globaltheology

Pressure from comparative studies

IIC conference: Harold Kasimow (centre) in dialogue with Brian Pearce and Kusumita Pedersen

Recognising some theological affinities across boundaries of tradition is beginning to suggest that we are related to one another in more than ordinary human ways of friendship.

For example, the Jewish theologian, Harold Kasimow, has suggested how the Indian sage, Swami Vivekananda and the Jewish philosopher, Abraham Heschel, valued the human being as being ‘of God’.

Kasimow writes:

According to Vivekananda, the central aim of man and woman lies in ‘aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine nature.

And Kasimow points out Heschel’s words:

It is the whole man and every man who was made in the image and likeness of God… The image is not in man; it is man.

Both stress the love of God and the compassionate love for others that flow from this grounding in divine love. Both agree that religious intuition cannot be separated from social and political issues. Both pointed out that respect and learning from others is the new fact of our time.

Vivekananda said,

I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We not only believe in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true.

And Heschel affirmed:

Perhaps it is the will of God that in this aeon there should be diversity in our forms of devotion and commitment to Him. In this aeon diversity of religions is the will of God.

(For the full account of this comparison, see Harold Kasimow, Swami Vivekananda & Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants’ Interreligious Insight, Volume 1, Number 3, July 2003).

Many ‘experiments’ in dialogue and exchange have taken place over the last 30 years, producing some remarkable results. For example the ‘Guidelines for Interreligious Understanding’, produced by the Snowmass Conference in 1984, show an intriguing convergence between religions:

1. The world religions bear witness to the experience of Ultimate Reality, to which they give various names: Brahman, Allah, Absolute, God, Great Spirit.
2. Ultimate Reality cannot be limited by any name or concept.
3. Ultimate Reality is the ground of infinite potentiality and actualization.
4. Faith is opening, accepting and responding to Ultimate Reality. Faith in this sense precedes every belief system.
5. The potential for human wholeness – or in other frames of reference, enlightenment, salvation, transformation, blessedness, nirvana, - is present in every human person.
6. Ultimate Reality may be experienced not only through religious practices but also through nature, art, human relationships, and service of others.
7. As long as the human condition is experienced as separate from Ultimate Reality, it is subject to ignorance and illusion, weakness and suffering.
8. Disciplined practice is essential to the spiritual life; yet spiritual attainment is not the result of one’s own efforts, but the result of the experience of oneness with Ultimate Reality.

(Source: Thomas Keating, Theological Issues in Meditative Technologies’, in Interfaith Spirituality, The Way Supplement 78, Autumn 1993, p. 56)

Noting similarities across traditions does not of course suggest an immediate theological or philosophical solution to the problem of religious diversity. The religions remain different apprehensions of the meaning of life. What it does do is give backing for the idea that the religions do exist as part of a sacred-human continuum in life.

 

Contents / Introduction / Global superiority / All-Inclusive / Momentum / Pressure / Inductive approaches / Initiatives /Summary / Inspiration / Resources

 

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© International interfaith organisations network 2003