The Acts of Religion

We have already explained that religion, taken in its proper sense, manifests itself in acts. The question now arises: In what specific acts?

Man’s religious life legitimately shows itself in certain acts, the nature and quality of which are determined, on the one hand, by his ontological relation of dependence upon God, and, on the other, by the peculiar character of his nature, which is partly material and partly spiritual.

From the last-mentioned point of view we may distinguish two species of religious acts, interior and exterior.

The interior acts of religion are acts of the intellect, of the will, and of the emotions. They are manifested and completed by corresponding exterior acts.

§ I. The Interior Acts of Religion

1. Religious Knowledge

The first religious act of man, and the preliminary condition of all other religious acts, is an act of knowledge.

The proof for this thesis is taken from the nature of religion. Religion consists in the worship and service which man freely renders to His Creator; now, man cannot perform a free act unless an act of the intellect has preceded and accompanied that of the will; therefore, intellectual knowledge is a necessary factor of the other religious acts and belongs to the essence of religion.

“Nihil volitum nisi praecognitum,” that is, nothing can be willed that has not been previously perceived by the intellect, is a philosophical axiom of the schools. Experience teaches that every act of the will is preceded by an act of the intellect. This applies also to the religious sphere. Here the intellect serves the purpose of apprehending God, who is man’s ultimate end, and of acquainting the will with the motives for serving Him, namely, the perfections on account of which He is worthy of supreme worship. If God should demand of us acts not discoverable by reason alone (e. g., the observance of the Sabbath), this demand would have to be made known to the will by means of the intellect. In addition, every act of the will performed in the exercise of religion must be preceded and accompanied by a corresponding act of the understanding.

The truths which belong to the religious sphere are called religious truths. The knowledge of these truths,—as, for instance, man’s dependence upon God,—is not the whole of religion, but merely its first stage. We, therefore, call this knowledge man’s first religious act.¹1That every religious experience includes an operation of the intellect is admitted by the representatives of the modern science of the psychology of religion. Thus Girgensohn (Der seelische Aufbau des religiösen Erlebens, Leipsic, 1921, p. 440) writes: “It is certain that wherever religion is experienced, man, in living the religious life, somehow or other seeks to outgrow his own limitations—interior as well as exterior—and conceives himself in connection with, or in a state of dependence upon, something higher and greater, even though this something may be never so indefinite and ‘predicate-less.’ I do not see how an experience which entirely lacks this thought-relation, and the interpretation of such an experience, can be called religious.” (Cfr. T. K. Oesterreich, Einführung in die Religionspsychologie, Berlin, 1917, pp. 17 sq.)

Hence we must reject as one-sided and erroneous the following opinions:

a) The teaching of the Vedantic philosophers of India, that the contemplation of Brahma is sufficient to redeem man from all suffering, to enable him to become absorbed into the godhead, and thereby to attain ideal perfection.²2P. D. Chantepie de La Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, Vol. II, 3rd ed., Tübingen, 1905, pp. 61 sq.; 4th ed., 1925, Vol. II, pp. 81 sq.

b) The doctrine of a certain school of Gnostics, who limited the religious life to an act of the intellect and regarded this (gnosis) as sufficient for salvation, regardless of good works.

c) Hegel’s assertion that religion is “the perception by the finite spirit of its essential absoluteness,” and the contention of some Pantheists and Materialists that religion ought to be replaced by science.³3Cfr. O. Pfleiderer, Geschichte der Religionsphilosophie, 3rd ed., Berlin, 1893, pp. 414 sqq.

2. Religious Acts of the Will

The innermost essence of religion is constituted by the activity of the will.

Religion is man’s free dedication of his whole being to the service of God. As the subject of human freedom and of self-determination is the will, religious activity must proceed primarily from this faculty of the soul.

The religious activity of the will consists in worshipping God as the Creator and ultimate end of man.

Worship is superior to honor. We may honor a man, even though he be an inferior and a subject, by freely acknowledging his character and merits; but we worship only those who surpass us by their prerogatives, inspire us with admiration and reverence, and command our respect and submission.

If we apply this truth to God, we find that His chief prerogative in relation to man consists in this, that He is the author of man’s being and his last end.

Man’s acknowledgment of the infinite greatness and majesty of God, and of his own absolute dependence upon Him as to origin, existence, and destination, is what we call divine worship or adoration,—clearly distinguished from every form of veneration given to creatures.

The acknowledgment of the divine prerogatives includes acts of complete submission and consecration, which, though not identical with, are closely related to, humility and obedience. Man’s unreserved surrender of himself to God, the Author of his being and the Goal of his highest perfection, contains an acknowledgment not only of his own lowliness and weakness (humility), but likewise of the majesty of God, who transcends all human greatness, to whom we owe whatever we are and shall be when we attain our highest perfection. Similarly, reverential submission to God is not an act of obedience in the strict sense of that term; for although God is our supreme Lord and Master, we subject ourselves to Him not only because He commands us to do so, but also on account of His infinite majesty and perfection and our own absolute dependence upon Him.

Love of God and hope in Him are necessary conditions of divine worship. Such acts of love and hope, however, do not, strictly speaking, belong to the sphere of the religious life, because they are directed to God Himself, not to His service and veneration; but they bear an intimate relation to divine worship for the reason that they are a practical condition and support of that worship.

The first and most important task that devolves upon man when he has arrived at a knowledge of God and of himself, and feels a desire to regulate his relation to the Deity, is to determine the goal of his activity. The properties of his own nature, above all its restless craving for truth and happiness, and the experience that no created good can satisfy this craving, compel him to realize that God, the infinite Truth and Goodness, is the exclusive goal of his striving, and that only in the possession of that goal, i. e., in the knowledge and love of God, can he find that perfection and complete happiness for which his nature yearns.

The will must, therefore, co-operate in the attainment of man’s last end. It must direct his aspirations and desires towards the possession of the Supreme Good. Created goods may also be the object of the will’s desire, but only in so far as they are subordinate to the Supreme Good. To love God above everything else and to strive to possess Him forever,—is the goal towards which the Creator wishes man to tend.

As long as this love is not yet in possession of, but merely in process of striving for, its object, it must, in order to be permanent, be joined to hope. For without a firm confidence that, in spite of all obstacles, we shall sooner or later attain that exalted aim through our own efforts and with the help of God, even the most heroic soul would eventually grow weary and lose courage. Hence the love of God and the hope of attaining happiness by possessing Him, are inseparable in the heart of man as long as he sojourns on this terrestrial planet.

Love and hope establish the first and fundamental connection between the free-will activity of man and its ultimate goal, i. e., God. The acts of these virtues are modified and more definitely determined by those acts which properly constitute divine worship. It is not enough that man should love God above all else, and that he should confidently hope and earnestly strive to possess Him;—no, he must likewise keep constantly before his eyes God’s infinite majesty and his own absolute dependence upon Him, and be practically guided by these motives in all his acts of love and hope. Hope and love must rest on truth. Only when the motives of divine worship are taken up into the acts of these two virtues, and all these activities interpenetrate one another and become fused into one, as it were, does human conduct possess those properties which are demanded by man’s dependence upon God.

The action of the will occupies the first place in the religious life of man; but religion must not, as Kant and many of his followers would have it, be detached from theoretical knowledge and regarded merely as a postulate of the will, to be ultimately absorbed into the activity of the latter faculty.

3. Religious Emotion

Religious emotion naturally follows intellectual cognition and the activity of the will.

Man is not a pure spirit, but a composite of body and soul, and consequently does not exercise his reason apart from his other faculties. The bodily organism has its share in every movement of the spiritual life. The imagination is the constant companion of thought and frequently stirs the sensitive appetite to a greater or less degree. The spiritual appetency also plays a rôle, in that it unconsciously accompanies thought.

The sum-total of the unconscious movements of these two appetitive faculties towards some object perceived as good or bad by the intellect, is called emotion. The different emotions have no necessary connection with the will, but often arise in opposition to it and its desires. Sometimes they can be suppressed, but quite often the will is powerless in regard to them.⁴4Cfr. J. Jungmann, Das Gemüt, 2nd ed., Freiburg, 1885; J. Schuchter, Empirische Psychologie, Brixen, 1897, pp. 149 sqq.; H. Lotze, Mikrokosmos, Vol. II, 5th ed., Leipsic, 1905, pp. 381 sq.; J. Geyser, Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Psychologie, Vol. II, 3rd ed., Münster i. W., 1920, pp. 381–436; IDEM, Intellekt oder Gemüt, Freiburg, 1921; J. Fröbes, S.J., Lehrbuch der experimentellen Psychologie, Vol. II, Freiburg, 1920, pp. 280–328; de la Vaissière, S.J., Experimental Psychology, St. Louis, 1926.

From what we have said it follows that emotion plays an important part in man’s religious life. Our thinking and willing is always accompanied by emotions, be it of pleasure or displeasure, taking these terms in their widest sense. Religion, as an act of the intellect and the will, is naturally accompanied by emotions of one kind or another. That emotions play a more important part in the domain of religion than elsewhere, is owing to the nature of the object of religion and to the lively interest which both the intellect and the will take in that object. In accordance with the nature of religion, which sees in God the absolute Lord of creation, in whom alone man can be completely happy, the emotions that assert themselves in the religious sphere are primarily a feeling of dependence, reverential awe, yearning, confidence and security, exaltation, happiness, and joy.

Though emotion is by no means the main factor of religion, its value must not be underestimated. First and above all emotion is a splendid means of promoting the activity of the mind. The more narrowly human activity is limited to the purely spiritual, the more difficult and laborious it seems to be, the more quickly does the soul grow tired and weary. This is quite natural, for a purely spiritual activity corresponds to only one element in the double nature of man. It is only when the senses receive their proportionate share of attention that man’s whole nature sets to work. Such mixed activity, therefore, is exercised easily and with pleasure, and thus disposes the harmoniously co-operating faculties and powers of man to performances which constantly grow more perfect. The most powerful influence in this regard is exercised by emotion, which, on the one hand, is based upon man’s sensitive nature and, on the other, stands in intimate relation with the higher aspirations of his intellect and will.

As the religious acts of the intellect receive greater strength from the co-operation of emotion, so, conversely, emotion reflects the intensity of the intellectual operations. For only a cognition which takes place with power and vividness is able to awaken the emotions by stirring up all the appetitive faculties of the soul.

It is a wise provision, which clearly proves the goodness of the Creator, that emotion shows its strength and exercises a beneficial influence principally in cases where the imperfect development of the mind and the weakness of the will make this appear desirable, namely, in early youth and in the female sex. This fact explains why children and women are not inferior to man in the practice of religion, nay, often perform heroic acts of piety.⁵5Cfr. C. Gutberlet, Apologetik, Vol. I, 4th ed., Münster i. W., 1914, p. 36.

While religious emotion, therefore, undoubtedly plays an important part in connection with the other acts of religion, it would nevertheless be a serious mistake to assign to it a dominant rôle, and still more foolish to place the whole essence of religion in feeling, as Jacobi⁶6Cfr. O. Pfleiderer, op. cit., pp. 224 sqq. and Schleiermacher⁷7Ibid., pp. 300 sqq. have done.

We cannot here discuss the extraordinary phenomena of mysticism and their relation to the ordinary religious activities of the soul. These phenomena, so far as they appertain to the sphere of natural religious experience, are, on the one hand, too rare and too little known in their nature, while, on the other hand, if we take into consideration the supernatural mysticism of the Catholic Church, they presuppose divine faith and revelation, and consequently lie beyond the scope of natural religion.⁸8On this topic the student may consult: J. Zahn, Einführung in die christliche Mystik, 2nd ed., Paderborn, 1918; E. Krebs, Grundfragen der kirchlichen Mystik, Freiburg, 1921; M. Grabmann, Wesen und Grundlagen der katholischen Mystik, Munich, 1922; W. Müller-Reif, Zur Psychologie der mystischen Persönlichkeit, Berlin, 1921; O. Söhngen, Das mystische Erlebnis in Plotins Weltanschauung, Leipsic, 1923; G. M. Sauvage, in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. X, pp. 663 sqq.; J. Howley, Psychology and Mystical Experience, London, 1920.

§ II. The External Acts of Religion

Religious sentiment, considered in its sensitive aspect, is so fused with man’s purely spiritual activity, that external acts of religion invariably combine with interior acts as their complement and visible manifestation.

This statement can be proved, (1) from the nature of the interior acts of religion, (2) from man’s dependence upon God both as to body and soul, and (3) from the fact that man is destined by His Creator to live in society.

1. Since the nature of man is both material and spiritual, his interior acts of religion cannot fully develop without manifesting themselves outwardly. This full development is demanded by the nature of religion, which involves a complete surrender of man to God, and therefore, external religious acts must be combined with internal.⁹9St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 81, art. 7; Summa contra Gentiles, III, c. 119.

That interior acts of religion require external acts for their full development can be demonstrated by a twofold argument.

a) On account of the intimate mutual relation between body and soul, the spiritual acts of divine worship, when they take a strong hold on man, naturally manifest themselves externally and sensibly, thus constituting what is called external cult. The religious thought, the subjection of the will to God, the religious emotion, are garbed in words and deeds, that is to say, they manifest themselves in oral prayer, the folding of the hands, the chanting of religious hymns, a devout attitude of the body, the bending of the knees, the bowing of the head, and, above all, in the offering of sacrifice, which is the most pregnant symbol of man’s consecration of his person and service to God.

b) External worship reacts inspirationally on, and strengthens, the internal disposition. It is natural for man, whose intellectual activity begins with sense perception, to ascend from the sensible, especially from the knowledge gained by the external senses, to the spiritual sphere. We can see this exemplified in the elevating effect of common devotions and prayers and the enthusiasm aroused by religious meetings and processions.

2. Our second argument is based on man’s dependence upon God both as to body and soul.

Man’s religious acts must reflect his dependence upon His Creator; now, man depends upon God both as to body and soul; therefore, his religious acts must be acts of the body as well as of the soul, i. e., they must be external as well as internal.¹⁰10St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 1a 2ae, qu. 101, art. 2.

If, as we have seen, the dependence of the whole man upon God is the foundation of religion, external bodily acts of worship cannot be regarded as non-essential. When man acknowledges the Divine Majesty reverently and submissively, and admits his own weakness in acts of prayer and sacrifice, the body, which forms one nature with the soul, must participate in this worship in its own peculiar way, that is to say, as inspired and animated by the intellect. For every act of religion, whether it be internal or external, is by nature a vital manifestation of reason and free will. God wishes to be adored “in spirit and in truth.”

3. Our third argument is derived from the fact that man is a social being, destined by His Creator to live in the company of others.

Man, we say, by his very nature, is not merely an individual, but also a social being, destined to dwell with others of his kind, and consequently he must practice religion also as a member of society. Now, the social exercise of religion is possible only by means of external acts. Therefore, man is in duty bound to manifest his religious convictions by external acts.

Man has a strong natural tendency to live together with his fellowmen, i. e., in society. It is only in society, in company with others of his kind, that his powers, faculties, and aptitudes reach their full development, and, conversely, every individual, as a part of the social whole, contributes his share to the well-being of society. Man would become stunted in body and soul if he were compelled to spend his entire life in solitude. This general truth applies first of all when there is question of performing the more important tasks of life, chief among which is undoubtedly the practice of religion. Hence man’s social nature and tendency must be taken into due consideration in the religious sphere. He is bound to live according to the dictates of his religion, and must do so in harmony with his social nature, i. e., as a member of society. In other words, divine worship is not limited to the individual, but is a duty of society, which, as a moral person, must acknowledge God as the Author and last end of man.¹¹11Cfr. Leo XIII in his encyclical letter “Immortale Dei,” Nov. 1, 1885: “Natura et ratio, quae iubet singulos sancte religioseque Deum colere, quod in eius potestate sumus, et quod ab eo profecti ad eundem reverti debemus, eadem lege adstringit civilem communitatem. Homines enim communi societate coniuncti nihilo sunt minus in Dei potestate, quam singuli: neque minorem, quam singuli, gratiam Deo societas debet, quo auctore coaluit, cuius nutu conservatur, cuius beneficio innumerabilem bonorum quibus affluit, copiam accepit.” (“Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, not less than individuals, owes gratitude to God, who gave it being and maintains it, and whose ever-bounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings.”) (The Pope and the People, London, 1912, p. 75).

Now, there can be no social worship of God except through the instrumentality of palpable, external acts. For it is only through such acts that a number of individuals can unite in paying external homage to the Deity. The purely interior acts of the individual remain hidden to his fellowmen and consequently cannot influence their religious thought or conduct, nor can they be controlled by authority and directed to a common end.

External acts of religion, therefore, are necessary if divine worship is to correspond adequately to human nature and its necessities. But in its external manifestations, religion must not be detached from knowledge and emotion, lest it resemble a shell without a kernel and justify the contention of those who reject all religious ceremonies as empty gestures savoring of Pharisaism.

For further reading, see page 127.