Theologische Betrieb

PARALLELEN UND KONVERGENZEN IN DER RELIGIONSGESCHICHTE
PARALLELS AND CONVERGENCES IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGION

1          Gleicher präreligöser Untergrund
2.         Zeitliche Parallelen in Hellas, China, Israel, Persien und Indien
3.         Sachlichen Parallelen: vita religiosa
4.         Brahman, Tao, Logos
5.        Atman, pneuma
6.         Erlösungsdualismus
7.         Die mystische Regung
8.         Heilandskult
9.        Theologische Betrieb
10.       Einheit und Verschiedenheit des religiösen Triebes
11.       Vergleich und Unterscheidung
12.       Unterscheidung der westlichen und östlichen Religionsentwicklung
13.       Beispiel: Origenes und indische Theologie

9. Theologische Betrieb

The latter parallels become most marked as we come to the 'Saviour-mysticism' to which the more comprehensive God-mysticism narrows down in the East as well as in the West. It is a variation on the religious feelings associated with the mystical love of God with its sweet, melting emotional sentiments and delights, which in the East as well as in the West readily assume an erotic tinge, as they become transferred from the more abstract world of God-mysticism to the 'Saviour', the god-man. In the Vishnu religion of India such cult of the Saviour with its tender-sweet emotion attaches especially to Krishna and Rama. Sri-Krishna, the incarnation of divinity, becomes the object of ecstatic, blissful-intimate contemplation, which, while it would resist and purify the promptings of eroticism, often succumbs to them. In the East, Krishna's relationship to Radha and the Gopis corresponds to the part played by Solomon and the Shulamite in our western Saviour-mysticism. Indeed the Krishna-cult also knows the touching chatter with the 'little babe', the cult of the bambino. This kind of emotional pietism, tinged with mysticism, manifests itself in a specially pure and moving form in Tulsidas's vernacular rendering of the Rãmãyana. The emotional worship of the Saviour is here centred upon the lovable personality of Rama, and Tulsidas's feelings find expression in prayers whose purity and tenderness are comparable to many of our hymns to the Saviour Jesus. The Krishna songs, both those with a marked erotic tinge as well as several of wonderful intimacy, full of praise and gratitude for the love which seeks the lost, saves him, and makes him happy, are universally sung. Caitanya, the Bengal reformer, who was a contemporary of Luther, and his successors are representatives of a whole period of poetry which is expressive of this emotional Saviour-pietism, and which coincided remarkably with the wave of Protestant and Catholic emotional pietism in the West. Here, too, the theological basis of the Saviour-cult is the teaching that the godhead becomes man, and we find analogies too to the varied evolution of this doctrine in Christendom: the problems and controversies centring in such questions as the massive or 'modalistic' transformation, the incarnation of the whole godhead, or of a 'person' or a part of it only, the personal union between God and man without loss of humanity, or mere indwelling, or complete symbolism.

*Bengalen, historisch gebied in het noordoosten van het Indische subcontinent, globaal samenvallend met het gebied waar de bewoners een gemeenschappelijke taal (Bengali) spreken. Het gebied valt staatkundig uiteen in Bangladesh en de Indiase deelstaat West-Bengalen.

It is only natural, in view of all these parallels, that the forms of theological apparatus and machinery should also be similar in East and West. We find in both cases the same kind of canonical literature, reliance upon the 'scriptures', 'tradition', concerted efforts to reconcile scripture with scripture and scripture with tradition, and to explain the relationship between revelation and reason; we find the same act of interpretation and exegesis, the scholastic-philosophic formulation of doctrine and apologetics, the disputes of the schoolmen, the same problem as to the attitude to be adopted by theological speculation in the general scheme of the sciences, and in recent times the clash with modern physics and literary criticism; the same apologetics against both, the same theologies of compromise, the same modernists and fundamentalists. - That this is also true of Islam and of Judaism is well known, and investigation would bring the same tendencies to light in Buddhism.

These parallels lend overwhelming conviction to one great fact, namely the fundamental kinship of the nature and experience of mankind in general, East and West, North and South; by reason of their basic similarity, it works itself out in these parallels, manifesting similar phenomena, and in diverse territories producing similar results. But while that is true of mental evolution in general, we have, in such extreme similarities as are revealed in the Bhakta and the Christian doctrines of salvation, to reckon with another element which we sometimes meet in biological evolutionary processes, and which is known here as the 'convergence of types'. We find this force at work in the evolutionary history of living forms. Widely different families and classes of plants or animals may go through processes of transformation in the course of which, besides those general similarities which result from the basic unity of the vital principle itself, they also reveal a growing tendency to approach one another in form and function, until they terminate in final forms startling in their congruity. A similar process we find also in the field of history. Misled by such phenomena there has often been a too ready assumption of actual descent of the one class from the other.
Nowadays we are more careful; we are content to see convergence merely where previously the similar phenomena have been regarded as deducible one from the other; the West has been interpreted as being dependent on the East, or the East upon the West.

We find another error associated with this way of thinking, an error into which the unwary almost always falls under the influence of such analogies. I refer to the tendency to overlook under the influence of the general impression of similarity profound individual differences. It may be true that the life force in its varied manifestations is one and that its unity may be recognized in the consistent scheme of its manifestations. But in the plenitude of individual manifestations it breaks into a diversity of type and character that is very real; and the same holds good in the realm of spiritual life. Historically, 'religion' is manifested as religions and these no less have their characteristic differences; as with all other functions of the human spirit their generic uniformity is inclusive, not exclusive of the specific variations in their development. And as those who study the history of art are specially interested to ascertain the characteristic and individual contributions of the various individual civilizations to the general body of aesthetic achievement, so in the comparison of religions we are prompted to use an even finer discrimination in ascertaining the manner in which the common basic force, despite all apparent parallelism, takes on perfectly distinct forms in its individual manifestations.

There remains the still more important task of comparing their content and value, to ascertain where the higher and fuller values may be found. So far from being eliminated, this task is invested with a special and more subtle significance in the case of those particular similarities which we have endeavoured to relate to the 'convergence of types'. For, as in the realm of organic evolution convergences of types never lead to an actual identity in the sense of real systematic unity, so they do not lead to any such unity in the realm of religious evolution either.

Beyond all doubt the religions of the East and of the West approached one another almost to the point of contact in the teachings of Isvara, of Bhakti and Prapatti; but despite all their similarity these most similar manifestations are subtly but decisively distinguished in the spirit which informs them. The spirit of India is not, even in these instances, the spirit of Palestine. There are fundamental spiritual values which separate these two worlds of the spirit, in spite of astonishing similarities and convergences of type. I have endeavoured to formulate an answer to this question of their distinction and comparative worth in my book India's Religion of Grace and Christianity and in Eastern and Western Mysticism, Compared and Distinguished.

< 8 Verering van de Verlosser

De laatstgenoemde twee parallellen worden uiteindelijk het meest treffend in de vormen van de ‘verlossingsmystiek’, waartoe de meer omvattende godsmystiek zich zowel in het oosten als in het westen beperkt. In het christendom sluit dit met name aan bij Bernard van Clairvaux en herleeft later in het piëtistische protestantisme en in het katholicisme in de bruidsmystiek met de Here Jezus. Het is een verandering van de religieuze gevoelens geassocieerd met de mystieke liefde voor God met haar zoete, smeltende gevoelsaandoeningen en gelukzaligheid (die ook in het westen een lichtelijk erotisch tintje kunnen aannemen), doordat deze tegelijkertijd van de abstractere wereld van de godsmystiek overgebracht worden naar de Heiland, de Godmens.
In de Indiase Vishnureligie hechten zich zulke gevoelens wel aan Bhagavat’s heilsleven. Maar de werkelijke verlosserverering hecht zich met zijn zoetsappigheid en tederheid in het bijzonder aan de gedaantes van Krishna en Rama. Sri-Krishna, de goddelijke incarnatie, wordt het onderwerp van dweperige, gelukzalig-vertrouwlijke meditatie, die, terwijl het de erotische prikkelingen weerstaat en zuivert, er vaak genoeg ook aan bezwijkt. Krishna’s relatie met Radha en Gopis in het oosten komt overeen met de rol gespeeld door Salomo en Sulamith in het Hooglied in de joods-christelijke reddingsmystiek. [Deze verzameling liefdesliederen werd in sommige joodse kringen min of meer vergeestelijkt; het lied bracht de liefde van God voor zijn volk Israël tot uiting. In de vroegchristelijke kerk werd de zinnebeeldige opvatting uit de joodse traditie vrij algemeen overgenomen en toegepast op de liefde tussen Christus en zijn gemeente.] Inderdaad, de Krishnaverering kent ook het liefhebbende geminnekoos met het kindeke, de verafgoding van de bambino. Op bijzonder zuivere en aandoenlijke wijze tekent zo’n piëteit zich af in Tulsida’s hindoeweergave van het Rãmãyana. De aanbidding van de Verlosser is hier gericht op de beminnelijke gestalte van Rama. Tulsida’s gevoelens vinden uitdrukking in woorden en gebeden waarvan de zuiverheid en diepgevoeldheid vergelijkbaar zijn met veel van onze lofzangen over Jezus als de Verlosser. De Krishnaliederen, bevatten zowel een opmerkelijke vleug erotiek als een prachtige intimiteit, vol met lof en dank voor de liefde die de verdwaalde zoekt, hem redt en gelukkig maakt, worden overal, maar met name in Bengalen* gezongen.
Caitanya (1485–1533), de Bengaalse hervormer, een tijdgenoot van Luther, en zijn opvolgers zijn vertegenwoordigers van een hele periode van poëzie die in het teken van deze vrome eerbiedigheid staat en opmerkelijke overeenkomsten vertoont met de golf van protestantse en katholieke pieuze verering in het westen. De theologische basis van deze verering is ook hier dat de godheid mens wordt. We vinden ook hier weer overeenkomsten met de vorming van de christelijke geloofsleer: de problemen en controversen waar het om draait in zaken als de massieve, bepaalde totale verandering, de incarnatie van de hele godheid, of van een ‘persoon’ of slechts een deel daarvan, de persoonlijke verbintenis tussen God en de mens zonder verlies van menselijkheid, of gaat het slechts om ‘inwoning’, of is het toch alleen een geheel gevuld symbolensysteem? >