Lux Mundi - from the mailbox
From the Chaplain at Keble College, Allen Shin:
A couple of weeks ago when students from Tudor School in Oxford visited the chapel, they posed some tough questions after my brief talk on the chapel. One of the questions has been on my mind. How would you respond to the suggestion that in this post-modern society religious spirituality is in decline and perhaps on its ways out and this is a good thing? I rambled on with a half- baked, half-intelligent answer along the line that religion could never disappear, for it is an integral dimension of the human social fabric since the dawn of the human society. In all honesty I must admit I was being defensive, after all without religion I'd have to find a new job.
Archbishop Michael Ramsey in his lecture, Beyond Religion? (1964), noted the fact that in the New Testament the word religion seldom occurs and said, "it is not one of the characteristic words for Christian attitude toward God." Dr Ramsey suggested inthis lecture the notion of "religionless" Christianity, the term first coined by Bonhoeffer. The Victorian English theologian, F. D. Maurice, also suggested a similar idea: "We have been dosing our people with religion, when what they want is not that, but the living God." If we take these suggestions to heart, then, perhaps it is a good thing that religious spirituality is in the decline and dying out.
But, the nagging question still remains about human spirituality, for the spirituality in large part has been defined in terms of religious norms and customs throughout human history. To me "religious spirituality" sounds redundant and "irreligious spirituality", an oxymoron. I thing it's generally safe to say that all human beings are spiritual, although doubtful in some
instances. So, what is special about religious spirituality? And can we even talk of spirituality apart from religion? This is a complex issue.
The English word "religion" is derived from the Latin word religio. In the Hebrew Old Testament and in the Greek New Testament, there is no one particular Hebrew or Greek word corresponding to the word religio or its derivatives. Different words or phrase describing the act of worship or the disposition of holiness are translated into religio or its derivatives. In the Latin Vulgate Bible we would find nine occurrences of the term reliio or its variations in the Old Testament and seven in the New Testament, none of which appear in the Gospels. This is an interesting finding because it raises the question, Wasn't Jesus concerned about religion?
The etymology of the word "religion" has been a matter of debate from ancient times. Cicero derived religion from relegere (to go over again, to carefully ponder): "Those who carefully took in hand all things pertaining to the gods were called religiosi, from relegere" (De natura deorum II, xxviii). This also captures what we do with the Bible, reading it over and over again and carefully pondering upon its words. Another theory suggests that it is derived from the Latin ablative res (with regard to) plus legere (to gather), which describes the organisational dimension of religion. But, the most generally accepted theory was first given by Lactantius, the fourth-century Christian apologist: "We are tied to God and bound (religati) to Him by the bond of
piety, and it is from this, and not, as Cicero holds, from careful consideration (relegendo), that religion has received its name" (Divine Institutes IV, xxviii). St. Augustine of Hippo initially related religio with religere in the sense of recovering: "having lost God through neglect
(negligentes), we recover (religentes) Him and are drawn to Him" (City of God X, iii). However, he must not have been satisfied with this notion which implies redemption as the primary meaning of religion, for he later accepted the derivation given by Lactantius: "Religion binds us (religat) to the one Almighty God" (Retractions, I, xiii, "On the True Religion"). So, the notion of binding has been the classic Christian understanding of religion.
The notion of binding implies a sense of obligation legal and covenantal. This recalls the story of the Binding of Isaac in Genesis 22. Abraham takes Isaac into the mountain and binds him to sacrifice him to God as he was commanded by God. But, moved by Abraham's obedience, God sends an angel to stop the sacrifice and provides a ram for the sacrifice instead. This complex myth defines the fundamental relationship between God and his people and sets the boundary of their religion based on God's covenant. Abraham is often called Father of Monotheism and as such he perhaps defined religion which has been handed through the Judeo-Christian tradition. Interestingly, however, the word religio doesn't occur in the Latin translation of this story. Rather, in the Latin Vulgate Bible, relgio appears in the passages regarding ritual worship in Leviticus and Exodus and moral disposition in other passages.
Religion, defined in term of ritualistic and moralistic obligation, is fraught with emotional baggage and difficulties. Perhaps the reason the word religio doesn't appear in the Gospels is precisely because Jesus tires to do away with such a sense of religion and to liberate us all from the neurosis of religion. Yet, human spirituality is evidently expressed through rituals, repetitive habits which eventually take on deeper meaning. But, when we lose sight of the original purpose of religion altogether, our spirit gets stifled and suffers. I think this is what Archbishop Ramsey was warning about. However, the nagging question still remains. If religion is what allows us to express our spirituality, without religion, then, what does it mean to be spiritual? Can we talk about life's spiritual dimensions apart from religion without remaining vague and wishywashy?