Religio as Careful Consideration

The Lineage agrees against the Christianized etymology that displaced the classical sense of religio. Jung opens Psychology and Religion by recovering it: “Religion appears to me to be a peculiar attitude of mind which could be formulated in accordance with the original use of the word religio, which means a careful consideration and observation of certain dynamic factors that are conceived as ‘powers’” (Jung 1958, par. 8). For Jung this is not philological window-dressing; it is the entire definition. Religion is attention, scrupulous and renewed, to what addresses the soul from beyond it.

Benveniste, writing as a philologist with no Jungian commitments, settles the etymological dispute on the same side. Cicero derived religio from relegere — to gather, to read again, to attend with care; Lactantius and Tertullian, writing as Christians, replaced this with religare, to bind (Benveniste 1973). Benveniste’s verdict: “religio is a hesitation, a misgiving which holds back, a scruple which prevents and not a sentiment which impels to action or incites to ritual practice … the interpretation of the word by religare — ‘to tie, bind’ — which was invented by the Christians, is significant for the renewal of the notion: religio becomes ‘obligation’, an objective bond between the believer and his God” (Benveniste 1973).

Onians supplies the Roman ritual sense in which the binding meaning did, eventually, take hold: a religio upon the people that the pontiffs would loose through ritual restitution (Onians 1988, citing Livy V.23). The two senses coexist in late Latin usage; only the Christianized religare erased the Ciceronian relegere in modern translation. The recovery of religio as careful re-reading is, on the Lineage’s reading, the recovery of religion’s classical posture before its dogmatic codification.

Sources

• carl-jung: religion as careful and scrupulous observation of the numinosum (Jung 1958, par. 6, 8)
• emile-benveniste: religio etymologically from relegere, not religare (Benveniste 1973)
• richard-onians: late Roman religio as ritual binding the pontiffs loose (Onians 1988)