Abstract
This article suggests that symbolism and power are central concepts in the massive volume of David Martin’s work, which is underpinned and sustained by a dynamic dialectic tension between the religious and the secular. For Martin, the core characteristic element of the religious is the transcendent which is in constant dialectic with the secular in history and society through the functions and uses and abuses of power. Politics and religion, thus, are explored within the same mythic symbolic theoretical/methodological framework as, according to Martin, ‘there is no logos without mythos’. All this is theoretically depicted and empirically documented mainly in his General Theory of Secularization (1978), his Religion and Power (2014) and in his Breaking of the Image (1980). The latter is a masterpiece of symbolist analysis and interpretation of Christian theory and practice with a universal sociological application and significance. This specific hermeneutic symbolist approach of Martin is original and promotes a diachronic and synchronic sociological and theological understanding of religion as such and of religion in society. Within this framework Martin also provides us with a wider understanding of social change beyond the context and the limits of modernity.
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Notes
See his complete bibliography in Joas 2018:191–208)
This impasse is clearly stated at the end in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. (‘No one knows who will live in this cage in the future…..’) (Weber 1968 : 182).
For a general sociological statement on the nature and function of religious symbols see Kokosalakis (2001)
In the Eastern Orthodox Church icons are windows to the sacred and represent it anthropomorphically in condensed pictorial form. They are non-verbal carriers of essential Christian theology (Kokosalakis 1995).
God’s omnipotence is stated in the first article of the Nicene Creed: ‘I believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible.’ It is also stated in the concluding statement of the Lord’s Prayer: ‘For Thine is the Kingdom the power and the Glory of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever and into the ages of ages.’
11 Here, Martin (1980:177-204) discusses further the similarities and differences between the Christian and the Marxist paradigm. The concept of martyrdom, for instance, is common to both but there is a diametrically opposed interpretation of it by each. Martin further shows how freedom of conscience and individual freedom generally is allowed and sustained in the former and curtailed or abolished in the latter(p.186).
Further Reading
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