Anders Klostergaard Petersen

The difference between religious narratives and fictional literature: a matter of degree only

The existence of fiction-based religion makes it obvious to examine the relationship between fictional literature and religious narratives. Although the fiction-religion distinction is tangentially related to the faction-fabrication divide, the author argues that they do not amount to the same. Rather than pursuing the question of what differentiates fictional from religious narratives, the author focuses on those elements in fictional literature that enable interpretative communities to attribute them a religious character. Three assertions come to the fore of the discussion. He considers them crucial for how narratives may be attributed a religious nature: (1) narratives may be assigned religious status in so far as they include a repertoire of p-s-t-coordinates (person, space, and time) that allows elements of the story-world to be projected onto an actual landscape; (2) narratives may be ascribed religious status in so far as they include agents with counter-intuitive abilities who are capable of intervening in the world of the ordinary recounted figures. By virtue of this contrast, distinguishing the characters in the story-world, the relationship between counter-intuitive agents and ordinary persons may be transposed onto a comparable distinction between different worlds in the world of the interpretative community; and (3) narratives may be assigned religious status in so far as they by virtue of embedded discourses and openness or indeterminacy with respect to p-s-t-coordinates, invite readers to view their own lives in continuity with the recounted world.

Attaining Divine Perfection through Different Forms of Imitation

Abstract This article examines the relationship between notions of imitation of the gods and divinisation. I argue that a close historical connection exists between the two sets of ideas. Although some notion of imitation may be found in most forms of religion, it is intrinsic to utopian types of religion to lay stress on a narrow relationship between ideas about imitation of the gods and the concept of divinisation. Contrary to archaic forms of religion that place emphasis on the ontological difference conceived to separate man from the gods, utopian types of religion emphasise the need for man to overcome the ontological difference in order to attain a higher level of existence. Based on a number of examples from the early Christ-movement, I argue that with respect to the basic structure of its world-view it may — in line with an observation by Nietzsche — be conceived of as a bombastic form of Platonism, that is to say, that the central cognitive structure of Platonism has in the early Christ-movement been projected onto a spatial axis dividing heaven from earth. Man’s true home is no longer on earth but is the heavenly abode to which man, that is, the righteous man shall return subsequent to his death. In all forms of utopian types of religion, there exists an inherent relationship between concepts of imitation of the gods and notions of divinisation.