Covenant religion

Schools of thought
The thing is, there's a thousand different schools and denominations of the Covenant faith. The Hierarchs' word was law, but they couldn't stop all these different homegrown versions of the faith from festering on a thousand worlds, so they mostly elected to focus on the essentials. What is universally accepted is that the Forerunners are gods, and that through the Great Journey the younger species - under the Prophets' guidance and blessings - can join them in their divine transcendence, and in doing so escape the ever-turning grinding mill of the universe, which shall consume all at the end of time. Beyond that, and what the incumbent Hierarchs happen to declare in accordance with their own views and the religious traditions they come from, things get a bit more fluid.

The question of divine personage was one that had divided the Covenant from the beginning. For it was not just the use of Forerunner technology that divided the Sangheili and San'Shyuum on matters of faith. (Here I delve into some of the material covered in the previous thread on HA.)

When Forerunner worship became the mainstream faith on Sanghelios, through conversion and conquest, they adapted several of their old religious narratives (from various cultures across the globe) into the overarching framework of the Forerunners, as often happens when religions collide. As not much was known about individual Forerunners at the time, some of the old myths - as well as deities - were almost directly adapted to the Forerunner faith. Whatever their origins, Sangheili gods were personal, much like those in the Greco-Roman or Norse pantheons; concrete beings with distinct personalities, relationships, quirks and specialties- heroes, artisans, craftsmen, healers, rulers, tricksters and more. There were, of course, differences in traditions as there are in any interstellar civilization, but such gods were definitely the majority trend in the Sangheili sphere when the Reformists came into contact with them.

The San'Shyuum view of godhead was more elusive and transcendent. To them, the Forerunners became gods only after their technological apotheosis. Gods had no individuality or personality in the mortal sense; they merely floated in the heavenly spheres of the Divine Beyond, and their true nature was a mystery to beings of the mortal plane. Moreover, polytheism presented something of an issue to the centralization of religious authority and thus power; the early Sangheili civilization was split among dozens of different churches and traditions that favored certain gods above others, sometimes to the point of inciting competition and conflict between them. On the other hand, a religion without a pantheon of divine personages, each with their own priesthoods to champion their supremacy, would be easier to govern from the top down.

This difference was borne in part out of the lack of a solid Great Journey narrative among the Sangheili. The Forerunners were venerated as gods, but mainstream religious dogma did not recognize the notion of becoming like them. Many traditions did look to the Forerunners as exemplars, and some even contained the aspiration of becoming like them at one point, but this would be strictly through one's own path, for Forerunner technology was not to be tampered with. On top of that, the general consensus among Sangheili faiths was that the Forerunners had always been divine, whereas the San'Shyuum held that while enlightened in life, the Forerunners were only elevated to Godhead by the Sacred Rings. The Incremental Path tradition of the Covenant, which gained a mainstream following during the 23rd Age of Doubt, for example, added that the Forerunners' ascent had been gradual - that they had achieved enlightenment over time through their marvels of technology and science, and the Sacred Rings were but the culmination of this millennia-long progress. The most radical adherents of the Incremental Path would even go so far as to maintain the Sacred Rings may not even be necessary for transcendence, and the gradual accumulation and study of lesser artifacts would do. But such beliefs would typically surface to the mainstream only in Ages of Doubt.

This, in turn, led to another question that delved quite deep into esoteric territory, one that would occupy Covenant scholars for millennia - namely, what did it mean be a god? What would truly happen to one's self once the Divine Wind swept the soul away from the mortal plane? Would one truly be as one had been in life, or would one change irrevocably - and if so, how? Such questions were mainly the domain of theologians to debate on; the average Grunt, or even Deacon, would hardly have answers beyond vague religious rhetoric.

One of the foundational dilemmas of the Covenant faith was the question of whether the Forerunners were divine in flesh, prior to the firing of the Halos. On one hand, it was indisputable that the Forerunners' creations were divine, so the Forerunners too must have been gods to have created them; for creations cannot be greater than their creators (though this, too, was at times disputed). The Sangheili faith postulated that they were, while the San'Shyuum generally held that only the firing of Halo initiated their apotheosis. There were numerous smaller disputes over specifics e.g. when the Forerunners fired the Halos, did the souls of all Forerunners who had passed prior join them on the Great Journey? This ties to the question of Eternal Salvation; in the early days of the Covenant faith, it was not even decided if the Great Journey came to those who had already died or just those alive at the moment. Eventually, it was codified into the Covenant faith that Salvation was acausal and timeless, and all who believed would be saved. Below are some key schools or doctrines on this matter:

Perpetual Divinity: The Forerunners are and always have been divine in all their incarnations; thus it follows that the nature of godhood is eternal and unchanging. This did pose the theological problem that if the Divine was an immutable constant, how could the younger races - which were not definitively gods as of yet - attain it? While some apologists claim that the Forerunners' divinity was a special and unique case, their godhood being of a "higher" level than that of those who may later follow in their footsteps, this argument would still give rise to the later prevailing doctrine of Acausal Consecration. In addition, though post-Ascension theology was only understood and debated on by the most learned, it was commonly preached that following the Moment of Unworlding, one would ever grow in splendor and virtue, which seemed to conflict with the notion of a "fixed" Divine. Acausal Consecration: The Forerunners were mortal albeit Supremely Enlightened in flesh, but because the Great Journey is free from the boundaries of causality, the act of firing Halo retroactively made them and all their deeds in life divine. This was the mainstream view as of the Covenant's latter ages, but its specifics varied among various schools, the most prominent ones being: Inner Consecration: the retroactive effects of Halo left the Forerunners fallible in flesh but divine in spirit Absolute Consecration: the retroactive effects of Halo made the Forerunners divine in both flesh and spirit Singular Consecration: The Forerunners were mortal and flawed in flesh and were only propelled into godhood by the Great Journey. Now obsolete and generally regarded as heretical, as it implies Forerunner technology was not forged by divine hands.

Anyway, the question of the nature of gods was one of the many religious disagreements of the early Covenant, and one that kept theologians busy for centuries and beyond. In some ways, the debates on the nature of divinity never truly ended, even as the Covenant's mainstream religion settled into something of a balance between the two extremes, albeit one that tipped into either direction depending on the spirit of the Age (as well as the schools of faith followed by the incumbent Hierarch triumvirate). Some worlds emphasized particular gods, as did adherents of certain trades; engineers and builders prayed to the Master Builder, warriors to the Didact, healers to the Librarian and so on all the way down to numerous lesser gods (which also changed and increased in number with time as more named Forerunners were discovered, or when it was discovered that someone once thought to be two or more individuals was actually one with multiple titles or monikers; though just as often, especially in the early days, Forerunner gods were simply made up to fit existing archetypes). Other worlds and domains were content with leaving their gods as elusive as they had been to the early San'Shyuum.

Beyond the basic universal dogmas, or whatever specific question was on the table at the time (e.g. Humanity in the 9th Age of Reclamation) it was generally not in the best interests of the High Council to interfere in the specifics forms of worship on individual worlds or domains. It hardly mattered to them whether this cluster or that subscribed to a pluralistic or unitary view of the godhead, or what specific gods they emphasized. What truly mattered was the amount of power those regional churches held within their respective domains and over their parishes, and their eagerness to defer to High Charity's decrees. What the Clergy was efficient at, with some exceptions, was in unifying - and thus keeping the peace - between the countless different denominations of the Path.

High Charity's ecclesiarchy (and eventually the Hierarchs themselves) served as the ultimate arbitrator of religious disputes, should the need call for it. However, such interventions were typically reserved for critical cases such as conflicts on the domain level. For provincial ministers, asking for high-level arbitration could be a double-edged sword: on one hand, it could end in their church's favor, but it could (often depending on the generosity of either side's "tributes" and their connections to the High Charity ecclesiarchy) also invalidate core tenets of their specific denomination. This was also why High Charity's clergy was careful to pick their battles, and did not easily intervene in lesser disputes: because it did not serve them to make large groups of subjects unhappy by essentially invalidating their denomination's view on some (often minute) religious question, at least if said subjects were wealthy and powerful. To circumvent the issue, High Council arbitrators would often attempt to find compromises that would not invalidate either side's views, only recontextualize them in a way that was at least supposed to placate the dispute.

With the fall of High Charity, many domains have fallen into infighting due to the sudden absence of that spiritual nucleus or its instruments of compliance. Regional churches may not have always agreed with the word from High Charity, but they respected it nonetheless; for it cannot be understated how enormous its religious authority was, and how much sheer weight the High Council's missives carried.

Related pages

 * Kandonom Codex