feuerbach’s theory o
TRANSCRIPT
FEUERBACH’S THEORY OF RELIGIOUS PROJECTION:
AN EXAMININATION OF RELIGION PRACTICE AMONG THE KAREN
ETHNIC GROUP OF SOUTH EAST ASIA
WERASAK YONGSRIPANITHAN
I.D, No. 6019498
A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
In Philosophy and Religion
Graduate School of Human Sciences
ASSUMPTION UNIVERSITY OF THAILAND
2019
ii
Copyright by
ASSUMPTION UNIVERSITY OF THAILAND
2019
iii
Dissertation Title: "FEUERBACH’S THEORY OF RELIGIOUS PROJECTION:
AN EXAMININATION OF RELIGION PRACTICE AMONG THE KAREN ETHNIC
GROUP OF SOUTH EAST ASIA"
By: WERASAK YONGSRIPANITHAN
Dissertation Advisor: DR. JOHN T. GIORDANO
Accepted by the Graduate School of Human Sciences, Assumption University in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy and
Religion
…………………………………………
(Assoc. Prof. Dr. Suwattana Eamoraphan)
Dean of the Graduate School of Human Sciences
Dissertation Examination Committee
….…..…………………………………….. Chair
(Dr. Agustinus Sugiyo Pitoyo)
…………..…………………..…………… Advisor
(Dr. John T. Giordano)
……………………………………...……. Member
(Dr. Michael J. Clark)
……….………………………………..…. Member
(Dr. Kajornpat Tangyin)
……………………………………………. Member
(Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Malik)
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ABSTRACT
I.D. No.: 6019498
Name: WERASAK YONGSRIPANITHAN
Dissertation Title: "FEUERBACH’S THEORY OF RELIGIOUS PROJECTION:
AN EXAMININATION OF RELIGION PRACTICE AMONG THE
KAREN ETHNIC GROUP OF SOUTH EAST ASIA"
Advisor: Dr. JOHN T. GIORDANO
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ludwig Feuerbach’s theory of religious projection is an alternative interpretation of the
significance of religion. He posits the meaning of religion starting from the human standpoint
as a first reference; this is to say that if humans don't exist neither does religion. . This
dissertation examines the theory of Feuerbach as interpreted by two scholars, Marx Wartofsky
and Van Harvey who have dedicated much academic research to the subject and in their books
push researchers to make a more serious study of the subject.
The various interpretations give some light to the one doing an examination of the
Karen understanding of that mysterious being who reveals his relationship with humanity in
daily life. One can assert that religion opens a horizon for man searching for understanding
and fulfillment of life because, for man the mysterious being is no longer far away but one
with which an intimate relationship can be established. Religion provides a framework for self-
understanding. For Feuerbach it is a projection of man; others see more than that.
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We are living in the world where many people no longer have the belief in the
sacredness of things and are less aware of the existence of any mysterious being. This
dissertation would like to offer some ideas for a reencounter with this dimension of life. The
Greek historian Herodotus wrote that in all his travels, he had never come across a people with
no religion. Traditionally every culture or way of life managed space and time in such a way
that it enabled people to relate to what was transcendent or mysterious in their environment.
This thesis, especially the latter part, is another attempt to highlight the importance of
the cultural dimension, not for the purpose of comparison but to interpret its meaning and share
this with others. The effort to do this may be a contribution to harmony and dialogue
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My gratitude in the first place is to Dr. John Giordano, who kindly advised and
encouraged me to do serious work as a scholar. His expertise and his academic abilities were a
constant inspiration for me. He read widely and supported me in a very competent way as I
worked on topics such as the discovery of indigenous wisdom as a condition for promoting
inculturation. I also wish to express my gratitude to Fr. Patrick A. Connaughton for his help
and useful observations on many occasions.
I owe a great debt of gratitude to the Faculty of Religion and Philosophy, Assumption
University, especially Dr. Worayuth Sriwarakuel, Dr. Michael Clark, Dr. Veerachart
Nimanong, Dr. Mohammad Malik, Dr. Kajornpat Tangyin and Dr. Shang Wen Wang. With
their wisdom, guidance and encouragement I was able to bring this dissertation to its
completion.
I am also very grateful to Assumption University for the financial support of a
scholarship. This university has given an opportunity to those who want to pursue anacademic
field but lack the financial resources. It is a place that offers the possibility and strengthens the
desire to work for the development of humanity.
I really owe a debt of gratitude also to all the friends in the seminar class. I have always
experienced a cordial friendship as we searched for the truth together. Without their
understanding and support this dissertation would not have been possible.
May God bless all the people who have supported me, and of course whoever may read
this thesis also.
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CONTENTS
Page
COPYRIGHT ............................................................................................................. ii
APPROVAL .............................................................................................................. iii
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................... iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................... vi
CONTENTS ............................................................................................................... vii
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background and Significance of Study ............................................... 4
1.2 Dissertation Statement ........................................................................ 6
1.3 Research Questions ............................................................................. 7
1.4 Research Objective .............................................................................. 7
1.5 Preceding Relevant Research .............................................................. 8
1.6 Scope of the Study .............................................................................. 8
1.7 Definitions of Terms used in the research ........................................... 9
1.8 Research Methodology ........................................................................ 12
1.9 Expected Results ................................................................................. 12
CHAPTER II FEUERBACH, INTERPRETATIONS AND EVALUATION
2.1 Introduction ......................................................................................... 13
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2.2 The Essence of Christianity ................................................................ 15
2.2.1 The major themes of God, Religion and Projection
in Essence of Christianity........................................................ 16
2.2.1.1 God in The Essence of Christianity ................................... 16
2.2.1.2 Religion in The Essence of Christianity ............................ 19
2.2.1.3 Religion in general............................................................. 20
2.3 Some Philosophical Predecessors of Feuerbach ................................. 21
2.3.1 Xenophanes of Colophon .......................................................... 21
2.3.2 Giambattista Vico ...................................................................... 22
2.3.3 David Hume .............................................................................. 23
2.4 Feuerbach’s theory of religious projection ......................................... 25
2.5. Atheism: Three followers of Feuerbach ............................................. 29
2.5.1 Karl Marx .................................................................................. 29
2.5.2 Friedrich Nietzsche ................................................................... 30
2.5.3 Sigmund Freud .......................................................................... 31
2.6 New Philosophy of the Future............................................................. 31
2.6.1 History of Modern Philosophy .................................................. 32
2.6.2 Critique of Hegel ....................................................................... 34
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2.6.3 Philosophy of the Future ........................................................... 36
2.7 The Task of Interpretation ................................................................... 36
2.7.1 Some comments on interpretation in general ............................ 36
2.8 Interpretations of Feuerbach’s Work .................................................. 39
2.8.1 Hans Küng ................................................................................. 40
2.8.2 Cornelio Fabro .......................................................................... 43
2.9 More Positive Alternative Interpretations ........................................... 46
2.9.1 Max W. Wartofsky .................................................................... 46
2.9.2 Van Harvey ............................................................................... 51
2.9.3 Fokke Sierksma ........................................................................ 58
2.10 Critiques ............................................................................................ 60
2.10.1 Wartofsky ................................................................................ 60
2.10.2 Harvey ..................................................................................... 61
2.10.3 Sierksma .................................................................................. 62
2.10.4 Is Buddhism a projection? ....................................................... 63
2.10.5 Conclusion ............................................................................... 63
CHAPTER III APPLICATION: KONGBOON KHAO
3.1 Introduction ......................................................................................... 66
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3.2 A brief history and belief of Karen ..................................................... 67
3.3 Kong Boon Khao ................................................................................ 71
3.4 Conclusion .......................................................................................... 87
CHAPTER IV INCULTURATION
4.1 Introduction ......................................................................................... 89
4.2 The Challenges of Inculturation .......................................................... 90
4.3 Religion and Myth: Joseph Campbell ................................................. 93
4.4 Function and transmission of Religion: Aloysius Pieris ..................... 95
4.5 One Religions or Many? John Milbank .............................................. 97
4.6 Ethnic Groups and the Challenge of Modernization ........................... 99
4.6.1 Bible Reflection ......................................................................... 99
4.6.1.1 God: pure Being ................................................................ 99
4.6.1.2 Jesus: God and Man .......................................................... 100
4.6.1.3 Man and nature .................................................................. 100
4.6.2 Catholicism ................................................................................ 101
4.6.3 Salt and Light for itself .............................................................. 102
4.6.4 Awareness of Church already present but still, not yet ............. 103
4.7 A case study; “Host” made of rice ...................................................... 104
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4.8 Transition ............................................................................................ 108
4.9 Triple dialogue .................................................................................... 110
4.9.1 Church dialogue ........................................................................ 110
4.9.2 Prayer dialogue.......................................................................... 111
4.9.3 Inculturation dialogue ............................................................... 111
4.10 Conclusion ........................................................................................ 113
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION, RECOMMENDATIONS AND FURTHER STUDY
5.1. Conclusion ......................................................................................... 115
5.2. Recommendations; The felicity principle .......................................... 117
5.3. Recommendations for Further Study ................................................. 119
REFERENCES ....................................................................................................... 122
AUTOBIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................... 130
The Story of ‘Calling to the Spirit of Rice’ ........................................................... 131
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
Do the thoughts of a philosopher, written as the industrial revolution was about to begin;
have any relevance for our digital age? The philosopher I refer to is Ludwig Feuerbach, a
significant but now rarely-mentioned thinker of the 19th century. His critique of religion had a
wide influence in his time. Today there are various interpretations of his thought and work.
Some would see it as a foundation stone for atheism; others would call him an authentic early
researcher of the philosophy of religion, a thinker who raised many of the questions that needed
to be asked in a world that was leaving behind a static vision of religion and culture.
My interest in Feuerbach’s theory of religion began in 2012 when I was an MA student
at Rome. At that time I wrote a short thesis with the title Fabro criticizes Feuerbach referring
to the work of an Italian critic of Feuerbach. In 2017 I was admitted to Assumption University,
Thailand to study for a PhD. My interest in Feuerbach continued and the more I get to know
about him the more I came to believe that he has something to say to those of us who practice
a religion in our own times. In this work I also try to show, with the help of some commentators,
how Feuerbach’s theory of religion could be reinterpreted in a way that would have some
relevance in Thailand. This is presented in a case study from the perspective of the Karen
people; a subject influenced by my own personal background as a Karen. I have focused on the
key role played by rice in that culture; an element with a symbolism which makes it much more
than just food for Karen and for many South of East Asian people.
Feuerbach’s best-known work is The Essence of Christianity and here he develops at
length his basic thesis that religion is ‘a projection of man’ but it is a theme.
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which appears in many of his other writings. The idea has a long history. I will write more
about this in Chapter II.
Feuerbach’s collected works are contained in the 19 volume Gesammelte Werke edited
under the supervision of Werner Schuffenhauer and published by Akademie-Verlag in Berlin.
I will not be quoting from this original collection because of the limitations of my German
language. Most of the direct quotations in this dissertation are from the translation of The
Essence of Christianity written by Feuerbach, in 1841. This book has two main divisions. The
first part looks at the more positive dimensions of religion and the second part at the negative
aspects. In The Essence of Christianity Feuerbach explains his understanding of human nature
and of religion. When we talk about religion, belief or faith we must keep in mind that this is
something specific to humans. Humans, he emphasizes, are a definite kind of species. Like
other animals they have a physical existence which demands that they eat and drink but they
have the kind of brain that enables them to think.
A second work of Feuerbach that I will refer to is Principles of Philosophy of the
Future. Why do I emphasize this work? Feuerbach wrote this book in 1843. It is divided into
three parts – i) a History of Modern Philosophy ii) a Critique of Hegel iii) Principles of the
New Philosophy. It is supposed to be methodological argumentation. I will show that in this
book, Feuerbach presents an argument that the modernizers of his day have lost touch with
reality because of their confusion of the concepts of reason and understanding.
For Feuerbach, reason is the most important instrument or capacity of man. The whole
man must always be kept in view by the philosopher. It means that man is composed of
physical, intellectual and spiritual elements.
Today, those who know a little about Feuerbach think of him as one who had cut
himself off entirely from his Christian roots. This is because of his writings on religion and
especially because of his influence on Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. There were however
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important Christian Protestant theologians such as Karl Barth of the Swiss Reformed Church
and Martin Buber an Austrian Jew. Both studied his work and believed he had an important
contribution to make. There are philosophers, such as Italian Cornelio Fabro and Swiss Hans
Küng, who also see in Feuerbach’s critique something that is worth highlighting. In the light
of so much negative writing about Feuerbach they see that there are also propositions that
should be taken into account. After examining Feuerbach’s theory of religion, I will examine
what positive elements are contained in his propositions in order to see which should be taken
into consideration by those who are seeking a deeper and more purified understanding of what
religion is.
Apart from the religious thinkers mentioned above, I will discuss more at length the
views of a number of authors who offer profound and different interpretation of how
Feuerbach’s theory of projection might be understood in our own times. One is an American
academic Marx Wartofsky who writes that Feuerbach is not necessarily to be seen as positivist
and atheist. His works should be read in deeper way. Another commentator Van Harvey, also
American, is more positive than Wartofsky. He analyzes religious projection by use of two
kinds of metaphor. One is what he calls the Beam metaphor and the second the Grid metaphor.
Harvey offers an interpretation of Feuerbach’ theory of projection as the activity of man who
is searching for something, although this lies behind what is projected. Fokke Sierksma from
the Netherlands a theologian, is also concerned with the meaning of projection. For him, every
religion, even Buddhism, is a kind of projection. Projections are an effort to keep a balance of
the ‘inner and outer’ worlds of the whole man. I will use material from these authors to support
my argumentation that elements of Feuerbach’ theory of projection can be interpreted in a
positive way.
After discussing Feuerbach’s theory of religion and presenting some views of the
various interpreters of his theory of projection I will apply this analysis of religious projection
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to the religious culture of the Karen people and examine what might be considered a kind of
projection in their lives. Rice is an essential and important element of life among the Karen; it
has a symbolic value, it is a vehicle for the promotion of mutual relationships. Its symbolism
and significance is something much more than just rice as food. It carries a number of other
symbolic meanings that refer to something that goes far beyond the purely material; one could
say that is also has a dimension connected with mystery. Finally I will take up the theme of the
place of rice in the process of inculturation and as an element that somehow facilitates contact
with mysterious being. This is a Karen perspective or pointer to the divine, one of the many
that are found in our world.
This dissertation adds one more to the many works and articles which have attempted
to interpret Feuerbach’s theory of religious projection. Hopefully, it could at least be a starting
point to stimulate the interest of readers.
1. 1 Background and Significance of the Study
Feuerbach was a contemporary of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx. His basic thesis is
that God, and much of religious belief and practice, is a projection of man. God has no existence
in some transcendental world; man merely projects his deepest desires on to an imagined
object. Feuerbach writes:
Man—this is the mystery of religion—projects his being into objectivity, and then
again makes himself an object to this projected image of himself thus converted into a
subject; he thinks of himself, is an object to himself, but as the object of an object, of
another being than himself. Thus here. Man is an object to God. (Feuerbach, 1841, p.
29-30).
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From this perspective Christianity and its view of human destiny is something invented.
Everything valued by humankind concerning its essence are gathered together and projected
on to, or turned into a God.
Feuerbach is not a philosopher that is read a lot today. Those who do read him usually
look only at his earliest books and then believe that all the other works he wrote are more or
less along the same lines; ones that give a very negative view of religion. There are some
authors who do not agree with this. They think that there are positive elements in Feuerbach
and that there was a continual development in his thought. Some of the philosophers I will
discuss here have seen him as a serious philosopher of religion. They have interesting insights
about how to interpret the theory of projection in The Essence of Christianity.
In the final pages I will make some applications of this projection theory to the belief
of the Karen people of South East Asia. The Karen people are greatly influenced by their
animism. Of special interest is Wartofsky’s development of the terms esoteric and exoteric and
Harvey’s concept of projection understood as a beam or grid. The Karen people project their
understanding of the meaning of life through their belief in Ta Hti Ta Tau (Fung & Yoko)
similar to the place of God in Christianity. They exemplify that religion has a role as a
projection. I will show how ideas from Wartofsky and Harvey are useful as tools of
interpretation The Karen’s belief, coming from animism and then Christianity provides a
worldview and religion in which Karen people found a profound meaning of life.
In 1950, the missionaries came among the Karen. This was a time when sacrificial
offerings such as pigs or chickens, familiar creatures in use as sacrifice, were coming to an end.
Christianity arrived among them at an appropriate time. This religion was quickly adopted.
When Christianity came the Karen found that this new religion offered the fulfillment of their
concept of salvation. Jesus said ‘It is mercy I want, not sacrifice’ (Mat 12:7). With the passing
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of time an understanding of this new religion was deepened in the life of the Karen people. It
shaped the way of life and worldview.
I will examine also the religious beliefs of the Karen people as a communal projection.
Feuerbach’s attitude to Christianity is criticized for dealing merely with individual projection
but among Karen people, there is a kind of communal projection expressed through Kong Boon
Khao. It is exercised by Karen people when they recognize that rice is the most important
element of their life, therefore it becomes a projected image of charity in the community. This
activity is not just organized by one village; it has now spread to other villages. This is a kind
of projection image, but it does not relate to the individual alone. It is a communal projection
to promote a new community, a putting into practice of the command of Jesus ‘Love your
neighbor’ (Mk 12: 31).
This communal projecting has some similarities to English philosopher John Milbank’s
theory of universal elements of religion but for him, Christians are following a unique pattern
and he stresses sameness rather than cultural difference. Through this research we will find that
Christian communities are living with faith in Christ in accordance with their own
understanding. Finally I write about the concept of ‘inculturation’ which is employed to speak
of the idea of ‘translating’ religious concepts and practice into local culture.' Each local Church
in accordance with its own culture represents the Universal Church.
1.2 Dissertation Statement
Feuerbach's understanding of religion has usually been interpreted as a critique of
religious belief where God is considered merely as a projection of human essence. In other
words, religious belief does not point to any reality beyond human essence. But there are
more positive ways of understanding Feuerbach's thought and for this purpose I will use two
authors already mentioned Marx Wartofsky and Van Harvey. Wartofsky stresses that
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projection also includes latent and hidden meanings. Harvey emphasizes tha t religious
projection itself is a way by which a people orient themselves to life. These approaches are
more positive in that they do not necessary diminish religious belief. And further, they allow
an appreciation for the living practice of religion among diverse groups of people.
This dissertation wishes to illustrate this by examining the manner in which
Feuerbach's theory of religion can sharpen our understanding of indigenous Christian
religious practice – in this case, Karen Christianity. It will show how the living practice of
Karen Christianity is animated by various forms of projection and possesses deeper latent and
hidden meanings. This can be seen especially in the Kong Boon Khao, or the practices of the
rice merit bank and its use as a religious image that underlies Karen understanding of
Christianity. This approach is important in that it balances the more universal approaches to
religious inculturation, and it appreciates the importance of the ‘something more’ that diverse
cultural group project into their practice of Christianity.
1.3 Research Questions
1.3.1 Can Feuerbach’s projection theory be reinterpreted in a more positive way?
1.3.2 How can Karen belief be described as a projection but something more than that?
1.3.3 How can Kong Boon Khao (Rice Merit Network) be considered as projection but at the
same time one that leads to an experience of God?
1.4 Research Objectives
1.4.1 To study Feuerbach’s writings, especially The Essence of Christianity, and clarify what
he means when he says that religion is a projection.
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1.4.2 To study religio-culture among the Karen people to see if some of Feuerbach’s
interpretations might be applicable to their understanding and practice of religion.
1.4.3 To study the importance of inculturation as a projection from the perspective of Karen
people.
1.5 Preceding Relevant Research
This research will examine some writings of Feuerbach, Wartofsky, Harvey, Sierksma,
Milbank, Campbell and Pieris, all academics with an expertise in Feuerbach’s writings. It will
also examine some of the research that has been done on Karen culture; Marshall, Smeaton,
Fung, Yoko, Thienviharn and Wongjomporn. They are respected researchers in the Asian
context and they are well-known both inside and outside Thailand.
1.6 Scope of the Study
1.6.1 This thesis focuses on the philosophical perspective of religion as a projection in the
writings of Feuerbach
1.6.2 This study will provide an understanding of Feuerbach’s belief that religion is a
projection of man.
1.6.3 This study will examine two readings of Feuerbach’s theory of projection; Wartofsky
and Harvey and their interpretation.
1.6.4 From a philosophical perspective my hope is that it will generate an awareness of some
present-day elements of religion and the need for inculturation at every level of Church life
and activity.
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1.7 Definitions of Terms used in the research
Image
What is the 'stuff' of religious consciousness? Wartofsky explains that, for Feuerbach,
it is made up of images – but a clarification is necessary. For example, a photocopy is an
image of an original. For Feuerbach religious consciousness consists of images, but they are
no longer images of an original in the outside world. In Christianity the image is not a bridge
in the way it functions in natural religions for example. Where do these Christian images
come from? They are the products of the imagination and what Feuerbach calls a 'psychic
pathology.' What is important is not any original object itself but the human relationship to
this object. Its being is psychological. Wartofsky's summary is 'The objects of religious
consciousness are the images of human nature projected in an objective form' (Wartofsky,
1977, p. 253). So images have a human origin.
Beam Metaphor
The 'beam' is one of the words used by Harvey explain a certain kind of projection. He
explains its origin. “The first type tends to use metaphors taken from the cinema” (Harvey,
1997, p. 235). How is it applied? In the cinema the images that are 'inside' the machine are
projected or sent out like a beam, thrown on to, an outside screen. This type of projection has
four characteristics; all of them can be attributed to inner psychic processes: “Firstly, this
type tends to view anthropomorphism as a paradigmatic type of religious belief, secondly, it
tends to postulate some sort of inner psychic mechanism that causes and, hence, explains the
religious projection, thirdly, it recollects the view of human nature, the postulated inner
mechanism and the hermeneutic principles that guide the interpretation of the religious
projection, fourthly, it is the theory of human nature which explains the working of the
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projecting mechanism and yields the principles of interpretation also provides the criteria for
judging” (Harvey, 1997, p. 235-236). This beam metaphor is applicable to the 'early'
Feuerbach which presents religious ideas in a purely materialistic manner.
Grid Metaphor
Harvey's second idea the 'grid' has a different focus. Here the metaphor is taken from
the 'toolbox' of the map-maker. In order to put the pieces together in some intelligible order
the map-maker uses a grid, a kind of matrix of crossed lines. He places rivers and mountains
and islands like jigsaw pieces on his grid. When applied to the human mental process of
projection one could say that it helps the person to put different pieces of his/her experience
and knowledge together into a whole and see their relationships to one another. Harvey
asserts that “these conceptual scheme or grids are decisive for any given culture because they
mold the consciousness of all individuals within it and provide the basic of identity for
persons in those cultures” (Harvey, 1997, p. 235). The grid metaphor is considered to be more
applicable to the 'later' Feuerbach and his more mature writings.
Inculturation
Inculturation is a term that comes from religious studies rather than from sociology
where we find the words enculturation and acculturation. Inculturation refers to the adaptation
of a religious concept into the language or symbols of a local culture. For example in some
cultures black is an appropriate color for funeral ceremonies; in other countries it is white.
The commandment to love one another is most important one in the Gospel. How is this
expressed in different cultures? In Karen culture this may be expressed through the sharing of
rice with the poor or the orphan or the widow. One could say that rice is the means by which
the commandment is put into action in Karen life. Sri Lankan Aloysius Pieris writes about
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how each one lives in “his own conceptual world” Native people adjust the religious belief
into the way of life and the place where that people they are living. (Pieris, 1990, p. 17)
Among the Karen people rice is an element that gives them a continuous experience of the
transcendent of mysterious being.
Karen
The Karen are an indigenous people of eastern Burma (Myanmar) north and western
of Thailand. Anthropologists, and Karen oral tradition, indicate that they originated in the
Gobi desert and continued to move westward because of both persecution and famine.
Throughout the centuries rice has been the staple food of these people. Each family tries to
ensure that even if there is nothing else to eat there is rice. The language of the Karen, is
classified in the Sino-Tibetan family. Its highly distinct dialects have over five million
speakers altogether.
Kong Boon Khao
In past, Kong Boon Khao was organized by the Hihkof or the one recognized as the
leader of the village. This is referred to as the first wave. Later on missionary priests took a
role for looking after the community. They adopted religious ideas, especially from
Christianity, to help the poor and the widows; this is spoken of as the second wave. In the
present day the project is run by each community to look after not only just a single
community but also to contribute rice for the village; this is the third wave. There is a new
rice merit network in Chiang Mai diocese which was founded by missionaries and later this
project has continued to promote mutual solidarit y among the Karen. (Historical
Documentation, 2019, pp. 39-58).
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Projection
Projection as used here is a term whose meaning gradually developed through time.
We could perhaps begin with Xenophanes’s anthropomorphic critique that men make gods in
their own image. Later interpretations were made by people such as Giambattista Vico and
David Hume. Ludwig Feuerbach dedicates a lot of time to this concept. In simple words it
means that humans transfer the content of their own wishes on to some imagined external
being.
1.8 Research Methodology
This research is qualitative and documentary. It will analyze carefully the ideas of
Feuerbach about projection. It will be based on primary and secondary sources. An important
source, in English, for the study of the function of religion among the Karen people is a thesis
by Ignatius Marshall and Donald Smeaton. The research takes into account Feuerbach’s
theories when examining the characteristics of religious practice among the Karen people.
1.9 Expected Results
1.9.1 To have a clearer understanding of what Feuerbach meant when he said that religion is a
human projection.
1.9.2 To analyze how Feuerbach sees concept of projection functioning at the individual and
communal projection.
1.9.3 While taking into account Feuerbach’s theory and critique, to reinterpret in a more
positive way some characteristics of projection in the inculturated Christianity among the
Karen people.
CHAPTER II FEUERBACH, INTERPRETATIONS AND EVALUATION
2.1 Introduction
At this point it will be helpful to introduce something about the family background and
personal life of Feuerbach. Ludwig Feuerbach was born on 28 July 1804. He was the third son
of jurist Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach. His father studied philosophy and law at
Jena in 1790s and he was knighted in Bavaria. Anselm Feuerbach, a well-known neo-classical
painter, was his nephew.
As a young man Ludwig was a devout Protestant and at the age of 19 enrolled in the
theological faculty of the University of Heidelberg. His father was satisfied that he would be
influenced there by important theologians of the day such as Heinrich Paulus. In fact he was
influenced by a radical one, Karl Daub. Feuerbach decided to transfer to Berlin where he
wanted to study theology under August Neander and Friedrich Schleiermacher, a famous
pioneer in the field of hermeneutics. In 1825, Feuerbach, against the wishes of his father,
enrolled in the philosophy faculty to study with G.W.F.Hegel. Later still he went to the
university of Erlanger where he wrote his Latin dissertation “De ratione, una, universali,
infinita” in 1828. He began to lecture on the history of philosophy there. He wrote his first
book “Thought on Death and Immortality” in 1830 but it was not a literary success. In 1833 he
published History of Modern Philosophy from Bacon to Spinoza. This was followed in 1837
by History of Modern Philosophy: Presentation, Development, and Critique of the Leibnizian
Philosophy. After these came “Pierre Bayle: A Contribution to the History of Philosophy and
Humanity in 1838. None of these four books were translated into English. The publication of
“The Essence of Christianity” in 1841 brought a change of fortune. It is still today considered
his masterpiece and its fame was spread by the fact that it was translated into English by the
well-known English novelist Mary Anne Evans (George Eliot).
14
After publishing The Essence of Christianity Feuerbach continued to focus on
philosophy so he wrote “Principles of the Philosophy of the Future” in 1843. Here he wanted
to advance his other philosophical arguments. He turned to religion again in 1844 with The
Essence of Faith According to Luther. He said that: “It was Luther, in short, who saw that
theology is really anthropology” (Harvey, Journal of Religion, Vol. 78, No. 1). Then one year
later, in 1845, he published “the Essence of Religion.” His “Lectures on the Essence of
Religion” were published in 1851 and “Theogony According to the Sources of Classical,
Hebrew and Christian Antiquity” in 1857. In preparation for this last book he had spent five
years learning Hebrew in order to be able to provide more mature reflections. Feuerbach
himself believed that his “Theogony According to the Sources of Classical, Hebrew and
Christian Antiquity” written in 1857 was his best work because it was the product of a mature
mind and reflection on religion. Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx praised the work of Feuerbach
for bringing about liberation in thinking about the place of religion in society and breaking the
chains of the Hegelian system. They said that Feuerbach established the truth that human
consciousness is the only consciousness or spirit that exists. The human being is part of nature;
talk of otherworldly realities only leads to alienation.
Feuerbach had been able to dedicate himself to writing because his wife was a part
owner of a porcelain factory. Unfortunately for them this went bankrupt in 1859, and the family
had to move to Rechenberg on the outskirts of Nuremberg. In spite of his limited financial
condition he continued with his collected works, a project he had already begun in 1846. One
of the titles was “God, Freedom and Immortality from the standpoint of Anthropology” which
included his unfinished essay “On Spiritualism and Materialism.” He died on 13 September
1872.
In reading The Essence of Christianity one must be aware that his examination of this
belief system is one among the multiple beliefs systems in the world. I argue that one can
15
clearly perceive the purpose of the author by looking at the structure and the division of this
book. At the end of this chapter I argue that his ‘Principles of Philosophy of the Future’ is his
attempt at a draft in which he affirms human nature as the foundation stone of his project.
2.2 The Essence of Christianity
The Essence of Christianity is generally regarded as Feuerbach’s best work; the one in
which he develops in detail his theory of projection. Many changes have taken place in what
we might call 'the world of religion' since the days of Feuerbach. Are his writings still of some
relevance? It is a reasonable question but one for which there is also a reasonable answer in
our own times when religious faith is under scrutiny and there are plenty of apostles of atheism.
Was Feuerbach an early preacher of atheism? I will try to answer that question later.
Feuerbach divides his Essence of Christianity (from here on Christianity) into two parts.
The first part is “The true or anthropological essence of religion” and the second part is “The
false or theological essence of religion”. We can ask how he made this division and what his
intention was. A number of philosophers we will mention examine these two parts. Among
them, they have different explanations. I would like to look at these and offer my own
explanation as to why I support the more positive interpretation of projection. This “positive”
interpretation is already displayed by the structure of Christianity where the author affirms that
Part I must be counted as describing the authentic essence of religion. Feuerbach wanted to
collect the different meanings of religious belief that could be found in the world he knew.
Religion is something that is practiced by many ordinary people; not those of unsound mind
who easily imagines something which has no foundation. Referring to the two parts of
Christianity the German theologian Karl Barth says that in the first part, “he shows quite
unpolemically that the true meaning of theology is in its stating the identity of all predicates of
the divine subject and the human subjects; and consequently, also, of the identity of these
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subjects themselves” (Feuerbach, 1841, p. xv). Barth accepts that Feuerbach intentionally
affirmed in the first part the essential elements of Christianity without which Christianity would
seem to have no relevance. Barth continues that in the second part “he goes on to the attack
and demolishes the distinction between theological and anthropological predicates; that is, he
dissolves the false meaning of theology into a nullity, and absurdity” (Feuerbach, 1957, p. xv).
Theology and philosophy are different disciplines. This second part shows the discord
between them for the reason that if theology is irrational, it can’t be called even theology.
People who read the first part of Christianity carefully will see how Feuerbach sets out to
describe this belief. He believes that this is something positive and objective. In the negative
second part Feuerbach knocks down what he considers to be all the ‘straw men’ which the
theologians have invented and which have sent humans down the wrong road in search of the
meaning of their lives.
Feuerbach is really a materialist, all reality can be explained by reference to man's
essence and nature. This nature acquires its knowledge through its sensuousness, not from some
external agent. But I argue that even in this materiality something of the mysterious being or
God can be recognized.
2.2.1 The major themes of God, Religion and Projection in Essence of Christianity
There are two themes that are dealt with again and again in this book, religion and God.
I will first examine where he writes about God.
2.2.1.1 God in The Essence of Christianity
Feuerbach has various descriptions of God. Many of them are not easily understood.
The following is one of those descriptions.
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God as God, that is, as a being not finite, not human, not materially conditioned, not
phenomenal, is only an object of thought. He is the incorporeal, formless,
incomprehensible – the abstract negative being: he is known, i.e. becomes an object
only by abstraction and negation (via negationis). Why? Because he is nothing but the
objective nature of the thinking power, or in general of the power or activity, name it
what you will, whereby man is conscious of reason, of mind, of intelligence. There is
no other spirit that is (for the idea of spirit is simply the idea of thought, of intelligence,
of understanding, every other spirit being a species of the imagination) no other
intelligence which man can believe in or conceive than the intelligence which
enlightens him, which is active in him. He can do nothing more than separate the
intelligence from the limitations of his own individuality. The ‘infinite spirit’ in
distinction from the finite, is therefore nothing else than the intelligence disengaged
from the limits of individuality and corporeality, – for individuality and corporeality
are inseparable – intelligence posited in and by itself (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 35)
What makes Feuerbach difficult to interpret is that this description of God is followed
some pages later by another description of the meaning of the Christian doctrine of the
incarnation. This one has a different tone. He writes:
The consciousness of the divine love or what is the same thing, the contemplation of
God as human, is the mystery of the Incarnation. The Incarnation is nothing else than
the practical material manifestation of the human nature of God. God did not become
man for his own sake; the need, the want of man – a need which still exists in the
religious sentiment – was the cause of the Incarnation. God became man out of mercy:
thus he was in himself a human God before he became an actual man; for human want,
human misery, went to his heart. The Incarnation was a tear of divine compassion, and
hence it was only the visible advent of a Being having human feelings, and therefore
essentially human. (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 50)
Here Feuerbach analyze the nature of the love expressed in the Christian doctrine of the
Incarnation. He says "the need, the want of man – a need which still exists in the religious
sentiment – was the cause of the Incarnation." The doctrine has a human origin. It is a kind of
wish-fulfilment. Nevertheless here I would also interpret that even in this glimpse of the
presence of God, Feuerbach would say 'imaginary' or projected, in the mind of believer there
is reflected something of the awareness of mysterious being.
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Later again Feuerbach writes:
For every religion which has any claim to the name presupposes that God is not
indifferent to the beings who worship him, that therefore what is human is not alien to
him, that, as an object of human veneration, he is a human God. (Feuerbach, 1841, p.
54)
In his projection, man thinks of an object but this object is nothing more than man
himself; so the incarnation is described as a human invention. For Feuerbach, religion is a way
of representing a response to a human need.
Much further on, he writes:
The contradiction to the religious spirit in the proof of the existence of God lies only in
this, that the existence is thought of separately, and thence arises the appearance that
God is a mere conception, a being existing in idea only, — an appearance, however,
which is immediately dissipated; for the very result of the proof is, that to God belongs
an existence distinct from an ideal one, an existence apart from man, apart from thought
– a real self-existence. (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 198-199)
Feuerbach continually challenges readers to accept his idea that the God in the believer's
mind is just the idea of man, projected according to the human imagination. Whenever man
creates an idea of God, he is actually venerating his own essence. Here I would ask the question
where does the idea come from if it has no reference or foundation. Feuerbach apparently does
not have any difficulty with this problem.
Many theologians believe that God’s existence must be confirmed by revelation.
Revelation is the direct experience of the voice of God. So Feuerbach causes controversy when
he says that God is a product of man's imagination. But man’s position is recognized by
Feuerbach as something radical. For theologians, Feuerbach is dangerous, but Feuerbach
recognizes that belief needs to go beyond mere reason.
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With the idea of the existence of God is connected the idea of revelation. God’s
attestation of his existence, the authentic testimony that God exists, is revelation. Proofs
drawn from reason are merely subjective; the objective, the only true proof of the
existence of God, is his revelation. God speaks to man; revelation is the word of God;
he sends forth a voice which thrills the soul, and gives it the joyful certainty that God
really is. (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 204)
This challenges the connection of reason with Absolute Spirit in Hegelian tradition
where all religions would be explained by thought. Obviously, if one asserts that God is merely
an idea the conclusion is that God does not exist in reality.
2.2.1.2 Religion in the Essence of Christianity
Humans have desires and one of those is for certain perfections, such as the desire for
protection or love. These would be predicates of the perfect human life. Religion collects these
predicates, which clearly are not yet present, not yet realities in the world, and objectifies them,
or transfers them on to some divine figure. But their rightful place is on earth, not in heaven.
Religion is the disuniting of man from himself; he sets God before him as the antithesis
of himself. God is not what man is—man is not what God is. God is the infinite, man
the finite being; God is perfect, man imperfect; God eternal, man temporal; God
almighty, man weak; God holy, man sinful. God and man are extremes: God is the
absolutely positive, the sum of all realities; man the absolutely negative,
comprehending all negations. (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 33)
In the above Feuerbach underlines man’s keen awareness of all the things he lacks. He
might wish to be perfect, to be strong, and to be holy but he is not. These are made into attributes
of God who is everything that man is not. God becomes the symbol of everything that is
positive; in man there is only an awareness of all that is negative or lacking.
In the second part of Christianity Feuerbach writes both of the possible ‘moral
amelioration’ that religion can bring about and the possibility of dangerous forms of fanaticism.
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Religion is the relation of man to his own nature – therein lies its truth and its power of
moral amelioration;—but to his nature not recognized as his own, but regarded as
another nature, separate, nay, contradistinguished from his own: herein lies its untruth,
its limitation, its contradiction to reason and morality; herein lies the noxious source of
religious fanaticism, the chief metaphysical principle of human sacrifices, in a word,
the prima materia of all the atrocities, all the horrible scenes, in the tragedy of religious
history. (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 197)
The negative dimension for Feuerbach is that man can live with an illusion. Here man
imagines that there is a nature that is not connected with his own nature. Man projects his being
into another being which he calls God. Feuerbach strongly opposed the theologians who reduce
man to a being of little value. This kind of religion and theology is dangerous because it leads
interpreters astray and causes them to lose sight of the authentic value of the human being.
2.2.1.3 Religion in general
We now come to a second major themes in Feuerbach, the meaning and significance of
religion. It will be relevant first to briefly clarify our terms and show also that Feuerbach is not
the first to ask deep questions about religion.
According to Cicero the word ‘religion’ comes from the root ‘relegere’ which means
to retrace or re-read (Cicero, De natura deorum, II, 28). It can mean to ‘go through again’ but
in modern times ‘religare’ Augustine (De civitate Dei X, 3.) has defined it as ‘to bind fast or
bond between humans and God’.
Religion and the philosophy of religion are much-studied subjects today. People are
interested to know what and why people believe and what religion has to say about itself. We
could call Feuerbach a lifelong student of religion but he described himself as just a listener,
not 'a prompter' of religion. He examined the idea whether religious faith was founded on a
mysterious being who is communicating with man from the outside or whether it was produced
‘from the inside’ of the human mind.
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Some philosophers of recent times gave great attention to the meaning to religion in
general. Two of these who had a big influence are Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell. Eliade
claims that “for primitive people symbols are always religious because they point to something
real or to a structure of the world” (Eliade, 1959, p.98). The sacredness is an important
dimension of religion: it uses image but points to something real. Campbell says: “Religion is
really a kind of second womb. It’s designed to bring this extremely complicated thing, which
is a human being, to maturity, which means to be self-motivating, self-acting” (Campbell,
1991, p. 66). This is how Campbell explain the general meaning of religion; it is represented
through certain phenomena which demonstrate the experience of something which goes beyond
the merely physical perspective. One has to approach it with an open mind that is, be prepared
to look for something beyond the merely sensible. There is also a level of consciousness which
is the most important element humans use to understand of what he/she believes.
2.3 Some Philosophical Predecessors of Feuerbach
For at least 2,500 years there have been thinkers who criticized ideas commonly held
by the people of their time about gods and religious beliefs. Some of the critics tried to purify
the ideas, others acknowledge that it represents a search for something that is transcendent.
Here we briefly mention some of those questioners from the past.
2.3.1 Xenophanes of Colophon (570 B.C.E -478 B.C.E.)
The ideas of Feuerbach are not new. Over 2000 years before his time a Greek
philosopher said something similar. He was Xenophanes, a pre-Socratic philosopher, poet, and
social and religious critic. He was interested in shining some light on the idea of god among
the polytheistic cultural beliefs in ancient Greece. He observed the concept of gods found in
the work of Homer and Hesiod; gods in Greek myths are very like humans. They conducted
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themselves immorally by their stealing, deception, and adultery. Immortality is the only thing
that distinguishes gods from human. Xenophanes criticized this blameworthy misconduct of
the gods and questioned whether humans should recognize them as divine at all. He saw that
the origin of these ideas about the gods are due to human anthropocentric misconceptions and
projection of human images on the divine.
For Xenophanes God is not finite like human beings. Humans, animals, trees and other
thing have a limited existence. God on the other hand is outside or beyond the boundaries of
space and time. Xenophanes was arguing against the conception of gods as fundamentally
anthropomorphic. He sarcastically remarked that if cattle and horse and lions had hands or
could paint with their hands and creates works such men do, horse would create images of gods
like horse and cattle like cattle; they would portray the god’s shape and make their bodies of
such in a similar form to that which they themselves have.
Xenophanes was very much against this anthropomorphic image of God that man has
tried to create, a God who is like himself. For him, however, God is supreme among gods, God
is a being that is abstract, universal and unchanging and always present. Some of his ideas are
in accordance with attributes of God discussed by Christian apologist in some of the early
theological treatises. We can note here that the projection in which man depicts God, is
frequently not acceptable because the god of this projection is too much like the human, and
sometimes behaves like the human to such an extent that it is difficult to know why this god
should be regarded as a divinity. Nevertheless we can still ask what humans are searching for
when they create these projections.
2.3.2 Giambattista Vico
Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) was an Italian philosopher who, according to Max
Horkheimer, portrayed early civilization as one that is greatly influenced by fear of natural
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elements. These were personified by early humans who projected their own nature onto the
universe. That is the origin of the first institutions and customs. The primitive understanding
of the forces of nature in terms of the projection of human traits onto nature is the origin of
poetry which coincides with the onset of civilization. Vico makes a primary list of four
elements which are the main civilizing influences. He calls these the four causes or the four
elements of the civil universe; they are religion, marriage, orphanage home, and agriculture.
For Vico, Early humans projected their own character onto nature; this means that
natural forces appear to them from the outset as living beings akin to humans but stronger,
more powerful, and more terrifying.
Vico regarded myth as a necessary primitive stage of cognition, a stage from which our
science developed and which corresponded to an early stage of social development just like
our knowledge corresponds to the mental level of modern civilization. “Wherever a people has
grown savage in arms so that human laws have no longer any place among it, he wrote that the
only powerful means to tame it is religion”. (Vico, 1744, p. 177). Vico teaches that false
religions have their origin not in deception or imposture but in a necessary human development.
Vico's conception which shows him to be an ancestor of the anthropological construal of
religion by Ludwig Feuerbach is eminently lucid and well-developed. Vico shows that
projection is a part of what human being construct as civilization develops.
2.3.3 David Hume
David Hume (1711-1776) was a Scottish Enlightenment, historian, economist and
essayist. Today he is best known for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism,
skepticism and naturalism. He is remembered for the way in which he questioned how it comes
about that people can imagine that certain qualities belong to some objects. For example there
is no ground for deducing that when Ball A hit Ball B it caused it to move any more than to
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believe that night causes day because one follows the other. For Hume people have made
many mistaken deductions like this in both ethics and general philosophy. These mistaken
attributions are a sort of projection; and they are of several kinds.
Hume was as an empiricist. He observed that humans are limited by experience, but
this is not a defect in the science of human nature. It is true for all the sciences: “None of them
can go beyond experience, or establish any principles which are not founded on that authority”
(Hume, 1739, p.10). All explanations must come to an end somewhere. When we see that we
have “arrived at the utmost extent of human reason, we sit down contented”, for the only reason
we can give for our most general principles is “our experience of their reality” (Hume, 1739,
p. 9). He would find the meaning of projection, in case of necessary, is in the reality of this
appearance itself.
Hume says: “Thus my general position, that an opinion or belief is nothing but a strong
and lively idea derived form a present impression related to it, may be liable to the following
objection, by reason of a little ambiguity in those words strong and lively” (Hume, 1739, p. 60-
61). For him, the object of belief is a strong impression and lively community.
In the opening pages of his Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion David Hume indicates
the reasons for skepticism. This of course, in Hume's style, is somewhat concealed. Pamphilus,
the young observer and reporter (presumably Hume himself) of the conversations says 'nothing
but doubt, uncertainty, and contradiction, have as yet been the result of our most accurate
researches.' These still remain at the end of the dialogues.
Pamphilus, with some irony, introduces the dialogue to Hermippus:
What truth so obvious, so certain, as the being of a God, which the most ignorant ages
have acknowledged, for which the most refined geniuses have ambitiously striven to
produce new proofs and arguments? What truth so important as this, which is the ground
of all our hopes, the surest foundation of morality, the firmest support of society, and the
only principle which ought never to be a moment absent from our thoughts and
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meditations? But, in treating of this obvious and important truth, what obscure questions
occur concerning the nature of that Divine Being, his attributes, his decrees, his plan of
providence? These have been always subjected to the disputations of men; concerning
these human reason has not reached any certain determination. But these are topics so
interesting, that we cannot restrain our restless inquiry with regard to them; though
nothing but doubt, uncertainty, and contradiction, have as yet been the result of our most
accurate researches. (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4583/4583-h/4583-h.htm).
To conclude, Xenophanes criticized the religion of his day as anthropomorphic
projections. The gods are allowed to do what is not permissible for humans. One might then
ask why they should be given the name of gods. Vico situates religion within the development
of civilization and the need for social control and some primitive understanding of the world.
For Hume, an empiricist, out knowledge comes from experience; religion and ethics may be
based on lively impressions but, perhaps as in the case of causation, the content of these
impressions are then projected extra mentally as realities. Neither religion nor ethics are based
on demonstrable facts. These three philosophers are examples of the diverse ways of thinking
about the origin of religion.
2.4 Feuerbach’s theory of religious projection
Feuerbach is best remembered as one of the modern fathers of the theory that religion
is a human projection. I will now look at where it comes from and what it means? Then I will
address the question ‘When is the process of religious projection functioning in the sense
understood by Feuerbach? And then I will argue critically what the theory of projection of
Feuerbach might have to say to us as he attempts to explain the human belief in the existence
of God.
‘The Essence of Christianity’ contains the basic elements of Feuerbach’s theory of
religious projection. This is how he sets out his basic thesis:
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Man - this is the mystery of religion - projects his being into objectivity and then again
makes himself an object to this projected image of himself thus converted into a subject;
he thinks of himself is an object to himself, but as the object of an object, of another
being than himself. (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 29-30).
This is the beginning of the theory of religious projection that he was going to develop:
it is the thread that runs through all his arguments on religion. He set out to examine it seriously.
One of the mysteries of religion is how it is generated by a process of human projection. What
man worships is his own nature converted into an object outside of himself. Feuerbach was
drawing attention to the fact that man should be recognized as the true object of religion.
Feuerbach wrote that:
Man is nothing without an object. The great models of humanity, such men as reveal to
us what man is capable of; have attested the truth of this proposition by their lives. They
had only one dominant passion- the realization of the aim which was the essential object
of their activity. But the object to which a subject essentially, necessarily relates, is
nothing else than this subject’s own, but objective, nature. (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 4)
If man projects his subjective being into objectivity it means that man himself is made
an object of his own projection. It is notable that this projection begins first with ‘Man’ as the
reference. It is useless to talk about God if one neglects to refer to man; what can be the meaning
of religion without man? Feuerbach emphasized the significance of man’s ability to project as
the core of the mystery of religion. There is no religion without man. Religion is the business
of man who is the source of all ideas about God. Man projects and objectifies his being on to
God. This is the beginning of projection. Feuerbach wanted to show his deepened insight that
man should begin to understand his true nature as man and thus begin his journey towards
Absolute Being.
In ‘The Essence of Christianity’ Feuerbach notes the differences between man and what
he calls the brute; religion is the essential difference and clear distinction between them. This
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is an element which shows that religion is one of the basic elements of difference that radically
separates man from the other beasts although both have a physical nature. But a confusion of
language has contributed to a confused understanding.
Spirit without Nature is an unreal abstraction; consciousness develops itself only out of
Nature. But this materialistic doctrine is veiled in a mystical yet attractive obscurity,
inasmuch as it is not expressed in the clear, simple language of reason, but emphatically
enunciated in that consecrated word of the emotion – God. (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 87)
Man has a need to have other beings separate from him; it is a want or need coming
from the nature of man. This want or desire moves man’s being into another sphere and this
want represents man’s dignity and freedom. This want can be conscious or unconscious.
Feuerbach wrote:
God springs out of the feeling of a want; what man is in need of, whether this be a
definite and therefore conscious or an unconscious need – that is God. Thus the
disconsolate feeling of a void, of loneliness, needed a God in whom there is society, a
union of beings fervently loving each other. (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 73)
He notes here that this feeling is an essential part of human nature. If man desires God
this reflects a want of his human nature whether conscious or unconscious. Feuerbach wrote:
(A) limited consciousness is no consciousness; consciousness is essentially infinite in
nature. The consciousness of the infinite is nothing else than the consciousness of the
infinity of the consciousness; or, in the consciousness of the infinite, the conscious
subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature. (Feuerbach, 1841, pp. 2-3)
The consciousness is, whether of this or that, infinite by nature so there is no need to
argue that the desire for eternity comes through man’s consciousness. It must be understood
clearly that man, by nature, is searching for infinity; Feuerbach says that the nature of man is
open to infinite being.
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For Cornelio Fabro, Feuerbach grounded the sense of infinity in consciousness. This,
he says, is incorrect because (for Fabro) consciousness is not of the essence of man but is a
capacity. I believe that consciousness can’t find its essence in itself but it is correct to say that
consciousness is a means to reach eternity.
When we speak of this need for the infinite this may sound like the thought of St.
Augustine who wrote in his Confession “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart
is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” (Confession, I, 1. 1) As a philosopher he expressed his
feeling of a want in man that can only be answered by God. This feeling invites readers to turn
back to the very nature of man when man was just an embryo in mother’s womb. This feeling
is part of the nature of man. I argue that if feeling is recognized as a means of man to know
something, it would be counted as a part of mechanism of man then this feeling is, by nature,
a capacity of man and it is natural means man has for learning, something defined as the ability
of man. But Feuerbach misunderstood it as part of the essence of man. Feuerbach does make a
valid point when he agrees that religion begins with man’s desire or want.
In his biography Feuerbach said he was going to do philosophy and religion. Many see
it as a mixture of philosophy and theology. In contemporary philosophy there are two
hermeneutic, one of “collection” and the other of “suspicion” which are used to interpret
religion. He is included in the 'suspicion' group but not really one hundred percent because his
interpretation of religion allows the possibility that man needs religion and projection because
of the ‘desire’ of man to reach ‘self-understanding or self-knowledge.
Religion is a projection but through it man can get beyond his limitations. According
to Feuerbach, through religion, man comes to a self-understanding of how this process comes
about. The 'later Feuerbach' sees that religion and projection have a role to play. It is very
important to reflect on this because man by nature, needs a projection in order to express his
experience of mysterious things. He summarizes his great goal in life in the following words:
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My only wish is that I have not failed in the task I set myself and formulated in the
opening lectures: to transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into
thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into
students of this world, Christians who, by their own profession and admission, are half
animal, half angel, into men, into whole men. (Feuerbach, 1851, Lecture xxx)
Does he want to reduce theology into anthropology? The answer is yes. Why do
Christian theologians disagree with him? They say that he is using the methods of one science
to judge the content of a totally different discipline. Empirical sciences deal with one kind of
truth, theology with a different but equally valid one.
2.5 Atheism: Three followers of Feuerbach
During Feuerbach’s lifetime and in the years following his death three influential
thinkers followed in his footsteps; Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. They
have their own interpretations of what the essential meaning of religion is, but the common
core of their thinking is that religion is always negative because it is an obstacle to the progress
of humanity.
2.5.1 Karl Marx
Karl Marx wrote his Thesis on Feuerbach in 1845 but they were not published until
after his death. The publisher was Friedrich Engels who wrote “the first document in which is
deposited the brilliant germ of the new world outlook.” (Marx and Engels, 1969, p. 336). Engels
described Feuerbach’s influence on Marx:
Then came Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity. At a stroke it demolished the
contradiction by raising materialism again without more ado to the throne … How
enthusiastically Marx welcomed the new view of things and how much – despite all
critical reservations – he was influenced by it we can read in The Holy Family. (Küng,
1978, 191)
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Marx sets out to analyze the society of his day and lay down the rules for the liberation
of the working class, or proletariat. One of the obstacles he identified was religion. He says:
“religion sprang from the contradiction of this secular basis, form social antagonisms” (Mapke,
1973, p. 91). Religion was an obstacle for the progress of humanity and practicing a religion
causes people to abandon the fight for a better world now and put one’s faith in a future illusion,
Healthy people should work for the benefit of society now. Work is liberation for man. Religion
is part of the superstructure that justifies an oppressive system. Marx thought Feuerbach was
not radical enough. It was of him he was speaking when he made his other famous statement:
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is
to change it.”
2.5.2 Friedrich Nietzsche
In The Anti-Christ Nietzsche writes:
A critical examination of the Christian concept of God invites a similar conclusion, –
A people which still believes in itself still also has its own God. In him it venerates the
conditions through which it has prospered, its virtues – it projects its joy in itself, its
feeling of power on to a being whom one can thank for them. He who is rich wants to
bestow; a proud people needs a God in order to sacrifice. (Foreword No 16. Penguin
Books, 1990)
For Nietzsche “religion was a disorder of the instincts, a reaction to suffering and the
longing for another, morally better world” (Harvey, 1977, p. 5). Many people who know
nothing about Nietzsche know that he proclaimed ‘God is dead.’ Apparently the best
interpretation of this statement is that the God who is being proclaimed in the churches of the
Germany of Nietzsche’s day is no longer credible. As the opening quotation shows, he, like
Feuerbach, sees religion as a projection. It has very unhealthy consequences. It is based on
feelings of guilt and it has the effect of limiting the development of the really good people who
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would make a difference to society. Religion serves a purpose, but not a good one. It is used
for example when people are facing a difficult situation such suffering in life.
There is a challenge in Nietzsche. Like Feuerbach he wants to start from what he
considers the real truth about the human condition. A new moral order has to be created. The
illusions promoted by religion must be overcome.
2.5.3 Sigmund Freud
This is how one modern author summarizes the views of Freud on religion. The
language and ideas could have been written by Feuerbach:
Sigmund Freud held that religious beliefs are a product of wishful thinking. They are
an evasion of reality and a regression to childhood in the search for security in a hostile
world. Children are dependent on their fathers when they are small, but as they grow
older they recognize the limitations of their human fathers and seek a new security in
the projection of an idealized father-image on a cosmic scale. (Barbour, 2000, p. 154)
For Freud, religion was a collective neurosis. (Harvey, 1977, p. 5). He wrote that the
contents of religious belief were so irrational that religion could be considered as a mental
disorder. The title of one of his books The Future of an Illusion makes clear what should
become of religion. It is well-known that he is accepted as father of psychoanalysis.
Of these three, Marx is the only one who clearly speaks of his debt to Feuerbach but
both Nietzsche and Freud also have clear marks of his influence.
2.6 New Philosophy of the Future
Feuerbach wrote his The Principles of Philosophy of the Future in 1843. This book is
divided into three parts; a) History of Modern philosophy b) Critique of Hegel and c) Principles
of the New Philosophy. Principles of Philosophy of the Future is a second book in which we
32
can find some positive elements of Feuerbach’s thought. He writes that “the task of the modern
era was the realization and humanization of God – the transformation and dissolution of
theology into anthropology” (Feuerbach, 1843, p. 3).
2.6.1 History of Modern Philosophy
According to Feuerbach, the problem of religion or the image in man’s mind of God
begins with modern philosophy. Renè Descartes in the sixteenth century made his now-famous
affirmation “I think therefore I am.” In a world that is full of doubts and uncertainties this is
the one thing he can be certain of. If he is thinking then he must exist. This becomes a
foundation stone for philosophy that turns it towards what is abstract and internal. When he
comes to speak of the philosophy of his own time Feuerbach does not see developments since
the time of Descartes as positive:
The philosophy of the modern era was in search of something immediately
certain. Hence, it rejected the baseless thought of the Scholastics and grounded
philosophy on self-consciousness. That is, it posited the thinking being, the ego, the
self-conscious mind in place of the merely conceived being or in place of God, the
highest and ultimate being of all Scholastic philosophy; for a being who thinks is
infinitely closer to a thinking being, infinitely more actual and certain than a being who
is only conceived. Doubtful is the existence of God, doubtful is in fact anything I could
think of; but indubitable is that I am, I who think and doubt. Yet this self-consciousness
in modern philosophy is again something that is only conceived, only mediated through
abstraction, and hence something that can be doubted. Indubitable and immediately
certain is only that which is the object of the senses, of perception and feeling.
(Feuerbach, 1843, p. 37).
In response I would assert that in the philosophy of both Augustine and Thomas
Aquinas one can find plenty of material referring to the ways in which the natural world offers
revelation, for them the face of God.
33
Feuerbach believed that in the years after Descartes philosophy went down a very
different road. The abstractness of modern philosophy from the time of Descartes is something
Feuerbach rejects. This method reaches its peak in the theology of Hegel.
For this kind of philosophy what is important is the thinking mind. Basically this is
what man really is. It does not give any importance to feelings or important dimensions of
human life such as love. But this is not what real human life or human beings are. For a start
‘The true dialectic is not a monologue of the solitary thinker with himself. It is a dialogue
between “I” and “You”. (Feuerbach, 1843 p. 62). Human beings discover their real nature and
identity only when living in community.
A frequent phrase in Feuerbach’s work that gets the attention of the reader is his
reference to man’s desire for some ultimate necessary being. “God is the necessary being but
this necessity rests on the ground that he is a rational, intelligent being” (Feuerbach, 1843, p.
5). This idea of a necessary being comes from the mind of man so the Being is just an idea
which remains always in the mind of man. Feuerbach claims that “The necessary being is one
that it is necessary to think of, that must be affirmed absolutely and which it is simply
impossible to deny or annul, but only to the extent to which it is a thinking being itself”
(Feuerbach, 1843, p. 6). The modern era proclaims the idea of a God which is far away from
the real man who eats and drinks.
The confusion continues in modern philosophy where a distinction is not made between
subject and object. Feuerbach insists “That which is object in theism is subject in speculative
philosophy. That which is only the conceived and imaged essence of reason in theism, is the
thinking essence of reason itself in speculative philosophy” (Feuerbach, 1843, p. 7). Theistic
theologians and speculative philosophers, who appear to be talking about the same subject,
assert that they are talking about different realities. This leads to the idea of two subjects but in
different spheres.
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It is not difficult to understand Feuerbach when he says “God is an object of man and
of man alone and not of the animal” (Feuerbach, 1843, p. 8). God is an idea in the mind of man,
not in the mind of other creature. But then he goes on to say that modern man created or
invented God for himself. Then the hypothesis is that “If God is an object of man – and he is
indeed that necessarily and essentially – the essence of this object expresses nothing but man’s
own essence” (Feuerbach, 1843, p. 8). God springs out from the thought of man and then man
adores this God that he himself has invented in his own mind. Feuerbach continues: “Man
makes his thought, even his feelings, the thought and feeling of God; his own essence and
standpoint are made the essence and standpoint of God Speculative theology, however,
reverses this” (Feuerbach, 1843, p. 10). Some later writers criticized Feuerbach and expressed
the view that with this idea he planted the seeds of future atheism. Not everyone agrees with
this.
2.6.2 Critique of Hegel
In Feuerbach’s student days Hegel was one of his models. He took some of his courses
twice. He says that with Hegel modern philosophy reached the top of the mountain. Soon after
he finished his studies Feuerbach begins to reject Hegel but although this happened some of
the Hegelian method remained with him for the rest of his life. What, for Feuerbach, was the
basic problem with Hegel? This is what he writes:
The secret of Hegel's dialectic lies ultimately in this alone, that it negates theology
through philosophy in order then to negate philosophy through theology. Both the
beginning and the end are constituted by theology; philosophy stands in the middle as
the negation of the first positedness, but the negation of the negation is again theology.
At first everything is overthrown, but then everything is reinstated in its old place, as in
Descartes. The Hegelian philosophy is the last grand attempt to restore a lost and
defunct Christianity through philosophy, and, of course, as is characteristic of the
modern era, by identifying the negation of Christianity with Christianity itself. The
much-extolled speculative identity of spirit and matter, of the infinite and the finite, of
35
the divine and the human is nothing more than the wretched contradiction of the modern
era having reached its zenith in metaphysics. (Feuerbach, 1843, p. 21)
Max Wartofsky summarizes what happened.
In the Critique (of Hegel) Feuerbach examined the claims of absolute idealism, and
found this of the last grand philosophical systems wanting. In true Hegelian fashion he
uncovered the sense in which this system, like all others, was fatally limited and he
showed where its own self-contradiction lay. But Feuerbach’s critique is not a rejection
of Hegelian historicism, not a rejection of the dialectic. Rather it is a renewed
application of the very mode of analysis one would expect of a Hegelian. Its object is
to show the contradiction in which Hegel’s Logic is caught, and by extension to show
that an analogous flaw lies at the heart of Hegel’s Phenomonology. Thus the critique is
not a refutation of this or that particular aspect of Hegel’s encyclopedic work but rather
an attack on the conceptual foundations, on the Hegelian system itself, that is, on its
presuppositions. (Wartofsky, 1977, p. 37)
Marx was said to have turned Hegel upside down; Feuerbach said he wanted to stand
Hegel ‘on his feet’. He underlined the importance of matter, not just spirit’. This process of
abstraction leads humans away from an awareness of their own reality, and can be carried on
to great lengths. “It abstracts from all wherefrom it is possible to abstract without ceasing to
think, and it makes this act of abstraction from all objects its own beginning” (Feuerbach, 1843,
p. 20). Even though the thought is liberated to do this it wanders out somewhere but no one
knows “Wherefrom God is free, therefrom you must also free yourself if you want to reach
God; and you make yourself really free when you present yourself with the idea of God”
(Feuerbach, 1843, p. 20). Man believes that the freedom can be found in God so he convinces
himself that belief in this God can free him from the limitations of his human condition.
Feuerbach argued that “If you think of God without presupposing any other being or object,
you yourself think without presupposing any external object; the quality that you attribute to
God is a quality of your own thought” (Feuerbach, 1843, p. 20). The confusion in the human
36
mind between what is subjective and what is objective leads naturally to the false attribution
of predicates to God’s appearance.
2.6.3 Philosophy of the Future
In the introduction to his 1843 work The Principles of the Philosophy of the Future
Feuerbach wrote the following:
The philosophy of the future has the work of leading philosophy out of the realm of
departed spirits back to the realm of embodied living spirits; out of the godly felicity of
a world of thought without neediness back to the realities of human misery For this
purpose the philosophy of the future requires no more than a human understanding and
a human language. (II, 245)
The challenge for the philosophy of the future is to eliminate this division that has been
made between reason and feelings; between the head and the heart. The older philosophy has
misled people into thinking that the human can be divided up into separate parts for the purpose
of deeper study. There is only one human, the one who thinks, feels, eats and sleeps the one
made, above all, of matter.
2.7 The Task of Interpretation
2.7.1 Some comments on interpretation in general
Feuerbach's philosophy has not been a popular area of study; important hermeneutic
philosophers like Paul Ricoeur and other scholars had little regard for it. Harvey claims that
many have believed that his ‘philosophy of religion is not worthy of serious consideration’
(Harvey, 1995, p. 6). And that, ‘his books remain unread and untranslated; when his name is
mentioned, it is usually added that his significance lies in having helped to bring about the
transition from Hegel to Marx’ (Harvey, 1995, p. 7).
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Another reason for the lack of interest in Feuerbach is that he is not one who has a
theoretical framework which is easy to recognize. If we compare him to “Marx who was
recognized as having a comprehensive sociological and economic theory, and Freud as well,
had a small part of psychological theory. These philosophers were not only influential as
revolutionary practices but produced a number of research programs of a conventional
intellectual field” (Harvey, 1995, p. 7). Also, in Christian theology such new approaches were
resisted. Maybe because of discoveries like those of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), the Church
was in fear of the return of the conflict between Church and science as there was in the time of
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). These debates on religion were prohibited in the university and
Feuerbach himself was treated badly and even his career was in trouble.
Harvey states that ‘the theory of self-consciousness which was at its core and to which
Feuerbach’s theory of projection was linked has seemed to most contemporaries dated and
arcane’ (Harvey, 1995, p. 7). His failure was to some extent demonstrated in his works and
many scholars say that his contribution could qualify to be called foundational of philosophical
program since his critical capacities were based always on Hegelianism.
Harvey describes two different approaches to religious interpretation. One is ‘the
hermeneutic of collection’ and other ‘the hermeneutic of suspicion’. The first group thinks that
a belief in God is reasonable. The second group insists that questions such as ‘Is there a God?
Must be looked at with suspicion.
Paul Ricoeur named three people whom he considered the three masters of suspicion,
Marx, Nietzsche and Freud.” (Ricoeur, 1970, p, 28-36). Each held some version of religion as
projection and therefore worthy of suspicion. They said that people should outgrow their belief
in God. Feuerbach is considered the initiator of this trend and so has always been interpreted
as a thinker who denies the validity of religion. Ricoeur does not include Feuerbach because
his interpretation of religion is different from that of the other three. For Harvey, Feuerbach’s
38
view that religion is a function of the emergence of self-consciousness and leads to a far more
complex interpretation of religion than that practiced by the other three masters of suspicion.
He had stated his purpose with regard to religion at the beginning: “I constitute myself
only its listener and interpreter, not its prompter” (Feuerbach, 1841, p, xxxvi). By merely
listening and interpreting he wants to see in what way religion is important for those who
practice it. It means that he assumed that ‘man creates God’. His critics question whether his
projection theory can be verified as an authentic argument that religion is a projection of man.
What is the meaning of ‘the hermeneutic of suspicion?’ The three names most
associated with it are Karl Marx, Fredrick Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud.
In ‘The Essence of Christianity’ Feuerbach explained that god can be explained by his
theory of consciousness. Harvey says: “In the process of self-differentiation, it is claimed, the
subject first projects its essential nature and then misconstrues this as an objective being”
(Harvey, 1995, p.4). It is obvious that this idea of projection was not completely new. There
were philosophers, in the past, such as Xenophanes, Giambattista Vico and David Hume
(Harvey, 1995, p.4) all of whom saw religion as some kind of projection. It is seen as a
projection because when one does not believe in God one has to find the reason why some
people do believe in God? Where does the idea of God come from?
The ‘hermeneutic suspicion’ or the profound questioning of methodologies and
conclusions forced theologians and philosophers to think more deeply about their work. Are
they just speculating about ‘unhappy consciousness’ a state which needs therapy, or with a
significant human reality? Remember that ‘the masters of suspicion did not regard their
demystifying work primarily as an intellectual exercise; rather, they saw it as therapy’ (Harvey,
1995, p. 5). They represent themselves as the liberators of humanity from religious
misunderstandings.
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Early on, Feuerbach declared that to find the things as they are is the principle task of
man. After long-term searching he asserted that “religion is a projection of man.” Through the
individualistic culture in Protestantism, divine conceptions had become for modern believers
identical with their own exaggerated sense of selfhood “the single human individual …has been
perceived as divine and infinite” (Feuerbach, 1830, p, 10). This is the source from which
modern man formulates his divine projection. What are the different interpretations that can be
given to projection?
In what follows I focus on the alternative ways of interpreting projection both from a
negative and positive position. Most commentators interpret that this “projection” is just
something that man projects himself as an object like man himself “projects his being into
objectivity” (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 29) so the meaning of projection is presented negatively.
Besides the negative approach I will try to show that there are also positive elements. For this
I will use arguments of three interpreters; Wartofsky, Harvey and Sierksma who argue for
alternative interpretations or perhaps reinterpretations. It will, therefore, be necessary to
introduce into this research some understanding of some key ideas of these different
interpretations.
2.8 Interpretations of Feuerbach’s Work
I have already described the structure of theory of projection; The Essence of
Christianity and Principles of Philosophy of the future outline the core idea in the whole work
of Feuerbach. Here we will first look at some of the negative interpretations of Feuerbach’s
work. I start with that of Swiss theologian and philosopher Hans Kung and his lengthy review
of Feuerbach in his Book “Does God Exist?”.
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2.8.1 Interpretation of Hans Küng
Küng (b.1928) begins by giving some relevant background to Feuerbach. The secularist
thinkers of the French Enlightenment had a big effect on Europe in the years that followed.
Many intelligent Christians were losing respect for their churches that often opposed new
political movements and questioned scientific progress.
Feuerbach was a Left Hegelian which meant that he believed that Hegel's theories had
to continue to evolve. Very early on this led to a break with the traditional followers of the
master. Hegel's very spiritual and idealist philosophy was replaced by one that underlined the
importance of the real person who gets knowledge from his senses, not just by some pure
rational thinking.
Another big influence was developments in theology and Bible studies. Two German
scholars, Friedrich Schleiermacher and David Strauss had written some revolutionary new
books. Strauss showed, for example that the Gospels were not exact historical documents. This
made people less certain about religious truths and led to debates about the 'Jesus of History'
and the 'Christ of Faith' and to what was called the process of demythologizing. Strauss was
not an atheist; he only wanted to demonstrate the true nature of Christian scriptures. Küng
believes that the road to atheism had already been prepared by elements of Hegel’s thought.
With Feuerbach the tremendous danger to belief in God, a Christianity presented by
Hegel’s identification of finite and infinite consciousness of man and God, becomes
apparent. We need only to change our standpoint and everything appears to be reversed.
For then finite consciousness is not ‘elevated’ into infinite human spirit into absolute
Spirit, but – on the contrary infinite consciousness is dissolved into finite, Absolute
spirit into human spirit. And this is just what Feuerbach does. He does not want
‘drunken’ speculation, he wants ‘sober’ philosophy. So he abandons the ‘absolute
standpoint’ and with it the ‘absurdity’ of the Absolute. (Küng, 1978, 199)
Feuerbach underlines the fact that man cannot be fully human in isolation. He need an
‘other.’ It is in community that human life and human consciousness develops. Gradually man
41
becomes aware of what human nature is – the species he belongs to. But this leads to the next
step:
Man sets up his human nature out of himself, he sees it as something existing outside
of himself and separated from himself; he projects it then as an autonomous figure – so
to speak – in heaven, calls it God and worships it. In a word, the notion of god is nothing
but a projection of man. The absolute to man is his own nature. The power of the object
over him is therefore the power of his own nature. (Küng, 1978, p. 200)
Küng asserts that “Feuerbach defended the incompatibility of philosophy and Christian
faith and the replacement of the idea of God by the idea of human race … The Christian religion
would have to be replaced by philosophy” (Küng, 1978, p. 195-196).
Feuerbach clarifies where certain theological ideas about God come from. The idea of
God as an intellectual being comes from a projection of human understanding; God as a morally
perfect being comes from a projection of the human will. God as love comes from the desire
of the human heart, and so on.
Küng explains how Feuerbach differs from the thinkers of the Enlightenment of the
previous century. They had criticized religion as a great deception and fraud carried out by the
Church and it priests. For Feuerbach: ‘Religion must be understood at a deeper level; man
himself is the beginning, center and end of religion, religion is man’s self-worship.
Consequently religion is an odd mixture of truth and falsehood.’ (Küng, 1978, p. 202)
Feuerbach links atheism and humanism. The true nature of religion must be first
exposed. When this has been done people can really begin to develop truly human values –
focus on human life here and now and abandon their false beliefs about God.
Küng affirms that Feuerbach is by no means out of date today. Since his time, every
form of atheism has taken up some of his ideas. He examines some of the lessons we might
learn from Feuerbach. In summary Feuerbach’s assertion is ‘Religion is consciousness of the
42
infinite, thus it is and can be nothing else than the consciousness which man has of his own –
not finite and limited, but infinite nature.’ (Küng, 1978, p. 205)
One of the major themes commentators take up is his belief that religion has
psychological roots and that once this is shown the foundations of religion collapse.
Furthermore the ‘god’ that humans believe in is often nothing more than wishful thinking.
Küng’s response is:
From the psychological standpoint, the powers and functions assumed by Feuerbach
are undoubtedly involved in belief in God and in religion” It is true that all needs,
wishes and feelings are involving in self-preservation in theory of projection of
Feuerbach … It must be admitted that imagination also plays a part in any cognitive
act, that I know anything at all in my own way, and that in all cognition I place-project-
something of myself into the object of my perception. We must really insist that it is to
be hoped that not only the mind but also the heart, the whole man, are involved in
knowing God. The reality of these psychological factors is quite obviously the reason
why Feuerbach’s explanation of religion is so striking at first glance and also
continually freshly fascinating. (Küng, 1978, p. 209).
However, the fact that some of these Psychological factors are involved does not mean
that there is nothing more substantial present. Feuerbach, Küng says, merely fits all religious
beliefs into 'the box' of his own form of projection.
I suppose here we might ask the question ‘Was Feuerbach a Reductionist? Religion
can be described in many different ways. One could say it comes from psychology, sociology,
biology etc. It could be ‘reduced’ to something else. There are ‘suspicious’ interpreters of
religion who examine it by using these other areas of study, some of which are hostile to
religion. Others say that scientific methods cannot be used to study religion because they use
empirical deductive methods and religions ideas do not ‘fit into these boxes.’ Schleiermacher
believed this and Weber and Eliade more or less follow in this line too. There is a difference
between understanding religion and explaining it. Two important modern writers, Peter Berger
and Robert Bellah have accepted that one must start with the fact of religious experience.
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There are two approaches to study of religion. One is to try to explain it from the
outside. The other is to try to get inside the mind of the believers. Feuerbach describes himself
as the listener and the interpreter. He let the believers speak for themselves. He wants to ‘get
inside’ His approach is different to that of the other masters of suspicion He said that no one
can deny that what believers want ‘is a suffering deity that recognizes and loves them and can
intervene miraculously on their behalf.’ (Harvey, 1995, p. 99). He is saying ‘I know this is
what they believe.’ He, of course, believes they are mistaken and the deeper meaning can be
shown to them.
Küng sums up Feuerbach in the following words:
What he offers is definitive atheism. For the first time in the history of humanity we
are faced with a fully considered, absolutely determined, unreservedly professed and
this –, too is important – planned atheism kept up to the very end; an atheism that cannot
in any way be subsequently theologically reinterpreted and appropriated. This
consistent atheism presents a permanent challenge to any belief in God. (Küng, 1978,
p. 211)
2.8.2 Cornelio Fabro
Cornelio Fabro was an Italian Catholic priest of the Stigmatine Order, a neo-Thomist
philosopher. He was the founder of the Institute for Higher Studies on Unbelief, Religions and
Cultures. He was well-known both as a philosopher and theologian.
Feuerbach describes Christianity as an illusion; Christians believe in such things as
prayer, miracles and the Trinity. In reality these arise from and are rooted in the sensuousness
of man himself. Feuerbach affirms that it is not necessary to turn to theology because by nature
humans become aware of infinity. He claims that man can reach infinity by his own efforts; by
nature, through feeling and love he can reach the beyond. Fabro is a Thomist so he underlines
that there are two roads to the truth, reason and faith. He criticized some central ideas of
Feuerbach. For Fabro consciousness does not belong to the essence of one’s awareness of his
44
being; it is a capacity that leads man to experience infinity. He argues that man is finite; to
reach beyond the finite man needs spiritual help. He criticizes Feuerbach’s belief that man
realizes his infinity through psychological images and that, in reality this is just the functioning
of the psyche.
Fabro takes the idea of Karl Rahner that because of Kant’s influence of transcendence,
the idea of God constructed by reason in the modern era considered reason and thinking to be
the same. Speculative philosophy functions without sensuousness. Feuerbach in “Principles of
Philosophy of the Future” sets out to construct a new philosophy but on this point, Fabro insists
that the God of Feuerbach is not ‘other’ but man. Fabro says that, from the religious standpoint,
Feuerbach has two basic problems; a lack of knowledge of Christianity, on the one hand and a
misunderstanding of doctrine, on the other hand.
The second point is more important than the first because Feuerbach’s intention was to
turn theology into anthropology. Fabro asserts that Feuerbach’s knowledge of Christianity is a
superficial one, leaving him with the belief that it was an illusion. God, for Feuerbach, is the
projection of man’s perfect essence. Man comes to understand his own being by his encounter
with other beings. For Fabro, God is the Truth that man is searching for. The question here is
about Feuerbach's methodology. Where does he get the idea that man is infinite? For Feuerbach
the human consciousness can expand without limit, it is the consciousness of the species. Fabro
says that he makes the mistake of thinking that what is a capacity is part of the essence of man.
Who is God for Feuerbach? Fabro would reply that for Feuerbach God is a natural
being. When a person predicates something, he/she would predicate only what his/her nature
allows, so it is through their natural awareness that humans become conscious of themselves
as natural beings; God is an extension of this natural world. Here Fabro asserts that while God
is with man God does not belong to the same natural world. God is with the creature but creature
is not God. For example; if we produce a chair, this chair is our work, we and the chair are
45
related to each other. It is our product and we may be proud of our handiwork. But we are not
a chair. It is obvious that God is the creator and man is created by God. God is with us in a
relationship because of cause and effect. For Fabro Heaven is the Telos of the Christian, not
the natural world. Because humans are creatures of God there is a relationship. Humans
continue to search and one day this relationship will come to fulfillment but never in the natural
world. What connects God to man is believing. This is the most potential instrument of natural
man. This belief or faith cannot be explained by science; if it could then it would no longer be
faith. (Fabro, 1997, p. 113)
A central part of Feuerbach's programme in life was to reduce theology to anthropology;
basically to show that the content of theology can be well explained by human anthropological
science. Again Fabro rejects this goal. Theology is a discipline which has its own methodology.
In the Christian belief God humbles Himself to become man and man is transformed to be with
God. (Fabro, 1997, p. 50). By nature man is continually searching for the truth; he is open to
the 'beyond.' Revelation is an important help in the human search. Fabro writes that this
revelation is to be understood not just as a simple intervention of God but as an ongoing
experience of the Love of God for man. This revelation is beneficial for man to comprehend
the truth. I believe that revelation is not something used by Christians to fill unexplained gaps.
It offers the limited human a way to transcend his/her limitations and it provides a hope. For
the Christina theology links experience and confidence about the future, for Buddhism, it offers
Nirvana a way out of the limited self into the state of blessed.
On this point I would argue that Feuerbach is greatly influenced by Strauss' research on
the historical reliability of Biblical texts. For example several authors have attacked the
authenticity of the Gospel account that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The Gospels of Matthew
and Luke do not agree. Some people might ask 'How can you know the facts two thousand
years later?' Fabro, I believe, would argue that while it might be true that we cannot be certain
46
of the historical facts this does not make one's faith invalid. Faith, as Kierkegaard argued,
involves a leap; it does not come at the end of a rational process. In recent times Pope Benedict
XVI had good reasons for insisting that those who study the bible should be trained in the skills
of hermeneutics and exegesis.
2.9 More Positive Alternative Interpretations
I now pass on to more positive interpretation of Feuerbach as given by writers such as
Marx Wartofsky, Van Harvey and Fokke Sierksma. They underline other levels of his writing
that can give us a deeper understanding of what he was reacting to and what he was trying to
do.
2.9.1 Marx W. Wartofsky
The philosopher Marx W. Wartofsky (1928–1997) writes that Feuerbach’s critique of
religion has relevance not only for religion but for theology and philosophy as well. Feuerbach
wanted Christianity to be read by ordinary educated people but also by the theologians and
philosophers of his time; so it can be read at two levels. The structure of the book shows a
Hegelian influence. An important idea from Hegel is that progress is made through a
confrontation of thesis and antithesis which finally ends with a synthesis. The first part of
Christianity can be read as the thesis; the second part as an antithesis. There is not third part
with a synthesis but this is found in different chapters of the two parts.
The important thing about this work was that it introduced an empiricist and humanist
approach into philosophy and theology; something that had been absent in German thought.
Wartofsky writes: “There are, therefore, two levels at which the work may be read. First, there
is the manifest thesis that man creates the Gods in his own image. But, second, there is the
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latent and deeper thesis concerning the nature of concept formation not only in religion and
theology, but in philosophy itself” (Wartofsky, 1977, p. 197).
Again he writes:
The effect of this critique is the anthropological reduction not simply of religion but of
philosophy proper. In this ‘reduction’ the foundations of philosophical speculation on
human needs, wants and fears are to be laid bare. Philosophy itself is to be demystified
and recognized as the refracted, abstract image of concrete human existence and the
esoteric expression of human consciousness and self-consciousness.’ (Wartofsky,
1977, p. 198).
Many of the philosophers of the Enlightenment were deists who reduced the role of
God to that of a being who set the world in motion. Wartofsky places Feuerbach in a different
category. He was not like the writers of the French Enlightenment like Diderot or Montesquieu
who mocked religious belief.
Feuerbach’s critique goes much deeper. He focuses on where our ideas and images
come from. He wants to replace “old philosophy” with “new philosophy” go from “abstract
philosophy to concrete philosophy.” The source of human knowledge is not some special
revelation but human experience. Each person can know only his own experience but gradually
he comes to realize that his experience is similar to that of other people, the Thou. From this
he comes to the awareness of his species and its needs, wants and desires. This is where concept
formation begins.
Wartofsky writes that in The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach was demonstrating that
religion is a projection of man in which man projects the supernatural on to the natural. But he
asserts that another hermeneutic method is necessary to go deeper. Images are an important
part of religion. What are they? Usually they are thought to make a relationship between the
person who has the image and a real other thing; the image is thought to be an image of
something. For Feuerbach there is no something else; the image is simply an image – a product
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of a psychic pathology. This is how Wartofsky expresses it: “the content of religious
consciousness is the image. The demythologization consists in revealing that the image is not
what theology or speculative theology makes it to be.” (Wartofsky, 1977, p. 253). The only
sense in which the image is ‘real’ is that it is real in the mind of the person who has it.
Wartofsky introduces two concepts of exoteric and esoteric knowledge. In ordinary
language exoteric refers to that kind of language or knowledge that is available to all, not the
private experience of an individual or private possession of a small group. Esoteric knowledge
is not public. It is private or possibly linked to the experience of an individual. This distinction
can be useful when trying to understand Feuerbach but: “The very distinction of exoteric and
esoteric interpretation develops into a two-edged sword, available for the purpose of reading
not only the supernatural in the natural but the natural in the supernatural as well” (Wartofsky,
1977, p. 252). He writes that
What Feuerbach really intends to do is to examine the process of concept formation in
man’s knowledge of himself as man. In short, he purports to reveal the psychological
and epistemological process of man’s self-conception…and the content of religiousness
is a scientific inquiry into a “real” or “natural” subject matter, namely, human
consciousness. (Wartofsky, 1977, p. 198).
That Feuerbach was able to take religious consciousness seriously, that he did not
simply denigrate its insights or ignore its formulations made him the most powerful critic of
the psychology of religion and the function of religious consciousness. Unlike the atheist critics
of the eighteenth century … Feuerbach sought to make the phenomenon of religion and object
of deliberate rational and scientific study. … Feuerbach understood religion as a stage in the
growth of human self-consciousness, to be investigated in its own forms of expression – from
the ‘inside’ so to speak. (Wartofsky, 1977, p. 6)
Where does religion come from? Wartofsky quotes from The Essence of Christianity.
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Religion rests on the essential difference between men and animals – animals have no
religion –But what is this difference? The simplest and most general, as well as the most
popular answer to this question is – consciousness: but consciousness in the strict sense.
For it can’t be denied that animals are conscious in the sense of having feelings of self,
and on being able to man sensory discriminations to perceive and even to judge of
external things be means of particular sensible signs. Consciousness in the strict sense
is present only to a being to whom has species, his essential nature, is an object. The
animal is certainly an object to itself, as an individual – therefore it has self-awareness
– but it isn’t aware of its species nature. (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 1)
In looking for answers to life’s mysteries it is clear that Feuerbach didn’t take shortcuts
or accept easy answers. Wartofsky again quotes The Essence of Christianity.
The origin of life is inexplicable and incomprehensible. So be it. But this
incomprehensibility doesn’t justify you in the superstitious consequences which
theology draws, on the basis of deficiencies in human knowledge, doesn’t justify you
in going beyond the domain of natural causes. All you can say is: I can’t explain life on
the basis of those natural phenomena and cause which are known to me, or on the basis
of those which are known to me thus far. But you can’t say. It is impossible in general
to explain life on the basis of nature without pretending to already have exhausted the
last drop in the ocean of nature. (Wartofsky, 1977, p. 398)
Feuerbach sees that there is work to be done: “Philosophy itself is to be demystified
and recognized as the refracted, abstract image of concrete human existence and the esoteric
expression of human consciousness and self-consciousness” (Wartofsky, 1977, p. 198). How
will he do this?
I am nothing but a natural scientist of spirit; but the natural scientist can do nothing
without instruments, without material means. In this capacity – as a natural scientist- I
have written this work, which consequently contains nothing but the principle of a new
philosophy, one essentially different from previous philosophy, and one which is
confirmed practically, i.e., in concreto, in application to a particular, concrete subject
matter, but one which has universal significance: namely, to religion, with respect to
which this principle is presented, developed, and carried through to its consequences.
(Wartofsky, 1977, p. 200)
Feuerbach intends to replace “old philosophy” with “new philosophy” to go from
“abstract philosophy to concrete philosophy”. Humans are searching for the truth that lies
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behind the image. He explains his project: In his critique of religion Feuerbach affirms that the
“true subject of religion is man. But lying under religious belief there is a “mystery” of religion;
it’s true object or that which it hides under the external form of its imaginative constructions”
(Wartofsky, 1977, p. 198).
Through religion man can arrive at the knowledge of himself as man. Feuerbach tries
to reach the real meaning of “image’. In fact there is nothing beyond the image but there is a
mystery to religion. That mystery can be clarified by a greater understanding of human nature
which has been projected.
We use the words image in the sense of ‘a copy’ of an original. Wartofsky explained
that Feuerbach is concerned about religious appearance in which this image is supposed to be
an image of some original entity. All religious images are produced by the human mind but the
person who has them doesn’t recognize this. For example; every religion has its own Holy
Scripture, holy place, ritual, ministry and sacrament; believers ‘esoterically’ think that these
represent some hidden reality.
The Christian religion has inherited a collection of images from the past. Feuerbach
wants to expose the real nature and emptiness of these images, in order to remove obstacles to
true human existence. The following extract from Christianity shows how he is using what he
sees as a new and better empirical method.
Hopefully, now that I have often, step by step, supported my analysis with historical
evidence, if the reader is not totally blind he will be convinced and will admit, even if
reluctantly, that my work is a faithful and correct translation of the Christian religion
out of the Oriental picture-language of fantasy into plain, comprehensible and ordinary
language. My work has no pretension to be anything more than a faithful translation –
to speak plainly; an empirical or historico-philosophical analysis, a solution of the
enigma of the Christian religion. (VII, 280-1, or Wartofsky. 1977, p. 256)
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2.9.2 Van A. Harvey
The second philosopher who has a more positive way of interpreting Feuerbach is Van
A. Harvey (1926 - present). He believes that although Feuerbach is not included in Paul
Ricoeur’s list of the ‘masters of suspicion’ he deserves to be on it. What is Feuerbach's basic
argument? “His basic premise is that the superhuman deities of religion are, in fact, involuntary
projections of the essential attributes of human nature, and this projection, in turn, is explained
by a theory of human consciousness heavily indebted to Hegel” (Harvey, 1997, p. 25). The
ground had been prepared for Feuerbach by Hegel, with whom he came to disagree. Harvey
writes; “He realized that in that earlier work he had been guilty of the same excessive
abstractionism of which he had been so critical when practiced by Hegel” (Harvey, 1997,
p.161). Feuerbach had been guilty because he said that his master’s theory had no ground but
in fact nature is originally found in Hegel. And Feuerbach himself claiming that “the specie as
a whole was perfect and infinite”. He continually writes that “Hegel’s philosophy had
foundered on the idea of nature, his own analysis of religion in the Essence of Christianity
could scarcely be said to have made nature central to the religious consciousness” (Harvey,
1997, p. 161). Feuerbach is also influenced by his contemporary, the Protestant theologian of
the Tübingen School, David Strauss (1808-1874). Strauss had applied critical methods to his
Bible studies and showed for example that the gospels were not eyewitness accounts. There
were contradictions in the texts. Strauss did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. This kind of
thinking had a profound effect of the faith of the more intellectually minded Christians.
Up until the publication of Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity (from here on
Christianity) Hegel’s philosophy of Spirit was the generally accepted view in theological and
philosophical studies. This can be summarized in Harvey’s statement: “in other words the
history of religion, culminating in Christianity, was a progressive revelation of the truth that
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the Absolute is not merely an impersonal substance, but a Subject.” (Harvey, 1997, p. 26) God
or the Absolute arrives at complete self-knowledge by ‘objectifying’ itself in the finite world."
Feuerbach understands things differently:
Man – this is the mystery of religion – projects his being into objectivity, and then again
makes himself an object of this projected image of him, thus converted into a subject;
he thinks of himself is an object to himself, but as the object of an object, of another
being than himself. (Feuerbach, 1989: 29).
Feuerbach’s stated purpose in writing his book is to help Christians understand what he
sees to be the true nature of religion. Christianity is divided into two parts. He says that the
first part is positive. He sets out to show that so many of the qualities or ‘predicates’ that
Christian believers attribute to God are nothing more than the product of human imagination.
For example the compassion they give to God is nothing more than an idealized version of the
human quality of compassion. He calls this part ‘the true or anthropological essence of
religion’. The second part of this book, he calls ‘The false of theological essence of religion’.
Here his intention is to show the many mistakes and false beliefs that Christians can be led into
if they do not understand what he says in first part. That is if they do not know that the contents
of their beliefs do not refer to a divine being but are merely collections of projected human
desires.
Commentators on Feuerbach agree that his theory of projection is difficult to
understand. At one level it can be stated in a very simple way such as that God is a product of
human desire and imagination. Over two thousand years before Feuerbach the Greek
philosopher Xenophanes said something similar. But there are other levels in Feuerbach’s
concept that go far beyond Xenophanes; the most important of these come from his Hegelian
background. He begins by asking what distinguishes the human from other animals. It is a
consciousness but it must be of a certain kind because 'the consciousness implied in the feeling
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of self as an individual, in discrimination by the senses, in the perception and even judgment
of outward things according to definite sensible signs, cannot be denied to the brutes.
Consciousness in the strictest sense is present only in a being to which his species, his essential
nature, is an object of thought. (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 2).
This consciousness is achieved through the person’s contact with another person, a
Thou, and the realization that this person is like ‘me’ – of the same species. The special elements
of this consciousness are reason, will and feeling. The primary mode of this contact with others
is not abstract but concrete, through the senses, the body. Every species relates to the world
around it in the manner its organism permits.
Humans can attain happiness for example if they can use the powers of their nature.
Humans become aware that they belong to a species and that the species will continue into the
future but each person, as an individual, will die. This causes suffering and this is part of the
reason for the ‘invention’ of a God and life after death; “The root of religion in humans comes
not from reason but from feeling and imagination.” (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 125-6). These are two
important elements in the process of projection. Feelings produce the activities of longing and
wishing. All activities, when they become very strong, bring the wished-for object into
(imaginary) existence. Because the person feels it or longs for it so deeply it ‘must’ exist. The
imagination is also extremely important in religious thought. “The imagination can create
worlds, it can work with abstractions. It can by-pass the laws of nature and invent many things
– even separate divine beings” (Feuerbach, 1841, p. 139). It is important to identify the
predicates of the human species, reason, will and feeling. Is God something invented by reason?
Feuerbach says that a god like this would be too cold and distant. A god who represents good
moral standards and a god who loves are also required to meet human longings – not just the
cold god produced by reason.
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Harvey comments that feeling and imagination are the source of all religious
manifestation. This is how Harvey sums up what religion is for Feuerbach.
Religion can best be described as a type of anthropomorphism rooted in the structure
of self-consciousness; more precisely in the twofold differentiation of the self from
nature, on the one hand, and persons, on the other. This twofold distinction creates the
correlative desires to be free from nature and to gain recognition from other subjects.
The gods satisfy both structural desires uniquely. They can set aside the limits of nature
by performing miracles and they can offer a recognition that transcends that which can
be given by any finite person. (Harvey, 1995, p. 63).
For Feuerbach religion was the first step in the development of human self-
consciousness. Throughout history humans have slowly grown in self-awareness. One of the
important steps in this process was 'the invention' of gods. This was something that came 'from
the inside', a response to some imaginary 'outside' power. One of the mysteries of religion is
how humans continue to look for a power that is outside themselves. This is the nature of
religious projection and anyone who wants to do a hermeneutic critique of religion, has to be
aware of this.
Two types of projection
Harvey says he won't try to discuss the many kinds of projection theories current today;
rather he will divide them into two broad categories which he calls beam and grid theories.
First we look at the beam metaphor. This metaphor is taken from the cinema where an image
is projected from inside the machine on to a blank wall. These type of theories see projection
as something coming from inside the person, not a response to something outside. It is related
to deep psychological processes. He quotes Erwin Goodenough who writes of the world of the
unknown and the feared, what he calls the tremendum.
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Man throws curtains between himself and the tremendum, and on them he projects an
account of how the world came into existence, pictures of divine or superhuman forces
or beings that control the universe and us, as well as codes of ethics, behavior, and ritual
which will bring him favor instead of catastrophe. So has man everywhere protected
himself by religion? (Godenough, 1965, p, 8).
Some of these ideas are later found in the 'collective consciousness' of Carl Jung. The
influence of many of Feuerbach's ideas can also be seen in Sigmund Freud's The Future of an
Illusion but Harvey points out that there are also important differences. For example Freud
relates projection to the concept of transference. An example of this is where the real situation
of a patient is 'I hate him' becomes through projection and transference 'He hates me.' For Freud
all projection, especially in religion, was negative. Here, truth or falsity depends on the
underlying theory of human nature. Jung interpreted some projections as healthy if they helped
some process of integration of the personality.
Why does man project? It is because man is a mysterious being that is searching for
self-understanding but does not yet know himself. I focus on the Beam metaphor and assert
that the “early Feuerbach” wants to present a 'pure' form of projection in particular in “The
Essence of Christianity” and “Principles of the Philosophy of the Future”. This emphasizes the
way of human projection from inside to outside in their search for something. Garett Green
notes:
The assumption that such a move produces illusion rather than truth appears to be so
directly implied by Beam metaphor itself that attempts to use “projection” to describe
religion without at the same time precluding its truth have had a difficult time of it.
(Green, 2000, p. 97)
I argue that the beam metaphor is the one that most closely represents Feuerbach's early
theory about religion. For him, the correct interpretation is that religious concepts are the
product of projection. I would affirm that his interpretation is based on his materialism but it
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fails to recognize the mysterious dimension of man. Even in the case of those who are unaware
of this dimension, it is still there.
Harvey goes on to describe a different general classification of projection theories:
There is another type of projection in which the term “projection” is used to refer not
to the externalization of some aspect of the self - its feelings, attributes, or subjectivity
itself- but to the symbolic or conceptual forms that human beings superimpose on the
experience in order to make it intelligible. (Harvey, 1995, p, 246).
This second metaphor of the Grid is taken from the profession of the map-maker. He
has several drawings and bits and pieces and has to put this 'jigsaw' together. The best way to
do this is to place them on a Grid drawn on paper. In human life the process of projection can
play the role of the Grid. It is the framework provided by the group or the culture that gives a
meaning to the various 'bits and pieces' of life. It provides the organizing principle of life. It
can consist of symbols, concepts value system and many other elements. They usually reflect
the culture of the projector. For Marx religion was purely a cultural construct. The Grid
metaphor is applicable to the “later Feuerbach” as found in “The Essence of Religion” and
“Lectures” and later works where a somewhat different description of religion is given. Many
people are unaware of this development in his thought. Some authors however disagree with
Harvey; Green for example writes:
I find Harvey’s presentation of Grid theory unsatisfactory…the assumption that people
first have experience that is unformed (outside “symbolic or conceptual forms”) and
then proceed to “superimpose” forms upon it – forms that are evidently alien to the
“experience itself” that is, qualitatively other that the “pure” experience prior to the act
of imposition. (Green, 2000, p. 97).
There are nevertheless interpreters who support the use of this metaphor because they
believe is reconciles Feuerbach to some extent with ancient religion where culture maps were
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an important part of belief systems. But the Beam theory still maintains the materialistic nature
of Feuerbach’s later philosophy.
Now I would like to argue the difference between two understandings of Feuerbach’s
projection theory. At first, the difference of these two readings;
Beam theories tend to define religion in term of anthropomorphism and personification.
If religions are believed to be externalizations of human attributes, then this would naturally
explain why religions are anthropomorphic. Grid theorists tend to view religions as sacred
worldviews and the religious projection may include sacred classifications and symbolic
structure of many sorts. (Harvey, 1995, p. 248)
Secondly, Beam theorists tend to derive their basic hermeneutical principles from the
theory of human nature in which a psychic mechanism generates the projection. They rarely
appeal to social structures or cultural influences in the interpretation of religious symbols. But
grid theorists tend to be distrustful of appeals to an individual psychology which may originate
from a religious background which then influences its symbolism. In Grid theories, the idea of
projection itself does not play as large a material role in the actual exegesis of religion as it
does in Beam theories. (Harvey, 1995, p. 248)
Thirdly, an important difference is the way in which judgments of truth or falsity can
be made. For beam theory the religious projection is generated entirely from within; it is, at
best, regarded as an illusion. Truth or falsity is determined by the theory of human nature being
used. The grid theory is far more complicated because the conceptual grid is what makes it
possible to make judgments of truth or falsity at all. To make a judgment of truth or falsity
within this system one has to ask questions about the whole conceptual framework. If it helps
the person put the pieces together it may be judged as true. Harvey says: “Conceptual schemes
may be applied or utilized, be successful or unsuccessful or given purposes, but they cannot
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themselves be said to be true or false. They constitute the framework within which “true” and
“false” can be meaningfully employed” (Harvey, 1995, p. 251).
2.9.3 Fokke Sierksma
Fokke Sierksma, a Dutch psychologist of religion has some enlightening ideas about
projection. He writes:
(Man) becomes aware of “something” in himself that judges him, unseen and not
objectifiable; when he shudders before the mystery of the groundless ground of his own
soul. It is precisely that which is unknowable, ungraspable, overpowering, mysterious
that gives man the feeling that he is no longer at home in his trusted, stabilized
perceptual world, that he is unheim-lich (homeless)…He experiences bodily that man
stands in nothingness; that, although with his perception and his hands he has conquered
a part of the world, of which the thought it was the world, this turns out to be only a
small part of the world, a Merkwell…Beyond it is the reverse side of the world, is
mystery. (Sierksma, 1990: 102).
Man is not searching for material things alone but “meaning of life” as well, which is
aiming to something than that man is projecting, man with his worldview is seeking
“something” which is behind things and the world is related to him.
For Sierksma religious projection springs primarily from the awareness that there is
‘something more’ that escapes our normal projective grids, that there is, so to speak, a reverse
side of things that hides behind what we perceive” (Harvey, 1995, p. 257).
Sierksma is arguing that “the only minimal definition of religion that is scientifically
tenable, he claims, is that religion is characterized by the awareness that there is a “hidden
surplus of the world”, a hidden power of some kind that hides but sometimes reveals itself”
(Harvey, 1995, p. 257). It is a scientific explanation to give an understanding of something that
is beyond human mind and understanding.
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From our own knowledge we can affirm that the existence of God cannot be
demonstrated scientifically, but that does not mean that god does not exist. But experience
overcomes this limitation because even in the apparent absence God can be experienced but
not examined scientifically.
Buddhism, can be understood as a kind of projection as well. Is there a “something
more” in Buddhism? In the light of Sierksma, Harvey might say that;
It, too, is a religion because it is based on the experience that there is something more,
a surplus. It, too, takes human excentricity and insufficiency with the greatest
seriousness. But is differs from the other religions because it relates projection to
perception and has developed a religious practice devoted to revoking projection and
perception. It attempts to “guard the senses” and it criticizes all forms of objectification,
even the notion of a self” (Harvey, 1995, p. 258).
As one who lives among Buddhists; I find it meaningful as a religion for believers and
it is more than that. It is 'a searching ‘something more’ as well because as a religion it leads its
followers to look for something beyond their human limitations. Like Christianity “It keeps the
balance between the inner and outer world or between the world and the reality of the soul”
(Sierksma, 1990, p. 256). There are reasons why man projects something, even if it is
formulated against different fundamental backgrounds such belief, culture, tradition or
language. One reasons for projection are because:
The human being differs from other organisms by virtue of being an embodied
consciousness. As embodied, he/she has in common with all other organism the
“absolute dedication to Eros”; as conscious, he/she is able to transcend the body and to
envisage his/her own death. This dual nature of the human constitutes the human
dilemma: on the one hand, the person is driven to enjoy continued existence; on the
other, he/she is cursed with a burden no animal has to bear”- the awareness that he/she
will die. (Harvey, 1995, p, 294).
This is the reality of human life.
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2.10 Critiques
These are critiques to Feuerbach’s theory of projection. I attempt to criticize Feuerbach
and evaluate these readings. For me these are the clearest one I have read, but they make their
criticisms from different perspectives. I found that after examining his theory of projection,
as interpreted by the authors we can prudently reinterpret the materialistic approach to allow
for a mysterious being or God. Man can experience God because of the mysterious dimension
of his being; man is searching for something that will answer his fundamental questions about
who is he and where is he going and what ultimately is the meaning of his life.
2.10.1 Wartofsky
We have already mentioned Wartofsky’s two levels of reading Feuerbach; exoteric and
esoteric interpretation. He emphasizes the “religious consciousness” of Feuerbach. He began
with the proposition that Feuerbach is the one who worked as a pioneer of “consciousness”.
Through religious consciousness, man expresses exoterically an image that is nothing but
image. Wartofsky tries to explain the phenomenological belief that all expressions in religion
are images that religion adheres as its essence. This expression has to be put in public so that
it can be recognized by others.
But Wartofsky argues also that there is another form of expression that is close to beam
metaphor of Harvey; the role of a psychological process but it is something more than the beam
metaphor; something mysterious that is generated from the self or thinker.
I argue that in the light of Wartofsky, we can understand that if we turn to Feuerbach’s
argument, the reality is not only in the mind but also in reality. For example, if I say that I have
one hundred baht in my mind and I have one hundred baht in my hand it is clear that one
hundred baht is believable. If we take the exoteric and esoteric interpretation of religious
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consciousness, one is in the public domain and at the same time the self has its own
understanding and image of its gods.
According to Wartofsky, the image represents the real meaning of Feuerbach, that
religion is projection of man, but I argue that there is something more beyond this image. What
comes first the image or experience? Suppose for example that I had never seen Italy; the only
thing I have are some photos my friend gave me. Then one day I am able to go there. I look at
the photos and see that they represent what I now experience. The image which is linked to
religious consciousness, does not conform nothing but related to something real; that why
images are powerful in every religion.
2.10.2 Harvey
Harvey offers two reading of Feuerbach the Beam metaphor and the Grid metaphor.
First of all, he interprets Feuerbach's projection theory by use of a metaphor that comes from
the self or thinker who projects. This is similar to Freud and Jung who are interested in the “I”
who projects and whose projection is coloured by psychological or anthropomorphic
conditions. According to Harvey, this represents Feuerbach’s projection. Paul Ricoeuer's
interpretation is somewhat similar and for this reason Feuerbach should be included with the
other masters of suspicion, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. I argue that this beam metaphor is may
look just like a projection and nothing else but there is something more which goes beyond or
lies behind this projection or this image. Man needs some form of projection to represent
himself so projection is a kind of self-understanding.
Harvey explains his Grid idea at great length. He supports this metaphor as one which
could present a holistic view of man; one that is perceptual and socially constructed; one in
which a religious worldview can be represented. 'Man' includes cultures, languages and other
contexts so he argues that a Christian with “faith” might adopt the Grid.
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I personally appreciate the Beam metaphor because it presents a methodological
process by which projection functions. But the Grid metaphor serves as general point of
reference for every religion also. It reflects people’s worldview and experience but might be
unable to account for some of the deeper elements of that religion.
2.10.3 Sierksma
He distinguishes different kinds of projection. On the one hand there is projection in
general which the subjective organization of the world. On the other hand there is religious
projection. Sierksma argues that “the religious projection springs primarily from the awareness
that there is “something more” that escapes our normal projective grids” (Harvey, 1997, p.
257). This shows that there is something behind our perception or upper projection. He argues
that religion has its own definition that “it is scientifically tenable that religion is characterized
by the awareness that there is a “hidden surplus of the world” which is meaning a hidden power
of some kind that hides but sometimes reveals itself” (Harvey, 1997, p. 257) and he offers the
possibility of going further than just projection which we have discussed above according to
Feuerbach’s arguments. Through the vision of Sierksma, we glimpse that there is something
more which lies behind projection. Here the question arises 'What is this something more that
religion expresses? I argue that if a person is asked why they believe it is possible that they will
answer" I started believing but I never stopped" or "I imitate the belief of my grandmother" or
"I believe because I experience that it is reasonable for me to do this." Still others might say
"I have experienced God but I can’t explain to you." Not many would have read Wittgenstein
but if they had they might use his famous words from the end of the Tractatus: 'That whereof
we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent."
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2.10.4 Is Buddhism a projection?
According to Harvey Feuerbach would say that ‘projection’ is sometimes necessary
because it protects against the fear of death. Is every religion is a kind of projection, Buddhism
for example? We see that all religious consciousness is to a certain extent an effort of human
beings to modify their world through projection. Buddhism is also projective in some sense of
limitation in that this projection springs from the believer. It seems not to be a projective
religion in the sense of metaphysical ideas but as religion whose projections are created to
fulfill one’s desire.
Sierksma expands on Harvey's statement: “(Buddhism) too, is a religion because it is
based on the experience that there is something more, a surplus” (Harvey, 1997, p. 258). Later,
Harvey clarifies that this religion is related to projection but it differs from other religion
because it relates projection to perception and underlines putting religious ideas into practice.
Harvey calls this a “guard the sense” because Buddhism denies all sorts of transcendental
agency and claims that other religions are objectifications.
2.10.5 Conclusion
We have seen that there are a number of ways of interpreting the meaning of projection.
Wartofsky interprets it in two senses; on the one hand what is imaged through religious
consciousness and on the on the other hand, the image that is generated from psychological
processes. Harvey; offers two metaphors for interpretation One is a beam metaphor –it is the
self that projects its ideas to the outside. Secondly the grid metaphor regards projection as an
organizing principle. Fabro and Küng criticize Feuerbach from the point of view of neo-
Thomism; they affirm that Feuerbach’s argument is that the human being is searching for
himself through his own projection. This interpretation may be valuable in the field of
anthropomorphic argumentation but not in the metaphysical or theological domain.
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These readings of Feuerbach leave open the possibility that religion can be interpreted
in many ways including from the perspective of psychological experience and local cultures.
This is relevant when we examine the religion of the Karen people. In their efforts to understand
'the mysterious' role played for a long time by rice in the context of their animistic practices.
In the past 150 years or so missionaries came and they were converted to Christianity. The
projections about rice were seen to be in harmony with Christian teachings about charity. In a
broader sense, rice was also an element of their own world view. They could see that the Rice
Merit Network in this religion (Christianity) was a valuable element of their culture. This
projection continues actively today through Kong Boon Khao among the Karen. However it is
not just a projection but rather also an expression of a religious consciousness arising from
their belief. They are assured that there is something more to life than the superficial and it is
this that makes the people continue in the Christian way of life.
I am attempting to use an interpretation of Feuerbach’s theory of projection as bridge
or instrument for analyzing some elements of the relationship between the universal and local
Church. It can offer us some light in the difficult task of promoting inculturation.
We have looked at the need people have for religion. Max Weber wrote that the main
function of the major religions was to help people face suffering and offer a way to overcome
it. Weber’s viewpoint is that “Religion, not only provides an explanation for, but it also
promises redemption from, suffering. Religious techniques- performance of ritual, compliance
with morality, faith, mediation, etc. – are the means by which this promise is felt to be fulfilled”
(Spiro, 1987, p. 211). The problem of evil is a central issue in many religions and is as old as
the book of Job and the Indian classics.
Another important element in religion is human desire. However, the fact that desire is
an important factor in the life of the believer this does not mean that one's religion is based on
nothing more than some illusion of wish-fulfillment.
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Religion provides a framework within which hopes and desires can be expressed. Even
when logic and psychology have finished their examination of human motivations what
Feuerbach says remains?
Man with his ego or consciousness stands at the brink of a bottomless abyss; that abyss
is his own unconscious being, which seems alien to him and inspires him with a feeling
which expresses itself in words of wonderment such as: what am I? Where have I come
from? To what end? And this feeling that I am nothing without a not-I which is distinct
from me yet intimately related to me, something other, which is at the same time my
own being, is the religious being. (Feuerbach, 1867, p. 349).
To understand this better we need to look at how religious concepts are introduced and
translated from one culture to another. I will turn to that topic in Chapter Four.
CHAPTER III APPLICATION: KONG BOON KHAO
3.1 Introduction
Feuerbach wants to consider all the motivations that lead people to practice religion.
We have already discussed something about this theme in Chapter Two in relation to “The
Essence of Christianity” where has discusses the factors that motivate believers. His argument
sets out to demonstrate that religious projection arises from a natural desire of man. Another of
his books, “Principles” is dedicated to dealing with the problem of modernization. Feuerbach
attempts to address what he sees as the weakness of the philosophy of Hegel, his neglect of the
real, lived nature of man. Faith is always a projection of this lived experience and is of the
essence of man.
Wartofsky, Harvey and Sierksma interpret this theory of religious projection in the
different ways it can be used to interpret all stories, poems, and practices which contain a latent
or hidden meanings or realities. We can consider religious projection and the search for
meaning as an illusion, but on the other hand this projection may also demonstrate something
profound, related to lived experience, and even having a mysterious spiritual dimension. It is
related to the dignity and the freedom of the man who projects.
Tu Weiming is a Chinese-born American philosopher, Professor Emeritus and Senior
Fellow of the Asia Center at Harvard University. He writes: “The crisis of modernity is not
secularization per se but the inability to experience matter as the embodiment of spirit”
(Weiming, 2002, p. 1). Before entering into an application through various interpretations I
would say something about my purpose; an effort to explain the objective of this Dissertation.
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I intend to present a case study from among the Karen people; those who are living in today's
world but one where the sacred spirit also appears Here and Now.
3.2 A brief history and belief of Karen
A writer of the history of the Karen has to use whatever evidences is available, stories,
poems and Hta, but there are many challenges. Karen (the original word is Carianes according
to Smeaton. (Smeaton, 1887, p. 68). Nowadays the belief is that in the beginning the Karen
emigrated from “a river of running sand” (Smeaton, 1887, p. 66). Marshall insisted as well that
it was “Hti Seh Meh Ywa” (Marshall, 1922, p. 11) which is exactly the same as Smeaton. The
exact place of the origin according to Smeaton is “between China and Tibet”. He says that
“Karen did not march at first into Burma, but settled down on the borders of Western China”
(Smeanton, 1887, p. 68).
Marshall and Smeaton noted that the “religious tradition of the people is embodied in
the “Ywa” legend” (Marshall, 1922, p. 181). Smeaton believed that “from the colony of Jews
there, in all probably, leant the ‘tradition of the Elders; the coming back of the White Book, the
return of the long-expected Messiah” (Smeaton, 1887, p. 68-69). They believe that “Ywa”
(today's version puts “z” to “Ywa” so it is “Ywaz”) is a creator in a sense similar to that found
in Jewish tradition. This belief is a kind of projection that has shaped the Karen’s consciousness
for centuries, and has been a source of meaning for them. Part of this story is that the Karen
have been waiting for the coming of the young brother, a white foreigner, and, of course, the
Karen themselves are the eldest brother. Animism had prepared them to welcome Christianity.
The fulfillment they awaited happened in northern Thailand. It can be seen that the context
and idea of Ywaz functions as a communal projection, one that contains a search for the
meaning of life.
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In 1950, French missionaries were expelled from Tali diocese, in China. They moved
to the north of Thailand among the Karen people who already practiced a lively and strong
form of animism. Missionaries proclaimed a new belief, Christianity, through the “Karen
Apostle” (Moffett, 2005, p. 327-329). These missionaries asked for help and some translators
came from Burma at the beginning because of the difficulties in communication with native
Karen. Later on Christianity began to spread among these people very quickly. Some were
conscious of the fact that Christianity seemed to come at the right moment; the time when the
Karen people were beginning to stop the practice of offering sacrifices. These offerings had
been made to Taj, equivalent to Ywaz, who had asked for sacrifices of chickens and pigs; now
these were becoming scarce. Dias calls this being Ghost (Dias, 2004, p. 87). The conversion of
the Karen to Christianity could be said to have some elements of projection. The embodied
image as Ywaz which was an important part of their consciousness is now replaced by that of
a merciful God, and other images which give a new meaning to their lives. This is a summary
of the exodus and history of the Karen and the belief that gave a purpose to their lives.
As part of the animist tradition the Karen people believe in the Taj, in Thai called Phi.
He is well known as Ta Hti Ta Tau (Fung, 2017, p. 22-26) as well. The word “Phi” is originally
used by Thai people when they wanted to identify something that represents a spirit for Karen;
but in Karen language, Taj means God, something closely related to the Christian meaning of
“He who is living everywhere.” Thai people presupposed that Karen believe in Phi. Karen
insist that they don’t believe in Phi but Ta Hti Ta Tau (Fung, 2015, p. 11). This is Absolute
Being; if compared with western tradition, with eastern culture, this Being is mysterious being.
He is known as creator, protector, One who can heal or bring death. Since missionaries came
and proclaimed God as in western tradition into Karen’s culture, these people accepted Him as
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the fulfillment of their idea of God. Where does God come from? This might to be called a
form of “religious projection” for Karen.
A problem arises here. How do Karen people understand Ta Hti Ta Tau in relation to
the western concept of God in Christianity? In the Gospel of Matthew we find stated what God
wants: “Mercy is what pleases me, not sacrifice” (Mt 12:7) and today the papal document
Misericordiae Vultus affirms that this is the foundation of the Church’s life” (MV 10). There
is a possibility here that while Karen were leaving aside their custom of offerings; pigs and
chickens to Ta Hti Ta Tau as God, a spirit that has a stricter image than the Old Testament
figure, they still needed some form of sacrifice and rites to make up for past wrongs and ward
off the punishment of fate. This, according to Kaewta was a psychological process that was
influential in the Karen’s search for an alternative image of God who is more merciful and
understandable.
Here we might return to the beam metaphor of Harvey who asserts that religion also
functions as a psychological dynamism since man is made of mind and psychic being. The
image of this Ta Hti Ta Tau was translated into the 'western' God but not totally changed. It
was seen as the fulfillment of the concept of Ta Hti Ta Tau. It doesn’t mean that this Ta Hti Ta
Tau disappears from Karen life so it is necessary to explain something more about the “turning
point”. Firstly, many people have the erroneous idea that the Karen people replaced their own
belief with that of the western God. Secondly, one can see that in the same way as Jewish
biblical literature had the idea of future fulfillment, so also the “Hta”, mythological stories
expressed an attitude of waiting for well-being in mind and body. Many of the concepts which
are thought to be at the foundation of Christianity, such as the word “Ywaz” (literally “Flowing
or Living”) which means “God” are already present in their belief. Even “Hta” displays several
times that it contains the name of God. Thirdly, Ta Hti Ta Tau today has the profound meaning
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of God and now this God is merciful but at the same time in a way that is different from western
understanding because of the background of animism. The identity of this God which is found
only in Karen’s life and understanding is different.
The experience of Ta Hti Ta Tau in Karen life is like an adventure. It has nothing to do
with the abstract idea of Him as Absolute Being as influenced by Plato. For Karen, He is
everywhere and man can experience him directly and indirectly. Contact is made not through
knowledge but also by personal experience. This experience comes from believing and
personal witness; just believing increases belief. Man is a mysterious being since we don’t
understand well who we are. As Wartofsky explains when speaking of the esoteric type of
“religious projection”, this believing doesn’t only come from mind, psyche, communal or
individual desire but from the whole life or worldview of that person or community. Here I
argue that many Karen priests and nuns have an experience of this Ta Hti Ta Tau through
which they are assured that they are called by this mysterious being active in their nature; they
experience a God who is present here and now. Harvey argues that the grid metaphor is
particularly natural for Asian people, especially Hinduism to understand their encounter with
mysterious being. It is obvious that many Asian people recognize ultimate being in daily life;
every moment is a presence of mysterious being and that is why one could say that that God
(or some spirit) is Now or Omnipresence. If one accepts that this is, by nature, a kind of religious
projection, it could also be affirmed that religious expression in the context of Asia is a
permanent experience of mysterious being. This is the content of the theory of religious
projection in Karen Christians. This is one of the foundations of their belief, one that helps to
give some light to understand the connection between their God and rice which is the most
important element in their daily lives. Both are inseparably connected because the people
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believe that rice is a gift from God and life comes through it. Rice not only supplies a material
need but it also is food for the spiritual journey to eternal their home.
3.3 Kong Boon Khao
The words “paradigm shift” is often used to explain a “turning point” or a very
significant change of direction or the way something is understood. Historically, Copernicus
caused one of these. Further back in the New Testament the words of Jesus “Love your
neighbor” (Mk 12: 31) could be seen as an invitation to such a change. Above it has been
discussed the “Changing” from the image of Ta Hti Ta Tau in animism into God in Christianity.
Here this involves a psychological process but part of its value for the Karen lay in the fact that
in the worldview of the new religion they found much that harmonized with the old. Although
they had converted to Christianity their experienced of the mysterious in their existence was
not greatly different to what they experienced previously. For them there was a sense of
gratitude for the goodness they had received from this Being. They gave concrete expression
to this sense of gratitude through their desire to send this message of love to all mankind by the
founding of the “Kong Boon Khao”.
The Kong Boon Khao (In Thai language) is commonly used in Karen daily life. The
meaning of each word in “Kong Boon Khao”, is significant. “Kong” means “gathering
together” it is a moment of “giving” that this activity offers to a community. “Kong” is used
because in the Karen philosophical view of life we have to act in community. “Boon” means
“Merit” in Thai language and should be understood as something beneficial in the original
Christian sense. Here “Boon” does not refer to a benefit that comes from ourselves but one
that comes from God. This “Boon” indicates that this “Merit” comes from God but through
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communal activity. The idea refers to God because we don’t have “Boon” but we receive it
from God then we pass it on to others. According to Karen philosophy it doesn't make sense
when understood in an individualistic way. There is a strong sense of community among the
Karen. Marshall writes that for Karen, the tribe is more important than family or blood ties so
the place of the family is less accented in this culture. In Thai language “Khao” means “Rice”
in but in Karen language rice is called “Bu”. A common word among the Karen is
“Bupaxkauz”. For the sake of translation into English it can be broken down into three words.
“Bu” means “rice”, then “pax” means “keeping” and “kauz” means “everlasting” or
“sustainable”(Wongjomporn, Interviewed on August 2, 2019). Rice has a special essence. In
Thai it is called “Kwarn”, and in Karen, is called “K’la”; both “Kwarn” or “K’la refer to the
“Essence of life” so rice is not only something that satisfies a material need, it is also intimately
connected with life or spirit. Thienviharn analyzes this essence of life which is in Khao and
says it dies three times. Firstly the rice seed dies in the ground; secondly, the plant dies when
the rice is harvested, and lastly, rice dies when it is cooked. He sees some parallel here to the
Paschal mystery where Jesus died for humanity; rice dies to give life to humans as Christ has
died for humanity. (Thienviharn, 2004, p. 89-96). When they share Bu with others the Karen
people experience that it has a spiritual dimension. It is a mysterious element. This interplay
between the material and spiritual is a permanent element of their lives.
Here we come to a central point of Karen belief which is well summed up in the
following traditional saying of the Karen Hill Tribes. “Those who have more, eat less, and the
rest must be shared. Those who have less must also share” and “When we have, we all eat
together, when we don’t have, we all starve together” (Karen poem).
Before going any further it is important to remember that, in the past, the Karen often
suffered from hunger. They had to care for each other, especially in times of famine and
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disease. The idea of “sharing” that I have mentioned above is deep in the Karen consciousness.
Throughout their history they are aware that “we live or starve together” not as isolated
individuals. “Bupaxkauz” became a symbol of communal projection for the other. They had a
long experience of suffering throughout their history so they project that this history of
suffering should be a reminder that we must do something today to relieve suffering. The way
they think of others is a religious element which is found in the Karen people. This kind of love
is a religious projection that is in accordance with the message of God’s commandment. We
are familiar with the Christian teaching that Love is its essential core. For Karen the love of
God becomes palpable through the life-cycle of rice. Love is not an abstract idea but the Karen
grasp that this must be put into action not out of self-interest but for the good of the community.
I want now to explain how Karen consciousness and religious projection come together
when they listen to a story “The calling the bird of the rice spirit to heaven” from a Karen hill
tribe folklore. It is an old story that has been passed down through the centuries.
Pru! Come, rice, Come up! Bird of the rice spirit, widowed grandmother, call the paddy
up, call the milled rice up, call the rice up in the barn, call the rice up in the granary,
rice in the sky, rice in the ground, rice from the north, rice from the south, rice from the
east, rice from the west, rice from the big field, rice from the big paddy field, rice from
the great Maekong, rice from the great Salween, rice from the great mountain, rice from
the high peak, rice from Chiang Mai, rice from Bangkok, make yourself come up, make
yourself increase, come up and eat the first rice, come up and drink pure water, come
up and eat bird meat, come up and eat chicken meat, come up and join together, come
up and be together, come up and unite, come up and be in solidarity, come up and fill
the barn, come up and fill the granary, come up and fill the field hut, come up and fill
the resting place!.(Historical Documentation, 2019, p. 121)
This prayer is recited by the Karen hill tribes in Northern Thailand during the threshing
of the rice paddy after harvesting. The reference to “bird of the rice spirit” and the “widowed
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grandmother” is from another ancient folklore story told by ancestors over the years. This story
goes as follows:
An orphan lived alone and others discriminated against him so the heavenly angel saw
his suffering then she transfigured herself as a grandmother who came to stay with this
orphan. She taught him how to cultivate rice. When the orphan grew up she wanted to
say goodbye to him. He didn’t want her to go back to heaven so he asked her to stay
with him forever. Finally this grandmother was transfigured into rice. The Karen have
a rice ritual to recall the spirit of rice which is represented as a black bird. (Historical
Documentation, 2019, p. 132-142. ‘Whole story is found here on page 121-126 at the
end of Dissertation’)
To analyze this story, to understand and interpret it, three things must be observed. First
the orphan representing the Karen people, second the widow as grandmother, a celestial being
and at last, rice as an essential element for life.
Firstly, the background of the story is the life of the Karen, and their consciousness of
living in a status of orphanage. They have a life which is full of suffering. This story is one of
many stories that speak of the orphan condition. These stories personify the heart of the Karen,
the feeling that they are abandoned in this world. Many Karen songs express the reality of
suffering in their lives. Their Karen consciousness, repeatedly expressed in this way, is one of
being poor and living in a very limited condition. They were cruelly treated by other nation and
displaced from place to place. Marshall writes that;
Karen are accustomed to say of themselves that ‘they put a thing in the heart’. They
mean by this that they hold their peace, but do not forget slights, grudges, disagreeable
request, and the like. If a Karen is asked to do something he does not want to do, he
may reply with a grunt suggesting an assent, but does not comply with the request and
fails to appear soon again. He does not refuse at the time, fearing to cause trouble. In
the same way a slight or an insult is put in the heart without retort or demonstration of
anger. (Marshall, 1922, p. 26).
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There are contrasting identities here. On one side commentators might say that Karen
people cannot make any decision easily; on the other hand it could be said that they are prudent
before deciding whether something is black or white. The Karen phrase that we translate as
‘Put in the heart’ demonstrates that these people with good reason are wise in cases that touch
the heart, an important dimension of their reality. The heart is not only the center of life but
also the most important element of the life. The Karen are a contemplative people who
generally are very quiet when compared with other hill-tribes. Marshall mentions that “they
are cautious in entering into friendship, but, having done so, are faithful and sincere to those
whose confidence they accept in exchange for the other” (Marshall, 1922, p. 26). It is seen that
to be more silent is part of their personality and so they are careful about creating relationship
with other nations because first they must think deeply and, as they say 'put thing in their heart.'
If they do not feel fully confident they keep their distance, and for this reason they live in
isolated places such as mountainous remote areas where there are few people and little traffic.
But if they trust someone they are loyal and faithful to them. This is seen not only towards
people but also in regard to religious belief. In the story, the orphan who is abandoned by the
others struggled a lot to live but even in terrible situations he is faithful to life and tries hard to
grow rice by himself.
With reference to the blood tribe, Marshall writes that “Blood-brotherhood is a
recognized institution among them, having been much more prevalent in the past than at
present; and the bond signified by it in most of the Karen tribes was stronger that the ties of
family” (Marshall, 1922, p. 26). Marshall, a missionary of the American Baptists belonging to
a Foreign Mission Society, identifies this bond of blood among Karen as something which
represents for Karen, that the bond to the tribe is stronger than to the family. This is a means
of preserving unity. They have a fear of making friends with others and they believe that even
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in the case of marriage they have to marry someone from their own people and stay away from
other nations. They have a traditional saying “Don’t honor other place, don’t honor other
countries’ – P’trez pgaz of pgaz hti, p’trez of pgaz kauj t’geiz – They are happy with what they
have and what they are.
They accept the fate of life according to “Hta” (Ancient Poem); Hpo qai le ple pgaz
tooj e, htof lauz auf bu le lejhkle, Hpo qai le ple tooj saf wi, hez htauf bu laj kai htauf piv iv
(The orphan, in the past, was treated badly, he planted rice on the rock and the orphan, in past,
was hungry, he wrapped leaves of the grain and it became cooked-rice). This reflects the reality
of Karen life. Marshall analyzes that they are considering themselves as a people that has to
confront this destiny with patience because one of the things that is true for them is that “Karen
are not as quick-witted as some of the other race of the Orient” (Marshall, 1922, p. 27). They
cannot be called an intelligent people like other nation but by comparison with other nations it
can be seen that they are outstanding in faithfulness and honesty. The following fable reflects
this idea.
A man who was about to leave home, ordered his pig and dog to prepare a plot of ground
for planting as a garden. The pig was industrious and rooted until he had all but finished
turning over the plot, while the dog spent his time lying under a tree. Late in the
afternoon, before the master's return, the dog jumped up and scratched about here and
there in the soft earth. When he heard his master coming, he ran barking down the path
to meet him, and told him that the pig had been working only a short time, while he had
been digging all day. The faithful pig, meanwhile, was so busy rooting in the farthest
corner of the lot, trying to finish before his owner's return, that he knew nothing of what
was going on. The credulous man believed the dog's deceitful words. He killed the pig
and only discovered his mistake when it was too late. This fable is epitomized in the
proverb. ‘The dog scratches in the pig's place’. (Marshall, 1922, p. 27).
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This fable is recalled today to emphasize that faithfulness is more important than
accomplishment. For Karen this fable contains a truth. The Karen identity and consciousness
is strengthened by the telling of stories on various occasions; stories whose underlying
philosophy is about the peaceable, honesty, and goodness of the Karen nature. Another person
from the western world, a Dr. Mason, was an eyewitness who worked with them and lived with
them for decades. The orphan is the model of the peaceable, honest and good man. He lives
with his own limitation and his struggle for a better life, even if it is very low. Maybe they think
that the more one has or needs the more trouble they have. The orphan story shows the destiny
of Karen as a projection. The orphan, for Karen, is projected as Karen consciousness that life
should be simple and honest. (Simplicity and Honesty as Essence of Life) The modern metaphor
of the iceberg is appropriate; only a small part of life can be seen, the rest is mysterious being.
The story shows also why Karen life is often poor because they 'don’t know how' to live in this
world where deceit and trickery are so common. Marshall affirms that he agrees with this view.
(Marshall, 1922, p. 27). This is the first element that it can help us to understand the identity of
Karen.
Secondly, another element of the story above is the intervention of an angel or a
transfigured angel (Hpi muj mai). Traditionally, the word they use for 'the world' is “Haufhkof.”
In Karen language this means “place where we are crying”. In general the Karen people see
this world as a temporal home; they believe that one day they will rest in a better place that is
called “Moohkof” meaning “living place”. “Moo” means “Life” and “Hkof” means “place”.
Something that is common to many Karen fables is that there are two people, an angel
and an orphan. They usually live together to help each other but are often envied by the people
around them who try to harm them but these never succeed because this Hpi hpi or angel is
heavenly agent that has come to help the poor orphan. The orphan is poor and he is treated
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badly by the others. He is waiting for someone to come to help him. This second person is
mentioned here as an element of Karen religious projection. This could be related to the idea
of the beam metaphor of Harvey, or Freud's idea, with roots in Feuerbach, the human search or
wish for something that can save him from a terrible situation. Man may be treated badly by
fate but among the Karen, the process of projection, while expressed in fables, is seen not
merely as a psychological desire but as a necessary element for living. This is an element of
the religious consciousness which is functioning among Karen.
Where is this angel from? I found that many stories or fables recount the deep belief of
Karen people that there is no way out of their destiny which is full of terrible situations
especially treatment from other nations who have tried to bring about their disaster in this world
of weeping. They interpret this intervention of the angel as an opening of a new horizon, an
experiencing of something lies deep in Karen consciousness, a mysterious being. That is
something necessary to grasp when trying to understand the way of life of these people. This
projection is not a meaningless concept coming from the imagination; but for Karen, is a real
consciousness that is represented in several places in songs, poems, Htas and sayings.
Lastly, it is seen that that the angel, at the end, becoming the grain for the orphan;
“Streams of rice came out from under her fingernails, her toenails, her eyelids, her hair, her
nose, her mouth, and her clothes and began to fill the hut with a loud noise. The old widow's
whole body became a beautiful golden yellow of the paddy” (Karen folklore). The grandmother
or the old widow becomes the grain for the orphan, according to the Karen fable; the rice is
from the mystic widow who lives with the orphan. The grain is not only to satisfy a physical
need as a meal but also represents the consolation and closeness of this mysterious being as an
old widow to the orphan. This grain becomes something more for Karen; consolation and
closeness come through this grain or rice. Karen experience the mysterious being that it is
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hidden within rice. From now on the relationship between the orphan and the old widow is
indicated as the mysterious relationship in which Karen consciousness is represented from
generation to generation. This relationship underlines man's experience of mysterious being.
In his search he projects something beyond this world. This thing or image is drawn from
religious experience which is found in local people’s life. This is the original element that is
possibly explained according to Feuerbach’s religious projection.
It is considered that the orphan is a representative of Karen people whose self-
understanding and consciousness is that their own situation is similar to that of the orphan.
Many Karen stories, fables, poems, testimonies and sages, reflect this 'orphan' consciousness
of Karen, They feel that they are treated badly both by fate and other nation so psychologically
they need a saviour. There is a mysterious being that the Karen do not control but they welcome
his intervention with trust. The grandmother or the old widow is a representative of this
mysterious being that Karen experience everywhere. This being may be transfigured in many
images; the old widow, the needy and the poor and this is why Karen people are amiable to the
guests for they believe that the angel might visit them through guests and He may come
whenever He wants (Marshall, 1922, p. 30). This is a kind of projection but it has a meaning
for Karen people. Rice is a gift from the mysterious being; in the end, rice itself becomes the
mysterious being, an essential part of Karen life.
If we turn to Kong Boon Khao, we can understand immediately that grain or rice is an
essential element for Karen people. For Karen a mysterious agent is revealed.
In this twenty-first century times are extremely changeable and man’s consciousness is
continually expanding. Karen projection is vivid and continuous. The rice is not only an
element, what appears to the eyes, but it also contains the essence of life, what the orphan
experienced as spirit when the old widow left. At first he sadly asks “Grandmother, are you
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going home? Who will I live with? Who will help me to have rice to eat?” A second time, as he
feels great loneliness and unable to control his feelings, he called out to her again. A third time
as the orphan watched her leave, his heart nearly breaking, he called out to her again. One can
see how important rice is to Karen people; it is not only for this material thing that is food but
also an experiencing of something more in relation which is found in rice. The widow in Karen
folklore reveals the origin of the spirit of rice symbolized in her body. It is the threshold of the
relationship; the grandmother wants to go back to heaven where she had been before. Here is
the beginning of perception or sense of a metaphysical agent that the Karen inherited from
generations past.
The Karen people are challenged by the culture of the modern world where selfishness
is a kind of trademark. So how do Karen still project through their relationship to rice a way of
life that can still be a channel of sharing or love? Modern capitalism and consumerism promotes
unlimited desire by use of advertisements. This involves the magic of money but the greatest
part of the benefits are reaped the rich alone. Selfishness is a brand of this generation. Kong
Boon Khao/Bupaxkauz is based on a different set of concepts, a kind of reaction to the
consumerism and individualism of this generation. They share their resources with everyone,
in particular with the poor. This is a projection in Feuerbach's sense but interpreted by Harvey
by use of the beam metaphor. This psychological process were linked to desire or wish,
especially the struggle to overcome situations such as famine and other difficulties. What can
one find when searching for the connection between Kong Boon Khao and Feuerbach’s theory
of religious projection? The answer would be that through the “religious impulse” that Karen
projects on to rice is a kind of religious teaching, although animism is not religion. Bailey says:
‘‘Animism’’ is not a religion, it is a theoretical construct that attempts to explain a wide range
of religious beliefs and practices. (Leeming, Madden and Marlan, 2010, p. 43) Later on with
the coming of Christianity and the new golden commandment of Jesus to “Love your neighbor”
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the Karen find constructive ways to give concrete expression to this commandment to love one
another.
How did the Rice Merit Network come about? There are three moments. Firstly, there
was the “Pre-Missionary period” – villagers showed their mutual aid and concern during times
of food shortage. “In the past, villagers were engaged primarily in subsistence production
where reciprocal labor was necessary. The community was small with close relationship and
here traditional leaders played a significant role. Eventually village leaders called “Hif Hkof”
would give advice on mutual aid” (Karunan, 2019, p. 44). This was the first period or stage of
rice merit group; the mutual help was given by those who had more to help to those who lacked
and were helpless. Secondly, we have what is called the “Missionary Period” (1964-1977).
Missionaries observed that in villages, there were some families that had enough rice for the
whole year but there were others who were starving so in the small village they promoted a
more sustainable model of community life. The missionaries who brought Christianity
observed that in remote places, people who are our brothers and sisters suffered famine and
were helpless so they decided to something about it. “Over fifty year ago, most remote villages
did not have enough rice to eat. Missionary priests who came to promote Christianity in the
villages extended their assistance to solve the problem of rice shortage by setting up rice groups
in different villages” (Karunan, 2019, p. 44). The long-term objective was not only to relieve
starvation for each family but also to confront the problem of drug addiction (opium) among
villagers. One of the conditions was that drug addicts did not have a right to borrow rice from
the Rice Merit Network. As a result drug addicts tried to stop using drugs so that their family
members would have the right to borrow rice. Thirdly, there is the stage of the Rice Groups
from 1978 to the present time. The Chiangmai Diocesan Social Action Centre (DISAC) started
to work both in the highlands and lowlands on the community development during this period.
“The main activities during the initial period was to raise awareness among grassroots leaders
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and provide support to economic projects especially formation of rice group in various
villages” (Karunan, 2019, p. 45). The main purpose was to set up Rice Merit Network in the
villages, so that villagers could borrow rice in time of shortage. It is in fact, a renewal of the
value of mutual aid and a solution to the problem of exploitation by traders and middlemen
from outside. Each period provides the leader from “Hif Hkof” to “Missionary and then
“DISAC” (Diocesan Social Action Center) as organizer of projection but behind this is the
community where one could share his life with others. “Love your neighbor” whether practiced
in a context of animism or Christianity is a searching something that is behind this projection.
An interesting observation is that this project can’t be organized among other tribes, possibly
because they don’t have any original element of religious belief.
Coming after these three periods DISAC of Chiangmai diocese continues to develop
this activity as a project among Karen Christians, Buddhists and traditional beliefs. The Rice
Merit Network is a space of dialogue that also unites and involves people from different faiths
because this activity with rice touches on a common concern and raises awareness of different
indigenous or ethnic identity. (Karunan, 2019, p. 50). The Rice Merit Network is a way for
dialogue also among groups where people are looking for some spiritual connection, where the
soul is seeking a place for rest.
The Rice Merit Network has now been established for many years among Karen hill
tribe communities in Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son through the “Religio-Cultural Approach
to development.” This approach is based on an appreciation of the fact that “Human persons
are fulfilled when they are both “recipients and givers.” (Karunan, 2019, p. 50) Karunan added
that “when the community has enough rice to eat, they should also share their surplus to help
the merit fund involving over 383 communities” (Karunan, 2019, p. 50), “Love your neighbor”
means to give what one has and at the same time, one receives from others when one is in need.
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The main idea is that the one who has enough rice to eat has to share, and when one is short of
rice he or she can to ask for help because of a deep awareness of the others as their brothers
and sisters. This idea is close to the description of the kingdom as found in Christianity. The
Rice Merit Network is a way of expressing identity as a community but it is not just a religious
projection, it is vital for the survival of oneself and the community.
The objectives of this Rice Merit Network continues to expand and now goes beyond
immediate need to take into account other challenges to rural communities.
This rice merit fund to address different problems of the communities, such as a
revolving rice fund in local community, community welfare fund (in time of sickness,
death, fire, flood, and so on), fund for assistance to widows, orphans, elder people, the
handicapped, scholarship for poor children, women’s saving groups, natural resource
conservation fund, and non-chemical farming. (Karunan, 2019, p. 50).
They have extended the scope this religious projection, which at first focused on
survival in times of hunger. As the funds increased they distributed some to different people
who were in need. An organization called 'The Nine Grains of Rice’ is run by Buddhists and
Catholics in the lowland. It explains itself this way:
The first grain is for household consumption, the second grain is for helping relatives
and neighbors, the third grain is for entertaining visitors, the fourth grain is for donating
to the poor and needy, the fifth grain for exchanging for basic necessities, the sixth grain
is kept for the ordination of children into Buddhism, the seventh grain is for supporting
community activities, the eighth is for gaining merit by donating to the monks at the
temple and the ninth grain is for building up a new society -Messianic society.
(Karunan, 2019, p. 138)
This project has greatly increased the resources for helping others. The first concern
for Karen people, was Kong Boon Khao but in the future the big issues may be Kong Boon
Nam (water), Kong Boon Ya (medicine) or Kong Boon Education for instance. The project
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(projection) itself is defined by the nature of the need but, in what is given is something is
beyond rice that is Love. The significance of rice itself brings one into the presence of
mysterious being where the origin of values lies. There are many values such as use value,
exchange value, spiritual value and religious value and all value is found in life where people
are living. These different values and needs, and the inability to respond to them individually,
explain why people seek many and varied ways to help each other.
Where do the values come from? People of every culture have their own way of
evaluating and explaining the meaning of their culture. This is also true of the Karen.
(They) have stories, legends, tales and so on, integrated with new values such as the
concept on network and creation of symbols, such as the logo of the network. This is
the strategy for producing a new concepts and definitions of development in the rice
merit network is a hybridization of existing and new properties. (Karunan, 2019, p. 51).
Modernization tries hard to make just one global culture, one language, one story and
one 'tradition.' This is a problem that this argument would like to confront. We are different
but we can learn from others culture, languages and traditions. The diversity that exists in our
world is a source of great richness and beauty.
Karunan comments: “the Rice Merit Network has created new symbols by recovering
concepts or teachings from traditional cultures, such as concepts from stories, legends, poems”
(Karunan, 2019, p. 51). It is obvious that through religious projection, one can say that any
value can be projected by oneself. It can be an illusion but in the case of the Karen cultures it
has been shown that values have been there for a long time but sometimes one must try hard in
order to find it: it is like a pearl buried in the field (Mt 13: 44-46). One cannot ignore the culture
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of other people. Each culture with its creative spirit, can reveal the self-understanding of a
people. For the Karen people this is very much related to rice
The Kong Boon Khao Network is an example of religious projection among the Karen
for the benefit of society “by reviving community philosophy, perception and beliefs through
various symbols” (Karunan, 2019, p. 51). It also displays self-understanding of this group. It
also highlights the historical background of the people whose life is being studied. The Rice
Merit Network or Kong Boon Khao becomes an interpretation to Feuerbach’s concept of
religious projection and its ideology on mutual aid among community members. At the present
time, this projection is welcomed by Karen Christians. This model of the Rice Merit Network
or Kong Boon Khao is an expression of the core value of Christianity “Love your neighbor”
(Yibmuntasiri, 1997, p. 101-102). The sharing of rice is a sharing of love. God is love and so
the sharing of the mysterious being the person not only shares but is changed. This leads
believers into a deeper understanding of the central teaching of Jesus that “God is love” (1Jn
4: 7-21). This “Love” is interpreted by followers of Jesus to mean that if one doesn’t love, one
doesn’t know God. This means that one comes to know God through love; he who loves is the
one who knows God and so Kong Boon Khao is a way to help others to directly experience
God. It is legitimate to conclude that Kong Boon Khao is a religious projection of Karen
Christian in sense of the beam and esoteric concepts in Harvey and Wartofsky because this
religious projection leads people to experience God. It offers them a way to understand
themselves as human beings. Through this projection, there is something in the sense that a
man projects it. The human being can experience the mysterious agent, so man’s projection
demonstrates his desire to look for something that is beyond himself.
Another aspect of Kong Boon Khao is that “In knowing and understanding the
definition of each symbol, organic intellectuals would explain the meaning to community
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members to foster common community” (Karunan, 2019, p. 51). This is the strategy as struggle
“rice as the symbol of the good, giving life to community, foster mutual aid, sacrifice and
hospitality” (Karunan, 2019, p. 52). Karen Christian uses this projection among themselves as
the bond for sustainability for the future. Maybe this projection is diffused among them because
they want to fight with the money which is “the symbol of capitalism” (Karunan, 2019, p. 52).
The model of the Rice Merit Network can also serve to illustrate the conflict between
different priorities with regard to development and, capital and need. The idea is to preserve
the important role of rice but later on, money often replaces rice. People think that having
money is easier than rice. This is the parallel table between two approaches.
Rice Bank Rice Merit Group
Rice bank activity is purely based on
“economic” reason.
1. Rice merit activity is based on belief
and culture of community.
Motivation of organization of people
to implement rice bank is based on
“problem”.
2. Villagers got organized to implement
rice merit activity based on “virtue”
of mutual aid.
Resource to set up rice bank is
mobilized from outside (foreign
donor agencies).
3. Resources to support rice merit
activity are mobilized from within
community according to their
willingness and capacity with some
contribution from outside.
Rice bank provides loan with low
interest rate with regulations
determined by outsiders.
4. Rice merit has three types.
4.1 Grant or relief
4.2 Set up different revolving fund
for community
4.3 Set up operation fund for
networks at two levels, namely
regional and network.
(Karunan, 2019, p. 49)
A study of mainstream development always shows how the role of money can take over
from rice (community). Karuna’s comment on this development among Karen is that they are
facing two levels of struggle. Firstly, struggle against the definition coming from outside the
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Network through mainstream development discourse. This often promotes individualism,
consumerism and materialist happiness. The Rice Merit Network on the other hand presents
itself as an organization for mutual aid and unity based on self-sufficiency. Secondly, there is
a struggle within the network about different ways to promote community. What is the best
way to support villagers “with different condition and status to get involved in an exercise to
learn how to live together amidst diversity of opinions, beliefs and ideologies, and be able to
manage this conflict” (Karunan, 2019, p. 53). This religious projection for the Karen Christian
and his neighbor of a different belief, is not a projection without problems and often there are
conflicts among them but through mutual aid new horizons are created and areas of sharing
come into existence that will offer better possibilities for the sustainability of the community
into the future.
3.4 Conclusion
How can Rice Merit Network sustain the community as long as projection among
Karen? As the projection, it is appears as a war between rice and money. Money is dominating
the world and one can have everything if one has money. This is a disaster for an important
part of humanity. People can be persuaded that money is what is important, it can buy
everything, but it is clear that there are a million things that money can’t buy – things like life,
health, justice love. Karunan quotes Suppachai’s study “Rice Merit Network against Money,
Unity against Selfishness” (Karunan, 2019, p. 55). Karunan accepts that “The Rice Merit
Network is a successful mode of operation. It is based on the people’s participation based on a
community culture. It could serve as a good model for application in other places that are
interested in development based on empowerment of the community” (Karunan, 2019, p. 55).
This is an example from among the Karen Christians, a projection for fostering the community
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in this 21st century in which people have to struggle to appreciate real values in the face of
obvious and subtle invitations to selfishness
CHAPTER IV INCULTURATION
4.1 Introduction
We have already looked at an application of Feuerbach’s theory of religious projection
in Chapter III. Kong Boon Khao has a very significant meaning as religio-culture practice for
the Karen people. I highlight it as a communal projection that affects the whole community
bringing both physical and spiritual benefits.
In this chapter, I intend to look at ways to connect 'universal' Christianity to the local
culture of the Karen people, a process which is called “inculturation.” Essentially it is a
theological or religious concept referring to the process of adapting the Christian message to
the cultures of different peoples. This is the central idea that we are going to discuss in this
section.
At the beginning, we discussed the theory of religious projection according to
Feuerbach; here I want to first comment on some of the original elements which are found in
human life. People are born into a human community which already has a culture and they are
enculturated into this system of meanings and customs.
The concept “Inculturation” is an important one in the world today. Although it is most
often found in a religious context, it is also very relevant for others, business people, politicians
etc. who come into a different culture with activities which may cause change. It is often a
source of controversy. It challenges people to accept that we cannot live in isolation on this
planet because we also need others who live in different cultural contexts. To enter another
culture or religion, people need to be able to dialogue; in the field of religious dialogue one
needs to be able to avoid prejudice.
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4.2 The Challenges of Inculturation
Although the word inculturation is a recent one, the reality it signifies has a long history.
Here I will focus on events in Asia from the 1500's onward. At the council of Trent (1545-
1563) the leadership of the Catholic Church set about the challenge of renewal. Part of this was
a great new missionary effort. This was carried out by older religious orders like the
Dominicans and Franciscans and especially by the new energetic and well-educated Jesuits.
One of the best remembered in Catholic history is an Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, a missionary
in China from 1583 until his death in 1610. He was a member of a Jesuit team composed of
members from various European countries. Besides the usual training in philosophy and
theology they were also well educated in humanities and the sciences of their day. They had
come to preach the Gospel but Ricci was one of the first to realize that, to do this, they must be
culturally acceptable to the Chinese. They started by dressing like them, first as Buddhist
bonzes but then changing to Confucian dress when they realized that the scholar had a better
chance of being listened to. Ricci believed that Confucianism could be a good starting point
for a presentation of Christianity. By acting in this way, he showed a deep reverence for China’s
inherited wisdom. Four dimensions, language, dress, respect for local culture and dialogue
were important elements of Ricci's mission.
What does one do when trying to introduce new and unknown concepts into another
culture? Ricci tried to find what we could call 'cultural equivalents' that would allow the use of
Chinese terms to translate key Catholic concepts; he relied on his own reading and
interpretation of the Confucian writings. Centuries later the same challenge faced missionaries
working among the Karen; they decided to use “Ywaz” as an acceptable name for God in their
terminology. If the idea of God is present in a culture missionary must see how might be
rendered in Christian language. In China the Jesuits did not deny the new Catholics the
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opportunity to take part is such traditional ceremonies as rites for the dead and honours for the
ruler. Their policy was at first approved by Rome and the Jesuit superiors. What happened
after Ricci died in 1610? He left behind thousands of new Christians, and his methods were
adopted by the other Jesuit missionaries. By the 1660s Chinese Christians numbered a quarter
of a million.
However, as time passed problems arose. Other religious orders, partly out of concern
for purity of doctrine, and partly out of jealousy of the Jesuit success, began to send negative
reports to Rome. In 1704, Franciscan and Dominican priests who were missionaries in China
made complaints to Pope Clement XI that the Chinese Catholics, under the influence of the
Jesuits continued with some practices and superstitions that were contrary to Christian belief.
In response the Chinese insisted that they didn’t worship Confucius or their ancestors but were
paying respect; just as people in the west left flowers for the dead, in China they offered food
and drink for the dead.
The disagreement ended badly and with new laws prohibiting Catholic from taking part
in many traditional Chinese rites. There had been some disagreement among the Jesuits
themselves but the superior of the time, Fr. Longobardi, enforced the new rules. There could
be no 'marriage' between Confucian thought and Catholic doctrine because Confucian
cosmology did not recognize the separation of matter and spirit; no cultural equivalent existed.
Today we could argue that there is little possibility of a people accepting “Christianity” if we
don’t have any 'bridges' in the culture to explain of what we believe. We can appreciate Ricci
as a pioneer, an intelligent evangelizer of modern world.
The prohibition by the Church of the Chinese way of observing rites had very negative
results. In the book The Wise Man from the West, a biography of Ricci, the author Vincent
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Cronin wrote: “Christianity was no longer a universal religion adaptable to all peoples but a
swashbuckling, narrow, prejudiced local cult”. It was a clear demonstration of the
misunderstandings that arises when one does not enter into a dialogue with others but judges
the other instead. This form of ignorance could be eliminated if one were prepared to learn
from the past.
In 1606, four years before the death of Ricci, another Italian Jesuit, Roberto de Nobili
arrived to the State of Tamil Nadu in India. With the encouragement of his superiors he did an
intense study of language and culture. His creation of a vocabulary for the expression of
Christian terms in Sanskrit and his catechetical and doctrinal writings were a valuable
contribution. He soon realized that the local population despised the Christians and their
converts because they ate meat, drank alcohol and violated many cultural rules. He saw little
hope of challenging the 'divinely-ordained' caste system. He moved to a hut in a Brahman
quarter of the city, dressed like them and followed much of their way of life. But he too was
eventually judged to have made too many concessions and in 1623 Pope Gregory XV was
persuaded to forbid much of his programme for 'inculturation.'
These are the kinds of inculturation to which both Ricci and De Nobili adjusted
themselves in their contact with other cultures. It does not favour the other but tries to
understand the real meaning of their practices both in daily life and religion affairs.
In 1953, Betharam priests came as Christian misionaries to the territory of Chiangmai.
They moved from China to Thailand because of persecution in the years after 1949. We can
notice in them some similarities to the attitudes of Ricci and di Nobili when they came to work
among the Karen people. They started to learn the language, dress in a suitable way, eat the
food that was available and stay with the local people.
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. As we discussed in Chapter III while they brought the new religion to the Karen people
and had great success, they also tried to suppress many elements of the culture such as Htas,
songs, poems, plays and folklore from the life of these people. For example the Htas, expressed
beliefs that had been important to the Karen but the missionaries were not sensitive to this.
The effort to adapt is sometimes not in evidence among missionaries to the Karen today.
Some who could don’t learn the language, don’t eat what people prepare for them and never
dress according to any Karen custom. They sometimes regard the Karen as unhygienic and
uncivilized. Where these attitudes are present, they need to change. It is offensive to believers
if they feel they are being looked down on or if missionaries somehow give the impression that
they are wasting their time.
Finally, I could mention a problem to be found among diocesan priests of the newer
generation. They are sons of Karen people. They ought to be well-versed in their own culture
and belief but often they seem to have forgotten about their origins. Sometimes the 'universal'
kind of formation they received in Thailand or elsewhere seems to have left them 'overly
Romanized.' Unfortunately, sometime they appear to no longer acknowledge their original
background because they think that their new education has lifted them up beyond all of that.
I have mentioned some problems involved in inculturation. As a member of the Church, and
also a priest, I often wonder about the identity of the Karen Christian? At this point I'd like to
introduce briefly the thought of three more authors of more recent times on the origin of
religion, how it is transmitted and the extent to which the central idea of the major religion do
or do not overlap.
4.3 Religion and Myth: Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell (1904-1989) was an American professor of literature at Sarah
Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. He had studied widely in the humanities and in the
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cultures of Asia. He wrote several books on mythology and comparative religion and is widely
recognized as one of the most influential authorities in this field in the 20th century. For
Campbell all the major religions use myths, not in the sense that they are of no value, but stories
that have a deep meaning for the followers of that religion. A series of interviews called “The
Power of Myth” with famed American TV host Bill Moyers in 1988 attracted a huge audience
among the general public and increased Campbell's fame. The following is an extract from the
interviews
Moyers: As you've moved among various worldviews ... have you found
something in common in every culture that creates the need for God?
Campbell: Anyone who has had an experience of mystery knows that there is a
dimension of the universe that is not that which is available to the senses. There is a
pertinent saying in one of the Upanishads "When before the beauty of a sunset or a
mountain you pause and exclaim 'Ah!' you are participating in divinity. Such a moment
of participation involves a realization of the wonder and sheer beauty of existence.
People living in the world of nature experience such moments every day. Man's
tendency, however, is to personify such experience, to anthropomorphize natural
forces. Our way of thinking in the West sees God as the final source or cause of the
energies and wonder of the universe. But in most Oriental thinking, and in primal
thinking, also, the gods are rather manifestations and purveyors of an energy that is
finally impersonal. (Campbell, 1988, p. 258).
In the interview Campbell emphasizes that ultimate reality is a mystery but the very
limited and anthropomorphic ideas that people have are obstructions. He says "You hold on to
your own ideology, little manner of thinking, and when a larger experience of God approaches,
an experience greater than you are prepared to receive, you take flight form it by clinging to
the image in your mind." (Campbell, 1988, p. 262). There is no doubt about the reality of the
mysterious but the images used to express it are often very inadequate.
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4.4 Function and transmission of religion: Aloysius Pieris
Aloysius Pieris, a Sri Lanka Jesuit priest, is a well-known Asian Liberation theologian
and Buddhist scholar. He has written and researched a lot on how to understand why religions
exist and on interreligious dialogue. Here I present only his two of his ideas; the first is the idea
of the cosmic and meta-cosmic dimension of religion. Secondly, he underlines three elements
which are necessary if one is to understand or enter into dialogue with another religion. He
calls these three primordial or core experience, collective memory and the interpretation. I think
these are two useful ideas for a person who is interested in inculturation.
Firstly, we look at the 'cosmic' which in Greek, would be translated as “this world-
system”. The meaning of it, today, is understood much more in secular terms but in the past, it
indicated a worldview which included the religion of a particular nation or tribe. Saw Thant
Zin wrote: “this cosmic religiosity, which has a belief in cosmic force, can be found in many
indigenous religions such as devas in India and Sri Lanka, nats in Myanmar, phis in Thailand”
(Zin, 2014, p. 45). For the Karen, this force as cosmic religiosity is Taj, for Lahu it is G’ui-sha
and for the Lowland Thai in the north it is Tan. For Asian people, the “cosmic” worldview
contained not only the earth but also the sky and all the spiritual forces connected with the
natural world inhabited by humans. They are part of this network and understand and relate to
it, not because of science or knowledge but because of their intuition and nature.
The second term “metacosmic” is about something that is beyond the world. Pieris notes
by Zin’s word that “It is not ‘acomic’, it is the world carried to its destiny beyond itself” (Zin,
2014, p. 46). This belief is found in the main religions of the world such as Hinduism,
Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, etc. For Pieris, the idea of “metacosmic soteriologies are never
found in abstract “textual” form but always “contextualized” with the worldview of the cosmic
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religion of a given culture, creating a twofold level of religious experience, each level well
integrated in the other” (Zin quotes from Pieris, 1988, p. 72). From this idea, Pieris reminds us
that we cannot ignore this worldly spirituality because we are living in this world.
The meta-cosmic is the human heart’s infinite potentially that must be dreamt by our
imagination, grasped by our intuition, strategized by our reason, actualized by our
personal and collective effort, but always under the perennial impulse of love. Thus the
human is the experiential link between the cosmos and the meta-cosmic. Hence
soteriology can also be defined as the “cosmic-human-meta-cosmic continuum. (Pieris,
1996, p. 52)
Now I turn to a second important idea from Pieris, the three basic elements of any living
religion; the core experience, the collective memory and interpretation. He writes “The core
of any religion is the liberative experience that gave birth to that religion and continues to be
available to successive generations of humankind” (Pieris, 1987, p. 162). Secondly this core
experience is made available to successive generations by a collective memory. If a religion
does not find a way to pass on this original experience to new generations and continue into
the future it will obviously die. Another cause of death may be if its symbols and institutions
lose their relevance. The third element is interpretation. Pieris writes: “Integral to the
functioning of the communication system of the collective memory is ‘interpretation.’ In order
to be remembered, an experience – in its symbols, beliefs, and rituals – has to be framed in
terms of historical and cultural categories” (Pieris, 1987. P. 162-163). Here we can say that he
is talking both of the development required by new insights and the need for inculturation.
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4.5 One Religion or Many? John Milbank
We have looked at Feuerbach's efforts to reduce the doctrines and practice of Christian
faith to anthropology. The 'masters of suspicion' and pioneers of sociology like Comte,
Durkheim and Weber have explained the phenomenon of religion by using the tools of various
social sciences. Aloysius Pieris clearly does not try to do this but he recognizes that the
members of different religions see theirs as the best or truest. He is in favour of promoting
dialogue between religions. There are other present-day writers who reject the idea that religion
can be totally explained in terms of other scientific discipline, but they also say that inter-
religious dialogue has important limitations. One of those is John Milbank, Emeritus Professor
of Philosophy in the University of Nottingham. He calls this attempt of sociologists to explain
all religious values as an attempt 'to police the sublime.' He writes;
Peter Berger, a modern American sociologist, has claimed that 'sociology is now the
name of the scientific and humanistic critique of religion, the fiery brook through which
contemporary theology must pass.' And to a large extent theologians themselves have
accepted the idea that it is possible to give a 'social' explanation for at least some of the
features of religious belief. (Milbank, 1994, p. 101)
It has to be recognized that some of the things explained by sociologists have to be
accepted as true; for example, Marx's criticism that certain forms of religion can dull rather
than sharpen a sense of justice. Milbank rejects the idea of everything can be reduced to
anthropology or sociology. The sociologists invented a methodology and a vocabulary with
words like 'social facts' and gave the impression that the truth they were presenting
scientifically verifiable. They often defined religion is a way that ensured that it could not have
a central role to play in social life. Some sociologists will go so far as to say that even the most
private personal religious experience can be explained by using some other science like
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psychology. So, the question comes up 'Is there something about religious belief that is unique,
which is irreducible; in other words, it cannot be explained away by sociology or psychology?
Milbank is a theologian of what is called the Radical Orthodoxy movement. Their roots
go back to radical Catholic theologians of the first half of the twentieth century – such people
as Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Baltasar. Before the second Vatican Council they were
insisting that the core truths of Christianity had been lost sight of. The Christian faith was now
being passed from one generation to another by using books of rules. There was no contact
with the original writings. An example given by Milbank was how the teachings of Thomas
Aquinas had been forced into catechisms. There was an idea that there was no need to read the
original documents; Aquinas was enough. Aquinas himself, who was very open to new ideas,
would have rejected this approach. Milbank treats with great suspicion the approach of many
pluralist theologians of today who see similarities between religions where, he believes, they
do not exist. Pluralism can be interpreted broadly as “the belief that the existence of different
types of people within the same society is a good thing” (Cambridge Dictionary) or that many
versions of 'the truth' are equally valid.
Millbank is not easy to read but his position seems to be that too many moderns who
want to promote dialogue among religions look in the wrong place for some common ground.
Most of the promoters have been formed through western education and interpret the world by
using their own personally-defined concepts and criteria.
What is it that makes the church different?
(N)o other religious community comprehends itself (In theory) as an international
society, independent of political regimes and legal codes, including as equal members
(in some sense) men, women, and children without regard to social class, and
committed to the realization within this society of perfect mutual acceptance and
cooperative interaction ... This new and universal pattern of humanity, is, however
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presented to us not only in terms of concepts but also in terms of (highly spare)
narratives (and really rather abstract) metaphors. It is, in effect, because the narratives
and metaphors are fundamental for defining the new and universal pattern of life that
Jesus was regarded by the early church as identical with the divine Logos, not because
he had become the random object of a cultic attachment ... The particularity of Jesus is
insisted upon only to define a new framework of more than local relevance. (Milbank,
1990, p. 174).
4.6 Ethnic Groups and the Challenge of Modernization
4.6.1 Bible Reflection
Fr. Niphot Thienviharn, a priest of Chiangmai Diocese and a lifelong researcher into
the culture of the northern Hill Tribes asserts that if modern secular humans continue to refuse
to acknowledge such dimensions of life as sacredness and spirituality humanity will be
destroyed by 'modernization.' The choice is not optional. Authentic life is always threatened by
materialism, individualism, secularism and consumerism. He distinguishes three waves of
history of Christianity.
4.6.1.1 God: pure Being
This is the first wave; it involves taking the risk of believing that there is something
‘beyond’ something transcendental. Abraham believed and left everything to follow a call from
God that invited him to go out from his father’s house and leave behind his ancient faith and
ancestor’s belief. This was an era of the religious man. The call is directed to the heart.
The heart then, is more the seat of the religious experience than the head. There is an
attraction coming from there that leads man to a belief in “something” which is beyond him.
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4.6.1.2 Jesus: God and Man
This second period begins when a bridge is established between God and man. God becomes
human in the person of Jesus. The God who was far away and incomprehensible now is made present
among humans. God still cannot be seen but Jesus says “The one who sees me sees God.” (See Jn 12:
45). God is revealed through the person of Jesus. Part of the veil of mystery is removed.
4.6.1.3 Man and nature
Ours is a century where there is an emphasis on the experience of God in Nature. Every
element in the world is sacred, spirited and holy because of the presence of life. This world, so
sacred in the beginning is now profaned by modernization. Here there is an echo of Feuerbach's
insistence that feeling is an important element of knowing.
Is there a possibility that an individual cell of humanity can enrich what is more
universal? Experience shows that what provides the richness of the universal Church is not its
theological arguments but the contribution of local churches. Doctrines become only partial
truths if the universal Church ignores the beautiful elements coming from local churches; the
universal Church would lose its bridge if it fails to do this. The Church, in general, emphasizes
that “There is an intimate, inseparable and mutual relation between the universal Church and
the local Church” (Lumen Gentium, No. 23). This mutual bond is often not very clear and there
is little space for development in the local church. Much more discussion is needed in order to
open the minds of authorities to the need for adaptation to the local churches.
There are scholars today who argue the case for religious pluralism – well-known
authors such as Mario, Miguel and John Hick. These philosophers argue that “we need only to
recall the atmosphere that permeated the Enlightenment period to gain a sense of the desire to
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breakdown church authority and dogmatism and embrace the capacity of human beings to
control their destiny and come to a knowledge of truth on their own” (Francisco J. Mario &
Jesus R. Miguel, 2006, p. 23). Before that the destiny of the world was threatened by
exclusionism and inclusivism. This is a good time to promote the truth that “Each local Church
is wholly the Church, but it is not the whole Church. The local Church realizes the mystery of
the Church inasmuch as it is in communion with the Spirit of Jesus” (Gnanapiragasam J. &
Wilfred Felix, 1986-92, p. 44). The universal Church is present in the local church and the
more alive the local church is the more universal it is;
Every local Church is thus universal by virtue of the very realities which make it Church
and communion. The universal Church, in its turn, is not universal except in and
through the local Church. The universal Church has no concrete existence outside the
local Churches. Hence, the universal Church is the communion of the local Church.
(Gnanapiragasam & Felix, 1986-92, p. 44).
There is no universal Church if there is no local Church; the local Church is the life and
essence of the universal Church. The network of local churches is the essential point of
reference for the universal Church. If 'the Church' forgets this the word 'universal' loses its
meaning.
4.6.2 Catholicism
Nobody disagrees with the historical fact that Jesus of Nazareth was born into a Jewish
family and the Jewish culture. But the message that he brought was not just for the Jews but
for all peoples. As he proclaimed the Kingdom of God, he made it clear that the invitation was
for Jew and for Gentile – for everybody. Although he was a Jew his Jewishness was not part
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of his essential message. This was the principal issue debated at the Council of Jerusalem in
about 48 A.D. Nearly two thousand years later we can say that when a Catholic successfully
announces the good news, the newly converted man or woman must not be obliged accept the
culture of the evangelizer. They need only accept the essence of Gospel, the invitation to
conversion, to participation in the Kingdom of God and the following of Jesus who loved until
the end of his life. This is the message that any culture can put in practice. The way in which
this is incarnated in the culture or tradition of the evangelizers is of secondary importance. This
is another problem that I think needs to be addressed.
Nietzsche was a severe critic of Christianity. He said that there had been only one real
Christian and he died on a cross on Calvary. Mahatma Gandhi too had the highest respect for
Christ but believed that Christians fell far short as followers. For people like them the original
Jesus was a really compassionate and forgiving human being. The Christianity that developed
afterwards became a religion of many rules, rites and canon laws where somehow the mercy
of Christ was not often obscured. For many people the Church has too much formality and is
less attractive than it should be. Christian religions are losing the essential core of their message
which is love. What happens to religion in this situation? What does belief consist in? Is it
merely a human projection an illusion? For some that is one way of interpreting; but for many
others there is an entirely different way to understand it.
4.6.3 Salt and Light for itself
Jesus said to the disciples “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the
world” (Mt 5: 13-16). Salt and light are not for themselves but for the world. Christianity is not
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for itself but for the world. Like the candle, the more the Church spends herself, the more light
she gives to others.
Often there is a failure to appreciate the meaning of the words of Jesus when he said:
“In all truth I tell you, unless a wheat grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single
grain; but if it dies it yields a rich harvest” (Jn 12: 24). These words of Jesus emphasize that
the Church exists not for herself but to bear fruit one hundredfold for others. There is a dying
involved, like the grain of rice as Thienviharn proposed in his theology of rice. It is always bad
for the Church when she puts her own well-being and social recognition before the basic
priorities of the gospel.
4.6.4 Awareness of Church already present but still, not yet
Above we argued about the drama of the Chinese Rites in the 1600's and 1700's. Times
changed and Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) fostered inter-cultural diversity in his efforts to better
integrate the American Catholic Church into Universal Church, In his encyclical Praeclara
gratulationis he praised the cultural and liturgical diversity of expressions of faith within the
Church and at the same time underlined the importance of valuable ancient traditions and
symbols of the divine unity of Catholic Church.
Later on, in 1939 Pope Pius XII accepted the veneration of dead family members in
China, one of the issues for which Franciscan and Dominican priests in past condemned the
practice Matteo Ricci. This policy was published by the Sacred Congregation for the
Propagation of the Faith. In it the Pope stated that Chinese customs were no longer
considered superstitious but rather an honorable way of esteeming one’s relatives, therefore,
permitted by Catholic.
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Pope John Paul II in his 1990 Encyclical Redemptoris Missio took up the theme of the
local church and inculturation. He wrote:
Through inculturation the Church makes the Gospel incarnate in different cultures and
at the same time introduces peoples, together with their cultures, into her own
community. She transmits to them her own values, at the same time taking the good
elements that already exist in them and renewing them from within. Through
inculturation the Church, for her part, becomes a more intelligible sign of what she is,
and a more effective instrument of mission (R.M. No 52).
The words of Pope Francis on his official visit to Thailand in November 2019, and the
challenge he put forward, could hardly be clearer. He said:
As I prepared for this meeting, I read, with some pain, that for many people Christianity
is a foreign faith, a religion for foreigners. This should spur us to find ways to profess
the faith “in dialect”, like a mother who sings lullabies to the child. With that same
intimacy, let us give faith a Thai face and flesh, with involves much more than making
translations. It is about letting the Gospel be stripped of fine but foreign garb; to let it
“sing” with the native music of this land and inspire the hearts of our brothers and sisters
with the same beauty that set our own heart on fire. (The Holy See, 22 November 2019
at St. Peter’s Parish: Bangkok).
It will take a lot of creativity, courage and power of persuasion to strip the Thai church
of its fine but foreign garb and let it 'sing' with elements of its own culture. And it is the pope
that has invited Thai people to do this.
4.7 A case study; “Host” made of rice
The central idea of this dissertation is Feuerbach’s theory of projection. He is an atheist
who believed that the doctrines of Christianity could be explained by anthropology. For him
religion is merely a projection of man, an illusion, because there is no God. But his projection
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theory serves a useful purpose. It forces one to ask 'Why do people believe? Why do they
project to something if there is nothing?
Wartofsky and Harvey analyze the possible meaning and function of this projection. It
comes from man who projects in search of the mysterious. Campbell sees various religious
expressions as myths which serve to make some connection between the human and the
incomprehensible reality that lies beyond. Pieris relates the limited earthly experience with a
cosmic context of space and time. Thienviharn presents a map of the gradual evolution from
the beginning to today world of modernization.
I now would like to refer to Feuerbach’s theory as “religious projection” because it
becomes an instrument for understanding elements of the Karen’s way of understanding their
world. They are not a numerous people but their philosophy and world view are nevertheless
interesting. One might ask 'Are you ever amazed by the variety of creature around you? Do
you hear different songs produced by the natural world? Do you experience a mystic presence
at times time when you talk, walk, listen or contemplate?" All of this is a common experience
of Karen – reflecting perhaps something that Giordano Bruno had come to value 400 years ago.
Recently Thienviharn has argued an idea from Karen’s experience so-called “Theology of
Rice”. Here he tries to show the pearl of wisdom contained in the tradition, the voice of a
mother recalling her children to a love of nature; a story taught to the Karen from childhood.
Thienviharn, a researcher in Karen people, experienced that “as we read the Gospel,
people interpret for us”. He aims to say that God or mysterious being is found in the life of the
people. As the word of God reaches the ear of the believer, people suddenly experience that
mystic being that is in them. Campbell would say that religion is an experience that we call
those have already had experience with an original element or believing which is so-called
religion that this experience is in man.
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In the light of the various interpretations of religious projection I assert that any message
of Gospel, wherever it is proclaimed is understood through the filter of the lifestyle of the
people who hear it. The awareness of a mysterious being and the desire for communion with it
in different ways and different contexts is always present. This is the real meaning of good
news for creatures including man. Priests or pastors must have a concern for this essential
element. Before trying to evangelize, they must open their eyes, open their mind and open their
heart. The first ones who must convert to the mystery are not the people who are living there
but evangelizers who are challenged to embrace the vital elements of the culture of a people.
According to Feuerbach people have experienced the mysterious in life and reflected on it.
Today we could say that long before the arrival of the missionary the people also had an
experience of the transcendent.
We have seen how rice is vitally important for the Karen just as bread might be for a
European culture. Bread for the home is usually made from the flour of grains such as wheat,
barley or oats. Rice cakes are also made. The bread used in the Eucharistic celebration; the
small hosts are made from wheat flour in all countries. I sometimes wonder if it might be
possible to make the bread of the Eucharist from rice flour (Bu)?” As we have noted, rice is an
important element for Karen people. It is the essential element for every family and in rice they
project and experience mysterious being as recounted in the folklore. The story of how
fundamental rice is for every person is told over and over again in stories, legends, poems and
Htas. Perhaps it would not be too 'heretical' to suggest that the bread for the Eucharist be made
from rice flour. Rice for the Karen contains a mysterious agent and the essence of life. If the
host were made of rice, it would represent the intimate bond with the mysterious being in a
way that would have much greater impact than is experienced through the use of wheat, a grain
that is foreign to their culture. It doesn’t relate to the lifestyle of the people and it is seen as one
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of those things from far away that Catholics must do or believe. The Karen project rice as
something that gives the essence of life “K’la” to them, and K’la and mysterious being. We see
that there is a connection between K’la and mysterious being in Karen’s belief. The more Karen
fosters the essence of life, the more the experience the mysterious being.
The main reason why it should be permitted that the bread for the Eucharist should be
made of rice is related to the idea of religious projection which is found in theory of Feuerbach.
In rice the people see something that is close to is mysterious. If the universal Church allowed
the local Church among the Karen to use hosts made from rice, it would be clear that this local
element could deepen the connection between the mystery contained in the Eucharist and what
the Karen understand as the mysterious in their lives. The material rice carries already a
profound depth of symbolism. Campbell asserts that “I don’t have faith, I have experience”.
Life is a holy place that contains material and spiritual elements.
The religious projection, by nature leads to action; faith and love are as two sides of the
coin. To project is to believe, to believe is to love, to love is an act of believing in concrete
action. Kong Boon Khao is a remarkable projection that is found among the Karen people. The
religious idea reflects a truth and in the words of 'the good news' people experience the reality
that God is with them and revealing Himself to them in various ways in history.
Inculturation involves the effort to combine religious words and symbols with essential
element in the life of people. The rice in Kong Boon Khao is a connecting bridge between
religious ideas and a precious element of the Karen consciousness. To use Harvey's words, it
contains a latent and hidden meaning.
Kong Boon Khao or rice is a natural element found in Karen history and transmitted
through folklore that allows them to experience the mysterious being in which they say that
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rice is Taj or God. God descends into nature for the benefit of humans. This needs to be taken
into account by those coming from the outside who do not understand this culture. Sedmak
wrote as follows in his book ‘Doing Local Theology’
Theology is done locally. In order to be honest to the local circumstance, theology has
to be done as local theology, as theology that takes the particular situation seriously.
Local theology can be done with basic theological means. It can be done by the people
and it is done with the people. (Sedmak, 2002, p. 3).
It is inductive research that from local standpoint demonstrates a local theology where
they experience God’s presence through their daily life.
4.8 Transition
We are living in a world that has gone through extraordinary changes in the last 200
years. People have already lost their sense of mysterious being as Tu Wei-ming argued in
Chapter Three. There is no way back to the era of the pre-modern. However, a pre-modern tribe
like the Karen people who are living in the countryside still have this experience of mystery.
For them it is difficult to keep this sensitivity alive because of the effects of the modern world
all around them. Thomas Kuhn's phrase 'paradigm shift' is often used to refer to dramatic
changes of shifts in worldview – such as the one caused by the discoveries of Copernicus and
Galileo. The Karen today live the challenge to change to the 21st century secular paradigm or
retain their traditional understanding of their relationship to the world around them
Problems have already been there for many centuries. Missionaries who have a very
fundamentalist understanding of the instruction of Jesus 'You are the light of the world' can
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easily interpret the values of indigenous peoples as belonging to a world of darkness. This is
what Anthony refers to when he writes:
The Gospel message should be transmitted from one culture to another through the
normal process of acculturation. But historically, in many places the evangelization that
accompanied colonization contributed either to the eradication of native cultures, as in
the America, or to their disparagement, as in Asia and Africa. If the political and
economic exploitation that went pari passu with the evangelization of these lands was
an unjust intrusion, worse still was the undermining of their identity and dignity with
the suppression of their indigenous cultures and the imposition of an alien one.
(Anthony, 1997, p. 86)
Missionaries in the past often presented themselves as coming from a more civilized
world. The ministers of the Church often misunderstood and misinterpreted the message of
Jesus who came to live among simple people. Before he multiplies the bread, he asks what
they have. They have two fish and five loaves of bread; symbols perhaps of their cultures,
tradition and history. Jesus told Nicodemus that “God so loves the world and he gives his only
Son” (Jn 3: 16). God loves this world because it contains the mystic being and man must
contemplate it; as Campbell says “I don’t have faith but I have experience.” The mystical can
be experienced in the world. The Karen people experience this presence. “Your body is the
house of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6: 19). St Paul tells his readers. Man consists of body and soul;
the body is sacred and holy. If the body is holy and sacred, we should not depict nature as
something bad.
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4.9 Triple dialogue
The Second Vatican Council brought about a paradigm shift in many aspects of the life
of the Catholic Church; one was in the area of mission. It urged all missionaries to recognize
'sacred spaces' among the people they were evangelizing. German theologian Karl Rahner who
had a great influence on the theology of the Council documents called for a new model of
Church. This would not be the powerful pyramid with all authority based at the top but a
network of vibrant local churches - a polyhedron. The local Churches with their unique
experiences would contribute greatly to the riches of the universal Church. It is seen that when
we talk about local Church, it simply means that we decentralize the dominance the 'top' and
create a more universal Church. In reality the more the Church decentralizes itself, the more it
gains in fruitfulness; the more it can be faithful to its missionary nature. I now turn to a
theologian who believes that, if the Church is to survive in the modern world it must carry out
a triple mission.
4.9.1 Church Dialogue
Robert Schreiter, an American theologian writes in ‘Constructing Local Theology’ that:
“For Roman Catholics, the stress on universality has been such that it makes it difficult to think
about how locality and universality are to be related” (Schreiter, 1985, p. 37). A basic principle
is that the Church is the true Church founded on Jesus Christ. Questions arise about that how
local church should be developed? Schreiter gives an answer to this question. “The breadth or
the specificity of the concept of culture, the relation of the concept of culture to the concept of
society, and similar questions are germane to our search for ways of listening to human life in
the constructing of local theologies” (Schreiter, 1985, p. 42). He investigates many fields in his
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works; here I choose those which relate to my dissertation, the contrast between materialist and
ecological approaches to life and the relationship between society and its physical environment.
We might take as an example the Karen people who have used Kong Boon Khoa as an
instrument in which they are allowed to experience the mysterious being through rice. Rice is
a material thing but it contains the mysterious being.
4.9.2 Prayer Dialogue
How can the Church remember the word of God if she does not pray or contemplate or
connect to the original source of life that is God? Prayer is a conversation in which man and
God are allowed to encounter to each other. It is true that Pope John Paul II asserted that the
future of evangelization of the Church depends on prayer. To experience God in prayer is the
fountain of all energy of the Church. Personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, who has risen, is
the most important element for believer. Even though, according to Campbell, mysterious
being reveals Himself continually man can easily spend life without leaving any place for
silence. In that case man remains always lonely in this world because he finds no support or
energy in his life. Religious chanting for example is an element of some religions; a practice
meant to help the chanter come in contact with the mysterious. Religion defines its meaning as
a relationship between God and man.
4.9.3 Inculturation Dialogue
After the Second Vatican Council the Church became more aware that God's presence
and the seed of salvation is to be found everywhere. This continues to be an important point
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today; inculturation should be made an urgent necessity. A lot of time has been spent talking
about it, now is the time to awake from sleeping, Taj is at hand. The Church must stretch out
her hand to embrace all her children with their beautiful experience of mysterious encounter.
Respecting and collecting these experiences, would reveal a God with a thousand faces. “Myth
is a directing of the mind and heart, by means of profoundly informed figurations, to that
ultimate mystery which fills and surrounds all existence” (Campbell, 1949, p. 267). This is not
something that is optional for the Church; but something essential to its mission. The
development of a local Church and a local theology should not remain a theory or a dream but
a pastoral priority. Sedmak take up this point:
There is a need for a dialogue between our understanding of theology and our concept
of culture: Theology reflects upon culturally embedded forms of religious life.
Theology has to reappropriate the message of Jesus from its cultural context into local
cultural context. There is, however, no ‘super-cultural theology’ or ‘universal Christian
culture. (Sedmak, 2002, p. 79)
This is the ultimate aim of this dissertation. The author has the hope and wants to
promote the idea of respect for every culture because each one has a light to shine that could
make the life of humanity and the Church more beautiful. The Church must concern itself with
the need for acceptance of different ways to proclaim the Gospel in different lands. Where does
one begin? Anthony makes the following suggestions.
Though culture and religion may be distinguished they are not completely separate
entities. Religion in fact is the soul of culture, its determining core, its inner logic. There
is, so to say, an advaitic (non-dual) relationship between the two. Therefore, the
indigenous culture which the ecclesial faith seeks to encounter cannot be approached
as a neutral one, but as one inspired by another religious core. The Church can neither
shy away from this religious core pretending to occupy itself merely with the socio-
cultural elements, nor attempt to replace this religious core in some magical or
aggressive way. In other words, the Church that seeks to assimilate the indigenous
culture necessarily faces an interreligious encounter. (Anthony, 1997, p. 91)
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Attention to the above is vitally necessary at the present time if the presentation of the
Christian messages is to be something more than superficial. Anthony emphasizes “In
connection with the religious core of cultures, inculturation becomes the native Christian’s
search for meaning within the religious ethos of their non-Christian cultures” (Anthony, 1997,
p. 91). The Church has been searching more sincerely for a dialogue since the Second Vatican
Council. All the popes since then have promoted a culture of dialogue in every level of the
Church. On his visit in Thailand in 2019 Pope Francis urged priests, religious, seminarians and
catechists “Let us give faith a Thai face and flesh” and in his 2020 document Querida Amazonia
has shown a great appreciation of the value of indigenous cultures and the need for this to be
reflected in the life of the local Church. From the anthropological perspective Pieris says that
“Dialogue and consequently inculturation are conditioned by the nature of the religion that is
encountered: cosmic or metacosmic religion” (Anthony, 1997, p. 93). In this progression of
religious projection, I attempt to show that to believe means that man is searching for something
that is beyond him. The emphasis on inculturation is a reminder for all believers of the need to
distinguish between the foundational truths of one's faith and the way it is expressed.
4.10 Conclusion
In this treatment of “religious projection” of Feuerbach I have tried to interpret it from
the perspective of theology and philosophy. This is relevant now because many people interpret
religious projection under the influence of modernist philosophers who have no stake in
religion. But Wartofsky, Harvey and Sierksma attempt to go back to the intention of Feuerbach
who claimed “I constitute myself only its listener and interpreter, not its prompter”. Religion
is really in a deep sense, a projection of man, who remains a sacred mystery, and this man who
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projects is searching for something already present in themselves and their living community.
For the Christian it is a mysterious being, in the words of Thomas Aquinas 'This is what we
call 'God.' For the Karen, the Kong Boon Khao is an example of “religious projection” as a
projection of the life of people in Karen Christian culture. An understanding of this projection
is necessary for Karen because it is an instrument for them to maintain the deeper meaning of
their living experience of Christianity.
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION, RECOMMENDATIONS AND FURTHER STUDY
5.1 Conclusion
The introductory chapter provided a guideline for the whole work. It introduced the
topic of Feuerbach and his relevance, the various interpreters of his work and the possibility of
applications to religious traditions especially in reference to the Karen culture. I mentioned
especially the urgency of a better approach to inculturation and the need to understand better
what is involved in a pluralistic understanding of culture. We have looked at some of the past
failures of missionaries in regard to the culture and traditional beliefs of local people. The effect
of that misunderstanding can still be seen today. An overly 'Westernized' image of God creates
challenges for Southeast Asian Christian in the Philippines, Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia.
The second part of the first chapter presented the research questions and the scope
of the study. I presented the objectives of this dissertation; the methodology of this work and I
have given also a panorama of the range of different philosophers of religion from the
nineteenth century until present day. At the end of this section I presented a case study of
inculturation.
The second chapter was divided into three parts; firstly, I gave the general background
of Feuerbach’s life, his academic works and his fundamental philosophical arguments. In
particular, I highlighted his theory of religious projection which is found in his most famous
book “The Essence of Christianity”. A second book, his “Principles of the Philosophy of the
Future” discussed the problems of modernization as involving the rejection of nature. In these
works, Feuerbach focuses on man who projected his being on to another being outside nature
Feuerbach concluded that religion is a projection of man. Man finds it necessary to project
something which, in reality, is within himself, outside of himself. He is searching for the
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meaning in life, and religious projection therefore is a way that man becomes conscious of his
human dignity and freedom.
Secondly, I discussed his atheistic interpreters – Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and
Sigmund Freud. These philosophers are identified as the 'masters of suspicion, by Paul Ricoeur.
Each has his argument about why religious practice and doctrine should not be considered as
relevant. According to their definitions, religion is classified as “false consciousness”,
“disorder of instinct” and “collective neurosis” and something to be abolished. They set out to
demonstrate that religion is just a kind of projection, a kind of blindness to reality.
Thirdly, I have highlighted ideas from Wartofsky, Harvey and Sierksma who show
that the theory of religious projection of Feuerbach allows for alternative interpretations and
see the value of religious projection. Wartofsky develops the idea of religion as an image which
is generated by the projector psychologically, socially, and culturally. He examines this image
as a religious projection and interpretation it as a useful instrument for man to develop
knowledge of himself. For example, for Karen Christians their understanding of themselves is
represented in images.
Harvey introduces the metaphors of the beam and the grid. He provides a
contemporary interpretation of projection. He interprets the religious projection in Feuerbach
by using the metaphor of a beam of light, like that coming out of the modern cinema projector.
In this way, one can determine whether religious projection is healthy or not. The other
metaphor used by Harvey, the grid, sees a belief system as a kind of a map through which
cultures put the pieces of their worldview together.
Another philosopher Sierksma claims that every religion is a kind of projection. But
that this does not diminish the spiritual mystery of the source of this projection. Religious
projection is a search for something that maintains the equilibrium of the human being.
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In the third chapter; I have made some applications of these theories of projection
to the Karen people’s practice of their religion. I have used the practice of the “Kong Boon
Khao” or “Rice Merit Network” The connection between local and universal Church is
discussed. The universal Church is not just a multinational organization with branches around
the world. It needs to be in dialogue with the local church. The local church is an instance of
the universal. Its contact with nature and tradition, and its awareness of the sacredness of life
and presence of the Spirit can offer a possibility of insightful dialogue that can enrich the
universal church.
The fourth chapter develops the objective of this dissertation; to promote an
awareness of the need for a deeper understanding of inculturation. Feuerbach's theory of
religious projection and the various interpretations allow for an appreciation that the sacred
which one experiences in religion has its roots in the lived experience of religious communities.
It provides a way of understanding both universal Christianity and also provides a way to
examine the understanding of the particular spirituality of a local people. In this chapter I
present a case study; considering the idea of the Eucharistic host as made of Bu (Karen rice).
This leads to a discussion on decentralization in the Church and how to embrace the local
church as a vital element in the existence of the universal Church.
5.2 Recommendations; The felicity principle
There are other directions in which this reconsideration of Feuerbach and his value for
Christianity can take. One is the connection of holiness to happiness. Todd Gooch, author of
the lengthy entry on Feuerbach in the Standford Dictionary of Philosophy mentions some of
the themes taken up by Feuerbach in later life. "Foremost among these concepts and themes
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are Seligkeit or blessedness and the Glückseligkeitstrieb or drive-to-happiness; “human
egoism” or human self-love; the feeling of dependence on nature; and the powerful, theogonic
(i.e., god-originating) wish to be free from the limitations of nature by which the human drive-
to-happiness is restricted."
The English Utilitarians writing around the same time as Feuerbach used the principle
of felicity or the happiness principle to decide the moral quality of propositions. Feuerbach
writes that humans by nature have this drive to happiness (Felicitas). This is the origin of the
practice of religion. For Feuerbach, people may have religion because man is basically
searching for happiness, not for God or holiness. When he is analyzing different questions,
Feuerbach is like a carpenter. He uses different tools for different jobs, objectification,
imagination, and in this case, the desire for happiness.
The ancient Hebrews had the belief in creation “ex nihilo” meaning “out of nothing”.
The Christians took up this idea and radicalized it. Feuerbach criticizes his as a devaluation of
the natural world – creation was considered something merely to serve man, it had no
independent existence. He says that for both the early Jews and he Christians, nature was
merely the stage upon which they acted. It has no independent value. Nietzsche also took up
this interpretation in his book The Antichrist.
The early religions worshipped the sacred in connection to nature. But Christianity
condemned this as pantheism. They attempted to turn people away from the natural world to a
supernatural one. The natural world became seen as an obstacle to the establishing a
relationship with God.
Yet we must investigate the possibility that Christianity needs to learn from the early
religions to recover something of the sacredness of nature and the lived experience of people
119
on earth. Christ after all is considered as God become man through his love for his creation.
The conviction that one is loved by God is important. The doctrine that God became man, that
he suffered, that he rose again are absolutely essential. The resurrection reassures the believer
‘I too will overcome death.’ (Harvey, 1997: 89).
Through the appearance of Christ, the Christian learns what the essence of God is. In
the appearance of rice and its symbolic meaning, Karen people and many other Christians who
live in indigenous groups, who converted from animism, have much to offer in showing how
Christianity can be reconciled with nature, with local culture and with lived experience. It has
much to teach about the relationship between this world and next world.
5.3 Recommendations for Further Study
The recommandation has noted that the theme of felicity is the purpose of religious
projection. Nearly all interpreters of Feuerbach’s theory of religious projection say that the
ultimate aim of his religious argumentation is about happiness and fulfillment. This element
can be grounded in reason but it is always possible for people to project themselves into
something outside of that. This approach to religious projection would not be fear of death,
but the search for happiness.
In past centuries it was much easier for indigenous communities to preserve their
identity and culture. Most people were born into a local community, lived all their lives there
and died there. Today there is much greater movement. An example of this is the great number
of Karen people working in Bangkok. Maybe about 50% will eventually go back to their
villages with ideas changed by life the city. Much more important is the 'new school' of social
media and internet. Many rural people now have contact with a world which was unknown in
the past. It is like a marketplace of ideas, both good and bad. A person needs a certain level of
120
education in order to be able to make a wise choice between the good and the bad. People don't
always have this. Modern media is not value-neutral; a lot of it tries 'to sell' an ideology and a
materialist/consumerist philosophy; often its focus is to sell products. For example, for many
years 'cowboy films showed 'indigenous Indians' in a totally negative light. Today,
documentaries on minority groups often have a negative tone. In public offices in areas where
ethnic groups live there often is nobody who speaks that local language. In political life
minority groups see the politicians only at election times and local issues such as support for
local culture are often ignored.
One might ask 'Why bother to protect the indigenous culture and way of life of a small
group; are they not just 'left-behind' people? Would it not be better to merge all people in a
country into one? In his response to the conclusions of the Amazon Synod Pope Francis wrote:
Hence, without diminishing the importance of personal freedom, it is clear that the
original peoples of the Amazon region have a strong sense of community. It permeates
“their work, their rest, their relationships, their rites and celebrations. Everything is
shared; private areas – typical of modernity – are minimal. Life is a communal journey
where tasks and responsibilities are apportioned and shared on the basis of the common
good. There is no room for the notion of an individual detached from the community or
from the land. (Querida Amazonias; No. 20)
Clearly, he sees values in the local indigenous community that are weak, or have been
largely lost in our more modern societies. The fundamental doctrines of the Catholic Church,
as expressed in the Creed for example, are universal. Milbank underlines this aspect. But
sometimes, the language in which these doctrines or interpreted are expressed is too difficult
and obscure for people in local communities. Normally they don't read this theology but they
do attend Mass where the same difficult language is often used. Sometimes, in order to preserve
'universal' concepts and precise meaning a very difficult or specialized language is used, one
that is not understood by ordinary people. It is also important that these 'universal' doctrines be
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expressed as simply as possible, even if some parts of their meaning have to be explained later
if necessary.
Indigenous peoples like the Karen have a traditional spirituality closely linked with the
natural world. Pope Francis speaks of this in the letter we have quoted. He says that from people
like them we can learn to contemplate, not just to analyze; to see ourselves as part of, not apart
from, this natural world. He writes:
Let us remember that “if someone has not learned to stop and admire something
beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be
used and abused without scruple”. On the other hand, if we enter into communion with
the forest, our voices will easily blend with its own and become a prayer: “as we rest in
the shade of an ancient eucalyptus, our prayer for light joins in the song of the eternal
foliage”. This interior conversion will enable us to weep for the Amazon region and to
join in its cry to the Lord. (Q.A. No. 56)
This underlies the importance of taking seriously the local practices of religion and
shows the direction for future research. At a time like ours when people are becoming more
and more aware of the problem of global warming and ecological devastation there are
important lessons to be learned from those who often have been very responsible stewards of
creation in the past. This wisdom is stored up within the indigenous traditions and made visible
when projected in their religious practices
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Werasak Yongsripanithan was born on 19 July 1976 in Mae Hong Son Province in the
North of Thailand. He obtained bachelor degree in philosophy and religion from Saengtham
College in 2003. He received a Master of Philosophy degree from the Pontifical Urbaniana
University in Rome in 2014. He joined the staff of Saengtham College as a lecturer on his
return to Thailand in 2014. In 2017 enrolled in the Graduate School of Philosophy and Religion
at Assumption University Bangkok to study for a doctorate of philosophy in the Philosophy
and Religious Studies department. While studying at the Graduate School of Philosophy and
Religion, he presented an article titled “On Feuerbach's Idea of Religious Projection as a Way
of Approaching Religious Inculturation among the Karen of South East Asia” This was
published by the Saengtham College Journal Volume 12 No. 1 (January – June 2563/2020)
ISSN: 1906-5708.
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The story of “Calling to the spirit of rice”
Once upon a time there was an orphan boy who could only build a small house
for himself in the outskirts of the main village where the landlord lived. He had no
mother or father, no brothers or sisters, no neighbours, and lived all alone in his house.
The landlord said to him, "I am the head of the town. I am the owner of the land and all
the resources. Whatever the people do, whatever they eat, wherever they clear a field
or make a vegetable garden, they must receive permission from me first."
The orphan was very poor. He had no paddy field, no cow, no water buffalo, no
pig, no chicken, and only his little house where he lived all alone. The landlord would
not give him permission to clear a field, nor would he allow him to gather bamboo
shoots. The orphan thus thought to himself:
"Well, if that's how it is I'll go and beg the landlord to give me food (rice) to eat."
So he went to the landlord’s house. When he got there, he said to the landlord,
"Sir, I am hungry. I beg you to give me some rice to eat!"
The landlord replied, "Hey, orphan. You are a lazy fellow. You are sick in both
mind and body. Don't come near me!"
The orphan said to the landlord, "Oh, Sir, I am really very hungry! I cannot do
anything to help myself because you will not permit me to do anything."
The landlord said to him, "Let me be straight with you. I have a great number
of subjects/villagers that I must look after. I cannot allow you to do anything. Even if I
could, there's nothing you can do to help me."
The orphan did not give up trying and continued to speak directly to the
landlord's face with great persistence. When the landlord saw that the orphan was not
going to be turned away easily he bellowed at him threateningly. "Orphan, you are not
welcome in my house. Go away! If you do not leave I will kill you right now!"
The orphan saw that the situation was turning nasty and so hurriedly got up and
returned to his house. He was very hungry so he went around the houses in the
neighbourhood begging for some food. Sometimes he could eat his fill and sometimes
he could not, but he got by somehow.
A compassionate angel (Taj moo hkofhpo) looked down on the life of the orphan
from where she was in heaven and felt very sorry for him. She wanted to go down and
help him, but had no opportunity to do so, and also if the landlord knew about it he
would be very unhappy. Nevertheless, she felt that she should certainly go down and
help him, but she would have to do it carefully and incognito.
One day, while the angel was waiting for an opportunity to go down and help
the orphan, the landlord of another town organised a temple festival (for making
offerings to "make merit"). The landlord invited all his subjects and all the people from
the surrounding districts to come to celebrate the festival. Everyone was talking about
going to the festival, and all the people who heard about it decided to go.
The angel looked down from above and saw the events that were taking place
below. She anticipated that the landlord who was holding the festival would certainly
have many visitors and that no doubt the orphan would also go along like everyone else
too, but on which day she did not yet know. As she was travelling to the festival, there
was, by chance, a big treewith thorn that had fallen across the road, making it totally
impassable. The pathway was completely obstructed by branches, twigs and leaves.
The angel took the opportunity to transform herself into a bird and fly down into
the fallen tree. Once inside, she transformed herself again, this time into an old
widowed grandmother and wriggled beneath the branches and leaves into the deepest
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part of fallen tree. Above her was completely obstructed with branches, twigs, vines,
and other hindrances, and very difficult to get into.
The angel sat down to wait. After quite a while she heard the sound of people
chatting as they approached. The old widow thought to herself, "This is it!" The sound
of these people who were on their way to the festival continued to approach closer and
closer, and finally they arrived. The old widow saw that they were young men and
women who were certainly on their way to the festival, and that they were all dressed
up in fine and beautiful clothes. When they came up to the tree they all cried out, "What!
This tree has fallen and completely blocked the road. We can't go on and we can't go
back!"
They all helped each other find a way around the tree. They walked up and down
from one end of the tree to the other, thorns catching at their hands and feet until they
were all noisily crying out "Ouch! Ouch!"
Just then the old widow began to speak. "Hey, grandchildren, where are you on
your way to?"
They replied, "We're going to the festival. Grandmother, how on earth did you
come to be in there?"
The old widow replied, "Hey, grandchildren, please help me! The tree fell on
me. I was also thinking of going to the festival, but when I got here the tree fell on me.
I can't move. Please cut me free so I can get out of here!
The young people thought for a moment and then they said to the old widow,
"Grandmother, the branches are too dense. We're on our way to the festival and we
haven't brought knives or axes with us. We cannot cut you free, grandmother. We have
to be on our way or we will not make it to the festival on time."
The young people stood up and walked on by. The old widow watched them
disappear in the distance and said to herself, "Those young men and women… I asked
them to help me, but not one of them would. If they won't even help a poor suffering old
widow like me, it won't do them any good to try and make merit at the temple."
After a good while, there came the sound of another group of people
approaching, this one louder than the previous group. The old widow thought to herself,
this group of people will certainly have someone who will help me. When they came up
to the tree, they said to each other, "Eh? A tree has fallen over and completely blocked
the road. How are we to proceed? We're trying to go to the festival, but faced with this,
will we be able to get there or not?"
Some of the people said, "Well, we've come this far, we have to keep going."
The old widow under the branches spoke up to them, "Grandchildren, where are
you on your way to? There are many of you, please help me to get free from under here!
This tree fell on me. I was also trying to get to the festival, but when I got here this tree
fell right on top of me. I can't move. Please have pity on an old grandmother!"
The people asked each other, "What shall we do? The old woman is asking us
to help her get free. Are we going to help her get free or not?"
Some people said, "Ahh, we're on our way to the festival and we haven't brought
knives or axes with us. How are we going to cut her free? If we try to do it, we won't
make the festival on time. Don't pay any attention to her. Let's go!"
They got up and walked past the old widow just like the first group. The old
widow watched them disappear into the distance and mumbled after them, "These
children… I thought they would help me and I got all worked up, but not one of them
would help me. They walked by me without caring. If that's how they are, going to the
temple festival won't bring them any merit."
133
After waiting quite a long while there came the sound of one person
approaching, clearing the way as he came, making a loud "swish, swish" sound. As he
came up to the tree, the old widow saw that it was the orphan. He was also intending
to go and participate in the festival, but was going all alone with no friends or group to
go with, carrying a shoulder bag, holding a broken knife with only a short blade. When
he came up to the tree, the orphan said, "Well, this tree has fallen over and completely
blocked the road. When I passed here before there was no tree blocking the way. The
road was quite clear and easy to come and go. This time a tree has fallen in the way.
Which way are we going to go?"
All alone and talking to himself, the old widow under the branches of the tree
could hear him and was sure it was the orphan. Then she spoke up saying, "Orphan
boy, please cut me free and help me get out of here!"
The orphan heard the old widow's voice and asked, "Who are you, speaking
from under the shrubbery?" The orphan then climbed onto the branches, stared down
between the leaves and branches and saw an old woman down in the deepest part of
the entangled tree. The orphan asked the old widow, "How did you get stuck in there?"
The old widow replied, "The tree fell on me. I cannot move. I will die in here.
Please cut me free and get me out of here!"
The orphan replied, "Oh, grandmother, I've only got this one broken knife. I
don't know if I'll be able to cut you out of there."
The old widow said to him, "Grandson, if you have a will to help me, then please
try to do so."
The orphan said, "If you say so, I'll give it a try."
The orphan immediately set about trying to clear away the branches, cutting
and throwing away, getting deeper and deeper and deeper. He had almost reached the
old widow when he came to a big fork in the tree. It had to be cut through as there was
no way to avoid it and take another route as he was now already too deeply inside. He
had to go this way, otherwise he would have to start all over again from the top. The
orphan thought to himself, "What am I going to do with just a fistful of knife, and I
didn't sharpen it when I set out from the house again this morning. Oh, dear! What the
hell, I'll try to cut through it."
So the orphan set to work cutting through the tree fork, and after quite a while
it broke off. The orphan said to the old widow, "Grandmother, I've cut through the
branch!"
The old widow replied, saying, "Grandson, if you have a will to help me you can
do anything."
After that, the orphan continued to cut away the branches, and as he was cutting
he began to be aware that he was hungry, so he said to the old widow, "Grandmother,
my arms and legs are becoming so weak, I cannot lift my knife. I have no power, I have
no strength left. I don't know what's going wrong with me."
The old widow said, "Grandson, you are hungry."
The old widow plucked out one of her fingernails and a flat rice cake about the
size of two fingers appeared. She grasped it and handed it to the orphan. "Here, eat this
rice cake, grandson."
The orphan took the rice cake and ate it all. When he had finished eating the
rice cake, he felt his strength returning. He stood up and continued to cut. After a while,
it seemed that he would reach the old widow after cutting for just a little while longer,
but he felt hungry again. He told the old widow that he was hungry. The old widow
removed another fingernail which became a rice cake and she gave it to the orphan to
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eat. He ate it and then began to continue cutting. He continued to cut until the sun
pierced the tops of the trees and then he reached the old widow. He was able to help the
old widow out from under the tree. The orphan cut the old widow a walking stick. Then
he said to her, "Grandmother, come back and stay at my house! We don't have to go to
the festival. We won't make it there on time, anyway."
The orphan took the old widow by the hand and set off back towards his house.
Coming to a mountain on the way, the orphan began to feel hungry again as they were
walking up the slope and he said to the old widow, "Grandmother, I can't go on any
further, I can't walk another step."
The old widow replied, saying, "Grandson, you must be hungry again."
The old widow plucked another fingernail from her hand and a rice cake
appeared again, just as before. The orphan ate the rice cake and his strength returned
again and was finally able to take the old widow back to his house.
The orphan and the old widow lived together, just the two of them, until it
became time to clear a field. The landlord sent out the following command to all his
children and grandchildren, his subjects, and all the people:
"All my children and grandchildren, if you wish to clear a field, come and ask
me beforehand. I will tell you where you can and where you cannot. If you do not have
an instruction from me, do not go into the forest. I also order that if you want a field
you must go and clear one today. If you do not do it today, I will not give permission."
All the children, grandchildren of the king, the subjects, and the people in the
district close to the king heard the king's order and went together to clear fields, one
for each person. The orphan, however, did not hear the announcement because he lived
on the outskirts of the village. He did not go to clear a field on that day like everyone
else. When he heard about the order it was already many days after the deadline.
Nevertheless, the orphan went to see the landlord in order to beg to allow him to clear
a field. When he arrived at the landlord’s house, the orphan asked the head of the
township, "Sir, I want to clear a field like everyone else. Will you allow me to do so,
please?"
The landlord scolded the orphan, saying, "I launched the day for clearing fields
two or three (several) days ago. Didn't you hear about it? The others went to clear their
fields together. Where were you? I proclaimed the deadline, but you have just arrived.
Don't come begging me. The land, the trees and the forest are mine. Don't come near
me except on the appointed day. I cannot give you anything. You are a very lazy fellow
and you are wretchedly poor. Even if I allow you to clear a field, you will just destroy
the land and the forest. Go away! I will not allow you to clear a field."
However the orphan begged, the landlord would not relent, and so he went home.
When he arrived home, the old widow asked him, "Grandson, you went to see the
landlord. How did he reply?"
The orphan said, "Grandmother, he will not allow me to clear a field."
The old widow said to him, "Grandson, if the landlord will not allow you to
clear a field, we will not have any rice to eat. We must have a little field. No matter that
the landlord will not allow us to clear a field. Look for a rock ledge (a shelf of rock).
Then dig up some soil and spread it on the ledge, cut some branches and leaves, place
them on top of the soil on the ledge to dry, and then burn them. When the fire dies down,
sow rice and plant various different vegetables and fruits. If you do this we will be able
to eat."
The next morning, the orphan went out to look for a rock ledge. He searched
around until he found one. He dug up some soil and covered the stone with it. Then he
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cut some branches and leaves and piled them on top of the soil. He left them to dry and
then burned them. Then he sowed rice and planted vegetables and fruits as the old
widow had told him to do.
It turned out that the rice sprouted very nicely, much more abundantly than in
the fields of the other people. Every day the orphan went to weed his field on the rock
ledge. When it became time to harvest the rice, he harvested it and then threshed it, and
when that was finished the old widow said to him, "Grandson, build a field hut to store
the rice."
The orphan built a field hut, placed the mats and sheets in it, and when that was
finished the old widow went inside the field hut. Then she said to the orphan, "Now pour
the paddy down. I'll wait down in the hut."
The orphan poured the paddy down into the hut and while the paddy was falling
the old widow shook herself. Streams of rice came out from under her fingernails, her
toenails, her eyelids, her hair, her nose, her mouth, and her clothes and began to fill
the hut with a loud noise. The old widow's whole body became a beautiful golden yellow
of paddy. Because of this, the orphan ended up with a big granary full of paddy.
The next day the sun rose again and the old widow said to the orphan,
"Grandson, I have lived with you and helped you and told you many things up till now.
You now have enough rice to eat and so it's time for me to go home. My home is in
heaven above, and when I am gone do not speak my name."
When she had finished speaking, the old widow flew up into the sky. The orphan
watched her go, and when she was almost out of the orphan's sight he cried out to her
with a great feeling of sadness, "Grandmother, are you going home? Who will I live
with? Who will help me to have rice to eat?"
When he had spoken, the old widow dropped back to the ground with a loud
thud. She said to the orphan, "I tell you again, grandson, you must not ever speak of me
again. If you do, it will not be good for me."
The old widow flew up into the sky for a second time. The orphan watched her
go with great loneliness and unable to control his feelings, called out to her again. The
old widow dropped down to earth again as she had done before. She said to the orphan
that she had told him not to call her name, and then she flew away a third time. Just as
she was almost out of sight the orphan watched after her, his heart nearly breaking, and
then he called out to her again. This time the old widow fell to the ground dead, her
neck broken.
The orphan was grief-stricken. He wrapped the corpse of the old widow and
laid it on the shelf over the hearth hoping that the body would dry out and not rot so
that she would stay with him for a long time to come even though she was just a corpse.
The next day, the orphan took the covers off the old widow's corpse hoping to
have a look at her, but he found that the body had disappeared and that in its place was
the remains of a bird, all dried up and without any feathers on it, and a beautiful golden
yellow.
Because of this, when it came time to thresh the rice each year, the orphan
recalled the old widow and carried a walking stick when he carried the paddy to the
granary, and when he had finished threshing the rice he performed a ritual to call back
the old widow to heaven above. This ritual is called "the ritual to call the bird of the
rice spirit to heaven".
When the people of the district saw the orphan performing the ritual to call the
bird of the rice spirit to heaven, and saw that he had harvested a great deal of paddy
just by clearing a field on a small piece of rock, they all did the same as him and believed
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that to be the customary way of doing things from that time onwards. This ritual is
practiced by the Karen hilltribes to this day”. (Historical Documentation, 2019, p. 121-
130)
