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Religion and Cultural Synthesis
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10070 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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Date : |
4 / 1986 |
6,032 Words |
| Author
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Richard L. Rubenstein
Richard L. Rubenstein is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished
Professor of Religion at Florida State University and
president of the Washington Institute for Values in Public
Policy. He is the coauthor (with John K. Roth) of Approaches
to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and its Legacy |
In considering the role of religion in fostering cultural synthesis, it is important to distinguish between dichotomizing systems of gaps and synthesizing systems of continuity. In general, monotheistic religions which (a) affirm the radical transcendence of the Creator over creation and (b) claim that their beliefs and values are exclusively true because they are legitimated by a unique, sovereign, divine authority, tend to fall under the first category. In the latter category we find pantheistic, mystical and incarnational traditions which affirm the ultimate, though not necessarily the immediate, unity of God, man and cosmos. It is our thesis that systems of continuity are far more likely to foster cultural integration than systems of gaps.
An important social consequence of biblical monotheism has been the fostering of a sense of the radical incommensurability of God and man, and God and nature, as well as between the "true" God and what the Bible takes to be the false gods of paganism. This has led to the alienation of man from man, at least from those men whose sacred traditions were deemed to be false by the biblical religions. This alienation has also led to the eventual rise of modern secular individualism. In the domain of culture, it has led to the secularization of Western political and cultural institutions. In the case of biblical Judaism, biblical man came to understand nature as created by and wholly dependent upon an extramundane Creator and, hence, as a realm devoid of any inherent spiritual power. Similarly, rejecting the claims of the divine kings of Egypt and Mesopotamia, biblical man considered the political order to be a purely human enterprise, albeit one that stood under the judgment of God. By contrast, the cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia posited the continuity of "the world of men and the world of gods" in which human events and institutions were inked with the sacred powers permeating the cosmos. In ancient Egypt, for example, failure to comply with norms enacted in the name of Pharaoh, the god-king, constituted an offense far worse than a violation of humanly ordained rules. Such disobedience was though of as constituting a breach in the order of the cosmos itself, a breach which could conceivably disturb both the course of nature and the safety of the kingdom. To disobey the god-king was thus an act of sacrilege as well as an act of rebellion against authority.
The profound difference between biblical religion and that of ancient Egypt is evident in the scriptural traditions concerning the covenant at Sinai. Most contemporary biblical scholars do not regard the "Hebrews" who escaped from Egypt as having been a single people at the time of the Exodus. The name "Hebrews" probably
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