what is the relationship between man and God in classical literature
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Answer:
Religion is manifest in seven ways. Scripture, philosophy, mysticism, theology, ethics, ritual, and mythology are the principal branches of the religious phenomenon. While there can be any number of details by way of the expression of the religious outlook in practical life, it is mainly concerned with these foundational features.
Scripture is the foundation of every religion, so to say, and it is believed to be a record of the revelations of super-sensory perception. A revelation, a scripture, is regarded as holy because it is not an intellectual workmanship of any particular author. It is a supreme insight, a light that dawns in the soul of a prophet, a sage or a seer, a light that speaks the message of God to man. Such are the scriptures, which are the basic references in all matters of religious doubt and difficulty.
The revelation which is the scripture, the intuition of the Divine Reality, is also what is known as philosophy when it becomes a reasoned argument substantiating the dictum of the scripture. Especially in India, it is laid down that the philosophical disquisitions, while they can stand on the strength of reason and understanding, should not contradict scripture. Unbridled reason is not regarded as a trustworthy medium of knowledge. By 'unbridled', we mean independent of scripture. So, while scripture is direct intuition, a revelation which is super-sensory, philosophy is intellectual, rational, a method adopted to convince the reason by arguments which are logical in their nature—by induction and deduction, etc.—so that intuition, which is super-sensory, super-mental, super-rational, also gets confirmed by man's reason.
The seeds of theology and the other features of religion that I mentioned are actually laid in the scriptures themselves. In fact, we can find the foundations of every feature or aspect of religion in its scripture. The scripture is a storehouse of every blessed thing which a religion can be. It has its philosophy, the roots of reasoned arguments; it also has the seeds of mythology, ritual, ethics, and the general attitude of people in their social life.
The doctrine of theology is the concept of God as applied to human life, which again is a derivative from the proclamations of the scriptures themselves. In India particularly, the scripture, which has its foundations in the Vedas and the Upanishads, is also the basis of India's theology and philosophy, what to speak of other things such as mythology, etc. The Upanishads lay the foundations for the philosophy which is later called the Darshana, or the reasoned or rational perception of Truth.
The concept of God in its relation to the creation of the universe and the existence of the individual is the basis for theological doctrines. Theology is the science of God. It is the art of the disquisition of the nature of the Creator, or a system which argues the characteristics of the Creator in relation to His creation. Thus, inasmuch as it is accepted that theology considers the relationship that obtains between God, world and soul, and takes for granted the existence of this threefold principle, or tripartite entity, it is often distinguished from philosophy. Theology is not the same as philosophy if we are to define theology as a propounding of God's relationship to creation as well as to individuals, who are the contents of creation.
But philosophy is defined in many ways, and people have not come to a clear conception as to what philosophy is. Though it is generally defined as 'love of wisdom', that is a very vague definition indeed because one does not know what this wisdom is in order that one may love it. However, those who thought that philosophy is the love of wisdom must have had in their minds the idea that wisdom is nothing but the wisdom of God. It does not mean ordinary, worldly wisdom. In fact, the great philosophic hero who, for the first time, perhaps, made the word 'philosophy' popular was Plato, and he and his disciple Aristotle did not consider wisdom to be merely worldly knowledge, but an insight into Reality. Now, inasmuch as wisdom is supposed to be the content of philosophy, and wisdom also has been identified with an insight into Reality, and it is the task or the function of philosophy not to have any predispositions or preconceived notions, it has to differ from theology, which already accepts the fact of there being a creation and individuals inside creation whose relationship obtains in the context of God's creativity.
Answer:
The Relationship Between God and Man
AT our previous meetings we examined one of the foundations on which religion rests or perhaps I should rather say one of the indispensable elements in which religion consists—I mean man's belief in a superhuman power which works everywhere and in everything. This is not a mere philosophical theory or an abstraction designed to satisfy man's craving for knowledge nor is it a purely mental attempt to account for the world of phenomena we see around us—whether that world be the whole universe such as we conceive it to be or merely that limited portion of it that falls within the ken of uncivilised or primitive man and constitutes his whole world—but it is a religious conviction that is to say it exerts a direct and immediate influence on man's emotional life. For the phenomena which the religious man thus accounts for are precisely those which are bound up with his existence his welfare and his whole destiny; and the conviction that they reveal to him a superhuman power at once awakens in him a corresponding sentiment of awe and veneration of gratitude and trust towards that power and a sense of his obligation to obey and revere it above all others. Without this belief no religion can possibly exist. It is the fountainhead of all religions. If it is lost the old religious institutions may for a time be maintained and the performance of the old religious observances may for a time be ensured by the force of habit and tradition but the life of such a religion is extinct. Just as the machine must soon stop when its motive power has ceased to act although its wheels may continue idly to revolve a little longer so must such a religion inevitably perish. A God above us—that is the belief without which no religious life is possible.
Does this imply that the moment we feel compelled to reject the popular notion of the Divinity the moment we begin to hesitate to discern God with reverential awe in the highly anthropomorphised image which is regarded by most people as the only true God we must forthwith renounce religion altogether? Let us distinctly understand each other. It is never a single definite conception as such that constitutes the foundation of religion. Conceptions change; the imperfect are superseded by perfect the impure by the pure the lower by the higher; but the thing that abides that underlies them all is the one idea which they all strive to express in their different ways. All we have done and were bound to do has been to trace out and establish that idea. If our object had been to construct a philosophical system of religion we should now have to inquire into everything that is involved in that idea or that of necessity flows from it into the primitive myths and the later dogmas such as those of the creation of Providence and of the government of the world in which the idea has been more or less imperfectly manifested. We should have to test the dogmas by the idea itself and show what truth they contain or how far they are to be regarded as mere imperfect human allegories. We cannot however attempt so great a task. Our object is solely to offer you an introduction to the science of religion and to sketch its elements while in this ontological part of our course our special aim is to discover what is the permanent element in the multiplicity of changing forms. Yet there is one side-issue which we must not omit to notice. Belief in a superhuman power is a very positive belief a belief in one or more actual divine beings. Now people sometimes object to attribute personality and self-consciousness to the Godhead as importing a humanising and therefore a limitation and degradation of the Deity. But remember that we cannot even speak of the superhuman except after the analogy of the human or form any conception of God except with the aid of the highest conceptions known to us which in the domain of man's spiritual life are his personality and his self-consciousness. One thing is certain. When devout persons necessarily regard their God as a superhuman being He cannot be less than man He cannot be unconscious and impersonal or He would cease to be a god at all and to be worthy of adoration. It is beyond our province to inquire how far a philosophical system might be built upon the foundation of an unconscious and impersonal power but no religion could exist on such a basis. If personality and self-consciousness be terms which we may not apply to the Almighty without derogation let us admit that no human language can describe His being. But to predicate the contrary of Him would be a far graver derogation and would be no better than atheism. That “God is a Spirit” is in brief the creed of man throughout all ages; and religious man feels the need of ascribing to his God in perfection all the attributes he has learned to regard as the highest and noblest in his own spirit.