of the devotee, it follows that a study of religion that takes ‘belief’ seriously – that is, as of central significance to religion – and therefore focuses attention upon beliefs and belief-systems rather than upon the ‘religious life’ of the devotee, is utterly misguided. And from this it would seem to follow that the new way of looking at the religious life would require eschewing the use of any and all concepts foreign to the discourse of the religious community, because the concepts that are central to the scientific search for explanations and theories seem necessarily to stand at odds with the role of the central concepts in religious discourse. Without rejecting entirely Professor Smith’s claim to the discovery regarding ‘belief,’ I nevertheless find myself with a twofold disagreement with the position he attempts to build upon it. In the first instance, it is obvious that there are religious devotees, even if in only comparatively recent times, for whom belief is central and belief-systems of utmost importance. Many such devotees in fact refer to themselves as ‘religious believers,’ as do modern Christian fundamentalists, and appear therefore to consider ‘belief’ a religious category. That belief was not an element in that sense in earlier religious traditions simply does not stand as an argument against the claim that there are religious traditions in which it plays a central role, unless, of course, Professor Smith holds an essentialist view of the nature of religion. Consequently, to see these belief traditions as distortions of earlier forms of belief-free commitment and therefore as heresy, as does Smith, is itself a failure to achieve the empathetic understanding of ‘the other’ that historians of religion expect of all students in the field – including philosophers. My second disagreement with Professor Smith is more fundamental; it holds, moreover, even if one accepts his discovery to be not merely empirical but a philosophical discovery about the essential nature of all religions. From the fact that belief is not a religious category, it does not follow that the concept ought not to be used in the study and interpretation of religion. That would only follow, it seems to me, if it is assumed that all concepts used in the

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study of religion must be religious concepts. Professor Smith is no doubt right that it is a mistranslation on the part of the student to make it appear as if the religious devotees “themselves thought believing important,”10 but there is no reason to think that use of the category of belief necessarily implies that they did consider it religiously important. Even if believing, in the modern sense, is not a religious act or injunction, it is still nevertheless something religious people do. And it is wholly appropriate, therefore, for students of religion to take account of this fact; and they cannot do that if the use of the concept of belief is prohibited. And what applies here to the use of the modern concept of belief applies also to the use of other scientific categories that the student of religion may employ. Consequently, if the traditional and modern concepts of belief diverge as significantly as Professor Smith contended, it would follow that the understandings of religion held by the devotee and by the scientific student of religion would be fundamentally at odds, for one would have come to that understanding from the inside out, so to speak, on the basis of ‘belief’ in the traditional sense of the term, and the other from the outside in on the basis of the use of the modern notion of belief. And, if that were so, it was obvious that Professor Smith’s objection to the modern concept of belief was merely symbolic of his rejection of any social-scientific approach to understanding human life. And that position it seemed to me at the time, as it does now, is indefensible. Ernest Gellner’s work in Cause and Meaning in the Social Sciences makes clear why that is so and I shall briefly delineate the substance of his argument in that regard here.11 Gellner develops his critique of such an understanding of the nature of the social sciences with special regard to the work of modern philosophers like Peter Winch and Alasdair MacIntyre. Winch and MacIntyre, like Smith, are centrally concerned with preserving a humane or humanist approach to the study of human culture and society that would, as Gellner puts it, retain the human image of persons by refusing analyses of them that would deprive them of their freedom and dignity. A scientific sociology that explains human phenomena by subsuming them under general laws and theories, however, as Gellner points out, might explain men and societies not in terms of their own concepts and beliefs, but in terms of other concepts imposed by the sociologist from 10 11

Ibid. Ernest Gellner, Cause and Meaning in the Social Sciences (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973). I will be drawing on the following two essays reprinted in that volume: ‘The New Idealism: Cause and Meaning in the Social Sciences,’ (pp. 50-77), and ‘The Entry of the Philosophers,’ (pp. 78-87).

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outside. The ‘internal concepts’ might be shown to be irrelevant or illusory [and] the thinkers under consideration are anxious above all to deny this possibility. On the whole they accept that anthropomorphism is out in natural science (though not all of them, and not unambiguously), but they wish to save the anthropomorphic image of man himself.12 But fulfilling that ‘soteriological’ function of saving this form of anthropomorphism for the social sciences, Gellner shows, involves espousing what he calls “the collective privileged access theory”13 of culture which insists that explanations of human behaviours and institutions cannot be had in terms of recurring patterns of physical movement and the like, but only in terms of the meanings they have for the participants in the community. Thus, explanations of human behavior, from this perspective, must proceed from the inside out. And this he insists is to espouse a form of idealist metaphysics with all its attendant problems, for it implies that any and all meaningful action is exempt from nature and therefore from causal analysis. He writes: If the meanings make the acts into what they are, it seems to follow that any ‘external’ method which ignores or denies those meanings and replaces them by a new set of its own must be mistaken. The comparative or generalizing method, which in the interest of achieving generalizations empties the conduct it deals with of its locally idiosyncratic content, its ‘meaning,’ must be in error. A fortiori, behaviourism or causal explanation is out. Either social life is exempt from causation (Winch), or social causation is of a special kind without generality and internal to the ideas of the participants (MacIntyre).14 Although there is no denying the possibility that what the new idealist sees as a meaningful account of human behaviour may in fact be true, there is, Gellner points out, no way of guaranteeing a priori that such accounts will always be true or be the only ones to apply. The institutions of a society are indeed ‘made’ by the concepts used by participants but this does not in itself demonstrate that the assumptions or theories built into the concepts are true. And if they are not, then explanations of the institutions will only be achieved by refusing to be satisfied with merely ‘internal accounts.’ But the possibility of this kind of move away from such charitableness of interpretation is precisely what 12 13 14

Ibid., 80. Ibid., 51. Ibid., 81.

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Professor Smith, it seems to me, wishes to block. Like Winch and Maclntyre, it seems that Professor Smith is convinced that it is only in this kind of conceptual framework that the moral life of human communities can be salvaged and protected because where there is no freedom, there is no morality. According to Gellner, the ‘charitable’ interpretations of culture that such anthropomorphic positions allow, involves the social scientist in a multiplicity of difficulties chief of which is a relativism that requires the incoherence of a universal endorsement of all cultures.15 And that incoherence is found on at least two levels; the moral and the cognitive. There is the suggestion in such anthropomorphic traditions that to explain a culture in terms of concepts foreign to it is always to undermine its moral value because it does not take seriously the moral values of the culture under examination and attempts to account for cultural value in a causal fashion. It is not obvious to me, however, why an explanation of a cultural phenomenon must necessarily be immoral simply because it does not accept the meaning the phenomenon has for members of that culture. The point at issue here is clearly put, I think, in Marvin Harris’s response to such an anthropomorphic interpretation of the meaning of human sacrifice amongst the Aztecs provided by Marshall Sahlins. Harris writes: No one can doubt that ‘culture is meaningful in its own right,’ but many will doubt Sahlins’s authorization for telling us what it meant to be dragged up the pyramid by the hair – even if it was ‘magical hair,’ as he proposes in a footnote – to be bent back, spread-eagled and cut open. Sahlins claims it mattered to the victims whose screams ended five hundred years ago that they were part of a sacrament and not just part of a meal. “It is positivist cant,” writes Sahlins, to impose western categories such as cannibalism on these high holy rites. It wasn’t cannibalism, he continues, it was the “highest form of communion” – as if communion is not also a western concept and as if labeling human sacrifice ‘communion’ transubstantiates obsidian knives and human meat into things we can’t recognize as being sharp and nutritious respectively. We should certainly try to understand why people think they behave the way they do, but we cannot stop at that understanding. It is imperative that we reserve the right not to believe ruling-class explanations. A ruling class that says it is eating some people out of concern for the welfare of all is not telling the whole story. An anthropology that can do no more than make that viewpoint seem plausible serves neither science nor morality. Aztec cannibalism was the highest form of communion for the eaters 15

Ibid., 83.

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but not for the eaten. For the eaten, it was not only cannibalism, but the highest form of exploitation. (Even the bourgeoisie refrains from dining on its workers.) If it be positivist cant to describe human relationships in such terms, long live positivism. If it be anthropology to struggle against the mystification of the causes of inequality and exploitation, long live anthropology.”16 As for the cognitive incoherence of such a principle of charity in the interpretation of culture, Gellner argues that it is intuitively repellant to find ‘acceptable’ the primitive witchcraft and sorcery of archaic cultures in the same sense one finds modern physics acceptable. And in this I am in full agreement with him. In terms of the discussion above, to do so is to contravene the internal morality of scientific knowing. As Gellner also points out, to do this is a pragmatic contradiction because this can only be a belief held in one’s study and not in one’s life. Furthermore, such charitable interpretations fail adequately to account for the complex reality of the social world which includes internal cognitive conflicts and inter-cultural disagreements in the mutual relations between societies, for in theory such a transcending of one’s cultural barriers ought not to be possible. In light of these difficulties with the “collective privileged access theory” of culture, Gellner rejects the advice of philosophers like Winch and MacIntyre not because, as he puts it, they entered into the discussion of the nature of the social sciences as immodest missionaries bent on “bringing methodological salvation” without even bothering “to learn the basic mores of the land,” but because, even though interesting, they are wrong.17 In conclusion, he writes: It is not obvious… that “the study of man can hardly avoid being anthropomorphic.” The fact that, tautologically, the subject matter of the ‘study of man’ is indeed man does not seem … to entail that the explanatory concepts invoked must also be, in some sense further to be defined, human. The position of, let us say, behaviourists, to the effect that certain very human concepts (‘consciousness’) must be excluded, whether true or false, does not seem … self-evidently absurd. There is one straightforward sense in which the study of man can be ‘nonhuman’ in form: if it consists of causal explanations of human behaviour, in which the antecedents are events outside the range of ordinary human experience, 16 17

Marvin Harris, Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture (New York: Random House, 1979), 340. Gellner, 80.

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This conclusion is likely to appear not only paradoxical but also selfcontradictory to humanist scholars like Professor Smith. And it is for this reason that I took Professor Smith’s objections to the modern notion of belief to amount to an objection to this set of implications which seem to flow from it. It appears, however, that I may have been wrong to have done so, for Professor Smith insists in his ‘Reply’ that he was not and is not interested in dissuading scholars from using the modern concept of belief in their analyses of religion. Drawing that conclusion, however, may be a bit hasty because Smith’s advice comes with a very important qualification that makes this disclaimer a little more ambiguous than it at first appears to be. His concern, that is, is to dissuade scholars, as he puts it, from “using the notion [of belief] unself-critically and/or ambiguously, and from making it central in religious interpretation, especially from imagining it anachronistically central as a concept for a religious person’s self-interpretation.”19 In fact, Professor Smith insists that he has always acknowledged that belief is an element in religion, claiming that “in the situation presented in the Bible [for example], the writers and protagonists either believed what they believed unself-critically, as unconscious presupposition, or else they thought that they knew.”20 What such devotees ‘thought that they knew,’ however, they surely preached and desired others to ‘believe.’ And any student of religion, consequently, will need to invoke the concept of belief in order to make sense of this kind of situation. In admitting this, it seems to me, therefore, that there is considerable agreement between Smith and me on the role of ‘belief’ in the study of religion after all, but just exactly what all this means with respect to Professor Smith’s critique of the notion of belief is not altogether clear. There is, quite obviously, a drastic difference in epistemological assumptions between us. Professor Smith finds no difficulty in drawing radical distinctions between believing, on the one hand, and knowing, recognizing, perceiving, and discerning, on the other, whereas I do, and that has made understanding each other’s positions very difficult. In any event, I am not satisfied that Professor Smith’s comments here salvage the case 18 19 20

Ibid., 73. Smith, op. cit., 1980; 254. Ibid., 252.

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he has earlier made against a role for ‘belief’ in the study of religion. Resolving such epistemological matters, however, cannot be taken up here and I must, therefore, limit myself to a few comments on this revised view of the role of belief in the academic study of religion presented in Smith’s ‘Reply.’ Firstly, it should be noted that I am in full agreement with Professor Smith that an ambiguous and/or uncritical use of the concept of belief, as with any other concept, is dangerous. Secondly, I am persuaded by Professor Smith’s argument to the effect that the concept of belief in the modern sense was, for the most part, not central to the religious person’s self-interpretation. I do not, however, think this necessarily true for all believers in the past, although proving this point is more than can be undertaken at the moment. More importantly, as I have already indicated, there are many religious persons today for whom this does not hold true. This is something Professor Smith finds impossible to accept, or so it seems, since he appears to consider people who now define themselves with reference to such belief-systems as being guilty of some great heresy.21 Even should Professor Smith be entirely right in his claim that ‘belief’ does not characterize the religious consciousness of archaic believers, there is no necessity that ‘change’ in this regard must be read as degeneration (i.e., heresy) rather than as ‘development,’ unless, of course, one assumes a particular ontology in which the essence of religion precludes such development a priori. But in light of the revised claim that ‘belief’ is not entirely inappropriate as a category for interpreting religious traditions, that assumption becomes untenable. My final comment upon Professor Smith’s claim relates to his warning against making the concept of belief “central in religious interpretation.” Unfortunately this warning is ambiguous: if this is meant simply to reinforce either of the two points noted above and nothing more, there is no problem. But, if Professor Smith means here, as I think he does, that the scholar cannot use ‘belief’ as a central concept in his or her interpretation of religion because it is not so used by the religious devotee, then, as I have already made clear, I disagree fundamentally. As I indicated clearly in the article to which Professor Smith took objection, the outsider student of religion has done just that and it is precisely that use of ‘belief’ that I had set out to defend. And it has been my contention that Professor Smith’s arguments throughout the writings referred to above amounted to an attack on such a use of the concept of belief. That is, the overwhelming impression in these works is that ‘belief’ is of no, or such little, value to the religious devotee that a study of religion that

21

Smith, op. cit., 1977; v.

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takes it seriously and focuses attention on ‘belief-systems’ is utterly, or at least essentially, misguided. As Professor Smith has put it in Belief and History, faith is from God but one’s beliefs come from one’s century.22 If my interpretation of these texts is wrong, as one reading of Professor Smith’s ‘Reply’ might suggest, then I am in error in what I have attributed to him. However, if that is the case, it seems to me to follow that the understanding of the nature of religious studies I had originally set out to defend should find vindication in Professor Smith’s restatement (?) of his position in his ‘Reply.’ If it is true, that is, that I have misinterpreted Professor Smith and if it is true that he in fact recognizes the importance of ‘belief’ in religion in the sense I do, then it would seem to follow that he would be willing to accept the possibility of an explanation of religion, as I have already put it, from the outside in. Indeed, as I shall proceed to show, he would then have to acknowledge that the academic study of religion is essentially a study of tradition; as stated in my original formulation of the issue, he would have to acknowledge that to understand the tradition would be, in effect, to understand, as best as we can – as scientific students of religion – the faith of those in the tradition. But this, in my opinion, though not only my opinion, is precisely what he has rejected as utterly destructive to religion, and that he would still today consider destructive to religion. As Grant has aptly put it, according to Smith, this kind of approach to the study of religion reduces faith to the dimensions of the modern (i.e., the transformed) concept of belief and thereby constitutes an unacceptable “domestication” of faith.23 In so historicizing the basic allegiances of religious devotees by making of faith nothing more than the subjective element of trust shown by the devotees in the reality to which the devotee believes him or herself to be related, the power and vibrancy of God (or the gods) in the lives of those devotees is replaced with abstract and inert epistemic claims of particular historical communities. Therefore, despite the suggestions I see in Smith’s ‘Reply’ that we are in agreement in our views about the role of ‘belief’ in the study of religion, or at least that there exists an overlap in our views in that regard, I do not really think the differences between us to have been bridged. Nor do I believe that I have simply misconstrued the nature of his argument. A very clear indication of that disagreement is the difference in our views on the nature of the truth for which the academic student of religion seeks. Professor Smith would maintain that the framework within which I wish to speak of the role of belief in the study of religion operates with far too narrow

22 23

Ibid., 95-96. Grant, op. cit., 472.

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a concept of truth. According to Smith, that is, the use of the concept of belief in my proposal involves a notion of truth that is essentially impersonal because it concerns itself only with the question of the truth or falsity of propositional claims. And such a positivistic notion of truth, he would insist, fails to recognize that truth is considerably more than that – that truth inheres in persons and not simply in propositions. Given this affinity between the modern concept of belief and the propositional view of truth, and Smith’s thorough rejection of the latter, which has been tagged by some as ‘personalism,’ it would appear that my original interpretation of Professor Smith’s position regarding ‘belief’ and my interpretation of his warning against the illegitimate use of the concept in the study of religion was not wholly wide of the mark. That ‘personalism’ would imply, moreover, that understanding a community of persons is unlikely to be successful if it is done in terms of concepts tied to such a narrow and impersonal view of truth which is foreign to the understanding of truth by which that community lives. Such an understanding, consequently, could not help but be reductionistic. That could only be avoided if the understanding sought were not a conceptual, analytical, and theoretical activity but rather a moral one. And on this score it seems to me, therefore, that Professor Smith could happily echo the claim C. S. Lewis puts into the mouth of Hingest the chemist in That Hideous Strength: “There are no sciences like Sociology…. I happen to believe that you can’t study men; you can only get to know them, which is quite a different thing.”24 A brief review of the difference in our assessments of the methodological value of such a personalism to the student of religion will help, I think, to make clear not only why I rejected Professor Smith’s proposals but also why he saw that rejection as being based on a distorted view of his proposals. According to Professor Smith, my understanding of his ‘personalism’ was as wide of the mark as was my understanding of his position regarding ‘belief.’ An essential ingredient in that misunderstanding, he insists, was my attributing to him two concepts – the notions of ‘esoteric religion’ and ‘real religion’ – both of which, he claims, are foreign to his thought. It is true, as he points out, that he did not use the word ‘esoteric,’ but then neither did I say he had. But little of consequence hangs on that point for it is obvious that a particular concept can be in use even where the word that normally designates it is not. Nevertheless, I did attribute to him the notion of ‘esoteric religion’ despite his not using the term and insist, even now, that it was not inappropriate to do so.

24

Cited by R. B. Cunningham, C. S. Lewis: Defender of the Faith (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1967), 48.

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The point of my argument then, which remains unchanged, was simply this: Professor Smith’s understanding of ‘religion’ and ‘religious truth’ as personal excludes understanding it to all but the religious devotee; only those who have encountered what Smith calls the Transcendent, that is, can truly understand the nature of what the student of religion refers to as religion. His position on this is clearly and boldly stated in his The Meaning and End of Religion: “[T]he whole path and substance of religious life,” he writes there, “lies in its relation to what cannot be observed.”25 And this implies, of course, that “the student’s first responsibility is to recognize that there is always and in principle more in any man’s faith than any other man can see.”26 Consequently, “a preliminary insistence in the academic study of religion,” he continues further on, “must be that when any of these things is an expression of religious faith, then it cannot be fully understood except as an expression of religious faith.”27 With such an understanding of faith and the religious life it is difficult but to conclude that an external understanding or explanation of ‘religion’ that found itself in conflict with the devotee’s account would, a priori, be unacceptable; the devotee, that is, would have, according to Professor Smith, ‘privileged access’ to the meaning of his or her own experience and that would, in effect, make of it an esoteric phenomenon. It is puzzling, therefore, that Professor Smith objects to my use of the word esoteric to describe his position for it seems quite appropriate in describing the private and privileged ‘information’ of the devotee compared to that of the outsider student of religion. Indeed, the information is very much limited to the insider, and is therefore secret, as is clear from Professor Smith’s insistence in his The Faith of Other Men that a basic principle in the academic study of religion “is an ability to see the divine which, [as he puts it], I call faith.”28 If religion is only truly open to the understanding of the devotee, the phenomenon of religion disappears in favour of discourse about the Transcendent of which the devotee has subjective experience which makes of it something esoteric in comparison to that which Professor Smith refers to as tradition. In this regard, Professor Smith maintains that I have misunderstood his argument about the nature of ‘recognition,’ i.e., that because I do not think historically, I am unclear as to what he means by claiming that the devotee does not believe in God but rather ‘recognizes God.’ I cannot agree with him, however, for Professor Smith’s point here can only be made, I think, if the notion of recognition 25 26 27 28

Smith, op. cit., 1962; 136. Ibid., 141. Ibid., 171. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Faith of Other Men (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 46.

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has overtones of meaning that border on the mystical. I have no disagreement with Professor Smith on the matter of the religious person’s assumption, or claim, of having recognized or perceived a transcendent reality. My point in the debate here is a logical one and not historical. It is simply this, that a claim to recognition or awareness of any reality, transcendent or otherwise, is not necessarily recognition or awareness of, or experience of such an ontological ‘reality’; misperception, illusion, delusion and so on are all possible accounts or explanations of the experience and that fact cannot simply be dismissed. And to claim that the devotee need not be concerned with such logical matters suggests to me, therefore, that the devotee has a special source of knowledge and so has the alleged privileged access that makes his or her experience esoteric. It is in regard to this matter of the logical relation of belief to faith that I made brief reference to Professor Hick’s work on the problem of religious knowledge. I suggested that Hick’s analysis of the nature of religious knowledge provides a clear indication of the necessary relation between faith and belief and that such philosophical issues as he concerns himself with could not be taken up if the modern notion of belief had never emerged. Since Professor Smith maintains that I also misread Professor Hick, a brief restatement of the central thrust of Hick’s argument may be of some help here. It is true that Hick’s notion of faith has much in common with that of Professor Smith, but unlike Smith, Hick thinks it not only possible but important for the devotee to concern him or herself with the noetic status of faith – i.e., with the propositional beliefs which the faith presupposes or to which the experience of faith gives rise. The entire purpose of Hick’s Faith and Knowledge, in fact, is with faith as a putative mode of knowledge and the desire to know “in what it consists and how it is related to knowing and believing in general.”29 Furthermore, Hick explicitly rejects the notion that faith is of such a character that it cannot be compared with, as he puts it, “other hearings and seeings and knowings and believings.”30 And in this connection, Professor Smith’s ‘empirical discovery’ that “no significant classical religious thinker ever said that it [belief] is a necessary condition of faith” is entirely irrelevant (or even wrong if the implication of their silence on the matter is taken to mean that they would have said the contrary).31 This only proves that such classical religious thinkers did not consciously attend to the question of the logical connection between

29 30 31

John Hick, Faith and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), 1. Ibid., 5. Smith, op. cit., 1980; 250.

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faith and belief (knowledge) that I had attempted to elucidate and in support of which I had made reference to Hick’s theory of religious knowledge. It is nevertheless precisely on this point that Professor Smith considered the “pitiful misunderstandings” to have proliferated.32 He agrees “that religious persons and communities have indeed operated intellectually at various points in history with various ideas and sets of ideas.”33 However, he claims that the significance of this is to be found in the fact that “unlike recent times, no one affirmed that it was religiously important, historically speaking, to believe them.”34 If this is true, it is surely important, historically speaking, to establish this. But this truth or discovery, as I have just now intimated, has no logical significance here for whether or not the devotee considered believing to be a central and important element of the faith, has no bearing upon whether or not believing is in fact, logically that is, so related to faith. Hick brings that clearly into focus when he points out the peculiar nature of the task taken up by the theologian or the philosopher of religion in their quest for understanding religion. As he puts it: [i]t is only when the religious believer comes to reflect upon his religion, in the capacity of philosopher or theologian, that he is obliged to concern himself with the noetic status of his faith. When he does so concern himself, it emerges that faith as trust (fiducia) presupposes faith (fides) as cognition of the object of that trust. For in order to worship God and commit ourselves to his providence we must first have faith that he exists. And it is this logically (though not temporally) prior sense of ‘faith’ that we are to investigate in the following chapters.35 A proper phenomenological account of, for example, early Christian faith must take cognizance of Professor Smith’s discovery and not to do so would certainly result in a misunderstanding of religious history, but such phenomenological accounts are not the only matters that are of concern to the academic student of religion. My use of the phrase ‘real religion’ follows naturally on the heels of the idea of ‘esoteric religion.’ What the context of Professor Smith’s argument makes plain, I suggest, is that his inordinate emphasis upon faith and religious experience devalues tradition to such an extent that reference to ‘faith’ as constituting what is really religious in contrast to the externals of the tradition 32 33 34 35

Ibid., 248. Ibid. Ibid. Hick, op. cit., 4.

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is neither a misunderstanding nor a misrepresentation. It is rather a not unreasonable interpretation of his perception of tradition as merely providing clues, so to speak, as to what is the heart of the matter, namely the faith of the individual person within the tradition. That this interpretation implies that Professor Smith espouses an essentialist notion of religion is no a priori reason for rejecting the interpretation so much as it is a matter to be further explored. That my interpretation of Professor Smith’s position may be wrong I grant, but it should be noted that I am not alone in holding such a view about his position for then the question of misreading or misinterpretation can be helpfully put aside. In an early review of Professor Smith’s personalist proposals regarding ‘faith’ and ‘tradition,’ C. J. Bleeker argued the following: In his keen interest for people’s religious life, Smith is in danger of underrating the significance of what he calls ‘externals.’ No clear distinction can be made between the externals of religion – symbols, institutions, doctrines, and practices – and pure religious life. In most cases, you have to detect religion itself by interpreting the externals. This can only be done by impartial observation. It is therefore questionable whether the believer always understands his religion better than the outsider. It may be that the outsider, being a scholar, has a broader outlook and is, in some respects, better informed about the religion in question.36 And Eric Pyle, in his essay ‘In Defence of Religion,’37 a few years later, argued that Professor Smith’s claims regarding ‘religion,’ ‘faith,’ and ‘tradition’ amounts to a great deal more than a mere methodological recommendation. According to Pyle, we have here rather a covert argument on behalf of a very peculiar view of the nature of religion and religious experience that suggests the possibility that Professor Smith does in fact hold an essentialist notion of religion. Somewhat later, Gerald Larson came to a similar conclusion in his ‘Prolegomena to a Theory of Religion’ in which he writes: Smith then argues that ‘person within a tradition’ or ‘person’ in relation to a ‘tradition’ is what Religious Studies should study, but the force of his argument is that Religion cannot be conceptually studied but only personally lived. Thus one is left with the peculiar position that one should

36 37

C. J. Bleeker, ‘Future Task of History of Religions,’ Numen 7 (1960): 232. Eric Pyle, ‘In Defence of Religion,’ Religious Studies 3 (1969): 347-353.

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Wiebe study what cannot really be studied conceptually and, more than that, that there is nothing like Religion to study anyway. Whatever else Smith’s position is it is something of a conversation-stopper with respect to the issue of the conceptual clarification of Religion.38

What these critiques of Professor Smith’s proposals indicate is that, despite the room that exists for misinterpretation of his work, he seems to have made it fairly clear that the modern notion of belief should not play a central role in the academic study of religion. It is obvious that it is not simply one critic who has read him as having reduced ‘religion’ to ‘faith minus the tradition,’ with the concomitant implication that it is ‘faith,’ then, that constitutes that which is really religious, whereas ‘tradition’ is but a (dispensable?) vehicle for the expression of that reality. A further implication of such a view of religion, I argued, was that this precludes the possibility of an academic study of religion for it presumes that the understanding of the tradition is predicated on a prior knowledge or understanding of the faith of which the tradition is but an expression, which understanding is indistinguishable from that of, so to speak, ‘being in faith.’ And this, it seems to me, is a requirement that the student of religion, borrowing an anthropological notion, ‘goes native.’ In this regard, the summary of Michael Pye’s critique of Professor Smith may be usefully repeated here. [T]he study of religion is sufficiently painful to demand work against this trend … namely towards those critically refined abstractions which alone enable us to reflect comparatively, that is, upon more than one case at a time. This is also essential if anthropologists are to do more than simply disappear forever in the village of their choice; if historians of religion are to do more than relapse into antiquarianism; and if those who study religion (or something like it) in cultures other than those in which they grew up are to do more than become mere converts and enthusiasts. In other words, it is essential to make use of critically refined abstractions to bring particular sets of observed data into a wider area of intelligible discourse and reflection.39

38 39

Gerald Larson, ‘Prolegomena to a Theory of Religion,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion (1978), 448. Michael Pye, ‘The Significance of the Japanese Intellectual Tradition for the History of Religions,’ in Peter Slater and Don Wiebe (eds.), Traditions in Contact and Change (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983), 568-569.

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Science and Religion: Co-operative or Incommensurable?

There are many other points of disagreement between Professor Smith and me that I have not been able to pay attention to here. And it is entirely possible that I may have created a few more in this discussion although, obviously, I hope that is not the case. Furthermore, as to how to bring this discussion to a conclusion, I am at somewhat of a loss. There can be no doubt but that Professor Smith and I share a great deal with respect to the question of the nature of the academic study of religions. Nevertheless, it is also obvious that there are some sharp divergences. I hope that the present discussion has helped to clarify the nature of the divergences; for in my opinion, they exist not simply because of mutual misunderstanding but also because we work with radically different understandings (theories?) of the nature of the scientific enterprise. For Smith, from the time of his inaugural lecture at McGill University in 1949 to the present, science and religion are two developing traditions of thought which he thinks are capable of dynamic co-operation whereas I see them as divergent or incommensurable modes of thought. In that lecture he wrote: By accusation of irreverence modern man, particularly scientific man, is not deterred: he will scrutinize all that is before him, sacrosanct or not. But before the other half of this charge, he must, if honest, pause: that his scrutiny of holy things is vitiated by the inherent inappropriateness of the method to the material.40 Whereas I agree fully with Smith that the scientific student will not permit limits to be placed upon the scientific quest, I do not think he is right to claim that the honest scientist will find reason to pause regarding, as he puts it, the scientific scrutiny of holy things. The scientist would not, that is, talk of holy things but only of the cultural postulation of such realities. And the scientist would, moreover, consider it entirely appropriate to put to scrutiny claims about, and to analyze behavior in relation to, such culturally postulated realities. The reason why Professor Smith thinks every honest scientist would find him or herself in agreement with this claim is to be found in his espousal of a classical notion of truth which is not to be found in the modern sciences. He admits, that is, that if science is to evolve “so as to create also a science of

40

Wilfred Cantwell Smith, ‘The Comparative Study of Religion: Reflections on the Possibility and Purpose of a Science of Religion,’ in McGill University Faculty of Divinity, Inaugural Lectures (Montreal: McGill University, 1950), 41.

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religion”41 it will have to recapture, as he puts it, a notion of truth that brings into relationship the intellectual and practical concern – a notion which was present, he says, in the early Greek phase of the development of science but which has since been discarded. By this he means that modern science must return from its present objectivist notion of truth to the understanding of the pursuit of truth as a moral and spiritual discipline.42 I have argued, however, that this recognition that modern science has in fact discarded the notion of truth to which Professor Smith is committed be taken seriously by also recognizing that modern science has only become what it is because it has discarded that classical notion of truth. But to take that recognition seriously would also imply, then, that to ask that science give up that notion of objective truth would also be to ask it to give up its identity. And, at this point, the scientific or academic study of religion can no longer be distinguished from that which it studies. It is for this reason, then, that I have maintained that the differences between Professor Smith and me are genuine differences and not merely due to misunderstandings or simple mistakes of interpretation. 41 42

Ibid., 56. Ibid.

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Chapter 9

‘Understanding’ in Religious Studies: a Gnostic Aberration in the Modern Study of Religion? Donald Wiebe

Before attending to the question raised in the title of my paper, I wish to express my thanks to Professor Joseph Tak-Kwong Chan, the Director of the Department of Religious Studies here at Fu-Jen Catholic University, and the Department, for the invitation to present a paper in the theoretical section of this conference on ‘Religious Science and Religious Traditions.’1 It was not until the quinquennial International Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR), held in Durban, South Africa, in August of 2000, that I learned of the existence of the Taiwan Association for Religious Studies (TARS). The IAHR is of course dedicated to assisting colleges and universities worldwide who are seeking to establish a framework for the academic/scientific study of religion with the assistance of national associations like TARS. It is several years since I served on the Executive Committee of the IAHR, and I was therefore not aware of the considerable development of Religious Studies in this country. Nor did I know that many of the institutions in which the nine departments in Religious Studies exist have a religious foundation. I very much look forward to hearing more about the development of an independent, scientific study of religion in Taiwan from the historians of the field. I also look forward to knowing more about the challenge to the field being presented by the proposal to establish a postgraduate program as cited in the ‘Call for Papers.’ I am unaware at this point in time of the precise nature of the challenge2 this presents, and I have therefore refrained from speculation on 1 The paper will show that the concept of understanding is widely used in the study of religion in a primarily gnostic rather than epistemic fashion. However, on the assumption that the academic study of religion is a modern phenomenon, I will also argue that this approach to the study of religion in the university context must be seen as an aberration because it gives rise to “an uncanny doubleness of scholarship” (Wasserstrom, 1999) that is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish from a simple re-affirmation of religion. [Wasserstrom, Steven M. Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.] 2 The ‘Call for Papers’ states (without explication or comment): “Recently news has circulated about the possibility of establishing postgraduate programmes for only one religion. This presents an urgent challenge to the relationship of religious science and religious tradition” (emphasis mine). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_011Donald

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the matter in preparing my paper. Nevertheless, I have chosen to give general consideration to the notion of ‘understanding’ in the study of religion in the modern academic setting because it impinges upon many of the concerns suggested as items for discussion in the theoretical section of this conference; and I hope my comments here may – if only indirectly – make some contribution to the concerns Religious Studies as a discipline faces in Taiwan. I have just referred here to the study of religion in the modern academic setting, and in the subtitle of this paper I raise the question of a possible gnostic aberration in “the modern study of religion.” I wish to make clear what I mean by my use of the adjective ‘modern,’ for although I do not use it with a precisely technical meaning, it is intended to signify ‘more’ than the general sense of characterizing the academic setting by reference to the present or to recent times. The term ‘Religious Studies’ also requires some comment before proceeding, because I do use that term in a semi-technical sense and not just to describe any and every approach to the understanding of religion found on college and university campuses around the world today. I use the adjective ‘modern’ in this paper to refer to the emergence of a new mode of consciousness that stands in contrast to traditional modes of thought and existence in Western Europe until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. ‘Modernism,’ of course, has been broadly used to refer to a series of developments in the economic, social, and political life in Western European states, which radically transformed them from simple and homogeneous communities to complex and highly differentiated societies. But, as I have argued elsewhere (Wiebe, 2000)3, the transformations of the social structures of society wrought by the rise of capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, and other such developments, were themselves the results of deeper and more profound changes in consciousness that accompanied the overhaul of the notion of reason “marked by the gradual dissociation of knowledge and virtue as accepted and indivisible elements in the ideal structure of human reason” (Hoopes, 1962: 161)4. Whereas the traditional notion of reason – referred to by Hoopes as “right reason” – involves more than the use of mere intellect, in that it affirms “that what a man knows depends upon what, as a moral being, he chooses to make of himself” (Hoopes, 1962: 5), the newer notion of reason that first emerged in Europe in the late seventeenth century, is nothing more than “a proximate means of rational discovery or a ‘non-moral’ instrument of 3 Wiebe, Donald. ‘Modernism.’ In Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Russell McCutcheon and Willi Braun, 351-64. London: Cassell Publishers, 2000. 4 Hoopes, Robert. Right Reason in the English Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962.

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inquiry” (Hoopes, 1962: 5). And this new, non-moral sense of reason amounted to a rejection of traditional structures of knowledge and authority and, by diminishing as much as possible the moral, social, cultural, and political constraints upon the search for knowledge, gave rise to modern science, which has been humankind’s most effective form of cognition. For espousing this new cultural value of “knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone” provided the foundation for an objective, neutral, and universalistic discourse about the world, both natural and social, that now characterizes science in the modern academic setting. And ‘Religious Studies,’ as I use the term, designates an undertaking appropriate to that setting. ‘Religious Studies’ since the 1960s, as a review of the literature in the field reveals,5 is the most commonly used designation for college and university faculties and departments whose primary focus of interest is religion and the religions. However, its use has created considerable ambiguity in that the term has been employed so broadly that it appears to include virtually every kind of study of religion undertaken in any and every post-secondary institution of education – religious or secular – while simultaneously suggesting that it is a new kind of academic enterprise, methodologically distinct from those ‘sciences of religion’6 already in existence in the university curriculum before Religious Studies arrived on the scene. ‘Religious Studies,’ that is, is often used interchangeably with ‘the academic study of religion’ and ‘the scholarly study of religion,’ on the grounds that whatever is legitimated by virtue of its inclusion in the precincts of the university is scholarly and academic.7 Nevertheless, there is also recognition that the use of the new post-1960s designator ‘Religious Studies’ points to the emergence of an enterprise that differs from the ‘scholarly’ religious enterprises already ensconced in the university, namely 5 ‘Religious Studies,’ in The Penguin Companion to the Study of Religion, edited by John Hinnells. London: Penguin Books, 1980. 6 By ‘sciences of religion’ I am referring to the various disciplines ‘used’ in making sense of religious phenomena, including (but not limited to) history, philology, archaeology, and anthropology. This concept must be clearly distinguished from the notion of a ‘science of religion’ invoked by some historians of religion and phenomenologists as a special intellectual undertaking within the broader academic study of religion that provides an irreducibly religious explanation of religion. 7 ‘Scholarly’ and ‘academic’ – as my discussion of Religious Studies as an academic enterprise above, and Bates’s reference to scholarly traditions of thought in his analysis of ‘styles of knowing’ to which I refer below reveals – are ambiguous terms. Nevertheless, when discussing the study of religion, these terms are often treated as synonyms and are often also taken to be equivalent to ‘scientific.’ I am unable here to undertake the critical scrutiny the use of these three terms requires, and therefore, with some reluctance, use them as rough equivalents in my discussion of Religious Studies in this essay.

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in the theological encyclopedia of disciplines.8 And even though it may be true that the new approach to ‘understanding’ religion called Religious Studies made its entry into the nineteenth-century university curriculum by virtue of its association with the earlier theological disciplines, its difference from those disciplines cannot be ignored.9 Unfortunately, however, the designator

8 The theological encyclopedia of disciplines is generally considered to include four major areas of scholarly investigation: biblical studies, church history, theology, and pastoral studies. Although the scholarship involved in these disciplines often seems indistinguishable from that found in the ‘sciences of religion’ referred to in note 1 above, it nevertheless presumes a faith commitment – a religious stance – on the part of the scholars, and constitutes Glaubenswissenschaften, as Heikki Räisänen points out (1998); that is, scholarship from the point of view of the religious insider. Räisänen also objects to a simple division between the scholarship of Glaubenswissenschaften – as ‘transcendentalists’ (theologians) – and Religionswissenschaftler – as ‘historical empiricists’ (117) – because, as he writes, “[s]trong disagreement on the issue ‘theology vs. comparative religion’ [in biblical studies, for example], does not prevent far-reaching agreement in ‘everyday exegesis’ (121). Many New Testament theologies, he maintains, can be clearly seen as studies in comparative religion because they are “in full harmony with the ‘empiricist’ approach to comparative religion’ (124). Following Sigurd Hjelde (Die Religionswissenschaften und das Christenentum: Eine Historische Untersuchung über das Verhältnis von Religionswissenschaft und Theologie [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994]), she suggests that “it might be fair[er] to think of the study of religion as a continuous scale where all shades of grey are present” (118) and, therefore, not to exclude theologians from the scientific study of religion (116). To see the possibility of learning from the scholarship of theologians, however, is hardly justification for viewing their work as a ‘second stage’ in the Religionswissenschaft enterprise. Although the substantive positions such theologians espouse, as Räisänen puts it, may not “contradict a comparative-religion ethos” (126), the methodology of their constructive position does. (For a similar argument in favour of including theology as a legitimate discipline in the modern university, see Einar Thomassen’s ‘Wilhelm Schenke, Norway’s First Professor in History of Religions’ [2000], in Man, Meaning, and Mystery: Hundred Years of History of Religions in Norway. The Heritage of W. Brede Kristensen, edited by Sigurd Hjelde, 223-36. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002). 9 This has been suggested by a number of scholars since the rapid rise, in the 1960s, of Religious Studies in the context of the modern Western university. Robert T. Osborn (1992), for example, argues that “[i]nterest in ‘religion’ is almost exclusively a phenomenon of the west, which is to say, among other things, that although it eschews theology and generally finds no place for it within [R]eligious [S]tudies, it appears to have its beginnings primarily within Christian (Western) theology” (75). And Gavin D’Costa (‘The End of ‘Theology’ and ‘Religious Studies’” Theology (Sept./Oct., 1996): 338-51) and Kieran Flanagan (The Enchantment of Sociology: A Study of Theology and Culture. London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1996) argue that in Britain, Religious Studies was dependent on Theology for its entry into the university curriculum, but that it finally led to the expulsion of Theology from the university setting. D’Costa, however, believes that “the assumption of the neutral study of religion” (339) that led to this result is flawed, and Flanagan sees Religious Studies, as currently conceived, as an ideology that “has now killed the Theology that facilitated its admission to the academy” (85). Religious Studies, he writes, “entered [the university curriculum] through Protestant

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‘Religious Studies’ does not contribute to clarity in this regard for, as Adrian Cunningham (1990)10 puts it, “perhaps ‘religious’ [in the phrase ‘religious studies’] may still carry hints of its earlier usage to describe adherents, and of the ambiguities of ‘religious education’…” (30). Michael Pye (1991)11 similarly points out that “the adjective ‘religious’ can easily suggest, and sometimes may be intended to suggest, that these ‘studies’ are supposed to be religious in orientation and not simply studies of religion…” (41). The new enterprise is different from those that preceded it, insofar as it is neither a theological nor a religious undertaking, and must therefore be seen to be secular in its aims; were it otherwise, it would not, of course, be a new enterprise so much as a new form of religious education for college and university students.12 And although there are many scholars in departments of Religious Studies today who prefer to understand the field in this

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Theology, and quickly sought to secularise and to professionalise its host, converting it into a strict non-confessional, multi-denominational discipline, where a positivist methodology lent it a scientific status” (91). Further, Arie L. Molendijk (2000) has recently argued that, contrary to the widely held opinion, a study of the origin of the scientific study of religion in Holland did not emerge as the result of “a gradual emancipation from the patronizing power of Theology” by virtue of the Dutch Act of Higher Education in 1876 (21). Molendijk acknowledges, however, that despite the predominance of theology, “[t]he scientific character of the study of religion was very important to these early [Dutch] scholars” (40) – and this is of critical importance, as I have argued in my discussions of F. Max Müller and Cornelis P. Tiele, as the forefathers of the modern study of religion (Wiebe, 1999). I believe a clear distinction must be drawn between the political and intellectual aspects relevant to the emergence of Religious Studies as a university discipline if a proper understanding of the nature of the discipline is to be achieved. Zwi Werblowsky (‘Revelation, Natural Theology, and Comparative Religion.’ The Hibbert Journal 559, 1956/57): 278-284), for example, admits that “the modern study of religion is in many ways an offspring of Theology” (278), but he also points out that Religious Studies has another parent, “the spirit of Enlightenment,” which is thoroughly incompatible with the nature of Theology. It is clear, therefore, that Religious Studies’s association with Theology has to do more with the fact that Theology was already ensconced in the university curriculum and that any new study of religion would therefore likely find itself introduced into the curriculum through the Faculty of Theology. Consequently, J. Samuel Preus’s argument (1987) that Religious Studies emerged out of a critical response to the claims of religion and theology is entirely justifiable, since it was not ‘dependent’ upon religion in any other than a political sense. Cunningham, Adrian, ‘Religious Studies in the Universities: England.’ In Turning Points in Religious Studies, edited by Ursula King, 21-31. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1990. Pye, Michael. ‘Religious Studies in Europe: Structures and Desiderata.’ In Religious Studies: Issues, Prospects, and Proposals, edited by Klaus K. Klostermeier and Larry W. Hurtado, 39-55. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba and Scholars Press, 1991. As I have shown in my analyses of the study of religion in American universities and colleges, and of the American Academy of Religion (Wiebe, 1999), providing religious

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way, they thoroughly misunderstand the nineteenth-century motivation behind the eventual emergence of Religious Studies as a new academic enterprise in the university, wholly secular in orientation and scientific in approach and directed to a wholly mundane subject matter. This does not necessarily imply that Religious Studies is itself a new scientific discipline, wholly distinct from all other disciplines and with a methodology peculiar to itself. It does presuppose, however, that the enterprise is chiefly characterized by a cognitive intention – that it is essentially a quest for knowledge about religion for the sake of knowledge alone, available only in an empirical and scientifically theoretical fashion. Thus, although not itself a new science (or special discipline), it is nevertheless scientific in that it restricts itself to the study of religions as natural, human, and cultural realities open to scrutiny by the natural and social sciences. This may make the new enterprise appear multidisciplinary and polymethodic, and therefore somewhat scattered and incoherent. But to read the situation in this way reflects a superficial perception at best. Religious Studies is multidisciplinary in character, but its multidisciplinarity is not comprised of an incoherent list of miscellaneous disciplines. Following Michael Pye (1999),13 I believe the disciplines that chiefly characterize the field today “correlate and integrate those features of academic (or in some languages ‘scientific’) method which are particularly necessary in the study of religions” (195). Unlike Pye, however, I do not believe that this clustering of disciplines and methodologies can be called ‘judicial,’ making Religious Studies a discipline in its own right. I suggest, rather, that that clustering makes Religious Studies a scientific enterprise, where I mean by “enterprise,” following Robert A. McCaughey (1984),14 “any organized understanding of sufficient magnitude and duration to permit its participants to derive a measure of identity from it” (xiii). And such a measure of identity – quite distinct from that conferred by previously existing religious disciplines – emerged in the last quarter of the nineteenth century (Wiebe, 1998),15 and has been institutionally embod-

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instruction to undergraduates was an important goal of many university administrators throughout the twentieth century, and Religious Studies departments – especially after World War II – were the primary contexts in which such instruction was provided. Pye, Michael. ‘Methodological Integration in the Study of Religions.’ In Approaching Religion, Vol. I, edited by Tore Ahlbäck, 189-205. Åbo: Åbo Academic University Press, 1999. McCaughey, Robert. International Studies and Academic Enterprises: A Chapter in the Enclosure of American Learning. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Wiebe, Donald. ‘Does Understanding Religion Require Religious Understanding?’ In The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion, edited by Russell T. McCutcheon, 260-273. London: Cassell Publishers, 1998. (Originally published in Current Progress in the Methodology of the Science of Religions, edited by W. Tyloch, 297-308 [Warsaw: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1985].)

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ied (with varying degrees of success and influence) in the modern academic setting throughout the twentieth century. I fully recognize that the last decades of the twentieth century have witnessed the rise of a pervasive critique of the Enlightenment view of the nature of the modern academic setting and of Religious Studies. I have no doubt that, as Richard J. Bernstein has put it, “we are living through a period when Enlightenment-bashing has become the sport of intellectuals” (338). But these realities do not constitute refutations of the positions I have taken on these matters here. I shall attempt to explain briefly why this is so by reference to two recent collections of essays that focus attention on reason and religion in American culture. Michael J. Lacey, editor of the essays in Religion and Twentieth-Century American Intellectual Life (1989),16 for example, questions the claim that the rise of a naturalist ethos in the modern research university in America wholly displaced a theologically informed style of thought. Although he admits that “a naturalistic outlook remains the predominant one in the nation’s research universities” (4), he claims that the assumption of a continuing secularization of society is wrong and that a reading of American intellectual history from such a perspective is less than satisfactory (4). Conference participants (whose papers form the substance of his volume) claims Lacey, noted that in England and Germany “theological inquiry is accorded a more central place in university life,” and that furthermore it “plays a more prominent role in public thought generally” (11). Participants came to an agreement, he writes, “that an appraisal of the naturalist tradition in all its branches is long overdue, and that to move understanding ahead, it ought to be open to premises other than those of the naturalists themselves” (11). For the most part, the authors here maintain there is insufficient evidence to support the presumption of the secularization of academic culture. In the companion volume – Knowledge and Belief in America: Enlightenment Traditions and Modern Religious Thought (1995)17 – editors Shay and Huff maintain that the authors show that both the influence of the Enlightenment and religious thought persist in modern society, and “that [these] heritages have been intertwined since the colonial period…” (4). They suggest, moreover, that since neither has perished, neither should be ignored “as a partner in public discourse” (15). Indeed, they extend

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Lacey, Michael, J., ed. Religion and Twentieth-Century American Intellectual Life. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Shea, William M. and Peter A. Huff. Knowledge and Belief in America: Enlightenment Traditions and Modern Religious Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

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this judgment beyond the realm of public discourse to the academy and, in particular, to the academic study of religion. They write: The argument in the American Academy of Religion (AAR) between scholars of religious studies and scholars of theological studies over the place of theology in the study of religion in the American university and over the theologian’s active participation in the AAR continues unabated, with periodic reheatings. There are currently substantial numbers of Catholic and evangelical scholars who form interest groups under AAR auspices (5, note 6; emphasis added). The mere existence of particular interest groups in the academy, however, does not by itself ground the appropriateness of their epistemic claims, and the essayists in these volumes do not provide further argument in support of their epistemic pretensions on behalf of their call for a role for religion (theology) in the study of religion in the modern academic setting. They appear, rather, to want to justify their epistemic demands indirectly, by establishing a case – if they can – for taking religion seriously in public discourse. Mark A. Noll,18 for example, in an essay in the second of the two volumes, acknowledges that “[a]lthough theological study had been the dominant form of postbaccalaureate higher education for the first ninety years of the United States, it quickly lost its place in the [secular] transformation of higher education after the Civil War” (112); but he nevertheless insists that the “Enlightenment verities” embraced by university reformers are no longer “axiomatic in the wider culture” (112 & 118). Even if true, this would not of itself establish that religious/theological thought ought to play a role in the academic study of religion.19 Despite these arguments criticizing the influence of the Enlightenment on the study of religion, I believe that the epistemic authority of reason 18

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Noll, Mark A. ‘The Rise and Long Life of the Protestant Enlightenment in America,’ in Knowledge and Belief in America: Enlightenment Traditions and Modern Religious Thought, edited by William M. Shead and Peter A. Huff, 88-124. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. See also David Tracy’s contribution to the Shay and Huff volume. Like Richard J. Bernstein (‘Are We Beyond the Enlightenment Horizon?’ in Knowledge and Belief in America: Enlightenment Traditions and Modern Religious Thought, edited by William M. Shea and Peter A. Huff, 335-45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), he claims that “a substantial proportion of the American academy, including the academy in religious studies, has […] become distrustful of the epistemological and theoretical versions of the Enlightenment in favour of one or another anti-Enlightenment version of what has come to be known as postmodernity” (328). However, he also clearly acknowledges that the United States does not reflect a postmodern culture, yet insists – inconsistently in my

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as understood by Enlightenment thinkers remains intact, trumping all other putative authorities in the sciences, both natural and social.20 Having provided clarification of my use of the notions of ‘Religious Studies’ and ‘the modern academic setting,’ it remains only to comment on the term ‘gnosticism’ in the title of this essay, to reduce the possibility of confusion in my comments on ‘understanding’ to follow. My employment of the word ‘gnostic’ here rests largely on Donald Bates’s contrast between what he calls ‘gnostic knowing’ and ‘epistemic knowing’ in his introduction to a collection of essays on Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical Traditions21 – a contrast which, I think, can be appropriately and helpfully applied to the question of the possible ‘ways of knowing’ in the scholarly study of religion. The primary concern of the Bates volume is to determine on what grounds healers in three traditions – Galenic, Chinese, and Ayurvedic – claimed to know something about the promotion of health and healing. According to Bates, the Galenic tradition, which he dubs ‘epistemic knowing,’ differs significantly from the other two, to which he gives the label ‘gnostic knowing.’ The latter, he claims, is centred on the knower rather than on what is known and sees the student of medicine as a disciple within a traditional and orthodox framework of knowledge that can be enriched by further experience. Study in this tradition, therefore, is a form of initiation or rite of passage into the tradition and requires of the student a reverence for it, because only within its boundaries can the student be connected to transcendent knowers who are the ultimate sources of wisdom. The concepts ‘knowledge,’ ‘knowers,’ and ‘people of understanding’ in the gnostic tradition bear no connection to historical, empirical, theoretical, or even philosophical kinds of knowledge. The understanding sought by the gnostic, rather, is special in that it does not rest simply upon one’s study and investigation but upon revelation from a transcendent knower, and it requires the human knower to be especially prepared in order to receive it. Moreover,

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judgment – that “[it] is no longer possible, as moderns [had] hoped, to find a consensus on either reason or religion, on either knowledge or belief, much less on their complex interrelationship’ (334). If the country is neither postmodern nor modern, it would seem that it must still be pre-modern, and Tracy’s judgment about the profundity of the antiEnlightenment religious revival might suggest his commitment to such a position, but he does not provide an argument to that effect here. Nor do I think such an argument possible, as Bernstein puts it, without mimic[ing] what it is presumably attacking” (338). I decline further discussion of these matters here, since I have argued them at length in The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the Academy (1999). Bates, Donald. Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical Traditions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

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the ‘understanding’ gained transcended knowledge about this world to include divine secrets carrying redemptive power. Bates also points out that gnostic knowing often involves a subservience of the knower to authoritative (sacred) texts. And the degree of gnosticism involved, he maintains, “must be measured by the degree to which those texts serve as a framework that constrains meaning and the possibilities of knowledge…” (9). For Bates, therefore, any scholarly tradition of thought found among the humanities tends to be gnostic because, in revering textual tradition it seems to espouse the transcendental values expressed in them. ‘Epistemic knowing,’ on the other hand, is not esoteric and does not involve a ‘rite of passage’ in the sense indicated above, for in this mode attention is centred on what is known rather than on the knower. Although the early Greek medical tradition espoused wisdom as its ultimate goal, the notion was often equated with a sense of expertise. Epistemic knowing, then, was concerned with the nature and constitution of knowledge and with finding a methodology for the justification of such knowledge claims. Consequently, the power of these claims stands in stark contrast to the gnostic sense of power that lies in a ‘deepened understanding’ that comes from seeing things invisible to the uninitiated. Epistemic knowledge, that is, yields information about the world rather than esoteric Truth intuited by a superior knower.22 As Bates puts it: For gnostics, experience, however novel, is ultimately understood within a framework of basic principles that have been learned from superior knowers, while for epistemics the lack of any such constraining framework at least leaves open the possibility that experience will be claimed to have some autonomous role in the constitution of knowledge (14). Bates captures the essential contrast between these two modes of thought nicely in his suggestion that “we might think of gnostic scholarship as selfconsciously cultivating superior knowers, while epistemic scholarship selfconsciously searches for ways to justify knowledge” (4). With the defining characteristics I have here attributed to ‘Religious Studies’ and ‘the modern academic setting,’ and adopting Bates’s distinction between 22

I capitalize ‘Truth’ here to distinguish that notion from the truth or falsity of propositional claims about states of affairs in the world. Only the latter, I suggest – that is, propositional statements – constitute genuine knowledge claims; affirmations of Truth amount to the adoption or endorsement of a set of values or a way of life that create frameworks of Meaning rather than discover something about the world.

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‘gnostic’ and ‘epistemic’ knowing, it is clear that the modern student of religion ought to be seeking only ‘epistemic knowledge’ of religion. It is no secret, however, that the vast majority of scholars in the field, even those who see themselves as wholly committed to the scholarly enterprise and free from sectarian and religious bias, operate within a gnostic rather than an epistemic framework. Many of them, moreover, do not believe themselves simply to be seeking religious knowledge of the kind provided in the religious and theological disciplines already established in the university before the emergence of the new field of Religious Studies. But neither do they seek purely historical, empirical, and theoretical scientific knowledge of facts about the structure and function of religion. Although a framework incorporating both of these approaches is incoherent, outright contradiction seems to be avoided in the claim that the goal of the new Religious Studies is to gain an ‘understanding’ of religion and religions that differs both from religious knowledge and from the simple ‘positivist’ knowledge of the externals of religion gained through observation, analysis, explanation, and theory. I shall argue here, therefore, both that this ‘in-between’ notion of understanding is gnostic in character – therefore inappropriate to the modern academic study of religion – and that such ‘understanding’ is indistinguishable from religious ‘knowledge’ itself. Before proceeding, however, I think it appropriate to advert briefly to my earlier attempt to make sense of the way in which the notion of ‘understanding’ has been used in the study of religion in my ‘Does Understanding Religion Require Religious Understanding?’ (1984/1999),23 an essay originally presented to the second methodological conference of the International Association for the History of Religions, held in Warsaw in 1979. Although I still hold to the conclusion I reached in that paper – namely that religious understanding is not a prerequisite for a scholarly understanding of religion (1999: 270) – I am now persuaded that the conclusion is too weak, for I failed to show there that such religious understanding presumes a gnostic epistemology that effectively undercuts the epistemic character of the modern (scientific) study of religion. In that essay I argued that since the notion of understanding is used in both an ordinary semantic sense and a religious sense the question that forms the title of the paper could be answered both positively and negatively. I did suggest, however, that the question was not well formulated; that it amounted, 23

Wiebe, Donald. ‘Does Understanding Religion Require Religious Understanding?’ In The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion, edited by Russell T. McCutcheon, 260-73. London: Cassell Publishers, 1998. (Originally published in Current Progress in the Methodology of the Science of Religions, edited by W. Tyloch, 297-308. [Warsaw: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1985].)

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strangely, to asking whether an adequate naturalistic interpretation of religion requires a supernaturalist foundation in religious experience, or whether – an equally strange question – one could provide an adequate naturalistic account of religion and accept at face value its supernaturalist elements. Answering the question as formulated, I then argued, is to enter into a priori metaphysical commitments, in that both the positive and negative responses require a commitment by the student of religion to the question of the truth or falsity of religious knowledge claims. Given my assumption that the academic study of religion required metaphysical neutrality, I found this unacceptable. In consequence, I sought an approach to the study of religion that countered the religious reductionism of scholars like W. C. Smith and Jacob Neusner, as well as the behaviouristic reductionism of the naturalists. The neutrality necessary for a scientifically respectable study of religion, in my judgment, required that the student avoid any assumptions about the truth or falsity of religion. Furthermore, using W. C. Smith’s analysis of the notion of religion as comprising both faith (interior) and tradition (exterior) elements, I asserted the necessity of providing a framework of explanation that would do equal justice to both. Ultimately I claimed that Kant’s critical philosophy and its “desperate remedy,” as Ernest Gellner (1994)24 calls it, of resolving the tension between our deterministic knowledge of causal connection in the material world and the assumption of a freedom in human decision-making that undergirds our sense of moral existence, provided me with an analog for dealing with the problem of treating religion as a wholly human phenomenon and as an encounter by humans of a wholly transcendent reality. Although I still have some sympathy for the ‘desperation’ of this Kantian philosophical move, I no longer think it cogent in turning to the question of the nature of the study of religion; nor do I think it possible to view the study of religion as both an observable phenomenon (tradition) open to scientific methods of investigation and an interior, unobservable experience (faith). First: my claim in that article that “a methodological position which assumes either the truth or the falsity of religion presumes, in part at least, what the study of religion is concerned to find out” (268), is wrong on at least two counts. In the first place, refusing to accept the claims of religious devotees regarding the truth of their religious beliefs on the basis of their interior experience is not necessarily to assume the falsity of the religious claims themselves, but rather allows for the possibility of alternative forms of explanation for the professed experience and the belief-claims flowing from it.

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Gellner, Ernest. Legitimation of Belief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974.

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This is especially important when religious belief-claims conflict with other well-established scientific claims; such epistemic conflict, that is, provides the student the licence to seek naturalistic explanations coherent with our other well-established scientific knowledge about the world and human behavior. Further, to assume that the academic study of religion is ultimately concerned with adjudicating the question of the truth of religion is in effect to commit the discipline to a religio-metaphysical task that runs counter to what I argue in the remainder of my paper – namely, that the academic study of religion must refuse to take on such metaphysical tasks if it is to distinguish itself from theology and religion. My second misjudgment, revealed in the article, was my assumption that any study of religion that does not leave itself open to gnostic claims based on the interior experience of the devotee betrays a form of behaviourist reductionism. Similarly, I was wrong not to question the assumption that the notion of faith implies the existence of a transcendent reality. For all the student of religion has available respecting the transcendent is the phenomenon of the profession of faith deriving from the devotee’s experience, but never the transcendent itself. Interior faith, that is, is nothing more than another element of the (exterior) tradition. Third: I no longer believe it reasonable to argue that “[b]oth the student of religion and the religious believer … are insiders and outsiders” (263). The student of religion is certainly an outsider with respect to religious belief, in the sense that there is no a priori commitment to substantive metaphysical beliefs on his or her part; but as a scientific student of religion, he or she is not an insider in the same sense as is the religious devotee, as there is no similar commitment to substantive metaphysical beliefs. The student of religion, that is, is committed to a set of methodological procedures for gaining knowledge rather than to substantive beliefs with ‘a way of life’ attached to them. This asymmetry of commitment between the espousal of substantive beliefs and methodological procedures ought not to have been overlooked. Fourth: to refuse to accept at face value the explanations of religious experience, belief, and practice provided by the religious devotee is neither to denigrate religion nor to presume it to be irrational or meaningless. The social sciences, that is, in providing a fully contextual analysis of religions, show precisely how religions ‘make sense’ for both the individual and the community, and do so without presuming the universal validity of any religious system examined. It seems clear to me now, that to account for religion as simultaneously observable and unobservable is as incoherent as to try to integrate, using Bates’s terms, epistemic with gnostic epistemology. The methods involved in the two

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are incommensurable, and it is only the epistemic that ought to pass muster in the modern research university. As I shall show, however, the notion of understanding – one that produces a form of knowledge that complements, yet is consistent with, the knowledge gained by the social scientific study of religions – is still used by students of religion to characterize Religious Studies as a special kind of science. A brief comment on the relevance of the concept of understanding in the conduct of the sciences will be helpful to my assessment of its use in the context of the study of religion. In the 1999 Dictionary of Philosophy edited by Mario Bunge,25 which focuses on terms of usefulness and enduring value from a naturalistic and scientific point of view, the notion of ‘understanding’ hardly bears mention. Understanding, for Bunge, is essentially a psychological concept (302). Bunge further illustrates this view in an entry on ‘Verstehen,’ a term he considers synonymous with ‘understanding’ (although it is also often translated as ‘interpretation,’ ‘comprehension,’ or ‘empathy’). For he argues that it is an ill-defined term used in hermeneutic philosophy and social studies (308), referring to subjective understanding (of the meaning of human phenomena) that involves no objective standards of evaluation of its claims and therefore stands in stark contrast to the logic of explanation found in the natural sciences. Hermeneutic philosophy, as Bunge puts it in his entry on ‘Hermeneutics’ (120), is essentially idealist, for it regards social facts as (meaningful) symbols that require interpretation rather than as phenomena open to objective description and explanation. As he points out in his entry on ‘Meaning’ (171-172), the ordinary language sense of ‘meaning’ can be extended to almost any purpose or goal. The confusion between this notion of meaning and the semantic concept (involving sense [connotation] and reference [denotation]), as he puts it, “has led to viewing social actions as linguistic facts, and social science as hermeneutics” (172), which has prevented “the transformation of social studies from literature to science” (172). For Bunge, the appropriate epistemic operation bearing on facts in both the natural and the social sciences is explanation. And ‘explanatory understanding’ begins with a careful, empirical description of the phenomenon or event of which one seeks understanding, then proceeds to show how – explaining by means of causal ‘mechanisms’ – the phenomenon emerges. Although such explanations may invoke unfamiliar entities or properties in the process, those entities must themselves be open to examination, for, as he states, science necessarily “denies the existence of inscrutable things” (262).

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Dictionary of Philosophy. Edited by Mario Bunge. New York: Prometheus Books, 1999.

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The notion of understanding seldom constitutes an entry in dictionaries and encyclopedias of religion. Moreover, when it is found, the concept is not perceived as ill-defined in Bunge’s sense, but rather as designating something that provides a foundation for a (non-religious, non-theological) study of religion that, by virtue of its apparent similarity to the social sciences, has a legitimate place in the curriculum of the modern research university. The earliest consulted, Vergilius Ferm’s An Encyclopedia of Religion, published in 1945 and reissued in 1976,26 contains no entry under that heading; neither does S.G.F. Brandon’s A Dictionary of Religions (1970),27 Keith Crim’s Abingdon Dictionary of Living Religions (1981),28 J. R. Hinnells’s A New Dictionary of Religions (1984 – revised in 1995),29 Mircea Eliade’s The Encyclopedia of Religion (1986),30 nor John Bowker’s The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1997).31 Nor do these volumes provide treatment of concepts closely connected to ‘understanding’ – notions such as ‘interpretation,’ ‘exegesis/eisegesis,’ ‘meaning,’ ‘empathy,’ ‘the emic/etic distinction,’ ‘explanation,’ or ‘hermeneutics.’ Works edited by Brandon and Crim leave all of these untouched, while that by Ferm provides very brief entries for ‘exegesis’ and ‘interpretation,’ as being concerned with the actual interpretation of biblical texts and allegorical interpretation respectively, and a slightly longer entry for ‘hermeneutics’ as the science of the laws and principles of interpretation that virtually recapitulates the entry for ‘exegesis.’ Bowker’s work includes entries for ‘exegesis,’ ‘hermeneutics,’ and the emic/etic distinction; and it is interesting to note that they clearly exhibit the kind of idealist influence on the academic study of religion to which Bunge draws attention. Exegesis, the author claims (329-30), brings up the central question of hermeneutics, which concerns the transmission of meaning from texts to readers and hearers (424-25). Bowker’s entries here seem to presuppose the ambiguous, ordinary language-sense of ‘meaning’ in which, as L. Ginzberg is quoted as saying, “[t]he dead letter needs to be made living by interpretation” (329). ‘Interpretation’ is left un-explicated, although Bowker recognizes 26 27 28 29 30 31

An Encyclopedia of Religion. Edited by Vergilius Ferm. New York: Philosophical Library, 1945; Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1976. Dictionary of Comparative Religion. Edited by S.G.F. Brandon. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970. Abingdon Dictionary of Living Religions. Edited by Keith Crim. Nashville: Abingdon Publishers, 1981. Penguin Dictionary of Religions, edited by John R. Hinnells. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1984. The Encyclopedia of Religion. Edited by Mircea Eliade. New York: Collier Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987. Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. Edited by John Bowker. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1997.

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that without critical controls on interpretation and hermeneutics, they may well become eisegesis – that is, a fanciful reading of meaning into the text or symbol (329). The Bowker entry for the emic/etic distinction carries this same theme. Upon describing the contrast in the study of cultures and religions as either based on “the principles, methods, and interests of the observer” or involving “an attempt to understand the viewpoint of the people themselves” (313), this entry clearly asserts the need for a method other than scientific for understanding such matters: “[the emic/etic distinction] raises acutely the issue of whose meaning is the meaning of the meaning … since it is now recognized that the aim of a value-free account of religious beliefs and practices is unattainable” (313). Although there is no explicit affirmation of a ‘gnostic epistemology’ in these entries, it is clear that they do not tend toward epistemic knowledge in the study of religion. The discussions of these notions in the volumes by Hinnells, Eliade, and Smith (to which I now turn) indicate more clearly the assumption on the part of the Religious Studies ‘community’ that understanding religious phenomena requires more than mere epistemic knowing. In Hinnells’s A New Dictionary of Religions,32 the only cognate notion related to ‘understanding’ is found under ‘Hermeneutics’; and the treatment of it there seems to champion a post-classical view of the enterprise as an art that produces understanding, rather than as a science. Although no explication of the notion of ‘understanding’ is provided in the entry, or elsewhere in the volume, it is nevertheless asserted that hermeneutics (as an intellectual exercise producing understanding) cannot function simply by ‘observing rules,’ because grasping meaning – with ‘meaning’ also left undefined but implicitly used in the ambiguous, ordinary language-sense – is determined by the socalled hermeneutical circle – that is, “by the recognition that the meaning of a text as a whole and the meaning of each of its parts are reciprocally related since the apprehension of the one depends upon the apprehension of the other” (209). Eliade’s Encyclopedia of Religion (1985), although by far the most extensive of these projects, contains no articles on either the notion of ‘understanding’ or any of the cognate ideas cited above, with the exception of Van A. Harvey’s lengthy essay on hermeneutics (Vol. 6, 279-87).33 Harvey points out that the word itself is derived from the Greek verb hermeneuein and that the term designates the modern discipline concerned with the interpretation of ‘human 32 33

New Dictionary of Religions, edited by John R. Hinnells. Oxford, Blackwell, 1995. Harvey, Van A. ‘Hermeneutics.’ In The Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. 6, edited by Mircea Eliade, 279-87. New York: Collier Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987.

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expressions’ (279). Harvey views the discipline broadly and in an essentially post-classical sense in which it serves the role in human thought played in the past by epistemology. And although he acknowledges that there is as yet no convergence of opinion on how the discipline should proceed (280), he claims that it has undergone considerable development in the humanities (including the study of religion), and that it is now generally believed – on the assumption “that human consciousness is situated in history and cannot transcend it” – that cultural conditioning is an essential element in all understanding. He therefore insists that the assumption places the student of religion in tension with the so-called objective or scientific analysis of religious phenomena because the sciences operate in an essentially ahistorical fashion. Harvey’s picture of the anti-scientific bias, and the reliance upon the ordinary languagesense of meaning in this approach to the study of religion, are clearly visible in his discussion of ‘Hermeneutics as Foundation for the Cultural Sciences’: The natural scientist explains events by employing universal laws, whereas the historian neither discovers nor employs such laws but, rather, seeks to understand the actions of agents by discovering their intentions, purposes, wishes, and character traits. Such action is intelligible because human actions, in contrast to natural events, have an ‘inside’ that we can understand because we too are persons. Understanding, then, is the discovery of the ‘I’ in the ‘thou,’ and it is possible because of a universal human nature (282; emphasis added). Unlike the natural sciences, the social sciences involve elements of empathy – an imaginative identification with others – which apparently amounts to more than mere scientific analysis. And when applied to religion, claims Harvey, hermeneutics involves not only empathy but “a basic sense of religion” which, as appears from his discussion of ‘Hermeneutics as Reflecting on the Conditions of All Understanding,’ amounts to “an understanding that one cannot understand” (284), by which he means to say that every interpretation is shaped by a set of assumptions and presuppositions about the whole of experience that are not the product of that experience. And ‘religiosity,’ it appears, is an essential and a priori aspect of human nature that, as he puts it in his discussion of ‘Hermeneutics as Inquiry into the Interpretation of Texts,’ makes religious expressions unique and autonomous, and therefore in need of a special hermeneutic (282). In the final section of his entry, Harvey looks at ‘Hermeneutics as an Analytical and Mediating Practice,’ in which he maintains that hermeneutics is dedicated to resolving conceptual problems associated with concepts like ‘meaning’ and ‘understanding’ and to analyzing their

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relation to notions such as ‘rationality,’ ‘truth,’ ‘reality,’ and ‘explanation’ – all of which he leaves unattended and unresolved here. All that is really clear for the student of religion, in the whole discussion, is that hermeneutics provides an understanding of social phenomena – and especially religious phenomena – which, itself not rationally explicable, differs strikingly from the kinds of explanations the sciences provide. Indeed, hermeneutics appears to resemble closely what has generally been understood as religious knowledge. In Jonathan Z. Smith’s Harper Collins Dictionary of Religion (1995),34 the entry for ‘understanding’ defines the latter in a methodologically conservative way as “a cognitive state that results from having attained a satisfactory explanation of some problematic object, event, or situation” (1109; emphasis added). It acknowledges, however, that in the university context the notion of ‘understanding’ in the study of religion is seen “as [the source of] a special strategy [and] as an alternative to explanation …” (1109). In the Religious Studies context, that is, ‘understanding’ conveys the idea that a special method of investigation is necessary and available for explicating the concepts of and actions in cultural systems, particularly religion” (1109; emphasis added). The author also admits that this methodological strategy has been subjected to serious criticism, but he correctly notes that it has reappeared in Religious Studies in the guise of a variety of theories of hermeneutics. Something of the character of that strategy is also suggested in the entry on ‘Empathy’ (336-37), although, once again, with the acknowledgement that “no coherent justification for such a privileged approach has ever been successfully argued,” and that no “adequate method for empathy [has] been proposed” (337). The position spelled out in the entry ‘Religion, Explanation of’ (894-96), in my judgment, accounts for the reappearance of ‘understanding’ in special theories of hermeneutics in Religious Studies. As the author of this article puts it, explanations are seen as unacceptably reductionistic in that they provide an account of phenomena in terms of the beliefs and assumptions of the theorist rather than of the cultural or religious group being studied (see also the entry on ‘reductionism,’ 882-84). Such a reductionism is considered a positivist approach; and most scholars of religion are anti-positivist (895) and therefore assume a radical difference to exist between the natural and the social sciences, insisting that human things cannot be explained by natural law. And they use this natural sciences/social sciences distinction as the basis for justifying the use of ‘understanding’ to construct a methodology peculiarly related to the subject matter of Religious Studies. And this same issue dominates 34

Harper Collins Dictionary of Religion. Edited by Jonathan Z. Smith. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1995.

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the entries ‘Religion, the Study of’ (909-17) and ‘Science of Religion’ (967-68). The first insists that a positivist Religious Studies cannot provide one with a full explanation of religious phenomena which must, therefore, ultimately depend on disciplines that go beyond mere scientific understanding. And, so it is claimed, only faith and theology, through grasping the meaning of such phenomena, are able to gain that meta-scientific understanding (914). In the second article we read that the Science of Religion is an enterprise, operating within the broader field of Religious Studies, “that purports to provide a scientific explanation of religion” (967); but the author goes on to point out that, when described by those who espouse this terminology, the so-called science is not clearly explanatory but rather – like comparative religion and the phenomenology of religion – remains at the descriptive level. The field has failed as science, the author insists, “because it does not presume an open, critical attitude toward the subject matter” (968); and more fully: “The science of religion, as it has been widely practiced, is uncritical and thereby unscientific because it permits only an irreducibly religious explanation and interpretation of religion…” (968). What comes through loud and clear in perusing the dictionaries and encyclopedias of religion is that the notion of ‘understanding’ is rarely used in the simple sense of knowing the meaning of words employed in a text or of being able to grasp the point of a concept or idea. When it is used, it seems always to have a ‘special’ meaning and is usually considered of ‘special’ methodological significance to the discipline of hermeneutics, where the latter refers to considerably more than the act of translating, interpreting, elucidating, or explaining a text. The nature of that ‘understanding,’ however, is not clearly explained in these entries, even though there can be no doubt that in the context of the study of religion the process of understanding goes considerably beyond the ordinary use and meaning of the word. And although I shall not set out here to define more fully the term so used in these contexts, I shall attempt to elucidate that ‘special’ meaning by examining a typical use of it in a relatively recent exercise in the comparative study of religion. The methodological comments scattered throughout Lawrence E. Sullivan’s study of South American religions in Icanchu’s Drum: An Orientation to Meaning in South American Religions (1988)35 provides us with a relatively clear idea of how the special, ‘hermeneuticized’ notion of understanding operates in Religious Studies. According to Sullivan, this book represents an exercise in

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Sullivan, Laurence E. Icanchu’s Drum: An Orientation to Meaning in South American Religions. New York: Macmillan, 1988.

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history that will allow him “to look upon the whole of the South American continent and its peoples with a fresh eye” (8). But this is not an ordinary history, for even though, as he puts it, he has “researched materials in their context with care and concern for objectivity, [the] volume is not a detached work of analysis” (15). Moreover, he describes his approach here rather as one of “morphology and the general history of religions” (9) that allows him “to [‘landscape’] a broad panorama of religious ideas from across South America without trying to describe exhaustively the religious life of any single tribe” (9). He nevertheless claims this to be an empirical undertaking (20) even though he admits that the process of ‘landscaping’ involves constructing a coherent system of symbols culled from among the various South American religious systems in light of the ‘patterned meanings’ he claims they exhibit (21). But he does not mean by ‘exhibit’ the possibility of interpreting the patterns simply from the empirical data. This is history in a “wider sense” of the term (21), and rests on what Sullivan calls “an argument from images,” which involves interpretation aimed at determining the Truth about humanity (18) and “at probing the specific character of religious experience” (20). This book, then, is much more than a simple “comparative history” of South American religions; it is about the essence of religion itself. Orientated toward South American realities, he writes, this book “reappraises the meaning of religious experience and of symbolic life in general” (16). Ultimately, therefore, it is a history that aims at understanding “the full range of human experience” and in that process requires a “transfiguration” of the historic preconditions that can block understanding (15). By this Sullivan clearly means that “ordinary” history must be transcended.36 Modern history and the social sciences Sullivan claims, are alienated from symbolic meaning and are therefore incapable of disclosing the Truth about humanity’s relation to the Sacred (18). Although he claims not to decry reductionism, he nevertheless maintains that neither history, in the ordinary sense of the term, nor the (scientific rather than hermeneutic) social sciences, undertakes the study of religious phenomena appropriate to their nature (18). “Historians of Religion,” however, do take the right approach, because they know that “understanding any particular instance of a religious expression

36

Given that Sullivan is using the notion of ‘history’ in an extraordinary sense, he might helpfully have indicated this by writing ‘History’ with a capital ‘H.’ Steven Wasserstrom, as I point out below, uses that convention with ‘History of Religion’ (capitalized) in order clearly to distinguish the transcendentalist work of scholars like Gershom Scholem, Henry Corbin, and Mircea Eliade from the more objective research of the empiricist historians of religion.

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would require a total hermeneutics of the religious condition of humankind” (15). Unfortunately, Sullivan does not provide a systematic account of such a “total hermeneutics,” despite the importance of it to his project here. Nevertheless, it is clear that such a hermeneutic exercise would take one beyond what ordinary history and the social sciences can provide. How it is able to do that, however, seems to be something of a mystery. Yet it apparently can provide the student of religion with a great deal more truth than the anthropologists’ Principle of Charity – which shows the imminent (“thin”) rationality of primitive cultures to “make sense” of otherwise odd behaviour of primitives within the context of the fabricated knowledge found in their mythic cosmologies.37 The first step in achieving such a “greater-than-scientific” understanding however, requires rejection of the idea that the modern sciences – and especially the social sciences – discover rather than fabricate knowledge and therefore constitute a more robust or “thick” rationality than that found in primitive cultures. Such an idea is no more than a form of Western imperialism for Sullivan who, although without careful analysis of the arguments of those who have meticulously analyzed the issues associated with the possibility of the existence of a variety of “modes of thought,” writes: “Suppositions about prelogical mentality, infantilism, and primitiveness are revealing poses of modern thought and deserve no depiction here. They mirror back to us the illusory self-definitions that flaunt a fragile, even wistful, hope for a privileged place in human history” (2; emphasis added). He asserts, moreover, that “moderns” consider the thought of archaic societies to be inferior to science, and that they therefore consider such cultures to be less “heirs to human nature” than is modernity (2). As mentioned above, Sullivan provides no argument in support of such claims. Without examination of the extensive debate among anthropologists on the issue of ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ rationality, he simply denies that a scientific approach can deliver appropriate understanding of these cultures (6). In fact, according to Sullivan, sciences form part of the ideology of conquest that blocks all possibility of gaining ‘genuine’ knowledge of non-modern cultures. For Sullivan, ‘understanding’ is always culturally based and if one is to ‘understand’ other worlds of meaning and of symbolic life in general, one must oneself be transformed (16) by being catapulted beyond Western (scientific) ways of knowing. The first step toward such transformation, according to Sullivan, requires what one might call a form of repentance; that is, a turning-away from West37

I treat this notion at greater length in my ‘Can Science Fabricate Meaning? On Ritual, Religion, and the Academic Study of Religion.’

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ern cognitive imperialism. In the case of South American religions, Sullivan asserts that in order “[t]o come into the light that South Americans themselves shed on their experience of humanity, we must first inspect our own way of thinking and the shadowy concepts that undergird it” (6). Without explicating what he means by the “shadowy” nature of those concepts, Sullivan goes on to insist that the student of religion forego “using linguistic, geographic, or socioeconomic blueprints” because the general “[H]istory of [R]eligions” approach requires the student to work “in accordance with the mythic structures” by which the people in these cultures evaluate their own existence (8). This is to be done, moreover, not in the sense in which most current anthropologists attempt to discern an “emic rationality” within those cultures. Rather to see the rationality of archaic existence as primitives themselves see it requires that the student of the culture “undergo their meaning,” a process by which the scholar experiences a “transmutation of understanding” (11). “[N]o understanding of history,” Sullivan rather cryptically writes, “has ever waited for the final assembling of accumulated ‘facts,’ and no gathering of ‘facts’ yields understanding without the nature of those facts [being questioned].” By advancing other evaluations of what history (i.e. existence in time) might mean, one subjects the ‘facts’ to alternative methods of interpretation” (13). About all that is clear in these methodological comments, however, is that, for Sullivan, ‘understanding’ is a special kind of perception, and requires a form of hermeneutics that necessitates a transformation of the student, involving not only the empirical interpretation of facts but, as I have already pointed out above, the immediate ‘apprehension’ of the Truth of humanity itself, with how that Truth is related to religion. “Without a doubt,” he writes, “cultural context is the place to understand religious symbolism, but ‘historical circumstances’ in the narrow sense do not exhaust the sorts of context in which truths are relevant. Cultural views of reality also stand within the context of culture in the wide sense, that is, the human situation in the world” (17). And modern social science, according to Sullivan, is alienated from that kind of symbolic meaning (18). “Understanding” for Sullivan, therefore, involves not only knowledge about religions – about religious thought and practice “in their own right” – in the sense of a historical and comparative study, but also the recognition of the self-evident meaningfulness of religion that precludes the need for scientific explanation of them (20) and makes possible a new spiritual horizon for the modern world (682). In Religion After Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos (1999),38 Steven M. Wasserstrom shows that the kind of general 38

Wasserstrom, Steven M. Religion After Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

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history of religions found in the work of scholars like Sullivan derives from the writings of Scholem, Corbin, and, above all, Eliade. These scholars, as he masterfully tells the story of how their idealistic and meta-historical agendas “infiltrated scholarship in religion throughout the world” (3), emerged not only as representatives of “a new form of religion after the expiration of traditional forms …” but also as spokespersons for a university-based study of religion. Surprisingly, although themselves academics, they were suspicious of “mere academicism” (25); so that not only did they not wholly reject scholarship in Religious Studies, they saw a mystical value in it, insisting that the best students of religion were passionate religious intellectuals. Ultimately, then, they were not only philologists and historians, but “came to be seen as sages with elevated understandings of religion in general” (14). As Wasserstrom put it, in the work of these men “[t]he Historian of Religion as Homo religiosus had arrived on the [academic] scene. Against the anxieties of the time, and especially against the anxiety-provoking spectre of professional specialization, this new vocation responded instead to the thirst for transcendence and totality. This exalted calling called not to a career-track but to life itself” (9). Despite their “illuminist sense of scholarship” (24), these academics did not reject a university career-track, and neither have their numerous students. That is, they strove through their professional scholarly careers to reveal the ultimate Truth about religious reality that stands beyond scientific knowledge and is ‘obscured’ by historical and social-scientific research. Thus, as Historians of Religion, they “sought to perpetuate ancient secret teachings,” seeing themselves as dispensers of both scholarly knowledge about religion and a ‘knowledge’ that lies beyond the bounds of science and scholarly research. Wasserstrom’s comment, then, to the effect that one sees in such Historians of Religion an “uncanny doubleness” of scholarship is entirely – if ironically – appropriate, as is his assessment that in the final analysis such scholars are essentially modern gnostics. Religious realities, for such scholars, he continues, do not call for explanation that would “deliver religious phenomena to a meaning outside themselves” (57), but rather would require that the study of religion itself be a religious undertaking (63). He acknowledges that these three “sages” did not claim to be mystics (196), but asserts that as “hermeneuts” they sought to orientate the “lost moderns” to the superior Truth of traditional religious myths and symbols – as paradoxical as it may seem – through intellectual scholarly means (99). He writes: The scholar of religion who tells the story of the believer is the latest placeholder for that authentic believer of the past. The last in the line of tradition, the scholar of tradition, still belongs to a golden chain, unbroken yet linked to an ultimate hierophanic past. What still remains at the Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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It seems obvious from this analysis of the methodological injunctions of these Historians of Religion that to use the notion of ‘understanding’ in this fashion is not to make a contribution to the scientific study of religion but rather to undermine it. Historically speaking, as the entry ‘Science of Religion’ in the Harper Collins Dictionary of Religion (J. Z. Smith, editor) notes, the kind of study advocated by Wasserstrom’s ‘sages,’ is taken to be a ‘special’ kind of science, yet the methodology it espouses is both uncritical and unscientific “because it permits only an irreducibly religious explanation and interpretation of religion” (968). Even though Scholem, Corbin, and Eliade appear to struggle within the constraints of normal, everyday scholarship, in actual fact they transcend disciplinary boundaries in their work, abandoning scientific knowledge and rationality “in favor of symbols and myths, those truly privileged expressions of the spirit” (237). Wasserstrom, therefore – correctly, in my judgment – insists that critical (modern) students of religion cannot surrender to such (religio-theological) methodological injunctions because “[t]he history of religions … must end up being a historical study or it may be no study at all (238).” If the History of Religions, he writes, “is to remain a broadly communicable intellectual operation, we teachers should resist mystocentrism with its self-centered privileging of the esoteric” (240). Despite these comments, however, I think Wasserstrom fails to adequately stress the pervasive influence the “scholarship” of these “sages” has had on the field of Religious Studies. He claims: “It is not merely that History of Religions … is on the decline in Religious Studies … [but that] the expanding universe of knowledge has itself simultaneously shifted, relocating the place of History of Religions in the general fields of knowledge” (238). And much of the spirit of the History of Religions, he insists, has fled to the new religious movements, the New Age phenomenon, renewed traditionalism in the mainstream religions, and to the world of artists, concluding that “much of its legacy is now outside the academy …” (239). These imprecise comments, however, are unconvincing. Furthermore, he is wrong to assert that, even though the ‘arts’ within the university, and the movement toward interdisciplinarity within the academy, “absorbed the energies if not the substance of the History of Religions” (238), the movement had only a brief centrality in Religious Studies and is found now only on the margins of Religion departments, the latter having become increasingly scientific and therefore inimical to such mystocentric conceptions of religion (239-40).

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Quite to the contrary, my above survey of the predominant conception of the role of ‘understanding’ in the study of religion found in dictionaries and encyclopedias of religion, and my analysis of the concept of ‘understanding’ in a contemporary historian of religion like Lawrence Sullivan, suggest that the influence of ‘sages’ and ‘guru-historians’ still prevails. In fact, their work greatly fostered the religio-theological approach to the field which, as I have shown elsewhere,39 still dominates in the modern Western university. The general conception of Religious Studies as a field of scholarly endeavour, that is, is still seen as an undertaking that somehow puts us ‘in touch’ with the world of religious reality. This is clearly evident, for example, in Jon R. Stone’s claim in his introduction to the essays in The Craft of Religious Studies (1998)40 to the effect that religion “appears ever beyond humanity’s ability to comprehend fully” (3). He insists, therefore, that what is needed is a methodology that will “distinguish the study of religion from other humanistic disciplines … [as] a search for a unique way of understanding and interpreting data” (7). Jacob Neusner41 echoes that sentiment in his contribution to the volume, complaining that history is intellectually bankrupt and obstructs insight into religion, and he encourages the student of religion to embrace the richer ‘History of Religions’ as the proper avenue of achieving “insight into the character of religion …” (104). Martin Marty’s contribution to the Stone volume also deplores the quest for scholarly and scientific objectivity, claiming that it is itself dependent upon a religious ethos (154 & 156), and he argues “that the scholar, moved by faith, may benefit from putting to work his or her complex and ambiguous faith and non-faith, communal experience and private search, when trying to understand others” (151). In Religion and American Education: Rethinking a National Dilemma (1995)42, Warren A. Nord draws upon such theorizing in the discipline of Religious Studies to support placing religion itself within the public education system in the United States. A Religious Studies that is “merely” objective and scientific, he maintains, does not provide a “serious understanding” of religion. Unless one’s understanding of religion comes from the “inside” – that is, more than exclusively intellectual (216) – it is bound to be superficial. “Wilfred 39

40 41 42

For a critique of views of modern western science as cognitive imperialism, see my ‘Modern Western Science and the Study of Religion: A Response to Richard King’s Orientalism and Religion,’ Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 14, 2002; 265-278. Stone, Jon R. The Craft of Religious Studies. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Neusner, Jacob. ‘From History to Religion.’ In The Craft of Religious Studies, edited by Jon R. Stone, 98-116. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Nord, Warren A. Religion and American Education: Rethinking a National Dilemma. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

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Cantwell Smith,” he writes, “has argued that an outside observer may know all about a religious system, and yet may totally miss the point” (217). Even Amanda Porterfield’s recent discussion of ‘The Pragmatic Role of Religious Studies’ in her 2001 book The Transformation of American Religion: The Story of a Late Twentieth-Century Awakening,43 seems to argue – if in a watered-down form – that the discipline of Religious Studies somehow provides a kind of knowledge unavailable through other disciplines. Like Protestantism itself, she claims, Religious Studies involves “commitment to religious understanding” (209). She writes: “The scholars who secured a place for [R]eligious [S]tudies as part of most institutions of higher learning in the United States turned a good deal of their attention to the question of what Americans could learn from religious experiences of people in primitive and non-Western cultures” (211). Although she maintains that Religious Studies is primarily a descriptive and comparative enterprise (226), she applauds not only the influence of Protestantism but also that of the “Catholic imagination” and the theories of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, with their affirmations of symbol and myth, in assisting Religious Studies to respond to the crisis in American religion and culture. “In many cases,” she writes, “these developers of [R]eligious [S]tudies envisioned a future in which the study of ultimate concern advanced through courses in religion would eventually permeate all of academic life” (213-214), and society in general, by making Religious Studies “accessible and useful to every faith” (226). Although muted, this represents in effect a recapitulation of the “uncanny doubleness of scholarship” that Wasserstrom takes to be an essential element of the gnostic approach to understanding religion: Religious Studies must not only reflect sound scholarship and science but must also provide an entry into religion itself. Wasserstrom, it appears, is loath to give up this “fuller” notion of Religious Studies for a “mere” scientific study of religions, for he insists that students of religion today cannot ignore the Historians of Religion; they have an obligation, he paradoxically asserts, not only to move beyond them as authorities (246) but also to rediscover their legacy by honouring “religion’s fullness and majesty” (247). Students of religion today must see in their work the possibility of finding “edification” because the “History of Religions taught and still teaches us ways to engage the perennial mystery of religion” (247). Finally, Wasserstrom believes that it is the task of the contemporary student of religion to continue to create “a soteriologically vibrant conversation” (248).

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Porterfield, Amanda. The Transformation of American Religion: The Story of a Late Twentieth-Century Awakening. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

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I think it clear from this discussion that the notion of ‘understanding’ is used in the field of Religious Studies in a predominantly gnostic fashion. This ‘understanding’ consists of far more than sets of intersubjectively testable statements about religious behaviour, the historical development of religious traditions, or the role of religion in the lives of individuals or in society at large. It consists of more than mere explanations and theory based on logical or empirical grounds. Rather, it lays claim to a ‘special’ kind of knowledge not limited to what can be adjudicated about states of affairs in the world “by means of explicit logico-empirical, inductive-deductive, quantifiable public procedure or ‘operations’ subject to replication by independent observers” (Harris, 1979: 27).44 Insofar as the modern research university is committed to the development of epistemic knowledge of the natural and social worlds, Religious Studies carried out within its precincts has no choice but to shun such gnostic ‘understanding’ as an aberration in the cognitive quest. I appreciate the attention given to my paper by Professor Vu Kim Chinh. I regret that I was unable to be present at the conference where I could have engaged him in conversation on the issues raised in his commentary. He has provided there a clear and concise account of my argument and finds much of it persuasive, stating, moreover, that it is important to protect the new discipline against uncritical identification of religious studies and indoctrination. Professor Chinh is not entirely persuaded by the paper, however, and he raises two major issues for further discussion: the problem of western cognitive imperialism implicit in my espousal of western science, and the spectre of a reductionistic scientism. Regarding the first matter, Professor Chinh suggests that the epistemic-gnostic distinction I invoke is unjustifiable, suggesting that I may be relying here on Kant’s critical theory of knowledge which he believes to be inadequate. In opposition to the position I put forth, he sympathizes with Sullivan’s critique of modern science as imperialistic, and he proposes that one might find ground for transcending that distinction in postKantian philosophical developments as well as in the cognitive implications of Wittgenstein’s later thought. His comments here are interesting but are insufficiently developed to permit adequate response here. And if some analysis of the notion of practical reason and its relationship to cognition may be necessary in order to defend my argument, this matter is unfortunately too broad to be undertaken in a mere note. With respect to the claim about the “cognitive imperialism” of modern western science, including the scientific study of

44

Harris, Marvin. Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture. New York: Random House, 1979.

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religion, see my critique of Richard King’s Orientalism and Religion referred to in note 39 above. As to Professor Chinh’s second concern, he accepts my argument regarding “understanding,” but only if it is restricted to the study of religion at the empirical level. If extended to the theoretical level, he suggests, the argument constitutes a “reductionistic scientism.” He rejects such a scientism because, without an “insider” understanding of religious symbols one could not make judgments about them nor draw insight from them – with the implication that one could not properly engage in interreligious dialogue, which for Chinh is essential to the present state of the study of religion in Taiwan, where departments for the study of religion attract students from several religions who desire not only a deeper awareness of their own traditions but of the traditions of their fellow students. “Drawing insight” from religious symbols, however, and engaging in interreligious dialogue, are religio-theological rather than epistemic enterprises; and it is difficult to see how these undertakings can be clearly distinguished from the kind of indoctrination Professor Chinh seeks to avoid. That is, Religious Studies as a modern undertaking in the context of the modern research university must work within the naturalistic framework that characterizes the physical, biological, and social sciences. The question of whether Religious Studies at such a theoretical level constitutes a “reductionistic scientism” or only a “methodological reductionism” that eschews metaphysical discourse is open to further discussion.

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Chapter 10

Beyond Thick Descriptions and Interpretive Sciences: Explaining Religious Meaning Donald Wiebe

I think it can be held to have been demonstrated both that it was the nineteenth century’s interest in achieving a scientific understanding of religion that secured for the study of religion academic status in the modern university, and that most twentieth-century scholars in the field failed to follow through on this nineteenth-century scientific agenda.1 Afraid that the reductionism of the sciences might “explain religion away,” it seems that students in the field throughout most of the twentieth century have retreated to a socalled hermeneutical approach to the study of religion as the proper avenue to understanding it. The understanding sought, however, was not simply an elucidation of matters that were obscure, but something special; a “scholarly” undertaking that would provide an uncommon kind of knowledge – an “understanding” that goes beyond the simple provision of a narrative account of the historical development of a particular religious tradition or aspect of it, or clarification of the role of religion in the life of an individual or of its function in society, or the illumination of the meaning of a religious text in the simple sense of knowing the meanings of the words employed or of being able to grasp the point of a particular concept or idea, and so on. Although a hermeneuticized “understanding” does not necessarily eschew the ordinary, it is amorphous and oracular in nature and has little to do with the broader scientific aim of providing sets of intersubjectively testable claims (statements) about religious experience, belief, practice, or behavior and simply rejects as inappropriate the scientific objective of providing an explanation of religious phenomena that are open to empirical testing. In effect, therefore, espousing “understanding” as the goal of the discipline, is equivalent to working within what has been appropriately called a “gnostic epistemology” that effectively pits the results of the “scholarly” study of religion against social scientific analyses of religious phenomena.2 1 On this see Wiebe 1984. 2 I draw upon the work of Donald Bates (1995) here for the notion of a gnostic epistemology, which he invokes to account for a type of knowledge found in several ancient medical

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_012Donald

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That tension is clearly visible in Peter B. Clarke’s and Peter Byrne’s Religion Defined and Explained. According to them, scientific explanations are inappropriate in accounting for human actions and institutions because they are reductionistic. Therefore, “[i]n the case of human acts,” they write, “there is no sharp distinction between describing and explaining” (Clarke & Byrne 1993, 44). Moreover, in their claim that religion as a human phenomenon can be explained they intimate that there is something more to the reality of religion than can be accounted for theoretically. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, in their Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion, similarly assert that a study of religion that takes its subject matter to be a purely cultural phenomenon (“having no supernatural aspect” [Stark & Finke 2001, 20]) is rationally unacceptable, although given the supernatural character of the subject matter does not exclude explaining it at the human level – at the level of “the relationship between human beings and what they experience as divine” (21). Are such views defensible? Can one really distinguish between supernatural and extra-cultural aspects of religion and the human and cultural as these scholars suggest? And are those who seek a bridging of the natural and the social sciences motivated simply by a desire to “explain religion away” as Stark and Finke maintain? Have they any justification for their claim, for example, that members of the North American Association for the Study of Religions are obsessed with ridding students of belief in the supernatural and that they therefore espouse atheism as the only possible rationale for Religious Studies? Or is it rather the case that Stark and Finke are constructing a not so “cryptic” apology for religion? While not engaged in arguing a positive case for belief in some transcendental religious realm they, nevertheless, seem to maintain that the “burden of proof” in such disputes falls on the skeptic, agnostic, and atheist rather than on the devotee espousing the belief, and they thereby suggest that religious belief is justified on the grounds that the skeptics have not provided a metaphysically conclusive argument against it. Were we able to provide a bridge between the physical and the cultural sciences, I suggest we would be in a position to answer these queries. What persuasive power such ‘scholarly’ approaches to the study of religion wield, it seems to me, rests on the assumption that there is an order to life in the world that makes it meaningful – gives it significance – despite the demystification of the natural, material world that has been achieved by the traditions. According to Bates, “we might think of gnostic scholarship as self-consciously cultivating superior knowers, while epistemic scholarship self-consciously search[es] for ways to justify knowledge” (4). An elaboration of this distinction as it applies to the study of religion can be found in Wiebe 2002.

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physical and biological sciences. Although science may have disenchanted the material world in that it has been able to determine the causes that give rise to apparently mysterious and uncanny aspects of it, it is argued that the social sciences have been unable to provide equivalent accounts of the mysterious nature of the cultural realm – of meaning, for example. In this regard, argues Mark Schneider in his Culture and Enchantment, Weber over-estimated the influence of science because he thought it would eventually provide us a causal account not only of the natural but also of the social and cultural world. According to Schneider, however, Weber failed to see that enchantment is a natural condition of human thought and that naturalistic scientific inquiry is unnatural,3 and – given the natural preference humans have for seeing life as meaningful – that it is unlikely that a disenchantment of the social sciences will ever be achieved (Schneider 1993, 114-123). Interestingly, Schneider does not argue that a scientific, explanatory account of cultural phenomena is inconceivable or impossible – that is, that there is an unbridgeable chasm that separates the natural from the social and cultural sciences. He seems to maintain only that it is not presently within reach (although at times there is the hint that he may believe it never will be). His concession about the possibility of bridging the chasm between the natural and the social sciences, however, may prove more significant than he seems to think possible. I will argue here, then, that Schneider’s estimation of the current status of the social sciences is too stingy, and that he is unduly pessimistic about its future development. An analysis and assessment of his argument about culture and enchantment will repay the effort expended, for his discussion of the issues not only presents a clear understanding of the Naturwissenschaften/Geisteswissenschaften debate, but, in my judgment, provides a set of parameters whereby we can assess the current state of affairs in Religious Studies and move toward the goal of achieving a scientific understanding of religion and other cultural realities. Against Weber, Schneider argues that the disenchantment of the world has not been fully achieved. Enchantment, he insists, is a natural condition of thought because people have a preference for seeing meaningful connections in the world rather than explanations of the objects and events in it. Indeed, according to Schneider, Weber himself recognized that disenchantment of the world actually fueled a demand for enchantment because it excluded an account of life in terms of “what it ‘means’ or ‘feels like’ to be us” (40), and in doing so, impoverished the world. He writes: “[M]uch of culture (particularly in its ‘expressive’ domain, where we articulate our experiences and feelings) is 3 On this see R. N. McCauley’s comments on the unnaturalness of science and the naturalness of religion as a product of the standard cognitive dispositions of human beings in his ‘Comparing the Cognitive Foundations of Religion and Science’ (1998).

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given over to structures considerably richer and less perspicuous than explanation” (40). And these “ineffably rich expressive phenomena,” he continues, “[create] what we might think of as a structural mismatch for explanation” (41). And it is this, he claims, that encouraged “the conviction that the Geisteswissenschaften had aims, and required methods [of analysis], quite different from the study of nature” (41). Whether any particular field of inquiry is enchanted, Schneider argues, is a function of three factors: the tractability of its subject matter; the structure or organization of the inquiry; and the policing of its cognitive boundaries. The first concerns the nature of the subject matter of the field of inquiry which is referred to as its referential ecology. This pertains to the ease with which referential consensus about any subject matter (that is, the intersubjective availability of the subject matter or communal referential access to it) can be established, and the ease with which it gives itself to explanation. Cultural phenomena present referential problems because they are not purely physical objects but rather “meaningful” phenomena that do not even line up in any stable fashion with the physical dimensions of culture. A field of inquiry that causes significant referential difficulty, Schneider indicates, is likely to be enchanted. Further, reports on enchanted phenomena must be made in a particular epistemic register which marks the common sense distinctions we draw between the fictional and the factual or the imaginative and the functional. There are three registers: the naturalistic register requires empirical demonstration and involves the possibility of explanation; the non-naturalistic or edifying register that calls for warrants other than empirical (such as narrative coherence); and the ambiguous register that combines features of the other two. The second factor is the way inquiry into a particular subject is structured and organized. The issue here is whether there is the organizational capacity to manage the glut of often contradictory information – that is, to discriminate between more or less reputable reports produced by inquiry so as to be able to develop a coherent picture of the world. The natural sciences, Schneider argues, have been able to create boundaries between themselves and enchanted forms of inquiry and have been able to police them effectively, excluding “magical” objects of inquiry from consideration as imprudent paths to knowledge (namely, those having the properties of “occultness of operative principles, mercuriality of effects, and so on” [123]), as well as certain ways of interpreting the world. The final factor is the effective policing of cognitive boundaries and is closely tied to the social organization of the community of researchers and will be affected by such structural factors as role differentiation, equality, and autonomy in knowledge production. Although “the boundary between enchanted and disenchanted inquiry in the study of nature is complex both in its hisDonald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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tory and in the forces that have caused it to strengthen or weaken,” writes Schneider, we have nevertheless been able to trace the disenchantment of the physical world in “[t]he transformation of the natural philosopher (a differentiated role performed by cosmopolitan but independent intellectuals largely in solitude) into the natural scientist (a differentiated role performed by insular and highly interdependent intellectuals collectively)” (141). Where such structural/organizational conditions of knowledge production do not exist, therefore, so Schneider intimates, enchantment continues. Given this analysis of the boundaries and conditions that characterize natural scientific inquiry, Schneider claims that “[t]hose of us who study culture operate in an enchanted milieu because we have not yet broadly accepted (or perhaps even developed) the craft intuitions that would discriminate between ‘magical’ and mundane objects of inquiry …” (2). Culture, that is, “consists of essentially slippery [epistemic] terrain [and] prevents all but the loosest organization of interpretive communities …” (143). Thus, he continues, social scientists today differ little from the virtuoso seventeenth century natural philosophers like Joseph Glanville and John Aubrey who were unable to distinguish between apparitions and microbes (ix) and found themselves attracted by “Apparitions, Knockings, Blows Invisible, and Glances of Love and Malice” (1). Whereas the seventeenth-century virtuoso scholars – in holding the view “that unusual phenomena might express the intentions of another realm” (52) – are now thought of as naïve for violating well-established criteria of phenomenality, Schneider asserts that the occult referential niches of the modern student of culture have not yet been so stigmatized, with the result that the study of culture still remains enchanted. Thus he writes: In interpretive inquiry today, enchantment results from encounters with strange intenders [that is, “intentional agents that work in peculiar and mysterious ways” (46)] just as it did from Aubrey’s encounters with apparitions – provided they are discussed in the proper epistemic register. Most interpretive practices can be employed either for edifying or naturalistic ends, and only in the latter case do they become enchanting. As we have seen, interpreters find that some aspect of phenomena (which others might assume nonsemantic) carries meaning, a meaning that flows from intentional agents whose character and behavior we can apprehend only dimly. (52) Contemporary anthropology, Schneider then claims, is a clear instance of a loose organization of interpretative communities and he points to Clifford Geertz and Claude Lévi-Strauss as chief exemplars of scholars working on slippery epistemic terrain. Indeed, with them, he argues, enchantment re-entered Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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the academy, for although they appear to espouse naturalistic disciplinary ambitions, they nevertheless seem to find “strange intenders” that ultimately indicate their discourse to be in the natural or ambiguous epistemic register. Geertz, for example, appears to be involved in a scientific undertaking and yet his “thick description” treatment of the Balinese cock fight as revealing something peculiarly Balinese, describable in no other fashion, suggests the recognition of something mysterious and beyond explanation. And this makes his “cultural analysis” look more like an edifying reading than an explanatory scientific exercise. We see in Geertz, therefore, a methodological vacillation between naturalism and edification in which the meaning or significance of a cultural phenomenon is and is not referential. According to Schneider, therefore, it is quasi-referential, which means that “we are not to hector it with demands for empirical warrant …, [even though] its raison d’être would be weakened if its ‘fictive’ nature were fully and publicly underscored” (79). However, neither can the empirical pretensions of such meaning or significance be emphasized, for that would “arouse strong demands for [scientific] warrant” (80). Thus, as Schneider puts it, meaning of this kind is stuck in an ambiguous epistemic register and is, therefore, enchanted. Similar mysteries stalk Lévi-Strauss’s “gestures in the direction of science and its reductive urge” (95) in his systematic study of myths because he also espouses the broader Orphic ambition of seeking, through myth, (that is, “beneath its linguistic surface and independent of its narrative logic” [90]), the “primordial message spoken by the world itself” (112). Yet Lévi-Strauss fails to make clear by which measure he is to be judged: although seeming to place himself in the naturalist camp, he suggests that his claims should be adjudicated by traditional hermeneutic standards. As Schneider judges it: Lévi-Strauss “seems to be expressing a virtuoso disinclination to probe systematically into – and thus perhaps disenchantment – the mechanisms he implies are at work” (110-111). Therefore we are never clear with Lévi-Strauss as to whether his findings are meant to be science or edification, for, like Geertz, he adopts an epistemic register that both requires and ignores scientific/naturalist warrant. Therefore, both Geertz and Lévi-Strauss, as well as other “ambiguous register” cultural analysts, claims Schneider, “flirt with an imaginative genre which, like literature on occasion, draws strategically on empirical evidence in search of realism, while at the same time establishing themselves in epistemic territory normally closed to this” (113). And such a blurring of the distinction between significance-discourse and anthropological investigation catapults Geertz and Lévi-Strauss into an enchanted realm. How does the academic study of religion stack up against this? Just a few years ago, in my paper to the ‘Symposium on Methodology in the Study of Religion’ held in Åbo (1997), I suggested that it does not stack up very well at Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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all (Wiebe 1999c); I was aware of Eric Sharpe’s claim that evolutionary theory had allowed for the reconceptualization of the academic study of religion as a scientific undertaking to be clearly differentiated from theology. As I pointed out there, Sharpe had shown in his history of this new field of inquiry that “Darwinism” in the nineteenth century had relocated the focus of the study of religion from transcendental philosophy to “the altogether this-worldly categories of history, progress, development, and evolution” (Sharpe 1986, 24), and that it had provided a “guiding principle of method” that could account for the historical data of the religions in a theoretical way. As Sharpe put it, the Darwinian framework made possible “an attempt to view religion on the criterion provided by science, to judge its history, growth, and evolution as one would judge the history, growth, and evolution of an organism” (32). It is a fact, however, that this early recourse to evolutionary theory by students of religion fell into disrepute before the end of the second decade of the twentieth century because of its sloppy use of organismic metaphors and its attachment to simplistic notions of progress. As Steven Pinker puts it in his recent book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, “Darwin’s theory of evolution was commonly misinterpreted as an explanation of intellectual and moral progress rather than an explanation of how living things adapt to an ecological niche” (2002, 15). And it is also a fact that without an alternative theoretical framework, students of religion “reverted to type,” by which I mean that they returned to earlier scholarly – that is, non-scientific – approaches to “accounting” for religion that would nevertheless find some merit within the academic setting. And for the most part those approaches, I have argued, are “crypto-theological,” which is to say that they are largely religious, ethical, and political in intent. And I provided a series of brief analyses of the proposals for polymethodic humanistic approaches to the study of religion by Ninian Smart, Kieran Flanagan, Andre Droogers, Martin Prozesky, William Dean, and George Marsden to emphasize my purport, since in each of these “approaches” to religion, the field is opened up to the distorting influence of religious, ethical, and political agendas of “scholars” more concerned with their status as religious and moral leaders and “public intellectuals” than as academics and scientists.4 Connecting Darwin’s notion of the evolution of species to that of the “social evolution” of religion from a primitive to a civilized form, however, is not 4 Many religion scholars taking this approach draw support from developments in critical social theory found in a wide variety of university departments and disciplines. The critical approach in the social sciences and humanities rejects the notion of an objective science capable of providing us with knowledge of the world free from personal and cultural bias, and argues that knowledge of that kind is something that must be opposed because it is little more than the instrument of power. Critical social theorists rather see what is emancipatory as knowledge, and consider commitment to human liberation rather than the

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the only way of applying Darwinian insights to the study of religion and other cultural phenomena. Although at the time of the Abo conference I was unaware of Jane Ellen Harrison’s paper on ‘The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion,’ written in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin (and the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species), the essay clearly maps out the possibility of a Darwinian explanation of religion in terms of the evolution of the mental capacities of human beings that underlie the emergence and persistence of religion. So sure was Harrison of her conviction, she wrote, that had she not “feared to mar [her] tribute to a great name by any shadow of exaggeration,” she might well have titled her contribution ‘The Creation by Darwinism of the Scientific Study of Religions’ (Harrison 1909, 494). Before Darwin, she continued, “[r]eligion was not generally regarded as a proper object for scientific study, with facts to be collected and theories to be deduced” (494). Rather, she pointed out, religion was conceived of as a matter of beliefs, ready-made and complete by means of divine revelation, with no room for growth or development. But Darwin, she argues, made it possible to conceive of religion as a step in the evolution of human thought and so opened religion to scientific analysis in light of humankind’s mental evolution. In support of that claim, she quotes the following passage from The Origin of Species: “In the future I see open fields for far more important research. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation … of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation” (497). Harrison acknowledges that “[n]owhere … does Darwin definitely say that he regarded religion as a set of phenomena the development of which may be studied from the psychological standpoint” (497), but she nevertheless maintains that:

search for knowledge as the proper aim of intellectual activity. For them, obtaining objective knowledge about states of affairs in the world is not possible, and the attempt to do so, is merely cover for power politics. As Ben Agger puts it in his Critical Social Theory: An Introduction (1998), the positivist approach to knowledge can only undermine “utopian efficiency” (p. 24), and to avoid this, genuine scholarship (science) must seek insight, and be committed to bringing about social transformation. Agger admits that this view of social theory politicizes scholarship, but he insists that the critical theorist need not be ashamed of its political commitment because, according to him, the claim to value freedom of the so-called objective sciences is also a political stance. (He fails, however, to provide either argument or evidence in support of this counter-intuitive claim.) Clearly, therefore, the critical approach is incompatible with the approach to the study of religion I argue for in this paper. In arguing that the critical theory is inadequate as science, I do not mean to suggest that those who seek “objective knowledge” can have no other interests but knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone. Nor do I suggest that “objective knowledge” is without social or cultural significance. However, I shall not elaborate those matters here. I have taken up that issue briefly in the concluding comments to my contribution to Secular Theories of Religion (Wiebe 1999b, 272-276).

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[w]ith these memorable words the door closes on the old and opens on the new horizon. The mental focus henceforth is not on the maintaining or refuting of an orthodoxy but on the genesis and evolution of a capacity, not on perfection but on a process. Continuous evolution leaves no gap for revelation sudden and complete. We have henceforth to ask, not when was religion revealed or what was the revelation, but how did religious phenomena arise and develop. (497) Thus, despite Darwin’s piety, insists Harrison, “his heart went out towards the new methods in religious study” (497) which – interestingly – she saw as exemplified in the recent congresses of religion (for example, the 1908 Oxford Congress) that would eventually be organized under the auspices of the International Association for the History of Religions.5 Indeed, in her eyes, Darwin “had himself, if half-unconsciously, inaugurated” (497) this new explanatory approach to understanding religion. Although not as exploitable at that time as was the organismic metaphor and social evolution route to accounting for cultural developments, I think the evolutionary psychology route to the explanation of religion espoused by Daniel Dennett and others provides, as I intimated in my Abo paper, a framework for a genuinely scientific study of religion. As Dennett puts it, Darwinism suggests the possibility that there exists a single design space “in which the offspring of both our bodies and our minds are united under one commodious set of R-and-D processes” (Dennett 1995, 189) within which “the central biological concept of function and the central philosophical concept of meaning can be explained and united” (185). Were that possible, of course, the traditional assumption of an unbridgeable chasm between the Naturwissenschaften and the Geisteswissenschaften would be undermined and the social and cultural realm disenchanted; the notion that the study of mind and its products requires a disciplinary framework wholly different from the explanatory, “causal account,” framework of our study of the physical world, would no longer come into play.6 5 Harrison’s reference to the Oxford Congress is significant, for without congresses of this kind, and the national and international associations that support them, the scientific study of religion is not likely to have fully bloomed, let alone flourished. The reference to the North American Association for the Study of Religion earlier in the paper reveals the hostility – created by the fear of the possible disenchantment of religions and religion – toward a scientific study of religion that is characteristic not only of individual scholars but of powerful institutions like the American Academy of Religion and its satellite religious organizations, associations, and societies. On this see my The Politics of Religious Studies (1998). 6 On this matter see my ‘Disciplinary Axioms, Boundary Conditions, and the Academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals and Dawson’ (1990). I call into question there both Pals’s

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There can be no doubt, for example, that such an approach disenchants the subject matter of all cultural studies by improving the communal referential access to it and making referential consensus possible. In the case of religion, for example, the genesis and evolution of a particular capacity of the human mind is tractable in a way that revelations, intuitions, and insights that – in a fashion we know not how – insinuate themselves into the mind and life of the human community, are not. This is not to say, however, that such an approach will immediately subvert and eliminate virtuoso scholars in the field of Religious Studies, but it will go a long way within the scientific and academic community to stigmatize – in Schneider’s sense of the term – such edifying discourse in the context of the modern research university. As Dennett puts it: all the achievements of human culture – language, art, religion, ethics, science itself – are themselves artifacts … of the same fundamental process. There is no special creation of language, and neither art nor religion has a literally divine inspiration. If there are no skyhooks needed to make a skylark, there are no skyhooks needed to make an ode to a nightingale. No meme is an island. (Dennett 1995, 144) Dennett is well aware that cultural artifacts are the products of intention and that intentionality comes from minds, but he shows that this does not make cultural artifacts any the less artifactual. To do so would be to make mind itself a mystery and the source of mystery, he writes, “by making a metaphysical principle of a fact of recent natural history” (205), for human minds are non-miraculous products of evolution, and, consequently, “in the requisite sense [are] artifacts, and all their powers must have an ultimately ‘mechanical’ explanation” (370). As Dennett explains, “[w]e are descended from macro[molecules] and made of macro[molecules], and nothing we can do is anything beyond the power of huge assemblies of macro[molecules] (assembled in space and time)” (370-371). In saying this, Dennett is not claiming that we see the full-blown agency of intentional action “with the representation of reasons, deliberation, reflection, and conscious decision” when we look “through the microscope of molecular biology.” Yet he insists that it is only through that microscope that we get to see the birth of all such full-blown agency, for it is only in the first macro-molecules with sufficient complexity to be able to do things, as he points out, that we see “the only possible ground from which the seeds of intentional action could grow” (202). Nor does invocation of a Giddens-like double hermeneutic as distinctive of “humanistic social science accounts of human behavior,” and of Dawson’s attempt to ground “humanistic religious explanations” in a triple hermeneutic involving extraordinary and supernatural realities.

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Dennett deny that there is a vast difference between human beings and all other species, but that difference is not, he argues, of an ontological character; human beings are still artifacts of nature, and human intentionality, although real, is still “an effect of millions of years of mindless algorithmic R and D instead of a gift from on high” (427). It is rather the case that human beings possess “an extra medium of design preservation and design communication” (338); a biological phenomenon we call culture. And even though other species have the rudiments of culture, human beings alone “have language, the primary medium of culture” (338) that opens up “new regions of Design Space that only [human beings] are privy to” (338). And Dennett goes on to acknowledge what all human beings already know, namely, that “we have already used our new exploration vehicles to transform not only our planet, but the very process of design development that created us” (338).7

7 Dennett’s position has been severely criticized by John Searle (1984, 1998), and though the debate between the two cannot be taken up here in any detail, some comment is necessary. Like Dennett, Searle understands consciousness to be a biological phenomenon, with brain processes giving rise to consciousness. But unlike Dennett, Searle’s “biological naturalism” does not reduce consciousness to the level of the material; rather, he sees consciousness as “a higher level feature of the brain.” For Searle, therefore, both consciousness and intentionality are “at one and the same time completely material and irreducibly mental” (1998, 69). And given that intentionality is the special aspect of mind by means of which human beings can relate to the world, it is a form of causation radically different from the physical and, therefore, requires an approach that distinguishes it from the explanatory approach of the natural sciences. The argument here is but a continuation of that elaborated earlier in his Minds, Brains, and Science (1984), namely, that there is a gap between brain and mind that requires explanation of the mind, and its products (culture), in a different fashion from that used to explain the physical world. As he puts it: The main step in the argument for a radical discontinuity between the social sciences and the natural sciences depends on the mental character of social phenomena … The radical discontinuity between the sociological and psychological disciplines on the one hand and the natural sciences on the other derives from the role of mind in these disciplines. (Searle 1984, 79) Although Searle acknowledges that the physical sciences demystified the natural world, and, analogously, recognizes that mind and consciousness are not beyond the reach of scientific investigation, he nevertheless makes of consciousness and intentionality peculiar (that is, completely material and irreducibly mental) phenomena that are scientifically inexplicable (that is, requiring special sciences not dependent upon the natural sciences). Mind – consciousness and intentionality – is, therefore, an inexplicable mystery for, as Searle puts it: [O]nce we have explained the causal basis of consciousness in terms of the firing of neurons in the thalamus and the various cortical layers, or, for that matter, in terms of quarks or muons, it seems [unlike the explanations of mitosis or meiosis, or digestion] we still have a phenomenon left over. In the case of consciousness, we have an irreducible subjective element left over after we have given a complete causal account of the neurobiological basis. (Searle 1998, 55)

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It would appear, therefore, that Harrison is not guilty of exaggeration in claiming for Darwin the status of founder of the scientific – explanatory – approach to the study of religion. Evolutionary psychology, as Jerome Barkow, Dennett’s response to Searle’s views (in Minds, Brains, and Science) is to show how Searle’s claims for the mysterious nature of the mind (Searle 1984, 14) – based as it is on the distinction between intrinsic (or original) and derived intentionality – is without justification, and that it blocks further scientific investigation of the mind. Dennett, to the contrary, argues that intentionality is not inexplicable, but rather that properly understanding the intentionality characteristic of robotic behavior reveals “that within its world of merely derived intentionality we can show the very distinction that inspired the contrast between original and derived intentionality in the first place” (Dennett 1995, 54). That is, “it shows that derived intentionality can be derived from derived intentionality [and] … how an illusion of intrinsic intentionality (metaphysically original intentionality) could arise” (ibid.). A position similar to Searle’s can be found in McGinn 1999. McGinn maintains that “[t]he mind is simply not a combinatorial product of the brain [so that] [t]he conscious state does not have an internal structure that is defined by its physical underpinnings” (58). Therefore he calls his position “mysterianism,” because understanding consciousness simply cannot be a project within normal science (59). McGinn does not, however, think consciousness is an objective miracle, but rather that it remains a mystery because of the limitations of our cognitive capacities (70). Unlike Searle, however, McGinn does not seem to suggest that understanding mind or its products requires transcendence of the natural and behavioral sciences, for, as he puts it, “[w]hat we are pleased to call ‘civilization’ is basically biological overspill …” (42). (For a contrary opinion on McGinn see Pinker 1997, 560-565.) Roger Penrose, in Shadows of the Mind (1994), it seems to me, presented a view somewhat along the lines one finds in Searle and McGinn, based on the fact that mathematical understanding (e.g., Gödel’s theorem) cannot always be reduced to computation. As he puts it, “[o]nce it is shown that certain types of mathematical understanding must elude computational skill, then it is established that we can do something non-computational with our minds” (51). Nevertheless, unlike McGinn, and Searle, Penrose accepts neither “mysterianism” nor some form of idealism, and he argues that consciousness can be understood only in association with physical objects like the brain (214). Although we do not presently have a scientific explanation of mind and consciousness in terms of our current knowledge of physics and biology, Penrose insists that “we must search more deeply within the actual physical ‘material’ structures that constitute brains – and also more deeply into the very question of what a ‘material’ structure, at the quantum level, actually is!” (350-51). Whether a view of physics which accepts two kinds of physical law – one at the micro-level and one at the level of phenomena – constitutes reasonable grounds for explaining the supposed non-computational behavior of human minds, however, is widely disputed by philosophers and scientists. Nevertheless, Penrose, though arguing for the “specialness” of mind here, does not, as Dennett correctly notes, sink to mystery-mongering (446) that places the mind (consciousness, intentionality) beyond the pale of scientific understanding. We are no more at “the end of our cognitive rope” here, as Steven Pinker puts it, than we are in physics, given Richard Feynman’s comment that “If you think you understand quantum theory, you don’t understand quantum theory” (Pinker 2002, 239). “Thus, even though “[o]ur intuitions about life and mind, like our intuitions about matter and space, may have run up against a strange world forged by our best science …, [w]e [nevertheless] have every reason to believe that consciousness and decision making arise from the electrochemical activity of neural networks in the brain” (239-240).

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Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby put it in the Introduction to the essays in The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, not only brings to light the information-processing mechanisms of which the mind is comprised, but in doing so, “supplies the necessary connection between evolutionary biology and the complex, irreducible social and cultural phenomena studied by anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and historians” (Barkow et al. 1992, 3). A proper understanding of mind and culture, therefore, as they point out, requires us to cross disciplinary boundaries, and they urge scientists to overcome their disciplinary xenophobia reflected in charges of “intellectual imperialism” and “reductionism,” and push forward with integrating the natural, behavioral, and social sciences. In the long opening essay, ‘The Psychological Foundations of Culture,’ Tooby and Cosmides mount a detailed critique of the ‘Standard Social Science Model’ dominant in the study of cultural phenomena and argue the merits of an ‘Integrated Causal Model’ that by locating the social scientists’ object of study “inside the larger network of scientific knowledge” (Tooby & Cosmides 1992, 23) opens it to a causal account and so disenchants it; that is, the Integrated Causal Model shows that the assumption of the sui generis character of the cultural is unnecessary and the belief that understanding the cultural requires a special approach distinct from that of the natural sciences is unwarranted.8 And cognitive archaeologist Steven

8 This is what E. O. Wilson calls consilience (1998): “a ‘jumping together’ of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across the disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation” (8). Consilience, that is, assumes that the world is orderly and can be explained with a relatively small number of laws (4). Science, that is, is fundamentally reductionistic, and without reductionism, consilience is impossible. And, like Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby, Wilson considers the Standard Social Science Model of inquiry fundamentally misdirected, for it takes culture to be “an independent phenomenon irreducible to elements of biology and psychology, [and, consequently], the product of environment and historical antecedents” (188). He does not deny that social science is genuinely scientific “when pursued descriptively and analytically,” but claims that “social theory is not yet true theory” (188) because the social sciences “have not yet crafted a web of causal explanation that successfully cuts down through the levels of organization from society to mind and brain” (189). Consilience, he maintains, has characterized the natural sciences virtually from the time of their emergence, and he claims – rightly so, in my judgment – that it is now accepted in evolutionary biology and the brain sciences. And these later disciplines, he claims, offer a natural bridge to both the social sciences and the humanities. As he puts it, “The main thrust of the consilience world view … is that culture and hence the unique qualities of the human species will make complete sense only when linked in causal explanation to the natural sciences, [especially] [b]iology [which] is the most proximate and hence relevant of the scientific disciplines” (267). [On this score see also Steven Pinker’s claims about the entanglement of the Standard Social Science Model with the doctrine of the blank slate theory of the human mind that still dominates much contemporary thinking both inside and outside the academy (2002, 16-17).

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Mithen has provided a persuasive causal account of the cultural in terms of the evolutionary development of the human mind in his The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion, and Science (Mithen 1996). Although I do not want to claim here that an indubitable case can be made for an approach to the study of culture that divides it into exclusively naturalistic and edifying endeavours, I suggest that the Darwinism of Harrison, Dennett, and the others lends a greater degree of plausibility to the ‘Integrated Causal Model’ for the study of cultural phenomena than that attached to the view of the Geisteswissenschaften as special, autonomous, sciences. Even Schneider who, as I pointed out above, seems to want to make a case for the enchantment of cultural studies, appears to acknowledge this, for late in the development of his argument he admits that dividing cultural studies in this fashion is achievable in principle, but not at the present time. Schneider admits, for example, that E. D. Hirsch’s notion of intention makes a scientific study of culture possible because it provides a referential context that allows for a determinate theoretical aim, namely, the attainment of truth. As he puts it, “it suggests that everything about culture is in principle explicable, since all of it is borne by natural processes investigatable beneath the semantic level” (Schneider 1993, 155). Hirsch, claims Schneider, admits that knowing the intentional basis of sublime and ineffable cultural products does not reduce their sublimity or ineffability to something else, but rather leaves open the possibility for a literary interpretation of those cultural phenomena without making what they mean appropriate objects of knowledge, since it is impossible to get the physical dimensions of culture to line up with their apparent meanings. And this makes it clear that in the consideration of culture, there are legitimate goals besides the acquisition of knowledge and this, Schneider Ilkka Pyysiäinen’s recent (unpublished) paper, ‘What Is It Like To Be A Believer?,’ presents a complex argument in support of such consilience, including even the explanation of religion. Along with Tooby and Cosmides, Pyysiäinen insists that our physical and biological nature is not irrelevant to understanding the culture we produce, even though this explanatory strategy cannot “explain what it is like to have certain kinds of beliefs and experiences and to engage in certain kinds of behaviours…” (14). This is not a shortcoming of the explanatory strategy, however, because “having” the experiences and beliefs of another “is not a question of explanation at all” (14). Nevertheless, Pyysiäinen maintains that speculation about – describing – the subjective experience of the religious person is not irrelevant to the scientist’s task, and he argues that “we should direct our efforts to explaining religious experience from a second-person, heterophenomenological perspective, rather than only interpreting it” (15). Although I find much of Pyysiäinen’s argument persuasive, I have some reservations about his claims regarding the need to know “what it feels like” to be religious as an element in the description of religion.

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maintains, may suggest that there is some justification for the claim that we cannot fully “understand” or grasp (experience) culture by means of science alone. Schneider, however, also argues that “[t]his continued openness does not show naturalism as failing, as somehow coming up short with regard to culture; on the contrary, it might meet with complete success, but in the process reveals an aspect of culture it simply makes no sense to pursue in naturalistic terms” (159). Thus, even though the naturalistic and explanatory agenda of science may be complementary and compatible with the edifying practice of the interpreters of culture, the two practices are epistemically/cognitively incommensurable and cannot be blended. Thus, concludes Schneider: The study of intentions allows us to explain cultural artifacts according to naturalistic canons, thus disenchanting them, while edifying inquiry into their meaning would occur in a register that does not provoke enchantment in the first place. If the ambiguous middle ground – where strange phenomena are presently discovered by virtuoso practitioners of the interpretive ‘sciences’ – were to be abandoned, the study of culture would become disenchanted.9 (167) Nevertheless, as Schneider correctly points out, these two aims are often pursued in the same academic discipline and by the scholar who does not foreswear using the results of his or her scientific research to determine the (real) meaning of cultural objects. To separate the two aims, as Schneider puts it, for many scholars, is to force upon the field of cultural studies an aesthetically unappealing choice between “a banausic explanatory science and an ingenious but perhaps insubstantial hermeneutics” (203-204). Such scholars, therefore, are likely to believe that because naturalistic and edifying practices are commensurable, they can be blended, and they are likely, therefore, to blur methodological and procedural matters to achieve that blending. Thus, Schneider claims, “it is likely that virtuosi will endure, encouraging new efforts to occupy the space between science and edification – and enchanting us in the process” (204). There can be little doubt that the study of culture in general, (and the study of religion in particular) is currently dominated by virtuoso scholars who pursue knowledge and edification as if they were the same goal (or at least inseparable goals). But that the virtuosi will endure is clearly not beyond doubt,

9 Interesting possibilities in this regard are also suggested by Mark Turner’s thesis of parable as the root of the human mind in his The Literary Mind (1996).

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as Schneider himself has conceded. Unlike Schneider – for the reasons set out above – I think the recent developments in evolutionary psychology and the cognitive sciences provide every indication of disclosing those structures of mind and society that give rise to the “mercurial meanings” so beloved by the virtuosi. And in actively embracing the conceptual integration of the sciences – that is, in assuming the unity of the sciences – cultural and religious studies gain a degree of theoretical sophistication that has until recently eluded them. Within that framework, the social and cultural sciences are no longer “loose congeries of independent insights,” as Schneider suggests, but rather constitute knowledge linked through “a parsimonious set of underlying principles” (169). As Dennett puts it with respect to Darwinism: “Life and all its glories are thus united under a single perspective” (Dennett 1995, 141). This does not “explain away” the phenomena, as the virtuosi claim, but it does demystify them by its commitment to a non-question begging form of thought that refuses to countenance what has been called a “brutely emergent teleology” (Smith 1992, 3). Thus, conceptually integrated with the natural and behavioral sciences, the study of religion can clarify its referential field and clearly place its subject matter into the naturalistic register, thereby assisting it in managing the massive amount of information involved. Furthermore, related to the other sciences, the study of religion takes on a new structure and organization (the creation of societies and journals, for example, dedicated to promoting the scientific study of religious phenomena) that can assist it in policing its cognitive boundaries, and can exclude consideration of enchanted phenomena. The conceptual integration of the study of religion with the natural and behavioral sciences, moreover, reinforces the demarcation of the academic study of religion from the religio-theological approaches to the meaning of religion that preceded it. Although in the Åbo paper referred to above, I claimed that few students of religion have a cogent idea of what constitutes scientific knowledge of religion, and that we have been unable to frame a research program that can unify the field, I now think that was a rather pessimistic response to the overwhelming number of scholars in associations like the American Academy of Religion who claim academic status as students of religion but essentially take Religious Studies to be an edifying discourse. As in the nineteenth century, so now, Darwinism makes possible a scientific study of religion: a study of religion using only this-worldly categories provided by the development of evolutionary psychology and the cognitive sciences; a study of religion that goes beyond mere description to an explanatory account, not only of the emergence and development of religion, but also of its effect in and on the world. And the number of students in the field electing to work within such a framework has

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steadily increased over the past decade. If this refounding of the scientific study of religion in the last decade of the twentieth century is to persist, however, students in the field will have to forego claims to autonomy and recognize the deep dependence of Religious Studies upon the natural and behavioral sciences.10

Bibliography Ben Agger, Critical Social Theory: An Introduction, Boulder, Colo., Westview, 1998 . Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides & John Tooby, ‘Introduction: Evolutionary Psychology and Conceptual Integration,’ in The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, ed. by Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides & John Tooby, pp. 3-15, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992. Donald Bates, Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical Traditions, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995. Peter B. Clarke & Peter Byrne, Religion Defined and Explained, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1995. Jane Ellen Harrison, ‘The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion,’ in Darwin and Modern Science: Essays in Commemoration of the Centenary of the Birth of Charles Darwin and of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Publication of ‘The Origin of Species,’ ed. by Albert Charles Seward, pp. 494-511, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1909. Robert Neil McCauley, ‘Comparing the Cognitive Foundations of Religion and Science,’ Report #37 (26 pages), Emory Cognition Project, Atlanta, Ga., Department of Psychology, Emory University, 1998. Colin McGinn, The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World, New York, Basic Books, 1999. Steven Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion, and Science, London, Thames and Hudson, 1996. Roger Penrose, Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994. 10

Ilkka Pyysiäinen’s recent How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion (2001) provides a marvelous account of recent developments in the academic or scientific study of religion, and it constitutes a helpful compendium of scholars working on religion from within such a scientific framework. Most of the scholars referred to in this work find their homes in departments of anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, and elsewhere in the university, but it is clear that they are beginning to have a major, positive, effect upon students in Religious Studies.

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Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1994. Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, New York, Viking, 2002. Ilkka Pyysiäinen, How Religion Works: Towards a Cognitive Science of Religion, Cognition and Culture Book Series 1, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 2001. Ilkka Pyysiäinen, ‘What is it Like to be a Believer? Understanding vs. Explanation in the Study of Religion,’ in his Magic, Miracles, and Religion: A Scientist’s Perspective, pp. 1-27, New York, Altamira Press, 2004. Mark A. Schneider, Culture and Enchantment, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993. John Searle, Minds, Brains, and Science, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1984. John Searle, Mind, Language, and Society: Philosophy in the Real World, New York, Basic Books, 1998. Eric J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History, 2nd edition, London, Duckworth Press, 1986. Peter Smith, ‘Modest Reflections and the Unity of Science,’ in Reduction, Explanation, and Realism, ed. by David Charles and Kathleen Lennon, pp. 19-43, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992. Rodney Stark & Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001. John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, ‘The Psychological Foundations of Culture,’ in Barkow et al., pp. 19-136, 1992. Mark Turner, The Literary Mind, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996. Donald Wiebe, ‘The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion,’ Studies in Religion, 13 (1984), 401-422. Reprinted in Wiebe, pp. 141-162, 1999a. Donald Wiebe, ‘Disciplinary Axioms, Boundary Conditions, and the Academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals and Dawson,’ Religion, 20 (1) (1990), 40-50. Donald Wiebe, The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict With Theology in the Academy, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1999a. Donald Wiebe, ‘Why the Academic Study of Religion? Motive and Method in the Study of Religion,’ Reprinted from Religious Studies, 24 (1988), 403-418 with a new concluding commentary (pp. 272-279) on pp. 261-279 in Secular Theories of Religion: A Selection of Recent Academic Perspectives, ed. by Mikael Rothstein and Tim Jensen, Copenhagen, Tusculanum Press, 1999b. Donald Wiebe, ‘Appropriating Religion: Understanding Religion as an Object of Science,’ in Approaching Religion, Part I, ed. by Tore Ahlbäck, Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis XVII: 1, pp. 253-272, Åbo, Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History, 1999c.

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Donald Wiebe, ‘‘Understanding’ in Religious Studies: A Gnostic Aberration in the Modern Study of Religion,’ Fujen Religious Studies, 5 (2002), 15-56. Edward Osborne Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.

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Part 3 In Defence of a Science of Religion

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Chapter 11

‘Why the Academic Study of Religion?’: Motive and Method in the Study of Religion Donald Wiebe

The methodological implications of the motives that underlie the study of religion and, more particularly, the academic study of religion, have not, I think, received the attention they deserve. They are of the utmost importance, however, for the differences of motivation between the study of religion, legitimated by the modern university and the scholarly study of religion that antedates it, and sponsor radically different, if not mutually exclusive, approaches to its study. In asking why the study of religion is undertaken as an academic exercise – which is, after all, a comparatively recent development – I shall be attempting to delineate, to some extent, the relation of motive to method in what has come to be called Religious Studies.1 In clarifying that relation, I hope also to show that Religious Studies – that is, the academic study of religion – must be a vocation in very much the same sense that Max Weber speaks of science as a vocation2 and, therefore, that such study must take as merely preliminary a ‘Religious Studies’ that is concerned only to ‘understand’ rather than to explain the phenomenon of religion.3

1 I use the capitalized phrase ‘Religious Studies’ to designate the political reality of academic departments, schools, centres, institutes, etc. and not to characterize the style or approach of the study undertaken. 2 Max Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation’ in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946: 129-156). It was originally published in Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tübingen, 1922: 524-555). I use the notion of ‘vocation’ not, obviously, in its religious sense, but rather to emphasize the stark contrast in aims and intentions between a ‘religious calling’ and a ‘scientific career.’ 3 I have given brief attention to this contrast in my ‘Explanation and the Scientific Study of Religion,’ Religion, v ( 1 975) and ‘Theory and the Study of Religion,’ Religion, xiii (1983). The position espoused is the precise opposite to that of D. L. Dougherty in ‘Is Religious Studies Possible?’ in Religious Studies, xvii (1981: 295-309, especially p. 308).

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Wiebe Justifying the Enterprise

The scholarly study of religion, as is well known, has a very long history.4 Much, if not all, of that study was religiously motivated; it was – and for many still is – a religious exercise designed for, or directed to, the betterment of the individual, and is ultimately concerned with ‘salvation.’ The ultimate goal of salvation is not, however, the only motivating factor to be found as justification of this enterprise. There were (are) other lesser, but in some sense contributory, goals that have implicitly grounded or been consciously invoked as justification for such study. Such motivations are not easily discerned, however, for they are not always consciously and explicitly espoused. Recognition of the psychological, cultural, and political roles religion has played in society, and of its continuing importance in those respects in our own context, seems for many to imply that the study of religion ought to be undertaken as support to religion in its manifold tasks – that is, that it ought to complement religion. Religion has been, and still is, absolutely necessary, it is argued, for personality integration, and contributes significantly to human personal development. Not only has religion provided individual identity, it has been the ‘glue,’ so to speak, that has provided the cohesiveness necessary to social/societal existence. And a study of religion that fails to recognize these values, and the truth of religion upon which they rest, it is then maintained, is obviously misdirected; it is at best but wasted effort if not, in fact, destructive. This implies, of course, that the study of religion is not understood as an exercise undertaken in and for itself but rather that it is to be seen as an instrument for the preservation of religion and its presumed beneficial effects. The purpose for the study, that is, lies outside itself, being found only in ‘the truth of religion,’ however that phrase is interpreted. And it should be noted that such aims for the study characterise not only the individual engaged in that work, but also the institutional structures that make the scholarly study of religion possible. Such argument provides an answer to the question ‘Why the study of religion?’ but not, I suggest, to the question why one might, more specifically, undertake the academic (or scientific) study of religion as established within the university curriculum. Neither is it the only answer possible, nor the most 4 The scholarly study of religion has a rather long history and it should be clearly distinguished from the narrower, more academic interest in religious phenomena that emerged in, roughly, the last quarter of the nineteenth century. See, e.g., Eric J. Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History (London: Duckworth, 1975), or Jan de Vries’ The Study of Religion: A Historical Approach (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1967).

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persuasive. Indeed, even though it gives some indication of the pragmatic value the study of religion might have, the argument does not really answer the question satisfactorily since it seems to involve a non sequitur of sorts. It is quite possible, that is, for religion to be of benefit to individual and society without being true; the benefits of religion do not necessarily rest upon the cognitive truth of religion’s claims even though they may depend upon the belief by the devotees that those claims are (cognitively) true.5 It is clear, that is, that the benefits religion has conferred, or now confers, upon individual and/or society may be achieved in other, and possibly better, ways. To assume that the study of religion ought to be the ally of religion is not immediately obvious and therefore hardly the only grounds on which to base the study of religion. It must be recognized that knowledge of the falsity of religion – should that be the case – would also make the study of religion of pragmatic value since it would permit its manipulation for the benefit of individual and society, or its replacement for the benefit of individual and society, or its replacement with superior ‘social mechanisms’ for the fulfillment of such psychological or social needs. It seems that exactly that kind of argument is raised, for example, with regard to the study of magical and astrological systems of belief. The effects of such beliefs on numerous societies have not been invoked as indicative of the truth of the claims made, except by the faithful, nor that a study of those claims ought to be involved in promoting the results achieved through such systems of belief. There is no assumption here, that is, of the sui generis character of such systems of experience and belief and consequently no argument for the recognition of, say, Magiewissenschaft as a new discipline or call for the establishment of departments of magic or astrology. (As I recall, Brian Magee once raised the question ‘If departments of religion why not departments of Magic?’ on the BBC and, I think, quite rightly so). The 5 Important here is Peter Munz’s distinction between ‘catechismic’ and ‘cognitive’ beliefs. Beliefs, that is, function not only cognitively but socially (i.e., non-cognitively). Beliefs have often survived falsification, he points out, because they constituted a catechism that served as a social bond amongst members of the group. Indeed, the catechismic function of beliefs depends upon the incorrectness of the beliefs: “To form small groups distinct from other small groups of the same biological species – to form pseudo-species – it was necessary to use propositional knowledge which differed essentially from propositional knowledge similarly used by another group. Only ‘false’ knowledge can, in this sense, be sufficiently exclusive of beings which belong to the same biological species. ‘Correct’ knowledge would not have been able to provide a criterion of exclusion, for correct knowledge could be shared by members of other societies” (Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge, London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1985: 300). Membership of such a society, that is, depends on members being able to give not the correct answer to a genuinely cognitive question but rather the ‘correct’ answer to a catechismic question.

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postulation of the sui generis character of religion but not of magic, it appears, rests on the uncritical assumption that religion, in some fundamental sense, is True while magic (astrology, etc.) is not. Indeed, if this is not the assumption that implicitly grounds that postulation, the explicitly acknowledged grounds for establishing departments of religion referred to above, namely religion’s profound impact upon individuals and society, constitute adequate grounds for the creation of departments of magic – that is, for academically legitimating what we might analogously refer to as ‘Magical Studies.’ Concern for the practical value of religion, therefore, is not the same as the concern for the truth of religion in any cognitive sense. Indeed, understanding how religion has functioned in various societies constitutes knowledge about religion that is wholly independent of knowledge as to the truth or falsity of religious claims. Moreover, such mundane, objective knowledge is the only ground on which the pragmatic value of Religious Studies could be predicated short of presuming that the discipline can provide one with the insights of the religious experience itself. Furthermore, its pragmatic value would then be a matter of ‘political’ action based on the knowledge gained and not intrinsic to the study itself. It may motivate the individual to undertake the study of religion but does not constitute the raison d’etre of the discipline itself. And it is the failure to recognize this that has been the bane of the academic study of religion which, like other academic enterprises, sees itself as a scientific and not a ‘political vocation.’

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Max Weber and the Scientific Vocation

I have, in the preceding discussion, made reference to Religious Studies as a vocation. I have done so deliberately for it seems to me that much that Max Weber had to say of ‘science as a vocation’ is applicable to the academic study of religion. Even his discussion of vocation in ‘the material sense of the term’ – that is, to put it bluntly, with respect to the job prospects of the scholar – has a direct bearing on the religion graduate although I do not wish to focus attention on those matters here. What is pertinent, rather, is his discussion of ‘the inward calling for science’ which is inextricably bound up with what Weber refers to as the disenchantment of the world – with a recognition that meaning is the product of human creativity. Weber maintains that discussion of ‘the inward calling for science’ is of no assistance in answering the question as to the value or meaning of science within the total life of humanity, nor with ascertaining how one ought to live. Such questions are of a logically different order. Indeed, vocation in the sense of an inward calling for science presumes

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science is not directed toward answering such questions – that such questions, to rephrase the point, are not scientific questions. Rather, science presupposes that what is yielded by scientific work is important in the sense that it is “worth being known,” although Weber admits that this presupposition itself cannot be proved by scientific means.6 It is simply a matter of historical fact that aims such as these have emerged in the development of Western culture.7 The emergence of the desire for objective knowledge of ‘the world,’ that is, constitutes the introduction of a radically new value into human culture. Weber then proceeds to show, moreover, that where personal or societal value judgments are introduced into a scientific endeavor, there full understanding of the facts ceases and the inward calling for science is dissipated and science destroyed. Science is a vocation, then, in the exclusive service of, as Weber puts it, the self-clarification of ideas and knowledge of interrelated facts. “It is not,” he writes, “the gift of grace of seers and prophets dispensing sacred values and revelations, nor does it partake of contemplation of sages and philosophers about the meaning of the universe.”8 It is simply a human activity with a peculiar – recent – intentionality, so to speak. And what he has to say of the natural sciences applies, mutatis mutandis, to the social sciences including those focused on religious phenomena. He writes of the former: The natural sciences, for instance physics, chemistry, and astronomy, presuppose as self-evident that it is worthwhile to know the ultimate laws of cosmic events as far as science can construe them. This is the case not only because with such knowledge one can attain technical results but for its own sake, if the quest for such knowledge is to be a ‘vocation.’ Yet 6 Max Weber, op. cit. p. 143. 7 The desire for ‘objective knowledge’ – what we might refer to as ‘cognitive intentionality’ – first emerges in Presocratic Greece. Belief/knowledge, that is, was released from the noncognitive/social function it had until then fulfilled in the structuring of a cohesive group. Changes in the economic, political, and social complex of ancient Greek society provided opportunity for a truly cognitive apparatus to develop. Alternative kinds of social bonding, however, had not emerged so that the cognitive and non-cognitive uses of belief operated side by side. Nevertheless, the emergence of the more purely cognitive intentionality is the emergence of a new value that, like life itself, is its own justification. I have argued this claim in some detail in my unpublished essay ‘In Two Minds: Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Greece.’ G. Thomson catches the ambiguity that must have existed by noting that scientists and philosophers were only one section of the ruling class in Miletus and that they functioned in society at two distinct levels. Thus he writes: ‘These Milesian nobles had outgrown superstition in their private lives, but there was no question of abandoning it [religion/theology] as an instrument of public policy. [Aeschylus and Athens, (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1973/1941: 152)] 8 Max Weber, op. cit. p. 152.

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Wiebe this presupposition can by no means be proved. And still less can it be proved that the existence of the world which these sciences describe is worthwhile; that it has any ‘meaning,’ or that it makes sense to live in such a world. Science does not ask for answers to such questions.9

The academic or scientific study of religion is, I would argue, simply one of several special areas into which the scientific vocation of which Weber speaks is organized and that, like the others, it seeks self-clarification and knowledge of interrelated facts. What I shall attempt to do in the remainder of this essay, therefore, is to give a precise formulation of the aim of the study of religion qua study and to explicate the implications this has for the method of that study and how the subject ought to be taught in the academic/university setting.10

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‘The Authority of the Fact’

To put the matter somewhat tautologically, the academic study of religion must be undertaken for academic – that is, purely scientific/intellectual – reasons and not as instrumental in the achievement of religious, cultural, political or other ends. This means, quite simply, that the academic/scientific study of religion must aim only at understanding religion where ‘understanding’ is mediated through an intersubjectively testable set of statements about religious phenomena and religious traditions. As with any other scientific enterprise, therefore, the academic study of religion aims at public knowledge of public facts; and religions are important public facts. It is subject first and foremost to ‘the authority of the fact,’ although not thereby positivistically enslaved, so to speak, to ‘a cult of the fact’ as my comments below on the role of theory in that study will clearly demonstrate. Religion, it must be recognized, is a form of human activity and therefore like any other form of human activity can become the object of human reflection. This does not, of course, imply that persons who are religiously committed cannot be scientific students of religion or, for that matter, that Marxist atheists ought to be excluded from departments of Religious Studies. What it does imply, however, is that the value systems by which such individuals may be personally motivated to undertake the study of religion not be allowed to 9 10

Ibid. pp. 143-4. Although my concern here is primarily with research and teaching in this field in the university setting, it seems to me that it applies, in all essentials, to the teaching of religion at the primary and secondary levels as well, although I shall not argue that matter here.

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determine the results of their research. What is at issue here is the matter of what we might call ‘the institutional commitment’ that characterises the academic study of religion – that is, the commitment to achieve intersubjectively testable knowledge about religion(s) free of the influence of personal idiosyncratic bias or extraneous social/political aims. That ‘institutional commitment’ is a kind of epistemic morality – commitment to what can reasonably be called ‘the morality of scientific knowledge.’11 ‘Morality’ here does not refer to the moral effects scientific knowledge may or may not have – the uses to which scientific knowledge may be put – as important as that may be, but rather the ‘behaviour’ required for the achievement of the goal of ‘public knowledge of public facts.’ It concerns, in effect, the ‘internal morality of knowledge’ rather than the morality of the external effects of knowledge and the way knowledge is put to use. And like Kant’s perception that action undertaken for any reason except as an act of a virtuous will constitutes not a moral but rather a prudential act, so also an act of ‘scientific discovery’ undertaken for extra-scientific reasons produces ideology and not knowledge. That the scientific enterprise has extra-scientific significance is no surprise, but the suggestion that that extra-scientific value should determine the shape of the scientific enterprise is. It is, I would argue, an attempt to return from ‘the open’ to ‘the closed’ society.12 The goal of the academic study of religion, therefore, to reiterate, is an understanding of the phenomena/phenomenon of religion ‘contained in’ scientifically warrantable claims about religion and religious traditions. Without intersubjectively testable statements about religions, both at the level of particular descriptive accounts of the data and at the level of generalizations with respect to the data, no scientific understanding can be achieved.

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The concept of an ‘epistemic morality’ or ‘morality of scientific knowledge’ is quite appropriate, although I do not here provide justification for its use. I refer the reader here to the use of that notion in the philosophical literature. See references, e.g. in my ‘Is Religious Belief Problematic’ Christian Scholar’s Review, vii (1977) pp. 33-52; especially note 5, p. 25. My use of these notions follows that of K. R. Popper in his two volume The Open Society and its Enemies, (New York: Harper and Row, 1962) and in the essays in Conjectures and Refutations, (New York: Harper and Row, I 963). I am not unaware of that vast body of literature from the Frankfurt School and other ‘hermeneutical’ type enterprises that argue the contrary claim. To argue the weaknesses of those claims here, however, is not possible. A good hint as to how such an argument might be developed, however, can be found in B. Nelson’s comments on Habermas in his ‘On the Origins of Modernity: The Author’s Point of View,’ in his On the Roads to Modernity: Conscience, Science, and Civilization, T. E. Huff (ed.) (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981).

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At the simplest logical level, the student of religion functions somewhat like the scientific naturalist with a concern to collect, describe, and classify the phenomena observed. (Being aware all the while, of course, that a mere accumulation of data does not, in itself, constitute a science).13 The range of data, obviously, is enormous, involving rites, rituals, beliefs, practices, art, architecture, music, and so on. Some depth of perspective in the descriptive accounts is provided in relating it to the field of events and structures of which it is a part; in comparing it to similar phenomena in other cultural and social contexts; and in providing at least a narrative account of its emergence and historical development. This work is carried out primarily within the framework of the positive historical and philological disciplines, but does not exhaust the task of description. The work of the phenomenologist, the hermeneut, and the ‘historian of religions’ (in the broad sense of that phrase) in their concern for the meaning they think religious behaviour – beliefs, practice, rites, rituals, etc. – has for the devotee who participates in the tradition, adds something new to the surface description of that tradition. Such ‘thick description’ as it has been called,14 increases understanding of overt actions seen without reference to how they are ‘taken’ by the participant (i.e. ‘seen’ from the participant’s point of view). The work of such students of religion is, as one might expect, much more of an imaginative activity than that of the positive historian or philologist. The results of their work are much less exact. The act of interpretation is, in some sense, the imposition of an external construction and, therefore, never likely to replicate exactly the participant’s understanding of the phenomenon concerned. It will, consequently, be intrinsically incomplete and open to debate, although not on that account totally without merit, for such ‘constructions’ are not simply arbitrary but rather controlled by the context of information provided by the more positive sciences. That it does not allow the same degree of certitude that is to be found in the surface and depth descriptions of the other disciplines, does not imply that the question of meaning can simply be ignored, but rather that the student here will have to be satisfied with the more probable and plausible constructions and be willing to entertain alternatives to those constructions without overmuch fuss.15

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See, for example, D. Sperber, On Anthropological Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985: 11). This notion is borrowed from C. Geertz’s ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,’ in his The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973: 3-30). On this score I am very much in agreement with D. Sperber’s discussion of the nature of interpretation in ethnology. Interpretations are a species of nondescriptive representation of a culture based on a subjective understanding by the researcher. They are, Sperber

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It needs to be emphasized here that this concern with meaning and ‘thick description’ has nothing to do with speculative or intuitive insight as to the ‘real meaning’ or truth of religion – its ultimate meaning that comes from a knowledge of the ultimate ontological status of the ‘religious realities’ as known by the participant within the tradition. Nor has it any kinship with direct, intuitive insight of the religiously perceptive student of religion. The meaning that holds the interest of the academic student of religion, rather, is a psychological matter; it involves overtones and undertones of actions, utterances, and events as well as an attempt to understand the psychological and emotional state or condition of the devotee who claims to know such ultimate mysteries. This kind of meaning, although not obvious at the surface level of religious phenomena, is not, as I have indicated, wholly beyond the reach of reason and scientific research. Though knowledge of religion at the descriptive level is richly informative, it is not primarily that for which the student of religion strives. Indeed, an increasing flow of such information soon inundates the individual for it is simply not possible for any one person to know all the particulars of the world’s religious traditions. Like the other sciences, the study of religion seeks explanatory frameworks – theories – that account for the particulars; frameworks that permit an understanding of the multiplicity of particulars in terms of relatively few axioms and principles that can easily be held in mind. That thrust towards explanation and theory is implicit already in the descriptive and taxonomic levels that reduce ‘individuals’ to classes of things, persons, occurrences, and events. While explanations and theories transcend description, they are nevertheless also dependent upon the descriptive level of activity of the student of religion. The data that accumulates as the result of the labours of the historian and phenomenologist are, in a sense, the substance for theoretical reflection in that they are what the theorist tries to provide a coherent account of. Moreover, the theories constructed to account for the data can only be properly adjudicated over against new observational data beyond that upon which theoretical reflection has been focused. If these are the aims of the academic study of religion, then that study is structurally indistinguishable from other scientific undertakings. The academic study of religion is, then, a positive science and not a religious or metaphyssuggests, faithful to the meaning of the phenomenon rather than mirroring exactly its directly observable character. They are not, therefore, in and of themselves adequate to the phenomenon concerned but neither are they wholly useless. They can be very helpful, he insists, when combined with ‘descriptive comments’ that allow for some intersubjective assessment of their adequacy to the phenomenon in question. See Sperber, op. cit., especially chapter 1.

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ical enterprise in that it concerns itself with religion as a public fact and not a divine mystery. This does not mean that such a study must be limited to discussion of only the empirically observable behaviour of religious persons and communities – that it adopt, for example, the positivistic empiricism of a Skinnerian behaviourism.16 It merely implies that there not be ‘privileged access’ for some to the ‘data’; that whatever does lie ‘beyond’ the empirically observable – whether that be the interior experience of the devotee or the ‘intentional object’ of that experience – be somehow ‘intersubjectively available’ for scrutiny and analysis. And that, it seems to me, presents no problems given that the empirically available religious traditions are considered by the devotees to be expressions of their faith, which faith is constituted by their religious experience and the truth of that ‘encounter’ with ‘the ultimate,’ however it may be referred to in the various traditions. Thorough scrutiny of all aspects of the tradition, therefore, cannot but provide us some understanding as to the nature of the ‘faith’ although, quite obviously, not with the experiential quality and emotional forcefulness with which the devotee will claim to understand it.17 Thus, although there is an interior and esoteric aspect to religion, it is not wholly inaccessible to the ‘outsider’ for it can be approached from ‘the outside in.’ Moreover, should the devotee claim a superior understanding where a conflict of claims arises and do so on the basis of her/his direct personal experience of ‘the Ultimate,’ the claim will be overruled on the grounds that it resorts to the use of ‘information’ to which s/he has ‘privileged access.’ To allow such a claim to stand would be to place all understanding of religion in jeopardy (and not merely the scientific understanding of religion) since such grounds would then also be acceptable for the settling of intra-religious (and even intra-traditional) conflict of claims, as well. It is obvious, therefore, that the settlement of disputes would be achieved on highly idiosyncratic personal grounds – that is, on the basis of private religious experience – in which each and every disputant would be wholly successful. It would, in the final 16

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This is not, of course, to rule out all possibility of such a reductionism, although a reductionism somewhat less crude than such a behaviourism. I have touched on this matter in my ‘The Academic Naturalization of Religious Studies: Intent or Pretence?’ (in Studies in Religion, xv, 1986) and will not, therefore, elaborate further here. On the general question of the possibility of such reductionist moves in the social sciences, however, see especially Alexander Rosenberg’s Sociobiology and the Preemption of Social Science (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980). On this score, I find myself in serious disagreement with a number of scholars in the field. Time does not permit counter-argument here. However, grounds for the disagreement can be found in my response to a similar argument put forward by W. C. Smith: ‘The Role of Belief in the Study of Religion: A Response to W. C. Smith,’ Numen, xxvi (1979) pp. 534-549.

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analysis, then, commit us to a radical relativism that precludes all possibility of transpersonal truth claims, and with it, all possibility of a scientific (i.e., academic) study of religion. What one could then know of religion would be that which one could know of ‘faith’ and that is only known by faith and the direct encounter of ‘the Ultimate.’ To know that the essence of religion is ‘faith’ would be to know that it cannot be scientifically understood.18 This, unfortunately, is too seldom noticed by students of religion. They fail to see that such reasoning makes the study of religion possible only from within the circle of the devotee/participant, and therefore a religious rather than a scientific enterprise. The study of religion that appropriately finds its place within the university curriculum is rather that which I have sketched above. It is a critical study of a human cultural phenomenon and not a quest for some ultimate meaning or truth. It seeks ‘objective’ knowledge of a particular aspect of human culture. It is, therefore, essentially a positive, (not positivistic) social scientific endeavour that, although not necessarily behaviouristic, is nevertheless behaviouralist in its approach to religion in that it attempts to provide a public rather than a private knowledge.19

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In Search of Objective Knowledge

If the foregoing discussion is anywhere near being sound, it is obvious that the academic study of religion is, in Weber’s sense, a scientific vocation. It is the search for ‘objective’ knowledge gained – free of presuppositions – for its own sake alone. It is true, as Weber points out, that every science presupposes rules of logic and method, but such presuppositions are not of great consequence, since they are the general foundation of orientation to the world for everyone – scientist and non-scientist alike. That scientific knowledge is ‘worth searching for’ is also a presupposition of science, but obviously not one 18

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This is a fairly common argument from a purely religious/theological perspective that, it seems to me, has some merit. When it is the conclusion of an argument in support of an academically legitimated study of religion(s), however, it makes the argument in support of an academically legitimated study of religion a reductio. On the former issue see, for example, Thomas J. J. Altizer’s ‘The Religious Meaning of Myth and Symbol’ in Thomas J. J. Altizer et al (eds.), Truth, Myth, and Symbol (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1962) and on the latter see my ‘Does Understanding Religion Require Religious Understanding?’ in W. Tyloch (ed.), Current Progress in the Methodology of the Science of Religion (Warsaw: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1984/85). For possibilities of developing the argument in this direction see W. Richard Comstock, ‘A Behavioral Approach to the Sacred: Category Formation in Religious Studies.’ The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, xlix (1981) pp. 625-643.

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that can be proved scientifically, for it is that which itself establishes the enterprise. It simply is one of many values to have emerged in the growth and development of human culture. This presupposition can be interpreted with reference to its ‘ultimate meaning’ via-a-vis the ultimate position one takes up towards life as a whole, but that is something that lies beyond the boundaries of the scientific undertaking itself, including the academic study of religion. Desire for finding such ‘ultimate meaning’ in the study of religious phenomena may in fact motivate many, if not most, of those who enter upon this field. This is not extraordinary and constitutes no problem for the academic study of religion unless one attempts to make that personal aim or intention an integral and essential element of the discipline as a whole. That would be, very simply, the introduction of ‘confession’ into science, thereby distorting the essential aims of science qua science and, therefore, would be the destruction of it. Care is needed, consequently, to see that neither the rights of the individual are lost within the framework of scientific understanding, nor that science is distorted beyond all recognition by personal or societal aspirations. This can be achieved by keeping clearly distinct what ought, structurally and institutionally, to characterize the study of religion that is academically housed and legitimated from what is permissible on the level of the individual scholar’s extra-disciplinary (extra-scientific) aims and intentions for the results of that research. Weber’s point that to analyze political structures and party positions is one thing, but that to take a practical political stand quite another, is à propos here. To propagate one’s faith is not the analysis of religious phenomena. The lecture rooms of the university are wholly inappropriate for the propagation of either one’s political or religious agendas. It is simply outrageous as Weber points out, to use the power of the lecture-room, with its captive audience, for such purposes. He writes: Now one cannot demonstrate scientifically what the duty of an academic teacher is. One can only demand of the teacher that he have the intellectual integrity to see that it is one thing to state facts, to determine mathematical or logical relations or the internal structure of cultural values, while it is another thing to answer questions of the value of culture and its individual concerns and the question of how one should act in the cultural community and in political associations. These are quite heterogeneous problems. If he asks further why he should not deal with both types of problems in the lecture-room, the answer is: because the prophet and the demagogue do not belong on the academic platform.20 20

Max Weber, op. cit. p. 146.

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Similarly, the student entering upon the academic study of religion ought not to seek from the professors what the professors ought not to give. They should not, that is, crave leaders, but rather teachers. I radically disagree, therefore, with the theologian H. Cox who puts bluntly the position so widely espoused by students of religion in the Anglo-American university setting today by insisting that “the inner logic of the strictly academic approach to religious pluralism is leading it out of the academy and into the grimy world,”21 although in doing so, I do not mean to deny the value the ‘product’ of the academy may have in the ‘grimy world.’ The ‘inner logic’ of that study is that which makes it a search for objective knowledge, and, as such, a part of the academy. That knowledge, as Kurt Rudolph has so clearly pointed out, can make more than a merely intellectual and cognitive contribution. Although himself a champion of the study of religion as a positive historical science, he also notes the value of that study in the enterprise of ideology-critique which is something other than the study of religion pure and simple.22 But to discuss that sense of the vocation of Religious Studies is a matter for discussion on some other occasion. The task I set for myself in this essay was to delineate the nature of the study of religion as an academic exercise in the modern university. The aim of such a study, I have shown here, is to gain knowledge about religions and religion. Clearly, therefore, it is a scientific rather than a personal, social, or political undertaking. This is not to deny, as I have acknowledged in this essay, that the scientific study of religion may possess extra-scientific significance, but only that whatever that significance is, it falls outside the enterprise qua academic discipline.

5

Social Relevance?

I did not discuss the extra-academic aspects of the study of religion when this article was first published (1988), but I shall use the occasion of its reprinting to comment briefly on the broader value of the study of religion to society and on the broader social role (if any) of the scientific student of religion, qua scientific student of religion. I do so because of mounting pressure within the 21 22

H. Cox, Religion in the Secular City: Towards a Post-modern Theology ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984: 229). See, for example, his Historical Fundamentals and the Study of Religions (New York: Macmillan, 1985; especially chapter 4, ‘The History of Religions and the Critique of Ideologies’)

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field to demonstrate social and cultural relevance and to incite the student of religion to assume the role of ‘public intellectual.’ What is arguably of greater significance about modern science is its culturetranscending style of thought whereby knowledge of the world is gained by freeing thinkers from social, political, and cultural constraints. And while its success in matters of cognition is incontrovertible, its value as a tool for addressing human problems is open to question. As Ernest Gellner (1998) has recently pointed out, for example, science is of little help in providing a sense of belonging, a basis of obligation, and co-operation in society, or for consoling the afflicted. Gellner consequently concedes that science’s “defectiveness in these respects is as distinctive and conspicuous as is its superiority in the spheres of cognition and production” (p. 184), and he acknowledges that modern science has not had great success in theorizing “the sphere of social and human phenomena” (p. 191). But these defects do not provide grounds for an epistemology in which knowledge is gained by means of immersion in the ‘wisdom’ of cultural systems. What is at stake in the social sciences is not wisdom, value, or meaning, but knowledge, as it is in the natural sciences. The few successful extensions of science’s cognitive style into the realm of human behaviour justifies continued support for the development of an explanatory social science which may provide knowledge relevant to the resolution of human problems. But the linkage between the social sciences and human problems will be of the same order as that between the natural sciences and engineering. In Can Modernity Survive? (1990), Agnes Heller provides some interesting suggestions about how we might provide the link Gellner and others insist we find between our modern way of knowing the world and our modern values and way of life. Heller, moreover, is less pessimistic than Gellner about the extension of the new cognitive style into the social sphere and just as tenacious in advocating the scientific character of the knowledge sought by the social sciences. For Heller, extension of science to the social sphere does not entail the assumption that science is the only – or the highest – value for human society. Modernity, she argues, is characterized by “core values” but she does not attempt to provide a “single model of a supreme way of life” (p. 9), for the modern mind involves neither commitment to everything that is modern nor rejection of everything that is not. And science as quest for knowledge rather than for Truth and Meaning, embodies one such core value. “Truth [core values other than science] and true [scientific] knowledge are simply different in kind” (p. 14), she writes, even though the two may be closely connected. True (scientific) knowledge “cannot become Truth [Meaning] simply by presenting itself as true knowledge” (p. 14), she argues along Weberian lines, and scientists must not seek insight into the meaning of life in their scientific pursuits. The ‘culture sphere’ of science (over against other cultural spheres such as the Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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political, legal, aesthetic, economic, religious) stands alone, with norms and rules intrinsic to itself (p. 13): “[It] must be chosen as a vocation and not as a path leading to Truth. To offer insight into Truth through the pursuit of true [scientific] knowledge is to make a false promise, one that the social sciences have no authority to keep” (p. 15). For Heller, then, science is “core knowledge” compared to what she calls “ring knowledge” gained through particular personal and/or cultural interests and experiences, and concerned with existential matters – “meaning” and “value.” Heller argues that these two kinds of knowledge can be combined in what might be called Gesamtwissenschaft (all-embracing science) that connects (scientific) knowledge with existential concerns. She warns, however, that if the “ring knowledge” is too thick (i.e. subjective) the project will amount to a work of fiction or of ideology, and if it is too thin (i.e. objective) the “core knowledge” will be informative but of little significance to anyone (p. 20). And she reiterates her main concern with respect to scientific knowledge, claiming that “as long as a genre remains social science, to the extent that it does so, the constitution or the ‘unconcealment’ of Truth cannot be either intended or pretended by it … [T]he quest for true [scientific] knowledge has a different ambition” (p. 21). Gesamtwissenschaft, therefore, cannot transform the character of science, nor does it rival science; in fact, it is a different undertaking which, although involving science, must also be constrained by science. The work of the Gesamtwissenschaftler is a peculiar undertaking that, even though it involves familiarity with how the sciences might impinge upon other culture spheres and be used to advance their aims, is clearly distinguishable from science. And the Gesamtwissenschaftler – a person who makes use of science in taking up broader human concerns – is also distinguishable from the public intellectual who, by all accounts, it seems, must always be engaged in social and political commentary and activity. There is no doubt that the study of religion, like the natural and social sciences and humanities generally, bears some relevance to public issues and concerns, but it is important to recognize that this does not oblige the student of religion, qua student of religion, to become either a Gesamtwissenschaftler or a public intellectual – that is, to be directly and deeply involved in the shaping of culture or in competition for moral or political leadership in society. Playing a major role in public affairs of that kind is not part of religious studies training. So that to expand the portfolio of the student of religion beyond the search for knowledge about religion and explanation of religious phenomena to a concern for political action would clearly subvert the notion of religious studies as a scholarly, scientific undertaking concerned with empirical, explanatory, and theoretical analyses of religion. Literary scholars have recently raised similar objections to the notion of the literary scholar as public intellectual and I think a brief look at Stanley Fish’s Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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response to the issue there is an appropriate guide to the issue for the student of religion. In response to literary critics who lament their invisibility within the larger community, wishing to expand the range of their disciplinary responsibilities, Fish points out that “if the category of ‘academic work’ were enlarged to the point that it included almost anything an academic did – whether in the classroom, the jury box, or the town hall – the category would have no context because it would contain everything” (1995: 87). His advice, therefore, to those who want “to get beyond the current professionalization of literary studies to something else” ( p. 43) – and who “want to send a message that will be heard beyond the academy” (p. 2) – is to get out of the academy. For such a mandate, although compatible with Gramsci’s organic intellectual, is not that of the literary critic. As he puts it, “a practice acquires identity […] by not being other practices, by presenting itself not as doing everything but as doing one thing in such a way as to have society look to it for specific performance” (pp. 79-80). Engagement as an organic intellectual, moreover, requires expertise within a broad public context not provided by the confines of a university laboratory or classroom; as Fish points out, there are “no well-established routes by which literary criticism is first brought to the attention of those who inhabit the centers of power and then presented to them in a way that ties it to their concerns” (p. 52). He concludes, therefore, that “the […] academic who goes public successfully will have done so not by extending his professional literary skills, but by learning the skills of another profession” (p. 125). For him, ‘public intellectual’ is a job description and he justifiably insists that “it is not a job for which academics, as academics, are particularly qualified” (p. 125).23 This advice clearly holds for all humanists and social scientists, including the student of religion. And to complain, as does Richard Rorty (1998: 135), 23

Fish maintains: “[…] if you want to speak to the public, there is no degree to be had, no accepted course of accreditation, no departments of Public Relevance” (p. 117), and so he claims that the public intellectual is not recognized as such until she has the public’s attention (p. 118). He furthermore maintains that such attention cannot be gained from the stage of the academy, and that academics are therefore not candidates for the role. Scholars at Florida Atlantic University are in obvious disagreement with this notion for they have recently created a Ph.D. program in Comparative Studies billed as “the first interdisciplinary program to educate public intellectuals” (publicity brochure). The brochure continues: “The Latin word docere originally meant not simply to teach, but to lead. This dual meaning underpins this Ph.D. program. It is for those who want to change the social order as well as understand it.” [This claim leads to another set of problems since ducere means to lead whereas docere means only to teach, but that matter will not be taken up here.] Such a program, however, cannot guarantee its participants the attention of the public; and I think Fish is likely right to insist that that attention will not be commanded even by this kind of academic enterprise.

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that the professionalization or academicization of university disciplines has left us with nothing but a lot of dismal social sciences that favour “a talent for analysis and problem-solving over imagination” and “replace enthusiasm with dry, sardonic knowingness” is to ask for a transformation of the humanities and social sciences amounting ultimately to their subversion. As John Ellis argues (1997), the adoption of social agendas by literary critics in the university amounted to nothing less than “the corruption of the humanities,” because politically oriented research, even if “politically useful in the short run [will] crowd out more fundamental thought” (p. 140); this must be so for it is not possible to be committed to the cause of knowledge and to political and social causes at the same time. And if students of religion find their scientific research boring and dismal, they ought to heed the advice meted out by Fish and Ellis to similarly placed literary critics and leave the university for a job more to their liking.

Bibliography John Ellis, Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997. Stanley Fish, Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995. Ernest Gellner, Language and Solitude: Wittgenstein, Malinowski, and the Habsburg Dilemma, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Agnes Heller, Can Modernity Survive?, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990. Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press, 1998.

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Chapter 12

‘Taking Religion Seriously’: Eric Sharpe’s Comparative Religion – History as Apology Donald Wiebe

I have very much appreciated Eric Sharpe’s history of the field of Religious Studies.1 He has provided there a wealth of information about scholars, debates, and movements in the field and of the establishment of Religious Studies in the curriculum of the modern Western university and of its growth and development through a variety of associations, societies, journals and other such institutions. Nevertheless, it seems to me that his history of the field is not simply a history but also an apology, of sorts, and that it is so despite his recognition in the preface that his concern is with “the multi-disciplinary and non-confessional approach to the study of religion” that takes the religious traditions to be “phenomena to be observed, rather than as creeds to be followed.”2 The apologetic character is not a predominant factor in the book but it is there, I think, nonetheless. Though himself rejecting a narrow confessional control of the academic study of religion, Sharpe does not object in general to theological involvement in that enterprise but rather shows sympathy for the persistent interaction and overlap between the academic study of religion and liberal Christian theology that he has so clearly traced in his history of this field of research. His admiration for Nathan Söderblom, for example, is clearly indicative of that sentiment: “As Professor in Uppsala and Leipzig,” he writes, “he was responsible for creating an atmosphere in which comparative religion and theology were reconciled as never before or since ….3 Like Söderblom, it becomes obvious that for Sharpe, especially in the second edition of Comparative Religion: A History, the tension between the theologian and the academic student of religion is due entirely to misunderstanding – a misunderstanding that Sharpe would like to clear up.

1 This essay makes use of material found in my paper ‘History or Mythistory in the Study of Religion? The Problem of Demarcation’ presented to a conference on the institutional context of the study of religion held in Marburg in June, 1988. The paper will appear in the proceedings of the conference. 2 Eric J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History, (2nd ed.), (London: Cuckworth, 1986): xiii. 3 Ibid., 155.

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According to Sharpe, Söderblom’s distinctive contribution to the scientific study of religion is the reduction of tension between theology and Religious Studies, which he achieved by bringing a new attitude to the study of religious phenomena – his approach, that is, involved “taking all religion seriously, not merely as objects of scientific study, but as religions.”4 Moreover, Söderblom’s “taking religion seriously,” it should be noted, follows Sharpe’s critique of the explanatory approach to the study of religions espoused by Leuba who, as Sharpe puts it, proceeded on “the a priori assumption of the non-existence of the supernatural” and was, therefore, incapable of “even taking the ‘religious case’ seriously.”5 Whereas Leuba “explained away” religious phenomena then, Söderblom, according to Sharpe, revealed the sui generis character of religion. Implicit in Sharpe’s analysis, therefore, and in his insistence that the academic student of religion “take religion seriously” is a belief (and the necessity for belief) in the existence of a supernatural or transcendent reality and, consequently, a belief in the fundamental truth – non-illusory character – of religion as it is to be found embodied in particular historical traditions. In the second edition of his Comparative Religions: A History Sharpe correctly notes “that scholars trained in one or other liberal religious tradition have come to occupy a prominent position in the new religious studies enterprise since the early 1970s, from which position they have argued that the transcendental dimensions of religion must always be taken with the utmost seriousness.”6 He admits, moreover, that they could be imparting “a subtly new form of confessionalism” into Religious Studies.7 And he recognizes that this new development once again introduced an element of tension amongst academic students of religion regarding the relationship of theology and religion to the study of religion. As a case in point, he refers the reader to the recent debates amongst Canadian scholars over the “re-theologization” of Religious Studies. This local debate on the place of religio-theological inquiry in Religious Studies, he points out, is a continuation of the discussion regarding the “boundaries” of the academic study of religion that first emerged in the IAHR method controversies of the early 1960s.8 Furthermore, he maintains, or so it appears, that the tensions now, as then, are the result not of an illegitimate erosion of the boundaries of the academic study of religion by scholars grounded in a liberal religious tradition but rather of an over-sensitivity on the part of

4 5 6 7 8

Ibid., 159. Ibid., 105. Ibid., 110, 111. Ibid., 111. Ibid., 312.

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“scholars [in the field] of a more ‘empiricist’ persuasion.”9 His analysis is not, however, persuasive and, as I shall attempt briefly to show, is itself grounded in a liberal religious tradition of thought and has an apologetic character about it. His argument, it will become clear, is grounded in an a priori assumption of the sui generis character of religion, with the corollary that the transcendent/supernatural reality to which religion, so to speak, refers, actually exists.10 I have been a part of the local debate to which Sharpe refers in the second edition of his Comparative Religion and have argued, in a series of articles and essays on method and theory in the study of religion, that the refusal – or failure – clearly to demarcate the religio-theological enterprise from Religious Studies can only be harmful to that study of religion undertaken within the academic/scientific framework. In this I have followed Werblowsky’s critique of attempts to theologize the study of religion at the 1960 Marburg meeting of the IAHR, and Sharpe is quite correct in noting, in a recent essay in honour of Werblowsky, that in this we are “in general terms of the same mind.”11 Sharpe, however, believes, or so it appears, that even though the formative years of the academic institutionalization of the study of religion marked a secularization of that enterprise, such secularization is not essential to its characterization. Though he writes about the secularization of the history of religions, he maintains that that notion contains the possibility of its desecularization or resacralization. Although Sharpe is happy to see that religious tests have been abandoned as a condition of employment in this field,12 thus liberating it from institutional religious control, he is less happy to see “personal religious conviction” excluded from influence here. Secularization to that extent, he maintains, “necessarily leads to the privatization of religion, and hence to its neutralization,” which he assumes is unhealthy;13 this it appears is more than liberation although Sharpe does not spell out precisely what he thinks it amounts to. He confesses puzzlement, however, at my assertion in ‘The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion’14 that “the raising of the question

9 10

11

12 13 14

Ibid., 312. On this score see the distinction between ‘reality’ and ‘existence’ drawn by Ninian Smart in his The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). Eric Sharpe, ‘The Secularization of the History of Religions’ in S. Shaked, D. Shulma, G. G. Strousma (eds.); Gilgul: Essays on Transformstion, Revolution and Permanence in the History of Religions, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987), 258. Ibid., 263. Ibid., 264. See Donald Wiebe, ‘The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion,’ Studies in Religion, 13, 1984.

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of theology’s relationship to the academic study of religion should jeopardize the very existence of such an academic study.”15 In part Sharpe’s puzzlement can be attributed to the fact that he did not correctly read the claim I put forward in that essay. I argued there only that the claim that theology has a contribution to make to Religious Studies on the methodological level jeopardizes the very existence of the academic study of religion. To push for such a dialogue I insisted is to push an agenda on Religious Studies that is really quite incompatible with its own. This is why I have written, here and elsewhere, of a crisis of identity in Religious Studies. And I do not invoke that phrase merely as a fashionable term, nor simply to refer to a general crisis in the field, which I do not think exists.16 Although the phrase has its primary application in the developmental psychology of the individual it can, I think, reasonably be applied metaphorically to institutions. In psychology, the phrase is used to describe the inner turmoil that occurs when the integrity of a person’s self-image is threatened. The scholarly study of religion has gained a recognizable identity in the academic setting as a scientific undertaking, subject to the same canons of academic inquiry and assessment as every other discipline within the university curriculum. And that, I suggest, is what is threatened by the re-emergence of the theological question. Achieving recognition in the university setting has depended upon the conscious adoption by students of religion of a clear and precise methodological self-understanding as a scientific enterprise directed simply towards gaining knowledge about religion rather than seeking a ‘religious knowledge’ and the meaning it allegedly confers on those who possess it. Religious Studies so conceived is very much a product of the Enlightenment notion of a common and universally applicable mode of inquiry in every search for knowledge. And that, of course, presupposes intersubjectively available data regarding subjects of inquiry. Thus, just as anthropology and sociology, for example, became rooted in the denial of the absolute, but indiscernible, distinctiveness of humankind and recognition of that species as an ordinary member of nature, so the academic study of religion is rooted in the recognition that religions are ordinary, although distinctive, social phenomena that must be studied in the same fashion that we study all other social realities. The academic study of

15 16

Sharpe, op. cit., 1987: 269. This is said contrary to Sharpe’s suggestion (ibid.: 265). And it must be emphasized here that I am talking about a crisis of identity and not merely a crisis in Religious Studies; I do not, that is, think this field faces a general crisis due to an inadequate conceptual basis or something of the sort. See here my ‘A Positive Episteme for the Study of Religion,’ Scottish Journal of Religious Studies, 6, 1985.

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religion, therefore, was heavily centred, in its early development, on historical and philological tasks, resulting in the production of scholarly monographs and, later, handbooks, and comparative and interpretive studies. And in the last few decades the scientific study of religion has acquired what has been called a nomothetic interest – it has been recognized, that is, that a scientific study of religion must go beyond simple description and seek out not only generalizations regarding the particulars, but explanations of the phenomena that can one day lead to serious theorizing about the phenomenon of religion in general.17 The contrast between such a study of religion and that which antedated it is, ironically, very clearly captured by Sharpe in his history of the field. He remarks: … as the Nineteenth century advanced, it became increasingly clear that the real focus of the study of religion was to be located not in transcendental philosophy, but in the altogether this-worldly categories of history, progress, development and evolution.18 Religious Studies, then, as it emerged, toward the end of the nineteenth century and became ensconced in the curriculum of the modern Western university, and other institutions designed for its promotion, possesses a rather clear image of itself as a complementary set of scientific endeavors aimed at understanding a particular aspect of ourselves, of our society and culture. It possesses, that is, a rather distinctive methodological self-understanding and it is that self-understanding that has in recent decades come under attack and is now, more than ever before, under serious strain. The strain comes, I suggest, from the increasing number of scholars in the field today who hold to a conflicting set of loyalties and aspire to goals that far outstrip those espoused by the scholars who successfully established this new field of studies and saw it safely lodged in the university curriculum. It is not that the ‘new breed’ of scholar, if I may be allowed so to refer to them, objects to the search for a positive historical and philological knowledge of traditions and texts but rather that they think such study misleading unless supplemented with/by a search for the meaning – the true meaning – of religion. And for them that meaning

17

18

Some, like Kurt Rudolph, still hold out against theory for a more purely positive historical/philological study of religions. Most recently, see his Historical Fundamentals and the Study of Religion, (New York: Macmillan, 1985). I have argued the contrary in my ‘Theory in the Study of Religion,’ Religion, 13, 1983; and earlier in my ‘Explanation and the Scientific Study of Religion,’ Religion, 5, 1975. Sharpe, op. cit., 1986: 24.

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can only be the ‘religious meaning’ which is possessed, however dimly, by the devotee. At the very least, such scholars insist that the study of religion seeks only ‘to understand’ religion and not ‘to explain’ it, which they see as equivalent to ‘explaining it away.’ Their justification for such methodological moves is based on religious experience and their own religious/ultimate aspirations as can be seen especially clearly, I think, in the phenomenologists of religion whose work has been shown to be predicated upon religious assumptions and to carry a hidden, (though probably unconscious) theological agenda. Indeed, unearthing that crypto-theological aspect of the work of the phenomenologists of religion of the early part of this century, they argue that that was and is a central element of Religious Studies – an aspect of that study that had been eclipsed by the overzealous positivists of the early Enlightenment period of growth of the field. Consequently they now call for a ‘recognition’ of the central role of theology in the study of religion, claiming that unless a reintegration of the two is achieved, no full or true scientific understanding of religion will ever be achieved. And Sharpe himself, it appears, adopts precisely such a position. In the Werblowsky festschrift article he writes: Twenty years ago, the secularization process seemed both unidirectional and irreversible. Since the 1970s we have learned that it is neither. And since the study of religions cannot but reflect what is taking place in the world of religion as well as the world of the intellect, we have also been forced into the realization that the historical empiricism of the kind so confidently announced in the 1960s is very much open to challenge.19 And he concludes the second edition of his history of the field describing this ‘newer religious studies enterprise’ as being: … not a quest for intellectual understanding carried out from a great height, as though the student were totally immune to the religious imperative. On the contrary: because it recognizes that in matters of religion, human variety is human first and varied only incidentally, it believes that the student can by this means find his or her own place in the human religious panorama, while acknowledging ‘the others’ less as competitors than as fellow human beings.20

19 20

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It is obvious, then, that for Sharpe the academic study of religion can, and must, be more than merely a quest for disinterested knowledge about religious phenomena. For Sharpe, as for the new study of religion that he sees as having emerged on the American scene in the mid-twentieth century, there is a wider role to be filled by the student of religion than that of theorist; the student of religion can quite legitimately, it appears, take up an active role in the world’s cultural/religious dialogue. And in taking up this approach to the field of Religious Studies, Sharpe is really quite indistinguishable from scholars like W. Goodenough, W. C. Smith, M. Eliade and others who call for a ‘humanised’ study of religions that is not easy to distinguish from the form of religion.21 Moreover Sharpe is aware that a humanized study of religion is seen by such scholars to be a religious exercise and he himself admits its religious character and that espousing such a view constitutes a shift away from the stated ideals for the academic study of religion adopted by the majority of members of the IAHR in the 1950s and 1960s which excluded any and all intrusion of ‘personal religion’ into the scholarly debate.22 Sharpe has continued his association with the IAHR, however, even as did Goodenough, Smith, and Eliade. The grounds for this continued association, I suspect, is provided in the significance he attributes to the distinction he draws between confessionalist religion and the liberal religious outlook, assuming that IAHR members were really interested in excluding only the former. His implicit justification of the reintroduction of religion in a new form into the American university curriculum, despite the fact that the Constitution of the United States specifically forbids the provision of religious instruction in educational institutions supported by public funds, could also be applied to the ‘exclusion clause’ in the constitution of the IAHR. Of the ‘humanised’ study of religion in America he writes: … since the original aim of this law had been to eliminate the danger of sectarianism [confessionalism] and since comparative religion was nothing if not unsectarian, openings began to be found for the teaching of comparative religion under the Chicago program, not as religion in any traditional sense, but as the ‘new humanism’ Eliade claimed it to be.23 Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History, I suggest in conclusion, then, is concerned with more than merely tracing the historical emergence and development of the academic (comparative) study of religions. It is also an argument 21 22 23

Ibid., 273-287. Ibid., 281. Ibid., 281, emphasis is added.

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on behalf of a particular view as to how that study ought to be undertaken – a view, moreover, that ultimately assumes the value and truth of religion. His history, I would maintain, therefore, is also an apology – a defence of religious faith – and it is so despite his rejection of sectarian confessionalism.

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Chapter 13

On Theological Resistance to the Scientific Study of Religion: Values and the Value-Free Study of Religion Donald Wiebe

My concern in this essay is with the question of the role of theology within the academic study of religion. It is often assumed that if theology is not an integral aspect of the academic study of religion, that study can be of no value to society. I want to argue here, however, that theology, because it is concerned with the question of the ultimate meaningfulness of human life, is directly engaged in the formation of spiritual and moral norms and cannot therefore constitute an element of the objective, scientific study of religion; I do this while maintaining that the study of religion may still be of value, although only indirectly so, to those concerned with questions of meaning or other emancipatory agendas. My approach, however, will be somewhat indirect, in that I shall address the issue by responding to criticisms lodged against a recent proposal of mine regarding the relation of theology to religious studies in the university curriculum in which I argued that theology has no rightful place in the academic study of religion. The article appeared in the ‘Bulletin of the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion’ as a response to Francis Schüssler Fiorenza’s essay on ‘Theology in the University’ (also in the Bulletin), in which he attempted to make a case for the inclusion of theology in its curriculum on the basis of an argument for a natural affinity between theology and the academic study of religion. A response to his criticisms will afford me an opportunity to clarify and strengthen the case I attempted to make for a clear demarcation between theology and the academic study of religion understood as a scientific undertaking and, therefore, for isolating the latter from the influence of theology. It is not helpful, I think, to set out on this task by simply asking whether theology has a place within the academic study of religion, because it is clear that theology does currently play a role in the academic study of religion in the modern university and especially so in North America. I say this despite William Scott Green’s recent claim that “over the last quarter-century it has become a virtual axiom in the study of religion that as theology – as a constructive and analytical discourse – as a constructive and mystical discourse –

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is out of place in the academy” (Green, 1992: 102-104), for even the most cursory review of the curricular offerings of religious studies departments in North American universities, or of the programs of the annual general and regional meetings of the American Academy of Religion and other similar professional associations, will simply not bear out such a claim. It is no doubt true that the university community more generally considers theology to be out of place in the academy, but this is hardly an opinion shared by most of those who today consider themselves members of the ‘religious studies community.’1 Few in the latter community, however, seem willing to argue for the inclusion of theology as a discipline on its own within the curriculum, although many maintain that it has a rightful place within that curriculum as an indispensable element in the field of religious studies. Green, for example, states that there are several grounds on which “the study of theology can be defended as a basic element of a collegiate religion curriculum” (Green, 1992: 103). Unlike Schüssler Fiorenza, however, Green does not argue his case on the grounds of theology’s scientific character but rather argues that theology is a natural part of religion and that students should, therefore, be able to recognize it when they see it, and he further maintains that it has great value to the educational aims of the study of religion and of the humanities more generally within the university. As Green puts it, unless theology and religious studies are seen to be interdependent, they could generate two divergent, and possibly antagonistic, academic worldviews of how religion is studied and learned … [with] potentially harmful educational consequences …” (Green, 1992: 102). Green’s arguments, however, are not compelling; theology can be recognized as an element of various religious traditions, and students can be helped to recognize it for what it is without having to become theological, so to speak, in the process of doing so. Moreover, whether religious studies ought to have the educational role Green wishes it to have is open to debate, and especially so if one wishes also to regard the study of religion as a scientific undertaking. Whether the university should concern itself with, as the Germans put it, Bildung or Wissenschaft, or whether and how it can do both are questions that have not, I suggest, been settled.2 1 D. G. Hart points out, for example, that those teaching religion in American universities were not readily accepted by the academy; they were, he claims, unrecognized by learned societies and neglected in university curricula for nearly a century (D.G. Hart, ‘American Learning and the Problem of Religious Studies,’ in The Secularization of the Academy, ed. G.M. Marsden and B.J. Longfield [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992], pp. 195, 197). 2 On this matter, as in my discussion of Weber below, I am indebted to some extent to Frederic Lilge’s treatment of the issue in his The Abuse of Learning: The Failure of the German University (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1948), even though I dissent from his final conclusions.

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Schüssler Fiorenza’s argument in support of theology’s inclusion in the university curriculum, on the other hand, is argued primarily on the grounds of its wissenschaftliche character. Like Green, Schüssler Fiorenza would, on the empirical level, answer the question as I have reformulated it positively, rejecting “the exclusive contrast between religious and theological studies” (Fiorenza, 1993: 37). As to the nature of that theological enterprise, however, Schüssler Fiorenza’s comments are not altogether clear. It is an enterprise that in principle must “not exclude any approach to the interpretation of religion’s meaning, significance, and claims” (Fiorenza, 1993: 38) and that must have a “constructive normative” aspect to it. Its task, therefore, would be “to show the significance of [a particular] religious individual tradition for other religions and for the public world of ethical discourse …” (Fiorenza, 1993: 39) which, it seems to me, implies that the theologian is not simply concerned with matters of description and explanation of religions or aspects thereof, but with engagement in the religious life in its interaction with the world in which it exists on the assumption that religion is, in some sense or other, true and good. According to Schüssler Fiorenza, my rejection of his proposal involves both a misrepresentation of his argument in its support and a failure to provide a reasonable alternative understanding of the study of religion without a “theological” component. I think him wrong on both counts and a review of his complaints will, I think, help clarify why the demarcationists who differentiate theology – of both the theistic and non-theistic varieties – from religious studies as a scientific undertaking, hold firmly to that position. Schüssler Fiorenza’s first complaint about my analysis of his position, as stated in his ‘Theological and Religious Studies: The Contest of the Faculties’ (1991) and ‘Theology in the University’ (1993), is that I attribute to him a conception of “engaged” (i.e. non-detached) study. He maintains that he does not use that term to describe his understanding of scholarly enquiry, and that even the concept of such enquiry is foreign to his work. In his ‘A Response to Donald Wiebe’ (1994) he insists that the issue at stake between us cannot be reduced to one of “engaged” versus “non-engaged” reason, or between a “subjectively engaged reason” and an “objectively neutral reason” (Fiorenza, 1994: 7) and maintains that his insistence on a complementarity of “methods of explanation” and “modes of understanding” ought to have made that matter clear to me. The problem, however, is that his talk about a complementarity of explanation and understanding is not clear, and could not be because he does not really spell out what he means by those notions. In the essay on the contest of the faculties, for example, it appears that his talk of such complementarity is an argument for “the distinctiveness of the cultural and human sciences” on the grounds that they, unlike the non-human sciences, involve

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a double hermeneutic (Fiorenza, 1991: 122). This suggests a rather clear demarcation between the two; whether the latter are objective or only “monohermeneutical,” it is clear that they are significantly different in their modes of operation in gaining the knowledge they seek. And in Schüssler Fiorenza’s view of “hermeneutical understanding,” those differences, it appears, especially as regards knowledge of religion, have to do with the “embodiment” of the thought not only of the religious devotee in a particular and particularizing “form of life,” but also of the thought of the persons studying the religious devotee, and this “embodiment,” he insists, undermines all possibility of merely providing an objective explanation of the behavior of the devotee. The thought of the student, therefore, as much as the thought of the devotee, about whom the student attempts to theorize, “engages in interpretation with a practical intent” (Fiorenza, 1991: 139). Theological studies, as he puts it, “challenges religious studies to realize its role as a human science that interprets cultural traditions with a practical intent” (Fiorenza, 1991: 139). And it is this notion of “practical intent,” I suggest, that makes of such study an “engaged study,” for that kind of study does not, like the natural sciences, attempt to free itself from practical entanglements in an effort to know (i.e. explain) its subject matter. This seems a fair inference, I think, given Schüssler Fiorenza’s contrasting of this kind of knowledge, in the later part of his essay on the contest of the faculties, with those disciplines under the impact of professionalization which he maintains have developed a “technocratic rationality in which questions of value, significance, and application are often excluded or bracketed out” (Fiorenza, 1991: 142). His reference to the latter studies as “truncated,” that is, only makes sense in light of the fact that they are not “engaged” with “substantial issues” (Fiorenza, 1991: 142). The “engaged” character of the sciences of the double hermeneutic is also clearly evident in Schüssler Fiorenza’s argument in ‘Theology in the University’ when he asks why in religious studies departments one cannot, as in many other humanities departments, raise the issue of what claim the classics “have upon our present understanding of ourselves, our relation to the world, and our interaction with our fellow human beings” (Fiorenza, 1993: 36). He acknowledges the very distinction between “engaged” and “non-engaged” studies to which I adverted in my critique of his argument on behalf of theology’s inclusion in the university curriculum. He wishes to deny, however, that any “non-engaged” studies are even possible, maintaining that even the so-called technocratic reasoning is but a distortion of the true hermeneutical or embodied character of all reasoning (Fiorenza, 1991: 122-123). Schüssler Fiorenza’s complaint against me, therefore, is simply misdirected. Indeed, his

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own recognition here of the distinction between consciously “engaged” acts of reasoning – i.e., acts of hermeneutical understanding – and the unconsciously “engaged” acts of reasoning in the natural (technocratic) disciplines echo the very distinction between science and hermeneutics for which I argued; whether the natural sciences need to become critically conscious of the embodied or engaged character of their modes of reasoning or whether their socalled unconsciously engaged thinking is really a detached mode of thought resulting from a critical awareness and rejection of human attachments in an effort to understand the world as it is independent of human aspirations, has certainly not been settled by Schüssler Fiorenza. Schüssler Fiorenza also claims that I misrepresent his theological position in claiming, as I do, that his understanding of religious studies involves acknowledgment of a transcendent reality. In claiming that he objected to the views of Heiler, Pannenberg, Lonergan, and others who propose an understanding of religious studies “from the perspective of Western monotheisms and from an objectivist realist epistemology” (Fiorenza, 1994: 7), he insists that he has rejected any such views. His discussion of the meaning, significance, and truth of religious beliefs in ‘The Contest of the Faculties’, however, suggests grounds for suspicion of such a sweeping claim for he there clearly differentiates religious beliefs from non-religious beliefs in terms of the notion of transcendence. He writes: “Religious beliefs have a transcendent reference that unifies our experience of the world. Therefore, religious beliefs, despite all historical and experiential grounding, point to a transcending and unifying dimension of our worldviews” (Fiorenza, 1991: 135-136). This is not, obviously, an outright espousal of a form of theism, but it appears nevertheless to commit Schüssler Fiorenza to a belief in the existence of something more than the mere structures of society, culture, and history, and the agency of the individual person within those structures, that interest the non-theological and non-religious historians and social-scientists concerned to account for what we refer to as religious behaviour. If it did not, it is entirely unclear what it is Schüssler Fiorenza thinks either the theologian or the student of religion would add to the work of the other human studies – or how it would transform them, since they too are fully aware of their double-hermeneutical character. It is not surprising, therefore, that Richard Busse, in his editorial preface to the discussion, insists that there is not a great difference between our positions, since we share the assumption “that human experience is the measure of truth” (Busse, 1994: 2). Moreover, in his response to my question as to how he would distinguish Religious Studies from other humanities disciplines, Schüssler Fiorenza argues that Religious Studies, unlike the other disciplines, deal with religion as an expression of the religious dimension of life rather

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than with the relation of religion to other social and/or psychological aspects of human existence, which suggests that such a dimension of human existence transcends ordinary experience and is in some sense, therefore, other worldly; if it were not so, then surely it would be explicable in the same terms that the social sciences and the humanities disciplines treat all other aspects of human existence. My criticism of Schüssler Fiorenza on this score therefore, it needs remarking, has nothing whatsoever to do with my debate with Charles Davis as he suggests, but emerges rather from the lack of clarity and even confusion in the welter of claims Schüssler Fiorenza makes about theology and religious studies in relation to the social scientific and historical study of human behaviour. My third misrepresentation of his work, claims Schüssler Fiorenza, relates to his interpretation of the nature of science. In focusing on his critique of foundationalism and ignoring his argument for the use of explanatory method in theology, he maintains that I fail to grasp the thrust of his essay which, he insists, “moves in the opposite direction of a reconstruction of science” (Fiorenza, 1994: 7). What is problematic about his claim here, however, is that he seems not to concern himself at all with what the sciences are about but rather with what occurs in other disciplines in the humanities. “My own argument,” he writes, “was that religious studies as a discipline in the humanities should not isolate itself, but should embody the theoretical and academic practices of other disciplines in the humanities” (Fiorenza, 1994: 7). But my point was that that is precisely what is problematic about his arguments: distinguishing the humanities from the sciences, and placing religious studies within the framework of the humanities, is a rejection of the “scientific impulse” in the study of religious phenomena.3 Schüssler Fiorenza, obviously, but wrongly, thinks that a recognition of value in the hermeneutical critique of science to which he refers must necessarily imply an acceptance of a primarily interpretative or

3 As D.G. Hart points out, many scholars over the last century have thought that a connection between the humanities and religious studies undermines the latter’s claim to scientific status. For Hart, to move from religious and theological accounts of religion and religions to scientific explanations of them constitutes a watershed in the study of religion. He writes: “This [scientific] tradition abandoned the notion that religious guidance or belief was necessary for the study of religion and insisted that religious phenomena could be explained in naturalistic categories as well as any other artifacts” (‘American Learning and the Problem of Religious Studies,’ p. 196-197). I do not think Hart’s discussion of the problem of religious studies in American learning entirely perspicuous or consistent, but cannot take up a critique of his argument here. For further details on the history of the debate, see my collection of essays, The Politics of Religious Studies. The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the Academy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

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hermeneutical character of the academic study of religion.4 Recognizing that the hermeneutical critique of science has made clear the multi-layered depth of the reality which the social scientist, including the student of religion, examines, does not imply that an objective, generalizing, scientific knowledge of social phenomena is not possible and that the social sciences should not, therefore, look to the natural sciences for guidance in their work. And insofar as they can and do, they are radically different from the humanities. This does not mean, of course, that the humanities and arts do not also search for truths of a sort, but it does mean that they cannot establish universal laws about human existence in the manner that the social sciences can. What it does mean is that the social scientist, as a recent expositor has put it, like the natural scientist, seeks “to explain the causal relationships between general and continuous social and cultural structures, psychological propensities, 4 Schüssler Fiorenza’s suggestion that Tom Lawson’s and Robert McCauley’s discussion of the inter-relation of interpretation and explanation in their Rethinking Religion: Connecting the Cognitive and the Cultural (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) is similar to and supports his claims regarding the hermeneutical character of science is simply without foundation. Not eschewing the element of interpretation that in some fashion or other characterizes all discussions of social phenomena is hardly tantamount to rejecting an understanding of science as seeking objective knowledge about states of affairs in the world. It is quite clear, I think, that Lawson’s and McCauley’s work is really in the tradition of what most would see as reductionist science. Reading their recent article (‘Crisis of Conscience, Riddle of Identity: Making Space for a Cognitive Approach to Religious Phenomena,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 61 [1993]: 201-22), furthermore, will show how far off the mark Schüssler Fiorenza’s reading of their work really is, for in it they write of “the harmful effects of hermeneutic method” and claim that despite their comments about interpretation in their book, they do not espouse a hermeneutical understanding of the study of religion (‘Crisis of Conscience,’ 214). Indeed, they reject all hermeneutic approaches that try “to insulate certain [i.e. religious] phenomena from scientific analysis and reserve it for interpretative treatment alone” (Ibid.: 218). It is clear that they mean here that interpretation, even though involved in providing accounts of data, cannot substitute for explanation but rather clarifies what it is that requires explanation. This reading of their remarks is supported, I believe, by their critique of the “romantic rebellion” among contemporary anthropologists who, they claim, seek to undermine the notion “of a human science that operates along the lines of the natural sciences” (Ibid.: 203). Of them they write: “In short, this strategy for reconceiving cultural anthropology as humanistic inquiry in the hermeneutic mode may buy sensitivity and moral rectitude, but at the cost of forfeiting its place among the sciences” (Ibid.: 203-04), and they urge them not “to abandon explanatory theorizing in favor of either hermeneutic circling, idiographic research, or even detailed ethnography” (Ibid.: 204). Moreover, they argue against the view that would place the study of religion within the humanities (Ibid.: 208) and have it associated with theology (Ibid.: 212). “Why not instead,” they write, “consider a reformed social science (intimately informed by the post-positivist developments in the history and philosophy of science) or better yet (we will argue), a new cognitive science of religious systems?” (Ibid.: 208).

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intentions, understandings, and behaviors” (Lloyd, 1993: 140). This quotation is taken from Christopher Lloyd’s recent book, The Structures of History, in which he argues persuasively for a scientific understanding of social reality based on the model of the natural sciences, while being wholly sympathetic to the “double hermeneutical” character of all social enquiries. A brief exposition of Lloyd’s views on the nature of the social sciences here will help clarify the nature of the position I espoused in the conclusion to my critique of Schüssler Fiorenza. Lloyd’s understanding of explanation in the social sciences takes seriously the critiques of dated positivist notions of those sciences by showing that social-scientific explanations must depend on the interpretation of events, social situations, the actions and decisions of persons, and the like, but he also insists that recognizing this does not imply that the social scientist cannot go beyond such hermeneutical exercises. He writes: So science and the arts contain a hermeneutical element because they depend on establishing a circle of agreement between explicit statements within the discourse and the background framework of ideas shared by the community of scientists or artists. That background framework helps initially to conceptualize the objects and procedures of enquiry and/or expression. Many defenders of the hermeneutical character of the human and social studies have not understood this necessity for such an understanding of the sciences and so have wrongly drawn a distinction between science and the arts on this ground. Nevertheless, the hermeneutical element in science can be overstated greatly. Science must move well beyond such circular understanding to a criticism of knowledge vis-à-vis discoverable reality. A central role for the correspondence theory of truth must be retained (Lloyd, 1993: 140). Lloyd, then, recognizes that the sciences do not always operate strictly logically, are not simply empiricist, nor always reductionist, but he does not see this as undermining the fact that achieving a hermeneutical understanding of the world is not always the aim or rationale of science, but rather to make progress in explaining the world (Lloyd, 1993: 140). Thus he writes: Relativists such as Kuhn and Feyerabend have argued that there is no rock-bottom inter-theroretic reference between words and the world, such that there can be a gradual convergence of theories upon truthful explanations. There has been no genuine progress in discovery, according to them. But a line of reasoning stemming partly from Quine and

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Wiebe including (in different ways) Putnam, Harre and Madden, Shapere, Boyd, and Hesse, has cogently shown that, although our investigations of both the world and our ways of knowing about it always have to be made from within particular ways of knowing, there has clearly been progress in discovering the causal structure of the world. People collectively over time have been able to improve their understanding of nature and society and to exert some control over them accordingly …. Explanations always remain bound by frameworks, but our frameworks improve through feedback from empirical observation, experiment, and engineering (Lloyd, 1993: 142).

What is clear from Lloyd’s analysis, then, is that even though the hermeneutical critique of science has shown the impossibility of securing an absolute, objectivist foundation for our knowledge, there is no need to abandon “the modernist project of building an intersubjective foundation for knowledge” (Lloyd, 1993: 187), even in the social sciences, which seek “to explain the origins and nature of the real structure of the world and their transformations” (Lloyd, 1993: 4). It is for this reason that I claimed demarcationists could accept the hermeneutical critique without necessarily having to accept Schüssler Fiorenza’s conclusion about the interpretative nature of religious studies; it is simply false to assert, as he does (Fiorenza, 1994: 8), that those who reject the fundamentally hermeneutical character of the academic study of religion simply accept an old-style foundationalist epistemology. It is important also to point out that Lloyd, despite his epistemological stance with respect to the sciences, believes that a normative element needs to be recognized. Fundamentally, therefore, he seems to be in agreement with Schüssler Fiorenza’s understanding of the hermeneutical nature of science. The agreement, however, is only superficial. The normative element, Lloyd argues, must emerge in regard to the question of the justification of social scientific enquiry, and he sees that justification in emancipatory and liberationist terms, but he does not see the ‘normativeness’ as an indispensable element of science itself. For Lloyd, this is not intrinsic to science. Indeed, not to bracket such ‘normativeness’ is to destroy science and its emancipatory potential. As he puts it: A scientific attitude of truth-seeking provides a framework for a culture of liberation […]. Science cannot validate the content of liberation but it can try to establish the structural conditions of liberation. The alternative to intersubjective critical validation is tyranny or nihilism (Lloyd, 1993: 187).

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In light of this kind of understanding of the hermeneutical critique of the sciences, it should be wholly clear why I have disagreed with Schüssler Fiorenza’s claim regarding the intersubjective nature of religious studies. Moreover, in a number of articles I have written, I have set out proposals for the study of religion of a similar nature to those proposed by Lloyd. Unfortunately, Schüssler Fiorenza appears not to recognize this when outlining ‘Wiebe’s Constructive Alternative’ (Fiorenza, 1994: 8) to a humanistic/theological study of religions.5 Schüssler Fiorenza’s claim that the influence of the methodenstreit has so refined our understanding of science as to make the sciences essentially indistinguishable from the humanities is simply unpersuasive, for it amounts to little more than a claim that scholarship in the humanities does not involve giving up “canons of accuracy and intersubjective assessment” (Fiorenza, 1994: 7). Schüssler Fiorenza is certainly on the mark when he claims that I downplay the role of ‘understanding’ in the academic study of religion, if by that he means ‘hermeneutical understanding,’ which substitutes for explanation and therefore precludes any possibility of an objective scientific study of religious phenomena.6 Such a scientific study of religion, however, does provide one with explanations of religious events, actions, and structures in the manner described by Lloyd. In “paralleling” religious studies to the humanities and cultural studies, as Schüssler Fiorenza puts it (Fiorenza, 1994: 8), he has effectively undermined all possibility of a scientific study of religion; and he has made Bildung (education/formation) his concern rather than Wissenschaft (scientific knowledge).

5 This appears to be the case in Schüssler Fiorenza’s discussion and is more fully elaborated in several of my later essays (“‘History of Religions’ in the Context of the Social Sciences: From History to Historical Sociology in the Study of Religions,” in Studies on Religions in the Context of the Social Sciences: Methodological and Theoretic Relations, ed. Witold Tyloch [Warsaw: Polish Society for the Study of Religions, 1990], pp. 205-20; “From Religious to Social Reality: The Transformation of ‘Religion’ in the Academy,” The Scottish Journal for Religious Studies 12 (1991): 127-38; and ‘Postscript: On Method, Metaphysics, and Reductionism,’ in Religion and Reductionism: Essays on Eliade, Segal, and the Challenge of the Social Sciences for the Study of Religion, ed. T.A. Idinopulos and E.A. Yonan [Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994], pp. 117-26). To insist, as he does, on the basis of statements made by Lorne Dawson, that I am looking for a universal foundation or starting-point, is hardly acceptable. I have replied to Dawson’s claims in this and other regards but unfortunately Schüssler Fiorenza has not taken that response into account (see my ‘Disciplinary Axioms, Boundary Conditions, and the Academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals and Dawson,’ Religion 20 [1990]: 17-29). 6 In this I am wholly in agreement with the claims of Lawson and McCauley (‘Crisis of Conscience, Riddle of Identity: Making Space for a Cognitive Approach to Religious Phenomena’), whereas Schüssler Fiorenza stands in conflict with their conclusions, despite invoking their work in support of his own.

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Schüssler Fiorenza, strangely, lauds my Weberian attempt to show that a scientific study of religion should aim at the objective knowledge of religion and religions for its own sake, even though he maintains that such knowledge is not possible because all knowledge is necessarily contaminated by the personal values of the scholar. For this latter reason he ought to disavow such a Weberian objective, for Weber adamantly insisted – and rightly so – that the development of modern science had emancipated itself from other parochial cultural values; it had certainly become wholly secular and dissociated from the quest for meaning (and/or salvation) and had therefore become “meaningless.” This is not to say that Weber thought science wholly without value to concerns about meaning, emancipation, salvation, etc. For him, science can be an instrument for the “rationalization” of the world, whereby one can explain and control the forces of nature and the structures of society and, therefore, help achieve emancipatory goals. To confuse that enterprise with the quest for meaning and value through science, however, creates confusion, for it suggests that scientists ought to concern themselves with matters of “formation” rather than the pursuit of knowledge; it wrongly presumes that science can somehow settle differences with regard to value and meaning. Whether the university ought to concern itself with Wissenschaft, as Weber argued, or with Bildung, as Schüssler Fiorenza, Green, and others argue, is itself a question of value and cannot, therefore, be settled scientifically.7 What is clear, however, is that to choose one is necessarily to exclude the other. If the 7 Schüssler Fiorenza’s and Green’s arguments in support of a humanities/Bildung notion of religious studies, it seems to me, is not consistent with the widely accepted history of the notion of the academic study of religion which takes F. M. Müller and E. B. Tylor and the early British anthropologists as the founding figures of the new academic discipline. The concern of these scholars, and of their like-minded colleagues in Europe and in America, was rather to establish a scientific study of religions that would be as much at home in the British Association for the Advancement of Science (B.A.A.S.) as anthropology, ethnology, and other such social studies. The humanities/Bildung notion has a quite different ancestry which is seldom, if at all, invoked in accounting for the development of the modern academic study of religion, namely, the establishment of a kind of comparative religion by Thomas Carlyle. In a recent work on Carlyle by Ruth ApRoberts (1988), for example, she claims that Carlyle was a pioneer of comparative religions in England (3) and argues that this new discipline was not (and is not) simply a logical and scientific undertaking but one concerned with Bildung and Humanität (i.e. with salvation [56-57]). This was not the kind of study of religion, however, that would be concerned with finding approval by other scientists in the B.A.A.S. but would rather be one that would make up for the insufficiencies of science. I do not, therefore, consider it possible to claim the former scholars as one’s ancestors in the field while espousing the wholly contrary notion of the study of religion deriving from Carlyle and the romantics, and this is what scholars like Schüssler Fiorenza and Green, in my opinion, attempt to do. (Max Müller, it is true, is an ambiguous figure in the history of the development of the field

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university’s task is to provide as objective a knowledge of the world as possible, it cannot also take on the responsibility of providing a framework of meaning, since such frameworks are always pervaded with value-judgments. A study of religion that embodies the principles and practices of the humanities, as described by Schüssler Fiorenza, therefore, will not be a scientific study of religions; it will be, rather, a moral/educational exercise, concerning itself with the appropriation of visions of “how to be human.” As Green puts it in his essay: It is in the humanities that students begin the process of identifying and assessing their values by confronting other whole lives, alternate models of being in the world that have the audacity to make demands on them. Great works of art, literature, philosophy, and religion are powerful precisely because they claim to know better than we do how we should live (Green, 1992: 103). Schüssler Fiorenza’s argument – that, since the humanities in the university curriculum follow a practice similar to that espoused by the contemporary theologian, there is therefore no acceptable ground on which theology ought to be excluded from playing a similar role in the educational task of the university – is not without merit. But neither is it wholly persuasive, for he fails to see that his argument can cut both ways; that is, if theology is arbitrary and without scientific merit, then so are the humanities – and perhaps they also should be excluded from the university curriculum. Or must we assume that any and all views on values and styles of existence in society must gain equal hearing on campus? That seems to me the logical outcome of Schüssler Fiorenza’s argument. Moreover, this undermines the implicit teacher-student relationship, in which the university is no longer an institution where the acquisition of objective knowledge takes place, but rather a place in which only some – the professor-gurus – have the protection of ‘academic’ freedom to defend their own moral and religious convictions before captive audiences. For it is a fact that not all ‘visions of life’ can be included in the curriculum and there is no obvious criterion by which it can be determined which of those ‘visions’ will obtain. The arbitrariness of such a proposal then is obvious. It is well illustrated in Green’s essay on recent curricular developments in the for he appears at times to fit into both “histories of the discipline.” ApRoberts, for example, emphasizes the affinity between Carlyle’s and Müller’s views. I have argued for a different view of Müller, however, that sees him as establishing a scientific rather than a romantic approach to the study of religions (1994c; see also 1994d).

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university (i.e. the emergence of women’s studies, African-American studies, etc.), in which he argues a position very much akin to that of Schüssler Fiorenza. He writes: “Fear of being accused of confessionalism is a weak justification for the curricular disuse of theology” (Green, 1992: 103). Confessionalism, he continues, might explain exclusion of a subject from the academy if the academy could present itself as a center of neutral inquiry and discourse. But if that ever were the case, it surely is not so now. The proliferation of new, ideologically-driven fields and methods of study – many of which begin with their own confession of basic convictions – surely makes theology both a plausible subject and a method of study (Green, 1992: 103-104). Surely a more appropriate response to the increase in ideologically-driven fields and methods of study finding their way into our universities is not to add yet another such field but rather to design a course of action to rid the university of all such elements in the curriculum. “To ready students for a life in an increasingly diverse and divided society,” as Green puts it (Green, 1992: 104), does not require the rejection of scientific discourse and the acceptance of ideological pluralism in the curriculum, as he suggests, for scientific knowledge is not wholly irrelevant to the aspects of life’s ideals with which he seems here concerned. This is clear, for example, in Lloyd’s discussion above. Decisions about life’s ideals may rest with the individual, but the ‘natural’ scientific knowledge gained at the university, and the tools with which it is achieved, can assist the student to analyze the preferred ideals more clearly while providing knowledge as to how they might be achieved. If, as Schüssler Fiorenza suggests, theology is like the humanities and other cultural studies, it seems to me that his proposal that it be included in the university curriculum is still not justified. The problem with the proposal is that he simply has not shown in what sense admitting theology to the university “adds value” to the curriculum. To say, as he does in his response to my original criticisms, that the study of religion is distinguished from the other humanities insofar as it focuses attention on “religion itself as an expression of the religious dimension of life” whereas the humanities, concerned as they are with religion, focus on religion only as it relates to other aspects (psychological or sociological) of human experience – is to say very little (Fiorenza, 1994: 8). Schüssler Fiorenza nowhere tells us what the “religious dimension of human experience” is, and it is impossible, at least in terms of his notion of theology, to conceive of that dimension as being anything but social and/or psychological. It is difficult, therefore, to see just what theology can add to the

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humanities unless it reveals to us something about human experience which no other “discipline” can. That would imply, however, that the “religious dimension” of human experience really is “otherworldly” in comparison to all other aspects of human experience, and that consequently a method particular to theology and religious studies would be needed. Having eschewed all such special pleading, however, Schüssler Fiorenza is left without ground for arguing the inclusion of theology in the university curriculum. Additionally, it is possible to assert that theology need not be included because the humanities now fill the role theology once held in university education. A brief account here of one such argument will, I think, strengthen the case I have just presented against Schüssler Fiorenza’s position. In his recent book on cultural studies, Fred Inglis has convincingly shown that the emergence of at least some humanities programs in the university curriculum has come at the expense of religion and theology; he has shown that they replaced theology because, after the Second World War, religion and theology could no longer constitute the cement that could hold society together. He argues, for example, that the study of English literature in English universities was proposed because it was felt that, in expressing the culture of English society, it could constitute the kind of cement needed for a healthy social order. The post-war politicians, he points out, believed that culture “would hold together a people in uncontentious membership, as religion once had done” (Inglis, 1993: 30). The politicians, he continues, had understood that Christianity had been too disgraced by the war to work any longer as cement, and they feared … the fearsome new secular religion of socialism as threatening their own comforts. Thus politics was dissolved into culture and the new frame for rendering-the-worldintelligible was demanded from what were then called the humanities (Inglis, 1993: 30-31). The description Inglis provides of “cultural studies” very much resembles the notions of theology and religious studies found in Schüssler Fiorenza and Green. This “discipline” is not concerned, he claims, with producing “that dismal product of the knowledge industry, the expert,” but rather directs itself to education in the “good life” (Inglis, 1993: 6, 16); it involves moving away from a mere analysis of societies as historical and political entities to understanding them (Inglis, 1993: 36). In rejecting what Inglis calls “technicism,” cultural studies, he argues, understands reason to be inseparably linked to issues of virtue and justice and, therefore, to be more than simply a formal instrument of analysis in that it brings one to self-knowledge rather than simply providing

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knowledge about the world. Thus cultural studies, unlike the “old” (scientific) disciplines, claims Inglis, “stand closer to lived experience” (Inglis, 1993: 239) and are directed toward the meaning of life. Although I take exception to other aspects of Schüssler Fiorenza’s treatment of my argument on behalf of making a clear demarcation between theology and religious studies, enough has been said here to show that theology ought not to have a place within the academic study of religion.8 It is true that if one still thinks of the modern university professor as somehow having a responsibility to provide a framework of meaning for her/his students – to establish values and to deliver an intelligible story about the universe and its history that will establish it as a meaningful environment for human existence – then one can, perhaps, provide some argument for including theology within the academic study of religion. But such an argument on behalf of the professor as guru or prophet, as I have shown here, runs into serious difficulties: the plurality of visions of the world available for promulgation is such as to overwhelm the university with perpetual ideological strife as the competing visions vie for the hearts and minds of students.9 And, as I have just pointed out, the humanities and cultural studies to which Schüssler Fiorenza compares theology and the academic study of religions, have, for the most part, distanced 8 I am somewhat concerned that Schüssler Fiorenza complains that I misrepresent him. His reference to Bruce Alton’s comments regarding my views (‘A Response to Donald Wiebe’: 9, note 6) seems to suggest that Alton thinks my work essentially misguided, whereas Alton, although thinking my claims not as easy to prove as I do, nonetheless admits that “[I am], for the most part, right” (Bruce Alton, ‘Method and Reduction in the Study of Religion,’ Studies in Religion 15 [1986]: 155). Indeed, he wishes that I had been more careful in my methods of analysis so as not to allow my critics “to dismiss [my] quite serious and important challenges [regarding de-theologizing the study of religion (Ibid.: 161)] all too easily (Ibid.: 160).” With regard to my own work, Schüssler Fiorenza maintains that I espouse a form of essentialism, quoting in support part of a sentence as if it were the whole. I have “explicitly affirmed,” he argues, “that one can in fact speak quite legitimately of an ‘essence’ of Christianity (or of Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.)” (Schüssler Fiorenza, “A Response to Donald Wiebe”: 9). In fact, the sentence in my book continues as follows: “– at least, to put it in an adverbial form, to speak of what is essentially Christian (or essentially Buddhist, etc.)” (Donald Wiebe, Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion [The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1981], pp. 166-67). Moreover, I then proceed to argue that there are no clearcut criteria for distinguishing between religious and non-religious persons, and I deny the existence, so to speak, of religious “acid tests.” My aim was to avoid an outright essentialism in discussion of the definition of religion without simply espousing an absolute relativism in the process. In effect, then, if misrepresentation has taken place, it has not been done by me but rather by Schüssler Fiorenza. 9 On this score I think Robert Michaelson’s proposal that the professor ought to fill both roles is internally inconsistent (R. Michaelson, ‘The Engaged Observer: Portrait of a Professor of Religion,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 40 [1972]: 419-24).

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themselves from religion and theology and see themselves as now providing, with greater intellectual respectability, what religion and theology attempt to deliver (and for generations did deliver), but fail. And as liberally reinterpreted by Schüssler Fiorenza, there is no possibility of distinguishing theology from the other humanities and therefore no case to be made for its inclusion in the curriculum alongside the humanities. If, however, one has a more sober and measured understanding of the task of the professor as one who seeks to impart knowledge about the world and states of affairs in the world, one will understand that the phrase ‘academic study of religion’ refers to the scientific, and therefore value-free, study of religions and religious phenomena. And as I have already indicated in the brief discussion of Christopher Lloyd above, such a scientific study of religion is not reducible to hermeneutics and is, clearly, continuous with the enterprises we refer to as the natural sciences. Consequently, our task as professors of religious studies, like that of professors in the natural and social sciences, is to contribute to the increase of knowledge about the world, namely about religious persons, events, structures, etc., knowing full well that here as well our knowledge always remains provisional and therefore inadequate as a foundation for structures of meaning or paths to salvation. The attempt to combine the two enterprises can therefore only be detrimental to science and to the university as that unique institution in which the search for knowledge can proceed on its own terms, without political coercion. Consequently, to take Schüssler Fiorenza’s or Green’s advice with respect to the university curriculum can only lead to intellectual sectarianism. Those who are genuinely committed to the pursuit of scientific knowledge, therefore, will clearly demarcate religious studies (the academic study of religion) from religion and theology, and will keep existential concerns at bay in the classroom; they will fulfill their responsibilities in the classroom as professors and not as gurus or prophets. If, following the advice of scholars like Schüssler Fiorenza and Green, we admit into the university curriculum fields of study in which truth and knowledge are politically and/or religiously prescribed, we will have begun to undermine one of the few environments within which science can truly flourish.

Bibliography Bruce Alton, ‘Method and Reduction in the Study of Religion,’ Studies in Religion, 15 (1986), pp. 153-164. Ruth ApRoberts, The Ancient Dialect: Thomas Carlyle and Comparative Religion, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1988.

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William Scott Green, ‘Is Theology Academic?,’ SH’MA: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility, 22/433 (1 May, 1992), pp. 102-104. D. G. Hart, ‘American Learning and the Problem of Religious Studies,’ in The Secularization of the Academy, ed. by G. M. Marsden and B. J. Longfield, pp. 195-233, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992. Fred Inglis, Cultural Studies, Oxford, Blackwell, 1993. E. Thomas Lawson and McCauley Robert, Rethinking Religion: Connecting the Cognitive and the Cultural, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990. E. Thomas Lawson and McCauley Robert, ‘Crisis of Conscience, Riddle of Identity: Making Space for a Cognitive Approach to Religious Phenomena,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 61 (1993), pp. 201-223. Frederic Lilge, The Abuse of Learning: The Failure of the German University, New York, The Macmillan Co., 1948. Christopher Lloyd, The Structures of History, Oxford, Blackwell, 1993. Robert Michaelson, ‘The Engaged Observer: Portrait of a Professor of Religion,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 40 (1972), pp. 419-424. Fiorenza Francis Schüssler, ‘Theological and Religious Studies: The Contest of the Faculties,’ in Shifting Boundaries: Contextual Approaches to the Structure of Theological Education, ed. by Barbara Wheeler and Edward Farley, pp. 119-149, Louisville, KY, Westminster Press, 1991. Fiorenza Francis Schüssler, ‘Theology in the University,’ Bulletin of the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion, 22/2 (1993), pp. 34-39. Fiorenza Francis Schüssler, ‘A Response to Donald Wiebe,’ Bulletin OF the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion, 23/1 (1994), pp. 6-10. Donald Wiebe, Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion, The Hague, Mouton Publishers, 1981. Donald Wiebe, ‘History of Religions in the Context of the Social Sciences: From History to Historical Sociology in the Study of Religions’ in Studies on Religions in the Context of the Social Sciences: Methodological and Theoretic Relations, ed. by Witold Tylock, pp. 205-220, Warsaw, Polish Society for the Study of Religions, 1990a. Donald Wiebe, ‘Disciplinary Axioms, Boundary Conditions, and the Academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals and Dawson,’ Religion, 20 (1990b), pp. 17-29. Donald Wiebe, ‘From Religious to Social Reality: The Transformation of Religion in the Academy,’ The Scottish Journal for Religious Studies, 12 (1991), pp. 127-138. Donald Wiebe, ‘On Theology and Religious Studies: A Response to Francis Schüssler Fiorenza,’ Bulletin of the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion, 23/1 (1994a), pp. 3-6. Donald Wiebe, ‘Postscript: On Method, Metaphysics, and Reductionism,’ in Religion and Reductionism: Essays on Eliade, Segal, and the Challenge of the Social Sciences

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for the Study of Religion, ed. by T. A. Idinopulos and E. A. Yonan, pp. 117-126, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1994b. Donald Wiebe, ‘Reviews of Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion (Peter Byrne) and Religion and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Peter Harrison),’ Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 6 (1994), pp. 92-104. Donald Wiebe, ‘Religion and the Scientific Impulse in the Nineteenth Century: Friedrich Max Müller and the Birth of the Science of Religion,’ International Journal for Comparative Religions, 1 (1995), pp. 75-96.

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Chapter 14

Dissolving Rationality: the Anti-Science Phenomenon and Its Implications for the Study of Religion Donald Wiebe

As is well known, the current status of the study of religion legitimated in our modern Western universities is the result of successful argumentation on the part of our forebears that a scientific study of religion was possible. And yet here we are assessing the issue of how a “rational and disciplined scientific/scholarly discourse on religion” is possible1 which, to my mind at least, suggests that we still face fundamental problems in the field of religious studies. Now this is not an altogether new experience for our discipline, for the emancipation of the study of religion from the religio-theological framework within which that study had been undertaken until the latter part of the nineteenth century has never fully been achieved. “The very abundance of contemporary literature about how religions and their study ought to be conceived or organized,” Sam Preus rightly contends, “amounts to evidence of an identity crisis in the field” (Preus 1987, 17). The problem with the study of religion which we are facing here, however, is not, I think, merely a continuation of that crisis of identity; it rather catapults the problem to an altogether different level of severity. The psychological notion of a ‘crisis of identity’ when taken as a metaphor is appropriate in discussion of this field because although the study of religion in the academic setting had achieved a recognizable identity as an objective and scientifically legitimate enterprise, it was all the while being undermined by a conflict of loyalties and aspirations of many of its practitioners who were committed both to the scientific study of religion and to the maintenance of religious faith. The crisis now is not that of maintaining a scientific identity in the face of the extra-scientific aspirations of students of religion, but rather with the loss of identity as a scientific enterprise altogether since the very notion of science itself is now under attack. The notion that science is a special 1 This is the central issue for discussion formulated by Jeppe Sinding Jensen in the ‘Invitation to an International Conference on Rationality and the Study of Religion’ held at the University of Aarhus in June, 1996.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_016Donald

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form of reason that can bring about convergence of opinion regarding states of affairs in the world and so ground our knowledge of the world and its contents is itself in dispute. The notion of science as an epistemologically privileged type of knowledge is today criticized as a political tactic “to exclude, silence, or otherwise disempower socially threatening or marginal groups” (Seidman 1992a, 54). Indeed, as Steven Seidman, from whom this quotation is taken, puts it, science is nothing more than “a social practice that is part of the ongoing struggle among groups to impose and legitimate their conflicting interests” (ibid.) Contrary to the beliefs of those who established the scientific study of religion, therefore, and of those who now support its continuation, science is not justified in terms of genuine epistemological achievements but rather only in terms of a scientistic ideology that according to Seidman cannot justify its claim “to promote the growth of knowledge and human rationality” (Seidman 1992a, 62). The assumption of the possibility of a rational and scientific study of religion today is therefore seen to be chimerical and the original crisis of identity – caused by the conflict of scientific and religious interests in the study of religion – is consequently dissolved, (and the ‘reality’ of religion saved). That, I shall argue, however, is not an achievement to be applauded by those in the field, but rather a setback to be lamented and transcended.

1

Dissolving Rationality?

The term anti-science, I think, appropriately describes the attitude expressed by Seidman. And it appears to me that one can also appropriately speak of an anti-science movement amongst contemporary intellectuals in our academic institutions in that many, for a variety of reasons, seem intent upon delegitimating science itself. Whether that movement has had the effect of dissolving the rationality of science, however, is far from evident as a critique of several such proposals will clearly show. Tom Sorell’s Scientism: Philosophy and the Infatuation of Science (1991) and Mary Midgley’s Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and Its Meaning (1992) provide us with clear examples of general philosophical dissatisfaction with science in our society. Sorell, it is true, attempts to distinguish science from scientism – the latter involving commitment to science as “the most valuable part of human learning” (Sorell 1991, 7) and holding that what is not scientific is of doubtful value – but his critique of scientism as an arrogant, epistemology-centered philosophy seems also to apply to science itself. Science, that is, in its concern to know the world, and to know it objectively, is, necessarily it appears, insensitive to the broader culture which is and must be concerned with more than matters of

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knowledge and academic life. To possess culture is not to possess objective, explanatory knowledge of social life, but rather a sensibility which allows one to participate meaningfully in the life of society. Knowledge about society, consequently, cannot simply be concerned with the explanation of phenomena, argues Sorell, and the social sciences, in consequence, cannot be scientific. To insist that the social sciences proceed in the manner of the natural sciences, therefore, is to be scientistic in that it rejects as insignificant the concerns of the social sciences with practical and normative questions. Sorell does not deny that the social sciences sometimes succeed in being explanatory in a way that resembles the natural sciences but he insists that they cannot simply be identified with the natural sciences without undermining society itself, which is much more than a mere accumulation of ‘facts about’ and ‘theories of’ human behaviour. ‘Culture,’ he writes: is not a matter of academic knowledge but of participation. And participation changes not merely your thoughts and beliefs but your perceptions and emotions. The question therefore unavoidably arises whether scientific knowledge and the habits of curiosity and experiment which engender it, are really the friends or foes of culture? Could it be that the habit of scientific explanation may take over from the habits of emotional response, or in some way undermine the picture of the world upon which our moral life is founded? (1991, 108) Sorell insists that his critique of scientism is not an attack on science, and he worries that it may simply help those who wish to peddle an alternative science like creation-science. Nevertheless, amongst philosophers, he insists, “the problem is not to create respect for science but to dissuade people from worshipping it” (Sorell 1991, 177). That conclusion, however, is very much open to question. Mary Midgley, like Sorell, is concerned that her book not be seen as an attack upon science itself. Yet, like Sorell, she also sees science as an enterprise that undermines meaning in life if it makes knowledge an end unto itself for, so understood, “it leaves unserved the general need for understanding, and whatever spiritual needs lie behind it” (1992, 2). Science understood as the method for obtaining objective knowledge of the world therefore, is for Midgley but a cult of information which she labels scientism. True science, for her, is concerned with providing a world-picture that deeply concerns us and provides our lives with significance. The task of science, therefore, is to provide persons with connection to something ultimate in the world. “Connexion itself,” she writes, “is not a superstition that we can get rid of. It is work that must be done one way or another. To refuse that work will not stop it being Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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done. It will only leave it to uncontrolled play of the imagination” (1992, 95). Furthermore, science as the search for information about a purely objective – and therefore for her an alien – world (i.e., Midgley’s ‘scientism’) is not even a possibility for it is, in Midgley’s opinion, merely another faith and cannot, therefore, claim a status different from that of other frameworks of meaning. The high value put on knowledge and information by those who espouse that Enlightenment view of science, she insists, is indicative of a perception of epistemology that makes it impossible to distinguish it from a social myth. “I strongly suspect,” she writes: that, in the end, some outward-looking reverent attitude of this sort may be an unavoidable part of any serious pursuit of knowledge, and ought to figure in any explanation of its value. Mere intellectual predation – fact-swallowing – simply is not enough to power effective thought. The world that we think about has to be seen as important, as having value in itself, if we want to claim that there is any great value in thinking about it. (1992, 71-2) The dissatisfaction with the rationality of scientific reasoning is not, unfortunately, limited simply to philosophers seeking some justification for a form of philosophical knowledge; it is also, paradoxically I think, to be found amongst some scientists and especially social theorists. In his recent Fin de Siècle Social Theory (1995), Jeffrey Alexander, for example, argues that the role of reason in social theory has dissolved because there are dimensions of our social life that rationalist thought either denied or failed to thematize. The failure of the modern social sciences, he maintains, lies in its failure to see reason for the complex textual construction that it really is, and using it merely as a tool of calculation. The task of intellectuals, he insists, is not only to explain the world in a rational universalizing fashion, but also to interpret the world – to understand the world in a way that provides meaning to, and motivation for, living. In fact, argues Alexander, it is not possible to separate the explanatory from the interpretive task in social theory. ‘Twentieth-century philosophy,’ he writes: began with logical positivism and the confidence that analytic thought could know the truth. It is ending with hermeneutics, a philosophy which maintains that knowing reality in a manner that separates it from us is epistemologically impossible. (1995, 78) Alexander insists that this abandonment of positivism does not mean that social theorists have given up on science or reason, but admits that this no Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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longer involves the pursuit of general theories of society. Although he refuses to espouse the simple contrast between ‘scientific theory’ and ‘antitheoretical relativism’ in social theorizing, he does nevertheless maintain that theoretical knowledge ‘can never be anything other than the socially rooted efforts of historical agents’ (1995, 91). And such a notion of agency, he assumes, undermines all possibility of deriving objective, scientific laws that can depict the universe. What Alexander rejects, then, is the notion that social scientific knowledge has a privileged epistemological status; he rejects the idea that scientific knowledge has a universality about it and that the criteria of adjudication of its theories are not culture-bound. For Alexander, therefore, there cannot be a natural science of society, for social theory is not only science but also ideology. “Unless we recognize the interpenetration of science and ideology in social theory,” he writes, “neither element can be evaluated or clarified in a rational way” (Alexander 1995, 10). Steven Seidman’s and David G. Wagner’s introduction to their recently published reader on Postmodernism and Social Theory (1992) concisely summarizes the implications of much postmodernist thought for the social sciences. “Postmodernism,” they write: criticizes the modernist notion that science itself, not this or that theory or paradigm, is a privileged form of reason or the medium of truth. It disputes the scientistic claim that only scientific knowledge can be securely grounded. It takes issue with the unifying, consensus-building agenda of science. It contests the modernist idea that social theory has as its chief role the securing of conceptual grounds for social research. And postmodernism criticizes the modernist notion that science is or should be value-neutral; postmodernism underlines the practical and moral meaning of science. (1992, 6) Seidman is wholly convinced not only that scientific rationality has its origins in Western culture but that the rationale for what counts as warrant and evidence for propositional claims in the sciences is coherent only for Western cultural traditions. In other words, science is like other institutions – a strategy to promote particular social agendas. Consequently Seidman counsels social scientists to abandon the search for general theories and proposes instead: a shift in the role of theorists from building general theory or providing epistemic warrants for sociology to serving as moral and political analysts, narrators of stories of social development, producers of genealogies, and social critics. (Seidman 1992a, 48-49)

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He continues: I advocate a change from a discipline-centered social inquiry whose reference point is debates in specialty areas to contextualized local narratives that address public conflicts. (Seidman 1992a, 49)

2

The Nature of the Postmodernist Challenge to the Study of Religion

As already intimated above, the postmodernist challenge to the study of religion is a far more serious challenge than was/is the crisis of identity created by those in the field who sought/seek to harmonize their religious aspirations with their commitment to the academic (scientific) study of religion. For the most part those scholars still retained a belief in the possibility of obtaining propositional knowledge of objective facts and of the possibility of explaining those facts in terms of objectively testable theories. Postmodernism’s attack on the notion of theory, however, makes such harmonization impossible because it makes of social theory an essentially contested concept and, thereby, makes the study of all human behavior – religious behaviour included – an essentially contested enterprise. The distinction between social theory as a philosophical interpretation of society in light of politico-ethical considerations and sociological theory as an epistemologically grounded account of society is rejected out of hand. And that makes a science of society – and therefore a scientific study of religions – impossible; unless, of course, we are ready to redefine science in non-cognitivist, nonepistemic terms. And there are many who are ready to do so both in the social sciences generally and in religious studies in particular. Although many still hold to a natural science view of the social sciences, it is readily apparent that this is fast becoming a minority position, being replaced with a notion of science as an interpretive enterprise concerned with meaning rather than with knowledge. Ernest Gellner describes the effects of this transformation of the idea of the social sciences in the field of anthropology as follows: In the end, the operational meaning of postmodernism in anthropology seems to be something like this: a refusal (in practice, rather selective) to countenance any objective facts, any independent social structures, and their replacement by a pursuit of ‘meanings,’ both those of the objects of inquiry and of the inquirer. There is thus a double stress on subjectivity: the world-creation by the person studied, and the text-creation by the

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Wiebe investigator. ‘Meaning’ is less a tool of analysis than a conceptual intoxicant, an instrument of self-titillation. The investigator demonstrates both his initiation into the mysteries of hermeneutics, and the difficulty of the enterprise, by complex and convoluted prose, peppered with allusions to a high proportion of the authors of the World’s 100 Great Books, and also to the latest favourable scribes of the Left Bank. (1992, 29-30)

Such anthropologists, he argues, are “hostile to the idea of unique, exclusive, objective, external, or transcendent truth” (1992, 24) and consequently espouse a logical permissiveness and pluralist obscurity which amounts to a rejection of theory in the study of human behaviour. Much the same, I think, can be said of those in our field who trade the objective scientific study of religion for one of the many new alternative approaches of phenomenology, hermeneutics, ethnomethodology, critical theory, etc. This is particularly clear, for example, in Francis Schüssler Fiorenza’s rather unclear attempt to reconfigure the academic study of religion in the light of the postmodernist critique of rationality and of what he calls “the challenge of interpretive disciplines” (1993, 35). The Enlightenment notion of an objective and explanatory study of religious phenomena, he maintains, has no justification for proceeding as it does, and he counsels the academic student of religion to eschew science and espouse the humanities as the model for his or her own undertaking. Fiorenza writes: Programmes in the humanities study the classics not merely for their meaning, but also for their significance, not merely as sources of past cultures, but as challenges to present cultures. Classics raise truth claims that are legitimately discussed. Such contemporary university programmes have heeded Nietzsche’s scorn of his age four score and forty years ago [sic], when he chastised its claims to be historical with an objectivism that kills the historical. (1993, 36) The objective study of religion in explaining religious phenomena, he argues, willy nilly affects religion, and therefore cannot be objective and neutral. And since it cannot be neutral, he concludes that the student of religion not only has the right to study religion as a search for meaning but rather ought to seek the meaning religion has for the totality of life. Fiorenza draws that conclusion for it allows him, it appears, to espouse both the metaphysical truth of ‘religion-in-general’ as well as, relativistically, the truth of each religion in its particularity. There is some indication that Fiorenza sees the logical tension implicit in his position here for he counsels the student of religion to seek a mode of knowledge that transcends the explanation-interpretation dichotomy Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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espoused by what he calls the positivistic student of religion. On recognition of the historical, social, and personal conditioning of all knowledge, he writes, the task of the student of religion is neither to espouse a Cartesian foundationalism nor relativism but rather “to become critically self-aware by reflecting critically [sic] on all our presuppositions and by combining explanatory as well as interpretive modes [of thought]” (1994, 8). What Fiorenza means by ‘explanation,’ however, is never made clear but if by ‘explanation’ he means the search for a natural scientific account of aspects of human behaviour, it would appear that his injunction to the student of religion is nothing short of incoherent; and if this is not what he means by his use of the notion, it is then unclear how he distinguishes it from the notion of interpretation with which he contrasts it. In the end, therefore, the operational meaning of postmodernism in the study of religion appears to be roughly what it is elsewhere – a hostility to the possibility of objective knowledge of the facts about religions and their theoretical explanation and an espousal of the notion that knowledge of religions, as of any other social phenomenon, is always local and not general in that it is necessarily linked to a particular person in a particular culture at a particular time. Thus Fiorenza rejects the nineteenth-century approach to the study of religion which achieved recognition as a scientific undertaking in quest of a general theoretical knowledge of religions and religion (Wiebe, 1994b). As he puts it: the social location within the university means that the interpretation of concrete religions takes place within a context of the interpretation of diverse religions and the taking seriously of the claims of other religions. Such a pluralistic context requires neither a generic concept of religion nor an evolutionary comparative scheme that should serve as an interpretive or normative key, as often was the case at the origin of the discipline. (1993, 37)2

3

Some Responses to the Challenge

It is difficult to know what would constitute a refutation of “decontructivist, postmodernist, and relativist challenges to established notions of rationali-

2 I have provided a further response to Fiorenza’s argument in my essay ‘On Theological Resistance to the Scientific Study of Religion: Values and the Value-Free Study of Religion,’ in Czlowiek i Wartości: Księga pamiatkowa poświęcona 35-leciu pracy naukowej i 40-leciu pracy nauczycielskiej Profesora Jana Szmyda. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Naukowe WSP, 1997, 131-45.

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ty,”3 or how the student of religion can, in a positive way, respond to the challenges of such critiques. Can one draw upon the resources of the very rationality which is under critique to ground a refutation of that critique? Would this not be asking the critics of rationality to buy into the very ‘hegemony of reason’ which they believe themselves to have undermined? On the other hand, if we try to do this from a postmodernist perspective, we will surely already have given up that which we wish to defend. How then can we respond to the attack on the notion of a natural science of society, of human behavior – and, more specifically, the notion of a scientific study of religion? Before attempting to answer these questions, I shall briefly review three responses to those who would dissolve reason in the study of religion. In a recent essay on ‘Postmodernism’s Impact on the Study of Religion,’ Huston Smith argues the necessity for students of religion to respond to what he sees as wholly negative implications of the dehegemonization of reason, namely postmodernism’s political reshaping of our language in a manner that makes it “difficult to consider the possibility of ontological transcendence without being charged with speaking ineptly” (1990, 662). But this is not, of course, a call for the defence of a natural scientific study of religious phenomena. Indeed, on this score Smith sees the consequences of modernity – that is, modern rationality and science – as equally problematical for the student of religion because it also deprives the study of religion of the language needed to talk about God and therefore distances the student of religion from religious reality. Nevertheless, Huston Smith does defend science to some extent – a suitably chastened science that has learned from the wisdom traditions, as he puts it, how to respect talk of transcendence. Science today, he claims, is “conspiring with the wisdom traditions to restore the hierarchical universe – which is also the hierophanous universe – to its rightful place as the generic religious posit” (1990, 665). From Smith’s point of view, then, postmodern science is moving closer to the traditional religious view in regard to the ontological truth claims found in religious traditions. Unfortunately, Smith provides no argument or evidence in support of that claim, and his notion of a hybrid mode of thought which combines reason and revelation would simply return the study of religion to the religio-theological matrix from which it emerged in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In a paper on ‘Global Perspectives on Methodology in the Study of Religion,’ Armin Geertz (n.d.) focused his attention on the methodological problems for

3 This is Jensen’s characterization of the major problem faced by the scientific study of religion in the ‘Invitation’ to the Aarhus conference.

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the study of religion implicit in the postmodernist stance. Although he is well aware that meta-narratives about rationality and science have lost their credence in the eyes of postmodernists, he nevertheless suggests that we must retain them but, as he puts it, in an improved, non-imperialist version which allows us to remain open to ‘the other’ and to difference. This requires, he maintains, power-free discourse for which he thinks the notion of conversation an appropriate metaphor. Geertz then elaborates that notion of conversation in the hopes of establishing a ‘revitalized humanistic study of religion,’ and does so by drawing heavily upon Richard Shweder’s use of the concept of divergent rationalities. Geertz names such conversation ‘ethnohermeneutics,’ and he suggests that it can supply a new logic which is neither merely emic nor merely etic but rather brings both voices into a kind of hybrid thinking – a new voice – which has a legitimacy all its own. Ethnohermeneutics, according to Geertz, involves combining “the reflections of the student of a religion” with “the reflections of the indigenous student of that religion” (n.d. 20). And he claims that with the combined efforts of the multitude of voices and perspectives engaged in a common self-critical scientific endeavor, the whole product will become “the third perspective.” It will be the practice of ethnohermeneutics, where the perspective and the result are greater than the individuals involved (n.d., 21). It appears to me, however, that Geertz’s proposal is mixing oil and water in that the person he refers to as “the student of religion” makes general methodological assumptions but excludes “localizing” substantive presuppositions, whereas the person he refers to as “the indigenous student of a particular tradition” is committed to “local” substantive presuppositions. It is obvious, therefore, that the pursuit of scientific generalizations is simply not compatible with the recognition of the necessarily local character of all knowledge, and Geertz can only establish an ethnohermeneutics, I suggest, by perceiving the work of “the student of a religion” and “the indigenous student of that religion” in terms of the notion of “reflection,” making each enterprise a hermeneutical endeavour. And that undermines the essential character of the scientific study of religion to which the field, speaking ideally, has been committed since the nineteenth century. This is not, of course, Geertz’s intention: “Even though I warmly support intercultural understanding and cooperation and actively support it politically and organizationally,” he writes: my point of departure is built on the Enlightenment principles of a critical, humanistic approach to the study of religion. I do not thereby condone or defend the gross excesses and intentions of specific scientists, or the ideological and political measure of scientific results. Nor do I deny

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Wiebe the hegemonic implications of the scientific project. But equally, I do not support the programmes of radical postmodern relativism, feminist theology, New Age ontology, or the extremes of political correctness in the humanistic study of religion. Most of these are the very forces, in new guises of course, from which the comparative study of religion attempted to liberate itself during the middle of the last century. Furthermore, the fact that scientists have politics and morals, does not automatically mean that science is futile or that its results have no universal salience. (n.d. 21)

In my estimation, therefore, Geertz’s proposal for the employment of ethnohermeneutics in the academic study of religion is not a particularly helpful response to the methodological problems created by postmodernists; as described here, it runs counter to the Enlightenment project to which he is obviously committed. I think a more critical response to postmodernism is needed – a response that can take seriously the cognitively legitimate complaints that critics of Enlightenment reason have raised for the social sciences, and improve the quality of our scientific knowledge of society rather than jettisoning it. Ernest Gellner, I suggest, best strikes the kind of tone we ought to take up in discussion. In his book Postmodernism, Reason, and Religion (1992), Gellner goes on the attack against postmodernists and their claims that the search for objective, scientific knowledge is little more than a cunning trick of dominators. The postmodernist project of replacing such scientific knowledge with hermeneutic truth, he argues, provides not liberty but logical permissiveness, relativism, and pluralist obscurity; clarity, he insists, is definitely not one of the attributes of postmodernist thought. And it is especially the discussion about the human subject around which obscurity swirls and in which relativism is, so to speak, established. As Gellner sums it up: The pursuit of generalization, in the image of science, is excoriated as ‘positivism,’ so ‘theory’ tends to become a set of pessimistic and obscure musings on the Inaccessibility of the Other and its Meanings. (1992, 23) The impact of such an anti-science movement in anthropology, he notes, “means in effect the abandonment of any serious attempt to give a reasonably precise, documented, and testable account of anything” (1992, 29), and its effect on the study of religion, as I have already suggested above, is much the same. Indeed, the influence of postmodernism on religious studies has in large measure come by way of the intimate ties that have traditionally exist-

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ed between these two fields. Further, Gellner’s query as to why anthropology departments should reduplicate the work of other persons “already employed by the university [in departments of philosophy] to explain why knowledge is impossible” is in an equal manner appropriately directed to departments of Religious Studies. In looking at the issues of ‘postmodernity,’ ‘reason,’ and ‘religion’ Gellner argues, and I think correctly so, that we are presented with three radically different positions with respect to questions of religious faith – with fundamentalism, relativism, and Enlightenment rationalism (which he also refers to as Enlightenment secular rationalism and rationalist fundamentalism). Fundamentalism, of course, excludes relativism in affirming a substantive and final world-transcending revelation of an extra-mental and extra-cultural universe of meaning. Relativism, on the other hand, does not believe in the availability of knowledge of, or access to, such an ontologically other realm. Rationalist fundamentalism, however, is both like and unlike fundamentalism and relativism. It has in common with fundamentalism its belief that there is objective, culture-transcending knowledge but differs from it in that it denies the availability of a final, substantive revelation. Like relativism, rationalist fundamentalism believes no substantive affirmation to be privileged and free from critical scrutiny, but differs from it in that it does believe that knowledge beyond culture is possible. In summary, rationalist fundamentalism repudiates substantive revelations but it does, in a sense, absolutize procedural principles for obtaining knowledge. Gellner has no doubt that these positions cannot be mixed and matched, and for him there is no doubt which to adopt. “I am not sure,” he writes, “whether indeed we possess morality beyond culture, but I am absolutely certain that we do indeed possess knowledge beyond both culture and morality” (1992, 54). Nor is this mere assertion on Gellner’s part; it rests largely upon the success achieved by science and the sciences, and the transformation science has brought to human civilization. As he points out: we happen to live in a world in which one style of knowledge, though born of one culture, is being adopted by all of them with enormous speed, and is disrupting many of them, and is totally transforming the milieu in which men live. (1992, 78) The sciences, that is, achieve certain epistemic goals which we have prized. And it is a fact about our society that the existence of such transcultural and amoral knowledge is gained by virtue of Enlightenment reason, even though the criteria in terms of which it establishes its knowledge claims are not ei-

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ther formulated easily or formulated with exacting precision, and even though they are not capable of authoritative demonstration. Gellner also shows clearly that postmodernist relativism hardly finds more persuasive justification for the denial of this central fact of our time: he shows that the claims of the postmodernist rest upon a facile argument that runs like this, men live through cultural meanings, cultural meanings are ultimate and self-sustaining, therefore all cultures are cognitively equal, therefore the central fact of our time could not have happened even if it did. (1992, 62-63) According to Gellner they have wrongly assumed that only if science cannot lay claim to objective truth can one understand the ‘other’ and so appreciate a humanistic perspective on the world. If Gellner’s critique is on the mark, the celebration of the end of science by postmodernists is then both premature and misguided. As Philip Kitcher has recently argued in his The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions (1993), even though postmodernists have raised legitimate criticisms of the Enlightenment notion of science, the Enlightenment view is nevertheless essentially right. “Flawed people working in complex social environments, moved by all kinds of interests,” he shows, have collectively achieved a vision of parts of nature that is broadly progressive, and that rests on arguments meeting standards that have been refined and improved over the centuries. (Kitcher 1993, 390) Such a general argument against postmodernism, however important, is not sufficient, I think, if we are adequately to defend the idea of a rational and disciplined study of society or, more specifically, the scientific study of religions. Nor will it do simply to strike out at postmodernists in an ad hominem fashion as does Gellner when he rejects cognitive relativism as being only an affectation “specially attractive amongst the more naive provincials in privileged cultures” who think it possible in this fashion to atone for their privilege and come to understand others and themselves (Gellner 1992, 71). We need, that is, to be able to show that the problems facing the social sciences are not really any different from those facing the natural sciences and, as Jonathan Turner puts it, regain the vision of early social theorists who established the social sciences in the last decades of the nineteenth century (Turner 1992, 175). Their critics, Turner maintains, have not presented a very interesting or fruitful alternative to those theorists because for them social theory can be nothing more

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than “a mixture of history, philosophy, social commentary, ideological advocacy, and empirical description” (Turner 1992, 176). Such a claim, however, has not gone unchallenged and even though this is not the place to argue the dispute in any detail, it will be of some benefit here to sample the nature of the debate given its central importance in the postmodernist arsenal. In Practical Sociology: Post-Empiricism and the Reconstruction of Theory and Application (1995), Christopher G. A. Bryant rejects such a disparaging description of postmodernist theorizing as mere conversation or discourse; there is no need, he argues, to make sociology (and, by implication, the other social sciences), as discourse and as explanation, mutually exclusive. Indeed, those who do so, he suggests, make sociology an impossible science because they subscribe to an impossible conception of science. The restricted notion of instrumental reason associated with these conceptions of the social sciences, he maintains, have simply failed to deliver what was expected of them. But this is not surprising, he continues, because in the social world it is simply not possible to establish scientific laws governing society and social behaviour; to attempt to do so is to overlook the radical difference between their subject matter and that of the natural sciences. He writes: Whilst there is no prospect of objects in nature changing their behaviour in the light of what natural scientists say about them there is just such a prospect with the objects of social scientific inquiry (1995, 52). Bryant goes on to argue, moreover, that there is a new theoretical movement, that in taking this difference into account has been able to provide a more coherent and applicable understanding of sociology as a matter of storytelling and a set of discourses showing it to be less a cumulative explanatory science than a moral inquiry. Bryant still wishes to call such inquiry ‘scientific’ but acknowledges that it is not by virtue of equating scientific truth with instrumental knowledge which allows the possibility of manipulating the things of which it speaks, but rather by virtue of equating it with hermeneutic knowledge which enables us to come to a mutual understanding with others and critical knowledge which helps us to overcome the manipulations of others in the interests of self-determination. (Bryant 1995, 121-22) This science, he insists, at least has the possibility of practical application in ongoing discourse which the notion of sociology as a natural science does not. “Cognitive and moral models of the universe,” Bryant then writes,

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Wiebe have more similarities than might once have been supposed. Cognitive models cannot exclude values, and moral models which refer to qualities, connections and consequences cannot dismiss empirical adequacy. The making and accepting of truth claims, and moral claims, both involve persuading others freely to reach a consensus, or freely to accommodate differences or negotiate a compromise. (1995, 122)

This new, more workable understanding of sociology and the social sciences generally, Bryant argues, arises because of the recognition of the importance of the notion of agency and the double-hermeneutic in social matters in the work of theorists like Norbert Elias, Pierre Bordieu, Anthony Giddens, Roy Bhaskar, and Jürgen Habermas, amongst others. Agency and consciousness, it appears, make impossible the establishing of laws of social behavior; when they are taken seriously it becomes clear that society is an open system “in which the constant conjunctions of events demanded by the Humean concept of causal law rarely occurs” (Bryant 1995, 87). Nevertheless, Bryant insists that even though this requires an understanding of sociology as a set of discourses, it does not mean that it becomes an activity in which “anything goes” (1995, 162). He adamantly claims that sociology so understood “has a contribution to make to the reflexivity of contemporary societies different from anything poets, prophets, and pundits can offer” (1995, 162), although he does not provide criteria by which such a differentiation can be determined. Moreover, he admits that repositioning sociology in this fashion will be a difficult and protracted exercise but nevertheless thinks the future of the discipline rests upon its success in doing so. In this claim, of course, Bryant is indistinguishable from those who share the original vision of sociology as a natural science but are aware that it will not be easy to show that to be the case. David Sylvan and Barry Glassner, it is interesting to note, see the “heroes” of the new theoretical movement in Bryant’s discussion as rationalists, even though the “new social realists,” as they refer to them, attempt “to emphasize the simultaneous importance in sociological explanation of structural and interpretive elements” (Sylvan and Glassner 1985, 6). They argue, in A Rationalist Methodology for the Social Sciences, that to have a social science implies holding that order characterizes the social world and that the proper task of that science is “to bring reason to bear in specifying that order” (1985, 1). And the “new social realists,” they maintain, do this in recognizing that the surface regularities exhibited in social behaviour are but reflections of a deeper order, the discovery of which is the task of the social scientist. This is why they reject both empiricist and hermeneutical approaches to social theorizing. The social world can be as fundamentally open-ended for the rationalist as for the

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hermeneuticist because it is possible to accept the importance of the notions of consciousness and agency – the importance of agents’ interpretations, their rule-making and rule-following – without taking this aspect of social life to be its fundamental constituent. Thus the outcome of such rationalist inquiries, Sylvan and Glassner conclude, “would not be a set of laws of human behaviour but a set of generative structures, capable of combining to produce empirical possibilities” (1985, 95) with respect to human behaviour, and in that sense provide some explanation of them. These are the fundamental and invariant properties of the universe which according to Jonathan H. Turner ought to concern the social scientists, for they alone are genuinely subject to theoretical analysis. Thus “while the structure of the social universe is constantly changing,” he writes, “the fundamental dynamics underlying this structure are not” (1987, 160).

4

Summary and Conclusions

Although the foregoing discussion of the challenge of postmodernism, and of some of the responses to it, does not provide an “affirmative refutation”4 of that challenge, it does suggest several elements that will be essential to the construction of such an argument. The first step in refuting postmodernism, (i.e. relativism and deconstructionism), I suggest, is that of internal critique. As I have already noted, postmodernists are likely to see such a critique as an indication of self-interest and therefore as an instance of special pleading. But such an indictment can just as easily be lodged against their critique of science and rationality – one can, in other words, argue the constructionist character of deconstructivism. The claim that scientific knowledge can be explained in terms of socio-economic status and hidden ideological commitments applies equally to those who would make these sweeping claims about science and reason. Paul R. Gordon and Norman Levitt have, to a large extent, provided that kind of analysis of postmodernism and other similar movements in their recent book Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science (1994). They correctly argue that the intellectual ethos of the various postmodernist movements is indistinguishable from that of other social movements that champion oppressed races, castes, outcastes, etc. and justifiably complain about their shameless resort to moral one-upmanship in their attack on “mere instrumental reasoning.” With the postmodernists we have then, they argue, the “rebirth 4 Jensen’s phrase in the conference ‘Invitation.’

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of the philosopher as comprehensive sage” who has the assurance that he or she is capable of profound insight into anything and everything (Gordon and Levitt 1994, 77-78). Gordon and Levitt also show the internal incoherence of much postmodernist thought and point out that those who evade such inconsistency provide us with nothing more than assertion. In the first instance, that is, it can be shown that postmodernists appeal to the same canons of judgment that their arguments set out to condemn. Shapin (1994; 1996) and Latour (1987), for example, base their claims on work that they, it appears, wish us to take seriously as careful social history and precise ethnographic analysis. And for those who do not intend that we take their work seriously in this sense, who refuse to distinguish evidence and argument from assertion, there is no reason to pay them attention; if assertion requires no justification, then neither does counter-assertion. A second step – still in the realm of philosophical critique – is the clarification of the notions of modern science and of scientific rationality as a search for knowledge rather than a search for meaning or truth; its concern is wholly with epistemic goals. That form of Enlightenment reason that argues that all spheres of culture – science, morality, art, and religion – can be equally moulded by reason into a harmonious framework for meaningful existence, is indeed an unwarranted hegemonization of reason and is, therefore, rightly open to attack. But the fundamentalist rationality that characterizes modern science is not concerned with bringing these culture-spheres into a harmonious worldview, and is not therefore guilty of seeking some form of hegemony; and to write off epistemology as philosophically incoherent because it cannot do this, is simply silly. A third step in the refutation of the postmodernist challenge is the provision of a careful history of the emergence of science as a peculiar sort of value in and for Western culture, namely, the quest for knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone. That history, moreover, will have to provide a persuasive accounting of the cross-cultural success which that peculiar cultural value has had compared to all other cultural values. Such an account will, I suggest, free us from having to deal with caricatures of scientific reasoning that would commit us to accepting a radical distinction between the natural and the social sciences. Only then will we be able to free ourselves from the moral and political goals of a religio-theological or humanistic study of religions and religion, and direct our attention to the cognitive (epistemological) goals that alone characterize science. The final aspect of the argument to which I shall advert here is that of properly analyzing recent developments in the social sciences, especially sociology.

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Much more fine-tuning will be necessary before we will be able to provide a reasonably persuasive analysis of the notion of agency as a natural phenomenon as explicable as any other. Such a fully developed argument will not likely convince the hardened postmodernist, I suspect, no matter how persuasive we might find it to be. That, however, is no reason for not undertaking the task, for it may well assist many who have not as yet been taken in by the sweeping, but unsupported, claims of postmodernism and its promises of liberation for all.

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Chapter 15

Transcending Religious Language: towards the Recovery of an Academic Agenda Donald Wiebe

I wish to begin this brief address by thanking Professor Bianchi and the Organizing Committee for this opportunity to offer some comments and reflections on the past achievements of and future prospects for the history of religions. It is not possible, of course, in the few minutes available even to catalogue, let alone describe and account for, the developments that have taken place in this field of study since its inception. Nor can the promises and problems it holds for the future be easily divined. Several of our congresses, however, have seen such retrospective/prospective contributions and not, in my opinion, without some benefit.1 I hope this contribution, by providing a particular perspective from which to interpret our collective scholarly activities as students of religion will do no less. There is much that could be said about recent initiatives undertaken by this Association with respect to the cultivation of national societies and associations concerned to promote the academic and scientific study of religion around the world and especially in third-world countries. Much of this information, however, is already available in various addresses of officers of this Association to previous congresses2 and is updated in the recently published book Marburg Revisited: Institutions and Strategies in the Study of Religion

1 See, for example, Eric Sharpe’s ‘From Paris 1900 to Sydney 1985: An Essay in Retrospect and Prospect’ in Victor C. Hayes (ed.), Identity Issues and World Religions: Selected Proceedings of the Fifteenth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, Sydney: Flinders University, 1986; or C. J. Bleeker, ‘Looking Backward and Forward’ in C. J. Bleeker, G. Widengren, and E. J. Sharpe (eds.), Proceedings of the XIIth International Congress of the I.A.H.R. (Studies in the History of Religions 31), Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975. 2 See, for example, the addresses by Geoffrey Parrinder, Marcel Simon, and E. J. Sharpe in M. Pye and P. McKenzie (eds.), History of Religions: Proceedings of the Thirteenth Congress, International Association for the History of Religions, Leicester: Leicester Studies in Religion, 1975. See also Geo Widengren, ‘Opening Address,’ in the proceedings of the XIIth Congress referred to in note 1; or C. J. Bleeker’s ‘Opening Address’ in the proceedings of the XIth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, Vol. 1, The Impact of Modern Culture on Traditional Religions, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_017Donald

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edited by Michael Pye, the present Secretary-General of the IAHR.3 Others in the Association, moreover, are better equipped than I to provide information on other such matters of political import. Much could also be made here about the ‘state of the art,’ so to speak, of Religious Studies in particular regions of the world and specific countries whether or not they are represented by the Association. But producing a survey of this kind for even one country or region is a formidable task and incapable of being properly presented in a forum of this kind. The Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, for example, has been involved in producing such an overview of the study of religion in Canada for several years now and though several volumes have either appeared in print or are in press, the task is still far from being complete.4 As to developments within the IAHR over the past quinquennium, I leave that discussion for the reports of the Secretary-General and other officers of the Association who have a far better vantage-point than I from which to discuss their significance. In order to comprehend most clearly and succinctly the significance of the ‘history of religions’ in the past and for the future, it seemed to me best to focus less on substantive developments of this kind than on structural changes in this field. More specifically, I have considered it best to focus on the development of the academic study of religion and its present status – with the history of religions being its earliest form – rather than on institutional and political developments within it, for it appears to me that whatever the promises and problems that study holds for the future are connected with its demarcation from the earlier, broader notion of the scholarly study of religion. As we all know, the scholarly/reflective study of religion has been in existence for a very long time. And it is clear from the history of its practice, as Jan de Vries, amongst others, has pointed out, that that study has been an essentially religio-theological undertaking.5 The ‘history of religions’ – or Religious Studies as it is more often referred to in Anglo-American contexts – however, seems to have emerged only as a result of a conscious and deliberate

3 Michael Pye (ed.), Marburg Revisited: Institutions and Strategies in the Study of Religions, Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag, 1989. 4 Volumes published include: Ronald W. Neufeld, Religious Studies in Alberta: A State of the Art Review, Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983; and Louis Rousseau and Michel Despland, Les Sciences Religieuses au Québec, 1972-1984, Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1988. Volumes in press or in preparation include H. Remus, W. James, and D. Fraikin, Religious Studies in Ontario; T. Sinclair-Faulkner, Religious Studies in Atlantic Canada; Julian Pas, Religious Studies in Saskatchewan, and Keith Clifford and Brian Frazer, Religious Studies in British Columbia. 5 Jan de Vries, The Study of Religion: A Historical Approach, (translation and introduction by Kees W. Bolle), New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1967.

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transcendence of theological assumptions and religious commitments that had informed the broader, more traditional study, of religions. The scientific study of religion, therefore, like the other sciences, emerged because of the prohibition of religio-theological debate and discussion – because of the clear demarcation between being religious and studying religion. It would seem to follow, therefore, that the language most suited for the analysis and understanding of religious phenomena would be that of an unabashed secularized scholarship. And yet it is not clear, either from developments within the IAHR itself, or within the other academic contexts in which the study is undertaken, whether religious language is considered inappropriate to the study of religion, or whether scientific language is considered to have any advantage in this regard, despite the rhetoric often heard in these circles. As Eric Sharpe has pointed out in his history of the field, it was the demarcation of the scientific study of religion from theology that provided the basis on which the history of religions (i.e., Religious Studies) achieved institutional legitimation.6 It was incorporated into the curriculum of the modern university as a scientific undertaking because it had broken free from submission to transcendental authority. There is, in fact, something reminiscent in the establishment of the academic/scientific study of religion within the university curriculum to the founding of the Royal Society in Britain, with its concern for science, that bears on the issue I am trying to delineate here. The Royal Society – writes Feuer – was conceived when a group of jovial coffee-drinkers who disliked theological hairsplitting and were tired of sectarian disputes, finally left the universities’ precincts to set up their own ‘college’ in London …. They had had their fill of religious ‘enthusiasm.’7 Religious discourse, it was agreed, was inimical to the scientific intent simply to know the world. The establishment of the history of religions as an enterprise intent simply on understanding the religious world, rather than in engaging it, was a similar movement out of the precincts of religion and theology. This is clearly indicated, for example, in the rules for participation in the International Congresses of Religion, of which this is the XVIth, listed in the transactions of the third congress held in Oxford in 1908. 6 E. J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History, London: Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd., 1986. 7 Lewis S. Feuer, The Scientific Intellectual: The Psychological and Sociological Origins of Modern Science, New York: Basic Books Inc., 1963, p. 23.

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If any reader or speaker – it is noted there – contravenes the fundamental rule of the Congress which excludes confessional and dogmatic discussions, the chairman of the meeting shall promptly intervene.8 In this respect, these congresses – which reflected work done in the new university contexts generated for the study of religion – clearly differed from their predecessors which, though intent on being scientific, in fact proceeded as religious events.9 In addressing the XIIIth Congress of this Association, Geoffrey Parrinder, then honorary president of the British Association for the History of Religions,10 drew attention to this injunction as it has become embodied in the statutes of the International Association established in 1950 to take over the ad hoc arrangements with respect to the previous religion congresses. In calling attention to the dangers to this field of study, he wrote: … some of our elder statesmen may recall that at a Congress of this Association in Rome twenty years ago, a gentleman appeared claiming membership of the conference on religions, declaring for his credentials, ‘I am a witch.’ It was because of the danger of such a wide interpretation of religious study that the statutes of the I.A.H.R. came to emphasize the academic character of our Society.11 However, the question of how wide an interpretation of ‘religious study’ can be permitted without endangering the new emergent enterprise has not, unfortunately, received as yet the kind of attention it really deserves. And until it does, I wish to argue here, little exciting advancement is likely to take place in this field and, furthermore, what stature it has achieved within the academy to date is likely to wane. I cannot attempt here to argue this matter in

8 9 10

11

Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions (I), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908, p. xix. Sharpe, op. cit., 1986. The name of the Association has subsequently been changed to ‘The British Association for the Study of Religions.’ Whether or not the name of the International Association ought also to be changed has been a contested issue virtually from the time of its founding and it is still hotly debated today. One might consult, on this score, minutes of the Association (often contained in Congress proceedings which indicate continued recurrence of discussion of this issue). I raised the matter in my ‘A Positive Episteme for the Study of Religion,’ Scottish Journal for the Study of Religion, 6, 1985. Opposing opinions (Wiebe for the change and Bianchi against) have also appeared in open letters to the Association in the IAHR Bulletin. See the proceedings of the XIIth Congress referred to in note 2.

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detail but what I do wish to try is to show that such a reading of the future prospects for Religious Studies is not implausible. For if we see the possibility that our present generous latitude in interpreting the nature of an academically acceptable Religious Studies is no less dangerous than the one referred to by Parrinder, serious consideration of the issue may well emerge before it is too late. Though the statutes of the Association seem to indicate a rather restricted scientific interpretation of that study, in practice, as Sharpe has pointed out, the matter is considerably different.12 In his retrospective/prospective essay in the proceedings of our last congress, Sharpe points out that many in the Association have been Christians who have made use of their (Religious Studies) scholarship and their positions within the field more generally to further the cause of liberal religion. This was so much the case, he further insists, that, the history of religions enterprise could be viewed – not least by outsiders – as furthering either the cause of value-free science (if such exists) or of liberal Christianity on the pattern of Söderblom, Otto, and van der Leeuw.13 And more recently he maintains that those who object to the present trend towards the re-theologizing of Religious Studies (not only in Canada and the U.S.A., although especially so there) are simply mistaken in assuming that the field had ever been consistently de-theologized.14 Moreover, he argues that even though the academic institutionalization of the study of religion involved its secularization, that secularization was not essential to its character15 nor did it distinguish the project of Religious Studies from that of liberal religion.16 Though one must distinguish here between the institutional structure and what is done by individuals within those structures, it seems to me nevertheless that Sharpe is not far off the mark in his claim that the religious project and the Religious Studies project as presently executed, for the most part, converge. Furthermore, Sharpe himself appears to be championing such 12

13 14 15 16

See Eric Sharpe, ‘From Paris 1900 to Sydney 1985,’ referred to in note 1, as well as his ‘The Secularization of the History of Religions’ in S. Shaked, D. Shulman, G. G. Strousma (eds.), Gilgul: Essays on Transformation, Revolution, and Permanence in the History of Religions, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987; and his ‘Religious Studies, The Humanities, and the History of Ideas,’ Soundings, 71, 1988. Sharpe, op. cit., 1986, p. 246. Sharpe, op. cit., 1988, p. 251. Sharpe, op. cit., 1987, p. 258. Sharpe, op. cit., 1988, p. 251.

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convergence and he is but one of many who prefer to see such convergence.17 Though Sharpe himself may not have an overtly confessional agenda, there is a general concern with the continued welfare of religion which it is assumed is essential to the continued welfare of humanity.18 However, to the extent that such an attitude still characterizes Religious Studies, it is false to argue, as is usually the case, that a new field of studies, distinct from theology and deserving of separate institutional identity within the university, ever emerged in the first instance or deserves legitimation by inclusion within the curriculum of the modern university. And in countries like the U.S.A. where the public funding of religious and theological instruction is prohibited in the constitution, the implications of this kind of argument are particularly significant. More importantly, if this is in fact the case, it is difficult to see how the study of religion can evade ‘religious enthusiasm’ and sectarian dispute and go about the business of simply accounting for religion and the religions.19 This problem is still of central importance to the IAHR because of the nature of its explicitly stated academic/scientific aims and intentions. There is need of serious reconsideration, I think, of the insistence over the years that the Association remain an association of historians of religion and that the foundational methods remain philological, historical, and phenomenological and, therefore, essentially descriptive (idiographic) rather than theoretical (nomothetic).20 In prohibiting the cultivation of theory in the study of religion, it can be reasonably argued, the ‘descriptivist stance’ of the Association, if I may be permitted so to call it, has provided for the persistence of this kind of cryptotheological agenda in the field.21 Illustrative of what I have in mind here is the injunction of C. J. Bleeker in his opening address to participants of the XIth Congress in 1965. Bleeker’s insistence that the field is one for historians is based

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21

I have given critical attention to numerous others in my ‘Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion,’ Studies in Religion, 13, 1984. Since that time, a considerable number of new proposals for such convergence, or justifications of attempts to bring about such convergence, have appeared, but they cannot be given critical attention here. See also the essays in Sharpe’s Understanding Religion, London: Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd., 1983. On this score, see my The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991. See the addresses by Widengren and Bleeker referred to in note 2. See also the comments, in this regard, in the preface to my Truth and Religion: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion, Holland: Mouton Publishers, 1981. I have developed this argument in my ‘Failure of Nerve’ article (see note 17). See also my ‘Explanation and the Scientific Study of Religion,’ Religion, 5, 1975; and my ‘Theory in the Study of Religion,’ Religion, 13, 1983.

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here on contrasting the methods of the historian with those of the natural scientist, which in turn is based on his intuitive perception of a radical difference between the subject matter of history and that of science; the materials with which the historian deals, he maintains, are unique and this is peculiarly so with respect to religious phenomena. As he puts it, the historian of religions, … is occupied with phenomena which are unique in a special sense, because they refer to the superhuman, the transcendental, the Holy. Religion is born from man’s encounter with the Holy. Because it is man, who testifies to this encounter in word, gesture, or deed, religion is a phenomenon, which shows many human and subhuman traits, and therefore should be understood and explained as such. Nevertheless one would denature religion by reducing it to such purely human factors as social or psychological forces.22 The unscientific character of the attitude expressed here should be obvious. To refuse to countenance the possibility that a single explanatory/theoretical framework can account for both religio-social and ordinary social phenomena is no more credible than would be a refusal to acknowledge that a single explanatory/theoretical framework can account for both celestial and terrestrial systems of motion. To see this as unacceptably reductionistic suggests that an agenda other than that of science is at work here; that there is a concern on the part of the scholar to protect (or justify) the stance/position of the devotee. And that, of course, is tantamount to having entered the theological circle

22

C. J. Bleeker, op. cit., 1968, p. 8. (Emphasis is added). A stark contrast of attitude in this regard is to be found in Richard Gombrich’s inaugural address on taking the Boden Professorship of Sanskrit at Oxford. “Historians of Oriental religions,” he writes, “have long had a tendency to try to establish the original meaning which the religious teacher intended, rather than to examine what his followers have understood him to mean …. Scholars have endlessly lucubrated, and are still lucubrating, over what the Buddha meant by his nosoul doctrine; but in so far as they assume his meaning to be something other than what Buddhists have taken him to mean, I consider that they are wasting their time. Similarly, study of the most famous of all Indian texts, the Bhagavad Gita, has been almost entirely on this theological level, the desperate a priori assumption that the text has a single coherent message leading to attempts to explain away the difficulties for the interpretation selected. This style of modern exegesis merely replicates the efforts of traditional commentators – except that it usually does the job less well. But surely our aim should be to examine the many different interpretations which can be put on the text by emphasizing some passages at the expense of others, and seeing the historical relationships between them. In other words, as historians let us assume that a religious text is a human product, and examine it like any other cultural phenomenon” (pp. 24-25, emphasis added).

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even though the scholar involved is unaware of having done so.23 Though that may not constitute Confessionalism (with a capital C) in the study of religion in the sense in which that term is usually understood (i.e., as requiring culturally specific religious beliefs to be held to be true a priori) it is, nevertheless, a kind of small-c confessionalism in that certain general (metaphysical) beliefs regarding transcendental reality are seen as a necessary and unquestionable element of the structure of the academic study of religion.24 In his Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud, Samuel Preus provides a pre-history of the history of the development of Religious Studies as a legitimate academic/scientific undertaking.25 A naturalistic framework for the study of religion, he argues, gradually emerged out of the criticism of religion that began in the sixteenth century and found its most forceful elaboration in the Enlightenment. Such a naturalistic framework implied an approach to religion that simply treats it as an element of culture like any other and does so by rejecting the assumption that it is necessary to believe what the devotee believes in order to understand the devotee. Without that development, I would argue, no demarcation between religion and theology would likely have emerged and no academic study of religion created.26 Many who bought into this framework, no doubt, did so because of a theology that assumed an ultimate convergence between science and religion but they bought into it nevertheless and so saw the establishment of a new field of studies. The full implications of that development for their theology, however, emerged later but only in an indistinct and nebulous way which accounts for the rather confused methodological stance taken by so many within the field, namely, the articulation of doctrines of the identity or reconvergence of theology and the academic/scientific study of religion and the development 23

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This, it seems to me, characterizes the espousal of ‘a science of religion’ in the work of C. P. Tiele. I have brought this to attention in ‘Phenomenology of Religions as ReligioCultural Quest: Gerardus van der Leeuw and the Subversion of the Scientific Study of Religion,’ in the selected proceedings of the Groningen van der Leeuw Commemoration Conference. See my ‘Failure of Nerve’ article (note 18); p. 403 and p. 403 n. 14. I am in disagreement here with the recently stated opinion on this matter by Jonathan Z. Smith in his ‘Religion’ and ‘Religious Studies’: No Difference at All, Soundings, 71, 1988, though I cannot elaborate on that disagreement here. J. Samuel Preus, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory From Bodin to Freud, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. See also the extended discussion of his thesis, ‘Explaining Religion: A Symposium’ (with response by Preus), Religion, 19, 1989. Some interesting insights in this regard are to be found in Abrahim Khan’s suggestions about why the academic/scientific study of religion did not emerge in Muslim cultures. See his ‘The Academic Study of Religion with Reference to Islam,’ The Scottish Journal for Religious Studies, 11, 1990.

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of theories of the autonomy of Religious Studies. Such doctrines and theories, it appears, are formulated in order to restrict the scientific study of religion to the descriptive enterprises of philology, history, and phenomenology and rest on the assumption that an appropriately full (i.e. thick) description also constitutes an explanation of the phenomenon under scrutiny.27 To accept these manoeuvres I would argue, however, is to reject (i.e. by distortion) the academic agenda originally espoused, even though it may have been espoused without full knowledge of its ultimate implications.28 To recover that academic agenda will require some difficult decisions. I made some suggestions in that regard to the recent IAHR conference on methodology held in Warsaw with which I shall conclude my comments here. Arguing for a restructuring of attitude in the field I wrote: The dominance of the history and phenomenology of religion in the history of our ‘discipline,’ as beneficial as it has been in helping to achieve academic legitimation for the field, now stands as an impediment to its further development. Unless the grip of these traditional approaches to the study of religion is loosened, it seems to me that the stature we have achieved in the academy is likely to wane. For however important a descriptive account – empirical and phenomenological – of religious phenomena and traditions is, it is not sufficient for the intelligent explanation for which science seeks. And without an infusion of theory this is not likely to be achieved.29

27

28 29

The literature here is extensive. I refer the reader here to my comments in the ‘Failure of Nerve’ article (see note 18) and in the bibliographical references there. See also Robert A. Segal and Donald Wiebe, ‘Axioms and Dogmas in the Study of Religion,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 57, 1990 (a response to Daniel Pals’ ‘Is Religion a Sui Generis Phenomenon’ in Vol. 56 of the same journal) and Donald Wiebe, ‘Disciplinary Axioms, Boundary Conditions and the Academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals and Dawson,’ Religion, 20, 1990; (the response is to Daniel L. Pals, ‘Autonomy, Legitimacy, and the Study of Religion’ and Lorne L. Dawson, ‘Autonomy Revisited: A Rejoinder to its Critics’ in the same issue of this journal). On this matter see, for example, my discussion of C. P. Tiele in my ‘Phenomenology of Religion as Religio-Cultural Quest’ referred to in n. 20. In my ‘History of Religions in the Context of the Social Sciences: From History to Historical Sociology in the Study of Religions,’ in the proceedings of the 2nd Warsaw conference on methodology. Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990, by T. Lawson and R. McCauley provides clear indication of the power and scope of a theoretical approach to the study of religion and therefore presents an excellent model of the kind of research that needs to be encouraged within our circles.

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Conclusion

An Encroaching Spirituality: What Hope Remains for a Science of Religion? Donald Wiebe

When we bear in mind the original religionswissenschaftliche aims of the enterprise of Religious Studies as it emerged in the last decades of the nineteenth century, there are disturbing signs that, intellectually and scientifically, the field is in decline. And that decline, I will argue here, is in large measure the direct and indirect effect of a gradually encroaching spirituality in the institutional structures that are essential to the field.1 It is a quarter century since I delivered my paper, ‘The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion’ (1984), to the American Academy of Religion. Back then I argued that although the study of religion had gained a place for itself within the academic community by claiming to distinguish itself from the religio-theological community, by the middle of the twentieth century it had given control of the scientific and educational agenda of the field to the scholar-devotee. By the time that essay was published, the line of demarcation between religion and the study of religion had become so blurred that it was often difficult to distinguish the objectives of Religious Studies departments from the religious interests of liberal Protestant seminaries. This ‘blurring’ of objectives not only continues, but is getting worse. Although I am in some respects as pessimistic about the field today, as I was in 1984, I nevertheless acknowledge that there have been some significant positive developments since then, and I shall first focus attention on them before airing my concerns. The first thing that must be recognized here is the incredible growth in the institutional and structural strength of the field. There are, for example, many more departments engaged in the study of religion and many more scholars engaged in research and teaching now than twenty-five years ago. There has also been a significant increase in the number of professional societies and 1 A brief version of this paper was first presented at the 2008 meeting of the European Association for the Study of Religion held in Brno, Czech Republic. I wish to express my thanks to the organizers of that meeting for the invitation to the conference. I also wish to express my thanks to Professor Luther H. Martin for his critical response to earlier drafts of this paper.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_018Donald

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associations dedicated to the study of religion, as well as an associated increase in the number of journals and other outlets for the dissemination of research. The most important and exciting positive development over that period of time, however, has been methodological; that is, the field has moved beyond its early and mid-twentieth century fixation on descriptive studies of religion and religions – involving primarily textual, historical, and phenomenological analyses – to explanatory and theoretical accounts of religious phenomena. We are all aware, of course, of the significant impact evolutionary theory has had on the academic study of religion in its earliest phase in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. In her tribute to Darwin, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, Jane Ellen Harrison suggested that Darwin be considered the creator of a scientific study of religion given that evolutionary theory counseled anthropologists and other social scientists to focus attention on how religious phenomena arose and developed (1909, 496) and not simply as it was then constituted. In his history of the ‘history of religion,’ Eric Sharpe points out that research interests in the field were distributed among diverse disciplines, each “content to cultivate a limited area [of the field] intensively” until evolution emerged as a “single guiding principle of method … able to satisfy the demands of history and of science” (1986, 26). That theoretical coherence, however, did not last. Not only did it fall out of favour through entanglement in moral and socio-political agendas that it had no business in, it did not issue in a genuinely progressive research program that allowed for the production of empirically testable theories. What we might call the scientific payload of the field from about the 1920s to the 1980s, therefore, was delivered primarily in philological, historical, and comparative work. This payload, however, was somewhat diluted by the emergence of less rigorous phenomenological studies of religion aimed at ‘uncovering’ (or interpreting) the essential (interior) meaning of religion which, unfortunately, further obscured the line of demarcation between religion itself and the study of religion. The return to theory in the last two to three decades, however, is a sign of hope for the possible re-establishment of the study of religion in the academic context as a proper scientific undertaking, especially so in the connections that have been forged between evolutionary psychology and the cognitive sciences on the one hand and the study of religion on the other. I have in mind here scholars such as E. Thomas Lawson, Robert McCauley, Pascal Boyer, Harvey Whitehouse, Ilkka Pyysiäinen, Scott Atran, Luther Martin, Armin Geertz, Aleš Chalupa, Joseph Bulbulia, Jeppe Jensen, and Emma Cohen, to name only a few. Each attempts to provide a causal account of some religious state of affairs in hypotheses and theories that postulate the exis-

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tence of evolved psychological/cognitive mechanisms and that are testable in terms of historical, ethnographic, and/or experimental evidence. If the scientific study of religion and not just ‘Religious Studies’ is to have a future, it will have to bring theory to bear on the field. A renewed call for the employment of theoretical analysis in our field was sounded by Hans Penner and Edward Yonan as early as 1972, and by H. J. W. Drijvers and others in the ‘Groningen School’ in 1973, although little came of it until years later. I expressed my agreement for this call to theory in my 1975 article on ‘Explanation and the Scientific Study of Religion,’ insisting that the field “must move beyond mere description and classification to explanation and theory” if it was to be considered a genuinely scientific enterprise. However, like many others during this period of transition, I expressed reservation about the reductionistic implications of such an approach to ‘understanding’ religion. This is what Penner and Yonan suggested was the cause of what they referred to as “theory-shyness” and Svein Bjerke called “nomothetic-anxiety” (1979). In time, however, I came to see the animus against reductionism as essentially a protectionist move on behalf of religious belief. In a subsequent general essay on ‘Theory in the Study of Religion’ (1983) in which I provided a brief overview of support for and reaction to the role theory had played in the scholarly study of religion, I recognized the necessity of reductionism as an essential element of any scientific enterprise and the need for a theoretical account of religion – that is, for “a set of interrelated concepts and propositions from which religious behaviour can be, in a suitably weakened sense, deduced (‘made intelligible’)” (1983, 298). Without espousing a metaphysical atheism, and recognizing the solid empirical work by humanist scholars in the field (1983, 305), I argued that the “determined attacks upon the reductionism of theoretical studies [were] becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from apologies for transcendence” (1983, 287-288). The methodological atheism I had argued for in general, however, had already been taken up in the formation and development of two new theoretical approaches to religion that had some prospect of being tested against empirical evidence: the first being ‘rational choice theory’ best represented, I think, in Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge’s A General Theory of Religion (1987; reprinted in 1996), and the second, a ‘cognitive science approach’ to understanding religious phenomena represented by scholars noted above. Stark and Bainbridge are sociologists (rather than religionists) who take a particular interest in religion. As social scientists they make it clear that they are committed to the undemonstrable belief “that human behavior ought to be explained” (1987, 23) and, as scientists, they set out to explain it objectively, that is, without reference to the supernatural. “[W]e assume,” they wrote,

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“that religion is a purely human phenomenon the causes of which are to be found entirely in the natural world” (22-23). Stark and Bainbridge continue: “[W]e show that religion must emerge in human society, and we derive its existence entirely from axioms and propositions in which religion is not an original term” (39). Their theory is both objective and scientific because it is, as they put it, “rooted in a few very obvious principles about how people act and interact” and it includes a very limited number of axioms and enough definitions to derive testable propositions about religious phenomena (315). Although neither affirmed the supernatural at the time of writing, they insist that neither of them was antagonistic to religion and that they “did not write this book to ‘enlighten’ those who accept religion or to strike a blow for rationalism” (23). This approach to explaining religious phenomena is still very much a live option in the field of Religious Studies and has produced significant advances in our understanding of religion. The origin of the cognitive science approach in the academic study of religion must be traced to anthropologists and archaeologists rather than to students of religion. Anthropologist Stewart Guthrie’s 1980 essay ‘A Cognitive Theory of Religion,’ for example, attempted to provide a plausible way of accounting for religion in terms of a more general aspect of human cognition, namely our tendency to anthropomorphism. Archaeologist David LewisWilliams attempts in his work Believing and Seeing (1981) to account for the spiritual lives of the ancient San people of South Africa wholly in neuropsychological terms. It is not, however, until the 1990s that scholars of religion ever seriously considered the cognitive sciences as a framework for understanding religious thought and experience. E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley’s Rethinking Religion: Connecting the Cognitive and the Cultural (1993), first brought this approach to the attention of scholars in the field of Religious Studies, while Stewart Guthrie’s Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (1993), Pascal Boyer’s The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (1994), Harvey Whitehouse’s Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity (2000), and Ilkka Pyysiäinen’s How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion (2001), to name only a few, added considerably to the credibility of this new approach. Subsequent work by these and other scholars, including collections of essays and research reports on current approaches in the cognitive science of religion, clearly show that this theoretical move has proved heuristically fruitful even though early claims to have once and for all explained religious phenomena and religions were overly optimistic. In addition to this groundbreaking work by individual scholars, institutional structures have appeared to underwrite and support this new research

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paradigm. These include the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen’s University, Belfast; the Laboratory on Theories of Religion, University of Aarhus; the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, Oxford, and the new Emory Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture at Emory University. Publication by researchers in this sub-field have found a number of outlets in established journals related to theory such as, for example, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion and the Journal of Cognition and Culture which is more broadly oriented to cognitive studies. The Cognitive Science of Religion Series (AltaMira Press) has published a number of significant volumes in the area, and Equinox Press will in the near future publish a series in the cognitive science of religion in connection with the Aarhus Laboratory on Theories of Religion. Finally, 2006 saw the formation of the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion dedicated to promoting international collaboration in the subject. These are exciting developments in the field of Religious Studies, and I regard this emphasis on the formation of testable theories as indicative of the beginnings of a renaissance in the scientific study of religion. However, this ray of hope does not, for me, offset the despair over other developments in society and the university that negatively impact our field. The resurgence of religion in society and its infiltration into the heart of the research university, for example, often draws many scholars of religion away from their primary intellectual responsibilities into socio-political agendas involving futile metaphysical debate, or encourages scholars to engage in what I will henceforth call compatabilist and accommodationist theorizing. Such activities compromise the research we undertake, and the institutions in which we work. I will first note some recent ominous developments at my own university.

1

The Resurgence of Religion in the Modern University

The resurgence of religion in society at large is placing significant demands on professors in the classroom to ‘serve’ students from diverse religious traditions. As a consequence, many (within and without the university) are calling for a review of the role and responsibilities of the public university in light of these concerns. An entire issue of Academic Matters – a journal of higher education published in Canada by the Ontario Confederation of Faculty Associations – was recently dedicated to the topic ‘God on Campus.’ C. T. McIntire, a retired member of the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, insistently claims that the University, as a public institution, is derelict in its responsibilities to the multi-cultural and multi-religious society that it ‘serves’ because it permits the study of religion “to act as a secular, nat-

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uralist, rationalist, objective, religiously neutral, scientific operation” (2007, 11) and thereby problematizes the practice of religion inside the university community (2007, 11). McIntire writes: students have no interest in keeping their religion out of the religious studies classroom. The dichotomy ‘secular and religious’ misses the mark of understanding the place of religion in their lives and their families’ lives. They chose to study religion precisely because their religion belongs to their lives. Many find it incomprehensible that religious studies should impede them from connecting their study of religion with their experience of religion (2007, 12). Studying religion scientifically, for McIntire, is treating religious people as specimens when, as he maintains, we have an obligation to engage them as persons (2007, 13). McIntire can be assured that there is no disagreement on the matter of treating everyone respectfully; however, having said that, the view McIntire puts forward here – it cannot be expressed strongly enough – is inimical to the very idea of a university. McIntire’s egregious views here emphatically do not represent the present state of affairs in the Department and Centre at Toronto; the situation there is much more nuanced than that.2 This is not to say, however, that such politically correct thinking is not rife within the larger academic community at the University of Toronto, which has recently established a Multifaith Centre that, as its website (http://studentlife.utoronto.ca/multifaith) announces, is meant to “accommodate a variety of spiritual and faith-based practices and [to encourage] interfaith dialogue and spiritual development as part of the learning experience for all students.” That the university is a secular institution is given lip-service, but the Centre nevertheless asserts that students and staff are not necessarily secular (whatever that is supposed to mean) and maintains that the University must in some ill-defined sense accommodate their spiritual needs. Such accommodation, in part, requires the University to provide space for religious students to engage in prayer and worship, and space for chaplains to meet with and counsel students. What is most worrying, however, is the

2 This has not always been the case, as I pointed out in my essay on graduate studies in religion at the University of Toronto (Wiebe, 1995). A number of changes have taken place since that time, particularly in moving the study of religion away from primarily Christian studies. However, it still appears to be the case that the Department and Centre at the University are sensitive to the “religious needs” of students and consider it necessary to “serve” the needs of Toronto’s diverse religious communities (see Wiebe, 2006).

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claim that the Centre sees “the study of religion and spirituality [as being recognized in many academic disciplines] as holding the answers to some of today’s most complex problems,” and that they include in their vision-statement the obligation “[to] further our understanding of the role faith and religion play in a number of academic disciplines.” Such a broad public expression of opinion channeled through an official university initiative creates a climate of fear and intimidation for those professors who do not cooperate with the program and thereby undermines the principle of academic freedom. To require that professors not offend students (or colleagues) who bring religion to bear on their research and teaching is a constraint that effectively undermines the principle of criticism and therefore the integrity of our teaching and research. In History Lesson: A Race Odyssey, Mary Lefkowitz recounts the conflicts her criticism of the ‘afrocentric movement’ brought her way and remarks: “… if the purpose of education is to instill knowledge, the feelings of individuals cannot always be protected” (2008, 89), and it seems to me that the same holds for those who study religions; while respecting cultural differences and religious diversity, offending individual and group religious sensitivities cannot always be avoided.

2

Methodological Appropriations of Religious Faith in the Study of Religion

A larger concern regarding the study of religion in the context of the modern university, in my judgment, is the continuing failure on the part of the majority of scholars in the field of Religious Studies to engage the enterprise in a genuinely scientific manner; in a manner that recognizes that the aim of all of the sciences is the production of knowledge about the world and, in this instance, the production of empirical and theoretical knowledge about religions and religious phenomena. This is not, as philosopher of science Alan Chalmers puts it, “to adopt the naïve view that science can be practiced in isolation from other interests, nor that those other interests never, or even should never, impede the realization of the aim of science,” but it does mean “that it is possible and important to distinguish the aim of producing scientific knowledge from other aims, and that the distinction is essential for an adequate explanation and appraisal of science” (1990, 95). This is also essential for understanding the character of the modern research university which, it is widely agreed, is a purpose-designed institution for the production and distribution of knowledge and training in the ‘tools’ for the production of knowledge based on our engagement of and in the natural world.

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I am no longer surprised by those scholars who adopt a dualistic methodological approach to the study of religion, or those who overtly announce their religious commitments and argue the limitations of science and the consequent need for a non-naturalistic – generally supernatural – source of knowledge either as the basis for understanding religion or as a necessary complement to whatever the sciences can tell us about religion. They are legion in the field; everyone knows where they stand, and it is patently obvious that no common empirical, scientific, or philosophical ground exists on the basis of which to debate the matter with them. The only possible response to such claims, I think, is a ‘political’ one that points out to such scholars that the disciplines legitimated by the modern research university (as a purpose-designed institution with the objective of achieving knowledge about the world) are directed to gaining a knowledge of the natural world that is intersubjectively available to all human persons and therefore simply involves reasoning processes as non-moral instruments of inquiry into the empirical character and structure of that world and its contents. (This includes knowledge about the social and not just the natural world.) Thus, just as religious persons would not expect our banking system to take seriously ‘the promises of god’ as financial instruments of commercial trade or as collateral for large-scale purchases, neither should they expect our universities to take seriously their claims to supernatural (non-natural) knowledge. Moreover, even should a fundamentalist religious believer presume that the bank ought to accept such promises as collateral, neither banks nor other financial institutions would; following that same principle, neither should any of the disciplines in the modern university accept supernatural or non-natural claims as knowledge or the basis for knowledge. Although I am not shocked by the overtly religious commitments of scholars in this group, I am nevertheless in fear of them, given their numbers in academia and their collective strength in giving shape to the enterprise we most often refer to as Religious Studies. Their stance is inimical to the development of our field as a scientific enterprise, and our response to them ought to be unambiguous.3 The scholars who do still shock me are those who believe themselves to be operating entirely scientifically yet have no hesitation in surreptitiously slipping religious ideas and beliefs into their work. I also fear those who, although they do not deliberately build compatibility systems between their religious

3 I have argued this at length in my Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the University (1999).

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and scientific beliefs, nevertheless refuse to square the methodological assumptions upon which their religious beliefs depend with the methodological assumptions they adopt in their more restrictive scientific work. They might reasonably be referred to as ‘covert accommodationists’ because they resemble religious apologists who water down the methodological requirements of the science they espouse in order to accommodate (gain credibility for) their religious beliefs. (In this they bear some resemblance to the theologians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who, in a contrary move were willing to water down their religious beliefs in order to obtain scientific credibility.) There may even be some in this general group of so-called students of religion that one might reasonably call pseudo-accommodationists – that is, scholars who are not at all religious but will take on the appearance of being so for funding purposes.4 Given the ease there seems to be in confusing the scientific study of religion with religion itself, these scholars seriously subvert our enterprise.5 Unfortunately, we can find examples of religious intrusions into the study of religion in each of the most theoretical approaches to understanding religion I have referred to as providing some ray of hope for the future of our field, namely, Rodney Stark in rational choice theory and Justin Barrett in the cognitive science of religion. A review of their positions will, I think, show precisely the nature of the encroachment of spirituality on the scientific study of religion referred to above.

3

Rodney Stark: from Methodological Atheism to Methodological Theism

Rodney Stark has made a truly fascinating, but philosophically and scientifically unjustified, about-face between his A Theory of Religion (1987; reprinted in 1996) and his Acts of Faith (2000, co-authored with Roger Finke). The history 4 I have in mind here scholars who are willing to appear to be committed to seeking ‘religious knowledge/truth’ in order to enhance their chances of receiving funding from religiously oriented foundations. I referred to one such case in my plenary address to the 2008 European Association for the Study of Religion meeting under the title ‘Beyond Apologetic Modes of Theorizing.’ 5 It should be noted that the intrusion of religion or religious assumptions in any form is more easily detected in the natural, biological, and social sciences than it is in the study of religion. Knowledge about religion, that is, is not always clearly distinguished from ‘religious knowledge.’ Scholars in the field of Religious Studies, therefore, need to be more vigilant in this respect than scholars in the other disciplines.

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of the sociological study of religion, he now maintains, is a polemical rather than a scientific exercise (2000, 13), a form of atheism intent not on explaining religion but rather on “explaining it away” (2-3). In fact, he sees it as nothing more than a form of unabashed village atheism which, he insists, cannot pass for scholarship (14). Here truly is a case of the pot calling the kettle black where he is both the kettle and the pot. A “more truly scientific approach” to studying religion, he insists, came about mainly as the result of increased participation of “persons of faith” who were well trained in research methods and wholly committed to obtaining unbiased results in their work (15 & 17). It is this kind of “sound scholarship” that he sees as the essence of the work of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) which, according to him, stands in stark contrast to what he considers unscientific objectives espoused by, for example, the North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR). The NAASR, he asserts, is made up of activist scholars who “justify aggressive atheism as the rationale of religious studies” (19) and who are “obsessed with ridding students of belief in the supernatural” (19). Stark does not, however, draw these conclusions on the basis of a study of the constitution of the NAASR, or a study of the work of members of that Association. Indeed, none of the scholars to whom he refers in this diatribe was ever a member of the Association. Furthermore, the picture he draws of NAASR rests on an account of the dispute between it and the American Academy of Religion (AAR) provided by Charlotte Allen in her 1996 article in Lingua Franca entitled ‘Is Nothing Sacred: Casting Out the Gods from Religious Studies,’ which was a rather unfortunate way of describing NAASR’s commitment to methodological, but not metaphysical, atheism (19). The difference between Stark’s approach to religion here and that of NAASR, he maintains, is a difference of motive (21). As far as Stark is concerned, the methodological atheist approach concerned with explaining religion is dedicated to advancing “a religion of science” (21). He makes this claim, however, without argument or evidence. Of his own motivation he writes: “our fundamental quest is to apply social scientific tools to the relationship between human beings and what they experience as divine” (21). But this is precisely what scholars who adopt methodological atheism do, although they talk of the “divine,” (which believers claim to have experienced) only as being “culturally postulated” whereas Stark seems to accept that talk as expressing metaphysical truth. Scholars of religion committed to methodological atheism, that is, do not presume to make pronouncements about what Stark refers to as the authenticity of the relationship between human persons and the divine, because there is no scientifically available – that is, intersubjectively available – evidence that can adjudicate the matter. For that reason, the scientific student must seek non-supernatural accounts of religion. By contrast, Stark’s method-

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ology “denies that secular social factors must underlie religious phenomena” (33) and he therefore clearly leaves open the possibility for explanations of religious phenomena (and, presumably, other phenomena as well) based upon assumptions about the existence of supernatural powers and forces. Whereas in A Theory of Religion Stark treats religion as “a purely human phenomenon,” in the sense that methodological atheists do, in Acts of Faith he treats only the “human side” of what he now somehow realizes, but not scientifically, is an ultimately supernatural reality. Stark does not deny that atheists can be good scientists of religion, but, unlike the methodological atheists, he insists that devotees can be good scientists even though they study the human side of a Supernatural Reality for which they have no (religiously independent) evidence (2000, 2; 2003, 197). And he erroneously assumes that this provides him a foundation for claiming that metaphysical religious propositions and science are compatible (2003, 177). But this is nothing more than an accommodation of science to his later religious belief(s). A further problem with the later Stark is that he invokes the notion of divine revelation to provide what he considers the fully comprehensive account of religion that eludes the methodological atheist (2007, 3-8), but he does so without recognizing that this makes his “scientific study of religion” methodologically incompatible with the rest of the natural and social sciences. His recent claim that a compelling case can be made for Intelligent Design theory (2007, 396), moreover, suggests that his version of the scientific study of religion is also incompatible with science on the substantive level. Stark, it seems to me, would not deny this criticism given that he finally comes to agree with Kepler, as he puts it, “that in the most fundamental sense, science is theology and thereby serves as another method for the discovery of God” (399).

4

Justin Barrett: Methodological Naturalism Completed by Revelation

Justin Barrett’s work in the cognitive science of religion contains a similar, though perhaps less virulent, subversion of Religious Studies as a purely scientific undertaking in the framework of the modern research university. Barrett is a confessing Christian who nevertheless claims to espouse a fully scientific methodology capable of explaining religious phenomena, but like the later Stark, he assumes that the results of such a methodology need not necessarily clash with knowledge of religion obtained from a revelational source. This, I think, is the full import of Barrett’s book Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (2004).

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Drawing on the work of cognitive anthropologists like Pascal Boyer, among others, Barrett argues that many of our beliefs are non-reflective and emerge as the result of a collection of non-conscious mental tools that generate assumptions about the way things are in the world. These comprise a kind of intuitive knowledge of various aspects of the world that constitute, for example, a folk-physics, a folk-biology, a folk-psychology, and so on. Consequently, most of our ordinary beliefs about our everyday environment are, in a sense, automatic and not dependent on conscious modes of reasoning. Such nonreflective beliefs, however, become the basis for reflective beliefs as well. And, Barrett claims, such consciously adopted beliefs that resonate with the automatic and non-reflective beliefs have a greater intuitive feel about them that gives them an increased credibility and makes them more existentially satisfying. Belief in God derives from a particular set of mental tools such as, for example, an agency detection device (ADD) that spontaneously ‘generates’ nonreflective detections of agency in one’s environment. This mental tool seems to operate in a hyperactive mode (HADD), which passes on information to another device designated ‘theory of mind’ (ToM) which in turn attributes propositional attitudes to such intuitively detected agents (referred to as counter-intuitive agents) which, in effect, are templates for conceptions of gods. As Barrett puts it: “The nonreflective beliefs generated by HADD, ToM, and other mental tools working together to make sense of unusual objects, events, or traces may become reflective beliefs when satisfactory alternative explanations fail to arise” (40). The emergence of belief in gods, and therefore the emergence of religion, requires very little in the way of peculiar inputs from the environment; they arise “naturally from the way our minds function in the ordinary world, independent of pre-existing religious systems and doctrines …” (61). Following Barrett’s argument this far, one might presume that he would have concluded that religious beliefs (beliefs in god) are the result of the evolutionary ‘design’ of our brains and are, therefore, natural but illusory, phenomena. He does not, however, come to such a conclusion. But neither does he assume, as some other cognitive scientists do, that just because our brains have been designed by natural selection “we can trust them to tell us the truth …” (19). He therefore finds it necessary to provide additional arguments to prove the truth of religious beliefs – a truth which he has already, it seems, accepted on confessional grounds. In chapter six of Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Barrett begins to set out an argument to the effect that the Abrahamic religious traditions have basic aspects which “give these religions further advantages over others” (75). In chapter seven he proceeds to fashion a philosophical argument of sorts for reflective belief in God, drawing on philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga’s Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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claim that “belief in God is as rationally justifiable as belief in other minds” (97). He writes: “People believe because such [unreflective] belief is intuitively satisfying. It matches nonreflective beliefs generated by a host of mental tools converging on the same things: minds and gods out there” (104). And he concludes that disbelief in God (which he refers to as “attacks on belief in God”) arises “more from political and practical motivations, prejudice, and ethnocentrism than from a fair appraisal of the legitimacy of belief” and therefore “betrays a lack of intellectual honesty” (104). That is, why one would not believe in God, according to Barrett, requires special explanation; belief in God does not, and for Barrett, disbelief can only derive from a worldview that is “dedicated to the notion that science ultimately can answer all questions and solve all problems” (118), and is, therefore, scientistic. In conclusion, Barrett knows that scientific studies of aspects of religion can be undertaken by both those who believe and do not believe in God. But, in the final analysis, Barrett, like the later Stark, believes that a full comprehension of (explanation for) religion must go beyond that which any of the sciences can provide us. He too, ultimately, opts for a belief in intelligent design, again, it seems, based on revelatory knowledge, the rejection of which will impede coming to a full and true understanding of religion. Thus he writes: God created people with the capability to know and love him but with the free will to reject him. Consequently, our God-endowed nature leads us to believe, but human endeavors apart from God’s design may result in disbelief. Even if this natural tendency toward belief in God can be conclusively demonstrated to be the work of evolved capacities, Christians need not be deterred. God may have fine-tuned the cosmos to allow for life and for evolution and then orchestrated mutations and selection to produce the sort of organisms we are – evolution through ‘supernatural selection’ (123). Barrett seems entirely oblivious to the fact that this “philosophical move” in his argument puts his position on religion, both methodologically and substantively, at loggerheads with both the natural and the social sciences as they are practised in the modern research university. He, however, does not see this as an inconsistency in his argument regarding the compatibility of science and religion, but rather sees the refusal to integrate religion and science on the part of those who approach the understanding of religion entirely on the human level as acting in a cowardly manner. According to Barrett: Intelligent Design reminds us that intellectual inquiry does not have to begin and end with naturalism. I happen to think that methodological Donald Wiebe - 978-90-04-38506-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 03:35:53PM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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5

Prospects for the Scientific Study of Religion

It seems to me that the ‘evidence’ as to the character of much contemporary academic study of religion, of which but a tiny proportion is provided here, suggests an encroachment of spirituality on the field of Religious Studies that continues to undermine the scientific credibility it has sought since its founding in the late nineteenth century. It is indisputable, I think, that it is not primarily the scientists who determine the agenda of the academic study of religion in our university departments today but rather that it is the scholardevotee who ‘calls the shots.’ As I have already acknowledged, this is not to say that there is nothing of scientific worth in the scholarship to be found in Religious Studies departments but only that there is, minimally, a hidden or partially hidden theological agenda – a crypto-theology, as I referred to it twentyfive years ago – that provides the overall framework governing the teaching and research that characterizes those departments. It appears, that is, that the fundamental assumption governing our Religious Studies departments today is that religion is something more than simply a human phenomenon, like any other, that can be accounted for in wholly naturalistic terms. And even such a limited, small-c confessionalism (that is, a vague, unarticulated belief in a transcendent being or power), precludes the possibility of a fully no-holdsbarred scientific approach to accounting for religious thought and practice in the individual and in society. It is interesting to note, however, that such smallc confessionalism does not seem to dominate studies of religion carried out in other departments in the modern university. And that observation suggests that if there is any hope at all for a science of religion, it will have to be found, ironically, outside of departments officially given over to the academic study of religion.

6 See Gene Expression, www.gnxp.com, ‘10 Questions for Justin L. Barret,’ posted 04/01/2006).

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Bibliography Charlotte Allan, ‘Is Nothing Sacred? Casting Out the Gods from Religious Studies,’ Lingua Franca, 6/7 (November 1996), pp. 30-40. Justin Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe in God?, Walnut Creek, CA, AltaMira Press, 2004. Svein Bjerke, ‘Ecology of Religion, Evolutionism, and Comparative Religion’ in Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology, ed. by Lauri Hanko, pp. 237-24, The Hague, Mouton, 1979. Pascal Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1994. Alan Chalmers, Science and its Fabrication, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 1990. H. J. W. Drijvers, ‘Theory Formation in Science and Religion and the Study of the History of Religions,’ in Religion in Culture and Methodology, ed. by Th. P. van Baaren and H. J. W. Drijvers, pp. 57-77, The Hague, Mouton, 1973. Stewart Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion, New York, Oxford University Press, 1993. Jane Ellen Harrison, ‘The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion,’ in Darwin and Modern Science: Essays in Commemoration of the Centenary of the Birth of Charles Darwin and of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Publication of the Origin of Species, ed. by A.C. Seward, pp. 494-511, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1909. E. Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley, Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993. Mary Lefkowitz, History Lesson: A Race Odyssey, Yale New Haven, University Press, 2008. David Lewis-Williams, Believing and Seeing: Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock Paintings, London, Academic Press, 1981. Hans Penner and Edward Yonan, ‘Is a Science of Religion Possible?,’ The Journal of Religion, 52 (1972), pp. 107-133. Ilkka Pyysiäinen, How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 2001. Eric J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History, London, Duckworth, 1986 [1975]. Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, A Theory of Religion, New York, Peter Land Press, 1987 (Vol. 2 of Toronto Studies in Religion; republished by Piscataway, Rutgers University Press, 1996). Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2000.

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Harvey Whitehouse, Argument and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000. Donald Wiebe, ‘Explanation and the Study of Religion,’ Religion, 5 (1975), pp. 33-52. Donald Wiebe, ‘Theory in the Study of Religion,’ Religion, 13 (1983), pp. 283-309. Donald Wiebe, ‘The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion,’ Studies in Religion, 13 (1984), pp. 401-422. Donald Wiebe, ‘Alive But Only Barely: Graduate Studies in Religion at the University of Toronto,’ Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 7/4 (1995), pp. 351-381. Donald Wiebe, ‘The Learned Practice of Religion: A Review of the History of Religious Studies in Canada and its Portent for the Future,’ Studies in Religion, 35/3-4 (2006), pp. 475-501.

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Critique

The Preconceptions of a ‘Science of Religion’ Anthony J. Palma

The test of our validity is not whether we are scientific, nor whether we can establish a claim to be so; but whether we are successful in knowing and in understanding and in making intelligible man’s religious life. Our duty, as members of the university, is not to be scientific, but to be rational – in ways appropriate to our subject matter … However ‘scientific’ the methodological obsession may be, or may appear to be, if it gets in the way of our understanding what we are supposed to be studying, as I fear that it may, then it is out of place in our work. To subordinate one’s understanding of man to one’s understanding of science is inhumane, inept, irrational, [and] unscientific. (Wilfred Cantwell Smith, ‘Methodology and the Study of Religion: Some Misgivings’)1

∵ Donald Wiebe’s argument for a science of religion, as outlined in the preceding essays, has considerable strengths: it distinguishes the academic study of religion from theology proper, it relies upon the authority of empirical science in affirming a more descriptive, objective, materialist reading of religion, it strives for methodological clarity, it views religion as a human phenomenon (by approaching it historically, comparatively, philologically, biologically, anthropologically, sociologically, psychologically, via the cognitive sciences, etc.), and its naturalized epistemology can appeal to both skeptics and devotees, insiders and outsiders. To quote from Max Weber’s Science as a Vocation, a science of religion, not unlike science itself, is “in the service of self-clarification and knowledge of interrelated facts. It is not the gift of grace of seers and prophets dispensing sacred values and revelations, nor does it partake of the

1 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, ‘Methodology and the Study of Religion: Some Misgivings,’ in Methodological Issues in Religious Studies, ed. by Robert D. Baird, Chico, CA: New Horizons Press, 1975, pg. 9.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_019Donald

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contemplation of sages and philosophers about the meaning of the universe.”2 Yet Professor Wiebe’s claims are not exempt from critique. Nor would he wish them to be. As with any case brought forward in the court of scholarly opinion, the arguments on offer are as sound as their capacity to withstand the slings and arrows of relevant counter-arguments. With a view to testing the intellectual resilience of his claims, I want to identify what I take to be five shortcomings in Wiebe’s overall argument. These shortcomings are briefly sketched here given the limitations of space. How does Wiebe’s elucidation of a science of religion hold up against critique? Let us see.

i)

Conception of ‘Science’

First, Wiebe’s support for a science of religion relies on a particularly narrow conception of what ‘science’ is. For Wiebe, the term science is synonymous with that of natural science, that is, with the observation, testing, and explanation of empirically accessible facts in the natural world. A science of religion thus involves the gathering, classification, and analysis of publically available data in the form of religious beliefs, rituals, art, music, architecture, etc. (This means, theologically speaking, that the essential connection between ‘reason’ and ‘revelation’ in many faith traditions – the belief that revelation does not contradict reason, but elevates it to a higher plain of intelligibility – is accordingly disqualified on account of the connection being empirically inaccessible). What constitutes ‘knowledge’ as such, then, must accordingly adapt to the epistemological standard of the natural sciences. According to this argument, scientia (i.e. knowledge) incommensurable with the epistemological standard of the natural sciences is not legitimate knowledge. Thus, scientific knowledge is the only form of knowledge, the only form of intelligibility, the only form of reason there is. Indeed, on this line of thinking (as with the logical positivists) all metaphysical propositions, insofar as they are thought to transcend empirical experience, cannot be logically translated, and are therefore unverifiable, nonsensical, and simply meaningless. If, as Wittgenstein writes in his Philosophical Investigations, the analysis of linguistic concepts can be compared to “a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at,” it is also true that reducing one’s ‘sight’ to a close inspection of the frame of the glasses, its design, its shape, its size, and its colour, that is, to the way in which glasses function as a tool for optical vision, distracts us from looking at reality 2 Max Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation,’ in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, London, UK: Routledge, 2009, pg. 152.

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through them.3 A separation of knowledge from the knower (i.e a disembodied epistemology) leads, consequentially, to a ‘view from nowhere.’ The notion of ‘science’ operative in all of this – a purely naturalistic notion – is certainly one way of construing what ‘science’ is, but historically not the only way. The elaboration of Wiebe’s argument assumes a static definition of ‘science’ throughout. That reified definition, it would seem, is grounded in what historian of science Peter Harrison has called the “common [narrative] about the trajectory of science … beginning with its birth among the ancient Greeks, its decline in the Christian Middle Ages, its revival with the scientific revolution, and final triumph with the professionalization of science in the nineteenth century.”4 In his Gifford Lectures, published in 2015, Harrison complicates this ‘common narrative’ by outlining the shifting boundaries (or territories) ‘science’ has assumed over time: For much of the nineteenth century ‘science’ was used in a wide variety of ways …. Even a cursory survey of definitions and usages of the word [bears this out]. In 1828, for example, the most widely read literary magazine of the period, the Athenaeum, divided the sciences into ‘exact, experimental, speculative, and moral.’ William Whewell – polymath, master of Trinity College, fellow of the Royal Society, and founding fellow for the British Association for the Advancement of Science – classified natural theology among the inductive sciences, and there were still those in the first decades of the nineteenth century for whom theology retained its status as ‘the first and greatest of the sciences.’ In a more technical sense, ‘science’ might refer to a process of logical demonstration, as the relevant entry in the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannia (1771) testifies: ‘[Science], in philosophy, denotes any doctrine, deduced from self-evident and certain principles, by a regular demonstration.’ This definition bears the obvious trace of the older ideal of science that dates back to Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics …. In nineteenth-century Oxford, ‘science’ could refer to ethics or the study of Greek philosophy, [etc.]5 Harrison’s genealogy suggests “there is a danger of systematically misconstruing past activities if we mistakenly assume the stability of [the] meaning of

3 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. by G.E.M. Anscombe, Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1958, pg. 45. 4 Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2015, pg. x. 5 Ibid., pg. 147.

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[the term ‘science’].”6 It would be equally erroneous, then, for secular naturalists to misconstrue the history of ‘science’ as an entirely physical endeavour as it would be for religious naturalists to misconstrue the history of ‘science’ as an entirely metaphysical one. Both commit the philosophical error of pars pro toto, mistaking a part of scientific history for the whole. Indeed, the roots of contemporary natural science lie in natural philosophy, a discipline that sought significance in the relation between the physical and the metaphysical, that is, between the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture (and viceversa). Bacon, Galileo, Boyle, Newton, and Kepler, (to mention a few), did not see their scientific undertakings as wholly divorced from moral and/or spiritual concerns; to claim otherwise would be a ‘flight’ from scientific history. Is there sufficient room around the epistemological table, given Wiebe’s account of ‘science,’ for those holding a broader, more elastic, more capacious, (i.e. less reductive) conception of what ‘science’ is and/or has been? Is there sufficient room for present-day religious naturalists, that is, for naturalists who seek to unite, not to divorce, the physical and the metaphysical, to balance, as it were, external evidence and internal disposition, epistemic authority with epistemic humility? Is the quest for philosophical compatibility, as Wiebe writes in his 1994 study Beyond Legitimation: Essays on the Problem of Religious Knowledge, really “a wasted effort?”7

ii)

Definition of ‘Religion’

Second, notwithstanding the contours of his theoretical development, the applicability of Wiebe’s definition of ‘religion’ is somewhat unclear. In the essays herein, we see a move from an initial view that a phenomenological description of religion cannot bracket out issues of valuation, judgment, truth, and falsity; to a second view that if the study of religion is to be characterized as theological it must nonetheless be critical; to a third view that a science of religion seeks objective explanation of rites, rituals, social institutions, and/or doctrines; to a fourth view that the postulation of transcendental and/or supernatural realities would distort the academic study of religion; to a final view that doubts whether the transition from mysterious affirmation to mundane explanation ‘explains religion away.’ Yet nowhere in these five intellectual moves can a clearly articulated definition of ‘religion’ be found. (That may 6 Ibid., pg. x. 7 Donald Wiebe, Beyond Legitimation: Essays on the Problem of Religious Knowledge, New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press Inc., 1994, pg. xi.

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very well be by design given that ‘religion’ can be deemed as too vague and too broad a term, but the fact remains). One has to turn elsewhere in the Wiebean corpus, namely, to The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought, for a more precise formulation: I shall use the term religion here to refer to those structures of meaning that make sense of human existence in face of an overwhelming and engulfing environment that so clearly reveals the limitations of human beings; of individual and society. Religion, that is, will be taken to consist of the stories of transcendence; of another realm of reality; of superhuman/supernatural being(s) that have the power to help (or to harm), humankind. The recognition of human limitation – of finitude – in face of the inexorable processes of nature that eventuate in death, and the transcending of those limitations by postulating (recognizing/assuming) the existence of a superhuman source of power on which humans can draw, is what religion is essentially all about.8 The above expressions explicitly admit the terms ‘truth,’ ‘transcendence,’ ‘supernatural,’ ‘spiritual,’ ‘mysterious,’ and ‘meaning,’ as possible constitutive elements of ‘religion.’ If they are, indeed, possible constitutive elements of ‘religion,’ as stated by Wiebe, how can these terms be ‘bracketed out’ of any free academic discussion of ‘religion’ – scientific or otherwise? To do so would be to misrepresent the very phenomenon in question – to juxtapose theoretical acknowledgement with practical neglect. It is not merely a question of misrepresentation here, but of epistemological attentiveness (or lack thereof). To ‘appreciate’ religion – a word loathed, in some quarters, by certain scientists of religion – is to fully recognize its epistemological implications. A botanist who restricts his/her study of plant life to what is only seen above ground, ignoring organic roots beneath the surface of the soil, would only be offering a partially integrated picture of his/her object of study. The structure of the botanist’s comprehension (restricted to what is only seen above ground) mirrors the structure of the plant that is perceived. (The problem with the botany analogy, Wiebe might reply, is that whereas plant roots are empirically available, the ‘mysterious,’ as it pertains to religion, is not.) But there is a paradox here in that while Wiebe assumes (at least in these essays) that a theoretical definition of ‘religion’ might include non-empirical elements as terminologically constitutive, he nonetheless wants to abandon these elements altogether, 8 Donald Wiebe, The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991, pg. 33.

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in pursuit of an objective science of ‘religion.’ Only a definition of ‘religion’ entirely emptied of its metaphysical content can satisfy Wiebe’s criteria for a naturalistic science of religion. Yet that is not the definition of ‘religion’ Wiebe operates with in implying that ‘religion’ might very well include non-empirical elements as terminologically constitutive. Is there a self-contradiction here? If the objective of a scientific study of religion is (in keeping with Occam’s razor) to not allow entities of explanation to be multiplied beyond what is necessary, then why bother, terminologically, with the ‘mysterious’ at all? It is not that a science of religion is a threat to the faith of the devotee that is at issue here; what is at issue is whether a study of religion should limit itself, in Kantian terminology, to the phenomenal (the-thing-as-it-appears) over and against the noumenal (the thing-in-itself). [The assumption here is that Kant was correct in that the light of the noumenal cannot be known. Yet many religionists equate Kantian skepticism with false humility].9 No less a figure than Max Müller, the German-born, Oxford-based philologist and acknowledged forefather of the scientific study of religion, writes in his Lectures on the Science of Religion (1870) that: As there is a faculty of speech, independent of all the historical forms of language, so we may speak of a faculty of faith in man, independent of all historical religions. If we say that it is religion which distinguishes man from the animal, we do not mean the Christian or Jewish religions only; we do not mean any special religion, but we mean a mental faculty, that faculty which, independent of, nay in spite of sense and reason, enables man to apprehend the Infinite under varying disguises. Without that faculty, no religion, not even the lowest worship of idols [would] be possible; and if we will but listen attentively, we can hear in all religions a groaning of the spirit, a struggle to conceive the inconceivable, to utter the unutterable, a longing after the Infinite, a love of God.10 Even if one were to grant Wiebe the benefit of the doubt and claim that his definition of ‘religion’ can be reduced to “rites, rituals, social institutions, and/or doctrines,” (i.e. to ‘culture’), one might be inclined to ask how such a definition could be distinguished from, say, capitalism, environmentalism, or 9 10

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. by Paul Guyer, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Max Müller, ‘The Science of Religion: Lecture One’ (1870), in The Essential Max Müller: On Language, Mythology, and Religion, ed. by Jon R. Stone, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, pg. 113.

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professional football, all of which have their own rites, rituals, social institutions, and/or doctrines that point to aspects of ‘transcendence.’ But are these activities ‘religions’ in any real (i.e. commonly accepted) sense? In addition, there is little engagement by Wiebe with the debate among contemporary scholars of Religious Studies on how ‘religion’ ought to be defined. No mention, for example, of J.Z. Smith’s construal of religion as ‘a human activity,’ or Benson Saler’s emphasis on ‘family resemblance,’ or Russell McCutcheon’s highlighting of ‘ethnocentrism,’ or Tomoko Masuzawa’s notion of ‘Christian universalism,’ or Talal Asad’s focus on ‘discursive processes’ in history.11 Finally, Wiebe’s commitment to a science of religion lacks a persuasive argument as to why religion is ‘not’ a sui generis (i.e. unique) discipline of study. The claim that religion is reducible to natural scientific explanation is not an argument for why it is not sui generis. Religion is also irreducible to natural scientific explanation; it relies, for the most part, on subjective understanding of culturally postulated spiritual realities. There are two sides to the epistemological coin here. If religion is a sui generis discipline of study – unique on account of its constitutive metaphysical elements and unlike any discipline in the Humanities (Geisteswissenschaften), Social Sciences (Sozialwissenschaften), or Natural Sciences (Naturwissenschaften) – then a science of religion, it would seem, is necessarily compromised. One would be hard pressed to find practicing members of any organized religion – Bahá’í, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, etc. – who see themselves as engaged in an exclusively scientific activity. Yet a ‘science of religion’ perspective would have them affirm that very claim, namely, that the self-interpretation of a religious practitioner has no place in how their ‘religion’ is to be defined. (Indeed, if, in the opinion of the scientist of religion, religion is merely an irrational remnant of a primitive, naïve, and superstitious human mind, how can it be taken seriously?) Charles Davis puts the matter bluntly in his 1984 critique of Wiebe ‘Wherein there is no Ecstasy’: “To assume that the subject-matter of religious studies can be investigated in the same fashion as the objects of natural science is to run counter to both 11

See Jonathan Z. Smith, Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2004; Benson Saler, Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories, Leiden, NL: E.J. Brill, 1993; Russell T. McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997; Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2005; and Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

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the convictions and the practice of religious people.”12 Does the supplanting of subjective understanding in favour of objective explanation come at too great an epistemological cost, however? Is the attempt to ‘explain’ a given phenomenon not also an attempt to ‘understand’ it? Is ‘gnostic’ (i.e. personal) experience not translatable in a publically accessible way? Despite French Enlightenment philosophe Marquis de Condorcet’s view that the methods applied to the study of bees and beavers could similarly apply to human societies, human beings are neither bees nor beavers, (nor rocks or plants for that matter), but selfinterpreting animals.13 Philosophically speaking, determining what ‘religion’ is, is not simply an empirical question, but also a formal question (i.e. a question involving inter-related parts in a systematic whole), and an abstract question, which requires ‘plumping’ on account of there being no agreed upon criteria on which to base a precise, unqualified definition. In the end, Wiebe’s preference for Aristotelian particularities, and aversion to Platonic essences, facilitates a reductive epistemology.

iii)

The ‘Modern Research University’

Third, Wiebe’s description of ‘the modern research university’ is noticeably truncated. It is within an assumed theoretical framework of what constitutes ‘the modern research university’ that Wiebe’s methodological claims concerning a science of religion are rationally legitimized. The inner logic of this (postEnlightenment) framework is grounded in a disenchantment of the world, a secularized view of the nature of reality, a naturalized epistemology, and an anti-teleology. The only claims that are epistemologically recognized in such a framework are empirical claims. Thus, the modern research university exists for one purpose, and one purpose only, namely, the production of scientific (i.e. empirical) knowledge. [The corollary to this assertion is that the reception of other kinds of knowledge, (or the realization of other intellectual goals such as virtue, beauty, wisdom, or truth), is merely tolerable, if not dispensable]. In fulfillment of this purpose, he argues, both the Humanities and the Social Sciences should take their epistemological cues from the Natural Sciences. They ought, in effect, to be conflated with the Natural Sciences, indeed, to become 12 13

Charles Davis, ‘Wherein There is no Ecstasy,’ in Studies in Religion, 13/4, Fall 1984, pg. 394. See Isaiah Berlin, ‘The Concept of Scientific History,’ in Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, ed. by Henry Hardy, London, UK: Pimlico, 1991, pg. 106 and Charles Taylor, ‘Self-Interpreting Animals,’ in Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers 1, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pgs. 45-77.

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Natural Sciences. In striving for ‘objective’ (i.e. value-neutral) scientific knowledge, the Natural Sciences have little to learn from either the Humanities or the Social Sciences (except insofar as they imitate the Natural Sciences in the pursuit of empirical knowledge). So whereas Wiebe is adamant that there be strict disciplinary boundaries between Theology and Religious Studies, he sees no need for a similar demarcation between the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Natural Sciences – which he subsumes (at least methodologically) into a single realm. Yet this drive for epistemological consilience is surely scientism in disguise, the totalizing view that all forms of knowledge are necessarily translatable into scientific terms – that only one key can open every proverbial door, namely empirical science. As a former editor of the New Republic recently wrote, in an exchange on the future of the Humanities with scientist Steven Pinker: Nothing in the physical world, in the world of the senses, in the world of experience, can be immune from or indifferent to the categories of the sciences; but there are contexts in which scientific analysis may be trivial. That is not to say that science is trivial, obviously. But the belief that science is supreme in all the contexts, or that it has the last word on all the contexts, or that all the contexts await the attentions of science to be properly understood — that is an idolatry of science, or scientism … Imagine a scientific explanation of a painting — a breakdown of Chardin’s cherries into the pigments that comprise them, and a chemical analysis of how their admixtures produce the subtle and plangent tonalities for which they are celebrated. Such an analysis will explain everything except what most needs explaining: the quality of beauty that is the reason for our contemplation of the painting.14 We know, moreover, that a comprehensive understanding of what the university is cannot be divorced from its history. We know, from the history of Western civilization, that the first European universities (Oxford, Paris, Bologna, etc.) were creations of the medieval Church, were fundamentally religious in character, strove for a broad liberal education, and that training in law, medicine, and theology, which were themselves preceded by general instruction in the arts and the sciences, formed the basis of the curricula. (Formal instruction in the logic, grammar, and rhetoric of the Trivium, and in the arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music of the Quadrivium, were prominent 14

See ‘Crimes Against Humanities,’ New Republic, September 3, 2013, Vol. 244, Issue 15, pg. 35.

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features of said education). This university model held intact, more or less, until the early 19th century, and the creation of the University of Berlin – the ‘mother of all modern universities.’ A new critical spirit emerged in Berlin and spread across Europe, courtesy of greater state involvement in higher education, the liberalizing tendencies of Protestant theology, and a unique emphasis on scientific study and research via lectures and laboratories, culminating in the doctoral degree.15 The implication of Wiebe’s methodological argument is that ‘the modern research university’ has uprooted itself from its medieval antecedent, and, in turn, has shed its ‘metaphysical baggage.’ The connection between nature and divinity, between knowledge and wisdom, has been superseded. While some of this baggage may have dragged itself into the modern academy, it is, as it were, ‘out of place’ epistemologically speaking – a nostalgic remnant of a bygone era. But are these claims entirely justified? It would seem that they are context-laden. [One is reminded here of Feyerabend’s provocative claim in Against Method that “the separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution.”]16 Would any modern-day public Catholic or public Protestant college or university in North America, for example, officially look upon its religious heritage in pejorative terms? On the contrary, they would institutionally affirm, rather than deny, precisely that heritage – and not simply as a matter of principle, but as matter of academic practice. (A similar logic applies to religious scientists who happen to be employed in wholly secular institutions of higher learning). As Julie Reuben, author of The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality, writes in ‘The University and Its Discontents,’ “[t]he history of the university indicates that the problem of morality is an epistemological one.”17 Whether admitted or not, a cascade of moral consequences flows from scientism, that is, from an exclusively naturalized epistemology. (The example of phrenology and the part it has played in the genealogy of modern racism immediately leaps to mind here). It is difficult to see how a ‘science of man’ – an expression first coined by the Scottish philosopher David Hume in his Treatise on Human Nature (1739) – can be morally neutral. It was Hume, rather ironically, who was the first to recognize its limitations: 15

16 17

See Julie Reuben, The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996; Thomas Albert Howell, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006; and James Axtell, Wisdom’s Workshop: The Rise of the Modern University, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, London, UK: Verso, 1975, pg. 295. Julie Rueben, ‘The University and its Discontents,’ The Hedgehog Review, Fall, 2000, pg. 90.

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[N]othing but the most determined skepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics. For if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, it is certain it must lie very deep and abstruse: and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains, while the greatest geniuses have failed with the utmost pains, must certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and presumptuous.18 To its opponents, a ‘science of man’ is a study of the human in the absence of the human. As the French philosopher Georges Gusdorf writes in his essay ‘For A History of the Science of Man’: [Scientific] positivism nourished the amazing ambition of establishing a science of man without man. This oft-repeated attempt, to make the determinisms of physics, chemistry, and biology obtain in the human domain, under the control of mathematical formulae, plainly demonstrates the desire to disclaim the specificity of the human being by referring it to norms that are not its own.19 What is valid for one order of phenomena is not necessarily valid for another. Moreover, Wiebe’s appeal for sharp disciplinary boundaries must be balanced (or at least seen against the backdrop of) an increasing push, in some academic circles, for enhanced interdisciplinarity and/or converging methodologies. In his exhortation on behalf of interdisciplinarity, for example, Harvard professor Louis Menand writes in The Future of Academic Freedom that the “structure of disciplinarity that has arisen with the modern research university is expensive; it is philosophically weak; and it encourages intellectual predictability and social irrelevance. It deserves to be replaced.”20 It would seem that Cardinal Newman’s idea of a university as a place for the cultivation of the intellect toward the unity of truth has been supplemented, or perhaps even substituted, by the idea of a multiversity, most aptly described by Clark Kerr in The Uses of the University as: … a whole series of communities and activities held together by a common name, a common governing board, and related purposes …. It is

18 19 20

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, New York: NY: Penguin Books, 1985, pg. 42. Georges Gusdorf, ‘For a History of the Science of Man,’ in Diogenes, Volume 5, Issue 17, March, 1957, pg. 90. Louis Menand (ed.), ‘The Limits of Academic Freedom,’ in The Future of Academic Freedom, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996, pg. 19.

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Palma more a mechanism – a series of processes producing a series of results – a mechanism held together by administrative rules and powered by money …. The multiversity is an inconsistent institution. It is not one community but several – the community of the humanist, the community of the social scientist, and the community of the [natural] scientist; the communities of the professional schools; the community of all the nonacademic personnel; the community of the administrators …. The multiversity is a confusing place for the student. He has [difficulty] establishing his identity and sense of security within it. But it offers him a vast range of choices, enough literally to stagger the mind …. [In the multiversity] the freedom of the student to pick and choose, to stay or to move on – is triumphant …. The multiversity has many ‘publics’ with many interests; and by the very nature of the multiversity many of these interests are quite legitimate and others are quite frivolous …. There is no single ‘end’ to be discovered; there are several ends and many groups to be served …. The president [of the multiversity] becomes the central mediator among the values of the past, the prospects for the future, and the realities of the present …. [The multiversity] is so many things to so many different people that it must, of necessity, be partially at war with itself.21

Further complicating the already complicated multiversity is what George Fallis (in his Multiversities, Ideas, and Democracy) has labeled ‘the character of our age’ – defined by the constrained welfare state, the information technology revolution, postmodern thought, commercialization, and globalization.22 These forces are expressions of the times in which we live. In short, the multiversity is not a hermetically sealed bubble. As an archipelago of intellectual interests expressed not merely in research, but in teaching and administration as well, it is a place of contestation about what the multiversity is and ought to be.

iv)

Methodological Monism

Fourth, Wiebe presupposes that methodological monism is both theoretically and practically superior to methodological pluralism, pedagogically speaking. But the demand that every student adapt to a single method of approach in 21 22

Clark Kerr, ‘The Idea of a Multiversity,’ in The Uses of the University, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pgs. 1-45. George Fallis, Multiversities, Ideas, and Democracy, Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2007, pgs. 3-13.

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any discipline, be it the academic study of religion or otherwise, is questionable. It is cliché to suggest that human nature is complex – but it is. There is no escape from this. Students arrive from different backgrounds; from different cultures; with different perspectives; have different expectations; different attitudes, beliefs, and values; different intellectual capacities; and different learning styles. If a university (or multiversity now) is a place where free intellectual inquiry ought to be had, then a degree of openness to the curiosity of the student must be accommodated. This does not imply, anarchically, that “anything goes.” What it does imply is that particular ideas and/or interpretations of facts about a given topic are admissible for public deliberation – in the classroom in this case – with the proviso that said ideas and/or interpretations of facts be exposed to critical, self-regulating scrutiny (i.e. to open peer review). To exclude (a priori) particular ideas/interpretations from a given classroom discussion on religion, to demand that these ideas/interpretations adapt, before expressed, to only one epistemological framework, is itself unscientific, a rigid imposition at best, leaving no room for intellectual and/or creative genius, for those students who may see the issue at hand in a different light, a fresh light, by way of a new interpretative framework. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which problematized the traditional notion of scientific progress, (i.e. as cumulative development), famously showed how paradigm shifts in the history of science, inspired by anomalous breakthroughs of insight, have altered our interpretations of empirical data, and moved scientific research in unforeseen directions. New interpretative models have perpetually replaced old interpretive models of understanding and/or explanation in the history of science.23 (This is equally true for the history of philosophy). In his rejection of a one-size-fits-all approach to scientific methodology, Steven Weinberg, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, writes in To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science, that “[w]e learn how to do science, not by making rules about how to do science, but from the experience of doing science, driven by the desire for the pleasure we get when our methods succeed in explaining something.”24 The philosopher of science, Alan Chalmers, echoes Weinberg’s remarks, adding that “[s]cientists should not be constrained by the rules of the methodologist … [violations of such rules cannot] “be anticipated and legislated for in advance … and for this reason the notion of a universal, ahistorical account of method that can serve 23 24

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (4th ed.), Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Steven Weinberg, To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science, New York, NY: Harper, 2015, pg. 214.

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as a standard, not only for the present but also for future knowledge, is an absurdity.”25 With this in mind, (i.e. with the idea that Wiebe assumes an objective conception of scientific method), the straitjacketing of a given student into a single framework of approach amounts to an infringement on his/her epistemological freedom. It is ultimately an obstruction to dialogue. Are the rights of the devotee less significant than the rights of the scholar? [Wiebe’s claim, of course, is that the empirical method liberates the student from undue attachment to his/her subjective biases related to gender, race, class, ideology, etc., on account of a reliance upon the ‘universal/objective knowledge’ supplied by the basic ground of the empirical method which allows for convergence of opinion; yet one might counter that he is exclusively confined to a modern, rationalistic, positivistic epistemological construal in his quest for ‘certainty’ and that the relationship between ‘fact’ and ‘theory’ in scientific inquiry is often elusive]. Students have different gifts. Some students are ‘religiously musical,’ (to borrow a Weberian turn of phrase), and some are not. Some students are ‘scientifically musical,’ and some are not. Some students are more historically inclined, and seekers between said musicalities, between philosophy as a handmaiden to theology and philosophy as a handmaiden to science. A healthy classroom discussion on religion ought to include a diverse range of musicalities, because that is what a free academic discussion, by definition, entails. The claim that one musiciality is epistemologically superior to another is itself a judgment of value that cannot be taken for granted; it must be shown to be superior (or not) in actual classroom debate, without the terms of that debate conveniently pre-determined. The constitution of ‘knowledge’ is a point of contention – even among scientists. In his study, A Secular Age (2007), the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor distinguishes between ‘buffered’ selves (persons closed to transcendence) and ‘porous selves’ (persons open to transcendence).26 His distinction could refer to either transcendence of immanence or to transcendence within immanence, yet it is helpful, nonetheless. Taylor’s buffered/porous distinction can be equally applied to both cultures and institutions. Western culture at large could be thought, at this stage in its history, to be more ‘buffered’ to transcendence than ‘porous’ to same. ‘Buffered’ cultures yield ‘buffered’ institutions, which in turn yield ‘buffered’ persons. Similarly, a ‘buffered’ multiversity yields a ‘buffered’ professoriate, which in turn yields ‘buffered’ students. Many students are ‘porous’ to transcendence rather than ‘buffered’ to transcendence, however. What shall 25 26

Barry Gower, ‘Chalmers on Method,’ in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 39, No. 1 (March, 1988), pg. 59. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007, pgs. 37-41.

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we make of them? Is their view of reality entirely lacking in validity and/or legitimacy? Should they be altogether excluded from the conversation? ‘Porous’ selves, (in the form of students more attuned to transcendence), are worthy of classroom recognition just as much as ‘buffered’ selves, (in the form of students less attuned to transcendence), are, not simply in terms of basic ‘respect,’ but in terms of their epistemological attunement. In short, Wiebe’s over-emphasis on strict methodological uniformity in the academic study of religion is pedagogically unsound. If, as the Greek poet Archilochus writes, “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” the essays in this collection reveal that Professor Wiebe’s views and sensibilities are closer in kind, figuratively speaking, to the hedgehog than to the fox, more in keeping with “one big thing,” as it were, than with “many things.”27 (Indeed, Wiebe would have the hedgehog devour the fox, and not simply co-exist with it in the same ecological environment). In the history of ideas, a similar ‘one vs. many’ methodological acrimony underlies the conflict between medieval scholastics and medieval humanists, and between the philosophers of Enlightenment and the philosophers of Romanticism.

v)

Atheistic Naturalism

Wiebe’s science of religion is premised on an intellectual commitment to ‘naturalism.’ But what is ‘naturalism’ precisely and what are its epistemological implications? In Is Nature Enough? Meaning and Truth in the Age of Science, John Haught, a distinguished professor of Systematic Theology at Georgetown University, defines ‘naturalism’ as follows: 1. Outside nature, which includes humans and their cultural creations, there is nothing. 2. It follows from #1 that nature is self-originating. 3. Since there is nothing beyond nature, there can be no overarching purpose or transcendent goal that would give any lasting meaning to the universe. 4. There is no such thing as the ‘soul,’ and no reasonable prospect of conscious human survival beyond death. 5. The emergence of life and mind in evolution was accidental and unintended.

27

Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History (2nd ed.), ed. by Henry Hardy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013, pg. 1.

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6.

Every natural event is itself the product of other natural events. Since there is no divine cause, all causes must be purely natural causes, in principle accessible to scientific comprehension. 7. All the various features of living beings, including humans, can be explained ultimately in evolutionary, specifically Darwinian, terms.28 In his Scientific Method: An Historical and Philosophical Introduction, Barry Gower summarizes ‘naturalism’ as “the view that human beings, together with their capacities and abilities, belong to an objective natural order, and that we should explain their relation to the world in terms appropriate to that order.”29 Gower sees ‘naturalism’ in tension with ‘empiricism,’ “the view that human beings occupy a special and privileged place in our picture of the world, because it is only in terms of human experience that we can construct and understand that picture.”30 According to Gower, then, while ‘empiricism’ holds that knowledge claims are mind-dependent, ‘naturalism’ does not. This tension between ‘naturalism’ and ‘empiricism’ is operative in Wiebe’s methodological reasoning, as well, insofar as he overplays his naturalistic hand in defence of cognitive realism while underplaying his empirical hand in refutation of cognitive relativism. For Gower, however, “we can disagree about what is true without implying that there is no truth.”31 Furthermore, Wiebe’s conception of ‘science’ leaves no room for what philosopher Michael Polanyi has called ‘tacit knowledge.’ Tacit knowledge “consists in the intimation of something hidden, which we may yet discover … We can show more than we can tell” argues Polanyi: The declared aim of modern science is to establish a strictly detached, objective knowledge. Any falling short of this ideal is accepted only as a temporary imperfection, which we must aim at eliminating. But suppose that tacit thought forms an indispensable part of all knowledge, then the ideal of eliminating all personal elements of knowledge would, in effect, aim at the destruction of all knowledge. The ideal of exact science would turn out to be fundamentally misleading and possibly a source of devastating fallacies.32

28 29 30 31 32

John Haught, Is Nature Enough? Meaning and Truth in the Age of Science, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pg. 9. Barry Gower, Scientific Method: An Historical and Philosophical Introduction, New York, NY: Routledge, 1997, pg. 258. Ibid., pg. 258. Ibid., pg. 250. Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2009, pg. 20.

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Professor Wiebe’s naturalism, it would seem, commits him not simply to a ‘methodological agnosticism,’ but to a ‘methodological atheism’ tout court. Not knowing whether God exists and assuming God does not exist are different epistemological stances. The late Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, often remarked, in public debates with monotheistic opponents, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”33 A monotheistic critic of Wiebe’s methodological atheism would find metaphysical atheism (and its covert theoretical companion ‘methodological atheism’) to be non-neutral propositions, ‘extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence,’ and ‘assertions without evidence that can be dismissed without evidence.’ That same critic would wonder what sort of a priori and/or a posteriori proof Wiebe might offer for God’s non-existence that, in turn, would validate ‘methodological atheism’ as an appropriate tool and/or procedure for the acquisition of knowledge in the academic study of religion. One would think, in the context of a nondenominational department of ‘Religious Studies,’ (not to be confused with a Catholic or Protestant Faculty of Divinity, for example), that a commitment to ‘methodological agnosticism’ would be a more coherent, more responsible position to hold than ‘methodological atheism’ would be, insofar as the former would be more sympathetic to non-naturalistic (i.e. metaphysical) discourse on the grounds that God’s non-existence cannot be proven. [It is important to note here that the nomenclature ‘The Department of Religious Studies’ is simply not synonymous with ‘The Department for the Scientific Study of Religion’; different epistemological suppositions hold for each]. Yet the upshot of Wiebe’s methodological monism is that methodological atheism is intellectually superior to methodological agnosticism in the academic study of religion. He offers little or no argument as to why this might be, however, nor does he acknowledge that the intellectual preconditions for methodological atheism, in the Western medieval and modern history of ideas – namely, nominalism (the view that ‘universals’ are mere names without corresponding reality) and Deism (the belief in a non-intervening Creator) – were themselves reflections of metaphysical transformation. [Wiebe would argue here that the break between mythological thought and scientific rationality that occurred in 6th century B.C. with the Milesian philosophers of Ancient Greece (e.g. as expressed in the writings of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes) marked the real

33

Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Toronto, ON: McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2007, pg. 150.

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birth of the modern mind].34 In an early work on Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion (1981), however, Wiebe was far less enamored with the practice of methodological atheism: One can readily agree with the verdict of the social sciences that religion is a human phenomenon; indeed, it would be folly to deny it. However, it is far from obvious that it is also folly to deny that it is simply a human institution; that it has no transcendent, and hence numinous, origin or cause (or meaning, [or] reference).35 While every scholar is free to change their mind on any number of matters in the course of their academic career – indeed, that is the very nature of intellectual growth – given his own epistemological commitment to ‘explanation,’ Wiebe’s change of mind about the legitimacy of methodological atheism in the academic study of religion also warrants explanation.

By Way of Conclusion: Gellner and Popper It may come as a surprise to some that two of Donald Wiebe’s formative academic influences are towering intellectuals who had a significant influence on their respective fields – Ernest Gellner, a social philosopher, and Karl Popper, a philosopher of science. What Gellner and Popper have said has mattered a great deal to Wiebe, even if their pronouncements have occasionally refuted the very project he has sought to advance. In 1977, Ernest Gellner, then a professor at the London School of Economics, had a substantive discussion with Bryan Magee on BBC television, entitled Philosophy: the Social Context, during the course of which Gellner remarked that: The more we can explain the world, the more we are ourselves explained. You can’t have one without the other … The price of the advancement of knowledge is that we also become objects of knowledge.36

34 35 36

Op. cit., Donald Wiebe, The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought, pgs. 84-129. Donald Wiebe, Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion, The Hague: NL: Mouton Publishers, 1981, pg. 153. Ernest Gellner, Philosophy: The Social Context, (BBC Interview with Bryan Magee, 1977), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qwWu9K7yOw.

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In the interview, Gellner proceeded to explain that there were two intellectual ‘strands’ that ran through the whole of modern philosophy. The first of these strands consists of the advancement of scientific knowledge. The second of these strands consists of a set of arguments for the preservation of our humanity against the claims of science – “the society for the protection of man,” as Gellner would have it.37 These two strands are in tension through the whole of modern thought. If Gellner’s remark is fundamentally correct, then such a tension, one might suppose, would naturally emerge, in one way or another, in any intellectual discipline purporting to be philosophical (i.e. rational) in the modern research university – including the academic study of religion. There are two ways of confronting this tension, of course. One is to deny the very existence of the tension. The other is to affirm it. The question raised by Gellner’s identification of the existential tension woven into the fabric of modern philosophy, is, I think, this: ‘Does an intellectual commitment to a scientific methodology in the academic study of religion enhance or distort our intelligibility of the aforementioned tension?’ It would appear, on the basis of the evidence, that the latter is so. On this score, Wiebe’s The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought is inclined to see not a Gellnerian tension, but “a fundamental contradiction (italics mine) [at] the core of western civilization,” between religion and science, between ancient and modern modes of thought, between the mythopoeic mind and the rational mind.38 Gellner’s ‘both/and’ sensibility seemingly has little difficulty in holding the two horns of the dilemma in synch, whereas Wiebe’s ‘either/or’ sensibility, (based in part on the dichotomy thesis of French philosopher Lévy-Bruhl), apparently does. This is evident in the very structure of The Irony of Theology where Wiebe devotes two of his six chapters to the philosophical and theological dynamics of ancient Greece, while, revealingly, no comparable attentiveness is given to the philosophical and theological dynamics of ancient Israel. In addition, he presents the 12th century controversy on the nature of fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) between the monastic theology of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and the scholastic theology of Peter Abelard – a conflict between a more devotional, Scripture-based theology (represented by Bernard) versus a more scientific, philosophically-grounded theology (represented by Abelard) – as irresolvable. Wiebe argues that Abelard advocates a form of theology that ironically undermines rather than complements the Christian faith and is “a major architect of the structure of the rational consciousness of modernity – the cause of the axial shift implicit in this need to 37 38

Ibid. Op. cit., Donald Wiebe, The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought, pg. 227.

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know what he believed.”39 In siding with the autonomy of reason (over and against its connection to revelation), Wiebe neglects to mention the historical fact that the theological disagreements between Bernard and Abelard were mediated, and eventually reconciled, by Peter the Venerable, the Abbot of Cluny.40 This intervention notwithstanding, Wiebe maintains that the aforementioned two modes of thought – ancient mythopoeic religion and modern rational science – are logically incompatible and mutually exclusive: The emergence of one mode of thought from the other implies neither the (logical) compatibility of the two nor the necessary disappearance of the first upon the arrival of the second. What does seem to be implied, however, is that their mutual coherence – should they both persist through time – can be maintained only by the one being made subservient to the other. By the dominance of one mode of thought over the other, then, it is obvious that both can coexist, even if they are logically incompatible but only one controls or organizes the analysis and understanding of the majority of enterprises/practices within each specific culture/society.41 Wiebe’s argument that modern science, as a new and independent mode of thought, has entirely superseded ancient religion in making knowledge claims about states of affairs in the natural world, presupposes a complete separation of philosophy from theology, of reason from revelation, of logos from mythos, a separation denied by serious scholars across many religious traditions. Curiously, this claim is itself ‘new’ and ‘independent’ in the Wiebean corpus of claims, in that he has held diametrically opposed views on the matter in prior work, noting, for example, in his 1981 monograph Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion, that “I have attempted to show that questions of truth and falsity are of prime concern not only for the religious, which would be admitted by most students of religion, but also that the question as to whether or not the religious beliefs are true is of utmost importance to the scholarly or scientific study of religion.”42 As Donald 39 40

41 42

Ibid., pg. 198. See Pope Benedict XVI, ‘Two Theological Models in Comparison: Bernard and Abelard,’ General Audience, Saint Peter’s Square, November 4th, 2009, @ https://w2.vatican.va/ content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20091104.html. Op. cit., Donald Wiebe, The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought, pgs. 80-81. Op. cit., Donald Wiebe, Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion, pg. 225.

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Stoesz has pointed out in his illuminating 1988 essay ‘Don Wiebe: A Shift in his Method?,’ “[t]here are, admittedly, tensions within Wiebe’s own thought about what he considers the proper analysis of religion to be.”43 I would go further than Stoesz, however, and argue that there are clear contradictions, and not merely tensions, between ‘the early Wiebe,’ as it were, and ‘the later Wiebe.’ On March 21st, 1959, Karl Popper wrote a letter to his friend, the Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin. The contents of the letter are as follows: Dear Isaiah, I got your letter today, and I have been able to decipher most of it. Very many thanks. It would be most pleasant if you could come to Penn. Alternatively, we could meet in London (after April 21st, perhaps best on a Wednesday). I was particularly interested in your reference to scientism and to Hayek. For my own work on science (I am alluding to my Logic of Scientific Discovery) could be described as an attack on scientism where it is most necessary to attack it (and perhaps most interesting) – that is, in science itself. My main thesis can be summed up by saying: science has no authority; it can claim no authority. Those who claim authority for science, or in the name of science […] misunderstand science. Science is no more than rational criticism. These theses allow it to solve the problem of induction completely – and without refuting Hume. It is solved by pointing out that we do not, in science, claim to know – we only claim (if so much) that we have thoroughly criticized and tested. I say all this because I want to interest you in my epistemology. It is the necessary background for any critical rationalism: for being a rationalist without claiming to know: for being interested – passionately interested – in knowledge while realizing that we don’t have any, and can’t have any, knowledge that can confer authority. All this is so important because without respect for science, for the search for truth, we cannot manage; and with too much respect (scientism) we cannot either. It is thus vitally important to find the nice dividing line. And it is surprising how well it fits.44 43 44

Donald Stoesz, ‘Donald Wiebe: A Shift in his Method? Toronto Journal of Theology, Vol. 4, No. 1, March, 1988, pg. 73. Karl Popper, ‘Letter to Isaiah Berlin,’ March 21st, 1959, in Karl Popper: After the Open Society – Selected Social and Political Writings, New York, NY: Routledge, 2008, pg. 201.

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This is, no doubt, a remarkable letter. And for many reasons. First, Popper acknowledges his antipathy for ‘scientism.’ Second, he claims not only that science has no authority, but that those who claim authority in its name misunderstand science. Third, he defines science as no more than rational criticism. Fourth, he points out that claims to knowledge cannot be made in science; only claims to criticism and testing. Fifth, he espouses a critical rationalism, a rationalism devoid of authoritative knowledge. And finally, he seeks, in the context of all this, a dividing line between no respect for science and too much respect for same. What, in the end, do these propositions amount to? What they amount to, I would submit, is a profound humbling of any claim to authoritative knowledge in the realm of science. This ‘inner logic’ of science, as outlined by Popper, then, a logic of perpetual conjecture and refutation, can be extended to the science of religion. If scientific claims have no authority, epistemologically speaking, then claims emerging from a science of religion can have no such authority either. And if claims emerging from a science of religion can have no such authority, these claims must be fairly placed alongside other claims (including non-scientific claims pertaining to religion) for critical assessment. In other words, to exclude non-scientific claims from the study of religion is profoundly unscientific – a view shared, I might add, by Wilfred Cantwell Smith in the opening epigraph of this critique. The preconceptions of Wiebe’s formulation of a science of religion outlined herein – its understanding of ‘science,’ the applicability of its definition of ‘religion,’ its construal of ‘the modern research university,’ its methodological monism, and its atheistic naturalism – are, for the most part, anti-humanistic. And, as we have seen, in as much as these preconceptions are anti-humanistic, they are, in turn, unscientific. What we have, in effect, then, is a science of religion purporting to be scientific when, in actual fact, it is not. For the record, I am in agreement with Eric J. Sharpe’s conclusion in Comparative Religion: A History that: [t]he study of religion must remain the meeting-ground of complementary (not competing) methods …. Great harm has been done to the study in the past by those who have insisted that their approach excludes every conceivable alternative. Let us hope that such dogmatism is a thing of the past. Only as methods and approaches meet can we hope to understand and appreciate religion in all its complexity.45

45

Eric J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History, 2nd ed., London, UK: Gerald Duckworth & Co., Ltd., 1986, pg. 293.

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This is not to suggest that a scientific approach to the study of religion lacks validity. On the contrary. It has a role to play as a technique in explaining the phenomenon of religion. It should not be excluded from the conversation. Professor Wiebe’s scholarship, over many decades, is a tangible reminder of this. His most persuasive book, The Politics of Religious Studies (1999), amply demonstrates that the nature of the academic study of religion is defined, in large measure, by institutional politics.46 (Wiebe is well aware that doctoral dissertations in departments of Religious Studies across North America, for example, continue to be theologically oriented notwithstanding the push for scientific legitimacy). Defenders of a scientific study of religion, some of whom have been academically marginalized, have had to fight, and will continue to fight, to have their say. And so they should. Having said this, my own view is that both a humanities approach and a scientific approach can make sense of religion, but that a scientific approach, on its own, is explanatorily inadequate. A partial explanation of religion is precisely that. While the shell of religion may not be sui generis, the pearl in that shell may very well be. The claim that a humanities approach is not essential for a scientific study of religion in no way negates the importance of that approach in the overall picture of intelligibility. The legitimacy of a scientific approach to religion is seriously compromised, moreover, when, in its fear of theological consideration (even when free of confessional oversight), in its obsession with disciplinary demarcation, in its reverence toward the current prestige of the natural sciences, and in its pursuit of intellectual respectability (however that may be defined), it seeks an all-encompassing, monolithic status. Epistemologically speaking, it is not, and should not be, the only game in town.47

46 47

Donald Wiebe, The Politics of Religious Studies, New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of John Clarke, Daniel Fishley, Marsha Hewitt, and David Neelands to the writing of this critique.

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Reply

Preconceptions about a Science of Religion? My Response to Anthony Palma Donald Wiebe

I am grateful to Russell T. McCutcheon, Aaron W. Hughes, and Kocku von Stuckrad for including this volume of articles and essays in Brill’s Supplements to Method and Theory in the Study of Religion. I especially wish to express my thanks and deep appreciation to Dr. Anthony Palma for undertaking the laborious task of preparing and editing these papers for publication. He has taken great care in selecting and arranging these pieces in a way that clearly charts the development of my understanding of ‘Religious Studies’ as a broad academic undertaking in our colleges and universities from an approach drawing upon both the sciences and humanities to an enterprise that is strictly scientific when undertaken within the context of the modern research university. Dr. Palma has given careful and critical attention to each of these essays and we have spent hours in discussion of them. In the end, we agreed that Palma would outline what he thinks this development of my defence of ‘a science of religion’ has achieved and what he thinks is problematic in my view of the enterprise that needs (or may need) further thought and argument. I fully agree with Palma that the arguments in favour of a scientific approach to the study of religions presented in the papers republished here are not likely in themselves to persuade all humanities-oriented scholars who ‘teach religion’ in our colleges and universities to, so to speak, ‘repent of their sins and retool as scientists’ of religions. Even after having given very careful consideration to my argument for ‘a science’ of religions, Palma himself clearly remains convinced that only a humanities approach to the study of religions can make sense of religion, as his epigraph from Wilfred Cantwell Smith confirms. Palma is fully aware that after many years of heated debate and some calm discussions with Wilfred Smith about the ‘academic’ study of religions in our colleges and universities, I was not successful in persuading him of the need for, and benefit of, a scientific study of religions in the context of our modern research universities. However, Palma seems unaware that Smith’s objection to a scientific study of religious thought and behaviour assumes that religious phenomena are a subject sui generis. To quote from the Smith epigraph: “Our duty, as members of the university, is not to be scientific, but to be

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004385061_020Donald

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rational – in ways appropriate to our subject matter ….” Implicit in this claim – and more so in other Smith publications – is that to be scientific in the study of religious phenomena, and all that is human for that matter, is irrational because such phenomena (as with everything else human) are radically different from other (everyday ordinary) natural phenomena – physical, psychological, or social – that are studied by scientists. For Wilfred Smith, therefore, not to exempt these extraordinary ‘realities’ from everyday ordinary scientific analysis and explanation, is, as Smith puts it, inept and irrational, and therefore not only unscientific but inhumane. It seems to me that all five problems Palma perceives as bedevilling my defence of a ‘science of religion’ are intimately aligned with Smith’s fundamental assumption that religion is a subject sui generis. The essence of his five criticisms can be bundled into three: (1) that my understanding of the modern research university simply doesn’t match the historical, modern, or contemporary exemplars of that institution; (2) that my definition of religion, and my atheistic naturalism places unjustifiable constraints on the ontological makeup of the universe; and (3) that my understanding of the nature of science and my methodological monism similarly forecloses all possibility of seeing the universe as it really is.

1

The Modern Research University

For Palma, my conception of the modern research university is, at best, “truncated” because my description of its motivating impetus in seeking “epistemological consilience” is simply “scientism in disguise.” Palma accepts philosopher Georges Gusdorf’s claim that a “‘science of man’ [of the human] is the absence of the human.” Palma insists that Clark Kerr’s conception of the modern university as a ‘multiversity’ that creates “an archipelago of intellectual interests” makes it impossible to see the modern research university as simply an institution in search of knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone. I agree with Palma that there is more than one idea or conception of what the modern Western university was, is, or ought to be. I also agree with the historical and sociological facts that modern Western universities are far more complex than institutions dedicated only to seeking and transmitting knowledge about the world and passing on to the next generation tools to continue to expand the boundaries of our knowledge of the world and its contents. But that is so because the modern Western research university carries with it vestiges of the objectives of the medieval and early modern European universities out of which it emerged in the nineteenth century. The modern American research

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university for example, only became possible, as Julie Reuben has long since shown in her book The Making of the Modern University, by virtue of its adoption of an epistemology that demands moral, religious, and political neutrality in achieving its goal of universal, transcultural epistemic truth claims about the world and its contents. As Reuben points out in the subtitle of the book, adoption of such an epistemology amounts to the “marginalization of morality,” which makes a Wilfred-Smith-type study of religion in the modern research university unacceptable. That many of our modern universities are also multiversities involving undergraduate colleges, schools of music, and other professional faculties and institutes including departments/schools of theology, does not, therefore, contrary to Palma’s suggestion, amount to a critique of the core objective of the modern research university. It is a shame that Reuben’s book has not received the broad attention it deserves, and I think Palma’s criticisms of my conception of this special educational institution indicates that further attention must be brought to it if we are ever going to settle the question as to the proper execution of the study of religion in this framework. I intend to deal with precisely this matter in a book I am presently writing under the working title Episodes in the Emergence and Development of the Scientific Study of Religion.

2

Defining Religion

I turn now to Palma’s claim that there is a constricted ontological universe in my definition of ‘religion’ and in what he calls my “atheistic naturalism.” If I were to argue for a form of naturalism which claims, as Alexander Rosenberg puts it in his The Atheist’s Guide To Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions (2011), that “the physical facts fix all the facts,” Palma’s criticism might have some bite. However, Palma has nowhere shown that I espouse a Rosenbergtype metaphysical atheism. He rightly notes that I am a methodological atheist rather than a methodological agnostic but he seems to take the two positions to be methodologically different. They are not. In neither case is the explanation or theory accounting for a state of affairs in the natural or social realm permitted to invoke transcendent, superhuman, or supernatural agency or agents in such accounting. That some scholars and scientists wish to call themselves methodological agnostics rather than methodological atheists only tells us something about their personal intellectual or religio-spiritual proclivities. Methodological atheism, on the other hand, merely emphasizes the primary scientific aim and intentionality of the process of naturalistically analyzing and explaining natural and social phenomena and nothing more.

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As Palma admits, he prefers the locution of “methodological agnosticism” because it has metaphysical overtones sympathetic to religious devotees. Despite my objections to Palma’s concerns here, I agree that further consideration of the intricacies involved in adopting a methodological atheism without any hint of arguing a metaphysical atheism in the process would be of great value to a proper understanding of this scientific enterprise. As for the concept/definition of ‘religion,’ Palma notes both that I have defined it variously over the years in different articles and essays and that I have not recently been engaged in “the debate among contemporary scholars of Religious Studies on how ‘religion’ ought to be defined.” Palma thinks that this reticence amounts, in his words, to a lack of “persuasive argument as to why religion is ‘not’ a sui generis discipline of study.” There are, I think, several good reasons for not pursuing a definition of religion or engaging in the debate over its definition. First: The term ‘religion’ is an abstract English noun that is without reference to anything perceptible in the world. As analytical philosophers might put the matter, there is no reference range for the term. Christian Smith most recently has put the matter succinctly in his Religion: What It Is, and Why It Matters (2017): “When we use the analytical term ‘religion,’ we must not think that it refers to some specific, ‘least common denominator’ super-religion or trans-religious entity, which can be partitioned into ‘denominations.’ No such thing exists. All that exists in actuality are particular religions” (46). Christian Smith, however, proceeds to provide the reader with a lengthy and complex definition similar to that made by Benson Saler decades earlier in his Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories: ‘[R]eligion,’ Saler proposes, “is a concept, not a concrete particular to which one can point.” Nevertheless, Saler also searched for a definition for the concept that could identify phenomena that are religious, but not by way of identifying a single distinguishing feature or set of features about them. Definitions of ‘religion’ of that kind are (nearly) legion. In his Psychological Study of Religion (1912) James H. Leuba lists more than fifty definitions of the term in the appendix to that work and in 1970 J. Milton Yinger, in his The Scientific Study of Religion, claimed that “a hundred or more [definitions of religion] can be gathered [from the scholarly literature] in the space of a few hours …” (1970, 4). Yinger sees no point in tracing the history of the emergence of these definitions, nor even cataloging them, but he does classify them into three categories: (i) normative definitions that seem to express the essence and value of religion, (ii) substantive definitions that refer to historical and cultural traditions rather than to some universal essence, and (iii) functional definitions that attempt to indicate what religion contributes to human individual and/or social existence. A more recent collection of essays

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on the definition of religion – The Pragmatics of Defining Religion: Contexts, Concepts, and Contents (1999); Jan G. Platvoet and Arie L. Molendijk (eds.) – also provides a diversity of definitions. The pragmatic approach to the definitional problem they advocate argues for the use of definitions that are antiessentialist and anti-hegemonic and therefore “tailored” to different types of enterprises. They are particularly concerned about definitions with reference to what they call New Age religiosities and deinstitutionalizations of religions. They are convinced that there is no hope of providing a “true definition of religion” that can form the basis for a common methodological and theoretical framework for the scientific study of religion. Similar concerns are raised in the contributions to the volume What is Religion? Origins, Definitions, and Explanations (1998) edited by Thomas A. Idinopulos and Brian C. Wilson and Religion in History: The Word, the Idea, the Reality (1992) edited by Michel Despland and Gérard Vallée. The multiplicity of definitions of ‘religion’ and the divergence of scholarly opinion on the possibility of defining ‘religion,’ however, did not convince Jonathan Z. Smith to abandon that enterprise. Smith is aware that having a multiplicity of definitions is not particularly helpful to ‘students of religion’ since they need to know with some precision what it is they are attempting to understand and explain. Thus Smith maintains not only that a “disciplinary” definition is essential to the field but that achieving convergence of scientific opinion on such a definition is possible when it is recognized, as he put it in his essay “‘Religion’ and ‘Religious Studies’” (1988), that the term is not an empirical category but rather a second-order abstract category. Smith expanded on that notion in his essay “Religion, Religions, Religious” (1998), pointing out that the concept is a term that scholars and scientists can adopt for their own purposes and that they can define it in any way that is useful to their purposes. Therefore, as Smith puts it, ‘religion’ “is a … concept that plays the same role in establishing a disciplinary horizon that a concept such as ‘language’ plays in linguistics or ‘culture’ plays in anthropology. There can be no disciplined study of religion without such a horizon” (1998 281-82). In this regard Smith affirms the value of Melford Spiro’s methodological definition of religion as “an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated superhuman beings” (Spiro 1996, 97). Such a definition, according to Spiro, clearly differentiates ‘religions’ from other cultural phenomena by way of “an ostensive or substantive definition that stipulates unambiguously those phenomenal variables which are designated by the term” (1996 91). Jonathan Smith’s conventionalist approach to the definition of religion has not dampened the debate about the nature of religion – that is, about the concept/term ‘religion.’ In fact, works like Russell T. McCutcheon’s Manufacturing

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Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (1997); Daniel Dubuisson’s The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology (1998); Timothy Fitzgerald’s The Ideology of Religious Studies (2000); Brent Nongbri’s Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (2013); William E. Arnal’s and Russell T. McCutcheon’s The Sacred is the Profane: The Political Nature of ‘Religion’; and Carlin A. Barton’s and Daniel Boyarin’s Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities (2016), among others, maintain that the concept of ‘religion’ is simply not viable in providing the framework Jonathan Smith maintains is essential for those wishing to study religion, which, as Richard Gombrich put it in his Precept and Practice: Traditional Buddhism in the Rural Highlands of Ceylon (1971), everyone really knows what that amounts to. Clearly, not everyone knows what ‘religion’ amounts to. And just as clearly, the definition of the term, once clouded by theological notions as in Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s The Meaning and End of Religion (1962), is now clouded by social and political concerns by postmodernists and deconstructivists who have nevertheless entered a “field” of “the study of religion(s).” Although I have some sympathy for Jonathan Z. Smith’s proposal, I no longer consider that conventionalist stratagem feasible given not only the religio-theological oppositions to it, but especially given the recent postmodern critiques of the term. Reading this literature has convinced me that Richard Gombrich’s judgment about the search for a definition of the term being both trivial and futile, and that Karl Popper’s personal rule enunciated in his autobiography “that the surest way to perdition is to neglect real problems for the sake of disputes about words,” are best taken to heart with respect to the concept of ‘religion.’ This accounts for my absence in the continuing debates and squabbles over the meaning of the word. Furthermore, over the past few years I have refused to use the word religion to designate what I think ‘students of religion’ are actually interested in, namely, a particular type of individual and collective human behaviour. Scholars in some disciplines actually study the economic or political behaviour of individuals and societies and I believe we could avoid the huge mess over the definition of the term religion if we focused our attention on a type of observable human behaviour we can describe quite neutrally as ‘religious.’ Instead of using the abstract noun ‘religion,’ therefore, I now use the nouns ‘religiosity/religiousness’ and ‘religions,’ and the adjective ‘religious’ as empirical terms that refer to a type of observable behaviours of individuals and/or social groups that can be differentiated from other types of human behaviour such as economic or political behaviour. Labelling belief in culturally postulated transcendent agency and culturally postulated superhuman or supernat-

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ural agents, and the effect such beliefs have had, or may still have, on human thought and practice as ‘religious’ differentiates this behaviour from everyday, ordinary human behaviour and makes it available as an object of scientific exploration, analysis, and explanation. When such behaviours are institutionalized at the social level they are appropriately referred to as ‘religions.’ It is therefore religious thought and behaviour by individuals and institutions that are the objects of investigation and explanation for a study of ‘religion.’ In dealing only with human thought and behaviour/practice, what in the past was called the study of religion is free of metaphysical overtones in that what may be transcendent reality for the devotee is a culturally postulated transcendent reality that may be studied scientifically. This study is not engaged in metaphysical claims of any sort; it is concerned only with knowledge about religious phenomena (belief and behaviour) by way of description, analysis, and explanation, not with the edification or moral formation of either the scientist or of those interested in the results of such scientific work.

3

Defining ‘Science’

The last of Palma’s criticism concerns the concept/definition of science he thinks I espouse and what he calls my methodological monism which it seems to imply. As for my view of science, which he thinks is too narrow, I must point out that the concept of science is as problematic a concept as is that of religion. I will therefore not deal with science in the abstract, but rather talk only of the sciences as providing epistemically legitimate knowledge claims by virtue of the fact that they provide testable propositional claims about states of affairs in the world and its contents. This is not a narrow conception of science – as Palma’s references to Wittgenstein and Harrison suggests – but rather a clear delineation of a type of knowledge claim that is empirically testable and therefore able to bring about intersubjective agreement in claims about the world that have causal purchase, so to speak, on the world. Palma thinks that a more ‘elastic’ or ‘capacious’ notion of knowledge should be countenanced that would “unite, not … divorce, the physical from the metaphysical ….” What this claim makes clear, however, is that metaphysical claims are multiple and untestable against observable evidence and discordant whereas the knowledge claims of the sciences are objectively testable and concordant. As Peter Watson has put it in his recent Convergence: The Idea at the Heart of Science (2016), the sciences present a coherent interlocking account of the universe. Whether ‘metaphysical knowledge claims’ are true or not cannot be known because they are untestable and are therefore unknowable. But the

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raison d’ȇtre of the modern research university is obtaining and communicating testable knowledge claims about the world and its contents. This is simply a matter of keeping the culturally postulated epistemic categories clearly delineated. Palma’s criticism of what he calls my “methodological monism” is motivated by his concern that my methodological proposal is pedagogically unsound because it will exclude some ideas and interpretations of religious phenomena, thereby curtailing free and open discussion of religious matters. “Are the rights of the devotee,” Palma asks, “less significant than the rights of the scholar?” I could agree with Palma’s claim that “If a university (or multiversity now) is a place where free intellectual inquiry ought to be had, then a degree of openness to the curiosity of the student must be accommodated,” if by that he means only that students should not simply be silenced if they raise naive or religiously-tinged questions. But Palma means much more than this. He sees my defence of a ‘science of religion’ as “an infringement on… [students’] epistemological freedom.” Palma’s desire for methodological pluralism, therefore, is essentially an apology for a religio-theological approach to the study of religions within the framework of the modern research university. His objection to my proposal for a science of religion is not a methodological critique of scientific studies of religious phenomena but rather a plea that this not be the only kind of study of religion that is permitted space in the modern research university. The study of religion in this context, however, ought to be of the same order as the study of biology in the modern research university. A student who raises a question about the place of Intelligent Design in the study of evolutionary biology deserves a response to her or his query but should also be made aware that invoking supernatural agency is incapable of providing testable knowledge claims about the evolution of life on earth. Good pedagogy in this case demands that the instructor shows why there cannot be what Palma calls “epistemological freedom” within the framework of the modern research university. Palma is simply wrong in his claim that “epistemological freedom” would not amount to an anarchic Feyerabendian methodology of “anything goes.” The claim that epistemological freedom is appropriate within the modern research university is therefore simply incoherent. Palma is quite right that I have found the works of Karl Popper and Ernest Gellner fruitful in terms of elaborating the notion of scientific studies of religious phenomena alone as appropriate within the framework of the modern research university. But Palma seems to assume that the modern scientific knowledge claims I seek must have certainty whereas Popper and Gellner recognize that no such certainty can be had. But Palma also assumes that without a claim to epistemic certainty it is impossible to demarcate what

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differentiates a scientific enterprise from a non-scientific one. And he is wrong in his assumption that claims by Popper and Gellner that no absolute certain knowledge claims are ever likely to be obtained, that Popper and Gellner therefore think it impossible to demarcate scientific knowledge claims from extrascientific knowledge claims. Engaging in that interpretive task is not possible here, but neither is it essential. Peter Watson, as I pointed out above, provides a thorough argument in support of the possibility of such demarcation. So also does Paul Hoyningen-Huene, who points out in his Systematicity: The Nature of Science (2013), that although certainty as an epistemic ideal for science declined in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, a new phase in understanding the special epistemic character of science started sometime in the last third of the twentieth century, that showed the systematicity of science as constituting a mark of demarcation.

4

Conclusion

It is salutary to have received Anthony’s criticisms of the assumptions and arguments in support of a strictly scientific study of religiosity and religions presented in this collection of essays. That he has not been persuaded of such an enterprise by the collective force of argument in these essays indicates that more work is needed. That he has not rejected all scientific analyses and explanations of various religious phenomena indicates that the project of establishing a scientific study of religion in the curriculum of the modern research university may yet be achieved. The modern research university that I have in mind, in my argument in support of a scientific study of religious thought and behaviour, only emerged in Germany early in the nineteenth century. The University of Berlin was an institution committed to the support of obtaining objective knowledge of the world and its contents and to the transmission of that knowledge and the tools and techniques for obtaining such knowledge. The ‘research university,’ however, was not a creation de novo. The ‘new’ University of Berlin – and the universities that modeled their curriculums after it – amounted to a ‘repurposing’ of the medieval and early modern universities already in existence. Consequently, although committing themselves to the ideal of obtaining knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone, for political and economic reasons these ‘new’ universities did not simply jettison traditional university concerns with the transmission of cultural values and the moral formation of students. Our modern research universities, therefore, are complex institutions that support not only the natural and social sciences but also ‘the humanities,’ including

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both ‘theology’ and what has, since the 1950s and 1960s, been called ‘religious studies.’ I suppose an argument can be made for our modern universities to continue with that ‘educational’ goal but it seems to me that this cultural and moral exercise needs clearly to be distinguished from the goal of the natural and social sciences in obtaining knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone. For example, an ‘academic’ study of religions with the objective of achieving an appreciation of the diversity of religions in the world and thereby contributing to a diminution of international conflict may be a worthy enterprise but it will be in the service of creating a new ‘political mythology’ rather than providing a scientific understanding of religious thought and behaviour. Restricting that kind of ‘academic study’ of religions to undergraduate colleges within the modern research universities would be one way of clearly distinguishing it from the objective of a scientific study of religiosity and religions. That modern universities – multiversities – may, and do, engage in activities other than seeking testable knowledge about the world and its contents does not undermine those segments of the modern university that are wholly dedicated to obtaining such objective knowledge. And my defence of a ‘science of religion’ does not concern itself with whether the modern university should still be involved in the cultural and moral formation of students. My argument is simply that if one wishes to obtain scientifically credible knowledge – empirical and theoretical – about religious thought and practice one must live under the same kind of methodological constraints that govern the natural and social sciences, including acceptance of both methodological atheism and naturalism. One is permitted, therefore, to seek explanations of human thought and behaviour of an extraordinary, not-every-day-ordinary, kind in terms of the everyday-ordinary kind of human behaviours in relation to culturally postulated extraordinary agency or agents that are often designated as ‘religious.’ The ultimate ontological status of culturally-postulated beings is not in question because there is no way of empirically or theoretically, that is, scientifically, determining that matter. However, if understanding these extraordinary modes of thought and practice can be accounted for in terms of everydayordinary human experience, then belief in the independent existence of such extraordinary agency and agents is left without scientific credibility. This is not to espouse a metaphysical claim about the non-existence of those ‘realities’; it is simply a statement about the scientific credibility of belief that such realities exist. Palma’s call for “epistemic freedom,” of course, makes no sense in terms of the quest for scientifically respectable knowledge claims about the world, including scientific claims about religions. In a free and open democratic so-

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ciety, of course, there must be ‘epistemic freedom’ for individual citizens. Karl Popper and John Rawls among many others, however, have clearly shown that insistence on epistemic freedom in governing modern societies would be detrimental to peaceful social coexistence. Nevertheless, that concept might make a kind of rhetorical sense in the humanistic study of religion aimed at interreligious dialogue and the inculcation of respect for the world’s diverse religious traditions. Whether that project is appropriate in the university curriculum, however, is another matter.

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Index Page numbers for definitions are in boldface

Abel, T. 28n12 Abelard, Peter 317–18 Abell, Peter 32n21 Ackerman, R. J. 126n8 Agger, Ben 198n4 Alexander, Jeffrey 16, 259–60 Alitzer, Thomas J. J. 223n18 Allen, Charlotte 292 Alton, Bruce 253n8 American Academy of Religion (AAR) 9, 170, 199n5, 206, 239, 283, 292 anti-science, anti-science bias, anti-science movement 16, 257. See also science; scientism ApRoberts, Ruth 248n7 Archilochus 313 Arnal, William E. and Russell T. McCutcheon 327 Aron, Raymond 43n41 Asad, Talal 305 Ashby, Philip H. 49–51, 53n22, 55n31 Aubrey, John 195 Axtell, James 308n15 Baaren, Th. P. van 25n6 on a systematic/theoretical study of religion 76–77 Baaren, Th. P. van and H. J. W. Drijvers 35n26 Baillie, J. on Bertrand Russell 127n10 Baird, R. 25n5 Barkow, Jerome 202–3 Barrett, Justin 18, 291, 293–96 Barton, Carlin A. and Daniel Boyarin 327 Bates, Donald 191n2 on contrast between gnostic knowing and epistemic knowing 171–73, 175–76 Beattie, John 77, 123n5 belief 6–8, 115–27, 139, 144, 145, 146–48, 152–55, 157–58 and knowledge 118

vs. faith 6 Bell, R. H. 74–75 Bellah, Robert N. 6, 32n21, 35n26, 55n31, 58n41, 67–68, and belief 115, 122–23, 125 Benedict XVI, Pope 318n40 Berger, Peter 43n41, 44, 58, 97 Berlin, Isiah 306n13, 313n27, 319 Bernard, of Clairvaux, Saint 317–18 Bernstein, Richard J. 170n19 on “Enlightenment-bashing” as “the sport of intellectuals” 169 Berthold, F., Jr. 45n45 Bianchi, Ugo 69, 274, 277n10 Bildung (moral formation) 15, 239, 247, 248. See also Wissenschaft Bjerke, Svein 68, 285 Bleeker, C. J. 65–66, 134–35, 159, 274nn1–2, 279–80 Bolle, K. W. 23n2 Bowker, John 77, 177–178 Boyer, Pascal 286, 294 Brackenhielm, Carl-Reinhold six criteria for a theory of religion 4, 88–89 Braithwaite, R. B. 24n3, 30n15, 107 Brandon, S. G. F. 66n3, 177 British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) 248n7 British Association for the Study of Religions (formerly British Association for the History of Religions) 277 Brockway, R. W. 66n3 Brüyn, S. T. 35–36 Bryant, Christopher G. A. 269–70 Bunge, Mario 176–77. See also Verstehen Burhoe, Ralph W. 55n31 Burrell, David 35n26 Busse, Richard 242 Campbell, Joseph

188

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334 Canadian Society for the Study of Religion 143, 275 Carlyle, Thomas 248n7 Chalmers, Alan 289, 311–12 Chan, Joseph Tak-Kwong 163 Chantepie de la Suassaye, P. D. 2, 49, 134 Chardin, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon 307 Chinh, Vu Kim on western cognitive imperialism and reductive scientism of Donald Wiebe 189–90 Christian, William 124 Clark, Peter B. and Peter Byrne 192 Combs, Eugene and Paul Bowlby 59n47 Comstock, W. Richard 223n19 Condorcet, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de 306 consilience 11, 203n8, 307, 323 Corbin, Henry 184–86 Cosmides, Leda 203, 204n8 Cox, H. and “inner logic” of strictly academic approach to religious pluralism 225 Crim, Keith 177 Crosby, Donald 99n9 Crouter, R. E. 34n26 crypto-theology 135, 139, 296 culture 6, 16, 149–50, 193, 195, 203, 205, 258, 267 and science 257–58 Verstehen approach to 33, 34 Cunningham, Adrian 167 Cunningham, R. B. 155n24 Darwin, Charles 10–11, 197–99, 202, 284 and theory of evolution 197–98 Darwinism 11, 197, 199, 204, 206 Davis, Charles 59n47, 243, 305–6 Dawson, Lorne 130, 132, 141, 200n6, 247n5, 282n27 on structure of “humanistic religious explanation” 137–38 Day, T. 115n1, 127n11 D’Costa, Gavin 166n9 Deductive-Nomological (D-N) model of explanations 27, 29, 30, 31, 36–37, 55, 136 Dennett, Daniel 11, 199–201, 202n7, 204, 206

Index Despland, Michael and Gérard Vallée 326 disenchanted/disenchantment 193–96, 199, 205, 216. See also enchantment/enchanted Dixon, Keith 31–32, 34, 35n26 Dougherty, Donald L. 99, 213n3 Dray, William 27–29 on Verstehens Methode 28–29, 34 Drijvers, H. J. W. 23n2, 35n26, 65n2, 285 Dubuisson, Daniel 327 Ducasse, C. J. 40n37 Durkheim, Émile 42n41, 43–44, 68 Earhart, H. Byron 78 Edsman, Carl-Martin 59n47 Einfühlung (understanding) 54–55 Eliade, Mircea 35n26, 43n41, 79, 88, 93, 94–96, 100, 103, 109n10, 110, 177–79, 184–86, 236 Ellis, John 229 enchanted/enchantment 193–96, 205. See also disenchanted/disenchantment epistemic knowing 9–10, 171–73. See also Bates, Donald; gnostic knowing epoche 131–32 ethnohermeneutics 265, 266. See also Geertz, Armin Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 24n4, 25–26, 64, 66–67, 84 explanation 2, 23–46, 194, 263 Deductive-Nomological (D-N) model of 27, 30, 36–37, 55, 136 explanandum 27 explanans 27 observer vs. participant explanations 30–34 role of in science of religion 24 strong explanations vs. weak explanations 2, 27 contrasted with understanding 54 faith

48, 85, 121, 126–127, 144, 145, 156, 157–59, 223 vs. belief 6 domestication of 154 and knowledge 117–18

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Index Fallis, George 310 Farmer, H. H. 124 Fenton, John Y. 25n7, 43n41, 44–45 Ferm, Vergilius 177 Ferré, F. 127 Feuer, Lewis S. 276 Feyerabend, P. 46n47, 61n51, 98n8, 244, 308 Feynman, Richard 202n7 Fiorenza, Francis Schüssler 14–15, 238–54, 262–63 on explanation 263 Fish, Stanley 227–28, 229 Fitzgerald, Timothy 327 Flanagan, Kieran 166n9 Friedrichs, Robert W. 58n41 fundamentalism 267 Galloway, A. D. 59n47 Gandhi, Mohandas K. 71 Garrett, W. R. 99 Geertz, Armin 264–266 and ethnohermeneutics 16, 265, 266 Geertz, Clifford 10, 25n6, 195–96 and ‘thick description’ 220n14 Geisteswissenschaften (humanities) 11, 99, 136, 193, 194, 199, 204, 305. See also Naturwissenschaften Gellner, Ernest 16–17, 141, 148–52, 174, 175, 316–17, 329–30 on anthropology concerned with meaning rather than knowledge 261–62 and postmodernism 266–68 and science’s “defectiveness” in addressing human problems 226 Gesamtwissenschaft (all-embracing science) 227 Gibson, A. B. 124 Giddens, Anthony 137 Gilkey, Langdon 35n26 Ginzberg, L. 177 Glanville, Joseph 195 gnostic aberration in the modern study of religion 164 gnostic knowing 9–10, 171–73. See also Bates, Donald; epistemic knowing Gombrich, Richard 280n22, 327 Goodenough, E. R. 23n2, 35n26, 236

335 Gordon, Paul R. and Norman Levitt 271–72 Gowan, Julie 40n37 Gower, Barry 312n25 on definition of naturalism 314 See also Haught, John Gramsci, Antonio 228 Grant, Colin 144, 154 Green, William Scott 238–40, 248, 249–51, 253–54 and confessionalism in the academy 248 Gusdorf, Georges 309, 323 Guthrie, Stewart 286 Hamnett, Ian 44 Hanson, N. R. 30n15 Harré, R. 23n1 Harris, Marvin 88, 89, 189 on Marshall Sahlins’ interpretation of Aztec human sacrifice 150–51 on meaning of the sacred cow 71–72 Harrison, Jane Ellen 11, 198–99, 202, 204, 284 Harrison, Peter 301–2, 328 Hart, D. G. 239n1, 243n3 Harvey, Van A. 178–80 Haught, John on definition of naturalism 313–314 See also Gower, Barry Hayek, Friedrich Auguste von 319 Heiler, Friedrich 58, 242 Heller, Agnes 226–27. See also Gessantwissenschaft Hempel, C. G. 24n3, 27, 29 Hempel, C. G. and P. Oppenheim 23n1 Hick, John 25n5, 124, 157–58 Hinnells, J. R. 165n5, 177, 178 Hirsch, E. D. 204 Hitchens, Christopher 315 Hjelde, Sigurd 166n8 Hocking, W. E. 125 Hodges, Daniel L. 99 Holbrook, Clyde A. 55n31, 59 Hoopes, Robert 164–65 Horton, Robin 77, 123 Howell, Thomas Albert 308n15 Hoyningen-Huene, Paul 330 Hughes, Aaron W. 322

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336

Index

Hultkrantz, Ake on effects of environment on religion 69–71 See also religion, ecology of Hume, David 73–74, 308–9, 319 Idinopulos, Thomas A. and Brian C. Wilson 326 Inglis, Fred 15, 249–250 Ingram, Paul O. 59n47 Integrated Causal Model 203–4. See also Standard Social Science Model International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) 14, 231, 232, 236, 275, 282 foundational methods of 14, 279 first methodology conference of (1973) 68 second methodology conference of (1979) 69 Oxford Congress (1908) 99, 276–77 quinquennial of (2000) 163 and religious vs. scientific language in the study of religion 275–77 Jarvie, I. 123n5 Jensen, Jeppe Sinding Jordan, Luis A. 65 Jung, Carl 188

256n1, 264n3, 271n4

Kant, Immanuel 219, 304 Kepler, Johannes 293 Kerr, Clark 309–10, 323 Khan, Abrahim 281n26 King, Richard 187n39, 190 King, Winston L. 59–60 Kishimoto, Hideo 23n2, 45n46 Kitcher, Philip 268 Kitigawa, Joseph M. 51, 69 on Religionswissenschaft 57–58 Klostermaier, Klaus K. 110n12, 133–34, 135 on moving from phenomenology to metascience 61–62 Kristensen, W. B. 54, 65, 84n4 Kuhn, Thomas 115n2, 244, 311 Küng, Hans 38 Lacey, Michael J.

169

Lakatos, Imre 99 Larson, Gerald 79, 159–60 Latour, Bruno 272 Lawson, E. Thomas 78 Lawson, E. Thomas and Robert N. McCauley 244n4, 247n6, 282n29, 286 Leeuw, G. van der 65, 79, 132–33, 135 Lefkowitz, Mary 289 Lepp, Ignace 127n10 Leuba, James H. 231, 325 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 10, 110, 195–96 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien 317 Lewis, C. S. 155 Lewis-Williams, David 286 Lilge, Frederic 239n2 Lloyd, Christopher 141, 245–47, 250, 253 Lonergan, Fr. B. 35n26, 242 MacIntyre, Alasdair 97n6 Magee, Bryan 12, 215, 316 Magiewissenschaft (magical studies) 215–16 Malefijt, Annemarie de Waal 64, 77 Martin, Luther H. 283n1 Marty, Martin E. 127n10, 187 Masuzawa, Tomoko 305 McCaughey, Robert A. 168 McCauley, R. N. 193n3 McCutcheon, Russell T. 305, 322, 326–27 McDermott, R. A. 45n46 McGinn, Colin 202n7 McIntire, C. T. 18, 149–51, 287–88 McLelland, Joseph C. 35n26, 59n47 McPherson, T. 124, 127 Menand, Louis 309 methodological atheism 43n41, 44, 58, 97, 285, 331 vs. methodological agnosticism 324–25 See also Berger, Peter; Wiebe, Donald methodological monism vs. methodological pluralism 5, 310–11, 329 Michaelson, Robert 35n26, 59n47, 252n9 Midgley, Mary 16, 257 and science 258–59 and scientism 258–59 Mitchell, Basil 46n47 Mithen, Steven 203–4 Mol, Hans 77 Molendijk, Arie L. 167n9

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Index Morris, R. 99 Müller, Friedrich Max 2, 49, 63, 65, 167n9, 248n7, 304 Munz, Peter and distinction between catechismic and cognitive beliefs 215n5 Nāgārjuna 125 Nagel, E. 24n3 Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences) 11, 136, 193, 199, 305. See also Geisteswissenschaften Needham. R. 115, 123n5 Nelson, B. 219n12 Neusner, Jacob 187 New Republic, The 307 Newman, John Henry, Cardinal 309 Nicholls, William 59n47 Noll, Mark A. 170 Nongbri, Brent 327 Nord, Warren A. 187 North American Association for the Study of Religions (NAASR) 192, 292 Novak, Michael 34n26, 49n7, 72–73 objective knowledge 223, 225 desire for (cognitive intentionality) 217n7 Osborn, Robert T. 166n9 Otto, Rudolf 25n7, 43n41, 57, 79, 109n10, 110 phenomenological and theological approaches to study of religion 48 Oxtoby, William Gordon 43n41, 55n31, 58 Palma, Anthony J. 322–25, 328–31 on Donald Wiebe and atheistic naturalism 313–16 his conception of science 300–2 his definition of religion 302–6 Ernest Gellner and Karl Popper 316–21 the modern research university 306–10 methodological monism 310–13 Pals, Daniel 108n10, 109–110, 199n6 on the academic study of religion 130–42 See also Dawson, Lorne

337 Pals, Daniel and Lorne Dawson 5, 7 Pannenberg, W. 124n7, 242 Parrinder, Geoffrey 274n2, 277, 278 Paul, Kegan 24n3 Penner, Hans H. 69, 79 on theory in the study of religion 75, 77–78, 87 Penner, Hans H. and Edward A. Yonan 23, 26n9, 28n12, 42n41, 68 on theories of religion 79, 285 Penrose, Roger 202n7 Peter, the Venerable 318 Phillips, D. Z. 73–74, 97n6, 107–8, 115 Pinker, Steven 10, 202n7, 203n8, 307 on Darwin’s theory of evolution 197 Plantinga, Alvin 294–95 Platvoet, Jan G. and Arie L. Molendijk 326 Polanyi, Michael 35n26, 314 Popper, Karl 80n9, 219n12, 316, 319–20, 327, 329–30, 332 Porterfield, Amanda 188 Preus, J. Samuel 14, 167n9, 281 and crisis of identity in religious studies 256 Price, H. H. 126n8 professor as guru, professor-guru 15, 35, 59n47, 249, 252, 253 Proudfoot, Wayne 107–8 Pummer, Reinhard 23n2, 35n26, 45n46, 51–52, 53 Pye, Michael 160, 167, 168, 275 Pyle, Eric H. 109n10, 159 Pyysiäinen, Ilkka 17–18, 204n8, 286 Räisänen, Heikki on Glaubenswissenschaften contrasted with Religionswissenschaftler 166n8 rationalist fundamentalism 267–268 Rawls, John 332 relativism 267–68 religion, academic study of 221–22 “belief” in 115–27, 152–55, 156–58 confessionalism in 281 definition of 325–26 ecology of 69–72. See also Hultkrantz, Ake “faith” in 158–59

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338 religion, academic study of (cont.) and public knowledge of public facts 218, 222 reductionism in 93–98, 100, 103–11, 141–142, 175, 180, 222n16, 285. See also Segal, Robert A. and search for explanatory frameworks 221 See also Wiebe, Donald religion, science of 2–5, 47, 50–52, 53, 54, 55–56, 58, 59 confession in study of 224 reductionistic vs. non-reductionistic frameworks in the study of 44–46 distinct from “sciences of religion” and “scientific study of religion” 49 study of 2, 23, 225 theory in study of 285 See also Smart, Ninian Religionswissenschaft 23, 52, 53, 57–58, 110, 166n8 Religious Studies (academic study of religion) 168, 284, 322, 331 and Joseph Campbell 188 and clustering of disciplines 168 and convergence with theology 7, 8 crisis of identity in 13, 233, 256–57, 261 demands on professors to serve students from diverse religious traditions 287–89 and demarcation from religion-theological enterprise 232 goal of 219 used interchangeably with ‘academic study of religion’ and ‘scholarly study of religion’ 165 and Carl Jung 188 methodological implications of motives underlying study of 213–15, 218–23 as methodologically autonomous 7 as a positive science rather than a religious or metaphysical enterprise 221–22 shift from Sciences of Religion 9 as a structurally distinct science 7 and role of theology in 238–44, 249–53 and theory 3, 63–90 and theory of evolution 198–99

Index ‘thick description’ of 220–21. See also Geertz, Clifford Reuben, Julie 308, 324 Robertson, Roland 55n31 Rorty, Richard 228–29 Rosenberg, Alexander 110, 222n16, 324 Rudner, Richard 81, 86 Rudolph, Kurt 68, 225, 234n17 Runciman, W. G. 81–84 Ryan, A. 31–32 Sahlins, Marshall 150 Saler, Benson 305, 325 Schneider, Mark A. 10, 193–96, 200, 204–6 Scholem, Gershom 184–86 science 226–27, 256–58, 260–61. See also anti-science; scientism scientific student of religion social role of 225–28 scientism 257, 258–59, 307, 319–320, 323 Scriven, Michael 30 Searle, John 201n7 Segal, Robert A. 4–5, 93–100 eight statements in response to Donald Wiebe 103–8 on study of religion as reductionist 4, 93–98, 100, 102–8 Segal, Robert A. and Donald Wiebe 282n27 Seidman, Steven 257, 260–61 Seidman, Steven and David G. Wagner 16, 260 Shapin, Steven 272 Sharpe, Eric J. 3, 10, 11, 13–14, 59n47, 214n4, 274nn1–2, 277n9, 278–79, 284, 320 on the ‘Darwinian-Spencerian theory of evolution’ 63, 64–65 on Darwinism 197 on demarcation of scientific study of religion from theology 276 and history of Religious Studies as apology 230–37 Shea, William M. and Peter A. Huff 169–70 Simon, Marcel 274n2 Shweder, Richard 265 Skorupski, J. 77, 123n5 Slote, M. 45n45, 99 Smart, Ninian 2, 24n4, 35n26, 97n5, 123, 133, 232n10

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Index on religious explanation 36–42, 43n41, 44–45, 94n2 on a science of religion 50–52, 53, 54, 55–56, 58, 59 theory unavoidable in study of religion 76 Smith, Christian 325 Smith, Huston 16 on postmodernism 264 on science 264 Smith, Jonathan Z. 180, 186, 305, 326–27 Smith, Peter 205 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 2, 5, 6, 7–8, 24n5, 35n26, 47–49, 57, 79–80, 127n11, 174, 178, 187–88, 222n17, 236, 320, 322–23, 324, 327 on “belief” in study of religion 115–22, 146–48, 152–55, 157–58, 160 on “faith” in study of religion 156–60 on meaning of the sacred cow 71–72. See also Harris, Marvin on methodology 299 “significant difference of opinion” with Donald Wiebe 143–48, 150, 152–62 on theory in the study of religion 75–76 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) 292 Söderblom, Nathan 230–31 on tension between theology and Religious Studies 231 Sorell, Tom 16 on culture 16, 258 on scientism 257–58 See also scientism Sozialwissenschaften (social sciences) 305 Sperber, D. 220n13, 220n15 Spiro, Melford 326 Standard Social Science Model 203. See also Integrated Causal Model Stark, Rodney 18, 291–93, 295 Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge 285–86 Stark, Rodney and Roger Finke 192 Stark, Werner 58n41 Stead, G. C. 38–39 Stoesz, Donald 318–19 Stone, Jon R. 187 Streng, F. J. 25n7, 43n41, 59n47

339 Strenski, I. 103n2 Stuckrad, Kocku von 322 Sullivan, Lawrence E. 181–85, 187, 189 Sylvan, David and Barry Glassner 270–71 Taiwan Association for Religious Studies (TARS) 163 Taylor, Charles 306n13, 312 theology anti-scientific vs. pro-scientific 2 theory 63–90 definitions of 79 ‘thick description’ 196, 220–21 Thomassen, Einar 166n8 Thomson, G. 217n7 Tiele, Cornelis 2, 49, 167n9, 281n23, 282n28 Tooby, John 203, 204n8 Toulmin, S. 30n15 Tracy, David 170n19 Turner, Jonathan H. 268–69, 271 Turner, Mark 205n9 Tyloch, W. 223n18 Tylor, E. B. 42n41, 252n7 understanding 28, 54–55, 97, 163–64, 166, 172–73, 176–82, 184, 186–7, 189, 191, 246 definitions of in Bowker, John 177–78 in Brandon, S. G. F. 177 in Bunge, Mario 176–77 in Crim, Keith 177 in Eliade, Mircea 177–79 in Ferm, Vergilius 177 in Harvey, Van. A 178–80 in Hinnells, J. R. 177 in Smith, Jonathan Z. 180 in Smith, W. C. 178 religious understanding not a pre-requisite for scholarly understanding of religion 173 used primarily in gnostic fashion in study of religion 8, 163n1, 189 See also Verstehen university 330–31 modern research university 306–310 multiversity 309–10, 311, 312, 323, 329, 331 University of Berlin 330

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340 University of Berlin (cont.) as “mother of all modern universities” 308 Verstehen 33, 34, 36, 54 Verstehens Methode 28, 34, 55, 84, 85, 99–100 Vidich, A. J. and J. Bensman 33–34 Vries, Jan de 64, 214n4, 275 Waardenburg, Jacques 49, 54 Wach, Joachim 35n26, 41 Wallace, A. F. C. 64, 77 Wasserstrom, Steven M. 9, 163n1, 182n36, 184–86, 188 Watson, Peter 328, 330 Wax, M. L. 28n12, 36 Weber, Max 68, 193, 213, 223–224, 239n2, 248, 299–300 and scientific vocation 12, 213, 216–18, 223 Weinberg, Steven 311 Werblowsky, R. J. Z. 53, 167n9, 232, 235 Whitehouse, Harvey 286 Widengren, Geo 274n2, 279n20 Wiebe, Donald 1–19, 55n32, 60n48, 63n1, 82, 87, 94n3, 98n7, 105, 143, 164, 165, 167n9, 167n12, 168, 173n23, 187n39, 191n1, 197, 198n4, 199n6, 219n11, 222n16, 223n18, 232n14, 234n17, 240, 247, 252n8, 263, 277n10, 279nn19–21, 281n24, 282nn27–29, 288n2, 299–310, 312–21 academic study of religion as a scientific vocation 12

Index on ‘crisis of identity in Religious Studies’ 233, 256–57, 261 crypto-theology 135, 139, 296 and definition of religion 303, 324–25, 327–28 and definition of science 328–30 and epistemic morality 219n11 on line of demarcation between religion and the study of religion 283 and methodological atheism 285 as a methodological atheist rather than a methodological agnostic 324 on modern research university 323–24 refutation of postmodernism 17, 271–73 revised arguments in ‘Does Understanding Religion Require Religious Understanding?’ 173–76 and “significant difference of opinion” with W. C. Smith 143–48, 150, 152–62 and role of theology in academic study of religion 238–44, 249–53 use of nouns “religiosity/religiousness” and “religions” instead of “religion” Wilken, R. I. 123n4 Wilson, E. O. 11, 203n8 Winch, Peter 35n26, 149–51 Wissenschaft (scientific knowledge) 15, 240, 246, 247. See also Bildung Wittgenstein, Ludwig 300–1, 328 Woods, George 45n45 Yandell, K. E. 40n37 Yarian, Stanley O. 59n47 Yinger, J. Milton 77, 126n9 on categories of religion 325

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