Historically speaking, the scholarly study of religion has its origins in the gradual shift of the academia from an overwhelmingly spiritual institution to a secular organization; theology, which once was recognized as the mystical philosophy of the supra-sensible was reduced to the rational investigation of religious matters—confiscated from the pulpits, it ended up relegated to the desk of the erudite scholar[1]. Following the introduction of the methodical study of religion in secular establishments (one is compelled to note the oxymoron), a multitude of ancillary utilities sprouted in the footsteps: anthropology, archeology, comparative religion, religious history, ethnology to mention just a few. With them, starting from the nineteenth century, hordes of religious scholars emerged, whose mental attitude towards the divine has been indulgent at the best if not indifferent, derogatory or completely hostile. Their method of investigation is similar to that of the researchers who study a microorganism under the ocular of a microscope: they could count its cells, describe its feeding and reproductive abilities but will never be able to explain what gives life to that creature, why it exists and why it was shaped in that particular form, ideas which go beyond the morphological and functional exploration of visible phenomena, directly into the essentiality of being. To give just an example of the mentality which characterizes the “objective” examination of religion, we could mention the irritating insistence on the “historical Jesus” which is either an unconscious (if one wants to warrant the religious historians the benefit of the doubt) or otherwise, a deliberately impious attempt to debase the sacred scriptures and reduce them to a collection of profane anecdotes. It is also an expression of the condescending attitude of scientism towards religion: “myths” needed the scrutiny of the objective scholars in order to unveil their secrets to the twentieth century mature and rational individual: “The question of the spiritual sense underlying the myths is one of those which people gladly relegate to the realm of feeling and imagination and which "exact science" refuses to treat otherwise than through the medium of psychological and historical conjectures”. Because he lost the sense of the holy, modern man cannot but trivialize it and reduce it to his demeaning mentality. In reality and to the extent that they are honest and sincere, religious scholars should realize that the sense of the sacred cannot be understood rationally[2] although it could be perceived intuitively, received by supernatural intervention and experienced mystically. The rendering of mythology in profane terms transforms it in what it is not: a collection of fictitious fables and obscure superstitions—a pattern of representation which nevertheless concurs with the preconceived idea of the immaturity, naivety and primitivism of the “uncivilized” man. These observations are all the more disappointing when the scientific outlook imprints on the disposition of the erudite with an open mind but still incapable to avoid the methodological and essentially profane avenues of science. On the other hand, the hammering of the consciousness of the believers with a multitude of inconsequential historic inferences and encyclopedic details left a permanent mark and the soul has become oblivious to any mystical dimensions—the noesis was cut short and for many, the Bible has become a place of earthly passions, saintly quarrels and dogmatic superstitions. Ironically, the skeptical, denigratory or flagrantly atheistic mindset of the religious scholars makes their endeavor frivolous and derisory not only de jure—from the perspective of the truth—but also de facto, that is from their own standpoint. Whoever seriously studies what he otherwise trivializes cannot help becoming the object of his own contempt: “since it is impossible to abuse directly a God in whom one does not believe, one abuses Him indirectly..., and one goes so far as to disparage the very form of man and his intelligence, the very intelligence one thinks with and abuses with. There is however no escape from the immanent Truth: ‘The more he blasphemes’, says Meister Elkhart, ‘the more he praises God’”.
[1] The church evidently preserved the right to teach its canons but could not prevent the apparition of these spurious parallel institutions which debase the essence of the sacred and trivialize its exoteric manifestations.
[2] Koans are the most representative expression of this idea, purposely meant to tax the understanding and ridicule reason.
Motto
In our days, when the monstrous state of confusion that has engulfed humankind seems to have thrown individuals and societies in complete disarray, one feels almost embarrassed to bring into discussion lofty spiritual matters which may be regarded as inconsequential and naïvely idealistic compared to the grave human problems that our terrestrial existence raises every day. Two thousand years ago, the Bible foretold these circumstances for which René Guénon provided a more recent account: “... the inferior judges the superior, ignorance sets bounds to wisdom, error prevails over truth, the human is substituted for the divine, Earth has priority over Heaven, the individual sets the measure for all things and claims to dictate to the Universe laws drawn entirely from his relative and fallible reason (from “Individualism”, in “The Crisis of Modern World”).