The House That Berger Built:

                                         An Analysis and Critique of Peter Berger's

                                    View of Religion in His Sociology of Knowledge [1]

                                                           K. Scott Oliphint

It would be futile to attempt originally to analyze the thought and contribution of Peter Berger to the field of cultural analysis.  The best that can be hoped for in a articler of this nature is accuracy in analysis and justice in selectivity.  That is, those things that are discussed should be true to Berger's position and, at the same time, fair to his overall concerns. ^[2]   We will attempt, therefore, to expound Berger's analysis of culture, particularly as that analysis relates to Berger's understanding of religion.  Because Berger's work spans two and a half decades, it will be impossible to be exhaustive.  However, given Berger's sometimes concentrated efforts toward the relationship of culture to religion, it becomes much more tenable than at first glance to abstract such a relationship. In analyzing Berger's understanding of the relationship between religion and culture, it will be necessary to look both at his approach and subsequent method.  We will then attempt to understand some of the more specific aspects of Berger's approach as those aspects relate to his view of religion.

The more "industrious" or "creative" aspect of this paper will be the attempt to subject Berger's approach to a Christian critique.  In so doing, the truth of Berger's approach can be seen in its clearest form and the problems can best be discarded.  But there is another, more specific, reason for a Christian critique of Berger's concept of religion.  Because any position that claims to deal with truth and knowledge finds itself, perhaps consciously perhaps not, within the realm of Christianity, it will be necessary to subject Berger's approach to a critique in order to vindicate the Christian position in its wake.  Thus, we will seek to do justice to Berger's truths, but also to insist that such truths require the Truth and can only be maintained within the context of a Christian approach to cultural analysis.  We will attempt to show, not only the antinomic character of Berger's approach, but we will also attempt constructively to set forth a tentative structure for a biblical "interpretive" sociology.  Such a structure would provide a true foundation, as well as a biblical starting point for cultural analysis. 

Employing a Christian critique of Berger's analysis provides no insight into the man himself, it deals only with his system and should not be seen as anything more.  It will, however, deal with Berger's system as, in some crucial areas, resting on the sinking sands of unbelief.  It cannot, nevertheless, ascertain whether or not Berger himself rests there or whether he does not.  This must be made clear at the outset in order to distance a Christian critique from mere character judgement.

In order to understand Berger's view of religion, it will be necessary to build the Bergerian house that leads us to religion.  Simply to begin with the problem of religion in Berger's sociology would be like trying to put shingles on a roof before laying the foundation.  We will begin, therefore, by seeing the approach to culture in which Berger most comfortably fits.  Such a context will then give us some insight into his method.  Having looked at his method, we will then begin to deal with his general theory of religion and how it relates to and fits within his overall approach.  Having built the Bergerian house, complete with its religious "roof", we will then be called in for repairs, some of which could be both extensive and expensive to Berger's vast investment.  We will, however, attempt to appreciate those things of lasting value that Berger has acquired, though perhaps illegally.

APPROACH AND METHOD

Before building the Bergerian house it is most important to locate his neighborhood, i.e., the context in which he views his approach and also his method of building.

It is helpful to see Wuthnow's categorization of Berger as within the neoclassical tradition. ^[3]  

The classical tradition wanted to deal with the problem of the relationship of subject and object.  Generally speaking, it was thought that reality was divided between the subject and the object.  Such division caused the subject to be alienated, in some sense, from the objective world.  One of the purposes, therefore, of cultural analysis (and more specifically of the sociology of knowledge) was to attempt to bridge the gap between subject and object thus healing the brokenness and meaninglessness of the original division.  The problem of meaning was at the forefront of this approach and, perhaps negatively, was relegated to the individual.  Cultural studies, therefore, were relegated to the problems of alienation (e.g., Marx) and anomie (e.g., Durkheim), both of which tend toward an individual, perhaps even overly subjective analysis. ^[4]   Interestingly (and this point will become even more important below as we evaluate Berger's approach), it was the view of reality in itself that set the sociological and cultural agenda in the classical approach.  That is, given the dogmatic assumption of the opposition (not merely distinction) between subject and object, how and on what basis can cultural studies be relevant and, perhaps, even be the solution?  Cultural analysis concerned itself with the individual, by and large, and culture acquires interest because of the problem of meaning, which was, itself, an individualistic problem. ^[5]   Religion, then, in this approach (generally speaking) was seen as an attempt to subdue or "demystify" the objective world in order to overcome the assumed alienation.  Speaking of Durkheim, Marx and Weber, Wuthnow shows the individualistic bent of the classical approach to religion, "The essence of religion, therefore, is a set of beliefs about these [objective] forces that the individual holds in an effort to bridge the gap between them and himself." ^[6]   Thus, religion is relegated to a subjective set of beliefs that come in as a result of a given perceived problem (of meaningless, anomie, alienation).

When we come to the neoclassical approach, we come to an approach that sees something true in the classical and then attempts to build on and perhaps even expand such truth.  Berger himself saw his own approach as one that stood on the shoulders of the classical giants in order to see a bit further.

We would contend that this dialectical understanding of man and society as mutual products makes possible a theoretical synthesis of the Weberian and Durkheimian approaches to sociology without losing the fundamental intention of either...  Weber's understanding of social reality as ongoingly constituted by human signification and Durkheim's of the same as having the character of choseite' as against the individual are both correct.  They intend, respectively, the subjective foundation and objective facticity of the societal phenomenon, ipso facto pointing toward the dialectical relationship of subjectivity and its objects.  By the same token, the two understandings are only correct together.  A quasi-Weberian emphasis on subjectivity only leads to an idealistic distortion of the societal phenomenon.  A quasi-Durkheimian emphasis on objectivity only leads to sociological reification, the more disastrous distortion toward which much of contemporary American sociology has tended.  It should be stressed that we are not implying here that such a dialectical synthesis would have been agreeable to these two authors. ^[7]

Berger places himself within the neoclassical tradition by building on the strengths of the classical approach while rejecting its weaknesses.  He also builds on those strengths through, among others, the "so-called symbolic-interactionist school of American sociology." ^[8]

According to Wuthnow, the neoclassical approach retains the problem of meaning within its analysis but deals with the problem in a "deeper" way, a way that by-passes the estrangement of subject and object.  As a matter of fact, meaning is the center piece of the neoclassical approach. ^[9]   Rather than locate meaning squarely in the individual, as in the classical approach, the neoclassical approach deals with the problem of meaning in relation to the symbolic construction of reality, both in the subject and in the object.  Thus meaning resides, not in one of the two antithetical poles, but in the context of the whole.  This will become important as we move from Berger's "neighborhood" more specifically to his "house".  Suffice it to say here that, in this approach, the quest for wholistic meaning is at the very core.  Wuthnow attributes this insight, albeit indirectly, to Wittgenstein's understanding of the world and its relationship to meaning. ^[10]   For Wittgenstein, the world is "all that is the case".  The meaning of the world, however, cannot be contained within the world itself but must be outside of it.  So, in Wittgenstein, we have an approach to culture that tends to deal with reality not as a subject/object opposition, but rather as a relationship of whole/part.  The source of meaning and of knowledge, therefore, is not in the individual, but in the symbol.  For Berger, meaning is acquired through socially constructed "symbolic universes", of which religion is one, and this meaning comes to the individual in society as the last (or perhaps better, more complex) step in the social construction of reality.

Just as some neighborhoods have building restrictions, so Berger's tradition entails specific methodological restrictions.  Berger is considered by his peers and even by himself to be in the phenomenological tradition of methodology, though Berger himself admits to being in the "antechamber rather than the inner sanctuary of the phenomenological school of thought." ^[11]   Such is the case, Berger contends because his roots are less philosophical than sociological and more religious than not.  In Berger's phenomenology, called by Ainlay "existential phenomenology", there are different emphases that need to be brought out. ^[12]

First of all, an existential phenomenology would emphasize the individual in the world more than for example, a hermeneutical phenomenology. Because Berger has been influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and, more, by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, he is grappling with man's predicament in a world that forces man to choose, a "structure of exigency" according to Sartre.  Berger, therefore, will have as his primary focus the "problematic" of man in the world.  Berger's problematic, unlike Sartre's, will be the socialization of man in the world, not the opposition of same.  Thus, Berger's affinity with Merleau-Ponty who himself criticized Sartre for not dealing seriously with man's body as the bridge between the opposition of "Being and Nothingness".  Thus, Berger's contention that man hovers between being and having a body. ^[13]    Such a bridging of the gap allows for the unity of experience so needed in Berger's approach, and so absent in the early Sartre. ^[14]

Secondly, the phenomenological epoche will play a relatively significant role in the house that Berger built.  In phenomenology, certain aspects assumed to be either irrelevant or a hindrance to one's investigation are to be "bracketed".  That is, one is to hold those things in abeyance that would, for example, pronounce judgements on certain facts.  Berger agrees with this analysis, generally speaking, and purports to bracket his own values, etc. when dealing with the discipline of sociology.  Not to do so would result in sociology's relegation from science to ideology. ^[15]   Though the sociologist can never remain value-free, the discipline itself must and thus the phenomenological reduction must be employed when "doing" sociology.  Again, this will become more significant when Berger deals specifically with religion.

Finally, (though other important distinctives could be mentioned) a phenomenological analysis assumes the intentionality of man's consciousness.  Such a view seeks, in Berger's approach, to maintain the wholistic perspective on the subject/object relation.  Intentionality in phenomenology (and the influence here is Husserl's) tries to bridge the gap between an attempt at pure empiricism or pure rationalism.  It seeks to posit consciousness itself as, essentially, always intending toward something, thus preserving both the subject and the object.  Experience, therefore, is a dialectic between things that we perceive (cogitatum) and the directedness of consciousness (cogito). ^[16]   Berger's understanding of religion, for example, in The Heretical Imperative and his plea for an inductive option will presuppose, among other things, the intentionality of man's consciousness.

It must be said also that Berger seeks for an interpretive sociology and thus could be seen within the "antechamber" of hermeneutical phenomenology as well.  Due to Berger's quest for meaning as socially constructed, such a quest requires an interpretation of the sociological data.  Thus, Berger sees his method as more empirical than scientific. ^[17]

Having looked now at Berger's approach and method, we can begin to see the actual application of such to his analysis of culture, particularly as that analysis relates to his understanding of religion.

THE SYSTEM

Central to Berger's "house", we could say even foundational to Berger's "house", is his insistence that reality in and of itself is chaos and terror.  This foundational point has not been brought to the fore as much as one would suspect, perhaps because it is a given datum in theory today. ^[18]   It does, however, seem to be Berger's starting point as he begins his elaboration of the dialectic of the social construction of reality.  Notice Berger's description of anomy:

It is for this reason that radical separation from the social world, or anomy, constitutes such a powerful threat to the individual.  It is not only that the individual loses emotionally satisfying ties in such cases.  He loses his orientation in experience.  In extreme cases, he loses his sense of reality and identity.  He becomes anomic in the sense of becoming worldless. ^[19]

And further he says,

The socially established nomos may thus be understood, perhaps in its most important aspect, as a shield against terror.  Put differently, the most important function of society is nomization.  The anthropological presupposition for this is a human craving for meaning that appears to have the force of instinct.  Men are congenitally compelled to impose a meaningful order upon reality. ^[20]         

Realizing that Berger wants to "bracket" the philosophical foundations of his approach, there is, nevertheless, an implicit assumption behind his conception of reality that may significantly influence his development.

First, we look at what Berger is actually saying.  He is attempting to deal with reality as social.  He is trying to show that man constructs his own social reality from the data given him in the world.  Sociologists, he says, can take the reality of everyday life as given without inquiring as to its foundations, which inquiry would be a philosophical task. ^[21]   Berger claims to refrain, again via the phenomenological method (more specifically the phenomenological reduction), from assertions about the ontological or metaphysical status of the phenomena. ^[22]   Yet in spite of all that, he has made some assumptions about the nature of reality (not to mention the nature of man) that are required for his theory to be plausible.  He shows his colors a bit more clearly when he speaks of the human construction of symbolic universes.

The origins of a symbolic universe have their roots in the constitution of man.  If man in society is a world-constructor, this is made possible by his constitutionally given world-openness, which already implies the conflict between order and chaos. ^[23]          

Thus our symbolic universes comes from our innate constitution which conflicts with the given chaos of the world.

Though Berger desires to distance himself from metaphysical pronouncements, he is not able to remain within his strictly sociological environment.  Abercrombie has seen this side of Berger in his analysis of order within Berger's system.  While maintaining that The Social Construction of Reality goes far beyond the scope of a mere sociology of knowledge, he sees the import of Berger's attempt to solve the classical dilemma in sociology between the individual and society. ^[24]   He then goes on to point out the importance of Berger's foundations.

   As I have indicated in the body of this essay, at the root of much of Berger's work is the insistence that the social world is naturally chaotic and precarious.  The very texture of Berger's language changes when he is describing the 'fundamental terrors of human existence'.  It becomes more lyrical, powerful, and evocative.  The basic assumption is that mankind is beset on all sides by uncertainties, instabilities, and terrors, whether biologically, environmentally, or socially induced. Human life is only possible if the precarious, threatening, and frightening world is kept at bay by a protective canopy of systems of meaning. ^[25]    

There is, therefore, in Berger a foundational chaos which must be "kept at bay" by our social construction of reality.  And while our social construction of reality provides the context for legitimations, externalizations, objectivations, internalizations, symbolic universes and religion, it is this foundational chaos that seems to form the background to it all.

If we are correct thus far in this analysis, we perceive in Berger a fundamental Kantianism that could destroy the entirety of his system.  If Berger is following Kant (and his phenomenology, dependent as it is on Kant, would certainly be circumstantial evidence that he is) he is operating within the context of a world that is, in fact, not just ordered, but created by man himself.  This could prove to be fatal to Berger's system and to his understanding of religion.  Reality, it would seem, has no meaning until meaning is imposed on it by man.  It is, in the existential sense, bare facticity and its only function is to create the "nausea" of exigency.

The concomitant of Berger's chaos is his insistence that man must be the ordering agent of his social world.

Society is a dialectic phenomenon in that it is a human product, and nothing but a human product, that yet continuously acts back upon its producer.  Society is a product of man.  It has no other being except that which is bestowed upon it by human activity and consciousness.  There can be no social reality apart from man.  Yet it may also be stated that man is a product of society.  Every individual biography is an episode within the history of society, which both precedes and survives it...  What is more, it is within society and as a result of social processes, that the individual becomes a person, that he attains and holds onto an identity, and that he carries out the various projects that constitute his life.  Man cannot exist apart from society. ^[26]

Man is the society-maker as well as the society-made.  This is what Berger defines as the continual interplay between externalization, objectivation, and internalization.  Externalization, for Berger, has to do with the very genetically constituted nature of man as a world-maker.  Man has no given relationship with the world.  Such a relationship must be established by man himself.  This "establishing" is what we call culture - man's drive to build a human world in the absence of a man-world. ^[27]   Objectivation occurs when this world that man creates is perceived as distinct, outside of man, and thus confronts man as an objective fact.  This takes place, not only with the material world of, for example, tools, but with the non-material world of, for example, language.  Man invents a language and then finds that his speaking is dominated by the linguistic boundaries which he has constructed.  Society, for Berger, is not just rooted in human activity but is objectivated in human activity. ^[28]   Finally, there is the internalization of that which is objectivated.  This is the reabsorption into our consciousness of that which we have objectified and thus we begin to think in terms of what we have externalized and objectivated.  It is at this point that man is made by society. ^[29]   Internalization is achieved primarily by means of socialization.  This entire dialectic is an integral part of Berger's concept of religion.

RELIGION

What is religion according to Berger?  A series of definitions may serve us well at this point.

Religion is a human attitude that conceives of the cosmos as a sacred order. ^[30]

Religious experience breaches the reality of ordinary life while all traditions and institutions are structures within the reality of ordinary life. Religious experience posits its own authority. ^[31]

Religion posits the presence of forces alien to the world. ^[32]

Religion is the positing of a sacred cosmos. ^[33]

Religion is a humanly constructed universe of meaning...  It is equated with symbolic self-transcendence. ^[34]

Religion is a human projection, grounded in the infrastructures of human history. ^[35]

All religious symbols are contingent, penultimate, fragile in their plausibility. ^[36]

This partial, somewhat arbitrary, list gives us a fair perspective on Berger's view of religion.  There seems to be a sense in which religion is "other-worldly" because it transcends the world (as socially understood, of course) and yet it is at the same time "this worldly" as a human projection.  One thing in Berger's system, however, is patently obvious at every level of his discourses on religion; religion is a type of symbolic universe.  As such, it comes to us at the periphery (though it could be the ideological core) of Berger's system, his "house".

It is well at this point of the argument to recall the definition of religion used a little earlier - the establishment, through human activity, of an all-embracing sacred order, that is, of a sacred cosmos that will be capable of maintaining itself in the ever-present face of chaos. ^[37]        

As a symbolic universe, it will be helpful to see how Berger seeks to bring religion to the fore in his sociological system.

Seeking to incorporate religion into Berger's dialectical process in the sociology of knowledge, we would have to begin first of all with everyday reality.  Everyday reality is that which is taken for granted (as well as that which is socially constructed).  Everyday reality is, to some extent, confined to the profane, even the mundane.  It is the reality that you and I live within, yet without questioning (because, in "Schutzian" fashion, doubt is "bracketed") on a day-to-day basis.  It consists of our pre-theoretical experience. ^[38]   But everyday reality is self-insufficient. People cannot live within the context of everyday reality alone. Thus, posits Berger, people seek for broader forms of meaning than those supplied by everyday reality. ^[39]   This, according to Wuthnow, is Berger's most crucial claim that seems, at least to some extent, to be empirically verified. ^[40]   In seeking a broader meaning in society, people tend to externalize, objectivize and internalize symbolic universes, again, religion being one of them.  So, for example, in an individual's social interaction with others there may emerge some sort of religious symbol.  This is externalization.  This symbol may be objectivized, for example, through further discussion or perhaps through writing in the religious field.  It may then be internalized as it is taken as one's own, becoming a part of one's own social identity. ^[41]   This is what Berger means when he claims that religion "breaches the reality of ordinary life", that it "is equated with symbolic self-transcendence".  For Berger, religion dominates the process when that which is socially taken for granted becomes synonymous to the world itself. In other words, after religion's symbols are externalized, objectivated and internalized, they could become such a part of one's socially constructed reality that they are seen to be co-extensive with the world itself.  "Nomos and cosmos appear to be co-extensive." ^[42]   Once this sacred cosmos is established, it pits itself both against the profane (which is a key element of secularization) and against chaos. ^[43]   Religion, therefore, keeps man from the terror of the world.  It supplies meaning to that which is otherwise "meaning-limited".  It becomes, it would seem, the key symbolic universe to which man must cling.  Therefore, religion, in Berger's own system, functions as the important, yet to some extent, "marginal" aspect of the social construction of reality.  In other words, religion seems to be important because it opposes itself to the everyday world.  Yet it only comes into the picture as a result of the fact that (1) the world is chaos (2) man must make his own social world (3) man's social world is not enough (4) symbolic universes are necessary to supplement man's social world and (5) religion is an important symbolic universe.  This is why religion appears to be, in the context of Berger's whole system, "marginal".  It is for this reason that we have attempted, by way of analogy, to see Berger's view of religion as the roof of the house that has already been built.  It is an important part of the house and perhaps needful if the house is to survive, but a house without a roof is still a house, with its own foundation, its own walls for protection and its own structure and identity.

Because Berger views religion as so important, however, it will be helpful to see the place of religion in the application of Berger's approach in his book, The Heretical Imperative.

In this book, Berger will be pleading, from the context of theology no less, for a remedy to the effects of modernity on religion.  Berger sees modernity as the transition from fate to choice in society.  Such a transition has been brought about by the process of secularization and its concomitant of pluralism.  Thus, when religious institutions began losing their foothold in society, man was confronted with a multitude of choices.  Whereas, for example, a person's sexual preferences used to be clearly outlined within the context of tradition, modernity now offers us a multitude of sexual choices that at one time were socially anathematized. ^[44]   The same could be said of birth control.  Modernity, in Berger's words, pluralizes both institutions and plausibility structures. ^[45]   The "heretical imperative", therefore, is that people must now choose (which is the root meaning of the Greek word hairein from which we get our English word heresy) in situations that used to be relegated to authority; from fate (authority) to choice (heresy).  Berger, it seems, wants to argue for the inclusion again of religious affirmations about the nature of reality in the face of modernity, including secularization and pluralism.  The Heretical Imperative (though Berger would not put it this way) is an apologetic for the place of religion in a modern society.  It is also the building of what Berger thinks is a viable "plausibility structure" for religion.  In that sense, it can be seen as a secondary legitimation. ^[46]

Berger's religious quest is a quest about the phenomenology of religion.  He wants to deal, not with religion's ultimate truth, but with its validity in culture. ^[47]   The reason that we must deal with religious validity is because, as symbolic universe that supersedes the reality of ordinary life, its plausibility structures are both weak and relative.  Only the plausibility structures of ordinary life, though easily interrupted, have sufficient strength. ^[48]   Religion goes outside of ordinary reality (because, according to Berger, no society could survive in the fixed posture of encountering the supernatural ^[49] ) in order to supplement the profane character of that reality which, though paramount, is dependent.

Berger is attempting, it seems, a number of different things in The Heretical Imperative.  He is attempting to confront religion with modernity.  He is attempting to show the past (and present) failures of such confrontation.  He is attempting to provide a solution to such failures.  He is attempting to provide a plausibility structure for present-day religious experience.  He is attempting to explain why the present problems of modernity have continued.  Imbedded in all of these attempts is Berger's insistence that the "inductive option", as he calls it, provides solutions to the above-mentioned problems.  He contends that the history of Protestant theology can serve as a useful paradigm leading us to the inductive option itself.

Berger rejects, first of all, the deductive option as able to confront the conflict between religion and modernity.  He uses as his paradigm the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth.  Barth sought to re-establish the objective authority of the religious tradition.  His was a theology of the Word.  The Word of God meets man because of the grace of God.  Man cannot come to God before God first meets man in His Word. ^[50]   It is interesting that Berger sees Barth's neo-orthodoxy as "the reaffirmation of the objective authority of a religious tradition after a period during which that authority had been relativized and weakened." ^[51]   Given other primarily subjectivistic interpretations of Barth, one could easily question Berger's summation.

He does, however, reject the deductive approach in Barth due to, what Berger perceives as, a subjective root in Barth's objective system.  The deductive option itself is a heretical imperative and thus a victim of modernity due to the fact that it itself is a result of a decision to believe again.  Because of this "decisionism", Barth's system is haunted by the distinctives of modernity. ^[52]   Not only must one decide, in Barth's system, why one should take the leap of faith, one must further decide into which tradition, where, one should leap as well.  Thus, Barth's system is a system presupposing, but not opposing, the heretical imperative.

Berger's second option under consideration is that of reduction and his paradigms for this model are primarily Bultmann and Feuerbach. ^[53]   In the model of liberal theology, man is seen as not choosing his own situation.  There is a kind of (Heideggerian) "thrownness" to human existence.  Because of this, we must see ourselves as within a particular world-view, a particular situation, not by choice first of all, and one that militates against the historical Christian tradition.  Christianity, therefore, must strike a bargain with modernity in which the former is "demythologized" to fit the latter.  There is a "basic translation model" used in the conflict between modernity and Christianity, of which Feuerbach was the classic example, i.e., religion is simply a gigantic projection of human concerns onto the cosmos. ^[54]

Berger's critique of the "demythologization" of Bultmann and the "translation model" of Feuerbach is that both assume at the outset the definitive and unchangeable character of secularization itself.  Because of such a scheme, Feuerbach and those with him have not grasped the totality of modernity's influence, not only on the objective, but on the subjective consciousness as well.  There must not be, according to Berger, a taken-for-granted mentality of secularization and a further translation of Christianity in order to fit.  According to Berger, only one side of the dialectic has been grasped in the reductive option.

Berger, therefore, will opt for the inductive approach as that which alone is able to face modernity and religion together such that religion's plausibility in the face of modernity is restored.  Berger's Protestant paradigm for this model is Schleiermacher.

The inductive model in Berger's view of religion can be seen as the shingles on the roof of religion on the house that Berger built.  The inductive approach shows us how religion looks and functions within the house of Berger's system.  "The core of the inductive model is... the assertion that a specific type of human experience defines the phenomenon called religion.  This experience can be described and analyzed." ^[55]   What Berger is advocating is the return to empirically verifiable experience as the beginning point for religious reflection.  The reason for this is that, according to Schleiermacher, the essence of religion is the feeling or sense of dependence (abhangigheit gefuhl).  This feeling of dependence is expressed empirically in the universe which is itself a symbol of the infinite.  Thus, as we begin with empirical experience, we see that it is intentional (phenomenologically speaking) and points beyond itself to that which is "meta-human".  Only when we begin to see religious consciousness itself as intentional will we be able to break the barrier of relativism and provide for a plausible assertion of religion in the face of modernity.  Berger goes on to argue that the certainty required in such an approach can only be there in the supernatural, never when we return to ordinary life.  Even that certainty is, what Berger following Troeltsch calls, a "mellow certainty", i.e., a certainty that has at the outset rejected any external authority (including Scripture) and rests its plausibility on its mellow character in the face of relative normality.  It would seem, therefore, that the only way to acquire a meaningful religious symbolic universe is through the experiential option which seeks to bring religious plausibility into contact with the self-insufficiency or the intentionality of both objective and subjective consciousness.

SUMMARY

We have tried to reconstruct the house that Berger built in order to gain an adequate and fair view of his concept of religion.  Though many other elements could have been chosen, it seems that Berger's personal interest in the relationship of religion to the sociology of knowledge and the analysis of culture warranted an extended explication of his system.  If we were to attempt a summary of Berger's "house" it would look like this:  Within the neighborhood of neoclassicism Berger sought to build his house by way of existential phenomenology.  As he laid the foundation of the world as chaotic, he quickly moved on to build the framework of the sociology of knowledge and then to hem in that framework in terms of the floor of everyday reality and walls of symbolic universes including, at last, the roof of religion with its shingles of induction.  The rooms of the house in which we constantly move are the rooms of externalization, objectivation and internalization, all of which become the living rooms of the house itself.  These rooms provide the content of that which lies below them and that which is above, including religion.  Having looked now at Berger's system, we must proceed ahead with inspection of the house and possible repairs.

CRITIQUE

Berger's insights provide ample fodder both for reflection and for reform.  Any position that attempts to explain any aspect of the world in which we live carries in its explanation some, perhaps unspoken, commitments.  These commitments are, to paraphrase Bellah, "commitments of the heart" and will determine, to a large extent, the content of any given position.  To attempt to understand these "commitments of the heart" is not, by definition, to go beyond the scope of sociology and cultural analysis unless one assumes at the outset that heart commitments have no effect either on science or on society.  Berger, perhaps, has assumed as much without proof.  Though Berger does, however, (perhaps with Wuthnow) contend that these heart commitments are thoroughly subjective and therefore beyond sociology's scope, nevertheless he contends also that society itself operates with certain taken-for-granted assumptions.  Thus, it would seem, though Berger may not take it this far, society, as made up of individuals, must itself reflect at least some of these basic commitments. ^[56]   The point to be made, however, is that Berger himself betrays some commitments that could prove to be destructive to his system of analysis. To that we now turn.

First of all, it will be helpful for us to deal briefly with Berger's "neighborhood", i.e., the context in which he builds his "house", including his method. Because Berger's position is neoclassical, he sees it as a progression from that which was before him, that which tended to look at only one side of the picture of reality.  He purports, therefore, to deal with reality wholistically, not, as before him, as a bifurcation between subject and object.  This, on the surface, from a Christian perspective, can be seen as an advance in perspective.  But one must ask as to Berger's basis for such a perspective.  Is it enough simply to synthesize Weber with Durkheim and to begin again with a presumed "all-encompassing" approach?  If one approach leads to subjectivism and another to objective reification, as Berger contends, are the problems resolved when subjectivism is combined with reification and the starting point becomes a synthesis of the two?

We would argue that Berger has simply combined a more rationalistic approach with a more irrationalistic approach (though each approach in itself had elements of both) and began his analysis of culture with an antinomic method.  When Berger seeks, therefore, to explicate the social construction of reality, he has no way of knowing that that which is socially constructed is really, for example, externalized.  The best that he can say is that society "thinks" in a certain way.  But surely Berger wants to appeal to more than just the (fallacious) argumentum ad populum. He certainly believes that which society has socially constructed is really there, but he, if he were able to see it, must jump from the objectivity of reality and the subjectivity of such with no bridge to cross between the two and no way to close the chasm.  Thus, he must vacillate between rationalism and irrationalism at every step.  Though he tries to supersede such a position via his continual dialectic, he is in fact, merely attempting to presuppose that which he has yet to account for, namely, that the continual poles of his dialectic are, in fact, related.  Berger may want to contend, as a sociologist, that the fact that society sees them as related is all he is interested in.  If that is the case, however, that society alone provides its own justification, then his dialectical relationship itself is destroyed by virtue of the fact that society has not "taken for granted" Berger's own system.  This is only to point out what should be obvious, that Berger's system needs a basis and that which he has chosen as a basis simply will not supply the air that is needed for life.  There must be, therefore, a transcendent point from which Berger's position may begin.  There must be an "Archimedean point" from which Berger may move his own "house".  The neoclassical approach cannot provide such a point.  His approach is plagued with the same problems as the classical.

If Berger had begun with the Christian position, he could have then presupposed that the one who created both the knower and the known was God Himself.  Because God reveals Himself both in the knower and in the known, Berger could have seen that the subject and the object of knowledge can only be brought into fruitful contact based on the presupposition of the Creator God being the Maker and Sustainer of both.  It is only the unity of revelation provided by the Revealer that provides for the mutual irreducibility (thus, no subjectivism nor reification) and yet knowability of the subject and object.  Because Berger would not begin his analysis with the presupposition of the truth of Christian theism in sociology, he is never able to escape the problems inherent in his system.  He may not want to deal with such problems, because, as he contends, they are philosophically motivated, but he cannot have his cake and eat it too as he posits so much about the nature of ultimate reality, i.e., that it is chaos, that God is not needed to know it, etc.  The revelation of God in His Word and works must be the only "Archimedean point" from which Berger, or any other person, begins.

In suggesting such an Archimedean point, we will begin to offer positive suggestions to a Bergerian system as well as continued critique.  It had to be determined, first of all, however, that Berger began by moving in to the wrong "neighborhood.

Berger's approach is an attempt to recover the classical emphasis on sociology as interpretive.

As employed here the word would include its ordinary usage - a theoretical concern with interpreting the subjective meanings and motives of social actors - but it also goes beyond it.  The meaning is more generic, referring to the act of explaining the nature, the causal relations, and the historical significance of different institutional configurations and their meaning for and impact on various types of individuals and groups as they live out the routines of everyday life.

Virtually every aspect of [Berger's] professional life has developed as an attempt to recover the interpretive vision of classical sociology. ^[57]

When one deals with sociology and with culture, one is dealing with man's interpretations of God's creation which is constantly being both suppressed and imposed on man.  Sociology and cultural analysis are often times attempting an interpretation of that which has already been interpreted (by God) and perhaps interpreted again (by man).  Thus, there can be truth on one or two levels of interpretation.  The Christian may start with the reality of God and His revelation and may end up with analyses that are inconsistent with such a starting point.  The non-Christian may begin with reality as illusion yet conclude with most helpful and revealing principles.  The goal, however, should be that all levels, because they so interrelate, be in conformity with one another.  As a matter of fact, the difficulty resides in the fact that all interpretations relate to one another and are related ultimately to God (covenantally).  The further difficulty arises when we see creation itself as God's interpretation and thus as permeating every level of interpretive activity.  All interpretations relate to one another and ultimately to God. ^[58]  

This has critical implications for Berger's system.  It will be remembered that Berger posits chaos as the "mode" of unsocialized reality.  Society is the imposition of order upon the flux of human experience. ^[59]   Because Berger is unwilling to go beyond the sociological, he does not bother to ask as to the source of everyday reality itself.  He has, in fact, made a universal metaphysical pronouncement as to the nature of reality.  Such a pronouncement, contra Berger, has crucial ramifications for his system.  If chaos is the foundation upon which Berger builds his house, what is the nature of the house and how can it stand?  Berger has seen that everyday reality cannot stand on its own.  With that we can agree.  But Berger seeks to supplement everyday reality, to protect it, with the "roof" of religion rather than go back to the foundation to look for cracks.  If reality is chaos, what is the status of our ordering of it?  Is it simply an order that is subjective?  Is it only objective to the extent that it hides the "real" reality of chaos?  Will Berger's system eventually fall into the abyss of solipsism both of Kant and of Husserl because of the irresolvable antinomy of chaos (objective yet irrational) and order (subjective and rational)?  Though Berger would prefer to bracket such questions, he is forced, in his insistence of symbolic universes, to deal with them, yet on quite another level.

If Berger were to see the world as God's interpretation, he would begin from the basis, not only of order, but of ultimate order in God.  He would then begin to see that everyday reality is man's response to God's initial interpretation and thus there would be a normative structure to that which Berger sees as both normative and relative, i.e, everyday reality.  Having seen the normativity of God's interpretation (creation, including man), he would then see externalization as that which man re-interprets in light of reality (God's creation as the original Socially constructed reality), objectivation as that which man takes to himself (in interpretation) and internalization as that which is determined both by man's and God's interpretation of reality.  Meaning, then, (which, remember, occupies a significant place in Berger's system) could be seen, as in his system, on all levels of interpretation but ultimately in creation itself (as God's interpretation). ^[60]  

Such an analysis as we have presented borrows from elements of truth (which are there by common grace) in Berger's own system.  True it is that consciousness is intentional.  Creation itself is intentional because it all points to and tends toward its Creator.  True also that sociology is interpretive.  All of man's acts are interpretive, yet on different levels.  What our analysis does indicate, however, is that Berger's concept of religion must be radically revised.

The tendency of sociology to see religion as at the (systemic) periphery of their discipline (if at all) is itself an effect of modernity (or perhaps postmodernity) and this would be one of the most stinging indictments against Berger's system.  There was a time, to use Berger's own analysis, when religion was seen as permeating all of life, all of culture.  If we begin to see the effect of seeing all of reality as interpreted, including creation, then all of reality will be a response both to creation as interpretation and to God as Absolute Interpreter.  Thus, the chaos of which Berger speaks is actually sacred (because as creation it reveals in itself the supernatural, i.e., God) and extends as creation beyond itself to the One who is its Creator and Sustainer.

Berger was seeing something of this when he advocated the inductive option as the only option able to confront religion with modernity.  He makes a very interesting comment with which, on a level, we must agree.

The theological procedure advocated in that book [A Rumor of Angels] is inductive, not in the sense of modern scientific method, but in the sense of taking ordinary human experience as its starting point.  The same meaning of 'induction' is applied to religious experience proper in The Heretical Imperative.  Perhaps I invited this misunderstanding by the use of the term.  Using more conventional Christian language, I might say that my approach is 'sacramental' - an apprehension of God's presence 'in, with and under' the elements of common human experience... ^[61]

Here Berger is articulating something of the transcendental critique we have been advocating in our criticisms. ^[62]   Given any fact, any (human) experience, we ask as to the conditions of its possibility and of its existence.  In a truly Christian approach, we will see that every fact, every experience, reveals, as created, not only itself, but its Creator!  Berger's position, however, can never be verified because the consubstantial God of his inductive approach, on his own basis, can only be seen as a projection of Berger's own consciousness.  Thus, God Himself is merely intentional and needs something beyond Himself to supply meaning.  Perhaps, in Berger's system, that something else would be society.

Berger's view of religion, therefore, directly relates both to his system and to the foundation of his system.  We have tried to show that not only is Berger in the wrong neighborhood, but his foundation is one of sand and the house that he has built, if it exists at all "out there", will not stand, and finally that the roof of religion with its invisible (projection of consciousness) shingles (inductive option) continues to leak beyond repair.  Life is religion and a sociology that wants to stand must recognize itself and its subject matter as inherently religious. ^[63]   Science itself must, as interpretive, refer back to its Source, as does its subject matter. The religious, specifically Christian, position must be the beginning point of Berger's inquiry. ^[64]  

In other words, Berger's symbolic universes must come to play, not in the margins of everyday reality, but as the very context in which everyday reality is lived.  Having seen the social construction of reality in that way, it would then be legitimate to observe the institutional aspect (second-order) of religion to determine its significance within the broader religious context.

There is one more perspective that must be briefly added here as a corrective to Berger's sociological interpretation and it has to do with the progress of modernity (now postmodernity?) and its concomitants of secularization and pluralism.  Having framed culture as inherently religious, it could be most insightful and instructive to begin to see culture as a dialectical interplay between two (at least temporally) corresponding axes. ^[65]   The first axis of culture is the implication of progress "from the Garden to the City".  Culture is seen as progressing from creation (Garden, Genesis 1) to city (redemption, Revelation 22).  These two, the Garden and the City are not antithetical but the City includes within it the Garden.  The second axis of culture is the struggle between cities, the city of God and the city of man.  These two cities of the second axis create tension and pull in opposite directions. ^[66]   The first axis involves man's subduing of the earth as culture is historically formed and re-formed.  The second axis involves the problems of corruptions, etc. that enter into any culture-forming activity. If these two poles are not held and kept in balance, the result will be a one-sided, insufficient and fundamentally erroneous view of culture.

Thus, when Berger views reality as chaos, he is viewing it only from the perspective of the second axis (the Fall).  When he sees the progress of social construction he is viewing reality only from the perspective of the first axis (creation to redemption).  If both are kept in balance, there would be a normative model from which to measure the "progress" of man's reality as constructed.  Thus, all of man's interpretive activity could be seen from the perspective of both poles and could, therefore, be evaluated as exhibiting the balance of the two in more or less obvious fashion.  As it is, Berger totters from one side to the other without a platform from which to move.  This is the case, ultimately, because Berger's system would never allow for the Christian position.  Thus, in the end there is religion in Berger's sociology and Christianity is no part of his considerations.

Much more could be said with regard to Berger's view of religion within his system.  We have not dealt at all with his "signals of transcendence" as advocated, for example, in A Rumor of Angels (of which The Heretical Imperative is a follow-up).  Neither have we done any adequate justice to the genius of his theory of secularization.  We have attempted, however, to show that Berger's own system cries desperately for meaning even as it searches for it and is, alas, a product itself of the spirit of modernity which Berger himself tries so hard to penetrate.  Perhaps Berger should take his own system and "face up" to modernity once more.