[1148]. Classification of religions. A word may be added on proposed classifications of religions.[2093] Certain resemblances and differences between religions are obvious, and groups may be made, geographical, ritualistic, theologic, or soteriological, but it is difficult to find a principle of classification that shall bring out the essential characteristic or characteristics of every religion and yet distinctly mark every one off from all others. All have much in common, and the elements in all are so mixed that divisions necessarily cross one another. Every religion is the product of some one community and represents its peculiar view of human life in its relation to the supernatural; there may be borrowings and fusions, but the final outcome is shaped by the thought of the people to whom the religion specifically belongs.[2094] The differences between various religions are the differences of thought between the communities involved, and the differences and the resemblances are often curious and sometimes defy explanation.
[1149]. Leaving aside ritual, which, so far as it is a merely external form of approach to the deity, does not touch the essence of religion, the following points may be said to be common to all religions: (1) The sense of a supernatural control of life, and the conviction that the supernatural Power must be placated or obeyed.[2095] (2) The belief that religion deals with and controls the whole of life; this belief is pronounced among savages, who know nothing of natural law, and is regarded as essential in more advanced communities, in which, from the religious point of view, law, physical or mental, is taken to be an expression of the will of the deity. (3) The creation of divine personalities[2096] (representing popular ideals), and movements toward a unitary view of the divine control of the world. (4) An ethical element in the conception of the character of the supernatural Power and the modes of pleasing this Power. The ethical side of religion corresponds to the general ethical standard of the people—in savages it is low, but it exists. (5) The conception of salvation as the goal of religious faith and service; the salvation looked for is at first physical, is gradually moralized, and ultimately takes the form of spiritual union with the deity. These are the essential elements of religion; they all exist in crude form in the lowest strata of society, and are purified in the course of social growth.
[1150]. A classification naturally suggested by this enumeration of fundamentals would be one based on grades of general culture, savage, half-civilized, and civilized; but such a classification would not take account of the differences of character in the members of the higher grades. These differ from one another in the conception of the ultimate Power of the world and of the nature of salvation and the mode of attaining it, and in other less important points. They are so highly composite in structure that their interrelations are complicated, and those that are brought together by one critical canon may be separated by another. Buddhism is allied on one side (the ignoring of deity) to Confucianism and Epicureanism, on another side (the hope of moral salvation) to Christianity. Zoroastrianism touches the Veda in its theistic construction, and is remarkably like Judaism in its organization. Christianity is Jewish on one side and Græco-Roman on another. Islam has Christian and Jewish conceptions attached to the old-Semitic view of life.
[1151]. A distinction of importance is that between national religions and those founded each by a single man (Buddhism, Christianity, Islam).[2097] This distinction may be pressed too far—all religions have great men who have given new directions to thought, and no religion can be said to be wholly the creation of an individual man, since all, as is pointed out above, are outcomes of the ideas of communities.[2098] The distinction in question is not a satisfactory basis for a general classification since it fails to note the theological differences between the various religions. Nevertheless, it embodies a significant fact: in the course of the history of the world the three religions above-named have come to divide the civilized world among them, that is, they have been selected as best responding to the religious needs of men. No one of them is universal, but the three together practically include the civilized world.[2099] They are modified in various ways by their adherents, but they have not been superseded. They have grown beyond the ideas of their founders, but these latter nevertheless occupy a unique position. Moses and Zoroaster are dim figures whose work it is impossible to define, but the teachings of Buddha and Jesus, though they left no writings, are known with substantial accuracy, and Mohammed has expressed himself in a book. The persons of the three founders are the objects of a devotion not given to other leaders. These things justify us in putting Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism in a class by themselves, of which the distinguishing note is the discarding of local national ideas and usages. These last are not wholly given up, but they are less prominent than in Judaism and Zoroastrianism. It is to the insight of the individual founders that this relative freedom from local features is due. This characteristic does not necessarily carry with it superiority in ethical and general religious conceptions.
A different line of cleavage is indicated by the designation "religions of redemption." In one sense all religions come under this head,[2100] for all have for their object the freeing man from the ills of life. In a higher sense the term 'redemption' means deliverance from the power of sin and from its punishment, particularly in the world to come. This meaning appears in definite form in Buddhism and Christianity, and somewhat less distinctly in Mithraism and the later Judaism; in the Old Testament religion and Islam it is not clearly stated. As it appears in germinal form in the lower cults, its development may be traced up to its culmination in the systems in which man is freed from moral taint through the agency of an individual savior or in accordance with a cosmic ethical law.
[1152]. Unity exists among the lowest and among the highest religious systems. Among savage and half-civilized cults there are no important differences—they all have the same ideas respecting the nature and functions of supernatural Powers and the ways of approaching them.[2101] In the higher cults a process of differentiation goes on for a certain time while each is developing its special characteristics, and then a counter-movement sets in—they all tend to come together by suppressing local features and emphasizing general ideas.[2102] Thus at the present day there are groups of Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, and Moslems that, without abandoning their several faiths, find themselves in substantial accord on some essential points. The unity of savages is the uniformity of undeveloped thought; the later unity rests on discrimination between fundamentals and accessories.
[1153]. Tabulated classifications of religions, it would seem, must be arbitrary and misleading—they give undue prominence to some one religious fact, they maim the individuality of cults, and they obscure the relations between certain cults by putting these into different divisions. The true relations between the various religious systems may be brought out by comparisons. In this way individuality and unitary character may be preserved in every case, while the agreements and disagreements may be made clear by referring them to general principles of religious development.