Approaches to the origin and evolution of religious systems

 1. Introduction

    Religion evolves in step with sociocultural evolution. Religious systems belong to historical time, for the same reason that they are part of the respective socio-cultural system: in it they arise and with it they evolve. All evolutionary changes are due to systemic instability and, in general, respond to adaptation and survival needs. In fact, there is evidence of a clear relationship between cultural evolution and the evolution of religion within culture. The relationship between one and the other seems inextricable, although it is convenient not to confuse them and to maintain the theoretical distinction between them. When asked whether religion is a specific subsystem of the social system or an inherent dimension of any of the subsystems that make up society, the answer would be that it is both. It is true that, everywhere, we find a particular subsystem, whether instituted or charismatic, as an activity circumscribed to a special time. But, at the same time, we observe that it is an omnipresent dimension, to the point that it is possible to analyze the religious implications of any subsystem or activity of a society, or even of a person. This generic religious implication need not correspond to what people think is established religion. For there are effective options, no less religious, that result from a practical denial, total or partial, of the explicitly recognized religion.

    We consider that each religious tradition constitutes a complex system, which develops its life in the midst of changing circumstances, and in interaction with them it preserves or modifies its structure and functioning. Like any system, the religious system consists of a hard core, which includes the founding message: some fundamental beliefs and some "ultimate sacred postulates" (Rappaport 1999: 585 and ss.). To this must be added a set of subsystems articulated around the nucleus and an immunological device that defends it from external attacks and tries to harmonize internal contradictions. The nucleus implicitly contains a code, like a genome that generates messages in historical forms that express and interpret it in very different ways. In this core content, a worldview, values, essential symbols and a basic organization are synthesized. It must be insisted that these elements only occur in historical forms: faith formulas, ethical principles, liturgical rules and hierarchical institutions, all of them variants on a theme that is already an interpretation from the beginning.

    In their formulation, religious systems can present a more or less open vision of the world, or else a more or less dogmatically closed doctrine, perhaps frozen in archaic embodiments. But even if the oldest sacred configurations of myths, rites, and practices are maintained, they should not be expected to remain unchanged. With the passage of time, it is most likely that their meanings, as well as their forms of social use, will change inexorably.

    A millennial historical development may be marked by a general trend, perhaps due to the predominance of one of the components, be it the myth, the rite, the ethical norm, the way of organization or the prototypical character. In this sense, there has been talk of an orientation or a predominant type in each great basin of religious life: the figure of the sage in Chinese civilization, that of the mystic in India and that of the prophet in the so-called Abrahamic religions (Küng 2011: 162).

    Every religious system organizes itself by adjusting its components and its fit into society. It is constantly reorganizing and trying to respond to the challenges of the political and social ecosystem. From there follow historical derivations and deviations, in multiple directions, through which evolution runs. From time to time, significant innovations emerge and these can lead to an accepted, system-renewing morphogenesis. However, at certain critical junctures, the diversification undertaken leads to schism, due to the resistance to change of the most traditional sectors. In extreme cases, the initial message is altered, introducing mutations in the generating code, to the point of giving birth to a new religion. While following within the same tradition, the most normal result is that important modifications of the confession of faith take place in the time line, giving rise to a succession -and overlapping- of historical paradigms of the same religious creed. 

2. History of religion: phases and paradigms

    It is worth distinguishing between the stages of religious evolution, from the point of view of anthropology, and the phases of development of the great traditions, from the point of view of the history of civilizations. In the first approach, there are classic theories such as the one summarized by Marvin Harris, who establishes four main varieties of cult with evolutionary implications, according to the scale of sociocultural integration: individualistic cults, shamanic cults, community cults and ecclesiastical cults (Harris 1988). The structural changes of the religious followed a defined sequence in all latitudes, in relation to the increase in demographic magnitude and the complexity of the organization. The great religious traditions (Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, Hebrew, Christian, and Islamic) all belong to the category of so-called “ecclesiastical” cults, that is, they constitute state-level organized religions.

    Students of the history of religions highlight the different phases that they go through throughout the ages (Díez de Velasco 1995, Smith 1991, Eliade 1967). As I have pointed out, each great tradition is founded on a nucleus of truths and postulates that are in some way essential, the formulation of which is necessarily historical from the original moments. That core, while the system remains recognizable, is preserved in changing molds, reformulated innumerable times, reoriented in its social function, reinterpreted from new mentalities, reformed in response to crises.

    Hans Küng uses the method of paradigms in his historical analysis of the so-called Abrahamic religions. Thus, in Judaism (Küng 1991) establishes the following sequence: I. Paradigm of the tribes of the pre-state era. II. Paradigm of the kingdom of the monarchical era. III. Paradigm of the theocracy of post-exilic Judaism. IV. Rabbinic-synagogal paradigm of the Middle Ages. V. Paradigm of assimilation to modernity. In his work on Christianity (Küng 1994) the succession of paradigms is: I. Proto-Christian-apocalyptic paradigm. II. Hellenistic vetero-ecclesial paradigm. III. Medieval Roman Catholic paradigm. IV. Paradigm of the Protestant Reformation. V. Enlightened modern paradigm. On the other hand, when dealing with Islamism (Küng 2006) he distinguishes: I. Paradigm of the proto-Islamic community. II. Paradigm of the Arab empire. III. Paradigm of classical Islam as a universal religion. IV. Ulama and Sufi paradigm. V. Paradigm of modernization. In the end, in all three cases, he wonders about the possible emergence of a transmodern and ecumenical paradigm appropriate to our era of globalization.

    It would be interesting to apply the same method to research and design an analogous model for the evolution of Asian religions in China and India, although we probably already have an advance in the periods distinguished by historians (Smith 1991, Cheng 1997, Ricard 2000). . For example, in the millennial history of the Hindu tradition, it is probably correct to point out: Vedic Paradigm. Brahminical paradigm of the Upanishads. Paradigm of reconstituted Hinduism. Paradigm of coexistence with Islam. Neo-Hinduist paradigm (Grigorieff 1898: 167-175).

    Broadly speaking, the historical religions transcended tribal boundaries, grew in a national context, and opened up virtually to a world horizon, at least in the geographic area of a great civilization. Of their own accord, they evolved everywhere from ethnicism to some form of universalism, within the political limits of each age and context. Even in the case of the Hebrew religion, we know that it experienced this openness to all nations, prophesied in Isaiah, although Rabbinic Judaism, after the Diaspora, ended up regressing to consider itself as the Jewish national religion. On the other hand, Christianity, starting with the Jesus movement (Crossan 1998, Theissen 2004), opened its message to Greco-Roman culture, from the 1930s and 1940s, in a line continued and defended by Paul of Tarsus. For its part, Mohammedanism arose as a religion of Arabs and founded an Arab empire, before the Abbasid caliphs opened their doors to people of other origins, giving the Muslim empire a universalist sign (Küng 2006: 275 and ss.). In short, the evolution of religions in the history of civilization made them concentrate their role in providing the legitimizing sacred rites of the nation and the empire, with which, at the same time, they were exposed to risks and power struggles.

    The complex history of human societies, and within it the history of religion, displays its existence far from equilibrium: systems self-organize, constantly reorganize, rearranging their structures and adjusting their operation. In general, it seems that each great tradition presents within it, to a greater or lesser degree, all tendencies, as if it sought to explore all the potentialities of the human spirit. It grants variable importance to each of the constitutive factors, such as the myth or vision of the world, the rite or lived symbolization, the principle or ethical practice norm, the community and institutional organization. In some cases, it tends to be predominantly concentrated in one of them.

    Likewise, there are characterizations in which we observe a typical decantation towards one of the possible options or orientations, in such a way that the paradigms come to be a combination of more or less marked options in one orientation, which gives it a specific historical profile. It is not difficult to compile a sample of these polarities, as alternatives (not always completely exclusive) around an axis, although it is necessary to insist on the idea that nothing can replace the need to carry out a detailed analysis of each case. concrete. A religious element supposes a codification of meanings, the communication of a message in the form of thoughts, experiences or actions. And this message involves taking positions or polarities, explicit or implicit, with respect to a multiplicity of aspects. Here is a simplified and schematic list of some pairs of opposition, to suggest what I mean: in terms of time, cyclical/irreversible; in terms of scale, collective/individual; in terms of power, theocratic/democratic; as for mediation, mystical/prophetic; in terms of belief, narrative/dogmatic; in terms of knowledge, gnostic/wisdom; in terms of organization, charismatic/hierarchical; as for ontology, dualist/monist; as for divinity, polytheism/monism; regarding the conception of the absolute, cosmic order/personal god; as for the ideal of life, monastic/lay; as for eschatology, ethical/apocalyptic; as for salvation, immanent/transcendent; regarding the attitude towards the norm, legalism/freedom; in terms of social relations, egalitarianism/classism or elitism; in terms of sexual difference, androcentrism/equalization of women; in terms of attitude towards the conflict, warmongering/peaceful.

    Each of the great traditions, throughout its history, has effectively explored the full range of alternatives underlying the realm of the religious, a very extensive, though admittedly limited, field. In it we can detect poles of attraction, axes of displacement, bifurcations, alternations, oppositions, intrasystemic and ecosystemic interactions in relation to the sociocultural context. As can be inferred, the combinatorics can be enormously broad and complex, before the new syntheses and possible emerging metamorphoses are exhausted.

    Finally, the idea of evolution of a religious system is understood in a double sense. The first alludes to change within a tradition, whereby a gradual transformation of the system is taking place, through small endogenous mutations or by assimilation of certain exogenous elements. In this case, evolving is reduced to producing varieties within the same species, which are maintained. The second sense is more radical and supposes the evolution of one system towards another that gives rise to a tradition so differentiated that it supposes the appearance of mutations that cannot be assimilated by the pre-existing tradition, to the point of originating a new religion. This was the case with the birth of Buddhism from Hinduism in the sixth century before our era, and that of Christianity from Mosaicism or the Judaic religion prior to the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem temple.

3. Springs and mechanisms of the human spirit

    When exploring the multiple theoretically possible alternatives, the different elements of the religious system do so based on the available social niches and in response to certain changes in the living conditions of social groups, classes or castes. This is the case in great processes, such as when Mahayana Buddhism was adapted to spread and become the official religion of the Mauryan Empire of India, in the third century BC, under the auspices of Emperor Asoka. In a similar way, when primitive Christianity smoothed out the radicalism of Jesus and the letters of the authentic Paul, to adapt to Roman society and, later, throughout the fourth century, to be incorporated as the official creed of the Roman Empire. Thus, the mechanisms involved in adaptation are always present, ready to be activated at all times, and probably represent a repertoire of resources inscribed in some way as schemes or structures of the "human spirit" (Lévi-Strauss 1964: 23). and made explicit in historical molds. The concrete nature of these mental schemes, which correspond to cultural mechanisms, will be cleared through the collaboration between evolutionary psychology and social anthropology.

    The most basic religious assumption is that there is an invisible order or dimension that manifests itself in some way, giving rise to epiphanies of the divine, sacred, exalted, absolute, by whatever term it is called. Such an epiphany is constituted by the attribution of the divine, holy, excellent, etc. character, without prejudging its character, to a certain experience, word, work, person, place, object. This happens constantly, but on privileged occasions, such as founding moments, the process is codified in new stories and practices, giving rise to a movement that feeds on them and transmits and reworks them.

    In the origins, the task of an initiator, or several, or perhaps a compiler, is fundamental, although his name has not always been preserved, as it did with Akhenaten, Moses, Zoroaster, Laozi, Confucius, Gautama Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Mohammed. , etc. Each one of them remodeled in his own way, with originality, the legacy of thought that preceded him, and became -even without intending it- the founder of a new system.

    The founder inevitably assumes the role of privileged and essential mediator for the epiphanic event, regardless of the variant that its manifestation adopts: vision, inspiration, revelation, meditation, experience. It seems to me a secondary question whether the epiphany is conceived, or not, as theophany, since this affects the level of language and the interpretation of what is manifested rather than the mechanism that categorizes it.

    It must be emphasized that the mediator (when it comes to a character, but the same could be said of any mediation element) is always a reality of this world that, within a framework of beliefs, is assumed to be in contact or communication with the invisible dimension, the truly real, the sacred. This ultimate reality, in turn, to the limited extent that it is attainable, appears only as an idea associated with the idea of mediation. So that both are there formed as ideas of this world.

    From the originating experiences and ideas, the first thing that stands out in the formation of a tradition lies in a process of exaltation that, based on events experienced as something extraordinary, invests them with such a meaning that transmutes and transcends them. Once the process is underway, the need for expression and consolidation leads to resorting to all sorts of historical background, literary creations, mythical, philosophical and theological categories. So it is the process of hagiographic exaltation that governs the narration of the facts, sometimes recreated or metamorphosed as symbolic instruments to transmit the message. To emphasize the supreme value attributed to the founder and his doctrine, an elaboration is given that applies elevation resources, among which we can identify various modalities: idealization, legendarization, mythification, justification, rationalization, sacralization, sanctification, canonization, glorification, numinization, tabooing, apotheosis, deification, deification or divinization.

    Hence, the founders, exalted by the hagiographic story to the height of supreme civilizing heroes, always end up being conceived as of such an extraordinary condition that they are considered superhuman, deified humans, semi-divine, or directly gods.

    The prophet Elijah, prototypical for Jews and Christians, not only spoke and worked miracles in the name of God. In the end, he was taken away in a chariot of fire and ascended in a whirlwind to heaven (2 Kings 2.11), from where it was believed that he would return at the end of time to implant divine justice in the world.

    Laozi, the initiator of Chinese Taoism, at the end of his days and according to legendary accounts, set off on the back of a water buffalo towards the far west, where his traces disappeared forever (Smith 1991: 201). The disciples erected Taoist shrines dedicated to Laozi where, despite all his warnings against worshiping deities, his image receives the ceremonial devotion of his worshipers.

    Kongzi (Confucius), founder of Confucianism, advised the greatest respect for rituals, sacrifices and the cult of Heaven. After his death, the "glorification" of the wise teacher began among his disciples (Smith 1991: 164) and the cult of his life, work and teachings. His former family residence in his hometown of Qufu, present-day Shandong province, was soon transformed into a temple, where ceremonies in memory of the master have continued to be held for centuries.

    Gautama Buddha, so skeptical of the divine, was elevated to the supreme status of enlightenment, such that, in both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, the sometimes colossal Buddha statues and impressive temples are not less than their doctrine, they became an object of veneration. The sermons attributed to the Buddha were collected and recreated as holy scriptures many years later. His biography was dressed in a hagiographic way, full of portentous events during the character's life and death, as can be read, for example, in the story of his entry into definitive nirvana, causing commotion in all spheres of the universe (Buddhacharita, collected in Eliade 1967: 499-500).

    Socrates appears idealized in the Platonic dialogues. The great Greek sage declared, at different times, that he listened to an inner “voice”, a daimon, through which he received signs and messages from divinity that warned him of what he should do and say. At times, he would feel possessed to the point of entering a deep ecstatic state. The truth is that Socrates acted as a life teacher and it should not be hidden that "he presented himself and was perceived by his disciples both as a philosopher who relies on reason and as a mystic who feels connected to a superior force" (Lenoir 2009: 71).

    Jesus of Nazareth was not only recognized by his followers as an eschatological prophet similar to Elijah, as the Wisdom of God, or as Christ, applying biblical references to him, but, very soon, the primitive church proclaimed him the Son of God and God in person (Theissen 2004: 53-56). The fact that his figure was conceived as an antagonist and opposed to that of the Roman emperor was perhaps not unrelated to this evolution of God: the kingdom of God against the kingdom of Rome. Indeed, Julius Caesar, after his death, had been deified by the Roman Senate, the year 42 before our era. And Octavio Augusto, considered the son of the divine, was likewise deified by the Senate, a month after his death, in the year 14 of our era (Crossan 1994: 19-20, Borg and Crossan 2009: 111-112). The truth is that, very soon, the first Christians organized their cult to their Lord, Jesus the Christ.

    Abu l-Qasim Ibn Abdallah, known as Muhammad, considered by Muslims to be the most perfect of men, was exalted as the last and greatest of prophets, to the extent that his name was included in the Islamic profession of faith as the messenger of God, considered the ultimate mediator of the true divine revelation (Quran 33, 40 and 56-57; 47, 2 and 33). His tomb in the Mosque of the Prophet, in Medina, Arabia, has been the object of veneration and praise since ancient times. And his name, artistically written on a circular panel, is placed for all to see in the apse of innumerable mosques, in the same way, at the same height and with the same honor as that of Allah.

    A noteworthy aspect of the hagiographies is the symbolic avoidance of death, the creation of myths about the founder, the sacralization of the corpse, the possession of relics, the erection of funerary monuments, in order to perpetuate the presence of the absent and, on occasions, , postulate his future return. The materialization of a magnificent mausoleum that contains empirically, or perhaps only symbolically, the remains of the great person grants the greatest prestige to the successors who guard it. Leaving aside the nuances of each case, we can see the same scheme in action everywhere. Confucius' tomb is erected in Qufu, Shandong. After Buddha's death, in Lumbini, the remains of his cremation were distributed among numerous temples. Abraham's tomb is located in Hebron. That of Moses, on Mount Nebo, near Jericho. The cenotaph of Jesus, in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Muhammad's tomb in Medina.

    The appropriation of something or someone who was in contact with the exalted deceased means the proximity to the sacred origins. The tomb of Saint Peter in Rome is well known, or the invention of the tomb of Santiago in Compostela, and the medieval traffic in relics of the wood of the cross and of popular saints. The Ottoman Empire enhanced its Islamic legitimacy, already from the time of Mehmet II the conqueror, with the opportune discovery of the tomb of a companion of Muhammad, Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, next to the Golden Horn, in whose honor the mausoleum was built and the Eyup Sultan Mosque. Likewise, in 1517, the prestige was reinforced thanks to the transfer of relics of the prophet from Mecca to Constantinople (Fletcher 2002: 146), currently exhibited in the Topkapi palace. It would be said that the cult basically takes the form of a cult of the dead, especially as a cult of the symbolic ancestor who is always the founder of the tradition. This one lives on to the extent that he continues to exert his influence on the lives of his followers. The cult means the repeated cultivation of the inheritance received.

    In all cases, the followers extend their adherence from faith in the sacred to faith in the mediator, be he a sage, mystic, prophet, or saint, and vice versa. To the extent that the mediator communicates with the holiness of the absolute or divine, he acts as a bridge between the divine and the human, sometimes bringing together the double condition in himself. The adherence to the mediator and to the mediations is not only intellectual but emotionally lived. The anthropologist Roy Rappaport points out that there are two aspects to the holy: the sacred, which refers to a rational logos, linked to the daily structures of life; and the numinous, mainly affective and expressed through ritual, which alludes to experiences in which the logos is experienced as divine truth, provoking enthusiastic adherence to sanctified conventions. Hence, the religious founder is "numinized" by his followers (Rappaport 1999: 596), who not only make him the object of intellectual acceptance, but also an emotional rapture that leads them to unconditional dedication.

    The exaltation process is usually based on historical facts, but it transfigures and mythologizes them, and this leads to ambivalent effects. In part, by fixing the story, it produces an orthodox interpretation of the original message that, due to its petrification, can come to neutralize it, either because it leads to a conservative attitude of the followers, sometimes at the risk of a literal or spiritualist imitation, or because it evolves towards accommodation to social circumstances and, sooner or later, political officialization. Instead, on the other hand, by disassociating the mythologized founder from his strict historical context, it becomes easier to turn him into a source of inspiration for other people and other times. The uncertainty will oscillate between the domestication of the initial charisma, perhaps too groundbreaking, in an attempt to adapt to society, and the latent possibility that this charisma will be revived in subsequent situations. This is what happens in renewal movements.

    Apart from the fundamental mechanism of mythic exaltation, there are many others that come into play in each historical variant and that underlie all the similarities and differences between religious options, as well as in the alternative orientations of different signs, some of which I have listed below. above.

    In reality, the great founders never started from scratch, but stood out against a pre-existing historical background. Normally they make use of it and reform it, applying a mechanism of assimilation, selective affirmation and overcoming of tradition. Confucius insisted that he only wanted to restore the wisdom of the old masters. Buddha maintained that he had not created the doctrine (dharma), but that it had been revealed to him; and that he is not the only Buddha, since there had already been others before him. The Hebrew prophets referred to the law of Moses, and this to the faith of Abraham. Jesus of Nazareth accepted Moses, even though he amended it; his figure was compared to the prophet Elijah and the messianic son of David. Muhammad considered himself the last of the prophets of Israel, while he tried to link above all with Abraham, through the lineage of Ishmael. It is typical of the reformers to invoke a recovery of the purest tradition: rabbinic Judaism, after the destruction of the temple in the year 70, invented the theory of the double Torah, uniting an oral law to the written law, supposedly also transmitted from Moses. , in order to confer authority on their doctrines and precepts collected in the Talmud. In general, after having sought legitimacy in traditional precedents, every renewed creed tends to present itself as the definitive culmination, or as an update for the new times or for the last times.

    The continuity of an established or restored tradition requires a minimum of institutionalization and hierarchy, which establishes who are the successors and authorized representatives of the historical initiator. The mediator gives rise to a whole saga of epigone mediators who will undoubtedly fight for an important position in the mediation hierarchy. Thus, there will never be a lack of a typology of figures with a special role: sages and teachers, gurus, bodhisattvas, patriarchs, high priests, rabbis, caliphs, imams, ulama, muftis, ayatollahs and mullahs, apostles, bishops, saints, monks, pontiffs, etc Even when the immediacy of individual access to the divine is proclaimed, there is never a lack of some kind of mediation, even if it is transitory and informal.

    The immediate succession of the founder is resolved by making the authority fall on a vicar or successor, who for this is designated, co-opted, or had as his reincarnation. But it is not uncommon to find that, to this end, the principle of kinship is used, so that it is the family or a relative who assumes the direction of the movement or organization. The use of this dynastic mechanism may perhaps be incidental, as in the case of James the Just, brother of Jesus, who led the proto-Christian church in Jerusalem between the years 44 and 62, when he died as a martyr. In other cases, an express attempt is made to perpetuate a chain of descent, as occurred with the first caliphs, who were relatives of Muhammad. The caliphal claim of Ali, the prophet's cousin and son-in-law, triggered the internal war and the split of Shiite Islam, the reason for which was precisely the dispute over the legitimacy of the succession. Even today, the Muslim monarchs of the Arab countries claim to be distant descendants of the prophet.

    The continuity of the origin is revealed as repetition, rebirth, reproduction, reincarnation, resurrection, as an almost fractal replication mechanism of analogous prototypes, similar scenes, similar sentences. Teachers teach disciples, who become new teachers of new disciples. The saints and saints do not cease to emerge generation after generation. Buddha is the ten thousand Buddhas. From the Buddha himself emanate the meditating Buddhas and from these the meditating bodhisattvas and from them the human Buddhas like Gautama.

    However, no matter how much fidelity and stability is claimed, times change and tendencies, currents, schools, sects, confessions, schisms, heresies appear. There are diversification mechanisms always ready to come into play, in the sphere of beliefs, ritual and festive actions, ethical and political practices, and organizational structures. Each variant reinforces a philosophical option, in what can be described as a struggle for power, either within the religious organization itself, or within the framework of social relations or state politics.

    The great traditions do not usually restrict their message to one group or one nation, but sooner or later project it as valid for all humanity, thus adopting some mechanism for universalization. We can verify this historically. Ancient Judaism developed as the religion of the Hebrew people, but there were times when it spread to other nations (for example, the Ethiopians), to later be understood again as the Jewish national religion. Islam emerged as an Arab “ethnic” religion, specific to warriors, more dominating than proselytizing, until the Abbasid dynasty opened it up to people of all origins. Christianity appeared as a movement of Palestinian Jews, soon reaching a diffusion throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. Buddhism, initially a monastic and masculine religion of Northeast India, was later adapted to all Asian countries, especially in its Mahayana aspect.

    The sometimes missionary tendency towards human universality often translates into a temptation for hegemony. That is when intra- and inter-religious conflicts can break out. It seems that each tradition only advocates tolerance and pluralism while it is in a weak state. Today, in democratic societies, religious conflict is prevented by imposing a framework of political beliefs that guarantees plurality and religious freedom, which perhaps functions as a simplified, minimalist version of religion with a universal character.

    In relation to the exercise of the human faculties to which greater importance is given for access to God and religious practice, everywhere there is an oscillation between a pietistic path and an intellectual path. The first cultivates emotional devotion, lived spiritual fervor, participated rituals, charismatic expression, with little interest in study, critical examination or questions. While, on the other hand, the intellectual position applies reason and tries to reconcile it with faith, it shows great interest in exegesis, theology and philosophy. From there, some historical confrontations are better understood, such as those that took place between the Sufis and the rationalist Mutazilies in Islam, between pietistic Hasidism and enlightened Jewish reformism, between Catholic traditionalism and critical theology. In general, it is found that the devotional path tends towards obscurantism and tends to opt for conservative options in all fields.

    It is a fact that philosophical and religious options are linked to positions regarding the sociopolitical order. The dominant minorities, and all the groups marked by an elitist mentality, generate spiritual and theological variants related to their class or caste interests. Thus, faced with the exoteric truth, that is, accessible to everyone, the privileged favor an esotericism restricted to those initiated into the supposedly deep knowledge and forbidden to common mortals: Hindu Tantrism, the Chan Buddhist school, Gnosticism Christian, the Islamic Sufi tariqa, the Judaic Kabbalah and most of the mysticisms. Thus, instead of affirming a universal spirit (pneuma), which supposes a knowledge available to all, all esotericism is rooted in an initiatory knowledge (gnosis), reserved exclusively for the select minority.

    In every system of religious thought, the injustices, privations, misfortunes and sufferings of common people receive specific treatments, which do not always provide a solution in this life, but rather some kind of evasion, through beliefs that justify the existing state of affairs. , they consider it ineluctable, or perhaps they move the remedy to a later life. In any case, soteriological mechanisms operate, apparently very different, but all coincide in the scheme of saving contradictions, harmonizing them, overcoming them, smoothing them out, dissolving them. As tremendously unfair as the present society is, it is always possible, apart from transforming it, to dream that there will be a system of compensation, retribution, punishment and rewards, in a future, linear or cyclical time, or in an eternity beyond time. . This conviction offers consolation and encourages hope, which already has effects in the hereafter. Although they work in different ways and with different results, there is never a lack of paths, real or imagined, for therapy, salvation, prosperity, liberation, social peace.

    In the Hindu and Buddhist views, since this world is considered ontologically unreal, suffering is also ultimately annulled in unreality. They have imagined a system of karma and samsara (Smith 1986: 77-80), where reincarnation will give the repeated opportunity to free oneself from the evils endured, for which only oneself seems to be responsible. In the background of Chinese thought, the conception of yin-yang (Cheng 1997: 238-244), based on a flow of mutations, either through their harmony or through their alternation, always provides an expectation of improvement and a faith timeless in that all imbalances can be balanced. In ancient Greek philosophy, the idea and ideal that reason, virtue and the golden mean will lead to happiness is widespread. The Hebrew religion maintains the belief in the election by the God of the alliance, who is just and promises to deliver and give happiness to those who observe his law (Deuteronomy 30, 9-16), even in the midst of the most difficult tests and the most desperate situations. The Christian gospel offers those who follow the path of Christ to participate in the kingdom of God (Luke 17, 20-21), making it a reality here on earth, and with the hope of eternal life (John 11, 25). In the Koran, in the suras from the time of the armed prophet, the division of the booty in this world and the pleasures of paradise on the last day (Koran 48, 20; 9, 21-29) are promised, in exchange for the entire submission and surrender to jihad in the path of Allah.

    Lastly, with regard to the reaction of the religious group with respect to society, on which all kinds of abuse, corruption and guilt so often hovers, positions of partial or total rejection are diversified. When the established religion has ceased to provide satisfactory means to face the crisis and obtain salvation, religious protest movements arise, as mechanisms tending to elaborate and channel the discontent. The sociologist of religion Bryan R. Wilson (1970 and 1973) defined a transcultural typology of those reaction attitudes towards the world, which would express so many alternatives or fundamental options of the human spirit, historically observed in different contexts. At some point and to a variable degree, we all find them present again in the evolution of the great religious traditions, without being understood at all as predetermined phases of a predetermined development. Conversionists subjectively seek interior conversion, thinking that, in this way, God will change and save people who were lost, thanks to an intensely lived transformation of a supernatural nature. Others give the greatest importance to their own attitude towards the world: manipulationists believe that God calls them to see the world differently, but each one must choose the most appropriate means and techniques to achieve it, while thaumaturgists believe that God He will grant them his gifts and will intervene miraculously in order to their particular salvation. Secondly, there are those who insist more on an objective and social realization of salvation. Revolutionaries think of a complete destruction and transformation of the social order, and even of the natural world, by virtue of imminent divine intervention, either directly or with human participation. The reformists are convinced that God commands them to correct the world, amending the unjust social organization through the implementation of practical measures, supernaturally inspired and voluntarily accepted. The utopians, more radical than the reformists, believe that society as a whole must be rebuilt, from its foundations, based on absolute principles of divine origin, but basically through human action. Finally, introversionists judge that this corrupt world is hopeless and believe that God invites them to leave it: they break with it and withdraw, in order to create their own peculiar ways of life on the fringes of normal civilization. A historical example of this last option would be that kind of fuga mundi philosophical constant "according to which, through Greco-Roman cynicism, one passes from Eastern mysticism to Christian monasticism and finally to secular anarchism" (Crossan 1991: 114).

4. The case of nascent Christianity

    In its origins, as is known, Christianity arose and began to evolve within the Hebrew or Mosaic religion, in Palestine in the first half of the first century, in a period of acute crisis, under Roman imperial domination. At that time, this religion was characterized by a wide internal variety of organized tendencies, among which the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Samaritans, Herodians and precursors of the Zealots stood out (Meier 2001: volume III, chapters 28 to 30). But, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, in the year 70, these currents disappeared as such, while they were constituted, producing a bifurcation, on the one hand, Christianity and, on the other, rabbinic Judaism.

    The early Christian churches, which spread throughout the Roman Empire, presented a remarkable theological, ritual, and organizational plurality. The main current of Hellenized Christianity was what later, during the fourth century, would constitute the great imperial Church. She set the canon of officially recognized foundational Christian texts, which make up the New Testament. The oldest in chronological order are the authentic letters of Paul (written between the year 50 and 60), the Gospel of Mark (composed around the year 70), the Gospel of Matthew and Luke (around the year 80) and the gospel of John (between the years 90 and 100). These documents already reveal, from the beginning, theological elaborations, in which specialists today distinguish various layers and eras of writing. Since the mid-1970s, research on the historical Jesus and on the Christian movement of the early decades has given rise to a flourishing of highly scientific works (among others: Borg, Crossan, Küng, Meier, Theissen).

    Here it seems important to me to pick up and underline the idea that we must give priority to the historical approach and, only afterwards, knowing that it is on a different plane, link symbolic and theological interpretation to history. It is evident that the Christian symbology and its language come from the Hebrew and biblical tradition, but without forgetting that the Jewish people had three centuries of cultural Hellenization and almost a century of Roman domination, which makes it necessary to also take into account the Greco-Roman tradition. to understand Christianity. Even to begin to understand the meaning of the most topical texts, which everyone knew by heart in countries with a Christian culture, before religious ignorance swept through the most recent generations. It will be necessary to refer the texts to the context of the Old Testament biblical scriptures, as well as to the historical background that, in the 1st century AD, is none other than that of Galilee and Judea in the 1st century AD, as a province within the more wide of the Roman Empire.

    On the other hand, Paul synthesizes his vision of faith in compact formulas like this: "Jesus Christ is Lord" (2 Corinthians 4, 5). His epistles exude a Christian theology whose meaning clashes head-on with Roman imperial theology. The latter conceives religion, with its worship of the gods and the Emperor Caesar Augustus, Son of God, as the supreme legitimation of war, whose goal is victory, through which the victors establish the peace of Rome in Caesar. On the contrary and in total opposition, the apostle Paul states that the religion of the followers of Jesus is based on personal conversion and love of neighbor, whose objective is justice for all, the only foundation from which the peace of God will follow in Christ (Borg and Crossan 2009: 113-115). In opposition to the normal social hierarchy of civilization, it postulates a radical equality, at least within the believing community, but with a tendentially universal projection: "You are all children of God (...) There is no more Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, for you are all one through Messiah Jesus” (Galatians 3:26-28). Pauline theology, in its principles and without making sense to look there for the approaches of our modern mentality, calls for overcoming patriarchy, reaching a balance between women and men, both in the family and in the Christian assembly. He pronounces himself on the problem of social inequality and slavery, demanding relations of equality and distributive justice. Paul vehemently cries out against elements of ethical and religious division, and defends unity within the Christian community. But not only that. He also pleads for the unification of all Israel and dreams of the unity of all humanity, uniting everyone, Christians, Jews and pagans, in the sharing of the same Spirit.

    However, it is not just a set of ideas collected in more or less creative texts. It must be realized that even more important than such documents is the practical and social reality lived by those communities, where they were created, from whose reflection these texts arise, which represent a product of experience and an instrument of communication. It is true, however, that it is the texts that have traversed the centuries, going far beyond what their authors imagined.

    Analogous to what I suggest about Christianity, it would be necessary to investigate the other great religious traditions historically, to go back to their formative phases and to critically revise their history. But let us for the moment abandon retrospective glances, whose meanders bear witness to the multiform and unforeseen developments of the origins, as well as to all kinds of distortions imaginable from the original meanings, in an incessant dynamic of instabilities and bifurcations. When thinking about the evolution of religious systems today, if we look at our days and broaden the panorama, we will observe that the main challenge that everyone must face is, without a doubt, that of their response to the inescapable approaches of modernity.

5. Religions in the face of modernity

    Like any other cultural creation, religious systems suffer the impact of time, are affected by outdatedness and obsolescence, due to the challenge implied by new social, economic and political conditions, and changes in mentality, which often surprise with the passing from one era to another. The hectic irruption of modern times, Enlightenment thought, positive science, the industrial revolution and political democracy, although born within the European Christian civilization, raised questions of all kinds from the beginning, not only to the churches and to Christianity, but to religion in general and its meaning in society and in people's lives.

    It is a generally accepted fact that modern industrial societies, and especially some political programs and actions, tend, as far as religion is concerned, towards secularization or, in another word, secularism (Gauchet 1985). However, there are reasons to interpret that what is really taking place is not an elimination, but rather a restructuring within the religious space. What we observe is, in effect, a more or less sharp separation of traditional religious institutions with respect to the institutionalization of something like a new state religion. In its lighter variants, it is presented in the form of "non-denominational" political power, while, in the harsher ones, it adopts the guise of militant secularism or atheism, but what it really takes effect is an imposition by force of the own creed. Such is what happened, sometimes with unprecedented brutality, in totalitarian systems. The State establishes the set of beliefs, rites and laws that are coercively obligatory for the whole society. In this model, a non-democratic Constitution is established, as an absolute sacred text, which emanates nominally from the sovereign will of the People, the Nation, the Proletariat (both hypostatized avatars of divinity). The 20th century showed us to what extent the great dictators officiate as all-powerful prophet-kings, as military and political messiahs, through whose mouth the god Nation, the god Reich, the god Working Class speaks irrevocably. Followed by the masses inflamed with mystical fervor, they implanted ominous religions of terrestrial salvation, for whose sake millions of human lives were sacrificed.

    The actions that appear as specifically religious are characterized by making explicit some connection with the sacred, through rites, myths, practices, philosophies, theologies. But religion also has links to seemingly secular everyday attitudes. In this, two opposing trends come into dispute: one affirms the submission of the "temporal" to the spiritual; another affirms the autonomy of the world. I do not think that the question is one of "enchantment" of the world, in the first case, and "disenchantment" in the second. The affirmation of mundane and human autonomy does not necessarily imply the denial of the religious or the divine, unless it has been arbitrarily understood in advance that the divine intrinsically entails the denial of that autonomy. There is nothing contradictory in conceiving that human autonomy is precisely what God willed. In reality, it is rather a question of divergent characterizations of the idea of the divine/sacred/legitimizing and, in practice, of its changing relocation in the social and mental space where it fulfills its functions.

    Furthermore, one could defend the thesis that modern values of rationality and autonomy are coherently aligned with the best of religious traditions. Whether a religious system promotes reason and freedom, or the opposite, depends on the type of religion we are referring to, and on its specific performance, not on any supposed and non-existent "essence" of religion. For the rest, we must not forget that political ideologies, the declaration of human rights, constitutions, philosophies of life, when they are not expressly derived from religious attitudes, operate as substitutes for religion and even as authentic substitute religions. For this reason, perhaps the modern belief that one can completely get rid of all religion is no more than illusory, since one can emancipate oneself from a certain matrix of convictions and values, but it is unlikely that one can rigorously and absolutely renounce all of them without giving up living .

    Therefore, we must be skeptical of the hypothesis that modernity has superseded all sacredness, no matter how many embarrassments it has put religious traditions in. As long as humanity and any of its societies, no matter how advanced it may be from a scientific and technological point of view, continue to function according to a world view, and no matter how much every world view continues to evolve, it will not be able to escape the " cybernetics of the holy” analyzed by the anthropologist Roy Rappaport. This implies, consequently, that one must be disillusioned with the scientific illusion and recognize the fact that any vision of the world always involves much more than a scientific and empirical knowledge of the world. In that plus resides religion, good or bad. Therein lies the maximum or minimum sacralization inherent in our human interpretations and decisions, no matter how pragmatic we are when considering them.

    The historical process is always unstable and is crossed by periodic convulsions, often unpredictable. Unless what happens is due to pure chance, crises set a beat for the reigning sacredness, sometimes even affecting its ultimate postulates. The cultural order symbolically implies a sacred foundation. When consolidated, it is consecrated, it is sacralized. Every revolution, by profaning the previous order, desacralizes or secularizes what was sacred, to finally resacralize the mutations themselves. Society turns to new gods, who exercise ideological domination. The result is that one sacredness is replaced, or displaced, by another sacredness, in whole or in part. When none rises to supremacy, then various sacrednesses coexist: religions, confessions, philosophies, ideologies. In modern societies, this diversity is usually framed in a kind of tolerant "suprasacrality", which takes the form of a state secularism, established as a legal guarantee that shelters diversity. For the historical religions this represents, beyond the wars of religion, the solution of pluralism within the constitutional unit; and on a broader scale, religious freedom and conscience under the lintel of human rights and the cooperation of religions in support of a desirable global ethic, universally assumed.

    Today it is taken for granted that there are no laws of evolution that govern and carry forward historical progress, but there are mechanisms that can be used intelligently and efficiently, so that we interact in search of hopefully a fairer humanity, hopefully on a more habitable planet.

👀Gómez (2014), Approaches to the origin and the evolution of religious systems. Gazeta de antropología.

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