Sould a religion be theistic?

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Religion actually just means “to bind”, the “to God/the gods” is something that would be bracketed, that is, it was implied by the usual usage of the Romans, but is not part of the definition of the word religio itself… “Religion” only came to mean what it does today after the Protestant reformation, I believe. One of the reason’s why “Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion” actually is “Calvin’s Instruction in Christian Piety” when properly translated, i.e. a catechism. And I’m normally a fan of very literal translations - “Institutio Christianae Religionis” - is very literally, “Institute of the Christian Religion”.

Any belief system can be called a religion today, from anti-theism (“New Atheism”) to Buddhism and Confucianism (non-theist) to Capitalism and Communism, to Judaism and Christianity and Hinduism.
 
To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. [Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 1885]
 
Well Yoga is founded in Hindu and sometimes practiced by Catholics
 
Religion is a pretty flexible word. It has room to include spiritual belief systems, such as Buddhism and Taoism, that aren’t necessarily theistic. I was a non-theistic Zen/Taoist for a while. For me, it was an intermediate stage in moving from almost-atheism back to my Christian roots. I was rejecting the materialist/reductionist worldview but wasn’t yet ready to go all the way with it. And in retrospect, I don’t think the Tao, which for me tied in also with Natural Law (Locke’s version) and with Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, was a bad start at all for rebuilding faith, one piece of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle at a time.
 
In America it doesn’t seem to appear religion needs to be theistic. If you can get a Religious Tax Exempt status from the government, then by default you are now a religion in America’s eyes! 😉
 
The defintion that religio means “to bind oneself to God” was stated by Lactantius, he said religio derives from *religare *= to (re-)bind.
But that was not the notion of the earlier Roman pagans. Cicero derived religio from *relegere *= to read again, to collect.It meant to observe the tradition (to which honouring the gods belongs).
So different religions have quite a different understanding of the term religion itself, as they have of what a god is or faith or whatever.

In Lactantius’ sense Buddhism would not be a religion, as gods are irrelevant there. In a broader sense it is. It has all the aspects religions have, ethics, rituals, afterlife (sort of), …
 
I’ve never read Lactantius. Is there a copy of his works (preferably in the Latin? Or Greek, if he wrote in it, as Marcus Aurelius did - surprising, that he was a soldier to, and it was in the ranks of soldiers that Latin was most used) available online, or in book form? If not, a copy in the English is acceptable.

I am familiar with Tully, but don’t remember that exact statement - I’m assuming it comes from De natura deorum?
 
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