religious revolution now 199
Among them, two are preeminent. One reason is that through its
revolutionary action, in both its sacred and its profane voice, one of
these three approaches to existence has aroused in humanity the idea
of its own greatness— the greatness of mankind but also of every indi-
vidual man and woman. Th is arousal has led us to pursue, in countless
veiled and imperfect forms, the aim of increasing our share in some of
the attributes that we ascribe to divinity. We cannot implement this
goal within the constraints of the established sacred or profane vari-
ants of the struggle with the world or of its spiritual rivals: the over-
coming of the world and the humanization of the world.
A second reason for religious revolution is that we cannot become
free and ascend to a greater life if we continue to deny the ineradicable
defects in human existence. To deny them, however, sometimes alto-
gether and at other times in qualifi ed or partial form, has been thus far
the commanding impulse in the history of religion. Th e religion of the
future must have as its premise to acknowledge them without reserva-
tion. It must recognize them because we cannot ascend through self-
deception. It must do so as well because uncompromising recognition
of the truth about death, groundlessness, and insatiability is our sole
reliable guarantee against conformity as well as against our fall into
self- deifi cation and power worship.
In the rest of this chapter, I discuss these and other reasons for reli-
gious revolution today, the occasions and sources of such revolution,
and the forms and methods of the needed revolutionary practice. In
what sense are the shift s that I defend religious at all? In what sense do
they amount to a revolution? If such a revolution is to succeed, it must
be brought about with full understanding of a tragic contradiction in
the history of religion. Moreover, the revolutionaries should ask them-
selves whether their program can or cannot be achieved within the
confi nes of one of the existing religions.
Th e unique position of the struggle with the world
Of the three approaches to the world that have been the subject of my
argument in this book, one, the struggle with the world, stands in a
unique position. From the beginning, it has taken the most combative