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globaltheology
Strategies for global superiority
The religions which are classed as transforming religions - that is, they exist to transform how human beings approach and live out their lives in relation to a higher reality and one another - are bound to think that they are superior as the chosen channel for that work of transformation. Consider some of the various ways in which religions can do this:
a) by stating that they are the ‘final’ religion – that is, the religion is God’s last instrument in historical time. So:
- Islam has accepted the validity of Judaism and Christianity as ‘religions of the book,’ yet Islam has THE book which is the revelation of God through the Qur’an.
- Christianity has said that Jesus the Christ is God’s last messianic saviour for the world.
- The Baha’i religion has considered itself to contain the most universalist perspective because it originated only in the nineteenth century, several centuries after other monotheistic outlooks.
b) by stating that they are the oldest of the religions – i.e. God’s first revelation and the claim to be the foundation from which all else has derived. So:
- Judaism can say it is the precursor for Christianity and Islam
- Chinese traditions contain within them the wisdom of ancient sages
- Indigenous religions are the oldest concerned with the earth
c) by stating that they allow multiple points of view as part of a basic religious outlook. So:
- Sikhism points to the fact that the Sikh scriptures, the Guru Granth Sahib, contains the line that in God there is no Hindu or Muslim.
- Buddhism allows for each person to discover their own path
- Jainism has the basic principle of relativity at its heart, the principle of ‘none-one-sidedness’.
- Hinduism rejoices in the approach that ‘truth is one and sages name it variously.’
There is a problem, however, with all the strategies adopted here: the ‘finality’ of the religion is defined as a function of one tradition only. The fact of being ancient, recent or multiple-minded is not sufficient reason for holding to that ‘finality’ in today’s religiously plural world. ‘Finality’ turns out to be an ideological construction and not an experiential judgement.
We can point out the difficulty in another way. All religions emerge into history as the result of an experience of revelation or disclosure of truth. This is what gives a religion a particular cultural shape – religions originate within certain boundaries. Yet the transforming religions extend themselves beyond those early boundaries to claim a universal truth, a truth for all times and places, and this is part of their attractiveness. What we have today is a number of universal religions each claiming universal truths but doing so in culturally bound ways.
The Christian theologian, Paul Tillich (d.1965) once said that
In the depth of every religion there is a point at which the religion itself loses its importance, and that to which it points breaks through its particularity elevating it to spiritual freedom and with it to a vision of the spiritual presence in other expressions of the ultimate meaning of man’s existence. (Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions, 1963).
If this is correct then the particularity of one religious expression has to find ways of recognising the depth and riches of spiritual understanding in other religions. It becomes less likely that one religion can claim to have discovered the whole of what needs to be said about the human spiritual condition. Of course any religion can claim to be the universal truth for everyone but to do that exclusively seems increasingly arbitrary.
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Is
there something that seems to you a universal truth? Why do you
think so? Do you find it only in your own religion or have you
discovered it in other religions also, or outside of religions
altogether? Can any religion ever deliver universal truth, that
is, a truth for all?
Contents / Introduction / Global superiority / All-Inclusive / Momentum / Pressure / Inductive approaches / Initiatives / Summary / Inspiration / Resources
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interfaith organisations network 2003 |