-I Whilst stress has been laid on urbanisation as an important factor
18 be replaced by the pragmatism of the secular city
The Sacred and the Profane.
Central to much thought on secularization, but particularly to the idea of desacralization, is the concept of a pair of opposing realities, kept in some kind of tension and balance, the sacred and
19
the profane. The classic exponent of this view was Durkheim , who saw this radical division into two opposing realms existing throughout the whole history of human thought, and as a characteristic of all religious approaches to life.
'This division of the world into two domains, the one containing all that is sacred, the other all that is profane, is the distinctive trait.of religious thought
... In all the history of human thought, there exists no other example of two categories of things so profoundly differentiated or so radically opposed to one another. The traditional opposition between good and bad is nothing beside this, for the good and the bad are only opposed species of the same class, namely morals . . . . The two worlds are not only conceived of as separate, but even as hostile and jealous rivals of each other*'20
17 Davis, C ., op.cit., p-37- There are certain similarities between this statement and the central ideas of the concept of awe.
(cf. section 2).
18 cf. the last part of ch.2.
19 Durkheim, E., The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Allen and Unwin, 1915-
61
The sacred and the profane are frequently referred to in this way as two distinct realms or spheres, and in the traditional view, a major function of worship was to form a bridge between the two
21
spheres . The extent to which the spheres are polarised, or whether they should be seen as more closely related, is a matter over which there is disagreement. It may be argued that the two are essentially and utterly distinct.
’The distinction between the sacred and the secular is beyond question. There is an area of man's life that is necessarily withdrawn (though not isolated) from his temporal concerns . . .'22
Such a view is opposed by Davies' stress on the essential unity of the sacred and the secular, and his argument that although they are
23
distinct, they may be found in the same areas of life . A third position, and one of which more will be said below, is that the two realms remain essentially separate, but it is only in the Christian context that they emerge both in their distinctness and their mutual correlation^^.
It is against the background of the concepts considered above that the desacralization theory must be seen. It is the movement away from a very deeply rooted view of the world, and, as such, desacralization is a complex, rather than a single process.
21 cf. Davies, J.G., op.cit., p.251. This will be discussed further in ch.6.
22 Clarke, T., 'The world is already Christie*, America, May 29th, 1965, p.802, cited in O'Hanlon, D., 'The secularity of Christian worship', in Taylor, M.J., (ed). The Sacred and the Secular, Prentice-Hall, 1968, p.219-
23 Davies, J.G., op.cit., p.79, inter alia.
24 For an exposition of this view, cf. Micklem, P.A., The Sacred and j
— Ô2
The Origins of Desacralization
The suggestion is frequently made that secularization is essentially a modern phenomenon» However, it has already been argued in the case of other categories of secularization (e.g. the decline theory) that such a view can be misleading, for the process may be seen to have its
origins at least as early as the last century, and often still earlier. With the category of desacralization, this argument can be made even more strongly, and the origins of this form of secularization may be seen in the Old Testament.
In contrast to the religion of the Old Testament, the other religions of the Ancient Near East appear, despite their differences, to have the common element of being essentially 'cosmological', and
25
remaining, in many ways, a form of high magic . This outlook posits a continuity between the world of men and the gods, which has been seen as being exemplified in the myth/ritual pattern of Ancient Near Eastern religion, by which the breaking of the natural order was rectified by the appropriate ritual acts^^«
The O.T., on the other hand, asserts a full repudiation of these systems.
'Whereas in the 'primary' religions 'the world' is a mythical concept, . . . the Bible at once, from the very first verse of the book of Genesis, sets the world in the dimension of time and history,'27
25 This is not to say that there were not magical elements in early Yahwisrn. These however, were subsidiary parts of the religion, especially as compared with the overtly magical emphasis of Baalism which was, of course, essentially a fertility cult. 26 cf. Berger, P.L., op.cit., p.119.
27 van Leeuwen, A.T., op.cit., p.531.
:
65 - ' %
28 Berger, P.L«, op.cit., p.121. 29 Van Leeuwen, A.T., op.cit., p.551
In the O.T., creation itself may be seen as one form of 'disenchantment', and, in both the Jahwistic and Priestly accounts of creation, divinity is ascribed solely to Yahweh. It is clear that in the O.T. traditions, Yahweh stands outside the cosmos, and is mobile, unlike the gods of the surrounding nations . Not being fixed to one particular nation, he was able to choose his people.
It is in this setting that the O.T.'s unique emphasis on history arises. The significance of this has been well-demonstrated by van Leeuwen, who wrote,
'Here a break is made with the everlasting cycle of nature and 4 the timeless presentness of myth. Here history is discovered, % where the covenant between creator and creation, between the -I Lord and his people, bursts open the solid oneness of the ^ universe. Here there is proper room for man, and here the
taste of freedom. The world is now radically secularized, becomes creation moving forward to regeneration, is made the arena of history, is in much pain and travail, waiting for the consummation and redemption of all things.'29
This historical emphasis of the O.T. finds expression in many ways. § The kinship ties of the people are to their ancestors, and not to
nature. The importance of history in the lives of the people may be % evidenced from the amount that survived in oral tradition. Most
important, however, is the way in which the world, bereft of magical forces, became the historical arena of divine activity. The Heils- geschichte pattern which is seen so clearly in the O.T. finds its best expression in motifs such as that of the Exodus deliverance. In the Old Testament,
- 64
'History acquires a value which it did not possess in the religions of ancient civilizations . . . it never occurred to them to identify the nerve of the historical process as the purposeful activity of God or to integrate the whole by subordinating it to a single great religious conception. Their view of the divine activity was too firmly imprisoned in the thought forms of their nature m y t h o l o g y
.'30
One of the clearest examples of the historical grounding of Israel's faith is to be found in the great cultic recital of Deuteronomy^"',
Whilst the O.T., and especially the theology of Creation, and the development of Heilsgeschichte are usually seen as the Biblical roots of ’desacralization', the idea can also be traced in the New
32 *2
Testament. Shiner cites Gal.4:1ff as evidence of the idea of % sonship through Christ, in which man is freed from the O T o t O u
Ko<ypOU . It is difficult to place too much emphasis on this "ÿ passage, because of the problems in the interpretation of the term
33^ The same theme is taken up by Newbigin^^, who sees this clearly in terms of desacralization. .
'In the Bible this desacralizing is attributed to what God has done in Jesus Christ. According to St. Paul, God has, in Christ, dethroned the cosmic powers and liberated man from their control so that he can enjoy.
30 Eichrodt, W., Theology of the Old Testament, vol.1, S.C.M., I961, p.4l.
31 Deut. 26:5-9.
32 Shiner, L., op.cit., p.216.
33 The meaning of (TT o LoL here and in Col.2 is much disputed. It may refer to the elements of learning, and thus of religion, or to the 'elemental spirits' of the earth. It seems to have had a more specific meaning within the realms of ancient philosophy,
(cf. Lohse, E., Colossians and Philemon, Fortress Press,
Philadelphia, 19711 pp.96-6). More difficult to accept is Shiner's use of the ofn'06' o T t Lcnxg l ^ Kotl Tod t o u 0 € O U Btuj . saying as an example of secularization through the separation of religion and politics.