This is what the Establishment Clause really says

We know that the First Amendment talks of not “establishing” a religion or preventing its “free” exercise. Such legal language is not exactly the same as “freedom of religion” or the more recent freedom “from” religion.

We also know that precisely defining “religion” can be a dicey matter. We now talk of atheists being protected by the First Amendment as if their “sect” were a “religion-less” religion. Amusingly, were no God, we could not talk of an “a-theist.” That word is simply the Greek way to deny a subject already known.

{mosads}We may possibly have heard of a difference between revealed and natural religions. Many universities have classes in the “philosophy” of religion, fewer on the “religion” of philosophy. Some scholars tell us that over twenty thousand Protestant sects can be distinguished. By now, most people are aware of the Sunni and Shiite Muslim differences, if not of the Wahhabis or Sufis. Buddhism is related to Hinduism. The Hindus have many gods. Africa has millions of believers in pagan gods. The ancient Greeks and Romans were poly-theists, believers in many gods, some more important than others.

The classical Epicureans, about whom Marx wrote his thesis, thought that the cause of our internal unsettlements was the belief in gods that punished us for ill living. It advocated a withdrawal from politics into a quiet life that deliberately shut out any such pesky concerns. 

Then we have the “two truth” theory that acknowledged a truth of religion and a truth of reason. But they could contradict each other. The practical result of this thesis was a public life ruled by myths and a private order ruled by reason. Since most people could not understand most things, they were left with their myths in the public order. It kept them quiet. Both of these views were “true” in their own way.

What are we to make of this swirl around the word religion? We should first look at the word’s meaning. Cicero held the word “religion” means to “read” again. Most writers thought it means something that binds. To be religious means to be bound to some god or thing. 

Looked at as a natural virtue, religion is an aspect of justice. Justice means to render or return what is due. Thus, if I buy something, I pay for it. When I do, the transaction is complete. Justice is rendered.

But when it comes to our parents, our country, or the gods, it is less clear just what we should “return” to them. Natural religion recognizes that we cannot return to our parents all that is due to them for what they did for us. The virtue of piety simply means that aspect of justice whereby we return honor or goods or concern the best we can. In this sense, religion is based on the understanding that what we have, in many ways, was given to us, provided for us. The only real adequate response is something like thanks or gratitude.

A “natural” religion indicates what we can figure out by our own reflective reasoning about our finite situation in the world. Most people have also heard of something called “supernatural” religion. That is, some relation to the gods that is not simply what we can figure out by ourselves. It recognizes from the human side that some fundamental issues are not completely answered by philosophic/scientific reflection. This incompleteness is not necessarily a bad thing. It is the other side of our personal realization that we ourselves are not gods. We are beings who exist as what we are through no input on our part.

A “supernatural” religion, from this angle, would mean that a transcendent power did address itself to our situation. We realized that we could not figure out everything by ourselves. In this sense, it would contain a description of how to live or what reality is all about.  What we heard made sense but it was not simply a produce of consistent philosophical reasoning. It seemed to presuppose that consistent philosophical reasoning was in fact going on. We actually wondered what was happening and tried to figure it out.

Thus, to be credible, a supernatural religion would have to be one that provided reasonable answers, i.e., answers that made sense, that were at least feasible and consistent with the issues at hand. What the supernatural religion or revelation maintained could not contradict reason. It would have to be consistent with the problem as posed. 

So in this sense, a supernatural religion does not mean some weird myth, or implausible fantasy, but a hard-headed coming together of reasonable positions that belong together in a consistent whole. The First Amendment does not “establish” such reasoning, but it does guarantee that they can be made known among us if we choose to think about them.

The Rev. James Schall, S.J., author of “A Line Through the Human Heart: On Sinning & Being Forgiven,” is professor emeritus at Georgetown University.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.