Naturalism and Protectionism in the Study of Religions

Juraj Franek

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350082397
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion & Science

How should we study religion? Must we be religious ourselves to truly understand it? Do we study religion to advance our knowledge, or should the study of religions help to reintroduce the sacred into our increasingly secularized world? Juraj Franek argues that the study of religion has long been split into two competing paradigms: reductive (naturalist) and non-reductive (protectionist). While the naturalistic approach seems to run the risk of explaining religious phenomena away, the protectionist approach appears to risk falling short of the methodological standards of modern science. Franek uses primary source material from Greek and Latin sources to show that both competing paradigms are traceable to Presocratic philosophy and early Christian literature. He presents the idea that naturalists are distant heirs, not only of the French Enlightenment, but also of the Ionian one. Likewise, he argues that protectionists owe much of their arguments and strategies, not only to Luther and the Reformation, but to the earliest Christian literature. This book analyses the conflict between reductive and non-reductive approach in the modern study of religions, and positions the Cognitive Science of Religion against a background of previous theories - ancient and modern - to demonstrate its importance for the revindication of the naturalist paradigm.

1

Introduction: Methodological schism in the study of religions

I am really no friend of images. The more recent literature has made them exceedingly repulsive for me, so much so, that the moment I chance upon an image, I am seized by an involuntary fear that the true purpose of the image is to hide the obscurity of thinking.

Sören Kierkegaard¹

In the preface to the first edition of his opus magnum that bears the ominous title The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer has been kind enough to inform his reader that although he intended to communicate one single idea, he found no shorter way to do so than to write a hefty monograph which is to be read twice, since the perfect understanding of the earlier chapters presupposes the information contained in the later ones.² In the third book of this work, Schopenhauer argued that a work of art is capable of revealing the representation independent of the principle of sufficient reason – that is to say, as an adequate objectification of the thing-in-itself (i.e., will) on a certain degree.³ It is to be said that the requirement to read the book twice may rather represent the objectification of Schopenhauer’s arrogance, the magnitude of which has been inversly proportional to the interest learned and unlearned contemporaries showed for his thought – and therefore always extraordinarily high; the latter proposition may amount to an intellectual violation of Kant fuelled by Schopenhauer’s desire to present himself not only as a deep philosophical mind, but also as a connoisseur of fine arts. Be that as it may, the primary objective of my work being the development and the defence of a single idea – namely that the study of religions was, is and most likely will remain splintered into two competing and mutually incommensurable paradigms – and since I surely want to abstain from asking kind readers to work double shifts, I will try to illustrate the central thesis of this work via a particular work of art.⁴

Raphael’s last oeuvre, Transfiguration, was commissioned in 1516 by cardinal Giulio de’ Medici (future pope Clement VII) as an altarpiece for his metropolitan cathedral in Narbonne.⁵ The works began in 1518 and scholars are unanimous in considering the painting unfinished.⁶ Some thought it was completed by one of Raphael’s students (Giulio Romano being the most likely candidate),⁷ but the results of a large-scale restoration from the years 1972–76 indicate that the work is, indeed, the great master’s autograph.⁸ Giorgio Vasari noted that ‘according to the communis opinio of the artists, it is the most famous, the most beautiful and the most divine of all of his works’;⁹ but for modern scholars, it has become an enigma on both formal and iconographical fronts. This oil on wood of considerable proportions (405 × 278 cm), housed today in the Vatican picture gallery, represents two otherwise discrete scenes related by synoptic gospels.¹⁰

The upper half of the painting shows the transfiguration of Christ on the mount Tabor, which he mounted together with the Apostles Peter, James and John. In the centre of the ring composition, Jesus is levitating above the ground, vested in white robes, eyes looking upwards, hands outstretched as a symbol of his redeeming power. On his sides, Moses and Elias, in conversation; at his feet, the Apostles in awe, protecting by hands their eyes from the supernatural radiance with which their master bathes the entire upper half of the painting. On the left side, two assistant figures are portrayed, whose presence is not warranted by canonical texts. Art scholars often identified them with martyrs and saints. Felicissimus and Agapitus have been proposed,¹¹ as well as Stephen and Lawrence,¹² but they are most likely Justus and Pastor, since their feast is celebrated on 6 August, which, ever since 1457, happens to also be the Feast of the Transfiguration, and both are titular saints of the cathedral of Narbonne, the original final destination of the altarpiece.¹³

The lower half of Raphael’s masterpiece transports us under the mount Tabor. In Christ’s absence, the remaining Apostles are trying their best to heal a boy possessed by an evil spirit, their efforts continually frustrated. From a compositional standpoint, the scene is cut in half by a figura serpentinata of a beautiful young woman, identified variously as Mary Magdalene,¹⁴ Erythraean Sibyl,¹⁵ even ‘the divine manifestation of the radiant Christ’.¹⁶ Nine Apostles on the left side are flanked by nine family members of the possessed boy (including himself), whose wobbly posture, distant look and the tension of every muscle and tendon set in physical and emotional movement all the figures.

It has been repeatedly pointed out that the painting as a whole is built on a series of antitheses:¹⁷ the upper half is overflowing with light, the lower half features almost Baroque chiaroscuro; calm and majestic figure of Jesus, accompanied by Moses and Elias, contrasts with the earthly chaos of agitated gestures that is taking place under the mount; the triumphant transformation of Christ as the ultimate confirmation of faith stands in counterpoint to the failure of his disciples, whose faith has not been strong enough. The depiction of two independent episodes runs counter to the classical unities of action, time and place, formulated for ancient Greek drama by Aristotle,¹⁸ and through analogy between painting and theatre very much in vigour in the Renaissance.¹⁹ In spite of Vasari’s high praises, this disunity led to less than enthusiastic appreciations of the Transfiguration in later times and ages.

Jonathan Richardson, in the second half of the eighteenth century, reproached Raphael for the violation of classical unities in a grotesquely deferential form;²⁰ several years later, Goethe informed us from Rome that the Transfiguration is far from being considered the master’s most beloved work by the fellow citizens of the Eternal City;²¹ both verdicts appropriated by otherwise very responsive French art circles at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the painting was ‘liberated’ from Rome and moved to Paris.²² Even the Nestor of modern Renaissance studies, Jakob Burckhardt, considered the Transfiguration ‘a daring work’²³ and his good friend, Friedrich Nietzsche, did not shy from using it as an illustration for the main differences between the Apollonian and Dionysian principles in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy.²⁴

It comes as no surprise, then, that the striking dichotomy, cleaving the painting into two apparently disconnected episodes, brought forth a multitude of different interpretations. Some preparatory drawings and a modello by one of Raphael’s students (likely Giulio Romano) seem to indicate that the Renaissance master intended to depict only the episode of the transfiguration, fully in line with traditional iconographic conventions we find in the paintings of the same subject by Botticelli or Bellini. It is possible that the inclusion of the scene portraying the unsuccessful attempt of the Apostles to heal a possessed boy has been incorporated due to the rivalry between Raphael and Michelangelo’s protégé Sebastiano del Piombo, who also happened to win a contract for an altarpiece – a contract sponsored by the very same Giulio de’ Medici and for the very same altarpiece of the Narbonne cathedral. Sebastiano produced the dramatic Resurrection of Lazarus, which may have prompted Raphael to rework his project ex post and to introduce no less dramatic motif of the cleansing of the possessed boy.²⁵ Other interpretations identified in the painting are a symbolic reference to the 1456 Siege of Belgrade and the resulting victory of Christian armies over Ottoman forces, a victory closely connected with the Crusades against Muslims fomented by the popes Callixtus III and Leo X.²⁶ For others still, Raphael’s Transfiguration is a visual representation of the primatus Petri (‘you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it’).²⁷ Peter is, after all, one of the Apostles accompanying Jesus on the mount Tabor and it has been suggested that it was his absence that frustrated the efforts of other Apostles to work miracles and heal the possessed boy – a visual representation of Peter’s singular authority has been viewed as a counter-reaction to the emerging Protestant movements.²⁸

Some scholars contextualized the painting on the background of the liturgy of Ember days: In Mark, Jesus says to his disciples that the evil spirit possessing the boy ‘can come out only through prayer [and fasting]’;²⁹ moreover, the professional curriculum of the contractor might have played a role as well – Giulio de’ Medici had been elected cardinal on Ash Wednesday and his titular Roman church of Santa Maria in Domnica had been the station church for the second Sunday of Lent.³⁰ Raphael’s Transfiguration has also been connected to Sebastiano del Piombo’s frescoes in the Borgerini chapel of San Pietro in Montorio, the church that was the first to house Raphael’s last painting, which Giulio eventually donated to the Vatican several years later.³¹ However, the frescoes depicting the transfiguration of Christ in the upper lunette above the scene of the flagellation of Christ in the central space may rather be read in the context of Joachim de Fiore’s apocalyptic visions, expanded by João de Menezes da ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Text
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: Methodological schism in the study of religions
• 2 Naturalistic paradigm: Critical reflexion of religion in Presocratic philosophy
• 3 Protectionist paradigm: Early Christian literature between faith and reason
• 4 Naturalism and protectionism in the study of religions (1): The beginnings
• 5 Naturalism and protectionism in the study of religions (2): The rise and fall of phenomenology
• 6 Cognitive science of religion (1): Methodology
• 7 Cognitive science of religion (2): Terminology
• 8 Cognitive science of religion (3): Practical application
• 9 Conclusion: A return of the prodigal son?
• Notes
• Notes1
• Editions
• References
• Index
• Copyright