250 religious revolution nowexistence by diff erent parts of humanity is not the problem; it forms
part of the solution. It is our task to enhance our capacity to develop
such approaches and to see them embodied not only in strong individ-
uals but also in well- defi ned collective forms of life (whether or not as-
sociated with sovereign nations). Mankind can develop its powers only
by developing them in diff erent directions. It forms part of the religion
of the future so to or ga nize the world that our power to invent such dif-
ferences, of life and of consciousness, is enhanced.
Defi ance of the conditions that history has required for the success
and survival of religions is intrinsic to the message. Th e confl ict between
the integrity of the conception and the price that the world charges for its
infl uence— a confl ict that beset every religion of the past— can therefore
only increase. Th e choice seems unavoidable between the disempower-
ment of the doctrine and its perversion. Against the seeming inescap-
ability of this choice, the only trustworthy antidote is a conception of
who we are, and have reason and opportunity to become, expressed in
the developing consciousness of humanity and sustained by the institu-
tions, practices, and ideas that provide us with instruments of invention
and defi ance.
Philosophy and religion
No world religion has been established by its found er as a systematic
philosophy. Every religion, however, has relied upon a vision of ultimate
reality, even if it is a negative, self- denying vision like the anti-
metaphysical metaphysics of Confucius (later replaced by the meta-
physical metaphysics of the neo- Confucians). Every major religion has
gone on, oft en long aft er its emergence and initial diff usion, to be the
benefi ciary or the victim of a conceptual elaboration of its doctrines.
Speculative reasoning, pressed to the accomplishment of this task, is
what we call theology. It is philosophy only in appearance.
Th e marks of theology, by opposition to a sociology or a philosophy
of religion, are those that it shares with other disciplines and discourses
that were buried in the history of modern thought: grammar by con-
trast to linguistics, and legal doctrine as distinguished from a sociology
or anthropology of law. Today these discourses seem so anomalous by