God and Mankind: Comparative Religions

(8 lectures, 45 minutes/lecture)
Taught by Robert Oden
Carleton College
Ph.D., Harvard University
Course Lecture Titles
1. Why Nothing Is as Intriguing as the Study of Religion
2. Orienting HumanityReligions as Spiritual Compasses
3. Religious Heroes 1Gilgamesh and the Dawn of History
4. Religious Heroes 2Moses and Jesus
5. Pondering Divine JusticeDo We Suffer for Naught?
6. Defending Divine JusticeReligious Accounts of Suffering
7. Religious Rituals and Communities
8. Bringing It All Back Home

* Life ... ?
* Death ... ?
* Suffering ... ?
* Redemption ... ?
* The origin of being ... ?
Each of these complex issues raises many, many questions.
How do the major religious systems address those questions? And what do their an
swers tell us?
An Ideal Starting Point for Inquiry
These eight lectures by Dr. Robert Oden are an ideal starting point for pursuing
those questions. And if you've been thinking about them for a while, as so many
do, you will likely discover he has many fresh insights to offer you.
Dr. Oden, who holds both a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
and a master's degree in Theology (two of the latter, in fact), has taught at H
arvard University and Dartmouth College over a long and exceptionally distinguis
hed career as both teacher and college president.
He was the recipient of the very first Dartmouth College Distinguished Teaching
Award, determined by vote of the senior class from among the entire faculty.
His lectures approach religious belief and ritual as a group of answers to these
most difficult and enduring questions, which have occupied mankind from the beg
inning.
A Sweeping Conceptual Grasp
The lectures underscore both the unity and the diversity of religious approaches
to life in a sweeping conceptual grasp.
Dr. Oden begins with a discussion of the nature and study of religion, distingui
shing between religion as both a matter of faith and as an appropriate subject o
f intellectual and academic inquiry.
In addition to discussing the four traditional views of religion, Professor Oden
also proposes a view of religion as a system of communication.
This serves as a crucial conceptual framework for exploring the thoughts of Mirc
ea Eliade, who proposed that the best way to understand religions is to examine
their views of how the world came into being and how it operates on a daily basi
s.
How Do We Reconcile Suffering and a Benevolent Deity?
Professor Oden continues with an investigation of the problem of reconciling an
all-powerful and benevolent deity with the suffering and evil that are part of h
uman existence.
You will also look at the dynamics of religious communities in general and the i
mpact of the Puritan religious tradition on America.
Lecture 1. This introductory lecture lays out a framework for the study of relig
ion, beginning with the "what" and "why" of the matter and moving onto the real
topic, which is "how" religions have been studied in the past.
Dr. Oden then analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the four basic approaches
to the study of religion:
* religion and history
* religion as amateur or immature science
* religion and the unconscious (psychological explanations)
* religion and society.
Lecture 2. You continue your comparative study of religions by examining their c
osmologies.
In general, the lecture follows the arguments of Eliade, who said that cosmologi
es are best understood as operating through a dynamic series of binary oppositio
ns, the most universal of which are those between gods/heaven/life and humanity/
Earth/death.
You learn that for religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism that see the world as
old, salvation comes in escaping from the endless cycle of birth and rebirth.
Religions such as Judaism and Christianity, however, see the world as relatively
new, and the goal is to gain more chances at life, either collectively or indiv
idually.
Lecture 3. You address the centrality of myth in making sense of religious cosmo
logies.
In this context, Dr. Oden places special emphasis on the birth narratives of rel
igious heroes, particularly the unusual circumstances surrounding the conception
and birth of these heroes.
You examine the birth narratives of Moses, Jesus, Sargon the Great, and Gautama
the Buddha in developing a framework for an extensive discussion of the ancient
Sumerian myth the Epic of Gilgameshthe discovery of which is relatively recentand
its cosmological implications.
Lecture 4. This lecture explores the notion of the Belgian/Dutch anthropologist
Arnold van Gennep, later developed by the American anthropologist Victor Turner,
that the rite de passage (rite-of-passage) scheme must be understood as central
for religious cosmologies in general.
As with Gilgamesh, this lecture looks at the stories of Moses, Jesus, Krishna, a
nd Gautama the Buddha, unearthing in each a key point that aptly reflects the co
smology of the religion in question.
Lecture 5. This lecture contains a systematic analysis of the so-called "theodic
y" problem:
* How can an all-powerful and benevolent deity allow innocent people to suff
er while success and happiness often seem to come to those who are evil?
You learn how all world religions have attempted to deal with this dilemmaand the
five answers that have been producedbefore moving on to a structural analysis of
the most famous contemplation of theodicy in the Western religious tradition, t
he Book of Job.
Lecture 6. You continue the discussion of the theodicy problem by examining two
of the main sources of Christian thinking on the topic, the Apostle Paul and the
16th-century Swiss theologian, John Calvin. You discuss the effects of the Paul
-Calvin predestination doctrine on Western Christianity.
By way of comparison, Dr. Oden also discuss the Hindu and Buddhist responses to
the theodicy question, including the Hindu doctrines of karmic law and transmigr
ation of souls and the Buddhist teaching that all life is suffering, with the on
ly release an acceptance of the impermanence of the universe and everything in i
t.
Lecture 7. Here you move away from the theodicy discussion and address the issue
of the dynamics of religious communities.
Dr. Oden places special emphasis on the examination of ritualincluding its nature
, importance, and ramifications for the religious communityand then describes the
dynamics of the development of two main types of religious communities: sect an
d church.
The lecture uses the example of the Protestant Reformation and compares this flu
x with the relative stability of monastic orders. It then examines both Buddhist
monastic traditions and the Hindu approach of integrating the urge for spiritua
l purity within the stages of a single individual's existence.
Lecture 8. In this concluding lecture, Dr. Oden moves from the comparative socio
logy of religion to what might be termed the religious nature of a particular so
ciety, namely, the United States.
Drawing on the work of the contemporary Harvard scholar Sacvan Bercovitch, the l
ecture addresses the American identity with reference to its Puritan origins.
The lecture includes an examination of the repeated emphasis on America and Amer
icans as "God's elect" and the constant parallels between America and ancient Is
rael, creating, in effect, an American civil religion whose basic themes include
:
* the "chosen" history of America
* a strong notion of covenant, with America's fate emblematic of the world's
* the idea that, in America, the ultimate sovereignty is not the people's, b
ut God's.
The course concludes by discussing four aspects of contemporary American identit
y that seem to be derived directly from the Puritan tradition:
* an anti-intellectual favoring of individualism and experience over the col
lective and theory
* a bias against ritual
* the strongest fundamentalist tradition in the advanced industrialized worl
d
* a distinctly American anxiety over vocational and occupational calling not
found elsewhere in the world.