Rev’d Dr. Leander Harding

David Scott

I. Introduction

Developing intellectual foundations for an intercultural dialogue is a pressing ethical task of our time. Globalization, driven by the communications and travel revolutions and by the worldwide spread of market mechanisms, makes the search for an intercultural worldview urgent. Free market mechanisms (e.g., World Trade Organization) bring international partners together; competition for labor, mineral, water and oil resources promote both competition and cooperation. Globalization invites, indeed forces, culturally diverse individuals, groups, societies and regions to acknowledge and respect each other and to cooperate. Never before has the need for an intercultural worldview been more necessary.

Where can a worldview supportive of intercultural respect and cooperation come from? What can people find in their own religious and cultural resources that might provide for, protect and promote an intercultural worldview? Does a worldview exist, or can it be found, that will promote, protect and provide for a universal human community of respect, tolerance, solidarity and cooperation? What set of truth claims about the world, human nature and human history can support global institutions like the United Nations, or even more regional groupings of nations like the European Union? The recently popular theme in the 1990s of “culture war” in the United States, a theme with parallels in other countries, also begs the question whether a commonly shared basis for civil life can be found.

In this essay I identify one element of Christian tradition, the Logos or Word doctrine, as a resource for a Christian contribution to an intercultural worldview. The New Testament Logos tradition is chiefly found in the Prologue to John’s Gospel and in the Letter to the Colossians. This tradition identifies the Logos as fully divine yet distinct from God, the Creator. While, according to the Fourth Gospel, the Word or Logos is eternally with God and, indeed is God, the Logos is also distinct from God and became incarnate in the person Jesus. Further, and especially important for this essay, God, the Creator, made the world in and through the Logos. Thus, for the New Testament Logos teaching, the Logos is a principle of unity, generating the creation as a cosmos, not chaos; generating a universe not a random array of beings but a universe. Even more important for our subject, the Logos is “the light which enlightens every human being, ” implying a relation between the Logos and human knowing and human solidarity. Still further, the Logos endows each creature with both inner coherence and intra-connectivity, this is a metaphysical foundation for human community. I will develop these themes further in relation to the relevant New Testament passages. The main point of this essay is to identify this New Testament Logos motif as a resource for Christianity’s contribution to an intercultural worldview. Along the way I also identify and briefly explore some problems inherent in Christian proposals for an intercultural worldview.

In proposing the Logos motif as a basis for an intercultural worldview, I am very intentionally implying that such a worldview requires a metaphysical foundation. That is, such an intercultural worldview should, in my opinion, be founded on truth claims about what reality is like or not like. The Logos is such a metaphysical principle . This has at least three important implications.

First, and perhaps least contentious of these three implications, is that making metaphysical truth claims is consistent with the major tradition of Christian theology. We say below that we will not develop in this essay the later theological elaboration of the Logos doctrine. But we can point out that the Christian Apologists of the third and fourth century did employ the Logos doctrine to make truth claims about truth found in pagan philosophy and other religions, about human reason and about the nature of creation as a whole. This metaphysical tradition continued through the Middle Ages, following the Platonic track in Augustinian theology and a more Aristotelian track in Thomas Aquinas’ theology. Proposing the Logos doctrine as a resource for a worldview stands in this metaphysical tradition.

Relating Christian faith to metaphysical claims, admittedly, is not a universal feature of Christian theology. Friedrich Schleiermacher may have been the first important Christian theologian to dissociate, intentionally and explicitly, theological statements from metaphysics and from ethics. This methodological decision has enormous implications for Christian theology’s relation to its own intellectual tradition and to philosophy and culture generally.

A second implication, more contentious, is that metaphysical claims based on the Logos doctrine involves disagreeing with a major feature of much Postmodern philosophy. An important aspect, indeed a distinctive aspect, of Postmodern philosophy is its intentional rejection of the possibility of metaphysical claims and therefore of truth claims. One form of much Postmodern philosophy restricts itself to critiques of all such metaphysical truth claims as veiled forms of control and power. This is Postmodern philosophy in the tradition from Friedrich Nietzsche to Michel Foucault.

The philosophical writings of Richard Rorty represent a second facet of Postmodern rejection of metaphysics and truth claims. Rorty does not reject traditional metaphysics in the name of another sort of metaphysics. Rorty, in the name of a Postmodern form of John Dewey’s and William James’ Pragmatism, prescinds from any sort of metaphysics, including a denial the possibility of truth claims. Rorty recognizes that such a denial would be itself a form of truth claim. In the name of Pragmatism and claiming membership in a larger company of contemporary philosophers, Rorty argued that human solidarity if better furthered by prescinding from truth claims of any kind.

Rorty’s position is very important for the theme of this essay, for Rorty very clearly is committed to human solidarity, tolerance and cooperation as a moral goal. Indeed, he thinks rescinding from metaphysical truth claims holds more promise for tolerance, cooperation and human solidarity than seeking a metaphysical basis for these. In this essay, however, we take a different route. We make truth claims about the nature of the world, human nature and human history, truth claims implied in the New Testament Logos idea. An assessment of Rorty’s non-metaphysical proposal for human solidarity must be deferred to another writing.

A third, and most contentious, implication of any metaphysical commitment, such as involved in the Logos doctrine, is that non- Christian resources for an intercultural worldview inevitably will the assessed for the metaphysical claims they make about reality. This means that this essay will make judgments about the metaphysical adequacy of other religions and philosophies as possible sources for an intercultural worldview. This implication is most contentious, because it relates world religions at the level of truth claims and invites religious disagreement. This collides with the widespread modern sentiment that religion, if not banned from the human scene altogether as a virulent virus, should at least avoid controversy over truth claims and just offers comfort to that religion’s adherents.
Intended Audience for This Essay

This essay is addressed to anyone interested in the problem of intercultural understanding. In particular my intended audience is Christian theologians, pastors, theologically interested laity and theological students who seek resources for addressing global ethical problems. An important sub-theme of this essay relates to readers who are Christian believers. Widespread in the media and in liberal educational circles today is the attack on organized religion generally and monotheistic religions in particular. The charge is that all monotheistic religions are intrinsically intolerant, doctrinaire, exclusivist and prone to violence in the support of alleged “absolute” or “ultimate” truth. Most postmodern people, at least in the west, insist that such absolute truth either does not exist (itself, of course, a sort of ultimate truth claim) or, if it exists, is unattainable by historically situated and intellectually finite minds.

These convictions nourish, in turn, the pervasive postmodern certainty that that all claims to “ultimate truth” are not just false but extremely dangerous for social harmony and world peace. In this connection the mass media cite the Christian Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch-burnings and violent acts by Christians in relation to abortion or support of contemporary military actions by the US to make plausible that Christianity is part of the problem of world peace and intercultural understanding, not part of the solution. I assume, therefore, that Christian readers of this essay feel challenged by the common charge that Christianity is a violence-prone religion.

Aggravating Christian defensiveness is a very low view of the “institutional churches” and their “dogmas” among modern or postmodern people. Individualism and subjectivism are key marks of popular ‘spirituality.’ Many modern or postmodern people take for granted that each person has both the right and responsibility to construct his or her own religion or spiritual worldview. Also they assume that if God can be found at all, the place to look is not the institutional churches with their normative rites, moralities and doctrines but in the depths of the self. Not the Catholic Epistles, but the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel According to Judas, are the scriptures of choice.

Further still, the public media are happy to display hypocrisy, illegalities, disagreements and divisions within the Christian Churches. The mass media present the institutional churches as of a battlefield of conservatives vs. progressivisms, of the older generation against the younger, of the “hierarchy” against the laity. This public image renders a Christian contribution to an intercultural worldview very implausible. On the contrary, the public denigration of “organized religion” implies that Christians interested in world peace, international cooperation and intercultural understanding should ignore their own Christian heritage and look outside their own tradition or seek an alleged “common denominator” in all religions for bases of intercultural worldview.

For all these reasons, leaders and other members of the institutional Christian churches need support and encouragement in their missionary and apologetic tasks. A secondary aim of this essay is to provide such support and encouragement.

Expectations for this Essay

I will concentrate in this essay on the suggestive New Testament passages about the Logos. I will develop ideas based on the Logos motif as recourse for an intercultural worldview. I do not pursue the historical use of the biblical Logos teaching in the early Christian Apologists and then, later, in the formulation of the Christian doctrine of God as Holy Trinity. I only hint in a footnote at the historical sources of the New Testament Logos doctrine. These sources are in Pre-Socratic philosophy (e.g., Heraclitus) and especially Early (Zenon and Cleanthes) and Middle (Panaeitius) Stoicism. The Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria also appropriated the Logos theme for his Hellenistic appropriation of his Jewish tradition. But, this essay is not a history study, and I do not try to develop the pre- and post- New Testament history of the Logos idea. Rather, my aim is theological and ethical. I call attention to one aspect of New Testament teaching —the Logos motif. I explore how this motif might contribute today to an intercultural worldview. Thus, this essay has very limited goals.

A further limitation of this essay is its exploratory character. This essay is not a complete and detailed analysis of the Logos doctrine as a possible element in an intercultural worldview. Such a complete treatment would require an analysis of other proposals for intercultural dialogue, a topic I touch on in passing. Such a complete treatment should also investigate the rule and history of the Logos idea in the so-called “perennial philosophy”, and in later metaphysical constructions, for example, German Idealism, and especially Hegel’s philosophy (where the Logos theme receives a dialectical interpretation).

Also, as mentioned above, full treatment of this essay’s theme requires a careful dialogue between it and specific teachings of other world religions, such as the Hindu Upanishad theme of the identity between atman (the principle of the individual self) and Brahman (the ultimate principle of all that is); for these teachings also have metaphysical implications, i.e., claims about the ultimate nature of reality. Even Judaism, which is not a missionary religion and is closely identified with Jewish ethnicity, has universalistic aspects: The Genesis creation stories speak about the creation of man and woman, i.e., humanity; the Noachic Covenant is a new start for the whole of human kind; and the prophet Isaiah speaks of Israel as a “light to the nations.” A complete investigation of this essay’s theme should also evaluate the public image of the Dalai Lama’s, recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize, as a positive religious contribution to cross-cultural tolerance and intercultural cooperation. This essay assesses the teaching of other religions only in passing and, therefore, is an insufficient treatment of its subject.

II. The Biblical Logos Teaching as a Christian Resource for an Intercultural Worldview

My proposal for a Christian contribution to an intercultural dialogue is the Logos theme in the New Testament. The core of this theme is that the whole cosmos is created in and through the Logos or Word of God. This Logos teaching has two aspects that should always be combined. The first is that God created the cosmos from nothing, i.e., from no preexisting material but as an act of absolute origination, (reatio ex nihilo.) The second aspect is the idea of creation in and through the Logos whereby the Logos stamps each creature with its own sort of metaphysical “logos” character. Creation from nothing (creatio ex nihilo) and creation in and through the Logos: these closely related biblical themes have rich implications for intercultural dialogue and a trans-cultural worldview.

Here are the key New Testament passages.

The New Testament teaching that the divine Logos exists and that God created the cosmos in and in and through the divine Logos is found in the Prologue to the Gospel According to St. John, in the Letter to the Hebrews and in Letter to the Colossians, attributed to St. Paul. We give these verses in the New Revised Standard Version.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him; and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (Gospel According to St. John 1:1-5)

He (Jesus Christ as the Word of God made human) was in the world, and the world came into being through him….” (John 1: 10)

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the world. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word (Hebrews 1:3)

He (the Word/Logos) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominations or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15-17)

The New Testament Logos tradition can also be linked to the Old Testament figure of divine Wisdom. The Wisdom figure is found most explicitly in the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 8, especially verses 22 and 23. The New Testament Logos theme has also been connected to the Genesis creation stories, which describe God as creating the world by acts of speaking. In Genesis 1: 3, 6, 9, 14, 20, 24, 26, “And God said…” is repeated before the creation of each part of the cosmos.

With these specific verses from Scripture in view, we now identify several key metaphysical implications for an intercultural worldview.

a. Comprehensive/Universality

Any worldview that might promote, protect and provide for intercultural dialogue, tolerance and solidarity must have a universal character. That is, the worldview must be centered in a principle that comprehends the whole creation, human and natural. The New Testament Logos tradition has this character. One key idea of the Logos theme is that every creature, without exception, is created in and through the divine Word/Logos. The Logos embraces every creature and therefore nothing created exists outside the framework or the scope of the divine Logos. The divine Logos/Word of God is, therefore, a metaphysical principle of inclusiveness for the whole creation. Two specific features of the Christian version of Logos teaching, however, are decisive for the character of this inclusiveness and universality.

First, the Logos, this principle of unity, is equally divine with God the Creator. Consequently, this principle of unity, the Word/Logos, transcends the creation, while simultaneously giving each creature its own ‘logos’ character. The transcendence of the world’s Principle of Unity has the extremely important implication that Christians need not or should not seek a principle of cosmic unity within the creation. No single language (English, Esperanto) could be a principle of cosmic unity; no economic order (the Free Market, the Command Market); no intra-cosmic dynamic (dialectical materialism’s class conflict inevitably leading to the utopian class-less society); no supra-national organization (the United Nations) ; no common denominator set of moral convictions (a set of moral teaching which each world religion allegedly teaches) can be a sufficient basis for an intercultural worldview. Why?

Acknowledging that the principle of cosmic unity transcends any aspect of the creation has enormous potential for peaceful coexistence. This principle means that the claim of any religion, any ethic, any political system, any international organization, any intellectual method (e.g., modern natural sciences) to be the key to intercultural tolerance, cooperation or peace would not only be a false claim but, if made a public policy, would imply some form of cultural colonialism and oppression. Inevitably any such religion, political or intellectual system will be part of one cultural tradition and not another. Insisting that this principle alone is competent for an intercultural worldview means that all other cultural traditions must submit to this alien tradition. That the principle of cosmic unity transcends the cosmos means that for a part of the cosmos to claim to be the principle of unity of the world cosmos is a form of idolatry.

Therefore, below, I address the question whether the New Testament Logos theme can be separated from its location in Christianity as a faith stance. Can we plausibly distinguish Christian faith in the Word of God from the Logos idea as part of an intercultural worldview? This is a very difficult question, but it must be tackled.

A second important implication of the transcendence of the Logos as the principle of cosmic unity is that each aspect of the creation should and plausibly can be “granted” its own particular character and individuality by every other part. One of the gracious advantages of avoiding idolatry (the elevation of something creaturely to a universal principle of unity and thus to a status of ultimate importance) is that each and every creature can learn to accept and affirm its difference and distinctiveness. If the principle that unites the creation transcends any part of creation, then unity does not require the elimination but presupposes the uniqueness of each creature. At first glance it seems paradoxical that only a transcendent principle of cosmic unity can protect, promote and provide for the value and integrity of individual difference. But thinking through the logic of the relation between a transcendent Logos and the reality and value of individual difference should make this evident.

b. Coherence

A second important implication of the transcendence of the Logos as Principle of cosmic unity is closely related to that of universality. This is the theme of connectedness of coherence. If every creature is made in and through the divine Logos, two features will mark each creature: inner coherence and external connectedness.

The word “Logos” in Greek derives from the very legein, to gather together. Thus, inherent in this New Testament theme is the idea of interconnectedness. The Logos is not only a principle of inclusion, and therefore of universality, but also a metaphysical principle of connection.

The Logos tradition, stemming from the Pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclites, has always included the note of internal constitution, certain “logic” or order to the inner structure of each thing. The New Testament Logos tradition provides an intercultural worldview with a reason to expect that every creature has some kind of intrinsic coherence/structure/order. In former centuries of western culture that internal coherence of each living thing was investigated by the traditions of Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics. In the modern west, that coherent structure is investigated by the disciplines of the natural sciences. In contemporary physics and cosmology scientists and philosophers search for a unified field theory, seeking to reduce the known laws of the physical universe to as few as possible and even to reduce these to a single, unifying law. An intercultural worldview should provide some ultimate explanation for such a unified theory and also for the human quest for it.

At the same time, the Logos, as a metaphysical principle of structure and coherence, implies that every creature is somehow connected to every other. The very notion of the world as a cosmos, i.e., a beautiful design, and not chaos, can be justified by reference to the Logos as a transcendence principle of unity.

In literary theory, one asks why metaphor, simile, analogy, indeed any of the literary tropes, can work. How can one kind of image illuminate other aspects of reality? The Logos theme implies that one thing in the creation can image other things, indeed like metaphors, can open us to new insights to other things, because at bottom, each thing is related to everything else.

One of the great strengths of the Christian Logos tradition is that it offers a coherent, rational explanation for the evident order, coherence and structure perceivable in each creature and among creatures. Indeed the Logos stamps each creature and the whole creation with its own character. In the Logos, each creature finds its own internal coherence and its connection with every other creature.

c. Human Knowledge

We have just referred to the human drive for knowledge and meaning. Meaning is the perception of relatedness among things. The Logos tradition in the New Testament illuminates not only that human beings are connected to every other creature in the cosmos (e.g., by physical laws) but also that human beings actively seek to understand and cognitively grasp these connections. More than that, the Logos teaching holds that the same Logos that illuminates the human mind has generated structure in each thing and connection among all things. Hence the Logos doctrine has functioned as a metaphysical illumination of the possibility and actuality of human knowledge.

The Fourth Gospel specifically relates the divine Logos to human reason. For Scripture, human beings are created in the Image of God, and that must mean, in biblical terms, human beings are created in the eternal Word of God, whose own divine Image is the Logos. The Logos is a principle of openness, and thus a power and capacity for knowing. For the Fourth Gospel, this Logos is a “life” which is also a “light. ”

Another of the important meanings of the Greek word logos is word in the senses of thought and language. Thought and language are means of human knowledge. Human knowledge is a special creaturely form of openness to the world, including openness to other human beings. Traditionally, two kinds of human knowing are distinguishes: personal acquaintance and knowledge about things as objects of knowing. Many languages therefore have two words to distinguish knowledge about and interpersonal knowledge. If human beings participate in some privileged and special way in the divine Logos, it follows that humans’ knowledge of other humans will have a distinct character from knowledge about non-human things. And, it also follows that if humans have a participation in the divine Logos, human knowledge of God cannot be reduced to either knowledge of an object in the world or knowledge of another person, although some similarities should be expected.

An intercultural worldview needs to provide some explanation for the distinctive aspects of human knowing. Human knowing, as just said, involves both an interpersonal knowledge and an objective knowing about. Human knowing presupposes some power of openness to the world, what the Greeks called nous (the mind’s capacity to intuitively grasp the essence or structure of something beyond the mind) or logos and the Latins called ratio. Human knowledge in all its aspects is closely connected with the next two aspects of an intercultural worldview.

d. The Human Project

An important aspect of the Logos doctrine, as mentioned above, is creation from nothing; i.e., that the existence of each creature depends upon an act of absolute origination by God. One consequence of this principle of creation from nothing is that each creature has a beginning in time and time is an ontological aspect of human existence, and perhaps of every creature. Time is a medium in which each creature exists.

One the one hand every creature, being temporal, is mortal. On the other hand creaturely existence knows continuity through time: psychological continuity—a sense of individual identity through time and social memory through generations. Thus, human existence is historical in the several aspects of the meaning of historical.

That creation has a history, a development through time, therefore is an implication of the Christian Logos doctrine. This temporality, combined with the above-mentioned feature of awareness, powerfully illuminates the human capacity both to objectify human existence, to imagine alternative forms of human life and actively to shape individual existence and social organization. Any worldview that claims intercultural value needs to provide a metaphysical account and justification for human creativity and the human project in history.

The Christian Logos teaching, specifically the idea of divine knowledge and power involved in absolute creation is reflected in human capacities of knowing and willing which express themselves in relation to the world in the theoretical and practical life, in knowing and doing. Created in the image of God, human being possesses a creaturely refection of divine creativity and imagination. The human mind of each individual and of society in history enables both self-transcendence and the capacity for introspection and the capacity to grasp and shape the world around human life. Human beings, as the modern existentialists told us, have both the privilege and the burden of making of their own individual life a project. To some degree each human being is self-directing, a shaper of his or her own life within the circumstances of his time and place, as is each social group.

In social life, this self-transcending awareness enables humans to make different aspects of common life the object of knowledge and control. Thus the human projects of science, education, of economics and of politics receive their plausibility. Production and distribution of goods and services (economics); the distribution of power and responsibility for the common life (politics); the formation of the next generation by the previous generation (education in all its aspects); the shaping of the material world to symbolize human meaning (the arts); the knowledge and control of nature for human welfare (science and technology) are all illuminated by the New Testament theme of the Logos, in which each human being participates. That the material world is, in principle, knowable, because it has a structure that human mind minds can grasp; that humans are teachable, because they share in the power of reason, both are explainable by the notion of creation in the Logos. The human project, the shaping by humans of their own common life in the present and toward the future, in the light of the past, has its plausibility in the light of the Logos doctrine. What can Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Islam and current movements in western philosophy propose as a worldview protecting, providing for and promoting the human project?

e. Mutuality and Solidarity

By solidarity I mean, first, a sense of belonging with all other creatures, to a single universe. Second, solidarity means a sense of sensitivity for and sympathy with all creatures, and especially for other human beings, a sense of responsibility, especially for those in need. This mutuality and solidarity, this intrinsic capacity for empathy, sympathy based on a sense of belonging is based on, but distinct from the capacities of human knowing. Human beings can also act contrary to this mutuality. Unlike the lower animals, which inflict pain in the pursuit of food and defense, humans can inflict pain as an end itself. The animal world does not know sadism or the impulses of vengeance, but humans certainly do.

Paradoxically, however, humans can also display sympathy, empathy and compassion, for nonhumans and for stranger. Everyone can appreciate the value of the Hindu principle of ahimsa and the Buddhist moral prohibition against injuring any living being. People in every culture can help others in need, even if this practice is more common in cultures informed by religions of love and service. Humans are contradictory; the same person can be cruel and compassionate.

An intercultural worldview must provide a metaphysical explanation for humanity’s capacity for sympathy and benevolence. The New Testament Logos principle does. Creation of every being in and through the Logos implies a principle of connection among all creatures, a principle of openness of humans to the world through different kinds of knowing and a capacity of self-knowledge by which empathy and sympathy can develop. The human capacity for mutuality, especially with other human beings but also with animals and all other creatures, is the foundation for a sense of responsibility for others and especially for others in need. Such mutuality is essential for an intercultural worldview.

To conclude, we have just identified the Logos principle as a foundation stone for a Christian intercultural worldview. We can call this a Christian foundation, because the Logos motif is well attested in the New Testament and can be connected to the Wisdom connection in the Jewish tradition. As a biblical principle, the Logos idea is available to all Christian traditions. We have drawn direct and relevant implications from the Logos motif for an intercultural worldview. Comprehensiveness/universality; coherence; and connection; human knowledge; the significance of the human project and the imperative of solidarity find their metaphysical basis in the Logos principle and are features any intercultural worldview should possess.

Important Remaining Problems

We have demonstrated that Christianity has resources for an intercultural worldview. The Logos principle is a rich aspect of the biblical tradition full of implications for an intercultural worldview. However, many questions and problems remain. The common denominator of all these questions may be: what practical usefulness in the modern cultural situation can this Christian resource have? How can Christian put this aspect of their tradition into effect? What can Christians do with this aspect of their tradition that would practically contribute to intercultural tolerance, mutual understanding, cooperation and world peace? In the remainder of this essay, I will at least try to identify some of these problems and explore some of their aspects.

One problem is that Christian resources for an intercultural worldview stand alongside others in our western culture. Among them are secularist traditions that differ radically from Christianity. We want next at least to identify three of these and make a preliminary assessment of their potential.

Marxism, Enlightenment Liberalism and the Free Market as Resources for an Intercultural Worldview

Marxism/Maoism

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels clearly conceived their metaphysical system, Scientific Materialism, as the only proper basis for an intercultural worldview. Essential aspects of this metaphysical system were materialism, more specifically, the claim that all aspects of culture are merely reflections of economic forces, that the central meaning of history is a dialectical, intensifying struggle between social classes, and that the inevitable outcome of history will be a classless, stateless society in which each individual could exercise his or her human potential, and each gives according to his/her ability and receives according to his/her need. Scientific materialism’s metaphysic was thus universal in scope, embracing every aspect of existence and relating to the whole of history. The Communist “hymn,” The International, testified to Communism’s universal claim. Marx and Friedrich Engels concluded the Communist Manifesto with a call to the Proletariat in every county: “Working men of all nations, unite!”

Marx’s positive, historic contribution to an intercultural worldview is its analysis and moral critique of social conditions. Marx and Engels wrote in the era of early capitalism, when bourgeois idealism blinded the middle and upper social classes, including most Christian leaders, to the misery of working people and to the importance of the material and economic bases of society. In our contemporary era of global capitalism, Marx’s writings, and the rich Marxist tradition of social analysis and critique should continue to as a resourse for intercultural dialogue. This analysis and critique should help unmask the rationalizations we use to close our eyes to material suffering around the world.

In contrast to the value of Marx’s philosophy as a source of social analysis and moral critique, Communism, a political order —Russian Communism, Maoism, etc. — has almost totally lost its plausibility as an intercultural worldview. In contrast to its noble theory, Communism in practice made the Marx-Engles’ utopian vision unbelievable to all but a few die-hard Marxist ideologues. The suppression of national languages and traditions in the Soviet Union, Russia’s exploitation of countries and ethnic groups belonging to the Soviet Union—an exploitation that continues today in relation to diamonds and gold in Siberia—, and the destructiveness of Chairman Mao’s Great Cultural Revolution undermined former adherents’ hopes that the Marxist-Leninist philosophical tradition holds promise as a resource for an intercultural worldview. No past or present forms of really existing Communism stand out for their tolerance of differences and respect for the individual. On the contrary, oppression, exploitation, suppression of diversity and oligarchy not democracy marks the Communist political tradition. No one today looks to Communism as a political system as a resource for an intercultural dialogue.

Enlightenment Liberalism

A more plausible resource for international understanding, mutual respect and cooperation today is Enlightenment Liberalism. This tradition came to flower in the seventeenth century in England, France and Germany, and has a vigorous history today, as witnessed to by the Preamble to the Charter to the United Nations and the United Nations Bill of Universal Human Rights. Values essential to an intercultural worldview, such as intercultural tolerance, democratic institutions including the principle of a limited state, and respect for the individual person, are flowers of Enlightenment Liberalism. Most people seeking resources for an intercultural worldview look to this tradition.

Enlightenment Liberalism has made invaluable contributions to protection of individual dignity, to the development of democratic institutions, to the domesticating of religion-based social hostility and to the human project, generally. These achievements must be part of any future intercultural worldview. From the standpoint of our thesis, we question, however, whether Enlightenment Liberalism’s own metaphysical principles suffice for an intercultural worldview.

Problematic are two features of contemporary Enlightenment Liberalism. One is the radical division within contemporary Enlightenment Liberalism, which roughly can be described as the gulf between its Modern and Postmodern representatives. The second problem with Enlightenment Liberalism as a resource for an intercultural worldview is its privileging of the individual over the group. We will briefly discuss each of these.

Within modern Enlightenment-liberal philosophy exists a sharp division. It might be roughly called a contest between the Liberal Moderns and the Liberal Postmoderns. The Moderns, standing in the tradition of Renee Descartes, Immanuel Kant and Georg W.F. Hegel, hold that Enlightenment principles of human dignity, scientific truth, political justice and human honesty rest on the metaphysical foundation of an essential human reason, human nature and the possibility of convergence and progress in history. Descartes’ division of all creation into two essence, res cogitans and res extensa, is a metaphysical claim. This aspect of Enlightenment Liberalism believes in a universal human nature and human reason and, on this metaphysical basis, in the possibility of an historical convergence toward greater truth, social justice and international peace. Championing these “foundationalist” Enlightenment convictions today are America’s John Rawls and Germany’s Juergen Habermas.

The Postmodern Liberals assume, by contrast, a voluntarist worldview which they contrast to a metaphysical worldview. This voluntarist view, derived historically, perhaps, from late medieval Nominalism (John Duns Scotus and William Ockham) was revived by Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche in the late nineteenth century. For Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the will is the deepest root of the human spirit and the will to power is the driving force of individual and social life. This voluntarist tradition continues today , in different ways, in the writings of American philosopher Richard Rorty and Europeans teachings of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michel Foucault, and Gianni Vattimo. For these Postmodernists, support for democratic institutions and an ever-widening sphere of individual freedom need not or cannot rest on an alleged universal, abiding human nature, human reason or historical progress. Such an essential, universal human reason or a universal human nature, they allege, does not exist or cannot be known. For them, human nature or reason has no essence; human existence, individual and social, is created and constantly recreated by new decisions in history. Intercultural tolerance, understanding and cooperation can find a sufficient basis in a shared recognition that all human perspectives are limited and historically and socially defined. They advocate, therefore, an ironic and tolerant tone that should replace the absolute truth claims based on alleged universal essences, truth and goals in history. Intercultural cooperation can best be protected and promoted by pragmatic, provisional, partial, ironic reaching out to those who are different. In Richard Rorty’s phrase, if we have to choose between human solidarity and objectivity (absolute truth claims based on alleged universal essences and reason) we should opt for solidarity.

Deciding between these two sides of contemporary Enlightenment Liberalism is not a primary task of Christian theology. The important point for this essay is that the western Enlightenment Liberal tradition is presently deeply divided within itself. This weakens it as an adequate resource for an intercultural worldview.

The second problem with Enlightenment Liberalism is both a strength and, from the standpoint of intercultural philosophy, a weakness, viz. the support for the individual. Enlightenment Liberalism does not merely value the individual above the group, the self above the community. For Enlightenment Liberalism, the group is a something secondary to the individual; the State is an artificial creation by individuals. Thomas Hobbes’, John Locke’s and Jean Jacques Rousseau’s “mythic” theory of the origin of the state postulates that the state results from a social contract by previously unrelated individuals in a “state of nature.” This implies that individuals established social institutions and the state not on the basis of their human nature as such but on the basis of self-enlightened choice. The state results from a hypothetical decision of individuals who each, for reasons of rational self-interest, chooses to give up certain individual freedoms for the sake of benefits through corporate activity. In its pure form, human nature is always the individual person. The state is a product of individual choice, a joining together by individuals for individual benefit. John Rawls’ proposals in A Theory of Justice are a modern rendition of this notion of social contract.

Enlightenment Liberalism’s metaphysical privileging of the individual over the group collides with its opposite, the privileging of the group over the individual. This “collective” metaphysical option, clearly articulated in Confucianism, is assumed in most Asian worldviews. The individual exists for the group, or at least, the group’s welfare—whether the family, the neighborhood, the work group, or the national society. Priority of the group over the individual is assumed in every country where the Confucian ethic is influential, and that is not just China but throughout all of Asia.

The collision of these two priorities is visible when Chinese leaders, accused by western leaders of neglecting “human rights,” reply that the East has a different understanding of “human rights” from the West. Asians generally explain western immorality to be a result of the west’s excessive individualism. They also charge that when the West identifies its (individual-privileging) version of human rights with human rights as such, they practice cultural imperialism and colonialism in another form.

I have already said I would not deal in detail with other possible sources of an intercultural philosophy, and therefore I will not develop this second problem of Enlightenment Liberalism further. I mention these two problems, however, to show that even Enlightenment Liberalism, the most widely accepted resource for an intercultural philosophy, is not without its own problems.

Free Market Economics as Basis for Intercultural Understanding

For the sake of inclusion, I will mention, beside Marxism and Enlightenment Liberalism, a third candidate as a resource for an intercultural worldview. This is the Neoconservative ideology that links the global free market with the spread of democratic institutions and intercultural cooperation. Supporters of free market economics, American Neoconservatives, often claim that the most effective motor for international cooperation is the free market. Proponents of deregulation and free trade hold that the free market will encourage democratic impulses wherever the free market is allowed to thrive. Their reasoning is that survival and thriving in free market conditions require a sphere of individual freedom and the possibilities of individual, entrepreneurial initiative. Thus, wherever free market conditions exist, a move toward limited government, and above all a move away from a command economy, will inevitably follow. The surest road to democratic institutions worldwide, Neoconservatives hold, is through the spread of market economy.

This theory that the spread of free market mechanisms is the surest hope for international cooperation and tolerance has, however, a major metaphysical weaknesses. This is competition, an essential feature of the free market system. Competition implies that every other actor in the market is an actual or potential opponent. The contemporary free market, driven by such principles, as shareholder value and global outsourcing —is a global trench for hand-to hand combat in pinstripe suits. Cooperation – whether between individual entrepreneurs, companies, national or a regional economy is only a provisional and tactical means to profit in a free market arena. Even managers who act to protect domestic markets do so on free-market grounds, i.e., believing that exporting job eliminates a domestic market for one’s company’s goods and services. Thus, the credentials of the free market as a resource for an intercultural philosophy, intrinsic for whom is solidarity and response to the needy, are questionable.

One general problem Christians would face in making any proposal for an intercultural worldview would be dialogue and critique with western, secular alternatives. We have briefly discussed three such alternatives: Marxism, Enlightenment Liberalism and Neo-conservatism.

The Attack on Monotheistic Religions

A second problem any Christian proposal for an intercultural worldview would face immediately is the pervasive hostility in modern and postmodern cultures to monotheistic religion. We discussed this briefly above. The general theme of this hostility is that all monotheistic religions are inherently violent because they make truth claims that believers think are the absolute truth for all persons, whether believers or not.

Closely linked to the opposition to monotheistic religion as inherently violent is the problem that adherents of a religion will “force” their doctrines on others. Since the Logos principle is biblical and reflected in Christian doctrine, we need to address both the perception that Christian monotheism is inherently violent and that the fear that Christian teaching about the Logos inevitably involves violating the conscience of nonbelievers.

I will discuss this problem complex in several steps. First we will identify the universalistic impulse in Christianity and in Judaism, from which Christianity comes. Then we will develop further the contemporary opinion that Christianity is inherently violent. Finally I propose a distinction between Christian faith an a worldview based on aspects of Christian teaching.

Universalistic Impulses in the Jesus Movement

The monotheistic religions make universal truth claims, i.e., claims about what is true for all people. Furthermore, Christianity is decidedly a missionary religion; its members believe Christ calls them to proclaim the Good News of salivation to all people. This belief is founded in Jesus’ Great Commission: “Go into all the world to preach the Gospel.” When St. Paul pursued his apostolic commission from Jesus to carry the Gospel of salvation through Christ beyond the borders of Judaism into the Gentile world, Christianity’s global perspective expressed itself beyond the framework of Judiasm, of which Christianity is an offshoot. Credally, this universalism is expressed in the Creed’s description of the Church as catholic (kata ‘holos) , originally meaning “ according to the whole. Thus, an intercultural perspective inheres in the very definition of the Christian church.

However, we have above referred to universalistic impulses in Judaism itself. When Jesus specifically named twelve disciples to spread his good news of the Kingdom of God, he clearly intended to reconstitute Israel symbolically. The universal horizon of the Kingdom of God, therefore, continued a universalistic theme in Judaism. Christianity believes its gospel is true, applicable and necessary for every person in every culture. How, then can Christians apply what they believe without violating the freedom of conscience of non-Christians?

Contemporary Perception of Christianity as an Obstacle to Intercultural Understanding and Cooperation

Recent international political events have led many believe both that religiously based worldviews are major sources of social conflict and that monotheistic religions are prone to violence. Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations: The Remaking of the World Order gave influential articulation to this view. Huntington’s widely read and discussed book identified cultural — especially religious and ethical values — as the boundary in intercultural encounter. Huntington’s central point was that not politics and economics but cultural differences, especially religious beliefs and ethical norms would increasingly cause international tension and conflict. The near future, he predicted, would witness “the clash of civilizations.”

Most of the current conflicts on the global stage appear closely connected to religious differences, differences that have over decades and even centuries bred hatred and hostility. The war in former Yugoslavia pitted Orthodox against Roman Catholic; the Islamist terrorist attack on the US in 2001 was fueled by political Islam’s perception of western Christian aggression against Moslems worldwide. The “troubles” in Ireland pitted Protestants against Roman Catholics, although economic issues played an important part also. The civil chaos in Iraq involves two groups of Moslems, Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq and their supporters in neighboring countries; the apparently irresolvable conflict in Israel lines up Jews against Palestinians, most of whom are Moslem. The list could continue by mentioning Moslem –Christian violence in Sudan, in India and in Indonesia.

Aggravating the perception that much contemporary international hostility has a religious basis is the belief that monotheistic religions especially are prone to intolerance and violence. Many educated people consider organized religion, generally, and Christianity in particular, to be the greatest threat to world peace, international tolerance and global cooperation.

Further testimony to the prominent role that religion plays in global violence is the need for the existence of the United Religions Initiative (URI). The Rt. Rev. William Swing, retired Episcopal bishop of the diocese of California, founded the URI. Swing’s vision was of a union of religious leaders working for peace and against religiously based violence as a spiritual counterpart to the United Nations.
The purpose of the United Religions Initiative is to promote enduring, daily interfaith cooperation, to end religiously motivated violence and to create cultures of peace, justice and healing for the Earth and all living beings.
Indirectly, the very need for and support for the URI testifies to the religious basis of much contemporary violence on the world stage.
The answer of the New Atheists, speakers and writers like Richard Dawkins (England), Christopher Hitchens (USA), Michel Onfray (France) , Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Holland) and Piergiorgio Odifreddi (Italy) is to eliminate religious belief from both the public and the private sphere of all societies and replace every religious world view with some form of Enlightenment or Rationalist secularism.
Toward responding to this contemporary attack on Christianity I will next develop a distinction between Christianity as a faith and a worldview incorporating an aspect of Christian teaching. The value of this distinction is to show that Christians can employ the Logos principle without violating the conscience of nonbelievers.
Christian Believing and a Christian Worldview

I will argue in this section that Christians can use the Logos idea as part of a worldview commended to all people even though this Logos idea is part of the Christian Scriptures and Christian theology. The reason is that what Christians believe can be distinguished from a worldview based on what they believe. Thus, I distinguish the act of Christian faith and Christian creedal confession, on the one hand, and a worldview containing a part of Christian teaching, on the other.

By “intercultural worldview” I mean a set of coherent truth claims about the world, about human nature and about human history that promote and protect tolerance, mutual respect, intercultural cooperation and mutual helpfulness. An intercultural worldview is metaphysical in character: it makes truth claims about the nature of human being and about the nature of the world. These truth claims can be assessed on the basis of rational coherence, comprehensiveness and conformity to the data of experience. Part of that date is the capacity of persons to seek an intercultural worldview, their capacity for feeling connected and responsible for one another. These perceptions are available to all, not just to Christians.

Christian doctrines, taken individually and together, do imply a specific worldview. Indeed, every religion implies a worldview. But faith defined as what Christians believe can and, for the sake of an intercultural worldview, needs to be distinguished from a worldview as such. As a human phenomenon, all religions have four components: creed, cult, community, and code. Creed refers to the religion’s belief claims; cult refers to the worship practices of the religion; community refers to the corporate body of believers, the members of the religion, and may be understood in some religions to include those who have died. Finally, every religion has a code, a set of normative moral practices that the members of the religion think oblige them. Only some religions believe that its moral code is God’s will, because not all religions believe in a transcendent deity.

“Christian faith” can refer both to the act of Christian believing and to the content of Christian faith. Thus, faith has two dimensions. One is faith as an individual and corporate act/habit/disposition of trust, thanksgiving and hope (faith, hope and love) in relation to a personal God. The second aspect of faith is “the faith, ” i.e. the set of statements that summarize what Christians believe about God and God’s relation to the world.

With these understandings of faith and worldview in mind, I want to distinguish and relate faith as trust and creedal affirmations , on the one hand, and a worldview deriving from Christian faith, on the other. Again, my main point here is that such a distinction is required if Christians want to contribute to an intercultural worldview that allows for, tolerates and even legitimates religious differences.

The key point in the distinction is that Christian faith is the source of a Christian worldview but Christian faith is not itself a worldview. The Creed implies a worldview but is not a worldview. A worldview may have its source in a religious faith (it may also have a philosophical system as its basis) but it finds its plausibility and binding quality—its believability— from the usual tests for human truth, i.e., coherence of its claims, conformity of its claims to experience, and comprehensiveness of its claims.. We will now identify four differences between Christian faith and a Christian worldview.

Faith is a gift; a worldview is a philosophical construction. Christians understand faith as a divine gift, as the work of the Holy Spirit. An unbeliever can inquire about Christian faith, can pray to God for faith, and can struggle to become a believer. But Christians should be the first to affirm that their capacity to trust God and affirm the Creed is a gift from God. Christian faith, in the New Testament, pistis, in Latin, fides, is an act or disposition that humans cannot generate by their own efforts. God alone enables faith as a human act or disposition. As the New Testament states, in the words of St. Paul, “No one can call Jesus Christ Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”

In contrast, a worldview can be proposed to everybody for its plausibility as tested by its internal coherence, its ability to correspond to and illuminate ordinary experience and by its ability to incorporate new experience. A worldview, including a Christian worldview, is something like a scientific paradigm, i.e. a proposal to explain the facts. A worldview, though grounded in a religious faith, is addressed to human reason and experience; the plausibility of a worldview is tested in the arena of inter-human dialogue and critical thinking.

A second point concerns the relation of Christian faith to a worldview. Christianity’s worldview obviously derives from Christianity as a living religion. But Christianity is not, in the first place, a worldview. In the first place Christianity is a living religion—the living faith and life of the Christianity community. Only in the second place does Christianity have a worldview, a view of human nature, the cosmos, other creatures, human history, derived from its creed. Derived from Christian beliefs, a worldview is a work of theological and philosophical reflection. Every Christian should be interested in the implications of his or her beliefs for relations to nature, self, neighbor and God. But the development of a religious worldview is a step beyond, often many steps beyond, the immediacy of personal faith and the teachings of the Christian Creeds.

Third, whereas the content of Christian belief is relatively fixed and stable, Christianity as a worldview changes and is relative to philosophical and metaphysical paradigms usually derived from outside the Christian community and which change through history. For example, the earliest Christian worldview was derived from late forms of Platonism. This so-called philosophia perennis, or perennial philosophy, was the Christian worldview throughout the later Patristic Period, the Middle Ages, through the Renaissance and into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Christianity’s Platonized worldview is very different from the worldview of nineteenth century liberal Protestant Christianity or a twentieth –century Christian worldview as informed by Darwinian evolutionary theory, Whitheadean Process philosophy or a worldview informed by Einstein’s Special and General Relativity Theories. The body of Christian beliefs is relatively fixed and unchanging, in the sense that the Apostle’s, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan and the Athanasian Creeds have not be significantly altered since the fourth century of the Christian era. But Christianity’s worldviews has changed throughout history.

This third point is important for this essay insofar that it explains why my statement of the Christian worldview involves a selection and interpretation of possible ways of stating a Christian worldview. What can and should count, as a Christian worldview is itself controversial. For example, with modern Roman Catholicism a struggle occurred with some Christian theologians and philosophers questioned the adequacy of Thomas Aquinas’ worldview for today. Indeed, in the thirteen century, Thomas Aquinas own worldview, which was intimately informed by newly available writings of Aristotle, was hotly contested by contemporary theologians in the Augustinian tradition, whose worldview was deeply indebted not to Aristotle but to Plato and to Neoplatonism. Any statement of a Christian worldview, therefore, will be an act of selection and construction. The viability of such an act of selection and construction will depend first on the selected elements truly being authentically representative of fundamental, traditional Christian teaching, and second, on the adequacy of the worldview as tested by experience, coherence and comprehensiveness.

Fourth, faith, as a kind of human knowledge, implies a stance of openness and expectancy toward the world, openness to God, to the self, to the neighbor and to all creatures. Genuine faith opens people to reality; faith and truth are closely related. But every worldview has the danger of becoming the opposite of faith, of becoming a wall behind which ideologues block out knowledge and experience that challenge their worldview. When a religious worldview becomes an ideology, a set of claims that are irresponsive to new experience and the facts of the immediate situation, any religion’s worldview can oppose that openness and expectancy toward God and the world that characterizes genuine faith.

Genuine Christian faith involves three fundamental relational attitudes toward God and the world: faith, hope and love. Faith is a stance of trust, affirmation, and glorification of God. Hope is a stance of expectancy in relation to the future as given by God. Love, as love of neighbor, requires a vulnerable openness to the actual needs of the neighbor, a stance of sensitive awareness of the neighbor’s real situation, as the neighbor himself or she sees existence. In all three of these stances, the Christian, as individual and as corporate body, is highly vulnerable to injury. Faith can be challenged; hope can be disappointed, and love toward others can be betrayed. The great enemy of faith, hope and love, as the New Testament says, is, therefore, fear.

Faith as a worldview, as a set of teachings about the nature of the world, of history, of human nature and society, can serve faith, hope and love. But the Christian worldview, like any worldview, can become a wall against the disappointments of faith, hope and love. Religious believers can use a religion’s worldview to categorize or pidgin-hole others. A worldview can become an ideology. Then Christian love is betrayed.

Hinduism and Buddhism as Resources for Intercultural Worldview

Having briefly discusses nonreligious resources for an intercultural worldview, and the relation of faith to worldview, I conclude this essay with some reflections on Hinduism and Buddhism. A Christian worldview will not only contest with nonreligious alternatives but with worldviews based in other religious teaching.

Hinduism

Many consider Hinduism the most tolerant of all religions. Well known is the phenomenon that Hindus can find a place in their pantheon of deities for figures like Jesus who are drawn from outside of their own cultural sphere. Further, Hinduism commends itself for its principle of non-violence and its respect for all life (the principle of ahimsa). One sect of Hinduism, Jainism, is especially remarkable for the care its members take to avoid injuring any living being.

Yet, a Christian can rightfully identify three features of Hinduism that undermine its ability to provide a worldview for intercultural understanding and dialogue.

One is the caste system. Hinduism , throughout its long history, has not seen an essential contradiction between its basic religious convictions and its division of society into castes, including the “lowest” cast, the “untouchables.” Although individual Hindus, such as Mahatma Gandhi opposed the caste system, this system that relegates lesser worth to all non-Brahmanic castes, seems endemic to Hinduism as a religion. The Hindu caste system, robs Hinduism of the principle equal dignity to every human being. Yet, such an affirmation is a sine qua non for any worldview serving as a basis for intercultural dialogue.

One reason Hinduism may be able live with this caste system, despite its principle of not harming any living thing, is its fundamentally negative orientation to earthly reality in space and time. This is the second feature of Hinduism undermines it as a resource for an intercultural worldview. A fundamental principle of Hindu religion, articulated so clearly in the Hindu Upanishads, is that atman (originally meaning breath, eventually meaning the individual self) and Brahman (the ultimate principle of reality from which all reality derives) are identical. This is a principle of universality, in that Brahman is a universal and cosmic principle. But identifying atman and Brahman threatens the reality and worth of the individual creature in relation to the absolute principle of the universe. The well-known image of the relation of atman to Brahman is the drop of water that loses itself in the ocean. This image makes dramatically clear that Brahman and atman are competitive principles—the greater the realization of Brahman, the less realization of the individual self. However Hindu philosophy may explain this relation, in the practice of daily social life, individual, embodied existence in this world is, in Hinduism, of little imperative religiously compared to attaining the awareness of identity with Brahman with also liberates one from the Wheel of death and rebirth (Samsara). Although modern India is an important world economy and a practicing democracy, Hinduism as a religion cannot plausibly validate granting individual and social life in history and the world of creatures a serious moral interest.

The third feature undermining Hinduism as an adequate basis for intercultural dialogue is its traditional notion of the cycle of rebirth based on the karma of works. This teaching holds that each self continues to reborn into the wheel of life and death (Samsara) in a form relative to the quality of its works in its previous life. This teaching, of rebirth and of karma, inevitably undermines the significance of history as a corporate human enterprise with a meaningful purpose. For Hinduism, as for original Buddhism, humanity’s destiny in this life is not a religious concern, only the destiny of the individual person in its struggle to escape the logic of cause and effect of good and evil works within the wheel of dying and rebirth.

In contrast, Christianity’s doctrine of creation from nothing teaches that God directly and positively wills this world and the individual existence of each creature. Creaturely being is not ultimately real; no creature has the principle of existence in itself; every creature is born to die. But in Christian understanding, the world is real, not an illusion; individual life is God-willed in its creaturliness; and history has a God-defined purpose.

Buddhism

Hinayana Buddhism (“the small vehicle”), closest to the historical Gautama Buddha’s own teaching, holds that each individual is responsible for escaping from the cycle of dearth and rebirth by accumulating good karma by the performance of good works. Salvation for Hinayana Buddhism is not a result of divine saving actions; the individual saves himself or herself. Thus, original Buddhist teaching is very individualistic, and one can say self-centered. Even the Buddhist dedication to nonviolence is less a matter of crediting other creatures with inherent value as it is avoiding the accumulation of bad karma for oneself.

Of course, in the Buddhist community (the Sangha), Buddhism has a corporate aspect. The Sangha assists with its tradition of Gautama’s teaching (e.g., The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path) and its leaders provide rites and prayers for the needs of daily life. However, apart from nonviolence, community or solidarity among humans is not, in Buddhist teaching a necessary, inherent and essential teaching as in Christianity. Hence, apart from the west’s appropriation of the Buddhist nonviolence ideal, western people have found little in Buddhism that contributes specifically to corporate solidarity and mutuality.

Perhaps even more than Hinduism, original Buddhist teaching denies the reality of individual existence. The original Buddhist teaching of anatta, denies the reality of a perduring self. In fact, “salvation” is a kind of realization of the unreality of the individual self. In that sense Nirvana is a state in which has escaped from Samsara, the wheel of death and rebirth. With Nirvana as the ultimate goal of individual striving, Buddhism offers little support for “the human project in this world,” as discussed above.

Conclusion

This essay addresses a major ethical concern: foundations for an intercultural, international worldview. The globalized economy, trans-cultural problems of ecological degradation, of terrorism, of energy, of poverty; of immigration, of population explosion and population deficit, of human meaning require intercultural dialogue, tolerance and cooperation. Who will provide this intercultural worldview? That question has driven this essay.

I have identified the New Testament theme of the divine Logos as a resource for an intercultural worldview. This principle offers metaphysical foundation and thus intellectual plausibility and moral legitimacy to a cosmic universality, to coherence within creatures and among creatures, to human knowledge as openness to the world, to human solidarity and to the meaningfulness of the human project in history. These commend themselves as necessary features of human interaction in a globalized world.

Christians will face many challenges and questions when they propose any aspect of their faith tradition as a resource for an intercultural worldview. In our Postmodern cultural environment, difference is highlighted and claims of universal truth— especially today universal religious truth—are subject to radical criticism and skepticism. Recognizing this, I have explored several issues related to an intercultural worldview—non-Christian resources and the distinction and relation between Christianity as a faith and Christian faith as a worldview.

The Rev. David A. Scott, Ph.D.
Murnau, Germany
September, 2007
Davidscott1234@aol.com

I owe the idea for this essay from Rita Widmaier, “Leibniz’ metaphysiches Weltmodell interkulturell gelesen” (Leibniz’s metaphysical world vied read from an intercultural point of view) in China Heute XXV (6) 2006: 222-229. This article not only underlined the urgency of the problem of finding an adequate worldview for international dialogue but also provided, through its evaluation of Leibniz’ metaphysics, some criteria of adequacy for any such worldview. Widmaier’s article contributes to a whole new branch of contemporary philosophy: intercultural philosophy. See the following websites for more information about this branch of philosophy: http://www.criticalmethods.org/p112.mv; http://home.concepts-ict.nl/~kimmerle/intercultural.communicationframe.htm; http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Franz.Martin.Wimmer/topoiint98.html.
The current struggle to agree on wording for a EU Charter testifies to the need for but also the difficulty of finding an intercultural worldview, even for a relatively coherent set of societies as constitute the European Union. Without a shared worldview, observers admit, the EU will be only a collective based on mutual economic advantage.
The phrase was popularized by James Davison Hunter’s 1991 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. For more background see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war
“Metaphysics” concerns the nature or constitution of real things; the most general concept of metaphysics is “being.” “Metaphysics: the branch of philosophy that systematically investigates the nature of first principles and problems of ultimate reality, including the study of being (ontology) and, often, the structure of the universe (cosmology). The American Heritage Dictionary.
See Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, paragraph 17. Schleiermacher “locates” theological statements within the Church community and then defines their meaning in reference to “the religious emotions themselves.” The “scientific value” of dogmatic propositions depends first on their conceptual clarity and then on their coherence with one another. That is, their scientific value is not related to truth claims about the world or human nature or God’s own Being than can be assessed by human reason in any form. See also paragraph 3, where Schleiermacher says that piety, upon which theological statements rest, is neither a knowing or a doing, but a modification of feeling or of immediate self-consciousness. The Christian Faith, Volume I Harper & Rowe, Publishers: Harper Torchback, 1963.
See, for example, Richard Rorty “Solidarity or Objectivity,” the Howison Lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, January 1983, in John Rajchman/Cornel West Eds. Post-analytic Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986,): 3-19. Rorty, whose writings are marked by a generous spirit, died in 2007.
A helpful resource for the relation between Christian theology and Stoic philosophy is Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theologie und Philosophy (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996): Chapter 4, 90-105. Unfortunately, I cannot provide the pagination for the English translation of this book. Pannenberg helpfully distinguishes between the Stoic Logos concept and the Platonic/Aristotelian notion of nous. Logos, from legein (to gather/collect), emphasizes the mind’s ability to relate different things in contrast to mind’s ability to intuit the nature of things. Stoicism’s focus on Logos, therefore, supported a notion of the unity, coherence and interrelatedness of the world, i.e., the idea of the world as cosmos, not chaos. Pannenberg also helpfully identifies important differences between basic Christian teaching and Stoic teachings. Biblical and Christian teaching insisted on God’s transcendence, whereas Stoic philosophy taught that the Logos was world-immanent. Christianity insisted that God was spiritual, not material (Tertullian was the exception proving the rule). Stoicism taught that the divine Logos was a very fine material substance. Christianity taught that the world had a single history, a real beginning and a meaningful, God-intended end; Stoicism taught that the cosmos passed through an unending cycle of destruction and new creation. Despite these fundamental differences, Stoic thinking touched on basic Christian themes, e.g., the mind as human participation in the universal Logos; the notion of divine providence and governance; and the human soul as related to divine Spirit; and the notion of a natural knowledge of God and a natural intuition of universal moral norms based both on the order and structure of the experienced cosmos and on the human mind’s natural affinity to the divine, universal Logos. These last features became important in the Renaissance and early Enlightenment renaissance of Stoic thought. The early modern period developed a widening, secularizing distinction between “the truths and moral norms of natural religion” and revealed norms and truths about God.
According to Rita Widmaier, this concept of perennial philosophy comes from Agottino Steucco (1540) to describe the metaphysical worldview dominant through the western Middle Ages and into the early modern period. The perennial philosophy was a Christianized Platonism. It assumed Jewish monotheism, giving ontological priority to God’s being. The perennial philosophy taught that the world was created. Most important, the perennial philosophy assumed that God’s conception of the world in the divine Logos preceded God’s act of creating beyond God (creatio extra se). Conceiving of the world in the divine Mind/Word/Logos bestowed on the resulting creation specific metaphysical qualities. Among them were that rational creatures could participate in God’s knowledge of the world; the world was in principle a universe, not a chaos; each creature had a divinely given coherent structure and an intrinsic relation to other beings. The important theological notion of analogia entis (analogy of being) assumed the perennial philosophy. Very important, the perennial philosophy invited Christians to find in non-Christian religions and philosophies truth and wisdom that agreed with, or at least did not contradict, Christian teaching, because every creature participated, in different ways in the ultimate truth of the divine Word in and through which every creature had been made. This metaphysical worldview dominated western thought through the seventeenth century. It even was reflected in literature. For example, in Shakespeare’s plays, natural events correspond to human events, since the whole creation participates in “the great chain of being.”
The “tolerant” nature of Hinduism as a world religion is often affirmed. This perception rests in part on the Hindu teaching that the “gods”, e.g., Vishnu and Shiva, but also Jesus, Mohammed, or Gautama, are all only forms or appearances of the Absolute. Thus, the sacred persons of all religions easily find a “place” in Hinduism. Further, the ethic of ahimsa, or non-injury of any living things is central to both Hinduism (and especially Jainism) and Buddhism. Indeed, Buddha’s Eight-Fold Path implies a set of practices that support the practice of non-injury of other living things. However, equally important aspects of both Hinduism and Buddhism undermine their being a resource of an intercultural worldview. Unfortunately, we can only refer to these in passing below.
The Dalai Lama is probably the religious personality today who in public perception stands most prominently for peace, tolerance, international understanding and willingness to cooperate. In his political struggle with the Communist government of the People’s Republic of China the Dalai Lama has always insisted on nonviolence. The Dalai Lama’s numerous books, speeches and public appearances reinforce his public image as a force for international peace and mutual tolerance. This public perception of the Dalai Lama, however, does not include the complexity of Tibetan Buddhism, a mixture of pre-Buddhist Tibetan animism and later, imported Buddhist teaching which forms the larger framework for the Dalai Lama’s teachings. For many Christians, not just Roman Catholics, the Pope, especially John Paul II and the current Pope, Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), are positive religious images, whose personality, admonitions for world peace and inter-religious dialogue support an intercultural worldview. Compromising this image, however, is the divisive role of the Pope in Christian inter-Christian dialogue. In 1993 Swiss theologian Hans Kueng contrasted the “foreign policy” of Pope John-Paul II, i.e. his admonitions about how world leaders should act with his “domestic policy, i.e., how the Pope himself acted within his own church.” Shortly thereafter, the Vatican denied Kueng his former standing as a Roman Catholic theologian.
As Rita Widmaier points out in her article, cited in footnote, the creation as conceived by God in and through the Logos before the actual creation of the world through the Logos, was a key feature of the perennial philosophy.
A religion based on a narrative of the divine origins of a tribe or clan, obviously, cannot meet this criterion of universality.
In two volumes, Roman Catholic theologian, Hans Kueng, searches the “world religions” for a set of common ethical teachings that could contribute to a “world ethic.” The premise of Kueng’s search/appeal for a world ethic is that no survival on earth is possible without a world ethic; no world peace is possible without a peace among the religions; no peace among the religions is possible without dialogue among the religions. See Hans Kueng, Projekt Weltethos (Muenchen: Pier Verlag, 1990) and Kans Kueng and Karl-Joseph Kuschel Eds. Weltfrieden durch Religionsfrieden (Munich:Piper Verlag, 1993) . Noble as Kueng’s appeal and quest for a world ethic is, a serious problem is reducing the ethical teachings of the world religions to a lowest common denominator and abstracting them from the faith and worship practices that make the moral life part of living religion. For example, when Kueng assimilates Jesus’ Golden Rule “Do to others what you would want them to do for you” with Confucius’ teaching, “What you do not want others to do to you, do not do to them”, he risks missing the radical difference between Jesus’ Golden rule, as defined by the context of Jesus life and ministry, and the meaning of Confucius’ version. Jesus’ Golden Rule implies that his disciples should actively seek the neighbor’s good, as God in Jesus Christ actively entered “our life world” to seek the ultimate human good. Confucius’ teaching, by contrast, encourages a certain moral passivity, a “hands-off” posture—don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you. Confucius’ form of the Golden Rule implies no imperative to come to the needy neighbor’s aid. Bartholomew Ma, a theological student from Hong Kong, helped me understand this difference between Christian and Confucian ethics.
A helpful resource her is Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (New York: Bantam Books, 1988). Hawking devotes one chapter to current attempts to integrate various universal principles e.g., Gravitation and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, to a single, comprehensive law.
Theravada Buddhism’s teaches that no being has a perduring essence or nature. This is the principle of anatta. In contrast to Hinduism, which affirms that the self (Atman) is real, original Buddhism teaches that the self is reconstituted new every moment. The Christian Logos doctrine can account this principle in so far as the Logos teaching holds that each creature and the whole creation is made ex nihilo, from nothing. If as the Logos teaching holds each creature is made by an act of absolute origination, it cannot have its principle of existence, its power to be, within itself. Each existing thing hangs, therefore, has not-being at its center. However, the Buddhist doctrine of anatta, if it will serve an intercultural worldview, must explain i. whey humans experience themselves and other things as existing and why each creature displays, with appropriate study, an inner structure and order. Theravada Buddhism’s teaching that this perception is simply an illusion contradicts experience.
Thus, the Christian Logos doctrine can account for the Hindu identification of atman and Brahman, i.e., that each self is metaphysically one with the Absolute. Unlike this Upanishad teaching, however, as we have already pointed out, the Logos’ transcendence protects, promotes and provides for the uniqueness, value and particularity of each creature.
When Renee Descartes taught tha the human mind, res cogitans, was radically other than allother things, including the human body (res extensa) he opened an unbridgeable chasm between the human mind and everything else. This metaphysical chasm rendered the possibility of human knowing inexplicable. The history of modern western philosophy has been preoccupied, therefore, with one philosophical issue, how is human knowledge possible, i.e., epistemology.
For example, French distinguishes connaitre and savoir; Chinese distinguishes zhidao and renshi. 知道 ; 認識; German distinguishes kennen and wissen. I think we should stay open to the possibility of yet other ways of perception and knowing, of which faith knowledge would be one.
In Christianity wished to engage the Samsara doctrine of Hinduism and Buddhism, with its associated teaching of karma and reincarnation , the historicity of existence implied by the Logos teaching might be the right place to seek a point of contact.
Jean Paul Sartre, especially in his major work, Being and Nothingness, developed this theme of human existence as a project. His key distinction was between etre pour soi (being for itself) and etre en soi, being in itself. Human transcendence includes the capacity to decide for oneself, a kind of freedom. Unlike objects, etre en soi, human existence involves the burden of personal decision.
Asking this question does not presuppose that these rich religious traditions have no answer. However, when Christians propose a contribution to an intercultural worldview, they have the right to ask this question.
Here I have in mind the well-known principle that what one has suffered enables deeper empathy and sympathy for other’s suffering.
See for the Preamble to the UN Charter: http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/preamble.htm; http://www.un.org/rights/http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/ch-cont.htm; http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
What Enlightenment Liberalism received from Judaism and Christianity is an important question for Christianity’s contribution to modern culture and for the question of the role of religion in public life. In discussing what Enlightenment Liberalism owes to Judaism and Christianity, Christians should not forget: first, that the Classical Greek and Roman heritages, although mediated through medieval and renaissance Christianity, are different from Christianity and were a distinct resource for the tradition of Enlightenment Liberalism. Therefore, Christianity cannot claim to be the ultimate source of all the achievements of Enlightenment Liberalism. Second, early Enlightenment thinkers, such as the French Philosophes, viewed Christianity, or at least the institutional church and its dogmas, as an enemy of Enlightenment. Roman Catholic opposition, reaching its apex in the nineteenth century, to democratic institutions and cultural liberalism, reinforced the early perception that Christian teaching contradicted basic Enlightenment principles. Christians should never forget that a major reason for the Enlightenment’s championing of “Reason” as the only possible basis for human cooperation was the horrors of the Thirty Year’s War (1618-1648), largely a struggle between Roman Catholics and Protestant forces, not withstanding the important role that political interests had in the War. For that reason, Enlightenment political theory relegated religious belief to the private sphere (e.g., separation of church and state). This was certainly not a resounding affirmation of Christianity’s potential to contribute to intercultural understanding. This aspect of the Enlightenment furthered the individualization of Christian spirituality, especially in Protestantism. Further, the Enlightenment’s conviction that reason and experience were sufficient sources for knowledge of spiritual truth (natural religion) and ethics (natural moral law) further sidelined the Church as the carrier of authoritative revelation. If Christians claim that everything valuable Enlightenment Liberalism came from Christianity, they will depart from historical truth.
John Rawl’s most influential book was A Theory of Justice ( The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.) This first edition received the most commentary; the “final” edition, however, was published in 1993. It general conception has been stated as follows: “All social primary goods – liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect – are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these goods is to the advantage of the least favored.”
Juegen Habermas is Germany’s most influential political philosopher and belongs to the “second generation” of the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. Habermas’major contribution for an intercultural worldview has been his theory of coercion free dialogue.
Educated Chinese do not regard Confucianism as a religion, although some western students of religion do. Chinese intellectuals views Confucius as a teacher. His teachings about right order in society, subordination of younger brother to older; wife to husband; children to parents, head of family to the Emperor profoundly shaped and still influence Asian social life.
Of course one cannot completely separate Enlightenment Liberalism from Free Market theory. The ‘father” of free market economics, Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, wrote of an “invisible hand” that coordinated sellers and buyers in the open market; this invisible hand presumably worked anywhere in the world and therefore was a trans-cultural or intercultural reality generating cooperation and mutuality.
For an introduction see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism.
Very simply put, the danger, in principle, with collectivist worldviews, to which I would allocate both all forms of socialism and also Confucianism, is that the individual risks being sacrificed to the group. The danger inherent in Enlightenment Liberalism and Free-Market capitalist theory is that the common good is sacrificed for the sake of an ever-expanding realm of personal autonomy, the freedoms of “the naked self.” Christian theology understands human being as created in and through the Word, the Logos of God. In the divine being there is both solidarity (Three Persons) and unity (God’s one Divine Nature). Being created in the image of God implies, therefore, that human nature is like an ellipse with two foci: the self as unique individual and the self as a center of community. The human sciences—history, psychology, sociology, anthropology—- validate this bi-focal understanding of the human person. Philosophical theologian, Paul Tillich, distinguished between autonomy, heteronomy and theonomy; only a transcendent principle, here the divine Logos, protects, provides for and promotes the individual and the communal aspect of human nature. See Paul Tillich, “Autonomy and heteronomy are rooted in theonomy, and each goes astray when their theonomous unity is broken. Theonomy does not mean the acceptance of a divine law imposed on reason by a highest authority; it means autonomous reason united with its own depth.” Systematic Theology I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965): 85
Matthew 28:19.
Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic Church, despite the provincialism implied by the name itself, claims to be the only full instance of the Christian Church. Similarly, the Roman Catholic Pope represents himself as the only legitimate representative of Christianity as such.
Relevant here is the opening verse of the Epistle to James, “To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings.”
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations (New York: Simon and Schuster, l996)
Currently popular is a veritable intellectual crusade against organized religion in general and Christianity in particular. Richard Dawkin’s, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford, brought up an Anglican, has written many scientific books. But his God Delusion was more than 30 weeks on the bestseller list. A quote: “The God of the Old Testament is one of the most unpleasant characters of literary history. Jealous, a racist, hater of homosexuals and child killer——.” Another quote: “Imagine a world before or without religion. There is no suicide bombers; no 11. September; no Crusades, and witch hunts, no Israel-Palestinian conflict; no massacres in the former Yugoslavia, no persecution of the Jews, no ‘unrest’ in Northern Ireland, no coifed TV evangelists in shining suits trying to get money from naïve believers.” Another popular opponent of religion, Christopher Hitchens, sums up the general tenor of the current attack: “religion poisons everything.” Internet resources are: www.infidels.cor; www.religionisbullshit.net
See the URI webpage: http://www.uri-na.org/wp/presentation/ and www.uri.org.
This, however, is a thoroughly unrealistic plan. For Moslems, Jews and Christians, i.e., for committed believers in these and in other religious traditions, this “Enlightenment” solution—the elimination of organized religion—is a nonstarter. No convinced and committed member of any religious body can agree to his or her self-destruction and the elimination of his or her religious institution, even for the sake of increasing the possibility of international cooperation and mutual tolerance. The reason: believers in a religion think their beliefs are true, i.e., make claims about reality that correspond to reality, are internally coherent and, at least for Christianity, comprehend all possible human experience. Furthermore, the notion of “eliminating organized religion from the world” may be thinkable in the abstract. In practice, however, it is impossible. A support for that claim is the attempt in Communist nations, e.g., in Maoist China, to eradicate organized religion, considered in Communist ideology to be an opiate of the people and superstition. What has happened is the eradication of Maoist Communism, not by violent opposition of organized religion but by massive experience of real existing Communism’s political, economic and cultural destructiveness. Only twenty-five years into the New China, i.e., the China open to international relations and market economics by Deng Xiao Peng in 1983, is a resurgence of organized religion in all its forms. The new program of the Chinese Communist Party is that the officially recognized religions in China (Islam, Daoism, Buddhism, Protestantism and Roman Catholicism) should make their contribution to a “harmonious society.” Any honest review of history demonstrate how lethal religious motivation can be for generating intolerance, refusal to cooperate and hostility to those who are outside “the faith community.” However, proposing that a religion eliminate itself is wholly realistic.

Hinayana Buddhism, the earliest form of Buddhism, retaining Gautama Buddha’s own original teaching, and still existing in Burma, Sri Lanka and Thailand, and other Southeast Asian countries, denies the existence of a supreme, transcendent deity. Indeed, Hinayana Buddhism denies the existence of any self. The Buddhist doctrine of anatta holds that belief in a perduring self, in anything, is an illusion.
The standard way this dual aspect of faith is stated in western theology is that one aspect of faith is fides qua creditum, i.e., faith as an act of trust; and a second aspect is fides quae creditum, i.e. faith as what is believed. In the New Testament, pistis most often means faith as the act/disposition/habit of belief in God as known in Christ through the Holy Spirit (e.g., Mark 1:14). But the New Testament also speaks of ‘the faith,” i.e., what Christians believe about God, the world, human beings and history. The relation between faith as trust and faith as doctrines is an important issue. Faith as doctrines can inform the understanding and help believers experience the world in new ways, thus deepening faith as trust in God. However identifying faith as doctrines generates a doctrinaire and dogma-centered Christianity. Such a perception of Christianity collides with Asian religious emphasis on the ineffability of and on experience of the divine. Many Asian people perceive Christianity as doctrine-centered, not experience centered. Thus, the tendency to define faith as assent to right doctrine is pertinacious both in the Roman Catholic and in the Protestant traditions. Martin Luther’s stress on faith as fiducial faith, i.e., trusting, faith opposes this tendency to equate belief with assent to doctrinal propositions.
The reason the Inquisition and the Crusades, that have besmirched Christian history, were morally and theological wrong is that they violated the very nature of Christian faith as a free human act enabled by God’s Holy Spirit. Authentic Christian faith cannot be coerced, because it comes, with hope and love, as a gift from God. Even if the act of faith is viewed as a assent of the will to church doctrines, in contrast to fiducial trust in God, coercion can have no part in truth faith, for the will’s assent is not free, but a violation of personal freedom.
I have in mind Thomas Kuhn’s discussion of scientific paradigms in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Proposals have been made to eliminate the so-called filioque clause (“and the Son”) from the Nicene Creed, especially when used in ecumenical setting with the Orthodox. Also, the assertion that the Christian Creeds are fixed must be qualified; the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed is a product of the fourth and fifth centuries, reflecting doctrinal developments about God as Trinity and the Two Natures of Christ. These doctrinal developments are not explicit in the earliest of the standard Christian Creeds, the Apostle’s Creed.
Simon and Garfunkel’s song “I am a Rock” reflects the self-isolation and defensiveness in reaction to the disappointments of love.
Islam, of course, is especially important today in relation to the question of intercultural worldview. This essay is already too long, so I have chosen to leave out a discussion of Islam. Were I to discuss Islam as a potential recourse for an intercultural worldview, I would want to discuss at least three features. One is the universal Islamic “brotherhood, ” which is cross-cultural. Second, important is the history of cooperation between Jews, Christians and Moslems, even in nations with a Moslem majority. The history of Lebanon witnesses to such cooperation, and this inter-religious cooperation in Islam’s history should be stressed to balance the current perception of Islam as intolerant, exclusivist and inherently violent. A third important point would be precisely the absence in Islam of the Logos theme. Islam’s teaches, as did the Christian heresy of Arianism, that divinity cannot be shared either within the divine life or with creatures. Islam’s monadic monotheism, in contrast to Christianity’s teaching that the Logos is distinct from God but shares God’s divinity, means that Islam lacks a mediating principle within God and between God and creation. Allah can address the creation, but only from above and outside the creation. An angel brings to Mohammed the words Allah has dictated. Mohammed is only a passive recorder. Moslems can and do pray to Allah but always to the transcendent God, never as sharers of the divine nature in Christ through the Holy Spirit. The intimacy and mutuality that Christians have, in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, with God the Father in the Holy Spirit, is foreign and alien to Islam. The absence of Christianity’s Logos teaching may also illuminate fatalistic tenor of Moslem self-understanding. Humans have no agency in relation to Allah; Allah decides and enacts everything in human life; every event in a human’s life is kismet, what God has willed.. “Islam” means submission to Allah. The lack of a Logos doctrine in Islam may also illuminate why Christians propose dialogue with Islam, as with other religions, but Islam has no principle within its own doctrine of God (e.g., the Logos doctrine) for dialogue with other religions. The metaphysical basis in Islam’s view of God allows for dialogue among Moslems but has no metaphysical basis that makes dialogue with non-Moslems either metaphysically plausible or morally imperative.

In 1956 the Indian lawyer, Rr. B.R. Ambedkar, along with 500,000 followers converted to Buddhism. In contract to his rival, Mahatma Ghandi, Amberkar believed the caste system could not be eliminated in the framework of Hinduism as a religion.