The Twilight of the Sacredrnby Thomas MolnarrnAt the center of the contemporary pagan/Christian controversyrnare the nature, the localization, and the psychological-rnmythological motivation of the sacred. The last one dominatesrnthe debate because as the transcendent God becomesrnless focused the sacred turns into a basically human domain.rnThe question, no longer addressed to heaven, is not over howrnGod communicates with man (revelation, natural law, moralrnconscience, and indeed the sacred), but through what psychologicalrnneeds does man become aware of God? And thus ifrnGod is dead, did we not kill Him so as to take His place? Underrnthe circumstances, we must reinvent a new pantheon, or ratherrna new, “objectless” sacred, a new understanding.rnPaganism has an important edge over monotheism. Evenrnthe average religious person admits today that while God, or atrnleast His image, cannot die, culturally He is in eclipse. The pagan,rnhowever, acts upon the position that his philosophicalmindedrnforebears always held: the worid is an interlocking networkrnof self-generated and self-shaped natural products,rnautonomous, eternal, material with matter’s “complexifications.”rnThis cosmos undergoes cyclical changes according tornsome unfathomable rhythm. All movements and changes arernmotored by necessity—the atoms of Democritus, the mechanisticrnview of man by the Enlightenment, Jacques Monod’srntheory—because who would bring into the system an elementrnof contingency and freedom? At one time, it seemed convenientrnto explain these phenomena by invoking the “gods”; todayrnthis view is relegated to mythological times. The paganrngods themselves are discredited or are rehabilitated only inrnsmall circles associated with Heidegger. There remain what arerninconsequentially called “humanistic values,” but without arnscintilla of sacredness. Neopagans themselves do not expect tornrestore the gods, but merely to speak about them in a historical-rnThomas Molnar’s Philosophical Grounds (J 99J) was just rereleasedrnby Transaction Publishers as Archetypes of Thought.rnnostalgic tone. And if God is dead, so is the sacred, as an illusionlessrnNietzsche had the courage to suggest.rnThe fact that both paganism and monotheism have engenderedrnbrilliant civilizations around the sacred—art, literature,rnphilosophy, law, science—is a sign of the difficulty of arbitratingrnbetween them. It seems that awe and wonder are constantsrnof human nature, and so is the impulse to sacralize places,rntimes, persons, and events. The Christian shrines, pilgrimages,rnlocal cults of saints, relics, and sacred events are often continuousrnwith their pagan cultic predecessors: a new sacred added, asrnit were, to an old and immemorial consecration. The essentialrndifference is that the pagan position asserts the exclusivity ofrnnature, hence the self-engendered, immanent universe, overrnagainst the Christian view of an extracosmic creation and continuingrnintelligent, personal providence. In other words, thernpagan sacred is derived from a cosmic self-sacralization, adumbratedrnby the worshiper through his tradition-imposed feelingrnof the tremendum (nature’s power and majesty), whereas thernChristian sacred is chosen for the worshiper by God, a supernaturalrnbeing infinitely above him, but with whose intelligence,rnlove, and compassion he can identify (incarnation). The Greekrnwent to Delphi attracted by Apollo’s prophetic power, andrnApollo was himself a sun-god—in other words, nature’s manifestation;rnMoses climbed Mt. Sinai to hear Yahwe, the personalrnbeing richer than any tremendum, able to give orders for thernright conduct of life.rnThe difference is enormous, and so is the nature of the twornkinds of sacred. Philosophically, the Greeks, the Christians,rnand the “Westerners” demand a Being behind beings, and thusrninquire about an ultimate cause, the cause being different fromrnand superior to what it caused (Aristotle). Let us grant that,rnaesthetically speaking, a self-caused universe may be just as admirablernas a created one, but only because its order, in spite ofrnits philosophical premises, is not haphazard but intelligent. Inrnorder to speak meaningfully of the sacred, it too must refer to arn24/CHRONiCLESrnrnrn