RELIGIOUS

METHODOLOGY
Different approaches to the study
of religion
 Introduction to
Methodology
 There are many different ways of studying
religion.
 They all provide important insights into religious
studies.
 Today we are going to look at a few of the major
approaches to the study of religion:
 Theology
 Literary Criticism
 Historiography
 Anthropology
 Sociology
 Psychology
 Philosophy
 Phenomonology
 Theology
 Many people assume that Theology and
Religious Studies are the same thing.
 Theology is literally the study of God – but
many religions do not have a concept
of God.
 Natural Theology is the study of God
through the natural world.
 The Watchmaker – William Paley
 Natural Atheology: the study of why
nature shows that there is not a God.
 The Blind Watchmaker – Richard Dawkins
 Literary Criticism
 Most religions have some sort of sacred
writing:
 Bible
 Qur’an
 Rig Vedas
 Literary Criticism
 The literary critic attempts to understand
these texts by asking certain critical
questions
 Who wrote this text?
 When was it written?
 Who was the audience?
 How close to the original text is this
manuscript?

 Literary Criticism
 Three tasks of the literary critic:
 Textual Criticism
 Lower
 Documentary criticism
 Higher
 Hermeneutics
 Textual Criticism
 Textual Criticism attempts different
methods to try and determine if the
text that we have is the most authentic
version.

 Textual Criticism
 A few of the principles used in
determining what is authentic:
 The harder reading is probably more
accurate
 The shorter reading is probably more
accurate
 Older manuscripts are given priority
 The harsher reading is more accurate
 Famous Textual Critics:
 B.F. Westcott
 Fenton J.A. Hort
 Example of Textual
Criticism:
 The Gospel of Mark
 Mark 16:9-20 includes the story of the
Resurrection of Jesus.
 The earliest manuscripts do not contain
this story but instead end with 16:8.
 The earliest manuscript that contains 9-
20 is from the lath 4th , early 5th century.

 Mark 16
 Mark 16:8 reads:
 “And they went out quickly, and fled from
the sepulchre; for they trembled and were
amazed: neither said they any thing to
any man; for they were afraid.”
 This is a harder reading than the
resurrection story found in vs. 9-20
 This ending is preferred because it is
earlier, shorter and a harder reading.
 Documentary Criticism
 The Documentary Critic is trying to
answer the questions:
 Who wrote this book?
 When was it written?
 Why was this book written?
 Examples:
 Isaiah
 Genesis
 Hermeneutics
 The art of interpretation
 What is the correct means of interpreting
a text?
 Historical-Grammatical interpretation
 Allegorical interpretation
 Exegesis vs. Eisigesis
 Historiography
 Attempt to reconstruct what ‘really
happened’ at the beginning of a
religion’s development.
 What were the economic, social or
environmental factors that influenced this
religion?
 An example:
 Demythologization: The attempt to explain
away the miracles of a certain religion by
taking into account the symbolic
significance of the miracles.
 Rudolf Bultmann
 Anthropology
 Study of human beings and societies –
emphasis on culture.
 How does the religion of a culture
influence that culture?
 Edward B. Tylor
 Emile Durkheim – Functionalism
 What is the function of religion in a
particular society?
 Sociology
 Social Behavior
 How does society effect religious belief
and how does religious belief effect
society?
 Max Weber (1864-1920)
 Known for his idea that social life reflects
the religious beliefs of a society
 Psychology
 Studies the psychological aspects of
religious experience.
 Also tries to understand psychological the
origin of religion.
 Freud
 William James
 Carl Jung
 Philosophy
 Philosophy is the love of wisdom
 Philosophy appeals to reason, logic and
meaning in order to understand the
world.
 Philosophy has always sought to
understand religious claims
 Plato: Euthyphro
 Philosophy
 Hinduism has a deep heritage in
philosophy
 The Samkhya school
 The oldest of the six orthodox schools in
Indian Philosophy
 Kapila –
 Inventor of Samkhya

 Philosophy
 One of the major debates is the difference
between faith and reason.
 Is religion reasonable?
 Are faith and reason contradictory ideas
and thus mutually exclusive?
 Is religion a blind, leap of faith? (Soren
Kierkegaard)
 Fideism
 Philosophy
 On Friday we are going to spend time
discussing in more detail logical
positivism
 A philosophical approach to religion and
religious truth claims:
 Antony Flew - Falsification
 A.J. Ayer - Verification

 Flew – Theology and
Falsification
 Beginning Parable
 “A fine brash hypothesis may thus be
killed by inches, the death by a
thousand qualifications.”
 The claim that believers always qualify
what they mean when they say ‘God is
good’ or ‘God is love.’
 Question:
 “What would have to occur or to have
occurred to constitute for you a disproof
of the love of, or existence of God?”
 Hare’s Response
 Parable of the lunatic
 Blik
 A blikis a belief that does not consist in an
assertion or a system. There are not solid
reasons for having a certain blik.
 Example of someone who believes in pure
chance
 No evidence would count against them
 i.e. Free Will/Determinism argument
 Mitchell’s Response
 Parable of the Stranger and War
 Mitchell says that belief in God is based
on trust because of an intimate counter
with God.
 Mitchell admits that the existence of evil
in the world counts against the
existence of God but is not sufficient to
disprove the existence of God by itself.

 Antony Flew - 2004
 In 2004, Flew announced that he was no
longer an atheist
 He is now a deist – like Thomas Jefferson
 He believes that a God started the world,
but does not believe in an afterlife or
that God answers prayers.

 Famous Philosophers of
Religion
 Avicenna (c. 980 AD) – Muslim
Philosopher
 Adi Shankara (788-820 AD) – Indian
Philosopher
 Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
 Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
 Al-Farabi (872-950)

 Phenomenology
 Seeks to describe religious experience not
try to explain religious experience.
 This is what William James was
attempting to do – first describe and
then explain.
 Seeks to portray religious claim in their
ownterms.
 Jean-Luc Marion (1946- )
 Catholic phenomenologist