The Religious Case Against Belief by James P. Carse

Author:James P. Carse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

PART III

RELIGION BEYOND BELIEF

Communitas, though always unique to itself, exists nonetheless in the world. And its relation to the world is rich with subtlety and paradox. As noted, it is not one of any of the institutions or people or associations or organizations or political units or traditions that make up the world. It has no identity that the world can recognize. From the view of the world, it may be seen, incorrectly, as merely one institution among countless others. Members of the communitas—that is, the religious—know, however, that they are being falsely characterized when viewed that way. Their specific communitas is a stranger in the midst of the world even if the world does not see it as such. In Jesus’s well-worn phrase, it is in the world but not of it. The challenge communitas faces in its relation to the world is to be at the same time authentically in the world without giving itself over entirely.

What is obviously implied here is that there is a clear distinction between religion and world. The distinction is a bit treacherous because it invites the old notion that the two are in essential conflict; the world on one side, and religion on the other. For believers this may be the case; for the religious such a dualism is not only meaningless, it is a path that leads to the Age of Faith II and eventually to the kind of havoc and chaos that abounded in the last century and threatens the present. Speaking of the relation of world to religion, then, I will simplify the discussion by using “world” to mean nothing more than whatever communitas is not. By such a definition, no valuation of either side is asserted.

Properly speaking, the world is not outside communitas or even around it. Communitas is unbounded in a way that belief systems are not. The world lies within its horizon; it is in the midst of the world. Just what makes up the world, from the perspective of the religious, is whatever they are able to see of it. But the horizon only marks the end of one’s vision. If “the world,” in Wittgenstein’s famous remark, “is all that is the case,” it is also all that can be the case, and that far exceeds the scope of anyone’s knowledge. Because there is no telling what may yet be seen, the world will never fall completely within our field of vision. It is always more than can be seen. Thus, no definitive judgment about the world can be made. All knowledge of it is partial at best.

For belief systems, on the other hand, “world” has a completely different meaning. Inasmuch as believers hold their views in opposition to nonbelievers, they see themselves surrounded by hostile powers. When they look beyond their boundaries, they see only the boundaries of rival systems. They take their horizon not as the end of their vision but as the end of all that is the case. The world has nothing more to reveal of itself.

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