Gospel & Universe 🌎 Many Tribes

East & West

An Eastern Flow - A Western Break

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An Eastern Flow

In India and China the main religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism — have a continuous history. Yet in the Middle East and the Mediterranean religion was radically altered by the monotheism of Israel. 

In the East the sources of religion flow from their beginnings right up to the present day. In India the Hindu scriptures (starting with Rg Veda) date to the late Ancient period, while the Hindu epics and the teachings of Buddha date from the Classical Age. In China, the traditions of Daoism and Confucianism, as well as the importation of Buddhism, date from the Classical Age. The fusion of Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism is often referred to as the Chinese religion, although Confucianism is often seen more as a social and moral philosophy than a religion. These Hindu and Chinese traditions were established in the Classical Age and then flowed through the Middle Ages to become part of the Modern Age. There were, however, interruptions —  in India, the Buddhism of the emperor Ashok (3rd century BC) and the Islam of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire (c. 1290-1707 AD); in China the legalism of Qin Shi Huangdi (210-212 BC) and the communist period of the last 50 years (which took a particularly anti-religious direction during Mao's Cultural Revolution from 1966-to 1976). 

While a large portion of the Indian subcontinent became Muslim, this didn’t radically alter the foundations of Hinduism. For instance, the powerful current of Islam created a large Muslim population: there are about half a billion Muslims there today. Historically, this current flowed southeast from India all the way to Malaysia and Indonesia, superimposing itself on an earlier Hindu/Buddhist culture (today only the small island of Bali is Hindu). Yet none of this altered Hinduism itself: there are still about a billion Hindus in India. 

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A Western Break

In the Middle East and the Mediterranean there was a massive theological shift from polytheism to monotheism between 300 and 700 AD (as I noted above, this shift subsequently affected southeast Asia). This shift had everything to do with the Jewish tribes, who 1) had polytheistic Middle Eastern roots, 2) became fiercely monotheistic at some point early on in the Classical Age, and 3) gave birth to Christianity in the late Classical Age, and to Islam in the early Medieval Age. 

The continuity of Eastern religions and the shift in Western religions, can be seen in the timeline below:

(I should add three provisos to this timeline: 1. What is sometimes referred to as ‘the Chinese religion’ (a fusion of Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism) doesn’t focus on the distinction between gods and God, although Daoism shares a similar concept of God with Greek Platonism (the Good) and Hindu Vedanta (Brahman), and Confucianism’s concept of a supreme and distant Deity resembles 18th century European Deism; 2. Polytheistic religions can contain elements of monotheism — as in the Middle Eastern gods Aten, Ra, or Marduk, or the Hindu Brahman; 3. Monotheistic religions can at times suggest elements of polytheism — for instance, in Christianity God has a Son, and Mary is somewhat deified in Roman Catholicism.)

Toward the end of the Classical Age, Christians gained the upper hand in the Roman Empire, and then proceeded to distance their version of monotheism from Greco-Roman and other forms of polytheism. In the late Classical Age councils established dogma about the nature of God and Jesus, all the time resisting the notion that Jesus, the Holy Ghost, Mary, the saints, and figures like Satan constituted any form of polytheism. They rejected any religious system that differed — even Zoroastrianism, which contained a similar scenario in which a variety of mythic figures operated, and in which a Supreme Being (Ahura Mazda) wins the cosmic struggle between Good and Evil, eventually redeeming even the most evil of creatures (Ahriman).

Like Islam after it, Christianity may have spread so extensively partly because of the clarity and simplicity of its message. Starting in the Middle East and Greece, it spread throughout the Roman Empire, and then to Northern and Eastern Europe, the Americas, the Philippines, Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, etc. Islam spread an even more clear and uncompromising form of monotheism in which God has no all-important Son, no Virgin gives birth to such a Son, etc. Islam spread east and west from the Middle East, all the way from Morocco to Indonesia. 

While Classical learning existed in Medieval Jewish, Christian and Muslim realms, Classical religion was labelled myth, and Classical philosophy was only respected if it could be squared with monotheism. In Christianity, Augustine reconciled Plato's idealism with the Christian Heaven (the Ideal City of God), and Aquinas used aspects of Aristotelian analysis to explain the existence of God and His Great Chain of Being. In Islam, Classical pagan questioning of monotheism was pre-empted by the Seljuk Persian, Al-Ghazali (1058-1111). Mixing jurisprudence, theology, and mysticism, Al-Ghazali managed not only to reconcile orthodoxy with mysticism but also to distance Islam from Neoplatonism in the process. For instance, the Andalusian physician and philosopher, Avicenna (or Ibn Sina) was “one of the prime targets of al-Ghazali” because of his “unified study of Plato, Aristotle, and Neoplatonism.” He “was obliged to denounce the philosophers … in order to forestall a neo-pagan renaissance within Islam” (Cyril Glassé, Concise Encyclopedia of Islam). It's perhaps ironic (or paradoxical, depending on one's view of Islamic iconoclasm) that while Islamic writers re-transmitted much Classical thinking to Europe, the type of free-thinking that slipped into the Christian world with the Renaissance was cut short in the Islamic world.

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