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The world has ever evolved in a pace so fast that it left men blaming men to be the culprit to the ever-growing meaninglessness. Few would have ever reckoned that it is still a human trait to assume that meaning in life should not be confined in a lifetime but even beyond. Hence, the birth of a belief of the afterlife and the one who holds it came about, a meaning in life projected into a life after death. It was not until the European enlightenment period that a formal claim of a critique of religion has come into light.
Now more than ever, the quest has headed us into asking whether the religion of today has retained its primordial role to initialize meaning in the life of communities and of individuals. Many philosophers of religion have tried insofar as they have perceived to look at the role of religion in a different light. Some of them were Martineau, Tiele, Otto, Tillich and Schelleirmacher. Most of them have dwelt upon the idea of a phenomenological encounter between the believer and the one that they believe in.
In this encounter, man seems to have the responsibility of discovery, a seeming invitation to transcend his nature and reach for the divine. And insofar as it teaches man to go beyond his own self, it verifies his personality to more than what has been before. The problem, however, is sometimes it falls like a coin in the pit hole of superficial religious rhetoric that is most of the time, not rooted in the ordinary and basic human concerns for existence.
We see then that Martineau would focus upon faith as a particular human concern. Central to this is free will and the primacy of motives, an expression of the self that manifests his relation to the world. The interpretation of the Divine is apparently reliant on the ethical demand, an invitation to act for a higher end. Such ethical demand is seen by Martineau as the continuing divine revelation. In this sense, Martineau focuses on the individual’s duty to follow the continuous divine revelation that must succeed over self-centered motives. Whether his act is good or bad is not a greatness solely vested upon the individual but also with the divine revealing himself in the person throughout the course of history.
Stepping forward to Schleiermacher, we see man in as if ‘paralyzed’ state being absolutely dependent on the divine. This paralysis is attributed by his supposedly finite existence sharing in the infinity of the divine. This presupposes an inward quest, similar to pantheism, seeing one’s finite existence partaking in an infinite whole. In this picture, man sees himself as small dot in the reality of things.
Moving on to Otto, we see the phenomenological lift of considering the feeling of awe and fear as religious experiences. It encompasses the idea of mysterious reality that is the “wholly other,” the idea of the holy. It places the individual in the sense of conflicting struggle amidst fear and fascination with the divine. Man sees himself as a mere onlooker of something great in front of him.
Tiele would look at religion centering on the disposition of the person involved. This involves one’s behavior that must be pure and reverential. In other terms, central to Tiele’s notion about religion is the idea of piety.
Though there are differences in the way these four philosophers look at religion, there is an apparent similarity which is an inevitable ideal role projected in a bigger reality apart or shared by oneself. The struggle is left upon the individual to attain it. What’s puzzling is the inevitable fact that person only sees his existence meaningful if see a bigger role to play and not just a bit part. If we’ll look at them more closely they are not answering the ultimate concern of this era where the struggle of man is laid in the conflict amidst the basic needs for existence and the quest for identity. Not all of us will experience the “mysterium” referred to by Otto nor see our will as a divine revelation or even look at ourselves as partakers of something more. Indeed we are awed by something great, we fear power but they can never be enough to answer the concerns of today. What this generation need then is a tangible and uncompromising religion, something that is not alien to his own existence. Such definition asks more from the believers more than they give tangible answers.
Moving on to Tillich, he emphasized on the individuality of the human being and the human experience starting on the process of becoming. Central to which is dealing with the Ultimate Concern. Tillich is rightful in asserting that we should not limit ourselves with symbols because we should always look beyond towards what they symbolize. Hence, religion must also be seen as a process of becoming. But then again, transcending to a new horizon is the responsibility of the believer.
Nice assertions as they may seem, they look at religion in a different perspective but the substance is lacking. Tillich may be right in asserting the indiduality of persons when it comes to religious concerns and that we should always look beyond. However, he failed to explain why more and more people are losing their faith in religion. Would this be because, they are not anymore grasping its relevance in their lives? Why such concern in the authenticity of religion keeps on bombarding several generations? If there is one main thing lacking of all the five, it is the fact that they may have failed to look on the political and empirical dimension of religion. No wonder then that we are finding it hard to look at their viability in answering today’s basic human concerns.