________________
27
Theism, Atheism and Jainism shade off into one another, and any one of the higher seems to contain elements of all the rest. Again we find all religions are in constant tlux and there is no uniforinity amongst the different development at different places. Even then efforts have been done to classify religion-its evolution and development. “The 18th century divine (who) divided religions into True and False."'Philosophy, in the person of Hegel, classified religion in threefold forms (a) the Religion of Nature, (b) the Religion of Spiritual individuality (c) the Absolute Religion.'»82 This was further distinguished into three periods or phases by K.F.A Wuttke (i) the objective, producing the religions of nature (ii) the subjective, God as comprehended in the individual mind; and (iii) God .as absolute spirit.
“In the same way Dr. Edward Caird recognizes three similar stages (i) objective consciousness, the divine in nature : (ii) self consciousness, the divine in man (iii) God consciousness, where God is above the contrast of subject and object, yet is revealed in both.”83 As we find the study of religion through different religions creates number of variety in classification, we find the study of religions through different aspects and approaches new classifications. We find J. Clyton Fever as one of the editors of his famous book” Religion in philosophic and Cultural Perspective" tries to classify the content into two perspectives (i) Philosophical and (ii) Cultural.
Similarly Prof. W.K Wright in his book, "A students' Philosophy of Religion” discusses religion with reference to values, self and reality. Dr. S. Radhakrisnan, while discussing and commenting on religion- specially comparative religion-talks in term of East and West in Religion. Max Muller proposed to group religions ethnologically by tests of language, resulting into two great families, the Sematic and the Indo-Germanic.
The brief sketch we tried to draw of the history and classification of religion, makes us to conclude that religion has its origin as back as the origin of human life. Religion is a product of the social life, and just like the human beings, living a social life, the
s are also in a flux, they are ever changing and ever transforming in accordance with the changing values of the social life.
81. Briughton, Dictionary of all religions (1945) preface. 82. Hegel, Philosophy of Religion (Eng.Transt) p. 266. 83. Dr. Edward Claird, Evolution of Religion (1893) Lect.vii.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
