Holding Sacred that which is not Sacred

Holding Sacred that which is not Sacred

1991 2 February 21-24 Holding Sacred that which is not Sacred (1308) Nothan Soderblom observed in a work completed in 1913 that the notion of holiness formed the central concept of religion. Since then the history of religions has been studied on a vast scale, a large number of scholarly books having been written on the subject in German, French, English and other languages. With very few exceptions, scholars of religion are in agreement that holiness is the basic tenet of religion, that is, the attribution of such mystical qualities or powers to certain persons or things as are not ever found in ordinary creatures or objects. These mystical attributes cannot be explained by general, rational principles or concepts. The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics discusses this in detail in its article on ‘Holiness’.

This concept of holiness is not an imaginary thing: It is deeply ingrained in the nature of man. The feeling generated by it is properly employed when it is concentrated exclusively on God. But it frequently happens that this urge within man is diverted to something which, in actual fact, is not holy. The actual feeling of reverence for holiness, which should have been directed towards the creator, finds its way instead towards some creature.

The reason for this is that since God is an invisible reality, Man is unable to see God with the naked eye, and, therefore, gives his attention to whatever else strikes him as most prominent in his immediate surroundings; he then begins to invest it with sanctity, and to worship it as if it were genuinely holy. It is that psychology which produced in ancient time what is called polytheism in religious terminology, and nature worship in academic parlance. This basic urge to worship impelled man from within to revere something which was holy. Consequently, he started worshipping anything which made a great visual impact upon him, e.g. stars, rain, animals, plants, water and fire. The concept of a high God existed as the Prophets had taught man. But this concept of a high God came to be distorted to mean that the high God “was the lord in heaven who had withdrawn from the immediate details of governing the world. This kind of high God – a hidden, or idle God – had delegated all work on earth to these ‘nature spirits’, which were the forces, or personifications of the forces of nature.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 12, p.877).

Scholars of religion agree in general that the concept of holiness is the cohesive force in all religions. That is, for a religion to hold” together, some unique or extraordinary person or thing must be designated as sacred and stand at the apex of the sum of its beliefs. This cannot be explained in terms of general, rational principles.

The commonest human reactions to objects of sanctity are fear and fascination. Only the sacred can fulfill man’s deepest needs and aspirations, Thus, the reverence that man shows for whatever is held sacred is composed both of trust and of terror. There is also the view that the acceptance of something as sacrosanct signals the boundaries of human effort, where man’s inherent limitations prevent him from seeking any further.

The objects of man’s reverence are disparate in nature, e.g. stones, animals, the sea, the sun, the moon, kings and other religious personalities. Whatever is held sacred is worshipped, and sacrifices are made to it. Rituals are observed in order to please it, escape its punishments and elicit its favours.

“Sacredness is manifested,” observes the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “in sacred officials. Such as priests and kings; in specially designated sacred places, such as temples and images, and in natural objects, such as rivers, the sun, mountains, or trees. The priest is a special agent in the religious cult, his ritual actions represent the divine action. Similarly, the king or emperor is a special mediator between heaven and earth and has been called by such names as the ‘son of heaven,’ or an ‘arm of god’.” (16/24).

Here are some of the important anthropologists who hold sacredness to be on the basis of religion. Their names are as follows:

Nothan Soderblom, Rudolf Otto, Emile Durkhem, Max Scheler Gerardus van der Leeuw, W. Brede Kristemsen, Friedrich Heiler, Gustov Mensching, Roger Caillois, Mircea Eliade (16/ 124).

The modern scholars of religion are right in saying that the basic idea behind religion is the concept of holiness. This feeling of holiness in itself is a natural feeling. However, when some other object besides one God is considered holy, this is the wrong application of a real, natural feeling. And this is the root cause of all kinds of evils. When man holds the non-holy as holy, he closes all the doors to progress.

There are two aspects of holding the non-holy as holy. One is to consider all of nature as being sacred, and the other is to revere certain individuals as being sacrosanct. Both kinds of evils have been found all over the world since ancient times. This has been the greatest reason for man’s thinking having remained unscientific.

The notion of holiness is deeply rooted in human psychology. To define in a phrase, such a psychology is extremely difficult, for the words used to express profound psychological states are more often symbolic than realistic. I would simply agree in principle that the concept of holiness is the focal point of religion. This existence of holiness, is, nevertheless, real and not imaginary, as modern scholars of religion would have us believe.

The truth is that the urge to worship is a natural instinct which every man is born with. Man, because of this deep inner urge, wants actively to bow before something which he regards as sacred. There are two forms in which this feeling finds expression one is monotheism, the other polytheism.

When man holds one God sacred and worships him as his Deity, he directs his feelings to the proper place. It is, in reality, God who possesses the attribute of sacredness. Holding the one and only God sacred is, therefore, to acknowledge a great truth.

But the mistake man makes is to worship and revere whatever object he finds outstanding in this world, or whatever he finds different from himself, imagining it to be sacred. This is the wrong use of the right feeling. This is giving to a non-god what is due to the one and only God. In religious terminology this is known as polytheism or, in common parlance, superstition.

It was this error of holding mere things holy instead of God Himself which prevented the emergence of science for thousands of years in the past. When we believe in one God, no scientific or intellectual problem arises in doing so, for God is beyond our physical reach and our Sphere of functioning. He is beyond the heavens, through winch man cannot pass.

The material objects which are considered holy, fall, on the other hand, within the sphere of human action. And whenever these things have been surrounded with an aura of holy mystery, they have assumed too exalted a status to be subjected to scientific investigation. It is precisely in making an intellectual conquest of these things that science has had its beginnings.

All things other than God are mere creatures. These are the things which are generally known as natural phenomena. It is these phenomena which provide the groundwork for science. To study them and to ·conquer and control them is what is meant by scientific procedure.

From ancient times the phenomena of nature had universally been considered sacred; as such, all these things, far from being objects of conquest, became objects of worship. It was this intellectual perversion which prevented scientific action for thousands of years in the past. The door to progress opened only when the revolution of monotheism changed human thinking and brought nature down from its pedestal of holiness.