Tweet
The time is ripe for us to look at what the words "diversity" and "tolerance" mean in the context of the nature of religious truth and how can we understand these terms when we attempt to have constructive dialogue among persons of different faiths or no faith at all. And, while we are at it, I would like Christians to tell me, how, or if, they think, Christians can affirm Christian confidence in the universality of salvation in a way that gives full value to the diversity of aims of life and subsequent patterns of life commended by other religious communities. Those are some of the question that I would like the members of this forum to look at with me, in a thoughtful and respectful manner please !
My primary aim, hopefully, for this thread, is to establish some intellectual ground rules for fruitful discussion among religions and those who have none, not to defend religion itself against the criticisms of secular philosophy. Wish me luck.
All too often today, in religious matters as well as elsewhere, the desire to be intellectually ecumenical and nondiscriminatory results in a vague pluralism we call "diversity" that often times seems purchased at the expense of truth. Real differences of opinion and conviction are also papered over in the name of "tolerance". Whose purposes and whose agenda is being served by this ? To my mind, what one achieves thereby is not tolerance but a loss of critical judgement. The deep divisions that separate people cannot be wished out of existence simply by repeating the mantra of diversity.
The Christian claim that there is no salvation except through Jesus Christ, or the Buddhist claim that there is no attainment of Nirvana except in the following of the Excellent Eightfold Path, do not only reflect exclusivism on the part of these communities as they are often accused of. In my opinion, it also establishes, the seriousness with which each regards the true aim of life and the means necessary to attain and enjoy it.
Genuine tolerance, though, requires the assertion of one's own convictions about the truth no less than the acknowledgement of other points of view. Otherwise what one achieves is not dialogue but a series of more or less isolated monologues. That may make for warm feelings and the smugness of attitude that has become all too common, but it also encourages dishonesty and intellectual laziness.
Nirvana for the Buddhist, salvation through faith in Christ, submission to the will of Allah for the Muslim, etc. are, prima facie anyway, very different, perhaps irreconcilable, conceptions of the "true aim of life." Attainment of nirvana requires the extirpation of desire and the setting aside of the self; for the Christian, salvation involves faith and trust in the work of Christ on the cross. Moreover, most major religions in their orthodox versions present themselves as providing privileged access to the truth that they proclaim: the Dharma for the Buddhist, the teachings of Christ for the Christian, the Koran for the Muslim. Not only the definition of what counts as "the true aim of life," but also the prescription for its attainment-the modes of life enjoined for adherents-differ radically from one religion to another. There is the further complication that some religions-Judaism, for example-do not seem to include anything like what Christians call "salvation" in their conception of the "true aim of life." Given these differences, how is real tolerance or conversation, as opposed to polite indifference, possible?
For Christians, the oldest and most obvious strategy-though hardly one calculated to encourage dialogue-is to dissolve the problem by insisting on the truth of Christianity to the exclusion of other religions. Typically, this amounts to the idea that salvation requires explicit faith in Christ prior to death. The "exclusivist" option is not much in favor these days, and is usually preceded by the word "arrogant" or some other negative epithet-only to dismiss it as inappropriate in most discussions with those of other faiths. Furthermore, many have pointed out that our ( i.e., a Christian's) faith in God's all-embracing providential care for the human race, would seem to require of Christian communities that they admit that their own traditions could not have a monopoly on religious truth and virtue.
Other strategies for dealing with religious diversity have been termed "inclusivist" or "pluralist." Inclusivists hold that all religions implicitly aim at the salvation that Christianity proclaims, even though their adherents may be unaware of the fact. Pluralists go one step further. They hold that all religious communities aim at transcendence of some sort, but that the nature of this transcendence cannot be expressed in words. Particular religions, pluralists claim, are by their very nature inadequate, culture-bound attempts to conceptualize something beyond conceptualization.
The inclusivist option has a long history, going back to some church fathers. Nicholas of Cusa's 'De pace fidei', written soon after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, is a classic example of the genre. He wrote about a Greek, a Turk, a Jew, and others discussing the diversity of religious belief and concluded that "this diversity is reducible to the worship of one God,". Not, by the way, an official position of the Catholic church today.
The pluralist option also has a long history, and it has become especially popular in recent decades as many theologians have come to fear nothing more than the accusation of being narrow-minded. Unlike the inclusivist, who tends to keep his critical powers intact, the pluralist prefers to close his eyes and murmur vague formulations about the goal of religion. Paul Tillich's once-famous, existential slogan, in which he substituted the phrase " the Ultimate Concern," in lieu of "God' is one. that comes to mind.
One of the chief aims of those who promote diversity in matters spiritual is to steer a course between the exclusivist position on the one hand and the inclusivist and pluralist options on the other. But if exclusivism is unwarrantedly "dogmatic" and "arrogant", inclusivism and pluralism are to me, equally unacceptable because they are vague and indeterminate and indulge in verbal gymnastics and shell games.
For example, this can work by reinterpreting any given expression of religious life in terms of some previously accepted tradition. Such accounts assert that the adherents of other traditions attain through their own traditions, not the aim defined and fostered by their distinctive patterns of life but that fostered by another. So the Buddhist monk might think he is aiming at nirvana, but "really" he is aiming at personal union with Christ. This patronizing attitude is not tolerance but a caricature of tolerance. It cannot, be truly respectful of the doctrines and lives of the members of other religious communities to attribute to them the unwitting pursuit of the aim of life as one defines it in one's own community.
The pluralist position is even more problematic for they tend to wallow in a cozy vagueness that I alluded to before. For example, to say that all religions aim at the "Ultimate Reality" or some such meaningless new age term, is to state an aim of such generality as to fail entirely to describe what actually transpires in religious communities. And in so doing, the pluralist forfeits the authority to say anything about the truth of the ideas he espouses. For religious doctrines that fail to assert anything definitive about that which is transcendent, then there is no point in debating the truth of religious doctrines expressing contradictory or even just different accounts of it.
At best, these are just devices employed to forestall specific judgments about the content of religious life by saying "I'm OK, you're OK". Intellectual laziness.
It is important to understand that Christianity is not the only faith that claims exclusivity. Muslims do. Hindus, say that theirs is a tolerant faith but Buddhism was born when Gautama Buddha rejected two fundamental assertions of Hinduism - the ultimate authority of the Vedas and the caste system. He then went on to exclusively claim that there is no attainment of Nirvana except in the following of the Excellent Eightfold Path. Atheists reject the beliefs of those who believe in God. Even Bahaism, which claims to embrace all religions, ends up excluding exclusivist doctrines ! The point being that when it is said that Christians arrogantly claim exclusivity, the fact is that every major religion does so as well.
As a Christian, I try and make room for a view of religious diversity that does justice to the distinctness and integrity of different religious traditions while at the same time acknowledging the reality of salvation for those who are not Christians. How can I do this ? Because it was done for me. And it was done for me through Grace, one of the best known and least understood concepts in Christianity.
"And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord," ( Jeremiah 29:13)
My primary aim, hopefully, for this thread, is to establish some intellectual ground rules for fruitful discussion among religions and those who have none, not to defend religion itself against the criticisms of secular philosophy. Wish me luck.
All too often today, in religious matters as well as elsewhere, the desire to be intellectually ecumenical and nondiscriminatory results in a vague pluralism we call "diversity" that often times seems purchased at the expense of truth. Real differences of opinion and conviction are also papered over in the name of "tolerance". Whose purposes and whose agenda is being served by this ? To my mind, what one achieves thereby is not tolerance but a loss of critical judgement. The deep divisions that separate people cannot be wished out of existence simply by repeating the mantra of diversity.
The Christian claim that there is no salvation except through Jesus Christ, or the Buddhist claim that there is no attainment of Nirvana except in the following of the Excellent Eightfold Path, do not only reflect exclusivism on the part of these communities as they are often accused of. In my opinion, it also establishes, the seriousness with which each regards the true aim of life and the means necessary to attain and enjoy it.
Genuine tolerance, though, requires the assertion of one's own convictions about the truth no less than the acknowledgement of other points of view. Otherwise what one achieves is not dialogue but a series of more or less isolated monologues. That may make for warm feelings and the smugness of attitude that has become all too common, but it also encourages dishonesty and intellectual laziness.
Nirvana for the Buddhist, salvation through faith in Christ, submission to the will of Allah for the Muslim, etc. are, prima facie anyway, very different, perhaps irreconcilable, conceptions of the "true aim of life." Attainment of nirvana requires the extirpation of desire and the setting aside of the self; for the Christian, salvation involves faith and trust in the work of Christ on the cross. Moreover, most major religions in their orthodox versions present themselves as providing privileged access to the truth that they proclaim: the Dharma for the Buddhist, the teachings of Christ for the Christian, the Koran for the Muslim. Not only the definition of what counts as "the true aim of life," but also the prescription for its attainment-the modes of life enjoined for adherents-differ radically from one religion to another. There is the further complication that some religions-Judaism, for example-do not seem to include anything like what Christians call "salvation" in their conception of the "true aim of life." Given these differences, how is real tolerance or conversation, as opposed to polite indifference, possible?
For Christians, the oldest and most obvious strategy-though hardly one calculated to encourage dialogue-is to dissolve the problem by insisting on the truth of Christianity to the exclusion of other religions. Typically, this amounts to the idea that salvation requires explicit faith in Christ prior to death. The "exclusivist" option is not much in favor these days, and is usually preceded by the word "arrogant" or some other negative epithet-only to dismiss it as inappropriate in most discussions with those of other faiths. Furthermore, many have pointed out that our ( i.e., a Christian's) faith in God's all-embracing providential care for the human race, would seem to require of Christian communities that they admit that their own traditions could not have a monopoly on religious truth and virtue.
Other strategies for dealing with religious diversity have been termed "inclusivist" or "pluralist." Inclusivists hold that all religions implicitly aim at the salvation that Christianity proclaims, even though their adherents may be unaware of the fact. Pluralists go one step further. They hold that all religious communities aim at transcendence of some sort, but that the nature of this transcendence cannot be expressed in words. Particular religions, pluralists claim, are by their very nature inadequate, culture-bound attempts to conceptualize something beyond conceptualization.
The inclusivist option has a long history, going back to some church fathers. Nicholas of Cusa's 'De pace fidei', written soon after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, is a classic example of the genre. He wrote about a Greek, a Turk, a Jew, and others discussing the diversity of religious belief and concluded that "this diversity is reducible to the worship of one God,". Not, by the way, an official position of the Catholic church today.
The pluralist option also has a long history, and it has become especially popular in recent decades as many theologians have come to fear nothing more than the accusation of being narrow-minded. Unlike the inclusivist, who tends to keep his critical powers intact, the pluralist prefers to close his eyes and murmur vague formulations about the goal of religion. Paul Tillich's once-famous, existential slogan, in which he substituted the phrase " the Ultimate Concern," in lieu of "God' is one. that comes to mind.
One of the chief aims of those who promote diversity in matters spiritual is to steer a course between the exclusivist position on the one hand and the inclusivist and pluralist options on the other. But if exclusivism is unwarrantedly "dogmatic" and "arrogant", inclusivism and pluralism are to me, equally unacceptable because they are vague and indeterminate and indulge in verbal gymnastics and shell games.
For example, this can work by reinterpreting any given expression of religious life in terms of some previously accepted tradition. Such accounts assert that the adherents of other traditions attain through their own traditions, not the aim defined and fostered by their distinctive patterns of life but that fostered by another. So the Buddhist monk might think he is aiming at nirvana, but "really" he is aiming at personal union with Christ. This patronizing attitude is not tolerance but a caricature of tolerance. It cannot, be truly respectful of the doctrines and lives of the members of other religious communities to attribute to them the unwitting pursuit of the aim of life as one defines it in one's own community.
The pluralist position is even more problematic for they tend to wallow in a cozy vagueness that I alluded to before. For example, to say that all religions aim at the "Ultimate Reality" or some such meaningless new age term, is to state an aim of such generality as to fail entirely to describe what actually transpires in religious communities. And in so doing, the pluralist forfeits the authority to say anything about the truth of the ideas he espouses. For religious doctrines that fail to assert anything definitive about that which is transcendent, then there is no point in debating the truth of religious doctrines expressing contradictory or even just different accounts of it.
At best, these are just devices employed to forestall specific judgments about the content of religious life by saying "I'm OK, you're OK". Intellectual laziness.
It is important to understand that Christianity is not the only faith that claims exclusivity. Muslims do. Hindus, say that theirs is a tolerant faith but Buddhism was born when Gautama Buddha rejected two fundamental assertions of Hinduism - the ultimate authority of the Vedas and the caste system. He then went on to exclusively claim that there is no attainment of Nirvana except in the following of the Excellent Eightfold Path. Atheists reject the beliefs of those who believe in God. Even Bahaism, which claims to embrace all religions, ends up excluding exclusivist doctrines ! The point being that when it is said that Christians arrogantly claim exclusivity, the fact is that every major religion does so as well.
As a Christian, I try and make room for a view of religious diversity that does justice to the distinctness and integrity of different religious traditions while at the same time acknowledging the reality of salvation for those who are not Christians. How can I do this ? Because it was done for me. And it was done for me through Grace, one of the best known and least understood concepts in Christianity.
"And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord," ( Jeremiah 29:13)
Comment