198 religious revolution now
Recall what it is that these three orientations, as well as the higher
religions representing them, have in common. First, they rob nature of
its sanctity and place at the forefront of consciousness a dialectic be-
tween the immanence of the divine in the world and its transcendence
over the world. Even Confucianism does so by locating the transcen-
dent divine in the sacrosanct experience of personality and of interper-
sonal encounter. Second, they deny the ultimate reality and authority
of the divisions within mankind. Th ird, they reject the predominant
ethic of the ruling and fi ghting classes, chiefl y in favor of an ethic of
universal fellow- feeling and sacrifi cial solidarity (which, however, the
struggle with the world incompletely and inexplicitly subordinates to
the primacy of love). Fourth, they promise a reprieve from mortality,
groundlessness, and insatiability. Fift h, all three orientations present us
with a license to escape the world or an invitation to change it, or both
a license to change it and an invitation to escape it at the same time.
Once again, Confucianism may seem immune to any temptation to
escape the social world that it seeks to humanize. However, such a view
misinterprets the psychological ambivalence of the Confucian (in his
quest to humanize the world) as of the Buddhist or Stoic (in his eff ort to
overcome the world). Th e superior agent, transformed by his insight and
his benevolence, performs his role without surrendering unconditionally
to the social order in which he fi nds himself. He is the citizen of another
world, whether it is the universal spiritual reality to which the Buddhist
or the Stoic trusts or the sanctity of the personal in which the Confucian
locates the divine. For the Buddhist as for the Confucian, this double citi-
zenship forbids any unconditional submission to the established social
regime. It also inspires the believer to seek a place of refuge against the
defects of an order that he may occasionally be able to serve and to im-
prove and yet remains powerless fundamentally to change.
For over two millenniums, the spiritual experience of humanity has
largely moved within the limits set by the overcoming of the world, the
humanization of the world, and the struggle with the world, and by
these fi ve points of overlap among them. Th is range of spiritual alterna-
tives no longer suffi ces to contain the spiritual ambitions of humanity.
It fails to do so for the reasons that I explore later in this chapter. Th ese
reasons supply the incitement for a future religious revolution and sug-
gest its direction.