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A Gainst Religion

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A Gainst Religion CHRISTOS YANNARAS A gainst R eligion THE ALIENATION OF THE ECCLESIAL EVENT Translated by Norman Russell Om K T M O n o X PRESS HOLY CROSS ORTHODOX PRESS Brookline, Massachusetts © 2013 Holy Cross Orthodox Press Contents Published by Holy Cross Orthodox Press 50 Goddard Avenue Brookline, Massachusetts 02445 ISBN-13 978-1-935317-40-1 ISBN-10 1-935317-40-7 Originally published in Greek as Enantia ste threskeia, Ikaros, Athens, 2006. 1. Religiosity ^ All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in 1.1 An Instinctive N eed ... 1 a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written 1.2 ... Always Centered on the Individual s permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. 1.3 Nonrational Thought and the Emotions l o 1.4 The Armored Shell of Authority j 6 On the cover: Pollock, Jackson (1912-1956) © ARS, NY. The Flame, c. 1934-38. Oil on canvas 2. The Ecclesial Event 21 mounted on fiberboard, 20 1/2x30” (51.1 x 76.2 cm). Enid A. HauptFund. © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2.1 The Reversal of Religious Terms 2 1 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, U.S.A. 2.2 Historical Realism 2 9 Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY 2.3 Relativity of Language and Priority of Experience 34 2.4 Authority as Service 4 j Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 3. The Religionization of the Ecclesial Event: The Symptoms 4g Giannaras, Chrestos, 1935- [Enantia ste threskeia. English] 3.1 Faith as Ideology 49 Against religion : the alienation of the ecclesial event / Christos Yannaras ; translated by Norman Russell, 3.2 Experience as a Psychological Construct 5 7 pages cm 3.3 Salvation as a Reward for the Individual 63 Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-935317-40-1 3 A The Eucharistic Assembly as a Sacred Rite 7 1 1. Religion. I. Title. 3.5 Art In the Service of Impressing, Teaching, BL48.G4913 2013 200—dc23 and Stirring the Emotions 84 3.6 The Eclipse of the Parish g 8 Contents vi 3.7 The Idolization of Tradition 105 3.8 The Demonization of Sexuality 118 4. The Religionization of the Ecclesial Event: Chapter 1 Historical Overview 130 4.1 The Judaizers 130 4.2 Religio Imperii 135 4.3 Augustine 143 Religiosity 4.4 Ideological Catholicity 1 51 4.5 Pietism 163 5. Orthodoxism: The Religionization of Ecclesial Orthodoxy 169 169 5.1 The Codified Fossilization of Our Heritage 1.1. An Instinctive Need... 5.2 Confessionalism 176 5.3 The Reversal of Ecclesial Criteria and Objectives 182 Religiosity is a natural human need, a need that is innate and in­ stinctive within us. 5.4 The Popularity of the Philokalia in the West 188 The needs we call natural, innate, and instinctive are those that 6 . Can the Ecclesial Event Accommodate are not controlled by reason and the will. They are embedded in 200 Natural Religiosity? us as imperative demands, within the functioning of our biological being. 205 Bibliography Psychologists summarize the drives that determine human­ 210 ity’s psychosomatic structure as two basic instincts: they speak of Index an instinct o f self-preservation and an instinct of self-perpetuation. Religiosity may be seen as a manifestation of the instinct of self- preservation. It belongs to the reflexes that have developed in hu­ man nature (our automatic, involuntary psychosomatic reactions) so as to ensure survival. Religiosity is analogous to hunger, thirst, the fear of illness and pain, or terror in the face of death. Why? A tentative, necessarily schematic but not arbitrary explanation might run as follows: Man sees his existence threatened by powers or factors that he cannot control. His own natural powers do not suffice to avert illness, pain, and death. He therefore resorts to imaginary powers that can offer hope of protection, a reassurance that comes from autosuggestion. He considers the causes of the threats that his own 2 A g a in s t R e l ig io n Religiosity 3 nature cannot control as supernatural, and, moreover, he personi­ periencing it as a threat. It cannot bear leaving whatever threatens fies them. That is, he sets them within a pattern of rational rela­ it shrouded in obscurity. It cannot endure treating the decay and tions that he knows how to manage effectively. transience of existence as enigmatic. In the face of death, nature Using the logic of relations between human beings, Man at­ generates panic, the mind-reeling effect of confronting the absurd. tempts to tame the forces and factors that threaten him. Or else he By supposing the existence of supernatural beings, even if with­ supposes that there are other contrary forces and factors (always out the support of intellectual hypotheses, Man consoles himself personified) able to overcome and neutralize the threats. He seeks and assuages the fear provoked by ignorance. If any evil threaten­ to win them over to his side so that they will protect him. ing Man has a supernatural cause or agency, then it is reasonable to Powers that are threatening to human beings include many think that the same supernatural factors that provoke it or permit it natural phenomena, such as earthquakes, storms, fire, floods, also have the power to deflect it. thunderbolts, drought, and famine. They also include the effects Consequently, for Man to find ways of mollifying and winning of the dysfunctioning or decay of Man’s biological being: sickness, over these factors, he needs some equivalent force that can “con­ aging, disabilities, inherited defects. Man has the instinctive need trol or manage” supernatural powers. Man seeks the power and to attribute these to nonnatural regulators of what appears to be capacity to render these supernatural factors subject to the goal of chance: either to inexplicable factors hostile to Man or to friendly, his own salvation from evil, his own “eternal” happiness. beneficent powers that nevertheless test him or “tempt” him. This power, this capacity, is what is demanded by religious Man wants to have good relations with these hypothetical su­ need, and it is this that the institutionalized religions promise. pernatural factors that are favorably or unfavorably disposed to­ ward him. His instinct of self-preservation imposes this upon him Religion may be defined as humanity’s natural (instinctive) need as an innate need. He wants to constantly win their sympathy and (1) to suppose that there are factors that generate existence and ex­ their good will, or at least not to provoke their opposition and an­ istent things, together with the evil that is intertwined with the fact ger. However advanced people may be in intellectual development, of existence; and (2) to extrapolate from this rational supposition critical thought, or scientific knowledge, when faced with mortal methods and practices for the “management” of these supernatural danger they resort instinctively to some supernatural protector. (It factors, so that hopes of humanity’s salvation from evil, of human­ has rightly been observed that “when a plane enters a zone of vio­ ity’s unending happiness, are built up. lent turbulence, nobody on board is an atheist!”) Somewhere within these boundaries we may locate the logic of religion, a logic that is biologically determined, which is why the Referring back to supernatural beings is hypothetical but consis­ phenomenon of religion has always existed in every human culture. tent with human logic. That is, it satisfies Man’s need (and it is also The common marks of the phenomenon, common at all times and natural) to interpret the natural word around him, to attribute ra­ in all places, are to be found in the (practical) manifestations that tionally to the same beings (beings inaccessible to sensory verifica­ depend on the instinctive needs that give rise to it: tion) even the cause of the reality of all that exists: the creation and preservation of a world that has been brought into being by them, First is Man’s need to know the factors that determine his existence. or the direction and preservation of a world that is self-existent. We need to possess reliable knowledge, to be reassured by certain­ The unknown frightens Man, especially ignorance of cause ties. We need to have at our disposal an effective antidote to the fear and purpose. Human nature defends itself with knowledge; it uses that arises from Ignorance, to the panic generated by the dark and it to anticipate dangers, and therefore reacts against ignorance, ex­ enigm atic aspect! of metaphysical theories. 4 A g a in s t R e l ig io n Religiosity 5 That is why every religion offers (and presupposes) dogm as: a The logic of sacrifice is a logic of demonstrating a devotion of priori received teaching, axiomatic definitions, truths that do not the senses, of proving in a practical way that God is more precious admit of doubt or of any control for their confirmation or falsifica­ than the best and dearest that Man has. There is also indirectly dis­ tion. The religions assure people of that which the needs of human cernible a logic of bribery. By the quality of the gift he offers, Man nature demand: guaranteed certainties with regard to metaphysics. places God under an obligation, just as by giving gifts he places Even if they have no support in common experience or reason, they those human beings on whom he depends under an obligation (the are “truths” that the infallible authority of the representatives of king, the tyrant, the master).
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