The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation

241 Pages·1979·31.99 MB·English

by  Peter L. Berger

CONTEMPORARY
OF
POSSIBILITIES
RELIGIOUS
AFFIRMATION
Heretical
erative
eierL
V/BttKX
The Heretical Imperative
Peter L. Berger is Professor of Sociology at Rutgers Univer-
sity and is the author of A Rumor of Angels, Sacred Canopy,
Invitation to Sociology, and Pyramids of Sacrifice, among other
books.
THE
Heretical Imperative
CONTEMPORARY
POSSIBILITIES
OF RELIGIOUS
AFFIRMATION
Peter L. Berger
1979
ANCHOR PRESS/DOUBLEDAY
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
The Anchor Books edition is the first publication of The Heretical
Imperative.
Anchor Books edition: 1979
ISBN: 0-385-14286-2
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 78-20106
©
COPYRIGHT I979 BY PETER L. BERGER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FIRST EDITION
Contents
PREFACE IX
Modernity as the Universalization ofHeresy 1
The Modern Situation
3
From Fate to Choice 11
A Plurality of Worldviews *7
A Very Nervous Prometheus 22
The Heretical Imperative 26
Religion: Experience, Tradition, Reflection 2
3
Many
Realities 36
Religion as Experience 41
Religion as Tradition 46
Once More: The Modern Situation 54
Assorted Protestant Miseries 56
Three Options for Religious Thought 60
The Deductive Possibility:
Reaffirming Tradition 66
vi Contents
The Case, of Protestant Neo-orthodoxy 68
"A Flake-like Thing on the Face of the Wilder-
ness" 74
Critique of Leaping 79
Reflecting on Thunder 87
4 The Reductive Possibility:
Modernizing Tradition
95
Bargaining with Modernity 98
Bargaining Away "Mythology" 101
A Translation Model 110
Critique of the Model 117
Man as Symbolizer and as Symbol 121
5 The Inductive Possibility:
From Tradition to Experience 125
Back to Schleiermacher 127
An Inductive Model 135
Criticisms of the Model 139
The Quest for Certainty and Its Frustrations 145
In Defense of Mellowness 153
6 Between Jerusalem and Benares:
The Coming Contestation of Religions 157
"The Dharma Is Going West" 158
Contents vii
The Divine in Confrontation and Interiority 168
While Waiting for the Dark Drums of God 181
notes 191
INDEX 209

Preface
Autobiographical discissions in the preface to a book typically
indicate that the author takes himself too seriously. This is a
sign that he is guilty not only of the sin of vanity but of a
deficient sense of humor (which is probably a more grievous
sin than vanity). Yet if an author has been humorless enough,
for better or for worse, to have written more than one book, his
readers will understandably want to know how a new book fits
in with previous ones. For this reason, and (I hope) for this
reason only, I will allow myself some autobiographical or, so to
speak, "autobibliographical" comments here.
It is almost exactly ten years since I worked on my last book
on religion. This book was A Rumor of Angels: Modern Soci-
ety and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969). The present book deliberately takes
up the argument at the point where the earlier book left it—to
wit, at the contention that theological thought should follow
an inductive approach. By this latter term I meant an approach
that begins with ordinary human experience, explores the "sig-
nals of transcendence" to be found in it, and moves on from
there to religious affirmations about the nature of reality. I
have in no way changed my mind about this. Also, the present
book is similar to Rumor of Angels in that it begins with