ABSTRACT
The worship of the gods (or God) which is usually associated with the practice of rituals is now described by the well-established term ‘religion’. Smith has comprehensively analysed the origin of this term and its use in history. The term is based on the Latin term religio, which was used in pagan Roman times to designate ‘the power outside man obligating him to certain behaviour under the pain of threatened retribution’ or to describe ‘the feeling in man vis-à-vis such powers’, with the ritual ceremonies themselves called ‘religiones’. Smith traced the evolution of the use of the terms religio and religiones from pagan times up to the modern era. By the fifth century CE, the time when the Church’s triumph over paganism was complete, there is a noticeable change in meaning, moving from the general to the specific. For example, Smith cites Lucretius (in De Rerum Natura) and Cicero (in De Natura Deorum) using the term religio generally; the former welcomes scientific materialism in order to liberate man from religio, referring to the ceremonies used in the worship of the gods, and the latter speculates on the nature of the gods, the divine. On the other hand, Augustine in the fifth century CE, in his famous book De Vera Religione, says that ‘true religion means the worship of the one true God, that is, the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit’.2
