Anyone who takes the Bible seriously instinctively understands that the original theism was monotheism. How long it was after Adam and Eve that polytheistic notions or animism arose may be up for discussion, but this much is easy: monotheism was the original theism. Adam and Eve were very clear on that.
But of course you won’t be surprised to hear that not all agree. And it’s always enjoyable when someone goes to the trouble to dig up all the extra-biblical evidence of the biblical teaching. In this discussion that someone is Dr. Winfried Corduan, and we were very happy that he could talk to us about his new book, In the Beginning God: A Fresh Look at the Case for Original Monotheism (B&H, 2013).
Books At a Glance (Fred Zaspel):
First, if you would, please introduce yourself to our readers. Tell us something of your academic background and career. And what have been your primary areas of concentrated interest?
Corduan:
Well, even before I talk about myself, I want to thank you for letting me talk about my book with you. I’m still always amazed whenever someone is interested in anything I have written.
I was born in Germany and came to the United States with my parents when I was thirteen years old, just old enough not to lose my German accent. I attended high school here, followed by earning my B.S. in zoology at the University of Maryland. From there, I went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for an M.A. in philosophy of religion. During that time, when I was twenty-one years old, I taught my first college course, lecturing on and overseeing the lab for Comparative Anatomy at Trinity College. I received a Ph.D. from Rice University in Religious Studies. My dissertation was about the similarity in concepts found in the Jesuit theologian Rahner and the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. I’m mentioning this only in order to show how my direction of study gradually underwent a strong shift.
Around the same time as I was finishing my dissertation, I was interviewed for a teaching position at Taylor University, which required more than the usual amount of breadth in subject matter. It included teaching New Testament survey, various philosophy courses, and a survey of world religions. Even though I had some background in comparative religions, this course was undoubtedly my weakest area, and so it was the one into which I put the most effort. As a result this field became increasingly my area of concentration. Over the years I’ve written a number of books and articles, but for the last few decades my focus has been primarily on the religions of the world, including my textbook Neighboring Faiths. The new book, In the Beginning God, was a logical outgrowth of issues briefly addressed in that book among others.
Just to round out the question of my career, I remained at Taylor for 31 years, but in 2008 I had to take early retirement due to Parkinson’s disease. I’m still as active as I can be and try to make a contribution to Christian scholarship.
Books At a Glance:
Please explain the overall point you are arguing in this book, and that in light of prevailing scholarly opinions whether past or current.
Corduan:
My main thesis is that the original religion of human beings was monotheism, that is to say belief in and worship of one God, who was neither limited in his power or knowledge nor under any restriction of place or time. This God created the world and had moral expectations of his creatures. He received worship and prayer, but could not be manipulated or bribed for the sake of a human purpose.
All of the above should sound pretty obvious to anyone who believes in the Bible, but it goes contrary to what is usually being taught in an academic setting. Although there are differences in details, the overall consensus is a “naturalistic” understanding of religions. It begins with the presupposition that religion is a part of human culture, which developed into greater sophistication along with improvements in our material culture. Religion allegedly began with a very naïve understanding of the world, as embodied in, say, a belief in magical forces or nature spirits. Then, so to speak, as the quality of pottery increased, so did the complexity of religion.
What I am trying to do in this book is to revive the contribution made by the German scholar Wilhelm Schmidt early in the twentieth century. He demonstrated on scholarly grounds that the correlation actually went into the other direction: The least developed material cultures practiced a monotheistic religion, and as human culture made advances in material areas, the religion degenerated into spirit veneration, magic practices, and so forth. On the whole, Schmidt’s work was either ignored or dismissed on spurious grounds. However, his accumulated evidence and the conclusion to which it leads is still there to read and study.
Books At a Glance:
Explain for us the kinds of evidence that you discuss.
Corduan:
Unfortunately, time travel is impossible, so we cannot discuss the nature of the first religion with early human beings. And, I should mention here just so that we stay on the same page, in this academic context we cannot use divine revelation as a source for our knowledge. As it turned out, Schmidt concluded on the basis of evidence that the one God revealed himself, but he did not use revelation to support his case in this context.
Also, physical evidence, such as ancient cave paintings or implements found in burial sites are not helpful because their meanings are equivocal; they could be accommodated into various types of religion.
The method of choice among scholars already prior to Schmidt was to make the following assumption: The people groups who manifest the lowest levels of material development are most likely the ones whose culture resembles that of the earliest human beings. Consequently, the religion they practice is probably also closest to the religion practiced by the first people. The subdivision of the field of anthropology that examines human cultures is called ethnology; the work of recording the data is ethnography. The golden era of ethnology, so to speak, was the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when ethnographers from all over the world researched newly discovered cultures. Massive volumes of data were accumulated, and they are still available, many of them without cost on the internet.
The overwhelming number of ethnologists based their view of early religions on these works, but read their conclusions into the evidence. If they sequenced the information chronologically at all, it was on the basis of what they expected so-called primitive religion to have been. What Schmidt did, and what I am attempting to bring back to the forefront, is to start the other way around. It is possible, by studying the evidence of the migration of human beings and their cultures, to establish an independent sequence for the age of various cultures and isolate which ones are, in fact, truly the ones that are least developed. This approach goes by the name of cultural-historical method. Unsurprisingly, the seemingly oldest groups tend to be hunter-gatherer cultures in remote areas into which they have been pushed by more powerful and more sophisticated cultures. And it is precisely those people who continue to hold to a monotheistic religion.
Books At a Glance:
Are there any fresh ethnographic studies that lend support to your position, or any ongoing studies that are returning compatible results? Perhaps it’s just because it’s not our regular field of studies, but we’ve seen very little work on this subject – is it a topic of current pursuit … on either side of the question? What contribution do you hope to make in this discussion?
Corduan:
Schmidt developed a formal scheme of the development of cultures (from the point of view of material culture and economy). Some of his conclusions need to be revised; however, some of those revisions actually strengthen his case. Let me just mention one example. Schmidt believed that true human beings, Homo sapiens, originated in one particular location, which was an unusual belief to have held at the time, but is now widely accepted. He thought China was this area. Furthermore, he held that the first pastoral cultures (e.g., cattle herders) originated in China as well, roughly simultaneously with the domestication of the horse. But those notions caused a problem because there had already been horseless pastoral cultures in other areas of the world, for example, in Africa.
Nothing in anthropology goes without debate, but many anthropologists now agree that human beings all came from one place, and there is now a widespread theory that the “birthplace” of humanity was in Africa (or its immediate vicinity). In that case, the origin of pastoral nomads without horses on that continent and their mounted counterparts later on in China are in harmony.
To the best of my knowledge, there is no work being done specifically on the origin of religion. The question is simply not being asked. A theory of the evolution of religion, as espoused for a long time, has been impugned due to lack of evidence. An alternative such as an original monotheism certainly would not be acceptable in the academy that seeks to avoid bringing in anything that smacks of the supernatural. If the terminology is brought up at all, the word “origin” usually gets redefined as the roots of religious inclination in the human psyche, not as a historical beginning.
On the other hand, many Christians have some awareness of Wilhelm Schmidt’s contribution, and the idea of original monotheism has appeared in a few writings over the decades. But I’m afraid there have been two problems associated with many of these works. For one, they tend to get overly enthusiastic and uncritically equate the God as found in the monotheistic cultures with the God of the Bible. We need to be careful here. Historically, there is only one true God, and he is undoubtedly the one whose memory and worship is preserved in those cultures. However, despite the similarity in his essential attributes to those of the biblical God, other secondary concepts and images have accrued on him and we need to steer clear of the idea, if I may put it dramatically, that these people are actually Christians under a different name. Second, the recent writings by Christians on original monotheism have not taken the culture-historical method into account. They tend to heap up examples of cultures with a monotheistic religion, but the argument only becomes decisive when you can show that the cultures with a monotheistic religion are actually the ones reflecting the oldest ones.
What I’m hoping to accomplish is first of all to help any Christians realize that there is good evidence for the biblical view that human religion began with a self-disclosing God, and that they do not need to be intimidated by what they are told by non-Christians. (I know that I just created a little bit of an ambiguity, and hopefully you will let me clear it up before this interview is over.) It would be wonderful if other Christian scholars picked up the topic, refined and clarified what I’ve been trying to say, learned to apply the culture-historical method, and demonstrated the general contention of original monotheism by working on particular case studies. I’m trying to be realistic in my expectations. However, once in a while I do allow myself to hope that maybe somewhere in academic circles that are not necessarily Christian my book might serve to give Wilhelm Schmidt and the idea of original monotheism the fair hearing that they have never received.
Books At a Glance:
Is it possible to pinpoint exactly when original monotheism was corrupted? Can we identify the origin of, say, polytheism or animism, or perhaps the circumstances of their origin?
Corduan:
One can look at this matter in two ways. If by the question you mean the first time when original monotheism was corrupted, it’s not possible to pinpoint that occasion. Interestingly, the Bible does not give us much help here either. Insofar as we can tell, right through Genesis 11, the people knew of one God only, whether they worshiped and obeyed him or not. Then, as the story of the patriarchs begins in Genesis 12, it is clear that idolatry has become a common practice.
However, idolatry was not the only practice. Abraham met Melchizedek, a priest of “God Most High,” a title that only makes sense in this context if it referred to the same God whom Abraham was worshiping. As we saw thanks to the ethnological researches, not all traditional cultures have abandoned their monotheism. So, another way of answering the question is to say that falling away from monotheism is something that has been occurring here and there throughout human history.
Obviously, I cannot speak for all cultures, let alone all people, about their motivation for leaving monotheism, but I think I can point to some very likely causes. As I stated at the beginning of this chat, one of the attributes of the God of original monotheism is that he cannot be manipulated. He answers prayers according to his will, but he will not do our bidding just because we perform a certain ritual or, say, place food before his image. But we human beings frequently do not have the patience to wait for God; we want results now if our crops seem to fail, our child is ill, our love goes unrequited, or other problems occur. And so we turn to lesser spiritual beings. What God apparently does not want to do, we think, we can perhaps trick an ancestor spirit into doing. Along with the process of falling away from monotheism, there seems to be the inevitable emergence of those who make a living by mediating between a person and the spirit world: a shaman, witchdoctor, priest, or healer, for example. And the more power this new class of spiritual experts has, the less likely the chance of a return to the original monotheism becomes.
Books At a Glance:
What paradigms and presuppositions are exerting the most influence on scholars who are currently studying this topic?
Corduan:
This is the question I was hoping we could get to so that I can clear up what may have seemed a little muddled earlier. I stated that the topic of the origin of religion per se is not a matter of research or writing these days, except perhaps in the context of the history of anthropology. A few sentences later, I said that I was hoping that my book would help Christians recognize that they have nothing to fear from claims made by non-Christian scholars. So, are non-Christian scholars addressing the issue of the origin of religions or not?
Of course, they are. They just do not officially admit that they are doing so. True enough, if expressed directly, one should not inquire into the origin of religion as an item of history or pre-history. The old theory of an evolution of religion is definitely passé. But one cannot really study a religion or a religious culture without some theoretical paradigm. And that framework has continued to be a naturalistic one, in which various religions began with spirit-directed practices or magic and only attained to the worship of gods or God after a long period of development.
Around the middle of the twentieth century, the idea of reinterpreting the question of the origin of religion as a psychological matter took hold in a serious way. The basic phenomenon of religion was being described by reference to categories in our unconscious (e.g., Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade, and Claude Lévi-Strauss) or by emphasizing its social utility (Emile Durkheim, E. E. Evans-Pritchard). Others (Paul Radin) paved the way for the chorus that historical questions, particularly origin-oriented ones, should not even be asked. As I just mentioned, though, the answers are assumed, even if asking the questions is a taboo.
Books At a Glance:
If monotheism was the earliest religious belief of primitive cultures, how does that relate to the Bible’s account of origins? It is certainly compatible, but is it more than that?
Corduan:
I have tried to point out that the question of the origin of human beings is a different question than the one that I’m raising in this book. It is certainly an important one, but it is not necessary to put it into the mix with the issue at hand. My contention is that the theory of original monotheism is true, regardless of what theory of human origins one subscribes to. If one believes in creation, then an original monotheism is a given, and one certainly does not need to resolve the “young earth – old earth” controversy” to reach that conclusion. Still, the theory of original monotheism adds just a little bit more plausibility to belief in creation. The few opponents of original monotheism who wrote criticisms of it asserted that it is not credible that human beings whose intellect supposedly was not fully developed should be capable of as sophisticated religion as monotheism. First I need to declare emphatically that there is no good reason to believe that the first human beings were deficient in intellectual capacity compared to us. But further, how much rational sophistication does it take for someone to look at the world around him and ask the obvious question, “Who made this?”
To return to the point, what I’m trying to do is to show that even someone who does not believe in divine creation or revelation has to face the fact that the evidence points to belief in one God by the first human beings.
Books At a Glance:
How should Christian apologists utilize the results of your study?
Corduan:
The history of theories of the origin of religion is filled with works of fiction that are remarkable for their imaginativeness. A very prominent case in point is Sigmund Freud’s idea that religion originated with the younger men in a human horde, who consumed their father in a cannibalistic ritual. Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of sociology, developed a theory of the origin of religion in the practice of totemism, by rewriting almost everything known to be true of totemism. J. G. Frazer invented the illustrations for his theory, as depicted in the Golden Bough out of whole cloth. These and many other accounts, unfounded as they may be, continue to be read and taught in college classrooms as classics. Naïve students pick the theories they like, combine parts of them, and endow their choice as “truth.” At a minimum, this book makes it clear that the naturalistic theories of religion, particularly the crass ones I just mentioned, have no factual basis whatsoever. So, the Christian apologist is helped in the task of demolishing these false ideas that are often presented as facts.
One of the constant themes of atheistic polemics is that someone (they don’t usually say who) invented the idea of God in order to keep the people in their society in line. A study of the evidence presented in the book shows that this theory can’t be true. The idea of God as a scary figure who makes boys and girls obey their parents is a part of the process of degeneration.
Let me broaden this picture a little further. Judging already by the early responses I have received from some atheists, the idea of original monotheism seems to undercut their entire naturalistic world view. In a purely logical mode, the fact that the earliest human beings were monotheists actually does not necessitate that monotheism has to be true. But atheists realize that appealing to pure logic here lacks plausibility. If original monotheism is not true, we are left with the huge puzzle of how it is that the earliest human beings should have had such a clear belief in one God who created the world.
Let me add here a part of Schmidt’s conclusion to which I alluded earlier. Schmidt was a scholar, a scientist, who carried out his professional work with all of the objectivity that’s possible for a human being. He was also a Catholic priest, a member of the Order of the Divine Heart, a philosopher, and a theologian. But it is clear that he did not base his ethnological conclusions on his Christian beliefs. He used to say when accused of being influenced by his supposed Christian bias, “Show me where!” As stated earlier, he did not substitute revelation for scholarship. However, on the basis of his scholarship, he made the case that the various people who held on to original monotheism all maintained that they had received their knowledge of God via revelation. They do not attribute their beliefs to any ancient wise men or ancestors; that form of explanation once again is something that came later. The truly monotheistic cultures point to God as the direct origin of their belief. And what’s more, according to Schmidt, and I concur, the impact that belief in one God has had in human cultures could not be duplicated by anything of human contrivance.
I have just barely scratched the surface. This book is the result of careful, objective, even meticulous research, delivered with a passion that I cannot hide, nor see the need to do so since the facts are the same even without the passion. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about In the Beginning God.
Books At a Glance:
And thanks to you for talking to our readers on such an unusual and fascinating study.
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In The Beginning God