John Milbank

Policing the Sublime: A Critique of the Sociology of Religion

John Milbank - Professor of Religion, Politics and Ethics at the University of Nottingham; Director of Center for Theology and Philosophy, University of Nottingham, Great Britain. John.Milbank@nottingham.ac.uk

This text is a translation of the fifth chapter from the book "Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason" by John Milbank. This chapter is devoted to theological criticism of sociology of religion. The author analyses approaches to religion by Durkheim, Weber, Parsons, Berger, Luckmann, Bellah, Luhmann, Turner, as well as anthropological concepts of religion by C. Geertz and M. Douglas. Special attention is devoted to functionalism in biblical criticism and historiography of early Christianity (one can find analysis of works by N.Gottwald, P.Brown and W. Meeks). From author's point of view, "as a 'science of the sublime', sociology is locked into the paradox of the Kantian critique of metaphysics and of any claims to the representation of the absolute". Author wants to show that "all twentieth century sociology of religion can be exposed as a secular policing of the sublime" and that this sociology of religion is manifestation of "secular will-to-power".

Оригинал см.: Milbank, J. (1990) "Policing the Sublime: A Critique of the Sociology of Religion", in Milbank, J. Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, pp. 101 - 144, ch. 5. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, US: Blackwell.

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Keywords: sociology of religion, society, sublime, biblical criticism, rites of passage, history, evolution, function of religion.

Preface to the publication

The SOCIOLOGICAL approach to understanding religion is one of the most important modern trends in religious studies. Its conceptual foundations were laid by the classics of sociology, a relatively young science that initially paid special attention to the interpretation of the religious dimension of social structures, their formation and dynamics. In relation to the religious phenomenon, sociology acted as a meta-discourse, thereby offering a secular alternative to theology as a discourse aimed at self-description and self-justification of religion. These claims of sociological science have long been considered "self-evident" and have not met with serious opposition. However, at the end of the last century, an exception to this unwritten rule appeared, namely, the work of the British theologian and philosopher John Milbank, who claimed to return theology to the function of a modern meta-discourse.

In this issue of our journal, the main topic of which is modern theoretical approaches to the study of religion, we publish a chapter from the book "Theology and Social Theory: Beyond the Secular Mind"by J. Milbank1. This chapter is devoted specifically to the critique of the sociology of religion (in particular, the author deals with the concepts of K. Geertz and N. Luhmann, which are discussed in separate publications of this issue of our journal).

John Milbank (born 1952) is one of the founders and leaders of the Christian intellectual movement "Radical Orthodoxy", which took shape in 1999 with the release of the collection of the same name 2 and unites Protestant Christian groups.

1. Milbank, J. (1990) Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, US: Blackwell. Rus. Translated from the first chapter by J. Milbank. Political theology and the New Science of Politics//Logo. 2008. N4. pp. 33-54. About the book and the author, see: Kyrlezhev A. John Milbank: the Mind beyond the Secular//Logo. N4 (67). 2008. pp. 28-32; Denisenko A. Mission of "Radical Orthodoxy" as a theological deconstruction of the concept of "secular". Special issue "Church and Mission". 2012. pp. 48-63.

2. Milbank, J., Pickstock, C. and Ward, G. (eds) (1999) Radical Orthodoxy. A New Theology. London, New York: Routledge.

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(mostly Anglican, to which he belongs), as well as Catholic and some Orthodox theologians and philosophers. The movement is currently co-ordinated by the Milbank-led Centre for Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham and publishes a series of books by various authors.

Milbank's position is indeed radical from the point of view of the established traditions of "secular reason" that define modern social and humanitarian sciences (this confessional radicalism is clearly expressed by him in a brief interview, which is also published in this issue of the journal). At the same time, his position, being not only purely theological, but also philosophical, as well as in a certain sense religious studies, reflects the latest "post-secular" trends that manifest themselves in both secular and religious thought.3
The theological critique of Modern European secular rationality proposed by Milbank in the above-mentioned book (a full Russian translation of which has been made, but has not yet found its publisher), as well as, for example, by the American Orthodox theologian David Hart4, who largely follows in Milbank's footsteps, deserves the closest attention simply because of the involvement of these authors in a competent academic discussion, which involves the collision of very different, even the opposite, points of view. In this case, we are not talking about a purely religious study, but about an interdisciplinary discussion, since religion-according to the logic of the subject itself - is studied and interpreted by representatives of various scientific disciplines: historians, anthropologists, philosophers, sociologists, etc. in this case, philosophizing theologians, and therefore on the pages of our magazine we give the floor to one of the most prominent and influential representatives of the modern Christian philosophical and theological community.

Editorial Office

3. See the issue of our magazine with the main theme "Religion in a post-secular context "(2012, N2).

4. See Hart D. The Beauty of the Infinite. Aesthetics of Christian Truth, Moscow: BBI, 2010.

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* * *

Consensus on the Sublime

Peter Berger, a contemporary American sociologist, has stated that "sociology" is today's name for the scientific and humanistic critique of religion, and that it is a fiery torrent that modern theology must overcome.5 In fact, theologians themselves have already largely accepted the idea that "social" explanations can be found for at least some elements of religious belief. Their response to this state of affairs was to try to minimize the damage: although they recognize the validity of the reductionist suspicion of religion that sociology practices, they also try to limit the scope of this suspicion by emphasizing the dimension of religion or theology that should remain irreducible. According to this position, a sound, self-critical religious faith must fully accept the criticisms of sociology (as well as Freudianism and Marxism) as propaedeutics, in order to then identify the truly religious remnant.

Here it is useful to note the perplexity of more consistent sociologists working in the Durkheimian tradition regarding the status of this remnant (for example, Mary Douglass6). If this remainder belongs to the realm of" private experience, "then we have every reason to believe that this experience is somehow mediated by social experience; and we must be prepared to accept the possibility that even the most personal religious beliefs are actually a reflection of a particular" social " situation. Such recognition is impossible for a liberal theology that seeks to establish itself through " authentic experience." But it is quite consistent with certain trends of neo-Orthodoxy, which insists on the existence of an absolute gulf between the revealed word of God and human "religion", which, being a purely historical product, can well be left to any reductionist analysis. However, this kind of neo-orthodox-

5. Berger, P. L. (1969) A Rumour of Angels, p. 44 - 45. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

6. Douglas, M. (1982) "The Effects of Modernization on Religious Change", Daedalus Winter.

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this is itself nothing more than a kind of liberal Protestantism: the word of God given in revelation is self-contained and cannot penetrate the sphere of symbolic human constructions without being corrupted and distorted; therefore, it cannot have any influence on the world and remains closed in the sphere of the purely religious, which corresponds to the concept of "religious experience"in liberal Protestantism.

If we accept the claims of sociology, then the liberal Protestant hermeneutics that chose via media, the middle way, between trust and suspicion, turns out to be unsatisfactory. As for the neo-orthodox bravado about reductionist assertions, this is tantamount to simply moving the same middle path to the farthest limits of possible human experience; and the result is that the" otherworldly " in question is characterized by an ineffability that leads to nothing and affects nothing.

However, the reflections presented in the previous two chapters allow us to go in a completely different direction: instead of partial recognition of "suspicion" , we should develop a "meta-suspicion" that casts doubt on the very possibility of suspicion as such. In this case, of course, I do not mean the suspicion based on common sense that never left us (it was very skillfully hyperbolized by sociology), and an example of which can be considered the following phrase: "Alfred's Methodism always seemed to me a form of pastime" (we do not add that "this kind of functionality Methodism as such"); or: "The Pope's work is more about power than grace." I am referring to the "fundamental suspicion "that seeks to prove that something" controversial "(anything) can be reduced to something"indisputable". Therefore, in my study of the origins of sociology, I have followed the path not of denying "reduction to the social", but of challenging the very idea of the existence of a "social" (in a special, technical sense of the word), to which religious behavior can generally be reduced.

By exploring these origins, we have seen 7 how the terms "social" and "society" have become so embedded in our consciousness that from now on, we will be able to use the term "social" and " society."-

7. См. Milbank, J. (1990) Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, US: Blackwell. Ch. 3, 4.

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we are not even trying to question the validity of the notion of " religions "as problematic, but of" social " as obvious. The idea that the former should be relegated to the latter seemed like an innocent stroke of genius. However, we now know that the emergence of the idea of the social must be considered in the context of the history of the "secular", its attempts to legitimize itself and "deal" with the phenomenon of religion. Even in Hobbes and Spinoza (and before them in Bodin), a critical, non-theological meta-discourse about certain aspects of religion - its local variations, specific traditions, and public rituals - appears simultaneously with the concept of political sovereignty.8 This meta-discourse emerged with the "state" as a new way of seeing things. It was a vision of power, which is power acting through this vision, through a vigilant presence in all parts of the social "body"(to use Hobbes ' metaphor), with which power is one. In the practical and intellectual approach to religion, starting with the "new science of politics" and continuing in political economy and positivism, the following duality can be traced: on the one hand, specific, historical manifestations of religion are viewed from a higher level ("from a higher perspective"), that is, using critical discourse, but on the other hand this "higher-level perspective", which is the perspective of the state, the whole body, and therefore "humanity", is often identified with universal religion, with the pure essence of religiosity, which is a construct created for the sake of achieving a secular world (peace).

In the French positivist tradition, the transformation of the political whole into a "society" allows for a more radical organicism, as well as giving the secular order a religious quality. After Durkheim reinterpreted this tradition in a neo-Kantian spirit, the social came to denote the ultimate presence for us of the Kantian "kingdom of ends": it sanctifies and embodies the sublime freedom of each individual within the framework of the state. In addition, it is an a priori scheme that postulates categorical universals, in the light of which any empirical content should be perceived. According to this approach-

8. Preuss, J. S. (1987) Explaining Religion, pp. 3 - 23. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

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However, in traditional, concrete religions, there are implicit indications of the primacy of the social; and as soon as this fact is revealed, the religion discovers its universality and reaches a perfect state. Max Weber, on the contrary, distanced himself from Comte's positivism; for him, the social is not something originally given, but rather the social itself must be known, based on the principle of the primacy of instrumental reason and economic relations. Nevertheless, the universalization of religion also occurs here, albeit in a different way: the source of religion is in "charisma", which suspends the action of instrumental reason in various ways, and this suspension is recorded by sociology as a negative deviation. Universalization here is a way to "manage" many specific religions by limiting them to the private sphere. But charisma reappears in public space as a super-rational goal of the political whole, which the instrumental mind can neither define nor control. (Since publicly recognized political charisma is an arbitrary force, Weber appears in this case as a political force.)more positivist and less Kantian than Durkheim.)

Both Durkheim and Weber view society from the point of view of the individual's relation to something social and universal, and this reflects the perspective of modern Western politics, whose main concern is the "bodily" mediation between the unlimited sovereignty of the state and the individual's self-will. Looking at all societies in this way ignores the fact that for many non-Western or pre-modern societies, what matters is not the binary individual/society juxtaposition, but the hierarchical ordering of groups with different status, as well as the distribution of roles according to a complex understanding of shared values.9 Sociology, of course, captures this difference, but only negatively, pointing out that organic and hierarchical societies exercise strict "control" over the individual, as if a member of such a traditional society already secretly carries a modern self-determining subject. As a consequence, the relation of the individual to the whole -

9. Tcherkezoff, S. (1983) Dual Classification Reconsidered /Trans. M. Thorn. Cambridge/Paris: Cambridge University Press.

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what defines only modern politics is seen as the universal structure of the social; hence the belief that all complex rituals, hierarchies, and religious beliefs that are inextricably linked to a stratified, organic society can be "explained" in terms of their functions in the exercise of strict control by the whole over its individual parts. This " explanation "is more than a tautology, because the normative perspective of modernity suggests that there is always a dimension of purely" social action "and" social power " that lies between the individual and the social and is separated from its ritual, symbolic, or linguistic embodiment. However, the" social whole", taken apart from the interaction of various norms and strata, is a reified abstraction; there can be no" social action " that can be defined or understood without taking into account its special linguistic manifestations and the inexplicability of a particular symbolic system.

The characteristic features of religions are "eccentric" customs, attachment to certain periods of time and certain places, as well as the constant reproduction of the same thing. The lie of sociology lies in its claim that it can use a higher-level meta-discourse to deal with this eccentricity, repeatability, and singularity. This claim is generated by the perspective that I described above. For if a traditional society is defined only negatively, then the characteristics of its religion, the type of organic whole that it is, and the content of its hierarchy of values will be considered secondary to, or even inferred from, the fact that it is a very cohesive society. However, such a reduction applies only to the specifics of religion, because sociology (as it is worth mentioning once again), like liberal theology, usually seeks to identify and protect the "real" essence of religion. This real essence has nothing to do with the power dimension of society or the correlation of social actions, but is connected with the sphere of "values" that justify and legitimize social actions and power relations. However, in really-

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And this is especially evident when considering traditional societies - legitimation is inextricably linked to power in all its distributional complexity. Sociology reduces this complexity to a single general fact - the social whole or core of instrumental action - and abstracts it from the symbolic embodiment of values, placing them, respectively, on the outer or inner edge of society. Thus, for Durkheim, values are constants that maintain a static social equilibrium at the level of an organic whole; for Weber, they are what an isolated individual arbitrarily strives for.

It turns out that sociology moves normative values, including religion, "to the edge": either to a space in which the individual is supposed to be outside or opposed to the social, and the social is understood as the area of verifiable facts (Weber); or to a space filled with a mysterious ether that connects one ineffable individual with the other, and at the same time creates the social substance of practical reason (Durkheim and Simmel). Thus religion, as viewed by sociology, belongs to the Kantian sublime: it is a realm of unspeakable grandeur beyond the possibilities of theoretical knowledge, a realm that cannot be represented in images, but whose overwhelming presence is attested to by the confused faculties of our imagination.10 For this presence of religion is at the same time the presence of freedom, of the soul, of the transcendental "apperceptive" Self, and therefore of an irreducible humanity. The sublime should be protected and appreciated, although it does not produce any positive consequences in the space of the objective factual world.if such consequences were to occur (as religions so often believe), then sociology might well show that the conditions for the representation of the sublime are completely determined by the social: either as factual a priori or as normative.

As a" science of the sublime, " sociology finds itself trapped in the paradox of Kant's critique of metaphysics, as well as Liu-

10. Kant, I. (1987) The Critique of Judgement /Trans. Werner S. Pluhar, pp. 97 - 141. Indianapolis: Hackett [rus ed.: Kant I. Kritika sposobnosti sudzheniya// Kant I. Sobranie soch. v 8 tt. T. 5. M.: Izdatelstvo "Choro", 1994. pp. 82-105].

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there are no claims to represent the absolute. In order to be able to make the critical statement that the categories applicable to the finite are applicable only to the finite and therefore cannot be legitimately extended to the infinite, two assumptions must be made. First, it is necessary to agree with the distinction between an a priori concept and empirical "intuition", and also with the fact that one cannot be comprehended without the other: for example, the concept of cause, even if it is a priori, is applicable only to "understanding" the phenomena of things in space and time. Since the emergence of such concepts as "cause" from a series of empirical phenomena is denied, it turns out that these two different series - conceptual analysis, on the one hand, and space-time examples, on the other - exist (in our subjective understanding) only for each other. Therefore, to extrapolate a particular category to the infinite is to break the boundaries of the natural circle of applicability of that category, a circle in which, whenever intuitions obey categories, an infinite regression in both groups is prevented, which would lead to undecidable antinomies, which in turn would make any reliable, accurate knowledge impossible.

However, if (and this is exactly the case) it is impossible to distinguish a pre-defined, categorical element (which in sociology is schematized as "society", understood as a fact or as a norm) from the stream of becoming, then it is impossible to speak with such certainty about the scope of applicability of a particular concept, and in addition, the applicability of this concept cannot be necessary it is limited to the end point.

The second assumption follows most directly from the first. According to this second assumption, an exhaustive list of a priori categories of possible finite knowledge can be compiled. It is here that the paradox arises: once and for all, it is possible to determine the boundary of human understanding and thereby "exclude metaphysics" only by standing on this boundary, so to speak, and casting a glance on the other side, in the direction of the sublime, having received some idea of it.11 So, for example, causality is understood as a closed, definite sequence precisely in contrast to freedom,

11. Kant, I. Critique of Judgement, pp. 106 - 117.

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which can be realized, although it is impossible to comprehend in any way. One can only deny the possibility that causality, or necessity, or concrete finite completeness belong primarily (although we cannot "see" this) to the infinite "in itself" if one starts from the false assumption that in" freedom " one has access to something that is outside of space-time.time series and constitutes the transcendence of "things-in-themselves" in relation to material existence, causality, relation, etc. (This is why Kant allows statements about God by analogy only in the case of a "regulative" discourse concerning the relationship of God to the world; he does not "attribute", as Thomas Aquinas does, such statements as these. concepts such as necessity belong to God "in itself" -since created effects remind us of their formal - goal causes-although, according to Kant, our practical comprehension of freedom is capable of providing an unambiguous understanding of the essence of the transcendent, the possibility of which Thomas could not admit. Wittgenstein famously put it this way: "While people believe that they can see the' limit of human understanding, ' they are also convinced that they can see beyond it. "12
Thus, the" critique of metaphysics, " which, according to Berger, sociology continues to engage in, is itself a new metaphysics, claiming a totalizing and ultimately correct representation of the finite, as well as a humanism that stands guard over the free and ineffable subject, which "produces obvious consequences" within the framework of this finite, but at the same time, in fact, it always surpasses it. Religion for sociology is one of the components of the protected "human" sphere, although sometimes this sphere (as in Durkheim) coincides with the schematic possibility of theoretical understanding. However, although religion is recognized and protected, it is also constantly "supervised": it is kept strictly outside the limits of empirical understanding. Thus, sociology comes into an inevitable contradiction with many traditional religions that do not conduct any research on religion.

12. Wittgenstein, L. (1984) Culture and Value. University of Chicago Press. 15e [rus. ed.: Wittgenstein L. Kul'tura i tsennost ' [Culture and Value]. On reliability, Moscow: AST, Astrel, Midgard, 2010, p. 44]; Kant, I. (1978) Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 517-518 / Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan [rus. ed.: Kant I. Kritika chistogo razuma// Kant I. Sobranie soch. v 8 tt.T. 3. M.: Izdatelstvo "Choro", 1994].

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the differences between "religious" and "empirical" reality do not separate one's idea of values from the stratified organization of time, people, and places that has developed in the societies where they are established. The "surveillance of the sublime" practiced by sociology coincides exactly with the actual functioning of secular society, which excludes religion from discipline and control regimes, while at the same time protecting it as a "private" value, and also sometimes involves religion at the public level to overcome the boredom of purely instrumental and useless rationality, which at the same time continues to be the main one a political goal.

In the three sections that follow, I intend to show that all of the sociologies of twentieth-century religion can be interpreted as manifestations of secular surveillance of the sublime. After this kind of deconstruction, the subject we are considering will appear as a pure manifestation of the secular will to power. Focusing mainly on the most influential American tradition, I will first try to understand the American concept of the sublime, which encompasses both Durkheim's sublime of the whole and Weber's sublime of the marginal subject, while trying to develop a third sublime of sacrificial "transition" that mediates between the first two. In the next section, I will continue to demonstrate how all three varieties of the sublime make it possible for secular oversight of religion, or its "imprisonment" in the flattened modern public space. In the penultimate section of this chapter, I will show how evolutionist approaches consolidate this" discipline "by tracing the gradual discovery over time of the" proper " elevated place for religion. In the fifth and final section, I will discuss the sociological thesis that religions have hindered our awareness of cultural temporality by violating the boundaries of negative sublimity and giving an "ideological" connotation to the facts of the past, which distorted the true state of affairs.

Parsons and the American Sublime

In the twentieth century, the sociology of religion largely follows in the footsteps of the American sociologist Talcott Parsons, as evidenced by the works of K. Geertz, P. Berger, T. Lukman, R. Bella and N. Luhmann.

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And this happens even when this connection is denied. As is well known, Parsons sought to synthesize Durkheim and Weber, and his critics often claimed that they did it much better. When you look at the Parsons project, three things catch your eye. First, he argues that Durkheim and Weber (as well as Freud) respect the boundaries of the rational and the place that the irrational occupies.13 Here he draws a parallel between" arousal " (effervescence) Durkheim and Weber's "charisma". Second, while religion is said to deal with" non-empirical " beliefs, Parsons simultaneously recognizes that religion is connected to some "real" realm beyond the actual, which somewhat resembles the neo-Kantian notion of the "unreal."14 In this aspect, a much more consistent position is taken by his American followers (for example, Berger and Bella), who successfully reteologize sociology, revealing its hidden proximity to both the old voluntaristic and new liberal Protestant tendencies. Third, his desire to simultaneously adhere to both Durkheim's and Weber's strategy of" protecting " religion can be understood as a reflection of the peculiarities of the American situation. Weber's pluralism, of course, resonates in the country of many sects and religious groups, but Durkheim's Rousseau-Comte problematics of "civil religion" are also in demand, since the United States is a country in which statehood has always implied a certain "general" element of faith in God and in which respect for the constitution can be equated with respect for religion. religions of individual freedom.

Since Parsons ' attempt to combine Weber and Durkheim was in many ways typical of the sociology of religion (as well as of sociology in general), it seems appropriate to briefly outline the most important points of this attempt. Parsons quite justifiably believed that the link between Weber's action and Durkheim's structure should be

13. Parsons, T. (1978) "Belief, Unbelief and Disbelief", in Parsons, T. Action Theory and the Human Condition, pp. 233 - 263. N.Y.: The Free Press; Bellah, R.N. (1970) "The Sociology of Religion", in Bellah, R.N. Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-traditional World. N.Y.: Harper and Row.

14. Parsons, T. (1978) "Durkheim on Religion Revisited: Another Look at the Elementary Forms of the Religious Life", in Parsons, T. Action Theory and the Human Condition, pp. 213 - 230.

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the question of the genesis of language. Therefore, he sought to incorporate into sociology the theory of "symbolic interaction" developed by the representative of American pragmatism, J. G. Mead. According to this theory, communication (and thus society) becomes possible only at the moment when a particular subject separates a certain repetitive action and it is assumed that another subject performs the same isolation.15 After that, there may be simulations and waiting patterns that make it possible to use signs. Moreover, it is only through this imitation and use of signs that a sense of self-identity arises. Because other people first recognize our repetitive actions and then respond to them, we are able to develop a response to ourselves, but only to the extent that we initially become a "generalized other" who performs actions that have a fixed and regular meaning. According to Parsons, this model makes it possible, together with Weber, to assert that arbitrary action is primary in terms of causality, and at the same time to pay tribute to the truth contained in Durkheim's concept of "social fact", recognizing that meaning by its nature is primarily public and universal.16 The priority given in Mead's theory to absolute consistency and regularity as fundamental conditions for the possibility of meaning itself becomes for Parsons the equivalent of Durkheim's concept of static social universals that generate categories that make understanding possible.

The problem with such mediating sociology is that it is unable to resolve the aporia of action and structure, but instead, at various points in its model of social genesis, it only incorporates contradictions related to the preference given to one or the other approach. If we consider "action", then it is impossible to talk about some pre - social individual who "separates" certain actions-for this, the individual must already have the selection criteria, which requires him to communicate with himself, and the knowledge of the individual is not enough.-

15. Parsons, T. (1951) The Social System, p. 19. L.: RKP. On Social systems, Moscow: Academic Project, 2002]; Toby, J. (1977) Parsons' Theory of Societal Evolution, in T. Parsons (ed.) The Evolution of Societies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall; Mead, G. H. (1964) "A Behavioristic Account of the Significant Symbol", in Beck, A. J. (ed.) Selected Writings. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

16. Parsons, T. The Social System, pp. 3 - 23; Toby, 3. Parson's Theory of Societal Evolution.

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cheat, and self-reflection. They initially find themselves involved in a private language game, which is impossible, since, according to the theory under consideration, self-reflection and identity arise only in a social context. If we take "structure", then Parsons makes the dubious assumption that the "first" social interaction should be democratic and equal, since each actor tends to expect the other actor to interpret the same non-ambiguous sign in the same way. However, it may well be that because one action is significantly related to another, higher value and greater significance will be attributed to one of the actions; in addition, this asymmetry may well be reflected in the role identifications made by specific actors. In fact, the starting point is rather not the similarity of signs and actions, but their difference, which produces the original order and meaning, since " communication "is already a second-order phenomenon within the framework of language, which first" positions " both things and people.

And after the reflexive interaction begins, the creative contribution of individual action becomes possible. And then there can be no guarantee that the various readings of common public signs (which in the end are just an interweaving of all these different readings/writings) will coincide, nor can there be any guarantee that the distribution of roles and values will remain the same all the time. Therefore, in relation to both action and structure, one should say "always already", and not only refuse to give priority to one to the detriment of the other, but also reject the mental picture proposed by Parsons, according to which these two elements are treated as "external" in relation to each other, and without such a picture there is no "There is only historiography (including historical geography) in all its variations, which is subject to endless revision.

If Parsons had adopted a more "strong" pragmatist thesis, he might well have come to the same conclusion. In this case, he would have realized that it is impossible to conceive of a genesis that begins with an individual and proceeds into an interaction, just as it is impossible to believe that the univocal meaning of a sign is socially fundamental. However, his diluted pragmatism leads to the fact that he connects two sociologies, turning them into a double il-

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luzia. This, in turn, has serious implications for his understanding of religion. Since for Parsons individual action is primary in terms of genesis, he tends to treat religion in a substantial way - as a certain sphere of experience, which only later receives symbolic "expression". But since for Parsons action is strictly limited to fixed norms of categorical meaning, he conceptualizes religion functionally - as something that legitimizes and sacralizes general agreements and social unity. Therefore, religion in Parsons (and later in Bell, Berger, Lukman, and Geertz) is both "charismatic", that is, belonging to a particular "existential" sphere, and "integrative", that is, providing social reality with the necessary ideology.17
At the same time, the contrast described above between expressive action and categorical structure does not exhaust the meaning of the picture drawn by Parsons, which is actually more complex. In the process of evolution, society is differentiated into a number of subsystems, each of which has a relatively independent "reference framework of action" with its own norms and relative autonomy.18 These subsystems remain completely discrete with respect to each other, since their symbolic norms function univocally (unambiguously) as categories that once and for all define all areas of possible knowledge and action. For example, the economy operates on the basis of" purely economic " criteria of scarcity, supply, and demand, and these criteria have nothing to do with morality, truth, beauty, political power, or consent. In addition, there are relatively independent cultural systems, including religion, that value and protect expressive originality. Therefore, as Robert Bella points out, there can be no "science" that covers the entire social system in every aspect.19 At the same time, science is quiteit can comprehend how all subsystems function in relation to each other, that is, the assumed level of "society" as such.

17. Parsons, T. The Social System, pp. 367 - 379; Parsons, T. Durkheim on Religion Revisited.

18. Parsons, T. The Social System, pp. 3 - 23.

19. Bellah, R.N. (1970) "Between Religion and Social Science", in Bellah, R.N. Beyond Belief, pp. 237 - 287.

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The description of this level is dominated mainly by economic metaphors: society has limited energy "resources", which it must "preserve" and maintain in "balance". Religion is useful in imagining and representing this invisible "whole", as well as in temporarily "accumulating" energies in an "ideal" area, so that they can then be used for "real" social purposes.20
In the light of this more complex picture, it is possible to slightly correct the idea that has developed in American sociology about how exactly "religion" is included in "society". At the level of private experience, the content of religion is universal, it concerns a permanent dimension of human existence. At the level of the cultural subsystem, this content is pluralistic and diverse, because it corresponds to various arbitrary symbolic conventions. As for the level of" society " as such, the level of civil religion, here the content again becomes universal, since only at this level is symbolic arbitrariness an expression of something real: an organic whole, a self-sufficient system capable of maintaining its energy in a self-regulating equilibrium.

Thus, according to American sociology, there is both the sublime of unspeakable private experience, which is present before and beyond linguistic expression, and the sublime of the whole system, the ultimate limit, which can only be described using formal, economic terms. But there is also another kind of sublime-the point at which two universal spheres of religion converge into one. This is the point of transition, the point of sacrifice, when each individual freely obeys the civil law of the whole at will, as well as the point of rites de passage (rites of passage), which implies the need to pass through space between various symbolic systems that denote our existence in time and space.

Thus, when analyzing American sociology, we find that in the implementation of secular surveillance, its role in the development of socialism is not limited.

20. Parsons, T. (1967) Christianity and Modern Industrial Society, in Parsons, T. Sociological Theory and Modern Society. N.Y.: Free Press; Parsons, T. Durkheim on Religion Revisited.

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the secret goal is to keep religion conceptually at its farthest limits; the influence of religion is denied, but it is also rewarded for its transcendent purity. Therefore, its "real" existence in all societies must be demonstrated-either at the level of an ineffable experience, or at the level of a functioning whole, or, finally, at the level of" liminal " transitions, where ambiguities and ambiguities have to be dealt with. What is denied here is the possibility of religion being embedded in the most fundamental level of the symbolic organization of society and in the most fundamental level of the mechanisms of discipline and persuasion, since in this case it will simply be impossible to talk about "society" separately, outside and apart from "religion". In this case, the "explanation" of religion through "other" social phenomena will be simply unthinkable. It will only be possible to describe religions with varying degrees of liking or disliking, and any radical suspicion of religion will inevitably take the form of suspicion of the whole of society, as well as its understanding of humanity. Society will then turn out to be nothing more than a certain configuration of competing expressions of the will to power.

In the following three sections, we structure this surveillance of the sublime. After this, it will become obvious that the sociology of religion can never claim to be a true meta - discourse in relation to religion-in contrast to theology, which simply represents a worldview. The claim of sociology to be a meta-discourse persists only insofar as it manages to maintain the illusion of the existence of a "social fact" that can be contrasted with religion, defined in such a way as to both limit it and preserve it as the surreal sublime. This limitation is achieved in the spatial dimension, when religion is subordinated to the social and condemned to fulfill certain functional roles; in the dimension of open time, when religion is presented as evolving towards the recognition of the truth of its own marginality; and finally, in the dimension of hidden time, when religion is interpreted as a late, "ideological" legitimization of earlier, purely religious values. social structures.

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Religion and functionality

1. Integrating functions

Suppose a sociologist says the following: "The function of the Eucharist is to unite disparate elements of the Christian community." The main problem with this kind of statement is that it tries to explain a certain phenomenon (the Eucharist) in terms of what it is and does, and this borders on tautology. For this reason, it may well be a theological statement. And it is considered something more than a tautology, just because in this case a mental division of what is one subject is made into three: thus, the Eucharist is considered (which resembles bad theology) as a kind of hypostatic "thing in itself" - in isolation from what it does. Further, what it does, its function, relates to the ecclesiastical community, which is considered in isolation from the totality of collective actions, one of which is the Eucharist, which only communicates reality to this community. Thus, the claim to decipher intra-ecclesiastical meanings with the help of objective sociological concepts, in reality, only generates epistemological illusions, the victim of which is not necessarily ecclesiology.

This example can be called an exemplary case of functional explanation: it tries to add to the narrative description of a certain phenomenon an explanation of why this phenomenon occurs, in some "universal" terms. However, it turns out that this explanation itself can be reduced to a narrative form. Or it imagines illusory " essences "of things, which are then declared to be the" causes " of what is happening, as well as illusory teleological wholes that are waiting to be realized.

Nothing will change if we take a less "obvious" example of functionality: for example, " the function of Christianity is to support patriarchal rule." Even if, indeed, this is the hidden and disguised function of Christianity, it can only be proved by a concrete description of how it all works, which will require revealing hitherto unnoticed relationships. In other words, the explanation of Christianity can only be achieved by using it.

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a new description, although this does not mean that such a new description will be "purely subjective". The limit of such a description will be reached with the questions: why in this society is patriarchal power, which is more or less universal, carried out in this way, disguises itself by using these very symbols?

Thus, a functional explanation that claims to reveal something new is in fact only a new narrative description. This description has nothing to do with the experimental establishment of relationships, nor with the identification of the general law according to which, having a society of type a, we can discover the function of B, as sociology tends to believe. For example, a sociologist may well try to prove that all hierarchical societies with a strictly centralized source of power are societies with monotheistic religions. To achieve this goal, he will "test" his hypothesis by collecting all known examples of societies of this type and finding out whether the dominant religion in them is monotheistic or not. If it turns out that everything is exactly as he expected, then the sociologist will hardly stop there; rather, he will want to show in detail how, in each particular case, monotheism contributes to the maintenance of a monarchical form of power and hierarchy. This means that detailed proof of the supposed correlation is a matter of narrative historiography ("plots" can relate to structures, symbols, and institutions as much as individuals). However, if we are talking about a society where royal power is understood in sacred terms and the king is king only because he is the "son of God", and God, in turn, is perceived as a heavenly monarch, then the historiographic narrative will not be able to establish what should be considered primary in the causal sense: a religiously sanctioned social structure or a socially colored religion. Thus, the more carefully the narrative describes and explains the universally observed correlation, the faster the very concept of "correlation" disappears, along with the need for some empirical law. Social structures are as much a part of monotheistic religions as beliefs, and the monarchical hierarchy is itself a religious institution. Therefore, in this case, the only valid general conclusion will not be "scientific", according to co.-

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Rather, the conclusion that centralized hierarchical societies "need" monotheism is simply that there is a certain class of societies that are broadly similar to each other.

This does not mean that beliefs and practices cannot diverge, but if they do, it is always the result of some historical event that can be described narratively; the creation of a separate field of practice is always associated with certain beliefs, that is, with the fact that it is partly allowed to "go its own way". Thus, the thesis that if we have a society of type a, we can find B is always reduced simply to describing the characteristics of this type of society.

So my thesis is that functionalist sociology does not add anything non-metaphysical to historiography. To support this thesis, I will use as an example a number of recent attempts by Bible researchers to supplement their historical criticism with elements of functionalist explanation.

2. Functionalism in Biblical Criticism and Historiography of the Origins of Christianity

Sociology uses functionalist explanations to go beyond the purely historiographical narrative of deeds, goals, and customs. As New Testament scholar John Geiger puts it, "history describes, sociology explains." 21 This statement can only mean that sociology provides us with a timeless knowledge of a finite range of social possibilities, which allows us to predict what kind of functions will be involved in a particular type of society. In this case, history, in the words of Paul Wein, becomes only "applied sociology"22. However, we have already discussed some of the reasons that make this kind of typology impossible: the functionalist explanation becomes a tautology, and the sociological explanation becomes a narrative description.

21. Gager, J. G. (1983) "Social Description and Sociological Explanation in the Study of Early Christianity: a Review Essay", in N. K. Gottwald (ed.) The Bible and Liberation: Political and Social Hermeneutics, p. 429. N.Y.: Orbis Maryknoll.

22. Veyne, P. (1984) Writing History: Essay on Epistemology. Wesleyan; 1st Wesleyan edition How to write a story. Experience of epistemology. Appendix: Foucault makes a revolution in history. Moscow: Nauchny Mir, 2003].

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If this is so, then why is it so common among theologians and Bible researchers that sociology can shed light on biblical and Christian history? Are those wrong who think that biblical critics who have used sociological tools-such as Norman Gottwald, Gerd Thyssen, Wayne Mix, and Peter Brown-have shed new light on well-known subjects in their works?

Of course, those who think so are not mistaken. However, it is quite possible to admire the works of the above-mentioned authors and at the same time claim that they are mistaken precisely when their thought turns out to be the most "sociological". Thus, Gottwald, in his work" The Tribes of Yahweh, " passionately argues that Israel was unique not only in its religion, but also because it made a unique attempt in the ancient Near East to create social mechanisms that would prevent social inequality and the concentration of political power.23 Gottwald's work is very useful because it allows us to correct many of the usual but excessively "spiritual" Christian critical interpretations of the Old Testament; however, to the extent that Gottwald considers his insights "sociological", he still remains, albeit negatively, within such interpretations. For the Jews have always insisted on the relationship between their religious and social identity: this is what is implied by the fact that the Torah has always been central to them. Gottwald, on the other hand, draws on the notion that religious and social aspects belong to essentially different spheres, and then goes on to argue that Yahwism was primarily a "social" movement, the religious aspects of which were "functionally" related to the movement itself. The true historical view that the worship of Yahweh was inextricably linked to questions of justice and the sacred community of the earth is being pushed to the sociological level.

Gottwald's way of thinking perfectly illustrates the whole problematic nature of the position that defends the priority of the social. This raises the following fundamental question: if yx-

23. Gottwald, N. K. (1979) The Tribes ofYahweh: a Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250 - 1050 BCE, р. 592ff. N.Y., London: Orbis/SCM, Maryknoll.

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vism was primarily a social and political idea, so why were religious functions needed at all? Gottwald argues that Yahweh, as the only true owner of the earth, provided mechanisms to protect against excessive accumulation of property and debt slavery, and as a God above nature, guaranteed the superiority of people and their freedom from subjection to nature as a force or fate.24 But, as first-rate anthropologists such as Franz Steiner and Mary Douglas would point out in this case, this statement is based on the improbable assumption that there were originally some moral principles that were discovered intuitively and privately, and only later were they reinforced by religious and ritual institutions.25
If one is not held captive by the notion that an egalitarian social order is "natural," then it should become apparent that religious interpretations are in no way secondary, but rather fundamental when it comes to such things as community responsibility or the harmful effects of the practice of keeping debtors in a servile state. In fact, the name "Yahweh" reveals a new level of" conscience, " and without this name and its associated faith, only idolatrous cults of power and blood would remain. To think otherwise is to regard our modern conceptions of duty and guilt as natural intuitions, independent of the symbolic code that establishes certain exceptions and creates an idea of certain "forces" of the moral conscience. It is this highly abstract and secular mythology that makes us interpret religion, in the spirit of Kant, as an additional level that exists "above" the level of morality as such. Gottwald only projects such an understanding on the realities of ancient Israel, ignoring the historical genesis of the division of morality and religion in our culture.

The more it is said that religion was necessary for the functioning of Israeli egalitarianism, since it provided the required symbolic means for ponies-

24. Gottwald, N. K. The Tribes ofYahweh, pp. 608 - 621, 703.

25. Steiner, F. (1956) Taboo/With a pref. by E. E. Evans-Pritchard. N.Y.: Philosophical Library; L.: Cohen & West; Douglas, M. (1976) Purity and Danger: an Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. L.: RKP [rus. ed.: Douglas M. Purity and danger. Analysis of ideas about desecration and taboo. Moscow: Kanon-press, 2000].

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The less possible is Gottwald's distinction between society and religion. This distinction, of course, could not have originated in the texts of the Old Testament, so Gottwald, in describing the emergence of Jahvism, is forced to rely entirely on the power of imagination and invent a certain stage when there is only a revolutionary praxis, which later assimilates a religion that corresponds to the social project he is implementing. 26 Even more unconvincing from a historical point of view is the Gottwald's thesis that there must have been such a brief historical moment when for the Israelites the religion of Yahweh was a kind of" conscious projection "of" primitive religious consciousness", connected (in a purely positivist manner) with the maintenance of the immanent spirit of group identity.27 On the other hand, the transformation of Yahwism into a simple belief system coincided with the disintegration of the original social organization of Israel and the transition to monarchy.28 This strange suggestion is the final outcome of Gottwald's failed attempt to combine functionalism with Marxism; he has to reconcile his conflicting desires: to defend the religion of Israel by showing that it participated in the formation of a free society, and at the same time to prove that such a society does not need any mythological or transcendent beliefs.

From all this, we can conclude that as a historian, Gottwald rightly draws our attention to those dimensions of the Old Testament text that indicate a strong connection between religion and social organization in ancient Israel. However, as a sociologist (or Marxist sociologist), he makes the incredible discovery that there was a brief period when the ancient Israelites shared Kantian ideas (which is not reflected in the texts): they distinguished morality from custom, ritual, and religion, and they also recognized that theological concepts, while not "operational" like empirical concepts, are still capable of performing a regulatory function, offering a certain "view of praxis." And Gottwald's approach turns out to be the most sociological one.

26. Gottwald, N. K. The Tribes of Yahweh, pp. 617 - 620, 693 - 694.

27. Ibid., pp. 632 - 637.

28. Ibid., p. 704.

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when he defends the relative autonomy of theology within this biased, symbolic " representation."

Gottwald's example shows how careful one must be in evaluating the phenomenon of "biblical sociology." On the one hand, it should be welcomed in every possible way, since it examines such dimensions of existing texts that are too often ignored by commentators who are interested either only in "religious" topics, or in reconstructing the history of textual sources. Biblical sociology usually brings us back to the final text, which should (quite logically) tell us something about the community in which it was written. However, it is always tempting to assume that with the help of "sociology" we can gain magical access to the pre-textual level. This is often seen as a form of compensation in the absence of the necessary historical evidence, for example, about the early New Testament communities and the circumstances in which they existed. Wayne Meeks believes that sociology allows us to make guesses "based on supposed regularities in human behavior." 29 If the right to make such guesses is denied, then, as he believes, all that remains is to retell the facts without giving them any interpretation. However, the identification of sociology with the necessary hermeneutics is a trick: the reader really has to perform "divination", synthesizing the material into a single whole, but the integrity obtained in the process of such synthesis may well overcome the limitations of any universal topology. Actually, this is the very essence of high-quality reading. And a really deep interpretation will be more like an epiphany that generates a "good story" than a summation of particulars under universal norms.

Biblical sociology tends to forget that an increase in the number of available historical "testimonies" will only mean an increase in the number of texts. These new texts may or may not confirm, for example, the way the Gospels describe the emergence of Christianity, but they cannot reveal a level of "social genesis" that is not mediated by a whole range of interpretations.-

29. Meeks, W.A. (1983) The First Urban Christians: the Social World of the Apostle Paul, p. 5. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

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long-term prospects. The point here is not that an "unbiased" approach to social genesis is impossible at all, but that there is no pre-textual genesis: social genesis itself is the "embodied" process of reading and writing. Oddly enough, it is much easier to talk about the" social background " of a separate text. In networks of intertextuality generated by a variety of evidence, the supposed pure social object loses its shape much more clearly. Thus, it can be argued that biblical sociology is most useful when it deals with extra-biblical historical materials, although such work is least likely to provide grounds for making sociological conclusions.

All this can be seen in the example of the dispute about the social affiliation of the first Christians. According to some sociological explanations, the function of religion is to express the sorrows and aspirations of certain social groups. For example, Engels saw Christianity as the religion of the oppressed lower strata of the Roman Empire; Nietzsche saw it as an expression of the resentment of the helpless and the outcast; Weber, on the contrary, saw Christianity as the "salvation religion" of the urban middle classes with their lack of locality and individualism - in contrast to the magical religion of the peasants and the aristocratic cult of honor.30 However, the existing historical evidence does not support any of these assumptions (although Weber was still closer to the truth than the others). This evidence also does not support the "anti-sociological" thesis that social affiliation and adherence to Christianity are not connected in any way. The real picture is much more complicated.

First of all, the New Testament suggests with great certainty that there is a contrast between the original environment in which Jesus 'teaching spread in Galilee and the urban environment where it spread later and where the first ecclesiastical communities were formed. 31 Galilee was an example of significant social deprivation, the nature of which is now known as the "Holy Land".-

30. Weber, M. (1978) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, pp. 481 - 484. Vol. 1. University of California Press.

31. Brown, J. P. (1993) "Techniques of Imperial Control: the Background of Gospel Events", in N. K. Gottwald (ed.) The Bible and Liberation: Political and Social Hermeneutics, PP. 357 - 377. Orbis Books; Belo, F. (1981) A Materialistic Reading of the Gospel of Mark, pp. 60 - 86. N.Y.: Orbis, Maryknoll.

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an Asian mode of production, absentee landlords, a client kingship dependent on Rome, and a theocratic legal control of everyday life. The cities, on the other hand, were characterized by an economy based on slave labor, a large number of groups that occupied an intermediate social position, and a certain spread of Roman law. Thus, in this case, we can talk about a rather abrupt transition from a provincial context in which Jesus was presented as the leader of an almost archaic movement that was not tied to the place, reminiscent of the time of the prophets and the reforms of Deuteronomy, to a global context in which the message of the dead and risen Jesus was to be proclaimed everywhere. It can be argued that the books of the New Testament are fundamental to the study of Christianity, as they record this transition. For a religion based on this historical narrative, it is rather difficult to imagine that sociology can understand this transition from a much more fundamental point of view than the theological one. However, in order to do this, sociology must deconstruct the thematic continuity of the transition in question and demonstrate that "primordial" Christianity corresponded to the realities of radical marginalization of rogue groups in the Galilee, whereas later ecclesiastical Christianity corresponded to the realities of cities. At the same time, the apparent gap in succession should not be so great that the transition itself is once again an unsolvable mystery.

Fernando Belo was one of the first to attempt this interpretation, and he made the same mistakes in dealing with the origins of Christianity that Gottwald made in dealing with the origins of Israel. Belo argues that Jesus, as the leader of a peaceful but revolutionary movement, offered" real "communist solutions to economic and social problems, whereas later Christianity offered only "ideological" solutions.32 However, it is clear that the "real" solutions offered by Jesus implied a new symbolic vision of Israel and the connection of this vision with apocalyptic expectations, which can hardly be convincingly characterized as "materialistic" in the Marxist sense. As for naru-

32. Ibid., pp. 16 - 19, 235, 241 - 197.

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If, contrary to Belo's opinion, Jesus violated the code of purity, these violations cannot be presented as a rejection of the "sacred" problem of purity in favor of the "secular" problem of duty. Jesus does not deny, but redefines purity in terms of the sanctity of all created things, even if they are infected with sin and disease; He defines impurity as "intrusion" or as something that "comes from within" ("coming from man"), which comes from a negative or demonic source.33 And just as Jesus moves from restraining and regulating impurity to a radical dualism that excludes as impure only that which denies Being, so He replaces the simple limitation of debt obligations with a universal demand for forgiveness - or the total cancellation of debt. And such a radicalization of the vision of Israel is nothing more than a return to the perception of a God who creates and sacrifices himself, who is outside the scope of the requirements of the law. Therefore, contrary to Belo's view, it can be shown that the social changes Jesus proposed are completely inseparable from religious and symbolic ones.

Moreover, since there is no reason to doubt that Jesus linked His mission to the present or future advent of an apocalyptic figure, there is sufficient reason to speak of a continuity between His own self-understanding and the later reinterpretation of this understanding, as well as the "exodus to the Gentiles" that occurred after His violent death. Just as Jesus used various bodily signs during His lifetime, which defined and thus made possible a new type of practice, so after His death, which denies violence, an attempt was made to continue this practice under the great sign of the cross, which clearly indicates the premature termination of this practice. There are no textual grounds for saying that there was a turn from the "real and horizontal" to the "symbolic and vertical". In this case, it is completely inappropriate to point out that redemptive theologies soon began to separate the vertical dimension from the horizontal, thus making the life and deeds of Jesus simply a prelude to a preordained drama involving the necessary sacrifice. It can be admitted that this was the case in reality, but at the same time

33. Mk 7:14 - 23.

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It should also be remembered that Christological reflections continued and, in fact, radicalized the reinterpretation of ideas about Israel and God, accomplished by Jesus. There is a continuity between Jesus ' refusal to seize power and the refusal of the early churches to overthrow existing structures. Instead, they tried to create alternative structures as "local" spaces in which relative peace, mercy, and justice would prevail. Thus, the social environment is clearly not a significant factor: the archaic and agrarian seeds of the Gospel took root in the cities and cracked the pavements of the ancient world.

The above analysis points to the impossibility of a proper sociological understanding of such an essentially "inexplicable" historical event (one can cite a lot of examples of such events - my appeal to Jesus in this case does not pursue any apologetic goals), as the assimilation of the initially rural and peasant worldview by a motley crowd of townspeople. This fact itself precludes any causality.

Continuing to examine the social aspects of early Christianity, it can also be shown that sociology is unable to explain the social structure of established urban Christianity. It is clear that in many ways the early churches were similar to the institutions that existed in the Roman Empire at that time. In this case, the work of researchers like Peter Brown and Wayne Meeks is very useful, not because they look at Christianity in terms of a certain Weberian typology (which, to their credit, they avoid), but because they show how Christianity functioned in the context of very specific structures of patronage and friendship (amicitia), characteristic of Mediterranean society and of late antiquity societies in general. 34 Thanks to these and other scholars, we now know, first,that individuals who held any high positions in society also held leading positions in ecclesiastical communities as their guardians and protectors. 35 Second, we know that the churches took over the existing structures of the oikos (households), which at that time were used as a basis for the development of the church.-

34. Meeks, W. A. The First Urban Christians; Brown, P. (1982) Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity. L.: Faber and Faber.

35. Meeks, W A. The First Urban Christians, pp. 64 - 79.

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It often included employees and business partners in addition to the actual family members and slaves who formed the primary, basic level of its organization. The church was also just an example of one of the many voluntary associations that were very common in the late Antique Polis, including, for example, the collegia tenuorum-associations of representatives of the lower strata of society,including funerary associations. 36
However, as Meeks points out, none of these voluntary associations claimed to encompass the fullness of a person's true life, all their interests and concerns; moreover, none of them had an oikos as their main unit; none of them had a whole network of associations within the city and did not call the oikos a "social organization". the term ecclesia, which had previously been used exclusively as a name for voting meetings 37. Thus, "social factors" (although this is a misnomer) tell us only about those features of the Church in which, in general, there is nothing surprising, whereas it is precisely the amazing, unique features of the Church that are the reason for its historical originality, which is still of interest to us. This is why there is a contradiction in trying to reduce the Church to a "social" level. It is not really a question of comparing "social" influence with "religious"influence. Here we need to talk about something else, namely about the already established and at the same time historically random forms of social organization that create a context and exert a certain influence, on the one hand, and about a new socio - religious element that is a new type of social education, that is, about the Church, on the other. Thus, it turns out that the most important social element of the new situation completely escapes "sociology" and can only be understood in the light of its own textual self-generation. It is perfectly acceptable to be suspicious of such a self-description, but it can never be "scientific". (Again, here I am not interested in the apologetic, but only in the historical aspect of the topic.)

Wayne Meeks does not confine himself to a detailed description of the complex social constitution of early Christianity, but at the same time-

36. Ibid., p. 77.

37. Ibid., pp. 78 - 84.

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menno puts forward a sociological thesis, at least in relation to the churches founded by the Apostle Paul. Based on the material of the Pauline Epistles, he concludes that a large number of members of these churches experienced "status inconsistency", which means that their economic, political or ritual position in society is disharmonious. In this connection, unmarried women of moderate means, wealthy Jews in Roman cities, free citizens who possess some profession, and freed slaves are mentioned.38 According to Meeks, such people were attracted to a religion that proclaims that the world is going through a "transitional time" and will soon cease to exist in its current form, followed by a new divine world order that will abolish all worldly power. In other words, apocalyptic symbolism reinforced the drama of both the marginalized social position in which the adepts initially found themselves, and the complete break with the society to which their conversion led them.

There is a lot of historical (as well as theological) value in this assumption; it is likely that Christianity was more attractive to those who were poorly integrated into civil society. However, the sociological term "status discrepancy" may divert our attention from the fact that the preponderance in late antiquity of people with such a sense of self was itself the result of the destruction of polis institutions and the liberation of economic forces from social control, for the reason that with the expansion of the empire, the status of "citizen" became devalued. This disintegration also led to the collapse of a certain type of religious organization, when piety (pietas)is considered to be one of the most important forms of religious organization in the world. it was directed at the polis gods. That is why there is every reason to say that the" status discrepancy " was the result of moral and religious transformations no less than social ones. Therefore, Mix actually describes a situation where one religious / political unity disappeared and people began to desperately search for new religious / social solutions, which sometimes had a new, "apolitical" character.

38. Meeks, W A. The First Urban Christians, pp. 53 - 75.

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Various solutions were proposed. For example, stoicism - a very common worldview at that time-can be considered a good solution for a marginalized person due to its teaching about indifference. If someone claims that Christianity was the only correct solution, the most appropriate from a functional point of view, then the speaker should be suspected of uncritically accepting what happened as inevitable. Christianity can hardly be said to be the only one suitable for those who suffered from a status discrepancy, and the problem that sociology cannot solve is related to the question of why this particular choice was made. And again, this is the only really interesting question. Meeks believes that the use of apocalyptic primarily reflected the social experience of the converts and the experience of the conversion itself, although in the second place it could have contributed to the strengthening of such experience. However, the real problem in this case is that the apocalyptic reflects the experience of status inconsistency only in so far as it redefines it: homology occurs only when the owner of social status has already changed and can "view" his former Self from the outside. Thus, in order to argue that apocalyptic sentiments are a very successful and functional solution to the problem of status discrepancy, the sociologist himself must take the apocalyptic point of view, but this is exactly what the sociologist is trying to avoid by all means.

In fact, stoic detachment is much more suited to the role of pure reflection and dramatization of individual isolation. Christians, on the other hand, put up with the need to experience such an experience only because they foresaw its end, both in the apocalyptic and ecclesiastical anticipation of the Kingdom. It is this element of imagination that makes it impossible to speak simply of a reflection of a previous social or religious experience; and yet it is this element that has given rise to the unprecedented effectiveness of the Church.

Another example of unjustified functionalist interpretations in the analysis of the social structure of the early Church is Peter Brown's analysis of the role of the saint in the later patristic period39. Brown resolutely

39. Brown, P. (1982) "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity", in Brown, P. Society and the Holy, pp. 103 - 152.

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Rejects the Weberian approach, which sees the mediating role of the saint with his miracles, exorcisms, and intercession for the community as manifestations of" folk religion "or even"pagan remnants." Instead, Brown sees the figure of the saint in the context of the phenomenon of amicitia and the increasingly widespread practices of direct "man-by-man" governance, which are opposed to practices of governance based on written rules (this is precisely the "eastern" version of justice that Weber so despised). Here you need to pay attention to one circumstance. It's all very well when Brown says that the saint served the "function" of embodying certain values that everyone shared but rarely followed, and that he provided "balanced punishments" (the meaning of this function is not entirely clear). However, another of his judgments is hardly true - that the saint " compensated for a distant God." This assumption implies that the mediating role of the saint had nothing to do with the representation of Christ, whereas the much greater underdevelopment of both the practice of "man-to-man governance" and the culture of mediation in Islam could have led to other conclusions.40 Brown suggests that the iconic element in Christianity may have been associated with nostalgia for face-to-face communication, as well as resistance to the growing detachment and centralization of intermediary power. At the same time, by emphasizing that the icons depicted primarily "saints", and not Christ, Brown loses sight of the fact that the very concept of "transmitting holiness" from the very beginning already places the figure of the saint in the space of the iconic, and therefore christological and ecclesiastical. On one of the oldest extant icons (VI century) two squat figures are depicted standing side by side: on the left is St. Menas, and on the right is the original "saint", Christ, who placed his right hand on the shoulder of St. Menas.41
Thus, Brown may be trying to downplay the extent to which Christianity alone has been able to transform the rarely seen "face-to-face" model of governance into a stable and even "traditional"one. And again the sociological ana-

40. Brown, P. (1982) "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity", p. 148.

41. Rice, D. T. (1970) Art of the Byzantine Era, p. 29. London: Thames and Hudson. I am very grateful to Sarah Coakley for bringing this to my attention.

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Liz ignores the social element associated exclusively with Christianity: the Church.

Another point to be criticized in Brown's position concerns his claim that the mediation of the saint was uniquely (in a "functional" sense) consistent with the realities of the second century. According to Brown, in the new social conditions, when the principle of amicitia was established, the impersonality and detachment of the oracle went against the requirements of the time.42 However, Robin Lane Fox has shown that during this period there was an increase in the number of private appeals to oracles, which occurred in parallel with the spread of ideas about the gods as purely "imaginary" protectors. 43 (Here it is important that Brown, who considers iconicity to be something "secondary", believes that the transfer of attention to " imaginary In Christianity, the" protectorism " occurred only after the saint's importance was reduced, whereas in reality, most likely, these two phenomena have always existed simultaneously.) Thus, there is no reason to claim that the function of the Christian "saint" is peculiar to the historical period under consideration: it was one of many religious and social reactions to the crisis of centralized power and civil pietas.

Based on the above, it can be concluded that the most well-founded theses of scientists who study the origins of Christianity from a sociological perspective relate to history, but not to sociology. This in no way means that there can be no "selective affinity"between a person's social status and religious beliefs. However, while recognizing this possibility, one should not ignore the fact that" social status "can itself be derived from moral, ritual, and religious conventions or what remains of them; such affinities can often be" religion to religion "or" practice to practice", rather than just "social status".practices with religion". It is simply impossible to create a universal or comprehensive typology of such affinities. At the same time, I do not want to deny the relevance of what might be called an ad hoc reductionist suspicion, nor the fact that sociology (and Marxism)is a very important part of the world. as a useful misconception contributed to the deepening of our-

42. Ibid., pp. 134 - 135.

43. Fox R. L. (1987) Pagans and Christians, pp. 283 - 284, 677 - 678. L.: Viking.

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There is a need to understand how ordinary selfishness can persist and disguise itself over time and in large collective formations. But one must be aware that the errors and fallacies revealed by such a shrewd suspicion ad hoc are historical accidents: their persistence should not be attributed to something ontologically or epistemologically fundamental.

Yet biblical sociologists have fallen into this trap all the time. In addition to drawing on extra-biblical evidence to clarify the social structure of the early Church, they also attempted (even more controversially) to reconstruct intra-church transformations based on universal sociological reflections on the patterns of group behavior. For example, John Geiger argues that followers of Jesus after the crucifixion can be seen as an example of group "cognitive dissonance": they cannot reconcile their previous expectations with what is happening to them.44 According to this "study", groups in such situations may paradoxically seek proselytism in order to involve others in this dissonance and mitigate its consequences. The problem with this attempt to make a sociological "sense" of the transition from the life and teachings of Jesus to the Church is that it involves a kind of look down on the types of groups that are described. Many movements and ideas simply cease to exist in this situation, and it can be assumed that those groups with which this does not happen are making efforts to organize their beliefs and that proselytizing is one aspect of this kind of effort. From Geiger's point of view, the early Church initially had only a belief system, which immediately fell into disarray; but it is also possible to assume that one of the reasons for the persistence of this "dissonance" was the incessant activity, uninterrupted practices of brotherly love, teaching, and healing. Indeed, there is every reason to say that the " exodus to the Gentiles "was intended from the very beginning, although the death of Jesus may well have reinforced the sense that this was the point of a mission that was otherwise"failed."

44. Gager, J. S. (1975) Kingdom and Community: the Social World of Early Christianity, PP. 37 - 57. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

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Much more subtle is Wayne Mix's attempt to show that the differences between the theologies of John and Paul correspond to early differences in the social attitudes of individual church communities. He was quite successful in his speculative reconstruction of the homology between beliefs and society, but the thesis that certain New Testament texts simply "reflect" certain communities is too speculative. But what is very difficult to understand is the claim that beliefs are somehow causally dependent on the "social" aspects of church life. The problem here is: how can one think of a particular society apart from its beliefs? Thus, Mix makes it clear that the focus of Paul's theology is not justification by faith, but rather participation in the body of Christ and reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles. 45 However, to take this as proof of the primacy of the "social" dimension in Paul is to return to the ignored catholic truth of Paul's ecclesiology as a sociology. If justification by faith is interpreted in the sense that a person can lead a truly good life only through being included in a social body dedicated to the remembrance of Christ - thanks to the resources that it has-then only remnants of Lutheran views can make it seem that" theological "elements are being replaced by "social" ones.

The same can be said for Mix's interpretation of the Gospel of John 46. He claims to have found in John strange "omissions", "gaps" and "irrational metaphors" that cannot be explained from the point of view of the history of ideas, and therefore most likely betray the presence of the "social". But what makes it possible to believe that behind the logic that seems irrational and alien to us, there should be a much more understandable reality of action? The only clue is the nebula (from our point of view) of the text itself. Indeed, Meeks believes that the self-referential nature of the Gospel of John, its constant allusions to some "secret," some "name" that is never revealed, indicates a closed, fearful, but expectant community that guards a certain knowledge (gnosis) that still needs to be revealed.

45. Meeks, W. A. The First Urban Christians, pp. 154ff, 168.

46. Meeks, WA. (1972) "The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism", Journal of Biblical Literature 91: 44 - 72.

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to be fully revealed. But even without questioning the relatively closed nature of the St. John community, it can be noted that Mix ignores the presence in the Gospel of John of a clear connection of that very name with social unity. The name is given so that "they will be one, just like us"47. Thus, the above-mentioned secret is in no way meaningless; at the very least, it is evidence of ongoing personal commitment and the resulting social unity. This close unity does not precede the text, but rather is proclaimed by the text as an ethical and religious goal. Appealing to the" society " that existed before the text (where did it come from? why is it so closed? etc.), which essentially ignores the social dimension of the text itself. The whole "sociologism" of his interpretation is reduced exclusively to the substitution of the ecclesiology formulated in the Gospel for another ecclesiology (an esoteric group formed around a mysterious name).

The above critique of functionalist explanations used in biblical criticism and historiography of the origins of Christianity is intended to show the impotence of sociology to explain anything. Identifying the causes of human actions is always a search for new definitions and descriptions that are not fundamentally different from the old ones. Our review of this area of research confirms Paul Wein's general conclusion that the prestige of sociology is preserved only by the absence of a "total history", as well as a history that would debunk the myth of synchronic structure48.

If we agree with the above, then we will have to admit the following circumstance:: we think that historical narratives are realistic, in which the "most real", "fundamental" and "completely conditioned" things are proclaimed that we ourselves consider to be the most significant in our own history, from the point of view of our own narrative. In this case, the desire to replace the narratives found in the New Testament with "more historical" ones based on" social "and" economic " factors may simply reflect our desire to convince ourselves that things were the same in the past as they are now. Topics of the ca-

47. John 17: 6-12.

48. Veyne, P. Writing History, pp. 73 - 76.

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we often lose sight of the fact that the scenario implemented in the past was in no way the "human" and "social" scenario that we are consciously implementing now. Perhaps we should take more seriously the biblical narratives, which sometimes only record what is happening, and do not seek to indicate causal relationships. These narratives seem to tell us what happened, using the same idioms that the historical characters themselves used to make what happened happen.

Transition functions

In the previous two sections, it was shown that it is impossible to understand religion by reducing it to the level of society as a whole. However, it is possible to identify other functions of religion, namely those that work in the sphere of the exclusive and problematic. Talcott Parsons and Clifford Geertz (following Weber) believe that although religion cannot be reduced to theodicy or the overcoming of anxiety, its intersection with society may well be understood in these terms.49 Thus, there is another way to "embrace" religion, according to which it should be understood as a later component of social discourse, and its function is to fill in the gaps that inevitably form in social or ideological systems.

There are three variants of this theme: liminality (intermediate, threshold state), sacrifice, and theodicy. In the first case - here the founder is Victor Turner, who, in turn, borrowed a lot from Arnold von Hennep - the main key to the essence of religion is declared to be rites of passage (rites de passage), as well as all other phenomena associated with travel and transit situations.50 In all cultures, there are representations of-

49. Parsons, T. The Social System, pp. 163-167; Parsons, T. Action Theory, pp. 371-372; Geertz, C. (1975)" Religion as a Cultural System", in Geertz, C. The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 87-126. L.: Hutchinson [Russian publishing house: Girts K. Religion as a cultural system. Interpretation of Cultures, Moscow: Russian Political Encyclopedia (ROSSPEN), 2004].

50. Gennap, van A. (1960) The Rites of Passage, pp. 189 - 194. Chicago: Chicago University Press; Turner, V. (1974) Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca, L.: Cornell University Press; Turner, V. and Turner, E. (1978) Image

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It follows that there are moments or periods of ambiguity when the individual has already lost his former role, but has not yet found a new one. In addition, each culture tries to completely organize all things according to a certain typology, but since no classification can be exhaustive, there is always something that has an ambiguous status. In both cases, threats to social identity can be neutralized by sacralizing uncertain times and places, tabooing them, and surrounding them with rituals and ceremonies. Everything that remains ambiguous can either be carefully repressed, or, conversely, neatly incorporated into the whole, or both; in this case, it is the fact of keeping it at an indirect distance that is important.

According to Victor Turner, the status of "sacredness" is associated with a borderline situation, with the sphere of the indefinite. Usually, the liminal is kept at a safe distance, but a sharp intrusion into this area can be a source of radical social renewal. Thus, Turner sees the liminal as the equivalent of Weber's charisma or arousal (effervescence) Durkheim. It becomes the space of the most intense religious experience of an unstructured, limitless communitas (community) that confronts the limits and limitations of everyday social existence.51
Although intense communitas collective experiences are rare, a constant encounter with liminality is unavoidable, so there must be mechanisms in place to regulate them socially. Consequently, according to Turner, the sublime cannot be localized outside the social, on the margins of individual existence; however, it cannot be identified with the social whole. The sublime is located within society and is associated with unavoidable and dangerous passages. Paradoxically, it is the empty marginal sublime that participates in the most essential social transits.

This kind of interpretation again imposes on the whole of history a modern vision, according to which religion belongs to the outside world.-

and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives, pp. 1 - 39, 231 - 255. N. Y: Columbia University Press.

51. Ibid., pp. 1 - 39, 232, 243 - 255; Turner, V. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors, p. 255.

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rational, existential sphere. It is completely wrong to say that in most societies it is the elusive moment of transition that is the main place of the sacred. On the contrary, the transitions themselves take place only because there are different stages and that the latter have a hierarchical, value-loaded quality, which gives them sacredness. In most cases, transitions are initiations (such as baptism), in which the transition does not mark a fall out of everyday existence and a subsequent return to it, but rather a final transition from the realm of the profane to the realm of the sacred. It is the same with most taboos: sacredness is not at all connected with the fact that not everything can be classified. On the contrary, the main purpose of any classification is to separate what is relatively pure and sacred from what is impure. So, for example, in the case of the Levitical Code, those things that are "mixed", that are not in their "place" or that seem too "similar" are avoided, but this avoidance is associated with norms that give a positive sacred status to maintaining a balance between identity and difference, as well as marking "proper places"."located on a particular land, land or sea 52.

Thus, religion cannot be limited to the liminal (even if it is motivated by the desire to protect religion). Such a sphere simply does not exist, since the transition itself is entirely determined by the structural ordering of time and space.

Rites of passage should be considered together with the other main categories of social movement used by anthropologists and sociologists, namely exchange, reversal, and sacrifice. In any case, the attempt to identify the "essence" of religion with one of these categories turns out to be just another variation of the standard Durkheim approach: attention is paid only to the formal characteristics of a social movement, that is, only to the influence of a generally accepted tradition on the individual (the essential content of this tradition is ignored), and this fundamental social relation is already identified with "religion". I will confine myself here to the consideration of sacrifice, the second example of the interpretation of religion as a function designed to solve the problem of lacunae.

52. Steiner, F. Taboo; Douglas, M. Purity and Danger, pp. 41 - 58.

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The views of Hubert, Mauss, and Durkheim, according to which sacrifice is associated with a constantly renewed affirmation of the social whole on the part of the individual, continue to enjoy wide acceptance. Focusing on sacrifice allows Durkheim's sociology to take on a slightly more nominalistic and individualistic Kantian tone: only sacrifice creates a sense of the social whole. 53 What is important here is not so much the consideration of sacrifice as a particular cultural phenomenon, but how the subject of sacrifice can become the basis of the entire sociology.

The British anthropologist Mary Douglas (a representative of the Durkheimian, not Parsonian, tradition), when she presented her general theoretical views in the 1980s (since then they have changed), postulated the interdependence between religious cosmology and the ethical system, or "sphere of interaction". The introduction of Kantian overtones to Durkheim's sociology led Douglass to argue that all religions are fundamentally related to ethical behavior in one way or another, although the latter can be observed independently of cosmological beliefs.54 It had the same method both for analyzing cosmological views that were clearly not related to ethics, and for separating ethical beliefs from cosmological ones. This method consisted of defining "serious" beliefs as those for which one can be sued and punished (actionable); these are beliefs that allow one person to bring another person to justice.55 However, this criterion makes no sense all attempts to find a correspondence between cosmology and the sphere of interaction, since "serious" correspondences can only be those that are already recognized and imposed. This criterion does not really distinguish "serious" and socially significant beliefs from superficial ones; the only seriousness it recognizes is violence. In other words, a serious value is found only if a person is forced to give up something, sacrifice something, or when he is subjected to a difficult task.-

53. Hubert, H. and Mauss, M. (1964) Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function, pp. 95 - 103. Chicago: Chicago University Press; см. также: Milbank, J. (1996) "Stories of Sacrifice", Modern Theology. 12 (1, Jan.): 27 - 56.

54. Douglas, M. (1982) "Cultural Bias", in Douglas, M. In the Active Voice, pp. 183 - 247. L.: RKP.

55. Ibid., p. 247; Parsons, T. The Social System, pp. 367 - 379.

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be penalized. And again, the content side of the victim - what is erupting? what is saved and cleared? - it turns out to be on the periphery. Instead, it is falsely argued that all seriousness implies sacrifice, and that this sacrifice primarily means subordinating the individual to the whole or transferring something from one individual to another in accordance with stable, universal procedures. With this approach, only those features of all possible societies that resemble the features of "contract", "modern" are important.

The same considerations apply to Douglass ' earlier writings, such as those dealing with codes of purity and bodily symbolism. Here attention is focused on the simple formalism of the individual/society relationship, and similarly, bodily symbolism is reduced to a simple scheme of rejection/acceptance of the body.56 This leads to a paradox that is present in the works of the middle period of her work: societies that exercise strict social and cultural control simultaneously "spiritualize" and suppress the individual body, and at the same time they are forced to resort to organic metaphors to express their own structure.57 As a result, between the two poles - the collective and individual body-all possible variants of ordering and hierarchizing the body lose their true significance. So, for example, Douglas ignores the fact that asceticism is one of the ways of ordering the body, and not just its "rejection". Similarly, the taboo of bowel movements is not a sign of" rejection of the body", as Douglas believes, but simply a preference for the front of the body over the back. Excluded or tabooed by the public is notnatural reality, but what is culturally and symbolically defined as impure and bad. Thus, there is no reason for Freudian speculation, such as that which Douglas was initially inclined to think: that there are certain "natural" limits to the exclusion of death, impurity, danger, eroticism, and violence, so that any balanced society should allow a certain level of this kind of individual" bodily " pro-life.-

56. Douglas, M. Purity and Danger.

57. Douglas, M. (1973) Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology, pp. 74, 93 - 100,193. L.: Barrie and Jenkins.

58. Douglas, M. Purity and Danger, pp. 159 - 179.

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phenomena. Here is another form of" sacrificial positivism": in order to counterbalance the tribute that the individual is forced to pay to society, there is a certain amount of damage economy that a functioning society must maintain, taking into account the individual's will and energy.59
In addition to rites of passage and sacrifice, the sociology of bridging imaginary "gaps" also focuses on "theodicy", although in this case the "gap" is more like a supposed universal psychological "need" rather than a social chasm. This kind of sociology takes up the idea of Weber and Parsons that the main function of religion is to cope with the twists and turns of life, and therefore it turns to understanding the problems of misery, suffering and evil.

However, there is every reason to doubt that religion is inherently a theodicy. This very concept is the fruit of the intellectual history of the West, where, from the end of the seventeenth century onwards, the word "God" came to refer simply to the hypothesis of a first cause, and not to the source and original receptacle of all created perfection. The first Cause, interpreted in terms of generating causality or logical possibility (Leibniz), was not, like the medieval God, good by definition. Its goodness had yet to be "proved" by pointing out the necessity of particular imperfections for the perfect harmony of the whole. As for the Middle Ages, then, despite the abundance of hints, in general there was no universally recognized "problem of evil". This was because the understanding of suffering and evil at that time, as Kenneth Surin showed, made it impossible to turn these phenomena into a theoretical problem.60 They were understood as something negative, predatory in relation to Being, and therefore it was a problem that could only be "solved" in practice. Since evil was considered

59. Douglas, M. Purity and Danger.

60. Surin, K. (1986) Theology and the Problem of Evil, pp. 1-58. Oxford: Blackwell; Maclntyre, A. (1974) Is Understanding religion Compatible with Believing?, in Wilson, B. R. (ed.) Rationality, p. 73. Oxford: Blackwell; Leibniz, G. W. (1985) Theodicy /Trans. E. M. Huggard, pp. 123-373, esp. pp. 340-341. La Salle, 111: Open Court [rus. ed.: Leibniz G. - V. Experiments of theodicy on the goodness of God, human freedom and the beginning of evil. (with appendices) //Leibniz G.-V. Sochineniya v 4 tt. T. 4. Moscow: Mysl, 1989. pp. 49-554]. See also: Milbank, J. (1990) Theology and Social Theory, ch. 2.

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as a consequence of the depravity of the will (it was assumed that without free consent there could be no perfect goodness in creatures), and suffering as a sign of the deep influence of this depravity, there could be no real problem of evil, and therefore no teaching about the "theodicy". In contrast, in the seventeenth century, evil was less and less understood as a consequence of the fall of demons and humanity, and thus evil was perceived as a theoretically observable fact of imperfection that requires rational understanding.

Sociology, being the heir to the post-Leibnizian theodicy, also tends to regard evil and suffering as observable facts in the life of society, and to see the main social role of religion in forcing fate to meet the expectations of justice. However, the very perception of unhappiness is determined by culture. Philippe Arjes showed that until the fourteenth century and the Black Death (plague), death was perceived as just another natural transition, and not as a "problem" or a constantly looming danger.61 Having acknowledged this, we are forced to conclude that religion is by no means a belated way of dealing with the gaps in social existence; rather, its very treatment of evil and suffering is an integral part of its description of the world, in which the definition of evil and the localization of truly serious misadventures belong to the original, fundamental level of the cultural constitution. Only in our society has the process of creating such descriptions become fully secular.

Because sociology projects the assumptions of the post-Leibnizian theodicy onto all cultures and religions, it can only recognize as fundamental "types" of theodicy those systems that contain rational explanations for the existence of completely positive and "explicit" manifestations of misery and evil. For example, Weber declares (and Berger repeats it exactly) that the only three possible fundamental types of theodicy are: Zoroastrian dualism, Hindu teachings on karma,and predestination theories. 62 In the first case, evil is considered as a primordial "fact",

61. Aries, Ph. (1983) The Hour of Our Death. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

62. Weber, M. Economy and Society. Vol. 1, pp. 518 - 522; Berger, EL. (1969) The Social Reality of Religion, pp. 71 - 82. L.: Faber.

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in the second case, misfortunes are associated with a cause-and-effect process that is completely under our control; in the third case, the appearance of evil is due to the incomprehensible will of God. However, none of these cases raises the question of how these theodicies relate to specific symbolic systems and philosophies of evil: is evil viewed positively or negatively? as a phenomenon sui generis, or as a secondary consequence of temporality, desire, and finiteness? as a predatory invasion or as an independent force? The most revealing of sociological typology is theodicy, which ignores the orthodox Christian (Augustinian-Thomist) understanding of evil. According to this understanding, evil is the result of a distortion of the will; accordingly, evil is not hypostatized, nor is positivity attributed to it, which in turn would require a compensatory, consolatory, or apologetic "explanation." It is this example that shows that religion is not only not inherently theodicy, but that it can completely eliminate the need for such a "problem-solving method".

Religion and evolution

Religion cannot be defined spatially either as a social whole, as a marginal social phenomenon, or as a social transition: here the sociological discourse comes to a dead end. Similarly, religion cannot be defined temporally either as a source, a stage, or an ultimate goal.

Parsons 'sociology attempts to combine the" liberal Protestant metanarrative " as expressed by Weber and Treltsch (discussed in the previous chapter) with Herbert Spencer's evolutionism, which was part of the latter's adaptation of Comte's positivism to the English context. According to Parsons the development of society goes through the process of its gradual differentiation into various social subsystems: over time, art is separated from religion, religion from politics, economics from private ethical behavior, and so on.63 As a result of this process (as for Weber), there is a situation when

63. Parsons, T. (ed.) (1977) The Evolution of Societies, pp. 48 - 49, 71 - 98. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

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something can be beautiful without being good or true, when it becomes possible to exercise power in a way that does not require the latter to rely on virtue or truth. At the same time, there is a sphere of "pure" science, which (as in the case of Spinoza's ideal of intellectual freedom) can now search for truth regardless of any pressure from outside and without worrying about practical consequences. These ideas fully correspond to the Cartesian-Kantian tradition: in both cases, the traditional Christian and metaphysical position about the "convertibility of transcendentals" (Being as such is true, good, and beautiful, and therefore what is true is also good, etc.) is rejected, and an attempt is made to avoid the modern and contemporary reality of the world. a post-Bacon perspective that reveals the inextricable link between truth and power.

The Kantian trick is to deny the convertibility of transcendentals within the framework of objective being, and at the same time to affirm the objectivity of knowledge, aesthetic judgment, and ethical will on the basis of ideas about the necessary a priori forms of functioning of these three faculties. (For Kant himself, these faculties were interconnected through judgment, but the mystery of this connection can only be vaguely felt in the realm of art.) This thesis encodes the modern Western division of value spheres, which legitimizes the possibility of politics as pure power, since it preserves the inviolability and purity of the scientific, aesthetic, and private-ethical spheres. In the light of this vision, the division of labor, or, more precisely, the specific form of this division that has developed in the modern West, is considered as an objective tool for classifying, bringing to public consciousness the objectivity of the division of various spheres. Thus, according to Parsons, sociology is a discipline that describes how history culminates in American democracy, with its defense of private choice and isolated values, and the synthesis of coercion and consent through the electoral system and the operation of laws based on formal principles. 64
64. Ibid., pp. 168 - 173,198 - 199; Toby, J. 'Parsons' Theory of Societal Evolution, pp. 15 - 18.

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Such evolutionist views can be considered "historicist" simply because they contain an idea of historical determinism, or the only possible movement of history "forward". For history can be described as a consistent movement in one direction only if some truth about society or some human knowledge about it is postulated, which, a-historically, remains always "the same". According to Parsons and his followers, the transcendental conditions for the existence of different value spheres in different social subsystems are "the same", although the latter "arise" from the symbolic interaction that sets them in motion. (Parsons speaks of the "coordinate system of action" as the source of the "phenomenology" of the conditions of action as such.) At the level of synchrony, the division of value spheres seems to be a purely accidental outcome, but at the level of diachrony, it also takes on the character of inevitability: in functional terms, this division helps to increase the adaptability of the human race, and also makes society stronger and more flexible. By virtue of the fact that the differentiation of subsystems is proclaimed by the affirmation and / or discovery of a priori conditions of the possible, the concrete history of the West is universalized, and the boundaries between subsystems are proclaimed inviolable.

It is assumed that within the framework of the theory of evolutionary differentiation there is a "comprehension" of religion. This is not a historicization of religion, since its comprehension is possible only if religion is also a certain category, which at the essential level always remains "the same". For example, according to Robert Bell, it is not the "religious meaning" itself that evolves, but only the institutionalization of this meaning and the forms of its intersection with other social elements.66 According to Clifford Geertz, religion can always be distinguished from" science " because it "suspends the pragmatic dimension"; from art-because religious images are not considered as fictions, but are ritually embodied and become an object of faith; and finally, religion

65. Parsons, T. The Social System, pp. 3 - 23.

66. Bellah, R.N. (1991) "The Sociology of Religion", in Bellah, R.N. Beyond Belief, pp. 3 - 19, 20 - 50; Bellah, R.N. (1991) "Between Religion and Social Science", in Bellah, R. N. Beyond Belief, pp. 237 - 287.

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It can also be distinguished from the reality of everyday "common sense" 67. But just as it is impossible to define with the necessary accuracy a certain universal "everyday life", it is also impossible at the level of universality to separate practices and beliefs considered "religious" from socially significant forecasting and control techniques that relate to things and people. In addition, it is hardly possible in any society to easily draw a dividing line between fabrications that are truly believed and fantasies that are only "amused".

For Bella and Geertz, as for Parsons, religion is rooted in an ineffable private experience; at the same time, religion, although different from science, art, and ethics, is involved in its public and symbolic manifestation in these three forms - knowledge, imagination, and the moral imperative. As religion becomes isolated, it is increasingly understood in its own capacity and narrowed down to the realm of experience, which is seen as the true starting point for theology. This interpretation raises the following problem: if religion is inherently a personal experience, then it turns out to be unspeakable and unidentifiable; but in this case, there is no way to represent it as a universal constant.

However, for Bella, religion also retains its unique ability to reflect the social whole and integrate different areas of values without encroaching on their autonomy. In essence, this means the public recognition of freedom and the sacralization of formal mechanisms of power. Thus, Bella welcomes the constant need for a "civil religion" and at the same time understands the "developing" factor in religious consciousness as a gradual "discovery of the Self": first it is a private confessing Self that is in direct connection with God (Christianity); then it is an "ambiguous" religious Self that is distinguishable from the ethical Self (Luther); and finally, the discovery of the" laws " of this ambiguity, accompanied by the recognition of its necessity (Freud)68.

67. Geertz, C. "Religion as a Cultural System"; Asad, T. (1983) "Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz"//Man 18: 237 - 259.

68. Bellah, R. N. (1991) "The Sociology of Religion", in Bellah, R N.Beyond Belief; Bellah, R.N. (1991) "Religious evolution", in Bellah, R.N. Beyond Belief; Bellah, R.N. (1991) "Between Religion and Social Science", in Bellah, R.N. Beyond Belief; Bellah, R.N. (1991) "Civil Religion in America", in Bellah, R.N. Beyond Belief.

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In other words, Bella reproduces and hypostases the concrete history of the West, in the course of which, on the one hand, the belief that the "real Self" is hidden somewhere far from public action, where the will or subconscious is located, and on the other hand, the objective techniques of public decoding of this self were gradually articulated and refined. the hidden, private self and its control (in the confessional guidelines or in the protocols of psychoanalysts)69. What Bella doesn't realize, however, is that this "invention of the soul," which makes "religious" matters increasingly private and discrete, and at the same time subject to impersonal control, may have been just another ploy of the authorities. The more "questions of the soul" are localized in the sphere of the particular, which always remains the same, the more easily the public discourse concerning this sphere can abstract from tradition and declare itself universal and scientific. So Parsons and Bell connect the topic of civil religion with the idea that Weber, Durkheim, and Freud laid the foundation for a scientific and non-reductionist discourse about religion: our "constant" need for charisma, sacrifice, sublimation, and so on. Contrary to their own assurances, they do not overcome positivism at all, but only restore its hidden religious dimension.

According to Bell, religion can be understood diachronically because, historically, it is precisely the gradual isolation of religion as such that occurs. However, the" mixing " of religion with other spheres that took place in the course of the historical process was not without its advantages: religion can function as a kind of storage of latent energy, developing and protecting those resources and ideas that will be fully realized in due time.70 Religion stimulates the imagination, invents" spiritual " equality before social and political equality is established; religion gives nature an imaginary meaning and significance, or provides magical control over it, anticipating the arrival of science and technology. This is where Comte's legacy comes closest to dialectics.-

69. Foucault, M. (1980) A History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Vol. 1. Vintage [ФукоМ. The will to truth. Beyond Knowledge, Power and Sexuality, Moscow: Magisterium, Kastal, 1996. See chapter 10.

70. Bellah, R.N. "The Sociology of Religion"; Bellah, R.N. "Religious evolution".

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We are asked to believe that history contains such a logic, according to which first of all knowledge must be developed, and forces must be saved in an "alien", illusory, but temporarily necessary form. However, a "higher positivism" that was truly free of dialectics would see here only modern technological science and modern formalized politics, which legitimize their claims to universal power and significance with the necessary narrative. According to this narrative, previously recognized human goals must now be clarified in order to reveal their true essence, and the former indissoluble unity of imagination, ethics, and attitude to nature that once existed within the framework of religion must be interpreted as a socially determined categorical error. As for the widespread occurrence of this kind of illusion, this fact should be considered as an unavoidable but fruitful mistake due to immaturity.

This legitimizing narrative is intended to present the modern West as the culmination of a "universal" history. Accordingly, all non-Western societies with relatively simple technologies are classified as "primitive", and they belong to different" stages " of development. At the lowest level of undifferentiation, religion turns out to be identical with the "everyday", and therefore only those societies whose religion does not contain ideas about the gods and does not have a pronounced sense of the transcendent can be called" truly primitive " (as, for example, the religion of the Aborigines of Australia).

In contrast to this kind of classification, you can point out the following circumstances. Not only can a "primitive" religion take on the most unexpected forms, but primitive societies themselves can also have a completely "secular" character, implying the existence of a separate economic practice, not limited to ritual and taboos, and, accordingly, a high degree of individual entrepreneurship, the strengthening of which is fraught with social destruction.71 On the other hand, ver-

71. Rappaport, R. A. (1968) Pigs for the Ancestors: Rituals in th Ecology of a New Guinea People. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press; Pospisil, L. (1972) Kapauku Papuan Economy, pp. 85 - 119, 400. New Haven, Con.: Human Relations Area Files Press; Mauss, M. (1990) The Gift. L.: Routledge [rus. ed.: Moss M. Essay on the gift. Form and basis of exchange in archaic societies//Moss M. Obshchestva [Societies]. Exchange. Personality, Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1996].

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but also the fact that in societies where "gift exchange" dominates and benefits are circulated through the constant practice of expected generosity (which, however, usually takes the form of competition in generosity and power through generosity), there is no real possibility to distinguish, even rudimentary or latent, a separate "economic" sphere: the exchange of material goods takes place only through the exchange of symbolic meanings, and the motive of purely "material profit" is absent. Anthropologists like Mary Douglas are right to insist that differentiation and undifferentiation, "religiosity" and "secularism" cannot be considered as moments of unidirectional diachronic sequence.72
The legitimizing narrative described above is still the same " liberal Protestant metanarrative "that" comprehends " the specifics of the Christian religion (that is, allows religion to be truly religious) and reveals the autonomy of other cultural spheres. The false understanding of ancient Judaism as "desacralizing" nature and human society, as well as Christianity as avoiding the social in the name of focusing on the direct relationship between God and man, is repeated again and again in American sociology. Therefore, there is no point in repeating here the criticism contained in the previous chapter.

However, it is necessary to pay attention to the turn in this meta-narrative, which is demonstrated by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. When applied to Luhmann, the label "liberal Protestant" is no longer so obvious: in some respects, his thought tends more towards "neo-Orthodoxy". At the same time, in my opinion, this circumstance only indicates that neo-Orthodoxy itself is in some sense just another kind of Protestant liberalism.

After Parsons, the idea that the secularity of Modern times indicates not the decline of religion, but only its natural subordination to the general process of differentiation, was widely established. Only the undue influence of religion in the public space, as well as the importance of its institutional and ritual "robes", has decreased. But the true religion -

72. Douglas, M. "The Effects of Modernization on Religious Change".

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the experienced "religion of the inner Self" - gets the opportunity to flourish like never before.

Luhmann also believes that true religion has gradually become isolated in the course of the historical development of the West. Like Parsons (and unlike Durkheim), he does not identify religion with society as such. He ascribes to religion a function that is relevant to this general level, but which itself operates in its own subsystem and in its own relatively autonomous cultural space.73 At the same time, according to Luhmann, this space is not connected with personal experience: just revealing the state of salvation, which is (supposedly) characteristic of Buddhism, is a sign of an earlier stage of differentiation than the stage that was reached in the West, where Christianity reveals the conditions of salvation.74 Strange as it may seem, Luhmann's "pure religion" coincides with the neo-Orthodox understanding of Christianity as "not a religion", but the word of God, based entirely on self-founded divine revelation 75. For a truly differentiated religion, it is not experience that is fundamental, but faith in the revealed word. Only the theology that knows about this, that is, dogma, and not practice, reveals the essence of religion for sociology (it can be noted: just as for Durkheim, it is the law that reveals the essence of society).

According to Parsons ' vision, reflected in various ways by Bell, Geertz, Berger, and others, the legitimate integrative function of religion is ultimately linked to the public sanctification of private freedom and private religious experience. For Luhmann, on the other hand, replacing experience with faith corresponds to replacing the integration function with the function of "contingency management". The established social order resembles the word of God in its arbitrariness: it is what it is, but at the same time it could be different. The function of religion as faith is to sanctify this random order as perfect by virtue of its divine institution, or better, as an unquestionable divine " gift."

73. Luhmann, N. (1982) Funktion der Religion, ss. 191 - 198, 223. Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp.

74. Luhmann, N. (1984) Religious Dogmatics and the Evolution of Societies, p. 76. N. Y, Toronto; Edwin Mellen.

75. Ibid., pp. 53 - 61, 92.

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This shift in emphasis allows Luhmann to carry out an effective" re-positivization " of sociology: he brings back to the fore those original accents that can be found in de Bonald and Comte. Luhmann emphasizes that the real problem of conditions of the possibility of the social cannot be reduced to either Hobbesian "problem of order" or the problem of the individual's relation to the social whole. Durkheim and Parsons emasculate positivism by holding that a truly developed society is legitimate (in liberal Kantian terms) insofar as it embodies rationally universalizable norms of behavior. Luhmann rejects this Kantian admixture and returns to the position that the institutions and conventions of any particular society always represent a pure possibility that cannot be given preference over any other possibility based on purely rational criteria.76 In this case, the highest social function is no longer identified with ensuring integration, with something that must be carried out by religion as society itself; rather, it is a slightly detached reflection on the purely random reality of the social whole.

In Luhmann's terms, a society, or an integral social system, transforms the "indefinite complexity" of its Umwelt (environment) into a "definite complexity"; however, by fixing such definiteness, it simultaneously creates a special shadow horizon of unrealized possibility or only assumed counterfactual uncertainty by means of "appresentation". Although Luhmann rejects human "subjects" in favor of "communicative acts," he still sees the social system as a kind of Husserl quasi-subject - "self-reflexive," "appresentative," and "generative horizon." It is in this sense that Luhmann hypostases social interaction and preserves, using phenomenological jargon, the positivist myth of a social whole that rigidly structures its components and turns out to be transcendent in relation to their present being. 77
76. Luhmann, N. Religious Dogmatics and the Evolution of Societies, pp. 7 - 13; Luhmann, N. Funktion der Religion, ss. 182 - 225.

77. Ibid., s. 200.

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According to Luhmann, societies are gradually becoming aware of their own need to manage unforeseen circumstances, which is exactly the same as Comte's evolution, which culminates in a "positive stage". In primitive societies, ritual is rarely separated from "everyday life", but its main function is to mask and conceal the indefinable complexity and randomness of the established social structure. This is done by tabooing any changes, anomalies, or hybrids.78 However, we have already seen above that neither taboos nor rites of passage cover the" gaps " of primitive logic, but are themselves necessary components of this logic: in any system of hierarchical value preferences, the negative and the transitional are the reverse side of the positive and the final goal. And there is no reason to regard theocratic legitimation as something that is added to the mere arbitrariness of the empirical order; on the contrary, this order exists and constantly reproduces itself only in so far as the arbitrary choice of a particular possibility receives a mythical justification. In Luhmann's terms, a certain reduction in uncertainty in the system can only be achieved by speculating specifically about the Umwelt.

Luhmann argues that doctrine is gradually replacing ritual. The further societies go along the path of change and differentiation, the less possible it becomes to disguise randomness through taboos and rites of passage; instead, randomness must be thematized and "managed" through revealed doctrine.79 In this approach, the development from the Old Testament through Christianity to the Reformation appears to be "prototypical", and in comparison with this line of development, other religious traditions are seen as immature and barren. Accordingly, Luhmann is forced to ignore the fact of Israel's uniqueness and present its religion as the result of national," social " development. Originally, Israel worshipped a tribal, " federal God." Then, in a situation of uncertainty, God was reinterpreted as a providence encompassing both Israel and its surroundings. The prolonged crisis has given rise to an "expanding consciousness of time" that

78. Luhmann, N. Religious Dogmatics, p. 40.

79. Ibid., pp. 49ff.

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This led to a further separation of "God" from "Israel" and ultimately to the idea of a transcendent God who arbitrarily chose Israel as the recipient of His promises. 80 However, this genetic reconstruction is purely speculative; rather, the Old Testament texts themselves suggest an increasingly broad understanding of divine providence, but they do not speak of any stage where the idea of the transcendent is absent and where God is not connected in any way with certain unique actions in time. Understanding the meaning of time and non-repetition is an integral part of the" grammar " of Israel's monotheism. And even if this grammar was first articulated in response to a threat or crisis, such a response was by no means inevitable, and thanks to it, a new social identity was created, without which "Israel" could simply cease to exist.

Like Treltsch and Weber, Luhmann considers arbitrary "election" and covenant-union to be key elements of the religion of Israel, and thus downplays all elements associated with immanence, as well as symbolic or participative (involving) reflection of intra-divine reality. In the case of Christianity, a breakthrough in the evolution of religion occurs when Dune Scotus proposes to understand contingency as a modus positivus ends, and Luther roots theology in faith and revelation, thus separating religion from ethics, or from reflection on natural reality, i.e., "creation." 81 Even Christology can be integrated into this scheme, since the unavoidable abstractness of focusing exclusively on chance, as well as the idea of God as a meaningless "will", need to be balanced by the doctrine of the "second person", which gives a concrete orientation to piety, and also fills the thesis that the absolute divine will is the most important thing in the world. the will is also a "good" will 82. The more theology relies on a series of clear and concrete revealed facts, the easier it is for it to separate doctrine from reason, while remaining a universal and ordered discourse.

80. Luhmann, N. Religious Dogmatics, pp. 51 - 53.

81. Ibid., pp. 53ff.

82. Ibid., pp. 98 - 99; Luhmann, N. Funktion der Religion, ss. 200, 205ff.

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Luhmann believes that although religion eventually differentiates itself into "randomness management," it will never be able to achieve perfect self-awareness in this function, as this would lead it to self-destruction.83 Accordingly, even though late Christian theology managed to concentrate on randomness/contingency, it was still forced to assert that the current state of affairs is a form of perfection. Here faith, which explains this perfection by the origin of things from a perfect being, however incomprehensible it may be, achieves what reason cannot achieve.

Thus, the Leibnizian problematics, in the context of which it is supposed to show that what is given is also "best", is also considered by Luhmann as a further positive development of Judeo-Christian reflection on religion.84 However, in Modern times, this concept also fails, because cultural differentiation leads to the appearance of different and incompatible "perfections", and the evolutionary consciousness basically denies the idea of "finite" perfection, offering instead the idea of infinite progress.85 In this situation, faith is further differentiated as a pure acceptance of the given, but at the same time it becomes possible to concentrate even more clearly on the "second person". Luhmann offers an interpretation very similar to that of the neo-Orthodox theologian Eberhard Jungel: the "perfection" of God is revealed only in His self-denial, which takes place in Christ, in the free perception of human life and death, which can now be reinterpreted as "pure reality". Acceptance of what is does not need any happy outcome, and "resurrection" means that "possibility" is no longer conditioned by what was before (Jungel is directly quoted here)86. Luhmann wants to see a theology that is fully aware of itself as the guardian of the proper (proprium) religion - namely, its mission of managing randomness, and one gets the impression that:

83. Luhmann, N. Religious Dogmatics, pp. 97 - 98.

84. Luhmann, N. Funktion der Religion, ss. 218 - 224.

85. Luhmann, N. Religious Dogmatics, P. 87.

86. Ibid., pp. 88 - 89, 90; Luhmann, N. Funktion der Religion, ss. 199, 206, 209ff.

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with this role, something similar to Jungel's theology, reinterpreted in the spirit of Luhmann, might well be possible.87
Such a theology (as Luhmann thinks) will consciously operate in harmony with sociology: it will mature to understand that, since its essentially non-religious social functions are now performed by some other authority, the actual church practices may well be reduced to a minimum. 88 Furthermore, Christianity has nothing more to say about the state of modern mores; Karel Dobbelaere, based on Luhmann's theories, argues that if the family is recognized only as a function of" companionship", it becomes obvious that attempts to put into practice traditional catholic ideas about the relationship between the sexes are futile. 89 To do this is to deny evolution and turn religion back into something more than just one of the "subsystems". The answer to all this is that if it is no longer possible to ask the question "what exactly has happened?" (no matter how stable and seemingly irrevocable the changes that have taken place), then a fundamental moral criticism of what is happening is also impossible. For example, you can't even ask the question of what kind of friendly communication is this that excludes the very concept of betrayal?

We now see how a theology reduced to its "true specificity", i.e., the problem of randomness, can remain orthodox Protestant theology, at least in a formal sense. However, all the concepts of such theology are meaningless: nothing is said about divine preferences - about how exactly God's love is manifested, about the content of His gift.

Luhmann's concept shows how, because of the complete desacralization of the world and the rejection of analogy and participation, neo-Orthodoxy allows itself to be transformed in addition to positivism. Thus, on a rational level, this theology is subordinated to the sociological meta-discourse, which, in turn, is itself a new version of the"liberal Protestant metanarrative". Luhmann offers us the"sociological"

87. Luhmann, N. Religious Dogmatics, pp. 134, n. 210.

88. Luhmann, N.Funktion der Religion, ss. 222 - 224.

89. Dobbelaere, K. (1984) "Secularization Theories and Sociological Paradigms: Convergences and Divergences", Social Compass 31 (2 - 3): 199 - 219.

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a vision of creedal development; however, this vision itself can be deconstructed as a self-description of sociology in terms of the Protestant concept of creedal development.

It is true that voluntaristic theology and Leibnizian theodicy are directly related to contemporary political and social structures. However, it would be wrong to assume that the problem of contingency first appeared in the social sphere and only then was reflected in theology. On the contrary, the focus of theology on the problem of the will, the desire of theology to separate Christianity from the Platonic and Aristotelian heritage, contributed to the assertion of the idea that social reality can be understood only in the aspect of its positive presence. Evolutionist sociology is concerned only with presenting this random development as the essence of Western tradition and the true outcome of human history.

Religion as an ideology

1. Ideology and Alienation: Peter Berger

Sociology does not succeed in conceiving religion in space-neither as a whole, nor as something external, nor as something transitive. Nor can it comprehend religion in time , either as a growth of knowledge or as a necessary transitional stage. But there is also a third approach: an attempt to understand religion as a hidden secular process of social self-occlusion, or as an "ideology".

The concept of ideology is borrowed from Marxism, but modified. From the point of view of sociology, ideology is not a clever way to mask the asymmetric distribution of power within a society, but primarily an attempt to solve the problem of the randomness of the social whole, which we have just discussed. And the main question is whether and to what extent sociology is right when it sees all societies in the perspective of" hiding " their randomness through the use of ideological strategies that are the essence of religions.

Peter Berger's work is a good example of the general theory of concealing random and rationally unjustified aspects. Berger (together with Thomas Lukman) builds his theory

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ideologies based on the sociological variety of symbolic interactionism already discussed above. According to the theory of social genesis developed by Berger and Lukman, the very first social institutions do not require a "sacred veil", but exist only as agreements that accidentally arise in the process of symbolic interactions between individuals, during which both the first social rules and the primary sense of personal identity are simultaneously established.90 Then these agreements are passed on to the "second generation", and only at the moment of transition to the" third generation " do questions begin to arise about their rationale - reasonable justification. Questions arise simply because the circumstances of the genesis of these arrangements are forgotten, and instead of a real but forgotten story, a mythical story appears that connects existing social facts with some imaginary order - eternal or natural. Only at this stage does society need a "sacred veil". This notion of the secondary, ideological nature of religion distances Berger from Durkheim. When Berger wants to define the "irreducible" religious sphere, he turns to private experience, not to religion as a social bond.

However, the notion of an initially innocent and positive social practice that is later masked by religion may well be called into question. First, Berger does not provide any textual evidence of such processes from any culture. In fact, this is impossible, since, according to Berger himself, societies had to do everything to forget and cloud their past. However, in this case, genetic reconstruction is simply doomed to remain only a hypothesis and can only have a probabilistic character. Secondly, even the probability of such a course of events is negligible. This raises the following fundamental question: why does the" innocent " principle need any ideological addition at all? J. Mead's concept of the "generalized other" is clear, implying mutual and egalitarian norms that do not imply an asymmetric distribution

90. Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, Th. (1967) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Anchor [rus. ed.: Berger P., Lukman T. Social construction of reality. A treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge, Moscow: Medium, 1995]; Berger, P. L. The Social Reality of Religion, p. 39.

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a government decision that would require additional justification. But why can't the memory of a purely pragmatic and arbitrarily conventional genesis of social norms persist beyond the second generation-like myths that are quietly passed down from generation to generation with only minor changes? Berger ignores this possibility, because, together with Lukman, he believes that the experience of dyadic relationships "face to face" ("I - You") sets the ultimate phenomenological conditions for social knowledge (here it is similar to Simmel's position). The further away from such a direct encounter with the truth, the weaker the knowledge. However, it is much more likely that the ideology is "always there". In this case, social institutions are established simultaneously with the mythological and ritual structures that legitimize them. For example, Berger and Lukman believe that such an institution as marriage is primarily an established fact, and the arbitrariness of the conventions associated with it is later legitimized by religious myths about its cosmic dimension, etc.91 However, it is precisely as a "fact" that marriage is permeated with rituals and taboos that only make sense within a more general narrative structure, including mythical elements. It may well be a fact taken for granted, but its acceptance is possible because it itself contains an element of legitimation: it depends on a whole network of interlinked narratives reproduced and implemented by society, which it simultaneously contributes to maintaining.

If ideology is associated with social consensus (as in Berger), rather than with an asymmetric distribution of social power, it is simply impossible to identify any layer of social reality that would be clearly obscured by later cultural justifications. This is not to deny the fact that historical evidence often shows how old institutions are given new rationales, and how old rationales are silenced and forgotten. However, this usually indicates changes in the social institution itself and the concealment of the old, and not at all new, way of its functioning. For example, this happened when new, stronger arguments were put forward in favor of

91. Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, Th. The Social Construction of Reality, p. 107.

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the Pope's authority, and this coincided with an attempt to expand his jurisdiction. In this case, there was no "gap" between the reality of papal authority and its theoretical justification. If we can speak of "ideology" here, then this ideological component is revealed not by comparing a cultural symbol or theory with a social fact, but by pointing out the random nature of a continuous socio-cultural complex - an accident that is denied, since actual social and theoretical change is not recognized as a change at all.

So it seems that in Berger's interpretation of ideology, it is not the idea of obscuring social reality that is correct, but the idea of "alienating" it, which consists in denying that society is the product of human effort, and instead attributing the origin of social institutions to God or gods, giving them the character of eternal truth.

There can be little doubt that many societies and many religions suppress historicity in this way, but Berger's position suggests that religion, unlike sociology, is at best only partially capable of avoiding such suppression.92 Berger believes that religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity (each in its own way) contain warnings about human perceptions of the transcendent, which also leads to an awareness of the purely human origin of institutions such as royalty, which are often considered sacred by their very nature. In the case of the Old Testament, attributing to God the patterns and norms that govern laws, social institutions, and sacred edifices does not in any way mean denying human effort or historical genesis; nor does the Old Testament ever attribute cultural innovations or social institutions to any middle beings-lower deities or semi - divine heroes. However, Berger misses an important point: it is not that the recognition of transcendence frees up the "secular" space of human autonomy, but rather that the human institution is seen as coincidental.

92. Berger, P. The Social Reality of Religion, p. 95.

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related to the establishment of the divine, sacred 93. Even in cases where the human character of institutions is not so clearly recognized as in the case of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman myths, which ascribe great importance to demonic intermediaries, this is not simply due to the alienation of man, but rather to the perception of human genius as "stolen" from the gods; as for the Jews, this is not the case. Yahweh was not afraid of human competition. Greek and Roman myths do not necessarily obscure the "factual"; rather, they give a different ontological assessment of the complementarity of nature with culture.

It is true that the pagan attribution of existing cultural institutions to direct divine or demonic intervention tends to erase historical memory. However, as Nietzsche understood it, this very fact reflects the tendency of culture to "forget" and to attribute to the gods a beneficial fraud, which results in a new oblivion. The price for this kind of mythological attitude is historical ignorance, but this attitude itself is not irrational or falsifiable. This is neither more nor less "scientific" than the biblical myth of God - a God who never deceives and who, at various stages of unfolding revelation, acts through the will of men, although each stage has its source in a single divine will. This myth negates the pagan notion that each new stage is a victory for new gods, obliterating the memory of the old gods. The modern "historical" approach, with its all-consuming interest in "how it really was", is a consequence of the mythological belief described above that the transcendent is manifested through a non-deceiving experience.concursus, that is, "convergence" with human wills, as well as through a historical process, during which the memory of the past is not lost.

Berger's theory of ideology as alienation corresponds to the biblical will to historical truth, which can reveal exactly how many myths hide history. However, Berger's historicism is still limited, as two points remain ill-conceived. First, it ignores the fact that,

93. Ganoczy, A. (1979) Homme Createur, Dieu Createur, pp. 124 - 127, 140 - 144. Paris: Editions de Cerf.

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that the commitment to the ideal of uncovered history confirms the Christian attitude that rejects the pagan idea that there is truth and benefit in hiding and forgetting. Secondly, Berger does not fully realize that the Bible and Christianity were able to overcome the estrangement of historical origins long before sociology, while remaining entirely within the framework of religious grammar.

Religions may well hide historical accident and the role of human participation, but the same is often true of modern secular systems of thought that fail to recognize their own value choices when it comes to combining empty freedom with instrumental reason. It takes nihilistic courage for secular thought to recognize this choice, whereas it is much easier for religious societies to openly acknowledge the randomness and specificity of their fundamental choices: religions themselves teach that such choices are shrouded in mystery and require "faith", that they cannot be fully explained. It is precisely in the aspect of their greatest ambiguity, when they are most vulnerable to scientific suspicion, that religions are more realistic than science about the inexplicable nature of cultural existence.

2. Ideology and Power: Brian S. Turner

Peter Berger connects ideology with beliefs shared by the entire society. But there is another approach to ideology, when it is interpreted as self-legitimizing beliefs of influential social groups that mask the arbitrariness of the fact that they are in power. Although this view was most developed outside of the sociological tradition - in Marx, it is also characteristic, as we have seen above, of Weber, and we will be interested here in the neo-Weberian approach. This approach is characterized by a sharply critical attitude to the ideas of Parsons already considered (also critically); nevertheless, I will try to show that my general criticism of the sociology of religion is also relevant in this case.

94. См. Milbank, J. (1990) Theology and Social Theory, ch. 4.

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The best example here is the work of Brian S. Turner. Despite the fact that he combines Weberian elements with the ideas of Marx and Engels and expresses his thoughts in a post-Nietzschean, Fucian language, his works give the impression of postmodernism rather than being such in essence. Turner is suspicious of the modern sociology of religion (which we discussed earlier in this chapter), rightly considering it quasi-theological, unable to go beyond the views of the nineteenth century.95 However, he is oversimplifying when he says that the nineteenth century was faced with a dilemma: religion, although necessary, is false. 96 Rather, it was that both social thought and perfectly sincere theology simultaneously tried to express the truth of religion in terms of "social" concepts. Furthermore, it is not true that Nietzsche was proclaiming the "uselessness" of religion; rather, he was talking about the inevitability of myths, and the need for a mythology that embodies the nihilistic notion that we are the creators of truth - a truth that is always mythical in nature.97
Turner reduces Nietzsche and Foucault to Weber. His fundamental thesis is that at a certain stage of historical development, religion performs the necessary function of control, not integration, by containing and reproducing bodies, as well as representing and registering the entire population, whereas now the exercise of these functions is mainly associated with secular, instrumental processes. These processes no longer depend much on the practices of ascetic control of the body, and reproductive control is carried out through "scientifically" based incentive and deterrent measures; in addition, these processes are almost unrelated to ideological representation and rely on detailed classifications and surveillance over the population. Religion is reduced to ideological representation, but this latter is no longer a necessary task in a society that does not need a general ideology; instead, representation becomes just a partial one.-

95. Turner, B. S. (1983) Religion and Social Theory: A Materialist Perspective, p. 3. L.: Heinemann.

96. Ibid., p. 38.

97. См.: Milbank, J. Theology and Social Theory, ch. 10.

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concerns regarding individual religious beliefs 98.
Turner's position remains strongly Weberian for two main reasons. First, he rejects Althusser's notion of ideology as a "material practice"that lacks the "gap" between the exercise of social power and its justification. 99 According to Althusser, the most fundamental justifications relate to the level of power relations themselves, since there is no exercise of naked power, that is, one that does not use rhetoric that determines the way it functions to achieve its goals. In this way, Marx demonstrated that in capitalism the most mythical elements are precisely those that correspond to facts, and that the grammatical units of capitalism are also the instruments of coercion that it uses: money and capital, which "hypostatize"the equivalents that we establish in the process of exchange. 100
However, Turner denies the central importance of reification and fetishization in Marxism, claiming (for some unknown reason) that all this is irrelevant for "monopoly capitalism". This rejects the element of Marxism that is most important for criticizing the attempts of sociology to separate social facts from cultural ideas.101 Instead, Turner argues that ideology is primarily a matter of "belief," so that when he states - following the line from Althusser to Foucault - that the sociology of religion should be concerned with "rituals and practices" rather than beliefs, he suggests that we are in some way trying to treat the former as purely material relations authorities that don't have a perfect dimension. Starting from this highly metaphysical notion of "matter" as a mysterious "foundation," Turner inevitably comes to understand ideology as something insignificant on the one hand, and on the other hand, as something that is not essential.-

98. Turner, B. S.Religion and Social Theory, pp. 5 - 10, 238 - 241.

99. Ibid., pp. 138 - 141; Abercrombie, N. (1980) Class, Structure and Knowledge, pp. 174 - 175. Oxford: Blackwell; Abercrombie, N., Hill, S. and Turner, B.S. (1980) The Dominant Ideology Thesis. L.: Allen and Unwin.

100. См. Milbank, J. Theology and Social Theory, ch. 7.

101. Turner, V. Religion and Social Theory, p. 6sff.

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goy - to the interpretation of rituals and practices as gradually revealing the inherently secular core of pure "discipline" (a turn of thought that Michel Foucault avoided). Turner is probably right when he refers to recent research indicating that if religion is the opium of the masses, then the effects of this opium were much weaker, even in the Middle Ages, than Marx and Engels believed.102 However, if we agree with Althusser that ideology is primarily present at the level of structure and practice, and not at all at the level of secondary beliefs, then we should pay much more attention to the fact that it is extremely difficult for any opposition movement to succeed, even in opposition to a religion that does not enjoy widespread popular support, precisely because it has at its disposal only the language that is the public language of the dominant power system.

Secondly, Turner's position remains Weberian also because he sees secularization as something inevitable, because he separates the question of power from the question of beliefs and "ideology"- which is incorrect. The only serious question about religion that interests Turner is why, over such a long historical period, religion has performed such an important function of maintaining social discipline (if not in society as a whole, then at least in the ruling classes). And his answer is not, as in Nietzsche and Weber, to point out the cunning of historical reason, which develops human self-control in an inherently alien form. Instead, Turner introduces into his already eclectic analysis what would later be called a feminist adaptation of Marx and Engels. Weber's rationality is attributed to the power of an eternal "predestining" foundation (although this power becomes "dominant" only in capitalist society), and, moreover, this rationality is associated with the immanence of the capitalist mode of production. Behind all cases of replacing religion with secular discipline, there is a single, fundamental fact of separating economic accumulation and ownership from relations based on family ties. In modern monopoly capitalism, private property and family inheritance lose their all-encompassing significance,

102. Ibid., pp. 63 - 86.

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whereas in feudal society it was precisely these institutions that demanded guarantees above all else. The main function of religion was precisely to provide aristocratic male control over women and their sexuality. The Church insisted on the obligation to enter into legal marriage unions and set up monasteries for unmarried women who might otherwise become victims of relationships with men and a source of problems associated with the appearance of illegitimate children.103
However, this is an extremely weak argument, and Turner himself points out that the church's rules on divorce often caused great problems for feudal rulers. 104 But more importantly, Turner is certainly wrong when he relates the structures of male control over women only to economic interests: for men were interested not just in continuity, but in the (symbolism) of male continuity. Moreover, this generic structure of succession itself goes beyond the purely economic one, since the desire to survive one's own death, to transfer one's possessions, is more of a "religious" than an economic impulse. The point is not that Catholicism played a "functional" role in the process of economic inheritance, but that at some point the mixing of Catholicism with ancient tribal remnants led to inheritance becoming a basic social grammar.

Inheritance is associated with the preservation of the name, honor, with the secret symbolism of the family coat of arms, as well as with cultivated land. If inheritance has lost its primary importance over time, it means that it is not a "fundamentally" economic phenomenon, and in this case we are dealing with one of the aspects of a total change in social perceptions and practices: a new "image" of the transfer of one's heritage by a person appears, which is expressed in the idea of abstract rights and in complex documentary evidence copyright holders. And this, of course, does not mean the emergence of a more rational discourse, as Turner believes, which interprets the separation of sovereignty in this way

103. Turner, V. Religion and Social Theory, pp. 108 - 133, 146 - 147.

104. Ibid., pp. 146 - 147.

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from a specific king 105. For it is far more fictitious to think of a property whose "possession" is in no way connected with any real owner, or of a government that continues in the abstract, but now without any hint of the real situation: the king is dead, and his successor is not yet crowned.

Turner integrates the Marxist dualism of base and superstructure into Weber's sociology and brings it into line with the sociological dualism of society and culture. However, he rejects those elements of Marxism that challenge this latter dualism. As a result, he stops halfway to a post-sociological and postmodern interpretation of cultural beliefs and values, which would take into account their inseparable involvement in social practices and regimes of power. This interpretation goes beyond the limits of sociological and Marxist ideas about "ideology", since it does not raise the question of "deciphering" the values that contribute to the exercise of power and mask this exercise. On the contrary, the power in question functions precisely through a certain system of values, and at the same time both power and values can be completely "transparent". For example, we can recall that the ideas of pure competition and necessary injustice that are so characteristic of modern capitalism are becoming more and more acceptable. In this sense, in contrast to the concept of "ideology", there is no place forcontradictions between beliefs and practices, although it is not uncommon to encounter local examples of ideological masking of power and deception of the powerless. But in general, power and value are an indissoluble and transparent unity, since there is no belief without action and no action without belief. In such a situation, the only alternative is to question the whole complex (beliefs/actions), pay attention to its arbitrariness, and then point out that "everything can be different".

If the analysis in this chapter is correct, then it is time to put an end to the sociology of religion. Secular reason asserts that there is a certain "social" point of view that allows you to identify and observe all sorts of "religions".-

105. Ibid., pp. 178 - 198.

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natural " phenomena. However, it turns out that it is precisely such assumptions about the nature of religion that give rise to the perspective assumed by this social point of view.

If we look at this problem through the prism of deconstruction, then the idea of the primacy of the social over religion can always be inverted, and then any secular positivism will turn out to be both positivist theology. Given the above, sociology can certainly continue to exist, but from now on it will have to redefine itself as a"faith". Although I have used elements of deconstruction in my analysis of positivism, it is not limited to this. More importantly, I have proposed a "metacritic" 106, which aims not to rearrange "social" and "religious", but rather to show that the hypostasis and mutual positioning of these two poles (here variations are possible: in the spirit of Durkheim, Weber, or Parsons) is inherent in a certain positivist "grammar" that should not be followed. just put it upside down, but you need to find some alternative. For example, the idea that religion deals with the relation of the "individual" to the "social" can be contrasted with the idea of hierarchical societies (meaning a hierarchy of values, not individuals), in which both the individual and the collective are subordinated to the essential organization of roles, values and goals. In this case, religion can be so fundamental that it is hardly possible to see society or private experience behind it.

Sociology, no matter where it looks, is simply doomed to find again and again a very modern limitation and protection of the "religious sphere." Positivism, which defines religion as something that lies beyond or across the boundaries of a "social fact," is always refuted by a more radical positivism that recognizes the unusual and specific nature of religious practice and logic, and therefore the impossibility of any serious attempt at scientific explanation or humanistic interpretation.

106. См. Milbank, J. Theology and Social Theory, ch. 6.

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Parsons, T. (ed.) (1977) The Evolution of Societies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Parsons, T. (1951) The Social System. L.: RKP.

Parsons, T. (1967) Christianity and Modern Industrial Society, in Parsons, T. Sociological Theory and Modern Society. N. Y: Free Press.

Parsons, T. (1978) "Belief, Unbelief and Disbelief", in Parsons, T. Action Theory and the Human Condition, pp. 233 - 263. N.Y: The Free Press.

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Rappaport, R.A. (1968) Pigs for the Ancestors: Rituals in th Ecology of a New Guinea People. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Rice, D.T. (1970) Art of the Byzantine Era. London: Thames and Hudson.

Steiner, F. (1956) Taboo/With a pref. by E. E. Evans-Pritchard. N.Y: Philosophical Library; L.: Cohen & West.

Surin, K. (1986) Theology and the Problem of Evil. Oxford: Blackwell.

Tcherkezoff, S. (1983) Dual Classification Reconsidered /Trans. M. Thorn. Cambridge/Paris: Cambridge University Press.

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Toby, J. (1977) Parsons' Theory of Societal Evolution, in T. Parsons (ed.) The Evolution of Societies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Turner, B.S. (1983) Religion and Social Theory: a Materialist Perspective. L.: Heinemann.

Turner, V. (1974) Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca, L.: Cornell University Press.

Turner, V. and Turner, E. (1978) Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. N. Y: Columbia University Press.

Veyne, P. (1984) Writing History: Essay on Epistemology. Wesleyan; 1st Wesleyan edition.

Weber, M. (1978) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Vol. 1. University of California Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (1984) Culture and Value. University of Chicago Press.

page 284

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