Interesting article on pluralism

[Vimalakirti]

Here's an interesting article on pluralism from a Christian perspective. Uses some technical vocabulary in spots, but worth the read.

http://www.religion-online.org/showa....asp?title=914

[Vimalakirti]

Here's a follow-up, an interview with Raimon Panikkar:
http://www.emptybell.org/panikkar.html

[Bandit]

i liked them both & thanks for sharing. the things he is talking about are true for me. it is kind of hard to find two people who can go that whole distance & we all may find ourselves getting 'stuck' at times, & that can be a good thing.

to do what he is talking about, you almost have to go into one on one debate, like you mentioned earlier I am 'A' & you are 'B', lets discuss.
plus the two persons need to have a sincere interest in the topic & be willing to go the distance & get along.
you cannot have others popping off, disrupting & repeating the things that were already discussed. it becomes too repetitive & obnoxious for the two or three who really want to discuss the nitty gritty.

just my 2 pennies

Gorday did a real nice job with the article too.

[Vimalakirti]

Originally Posted by Bandit

i liked them both & thanks for sharing. the things he is talking about are true for me. it is kind of hard to find two people who can go that whole distance & we all may find ourselves getting 'stuck' at times, & that can be a good thing.

to do what he is talking about, you almost have to go into one on one debate, like you mentioned earlier I am 'A' & you are 'B', lets discuss.
plus the two persons need to have a sincere interest in the topic & be willing to go the distance & get along.
you cannot have others popping off, disrupting & repeating the things that were already discussed. it becomes too repetitive & obnoxious for the two or three who really want to discuss the nitty gritty.

just my 2 pennies

Gorday did a real nice job with the article too.

Glad you liked the articles. Pannikkar is new to me as well. I'll have to find one of his books, when I get the opportunity. I was put on to him by Earl.

You know, what he's proposing here to me is like the metaphysical equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time. For most of us, it's a pretty neat trick to be fully committed to one's own tradition, while fully open to others.

On the other hand, something like this kind of pluralism seems to me the only way out, the only solution to all the misunderstanding, intolerance & sheer wackiness that goes on in the name of religion.

Absolutism will promote all kinds of havoc in the name of imposing unity, and will never be happy until we're all Catholic, or all Muslim, or all Orthodox, or whatever - in fact, even in mostly tolerant Buddhism there's this idea that theistic type salvation is just a stop-off for those poor schlemiels who can't handle the rigours of the true enlightenment we're all headed for!

At the other extreme, relativism at best just reduces everything to a lot of warm & fuzzy blather and good intentions, and would result I think in all the traditions just dying of boredom.

Cheers & good luck.

[lunamoth]

Thank you for the links, Michael (V). I'm happy to see the new threads on the topic of pluralism and I enjoyed the first article (I didn't read the second yet). Interesting idea, to embrace pluralism as a "thin place." What can I say but that I agree. From my prespective God does not care what religion one practices, what beliefs one holds, but nevertheless what we choose to practice and believe is very important for our salvation here and now. Salvation is a loaded word on these fora sometimes but I do not mean it as in "getting into heaven" after one dies. I mean living a full and authentic life.

peace,
lunamoth

[lunamoth]

I've had to return to this thread because something I wrote in my last post has not set well in my heart. It was beyond the pale, even for me , to say that God does not care what religion one practices or what beliefs one holds. That sounds too much like relativism and too much like an impersonal and uncaring God, neither of which I believe. It's just that I see religions as man made and not worth fighting over, killing over. While religions are man made, what is valid and vital about them is that they are a response to our experience of God and the best of them give us access to the collected wisdom that can help us approach God in this life, before the veil is removed at the end of our days. The best of them are about building God's Kingdom here on earth and finding It in our own lives. I find the blueprint for the Kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount, and I find the encouragment, faith and inspiritation needed to carry it through in the rest of the Gospels, Paul's letters and many other places in the Bible.

I am a Christian again (a Re-Episcopalian). When it comes to the afterlife I believe in radical grace. Is this universalism? Is this pluralism? I don't know. All I know is that I have faith in a compassionate, loving and forgiving God Who wants us to be compassionate, loving and forgiving to each other. Jesus, literally God with us, showed us what we are capable of even though it took Him to death. Paul taught us that that death is true life.

Before my return to Christianity last year, I was a Baha'i for about five years. Baha'is believe that all the major worlds religions, including the eastern religions Buddhism and Hinduism, are all related via progressive revelation as part of one unfolding religion of God. Progressive revelation is also found in Islam, although I don't think it includes the eastern religions and certainly not Baha'i, which it considers heretical (Baha'i arose out of Islam much as Christianity arose from Judaism). Needless to say, I loved this idea that all religions are one and in a way that made pretty good sense. However, I found that while Baha'i believe that all religions are one, not all are equal. A quote from the first essay cited by V's first post:

His (Panikkar's) working proposition is that for modem persons of any persuasion "isolation is no longer possible and unity is not convincing since it destroys one of the parties."

If you could only pick one word to describe the Baha'i religion, it would have to be "Unity." There is no getting around the fact that Baha'is believe that eventually everyone will (most will not say "must") be a Baha'i: it is a triumphalistic faith. But, so are Christianity and Islam. While Baha'is have utmost respect for other religions and are often involved in interfaith partnerships, the bottom line is that the Baha'i Faith, as the most recent Revelation, contains the divine edict for this day. Everyone else is going by "corrupted" and outdated interpretations of God's plan. While I was never comfortable with this aspect of the Baha'i Faith, it is not why I left.

I am not such a relativist as to believe that the truth is cut up in slices like a cake. But I am convinced that each of us participates in the truth. Inevitably, my truth is the truth that I perceive from my window. And the value of dialogue between the various religions is precisely to help me perceive that there are other windows, other perspectives. Therefore I need the other in order to know and verify my own perspective of the truth. Truth is a genuine and authentic participation in the dynamism of reality. When Jesus says "I am the truth," he is not asking me to absolutize my doctrinal system but to enter upon the way that leads to life.(Pannikar)

But when I decided that was no longer a Baha'i, that I had serious reservations about the workings of the Baha'i Faith that lead me to doubt Baha'u'llah's claim, I was left with my faith in the More and sitting there saying, well, what do I do with this? The only answer for me was to return to Christianity, and to the religion of my family and heritage. And I have re-embraced Christianity fully, I have come home. But now what to do with my pluralistic inclinations? I do not want to be unorthodox. I hate being considered not a True Christian by literal Bible believers and a heretic by mainstream Christians. If not unity of belief, I long for unity of compassion, love and forgiveness. And that does not happen when you cling to something you believe is the one and only ablsolute truth. Everyone else has got to be wrong and in need of being converted to your way.

I hold to my truth. I am even ready to commit my life to it and to die for it. I am simply saying that I do not have a monopoly on truth, and that what is most important is the manner in which you and I enter into that truth, how we perceive it and hear it. Thomas Aquinas said, "You do not possess the truth; it is truth that possesses you." Yes, we are possessed by truth. That is what makes me live; but the other lives, too, by virtue of her truth. I do not engage myself first of all to defend my truth, but to live it. And the dialogue between religions is not a strategy for making one truth triumphant, but a process of looking for it and deepening it along with others.(Panikkar)

I know that for many the whole issue about pluralism vs. absolutism revolves around the idea of an afterlife, getting into heaven or ending up in hell. But I believe the worst hell is being apart from God, and that is something we choose or not in our own ways. Not in totally random and relative ways, but in meaningful ways based upon the collective Wisdom of our religions and sacred writings. God cares what we believe and do, you can't interchange one religion for another, you can't force all religions into one mold. At the end of the day, what really counts is how much you've loved. And really this is the heart of the ten commandments, and the compassion of the Buddha, and soul of Baha'i. Well, I've vented quite a lot in this post, which wasn't my original intention. Thank you, Vimalakirti, for the links. Guess I'm in OK company.

lunamoth

[InLove]

Yes, all of those, Luna--including the message of Christ. I don't fit well, either--the fundamentalists think I am either looney or lost, and all the rest think I think I can save them. .

Well, your post touched my heart, and I would love to write a whole bunch more--the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is, frankly, tired tonight.

Guess I just wanted to thank you for your candid and sincere words before I log out.

InPeace,
InChrist,
InLove

[path_of_one]

Thank you lunamoth, for that post. You said very eloquently what I've struggled to put into words. I'm not a relativist; obviously, I made my choice, and so I think the choice matters. But I also believe that my understanding of Truth is limited, because I am limited. Studying other religions shows me a little bit of other people's understanding of the Truth. And I, too, believe in radical grace- I do not believe God will forsake one person who turns toward Him, no matter what religion they follow. It's all about devotion and spirituality for me, and yet it is also about being faithful to the Truth one has personally received. It's a paradox- while I feel it is perfectly acceptable for someone else to be Buddhist, for example, and I feel that if they are devoted they will be saved and embraced by God, it is not the right choice for me. God gave me a different understanding of the Truth, and I have to be faithful to that.

Although I don't believe in the unity of all religions- I think as you do that each is its own tradition of wisdom- I do believe in the unity of people's attempts to reach out to God, to express their experience of the Divine. Underneath all traditions are individuals with their arms outstretched toward that Big Something. And I believe that any tradition that is connecting with the Divine will show love, compassion, and forgiveness. The essence of God is love, and there is the unity. I agree that the best traditions will serve others rather than be about the self, and will encourage people to usher in the Kingdom.
I deeply appreciate this forum; most Christians I know are fundamentalist/conservative, and I love them, but I felt shoved outside the fold. As InLove says, most think I'm crazy, lost, or rapidly on my merry way to both. And yet I am not relativist enough, and certainly not rational enough, for most of my agnostic/atheist collegues. Mostly I just feel lonely, except for a few family members. I've searched and searched for a church and eventually just became a path-of-one. I feel it would be very wrong to lie about my beliefs and spirituality, to try to fit in when I don't, because God made me as I am and gave me the experiences I have. It has truly made me feel like I have more of a fellowship to converse with others in this position, and find that perhaps I am not so far outside the fold after all.

[lunamoth]

Thanks for the support, InLove and Path of One . Guess that's why I like it here at CR so much--it's been a place to find others with whom to share my experiences and beliefs in a respectful manner.

In His Peace,
lunamoth

[Vimalakirti]

Originally Posted by lunamoth

God cares what we believe and do, you can't interchange one religion for another, you can't force all religions into one mold. At the end of the day, what really counts is how much you've loved. And really this is the heart of the ten commandments, and the compassion of the Buddha, and soul of Baha'i. lunamoth

I appreciate your thoughtful and moving response, although it does worry me a little. I don't want to think that I've brought you any grief by passing those links along, and you do sound just a little melancholy in spots. That's what makes me nervous about these forums. I think it's interesting and hopefully salutary to challenge one another's beliefs, but I also know that strong emotions are always just around the corner. And I'm sure at times I've said the wrong things, yahoo that I am.

But I do think that people like Panikkar are very hopeful signs that we'll all wake up, and maybe sooner than we think. Another productive way of looking at the solution is just what you've talked about here - a personal relationship with God. I don't conceptualize things in the same way for myself, but to me it points to the vital truth: that fundamentally all core religious experience is I/thou; it’s the transformation or integration of consciousness person by person (and this can and has been said in a thousand other ways).

The point I always return to is that institutions and doctrinal systems are just tools, built around people who have the kind of experiences we're talking about, and intended to help other people realize the same experiences. And to me the most obvious analogy is language. Every living language say the linguists is completely adequate to its tasks – even if temporarily it lacks certain vocabulary, it has rules for constructing or borrowing new words.

So within every successful, living religious language we can achieve something like a sense of the “absolute”, but that says nothing about the possibility of approaching the absolute through other languages. Why would anyone force you to, say, speak Catholic, when speaking Islamic or Southern Baptist does the job just as well? Well, they’ll say, because the truth isn’t just language it’s about historical fact and verifiable experience. (Hurumph! Hurumph!) But how is this truth or experience communicated except through language? And what tradition claims an absolute identity of human language and ultimate reality?

And yet, the great traditions tie seventeen kinds of knots with interpretative strategies designed to put the most heterogeneous material into one harmonious whole and to show that these words, these particular words, exclusively and inevitably lead to the Absolute. This has been a great schooling of the Western World. Many a fine intellect – Jewish, Christian, Muslim - has been sharpened through toiling over this Sisyphean task. But again, being a simple (and lazy) modern I return to linguistics. There are signifiers (words); there is the signified (concepts) and there is the referent. And in religious matters the referent is wonderfully out of reach, and wonderfully close at hand.

So I think every great tradition is a great language adequate to the task and needing no apology. At the same time, religious traditions are mixed bags; they do double, triple, quadruple duty as social and political entities, with all the difficulties that involves. Even if traditions were able to keep focussed purely on the spirit, the letter of the necessary and inevitable doctrinal system is a powerful instrument (language) and easily mis-used. It reminds me of the old saying about the inmates running the asylum. Sometimes in religious matters it’s the asylum running the asylum.

But again, that’s why you sound to me to be on a good track. You respect the necessary role of institutions, while showing that you also understand that the real work & power! of religion happens on a personal level, from friend to friend. You can find those friends across traditions – people with their focus on the referent, not on the words or concepts they use. Even better, within the tradition you’ve returned to you’ll probably not only find friends of like mind but also of like words! (BTW, the Dali Lama has pointed out that we’re probably better off returning to our own traditions, whatever insights we may have gained elsewhere. Life is short, so why put in the time learning a whole new language and set of cultural peculiarities without compelling reasons or interest?)

Please tell me I’ve done more good than harm with what I hope is the last of my extended wind-baggeries!
All the best.

[lunamoth]

Dear Vimalarkiti,

No worries! I didn't mean to bleed all over your thread. I guess I should implement some kind of personal policy against posting anything after 10 pm. If my post sounded melancholy it was probably a combination of unresolved disappointment concerning the Baha'i Faith plus sadness over the divisions caused by religion, not anything you wrote or from the articles. I am enriched by the links you provided.

I am not sure if I've heard that statement from the Dali Lama before but it makes sense to me. And I like your metaphor comparing religion to language. Thank you for your many kind words--certainly no harm done!

peace,
lunamoth