Defining Religion Notes

Religion Defined

Part one - Religion is the relationship humans have with a transcendent and ultimate authority/power.

Part two - A system of values, ideas, and practices that provide a culture with a cosmos—an ordered reality.
Peter Berger writes in the Sacred Canopy that religion is “the establishment, through human activity, of an all-embracing sacred order, that is, of a sacred cosmos that will be capable of maintaining itself in the ever-present face of chaos” (51).

Part three - In conjunction with parts one and two, it is the practice of maintaining cosmos.
When our experience of the chaos overwhelms cosmos, religion offers a way to maintain cosmos, usually through ritual.

From Ernesto Grassi's Rhetoric as Philosophy: The Humanist Tradition, University Park: The Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1980.


Grassi defines religion "as man's endeavor to construct a 'holy and intact' cosmos which he conceives to be an overpowering reality other than himself. This reality is that to which man turns in order to give himself a place in an absolutely meaningful order" (102).
Grassi continues: "Religiousness, defined this way, springs from the experience of the threat to man's being consumed by chaos and thus from the necessity of holding the terrible in check by giving reality a fixed meaning" (102).
Grassi contrast sacred speech with rational speech and defines rational speech in three parts: first, rational speech claims to be "demonstrative and to offer proof because it gives the reasons for its assertions." Second, "rational speech arises from a process of inference through which every form of immediateness and every metaphoric element is excluded." Third, "its statements have a purely formal character, and their validity depends exclusively on the premises to which they refer. (103-104).

In the relationship between religion and language Grassi defines sacred language in five parts:
first " a purely directive, revealing, or evangelical character (never a demonstrative or proving function), and it never arises out of a process of inference in order not to give up its original character or absolute undetermined character." Second, "the statements of sacred language are formulated without any mediation, that is, 'in the twinkling of an eye' and in an imagistic way." Third, "they are 'metaphorical' statements insofar as sacred language lends the reality of sensory appearances a new meaning." Fourth, "the assertions of sacred language have a claim to urgency; the theoretical or practical view that does not fit with them is 'outrageous.'" Fifth, "its announcements claim to stand outside of time."

Myth

Narratives are the means by which we construct a world, using language, that has a beginning and an end. In religious studies we call these narratives myths. Myths are narratives that give us an ultimate perspective, a picture of the cosmos. Myths outline the beginning and in so doing imply an end, sometimes describing the end. Scientific accounts can never give an ultimate picture; they communicate specific instances. One difference between myth and theory (scientific accounts) is that theory is to be tested while myth is a foundation for what is real.

•C.S. Lewis wrote, “What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is), and, therefore, every myth becomes the father of innumerable truths on the abstract level. Myth is the mountain whence all the different streams arise which become truths down here in the valley. . . Myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really belong to. It is not, like truth, abstract; nor is it, like direct experience, bound to the particular.