God and Religion

"Have we discovered God? Or have we invented him?” (Sociologist Rodney Stark in Discovering God)

THE AXIAL AGE

A “big bang” occurred in the sixth century BC. No, it wasn’t the cosmic explosion of a supernova; it was a spiritual explosion that led to a constellation of religious movements. In the mere span of 100 years, civilization witnessed the rise of Zoroastrianism, Orphism, Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, the “new” Hinduism, and post-exilic Judaism.

Added to the sudden appearance of these faiths was the introduction of new and shared theological concepts. Doctrines of transcendent morality, sin, the afterlife, and salvation—hitherto unknown—were common among the new religions.

Why the explosion? Why the commonality? Is this “Axial Age” of religion evidence of the discovery or the invention of God? Those are questions that sociologist, Rodney Stark, explores in his latest book, Discovering God.

On the outset, Stark notes that, as in biology, “survival of the fittest” is at work in culture. Writes Stark, “Humans will tend to adopt and retain those elements of culture that appear to produce ‘better’ results, while those that appear less rewarding will be discarded.” That applies equally to concepts of God, which, observes Stark, incline toward deities who are rational, loving and limitless in scope and power.

Even in the earliest cultures—amid animism, naturism and totemism—there was belief in high Gods: eternal, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator-deities who established a moral order and kept an eye on the affairs of mortals. Contrary to the notion that primitives embraced a hodgepodge of superstitions, many had a more advanced concept of God than those who came later.

THE DEVOLVING OF RELIGION

With the rise of civilization, people began moving away from high Gods toward polytheism. It reflected their desire for gods that were more approachable. The Greeks, Sumerians, Egyptians, Mayans and Aztecs had a rich assortment of deities with limited, specialized powers. Not only were these new gods more human-like, they were less morally demanding than the gods of yore.

In fact, the gods of the pantheon lacked any concern for moral behavior, as evidenced by their petulance and penchant for puerile pranks. Their only interest in human matters was the worship and devotion owed them. Hence, with the rise of polytheism, the moral dimension of religion was eclipsed by elaborate systems of ritual and sacrifice.

Because famine, flood, plague, and other disasters were taken as judgments for neglecting the gods, religion became a matter of national security and welfare. To ensure that divine appeasement was properly attended, despot rulers built temples and installed professional priests, creating “state” religions where public involvement was not only unnecessary but discouraged, being reserved for members of the noblesse. Also discouraged was competition from outside religions.

But temple faiths had little to offer commoners other than the distinct “privilege” of financially supporting the religious activities of the elites. Consequently, in contrast to religions in an open spiritual marketplace, these theocratic religions tended to receive low levels of public commitment. That’s because, as Stark observes, “pluralism is the natural state of any religious economy.” Nowhere was pluralism more evident than in the Roman Empire.

PLURAL ROME

Early Rome played host to a plethora of religions, none of which received any appreciable state subsidies. Greek and Roman polytheism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and smatterings of new religious movements comprised a brisk religious economy. In this pluralistic, non-subsidized economy, rival faiths were forced to compete for market share.

Hence, unlike its earlier versions, Rome’s polytheistic faiths invited public involvement and depended on public support. At the same time, they were burdened by the same shortcomings: gods who were limited in power and, despite being more human-like, were generally unconcerned with the plights of men, providing no principles, by way of rule or example, for human dignity, moral behavior, or spiritual fulfillment.

This was a time when popular interest in existential questions had peaked—in a place where up to half of the populace were slaves, and where women had few legal rights. This created a perfect storm for more humanistic and salvific faiths. The tempest had been building for several centuries.

PREPPING THE SOIL

After a long hiatus, monotheism began its comeback. In the sixth century BC, belief in an uncreated eternal, omnipotent and beneficent God, was introduced to the Persian Empire through the combined influence of Jewish exiles and the teachings of Zoroaster. Common in these two religious streams were the concepts of one true God who is both creator and sustainer, the existence of good and evil, individual moral responsibility, an afterlife, and the eternal consequences of personal choices.

Further east, doctrines of good and evil and the importance of right moral actions (karma) were introduced by several concurrent movements: Taoism, Confucianism, Jainism, Buddhism and a revamped Hinduism. In contrast to the moral muteness of traditional polytheism, each of these religions addressed man’s irrepressible need to know “How now shall we live?”—with the latter three advancing doctrines of a meritable afterlife.

Moral codes, sin, salvation and life-after-death were revolutionary discoveries that prepped the soil for Christianity.

THE RISE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

The early appeal of Christianity came from its message of an afterlife that was attractive and accessible to all people as a gift to receive, rather than as a reward to earn. Novel teachings about human dignity, social responsibility and love of fellowman created followers whose attitudes and lifestyles were fetchingly distinct from their pagan counterparts.

In a culture endemically indifferent to the disadvantaged, “Christians created a miniature welfare state in an empire which for the most part lacked social services,” writes Stark. Their care for the poor, widows, orphans, and sick extended beyond their own to the wider community.

This was particularly evident in the second and third centuries, when plagues ravaged the empire. As pagan leaders, priests, and doctors left cities in frenzied haste, Christians stayed to attend to the sick and bury the dead. Their sacrificial love not only led to higher survival rates in the communities they served, but also increased immunity in their own communities against future outbreaks. To hearts that had been yearning for an interactive, caring God, the lives of Christians became a convincing argument that such a God exists.

Little wonder that, by the fourth century, the Christian population grew to become the majority in Rome and other principal cities of the Aegean world.

INVENTION OR REVELATION?

Secular historians are fond to point out the many similarities of Christianity with pagan religions: ritual cannibalism (associated with the Eucharist), Olympian deities impregnating human women to sire half-gods, and dying and rising Corn-Kings. The commonality, they argue, is proof of human invention. Rodney Stark offers another interpretation.

Assuming that God reveals Himself, these early undeveloped myths would be expected from a principle of “divine accommodation,” by which God-talk is limited to what humans in their present capacity can grasp. C.S. Lewis saw it the same way.

To Lewis, myth at its best is a penumbra of divine light that inspires the human imagination about the true nature of things—much of which is stamped onto the design of nature.

Myths about the Corn-King abound because of the natural pattern of life, death and new life which presages the “real Corn-King who will die once and rise once at Jerusalem.” Lewis writes, “We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical person . . . under Pontius Pilate.” He concludes, “We must not be nervous about ‘parallels’ and ‘pagan Christs’: they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t.”

Faced with a multitude of disparate religious doctrines, how does one distinguish human fabrication from divine revelation? Stark suggests two criteria.

The first is consistency. Faiths whose doctrines deviate from a consistent core “can be relegated to human origin.” Stark sees little compatibility among most religions. Some believe the universe was created; others insist it is uncreated. Although most religions acknowledge the existence of God, there are widely varied doctrines about the number of gods, their nature, and the duty owed them. There is little agreement on the afterlife. For some, it’s a conscious state of bliss, for others it’s an impersonal state of non-existence.

The other criterion is increased complexity. According to the principle of divine accommodation, revelation should become increasingly sophisticated, telling us more, not less, about God over time.

By those measures, the monotheistic religions stand out. The exception is Islam. Its doctrine of Allah as capricious and unknowable makes Islam theologically regressive. But it is also morally regressive. With an evangelistic mission to spread the faith “by the sword,” Islam is a throwback to the ancient theocratic religions.

Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity, on the other hand, share fundamental beliefs about the nature of man, God, and creation. And, in contrast to Islam, they involve a progression from divine "baby talk" to the unfolding of Christianity's comprehensive belief system with its mind-numbing doctrines of the Trinity, substitutionary atonement, and other-centered love, embedded in a historical, rather than mythical, context and corroborated by multiple eyewitness accounts.

“We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty . . . For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:16,21)