RELIGION VS. SPIRITUALITY?
© 1998, 2000, 2003 by Orchid Land Publications
[last updated 20030624]
Spirituality can have a good sense, one that is found in Orthodox--especially
ascetic--writings.1 But it is
a fashionable and rather lame substitute for religion heard in many
circles where it is desired to avoid religion while throwing crumbs in the
direction of higher aspirations of the human "soul." The term
can imply a Gnostic view in which matter (Mysteries, sacrament[al]s) and time
(tradition) are viewed as having no legitimate rôle in enlightened
religion. in some Denominationist2 circles,
spirituality is used to contrast
spirituality with religion conceived of as churchiness, religiosity, sanctimoniousness, and
so on. (The distinction goes
back to Karl Barth.) We don't have to stop using a term because it has been abused (abusus
non tollit usum); but given the misuse and hence the dangers in using the
term under scrutiny, it
should be used with caution and circumscribed with proper comments on what it means
in a given context use. Many will find it safer to avoid the term
entirely.
But what of those who ascribe only a bad sense to
"spirituality"? Why do many sincere and pious Denominationists
and individualists generally posit a war between religion and spirituality? What are the pluses and minuses
of each? Against religion stands its danger of getting its adherents involved in
churchiness (with or without a penchant for bureaucracy, ecclesiastical
politics, etc.) and analyses over what the Scritpure and the scriptual God "means" to
such an extent that GOD recedes into the background.
Against spirituality stands its vagueness and the fact that, without the anchor of
reasoned belief, sentiment and passions are given full rein in what passes for
spirituality nowadays; persons of vastly different beliefs can be equally
"spiritual"--free of material baggage, free of the pursuit of wealth
or fame or other personal advantage. This point of view treats belief as
optional or as being limited to a short list of undefined slogans3--or else as relative:
Whether you believe that Jesus is God or not, "it's all the same"--a
slogan that almost amounts to the creed of spirituality. For relativists,
truth is no longer part of religion. In short, the Icon of God (Image of God)--reason and freewill, our highest
potentialities--are unimportant for what is, if true, the most important thing in the
world! Those who believe the New Testament teaching that the LOGOS
("Reason") and SOPHIA
("Wisdom") of God created the cosmos and made it logikós will
of course have a different view of reason.
When beliefs boil down to a minimalist list of undefined
concepts, they offer a very unsturdy support for travails to come. They have been known to
provide an incentive to fanaticism. Unlike religion, spirituality
may lack Worship; but a penchant or outlook without Worship is of course not a
religion. (Belief constitutes a philosophy; ethics constitutes a service
organization; the sine qua non of religion is Worship. Philosophies
have believers; service organizations have doers and helpers; religions have
worshipers--along with believers and doers.) When people speak of
spirituality, one needs to consider whether it is Worship they are struggling to
avoid. A respectable religion includes
Worship, disciplined piety, and a theology that clarifies matters that, without analysis, are
unexamined contradictions. The transcendence and unknowability of God vs. His
immanence and knowability (through revelation) are, for instance, hard to reconcile, if
you have a thoughtful view of religion.4 But our choices are not limited to Deism vs.
a vague spirituality--at least, when we have tradition to guide us. Tradition is
the vehicle for the analysis of spiritual contentions; it's rôle is to examine every
alternative and over time to weed out all but beliefs that does no contradict
one another or, in the case of Christianity, the original deposit
of our Trinitarian, evangelical Orthodox religion.
When a Denominationist tells us that the Bible is literally true,
yet rejects the literalness of John 5:48-58 and "spiritualizes" most of the
references to body in St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, her or his
mind has gone astray; in fact, it has fallen into Gnosticism (for which CLICK HERE). You cannot be literal and spiritualized
with regard to such passages, at least not with a reasonable degree of honest
intelligence--although you can find a
spiritual sense in a passage that you deem to be literally, rather than metaphorically,
intended/ Most true literalists have little ground to stand on without
metaphorizing passages about matter and time, even thoughliterally literalist cannot honestly accept a metaphor.
What is the rôle of that reason that is part of the Icon of God in human nature? The reason and freewill of the eikón were human capacities that were not lost at Fall--or so the original Greek-language New Testament Christianity has held for two millenniums. What got lost was the Assimilation to God--according to which the original humans were also created. (See Gen. 1:26 in the Greek LXX, whose text is older than the current Hebrew text by a millennium.) Those who understand the morphological principles of Hellenistic Greek realize that the Assimilation is an energization--viz. of the capacities of the Icon of God to act in ways that are pleasing to the LOGOS Creator.
The Bible contains not a few of what on the face of it are contradictions; we cannot believe in naked contradictions and stay honest, and its hard to view religion as important if something unique to our humanity, reason, has a low place in it. Those who devote a lot of reason to their callings but very little reason to religion are in effect saying that religion is less important to them than what they do to earn their material bread and butter. Calling a contradiction a "mystery" is a misuse of the term when it simply masks our failure to apply reason to what reason can deal with. A true Mystery is something that reason is incompetent to analyse--beyond what revelation reveals. We can intuitively grasp a Mystery without the faculty of noűs--which transcends reason, feelings, and will --which pious Orthodox have access to at certain moments.
It is hard for the two-valued mind to avoid confusing opposition to
irrationality with rationalism or opposition to rationalism with a favoring of
irrationalism. It is hard for some to understand that while
Worship and love of our fellow human-beings are higher than belief, these things
are like a skyscraper without a foundation if they are not based on reason
rather than what boils down to superstition--expressed in "simple"
(undefined) slogans or whatever. For one can worship or love evil things
or people.
Despite the modish favor that "spirituality"
enjoys in some circles, despite a correct resistance to being "shackled" by
institutional bureaucracy (a grave and, in the literal sense,
obnoxious problem that most Christian institutions are far from being
free of) or indeed anything that restrains individualist fancies, and despite objurgations against seeking personal, worldly fame or wealth--not
to speak of institutional promotion--and even despite a sometimes genuine
enthusiasm for missionary labors to the unsaved, the wrong kind of
"spirituality" is as bad as the wrong kind of "religion"--viz.
religiosity.
When spirituality is so vague as to degenerate into religiosity--a
dilettante fiddling around with esthetic, self-help, or palliating "spiritual"
tonics, or unintegrated fringe aspects of genuine religion, it comes near to
being fraudulent. If sanctimony denotes (often ostentatious or hypocritical) behavior
that implies
one's superiority in holiness and purity, religiosity refers rather to behavior
that exhibits obtrusive zeal or attention to outward religious or
"spiritual" endeavors. Spirituality can lack ardor or it can
display an ardor that seems more sentimental or indeed well-intentioned than
what has a "solid" or defensible basis in reason and feeling and
practical will. Spirituality comes across as incomplete if it lacks
Worship of something or someone other than the self. Its good side is that
it usually lacks the fanaticism and/or deprivation of proper human freedom
imposed by some wayward religions throughout history. (Some Puritans were
so rejective of time that they put people in the stocks for feasting on Christ's
Birthday.)
The foregoing
has attempted to give a fair an objective assessment of religion and spirituality.
Partizans of either side will perhaps think differently. But its hard for an
objective person not to recognize the ills of churchy bureaucatism (the spiritualist
objection to religion) or the often greater emptiness of spiritualism.
Jesus
and also the Fathers spoke of those who attend the Temple and stay awake when the Gospel of the
day is read but then go out and cheat and lie and fail to attend to the poor or spread the
holy message.
You can tell a lot about a group by how it names
itself--for some human inventor of its doctrines (Lutheran, Calvinist,
Wesleyan, etc.) or for its form of (definitely non-spiritual) government (presbyterian,
congregationalist, or episcopal; this last beomg subdivided into synodical and papal types
as well as into mysteric [sacramental] and non-sacramental types).
Putting the things such nomenclature refers to ahead of the One we worship
clearly seems to miss the "spiritual" boat.
The big
question is whether religion and spirituality can be partners rather than simply
opponents. Traditional Christianity has always offered examples of a
proper marriage, though all forms of nearly all organized religions offer
examples of improper marriages of spirituality wedded to a religion that hardly
seems to deserve the term "pure." One can wonder whether the question
even arises for most partizans of a Gnostically spiritualist
viewpoint, since their individualism is free of the "baggage" of theology and
institutionalism. This is no doubt a strong attraction for many who are
"spiritually" inclined. It certainly is a question for traditional "religious"
Christianity, as the Fathers and especially the monastic movement have always
warned worshipers. If those holy people could combine theology and religion with
spirituality, it can hardly be thought to be impossible; they haven't embraced a
contradiction, but rather point the way to wedding both.
It is not the purpose of
this page to provide a how-to-do-it chart, but various spiritual writings on the Orlapubs
readings page (CLICK HERE) can be perused by those
interested. And Fr. Braun's Divine energy offers
a wealth of step-by-step ways to combine belief with contending against the devil in order
to be a right-practising Orthodox Christian.
CLICK
HERE FOR WHETHER ORTHODOXY IS TOO
TOO SPIRITUAL OR TOO MATERIALISTIC
________________________
1The sense of "spiritualism" here has nothing to do with
the sense connected with mediums and similar deviltry.
2"Denominationist"
is an objective term used to avoid the unwieldlyiness of "heirs of the
Reformation" and the objections of some heirs of the Reformation to being labled "Protestants"
as part of a hodge-podge of Liberals and Fundamentalists. The term also encapsulates a core trait--individual freedom
with on-going fissiparity. "Otherdox" (Greek heterodox) is a term
for those who are not Orthodox (which in Greek means "of right belief" and also
"of right Worship"). The North American religious scene can be
termed "polydox."
3A slogan without lógos or rational
content and a rational defence is a superstition.
4The only was traditional Christianity has
of reconciling the two is to distinguish the imparticipable and unknowable
uncreated Essence of God from His participable uncreated Energies. Western
Christians speak of a virtual unity with God's Essence; it is
"intentional" (conceptual) for the Latins and will-based (covenantal)
for Denominationists.
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