The great philosopher Martin Buber made a crucial distinction between “Religion”, as the preservation of religious tradition; and “Religiousity”, the inspiration that comes from meeting and communing with God.((Buber, Martin. On Judaism. Translated by Nahum N, Glatzer, Schocken Books, 1967. pp 80, 83.))
“Religiousity is man’s sense of wonder and adoration, an ever anew becoming … [whereas] Religion is the sum total of the customs and teachings articulated and formulated by the religiosity of a certain epoch in a people’s life … ”1
All genuine religious content comes from meeting the ultimate. In contrast, religions are our efforts to communicate these religious inspirations as the knowable: dogmas or teachings; and the doable: rules, customs, or rites.((Buber p.150.))
As long as we remember that religion consists of the knowable and the representable, and, as such, can only suggest the unknowable, it is of great value. But Buber warns, “… once religious rites and dogmas have become so rigid that religiosity cannot move them or no longer wants to comply with them, religion becomes uncreative and therefore untrue …”1 We should remember that “… he is the living God” (Jeremiah 10:10), and as such cannot be contained by anything static. Religion is true, only as long as it is continually renewed by religiousity.((Buber pp. 80, 83.))
Religion should never impede the unfolding of one’s individual religiosity. “… We shall resist those who, invoking the authority of the already existing law, want to keep us from receiving new weapons from the hands of the living God. For we can tolerate nothing that comes between us and the realization of God.”2 For, “…everyone, alone and from his own depth, must strive for divine freedom and unconditionality; no mediator can help him, nothing already accomplished by another can facilitate his own deed … ”3
Buber’s comments on his own religious background, Judaism, can be applied to any religion: “We can commit ourselves only to the primal forces, to the living religious forces which, though active and manifest in all of Jewish religion, in its teaching and its law, have not been fully expressed by either … the eternal forces that do not permit one’s relationship to the unconditional ever to wholly congeal into something merely accepted and executed on faith …”4
Buber had a grand vision of how the Divine acting through history would lead to a life of pure religiosity, outgrowing any external hindrance, whose ultimate expression would be in the love of one human being for another. “In mankind’s great ages, the Divine, in invisible becoming, outgrows old symbolisms and blossoms forth in new ones. The symbol becomes ever more internalized, moves ever closer to the heart, and is ever more deeply submerged in life itself … It is not God who changes, only theophany – the manifestation of the Divine in man’s symbol-creating mind – until no symbol is adequate any longer, and none is needed; and life itself, in the miracle of man’s being with man, becomes a symbol – until God is truly present when one man clasps the hand of another.”5
His advice for us, “Meet the world with the fullness of your being and you shall meet Him.”6
- Buber p. 80. [↩] [↩]
- Buber p. 138. [↩]
- Buber p. 83. [↩]
- Buber p. 169. [↩]
- Buber pp. 150-151. [↩]
- Buber pp. 212-213. [↩]
Amazing clarification of Buber’s spiritual insight into living truth that vibrates through the ages in ever changing symbolisms… Our symbolic expressions attempt to point us to the Living Truth, but the Living Truth remains above and beyond and can only be experienced in our ever expanding hearts. Thank you for sharing the insights of the wonderful Buber!