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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Within modernity, a third view of religion and the religions is emerging. It sees religions as sacraments of the sacred. As sacraments, the religions are not “absolute.” Rather, like the bread and wine of the Eucharist, they are finite products, finite means, of mediating the sacred. This is the sacramental understanding of Christianity that I have been describing in this book.
First, it sees religions as human creations.
Second, unlike the second option, it affirms that religions are human constructions in response to experiences of the sacred.
Thus the sacramental understanding of religion robustly affirms the reality of God, the sacred, “the More.” Without “the More,” there would be nothing to mediate.
Third, religions are “cultural-linguistic traditions,” a phrase used by Yale theologian George Lindbeck to express another widely accepted notion.
It means to live within its scriptures, its language, its stories, its vision, its rituals, its practice—in a comprehensive sense, to live within its ethos.
Fourth, the enduring religions of the world are “wisdom traditions,” a phrase from Huston Smith, perhaps today’s best-known historian of religions.
Fifth, religions are aesthetic traditions.
Sixth, religions are communities of practice.
Seventh, and directly connected to the sixth, religions are communities of transformation.
Each of the enduring religions is a mediator of “the absolute,” but not “absolute” itself.
the point is not to believe in Christianity as the only absolute and adequate revelation of God. Rather, the point is to live within the Christian tradition as a sacrament of the sacred, a mediator of the absolute, whom we name “God” and who for us is known decisively in Jesus.
