In reviewing David's book, I have to declare a considerable interest. Much of the experience that David incorporates in the book, I shared at least at second hand. We have learned and rejoiced together, valued each other's different experiences and insights, and disagreed sometimes in our interpretations. I hope many people reading the book will have a similar range of reactions.
For each of us, individually and within the faith and practice we share with others, there are certain experiences and ideas which must be validated by any interpretation we are offered. If they are not, then that interpretation will not be adequate for us.
For me, this includes the experiences of the holy people — the mystics, the deep thinkers, the compassionate and dedicated — of every age and faith. The great stories which have inspired whole communities must be affirmed and not negated.
Any interpretation of the religions of the world must seek to value them all, or it will be inadequate.
David, in my understanding, shares this. He also needs to affirm and value a tool which he has and which is not available to everyone — the tradition of European philosophy over the last few centuries.
It is often claimed in our Sea of Faith literature that the culture and thought of our age is influenced and formed by these philosophers. I am sceptical about that, wondering whether the verbal gymnastics of the philosophers is not rather the result of the interaction of their psychologies with the culture and thought-forms within which they do their thinking. Perhaps they comment on human change more than shaping it.
For those reading David’s book who tend to think somewhat as I do, it may be wise to miss out the Introduction and Chapter 1 on the first reading. I found that section of the book difficult to follow and in any case little more than a précis of ground familiar since Don Cupitt’s Sea of Faith. I have no doubt, though, that others will find it valuable.
The book comes alive for me at Chapter 2. Judaism is a religion of relationships. Doctrines about God are not important. ‘Don’t ask the name; get on with the task of fulfilling the divine will.’ Since Auschwitz, many Jewish thinkers have sought to reshape Jewish cultural identity independently of a supernaturalist conception of God as Lord of history. David illustrates with quotations from Job, Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes), Kabbalistic theology, Abraham Kok, Mordecai Kaplan and Lionel Blue.
The chapter ends with a plea for us all to replace the competitive stress on our own survival with coexistence and respect for each other’s stories.
Chapter 3 places the radical theology to be found in Christianity in the context of a multi-faith approach with selective quotations from the thought of the Fourth Gospel and from — among others — Eckhart, Boehme, Luther, Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer and Hick.
But the vision changes profoundly with Chapter 4 on Hinduism. Here is a religion whose essence is inclusive. No longer does David need to select texts which are at variance with the mainstream thinking of the Faith. Instead, the chapter is full of lovingly-told experiences — a pilgrimage to the festival of Lord Ayyappa, meditation on Shiva Nataraja — and quotations from the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita. We can ‘pass over’ into a world view other than our own, and find it inspiring. The chapter examines the implications of the thought-forms of the Sanatan Dharma (perennial philosophy or eternal truth) as many Hindus would prefer to call their Faith. The limitations are well assessed, but an attempt to interpret the Indian mind in terms of ‘non-realism’ struck me as unconvincing, though carefully argued. I would argue that ‘real’ in English translations of Hindu texts is contrasted with Maya (‘illusion’), referring to the world of our senses.
The questions which Hindu philosophy addresses cannot be identified with European philosophy.
By an easy transition we are into Buddhism in Chapter 5, a religion free from speculation on the nature of the divine or of the self. Enlightenment is the profoundest possible insight into our experience of the world; it is to know the tathata (suchness) of it all — how it is. There is nothing else, nothing outside, just a deeper understanding of what is. This is a most profound challenge to SoF Magazine No. 24, January 1996 those religions which seek to define and categorise an Other. Yet do the statues of the Buddha symbolise the absolute? The question is well explored in terms of ‘compassion’ and a quotation from the Zen Master Ch’ing-yuan.
In the chapter on Islam we are back to careful selection of quotations. I did not feel that David had ‘passed over’ into Muslim thought. Certainly to describe the Quran as ‘clearly a human creation’ betrayed a detached objectivity, from which standpoint surely ALL scriptures are human creations. Perhaps that illustrates the present vulnerability of Islam, in that its central scripture is more historically accessible than other scriptures to us who have not shared the devotion engendered by it. Nevertheless, David explores the interpretation of the beautiful image of the light in Sura 34, the Sufi tradition and the writings of alAfghani and Muhammad Iqbal to map out ways of understanding Islam in symbolic terms.
Why should we impose ANY universal category on all religions (as Cantwell Smith and Hick seek to do)? David asks the question with disapproval, yet himself seems to try to impose non-realism as a universal category. Should we not just observe and value what is there?
The book ends with more personal experiences and ‘tales of individual spiritual discovery’. For me, David’s book is primarily a traveller’s tale, which recounts excitedly the wonders he has seen, and urges us to make the journey too.
It is, I think, in that context that the Introduction and Chapter 1 have value. David writes towards the end of the book, ‘a single principle of interpretation results in myopic vision’; but it is not easy merely to accept the failure of a narrow literalist faith — even myopia is better than blindness — but a broader vision can render our narrowness obsolete.
David A. Hart, One Faith? Non-realism and the World of Faiths (Mowbray, 1995), ISBN 0-264-67367-0.