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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
It is at least twenty years too late to prevent most Catholic institutions of higher education in Europe and North America from establishing departments of religious studies. It is not, of course, too late to disestablish them or, short of that rather impractical possibility, reform them along lines extending from a quite different set of principles. I believe a particularly good reason for doing no less than the latter is that the present enterprise is a contradiction to genuine Catholic education; simply one more manifestation of the stale secularism which now permeates Catholic schools. And the proof of this claim, as I intend to argue, lies in the fact that it is impossible within the regnant discourse of religious studies to reclaim what St Thomas meant by “acts commanded by religion.” The very notion of religion operating within that enterprise precludes it. The “religion” of religious studies is both too extensive in its initial presumptions but, more importantly, much too narrow in its final application to encompass what St. Thomas spoke of when he wrote on religion.
Perhaps the best route, then, to what St Thomas meant by religion, and in particular by acts commanded by religion, is getting straight about what he was not speaking of. To this end we can look to the most recent Encyclopedia of Religion, published under the editorial leadership of Mircea Eliade. The contribution on “religion” by Winston L. King provides just the sort of definition that reflects, not only the current wisdom in the field of religious studies, but a perfect antithesis to the teaching of St. Thomas.
1 The Encyclopedia of Religion, Eliade, Mircea, editor in chief (New York: Macmillian Publishing Company, 1987)Google Scholar.
2 Op. cit., Volume 11, p. 282. Besides the assertion that the “Western view of religion” is dichotomous, I have no quarrel with this statement. In fact, I think it simply reflects a quite fundamental awareness necessary for maintaining any rationality when speaking of God. I can't imagine the point of worshipping a god who is not distinct from all else. Indeed, I can't imagine anything that is not distinct from all else: being distinct is the minimal requirement for being a thing. But the article then goes on to equate this metaphysical attainment with a “separation of the religious from all else,” and this is simply nonsense. While here has been an attempt to separate religion from all else and thus render it inconsequential, the agent of this separation is not traditional theism, but the secularism that now informs our society; and one expression of this separation in academic life is the existence of departments of religious studies. Yet before we pursue that matter it is necessary to first grasp what the article on religion means by religion.
3 Sharpe, Eric J., “The Study of Religion in the Encyclopedia of Religion The Journal of Religion 70:340–352, JI 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Op.cit., p.286.
5 See McCabe, Herbert, “Categories.” in Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays. Kenny, Anthony, comp. (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1969), pp. 54–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Hart, Ray L, “Religious and Theological Studies in American Higher Education: a Pilot Study. JAAR LIX/4, Winter, 1991, p. 716.Google Scholar See also, Donovan, Peter, “Neutrality in Religious Studies,” Religious Studies 26/1, March 1990. pp, 103–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 I first became aware of the radical difference in orientation to the subject of religion by modern religionists and St Thomas through an article by Dewan, Lawrence O.P., “Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas and the Philosophy of Religion,”University of Ottawa Quarterly 51/4, 1981, pp. 644–653Google Scholar.
8 S. T. I, 81, 3.
9 S. T. I–II, 60, 3.
10 The specificity of the definition, however, is very important to St. Thomas' purposes of distinguishing, on the one hand, religion from other Virtues, and on the other, religion from idolatry or superstition: Since the word ‘servant implies relationship to a lord or master, wherever there is a special type of dominion there is a special type of subjection. Clearly, since God makes all things and has dominion over them all, lordship belongs to God in a special and singular manner. Hence, a special type of service or subjection is due to God and religion renders it. This special form of service was called ‘latria’ by the Greeks (S.T. II–II, 81, 4, r.3). ” Religion,” writes Gilson, “is not to be confused with any other virtue. And this has to be taken in the strongest sense. It does not merely mean that the virtue of religion consists in honouring God more than anything else. The goodness of the infinite being is not only very much greater than that of the best of finite beings, it is essentially something else. To honour God as He should be honoured, an essentially different honour must be paid Him. This is the full sense of the expression. Its force is only ten easily lost by repetition. The virtue of religion consists in rendering God the homage due to Him alone” (Gilson, Étienne, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, New York: Random House, 1956, p. 334)Google Scholar.
11 As Herbert McCabe (I believe) once phrased it: “The God of freedom, Yahweh, is no god. There are no gods, they are so many delusions.”
12 This is because, as St. Thomas says, a species of virtue can pass into another if it has the latter as its end S.T. II‐II, 181, 2, r.3.
13 St. Thomas resolved this problem by distinguishing between the object of religion and its end. Religion does not have God as its proper object, and therefore the inability of human actions to be proportional to God does not make religion an impossibility, just as the impossibility of jumping as high as the moon does not make the attempt impossible, for the object of the act remains the same, whether or not the goal is accomplished. Cf. S.T. I–II, 62, 2; II–II, 57, 1, r.3.
14 See Donagan, Alan, Human Ends and Human Action; An Exploration in St. Thomas's Treatment (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.
15 Cf. S.T. II–II, 81, aa. 1, 4; II–II, 186, 1.
16 I believe that Huston Smith (JAAR LVIII/4, Winter 1990, pp. 653–670) is correct in his judgement that both modernism and post‐modernism are incapable of illuminating the subject of religion. What I disagree with, however, is his remedy: not only does it rely upon a metaphysical dualism between this world and another—how else can one make sense of his assertion that the supernatural is a realm having the capacity to “intervene in orders that are below it in ways that are Comparable to the way anxiety can influence the functioning of a digestive tract to cause ulcers” (emphasis added)?—but it also relies upon the notion of “experience” to distinguish the authentically religious from all else—thus his desire to return to William James, as well as equate the subject of metaphysics with “worldviews”. The present paper contends that there is no “other world” from which “this world” can be disengaged. There is, in fact, me world, the deepest Structures of which are captured in “God‐talk.”
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