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- Herausgeber: IVP
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
How do we make sense of the world's different religions?In today's globalized society, religion is deeply intertwined with every issue we see on the news. But talking about multiple religions can be contentious. Are different faiths compatible somehow? And how can we know whether one religion is more true than another? In this creative thought experiment, Peter Kreeft invites us to encounter dialogues on the world's great faiths. His characters Thomas Keptic and Bea Lever are students in Professor Fesser's course on world religions, and the three explore the content and distinctive claims of each. Together they probe the plausibility of major religions, from Hinduism and Buddhism to Christianity and Islam. Along the way they explore how religions might relate to each other and to what extent exclusivism or inclusivism might make sense. Ultimately Kreeft gives us helpful tools for thinking fairly and critically about competing religious beliefs. If the religions are different kinds of music, do they together make harmony or cacophony? Decide for yourself.
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BETWEEN ONE FAITH AND ANOTHER
Engaging Conversations on the World’s Great Religions
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
This book is about the second greatest conversation in the world.
The greatest conversation in the world is the conversation between ourselves and God. The name for that is “religion.” It means “relationship.” The English word religion comes from the Latin word religare, which means, literally, a binding-back relationship.
The second greatest conversation in the world is the conversation among the different religions—that is, the different human conversationalists in the first and greatest conversation. The name for that is “comparative religions.”
The first conversation is vertical. All religions converse with someone or something greater than ourselves. The second conversation is horizontal. One of the issues in that conversation is whether one religion is greater or truer or better than another. Are the different religions in the world incompatible or compatible?
There are three possible answers to this question. These answers are called by philosophers of religion “exclusivism,” “inclusivism,” and “pluralism.”
Exclusivists say that the religions of the world contradict each other, at least in some essential points, so that some religions must be untrue in some essential points.
Inclusivism says that deep down, perhaps at some “mystical” level, religions do not contradict each other. In fact that they are really one, like apparently different islands united underwater (mystically) as parts of the same undersea mountain, or different roads up the same mountain, converging at the top.
Pluralism says we cannot know which it is. It is skeptical of both of the other two positions and says that we can only know that the religions of the world are different, like lions and tigers, and not whether they are compatible and marriageable into a “liger.”
This book considers that question of comparative religions. It is also a very quick tour through the essential teachings of seven of the world’s great religions to gather enough data for the three characters (and the reader) to form a reasonable opinion or theory of comparative religions, a theory that judges the data. The questions in these dialogues are motivated by an attempt to find that unfashionable thing called truth.
Truth is ultimately what God thinks. All truth is God’s truth (as Wheaton College’s Arthur Holmes famously said). So our attempts to find truth are ultimately attempts to read God’s mind. Regarding the world, sometimes reading God’s mind is easy (2+2=4) and sometimes harder (E=mc2), but it is hardest of all concerning religions. Clearly the religions of the world are different, playing and singing different musics. The question of comparative religions is hardest of all because it is the question of how these different musics sound to God. Are they in harmony? Does one carry the lead? Are they in cacophony?
Spoiler alert: we are not God, therefore we will not find the final answer to the question of how the different religions sound to God. At least not in this life. So it is a wild goose chase. We will not catch the goose. But a wild goose chase is a very good thing to do anyway. And along the way we may find some very important answers to questions that are only a little bit less ambitious.
Dramatis Personae
Here are the characters in my little drama and their different methods of approach.
■ Thomas Keptic, a hard-headed, logical, nonreligious exclusivist who uses the scientific method, treating ideas as false until proven true rather than vice versa. He uses the light of logic in a sincere search for truth, like an explorer of new continents.
■ Bea (“Bee”) Lever, an open-hearted, intuitive, religious inclusivist who uses the unscientific and personal method of treating religions as true until proven false. Like a bee, she is engaged in making honey from nectar gathered from many flowers.
■ Professor Fesser, a neutral, scholarly, objective pluralist who uses the aesthetic or artistic method of listening to and looking at each different religious datum carefully before pronouncing on its value, truth, or compatibility with the rest of the data, like a listener at a symphony or a visitor to an art museum.
The three isms mean something different in this context—the study of comparative religions—than they do elsewhere. For instance, pluralism does not necessarily mean that a society with a plurality of different religions is inevitable or socially and politically preferable. Exclusivism does not necessarily mean that those who do not believe the one and only religion that is totally true cannot be saved. And inclusivism does not necessarily mean that religions are all the same, that there are no important differences. Pluralism claims that we do not know whether or not the religions of the world contradict each other. Exclusivism claims that they do. Inclusivism claims that they don’t.
A Personal Note on Where I’m Coming From
This is a work of imaginative exploration, not apologetics. My own position does not exactly coincide with any one of these three characters, though I have deep sympathies for all three.
Thomas is an atheist, or at least a skeptical agnostic, and a rather negative and cynical one. I made my exclusivist character an atheist simply because atheists tend to be hard-headed, scientific, logical, and critical, not because all atheists are exclusivists (they’re not) or because all exclusivists are atheists (they’re not). In fact, most exclusivists are believers and most believers are or at least have been exclusivists. Most of the great theologians, saints, and religious philosophers of the past were exclusivists.
I made Bea an inclusivist not because all believers are inclusivists (they’re not, though some are) but to show a triple difference between her and Thomas: heart versus head, believer versus unbeliever, and inclusivist versus exclusivist. No one of these three differences logically necessitates any of the other two. Bea can at times be naive, fuzzy thinking, and so open-minded that her brains seem to spill out; but she can also be very perceptive and profound. As Thomas is a logical, left-brain thinker, Bea is an intuitive, right-brain thinker.
Professor Fesser believes that a professor, unlike a preacher, ought to be detached, objective, and noncommittal, even though this makes him at times appear wishy-washy. But he is a good professor; and a good professor sometimes refuses to “profess” his own personal beliefs in class but performs as an actor playing a part (or playing two contrasting parts), so that students can look more clearly and fairly at the objective truth of the issues rather than at their professor’s personal, subjective mind.
All three positions, and all three characters that espouse them, have problems and faults. I tried to make the characters real concrete persons, not abstractions, idealizations, or allegories.
I find all three of these fictional characters in myself, as parts of myself, and I empathize with all three: with Thomas’s hard-headed logic, with Bea’s open-hearted love of wisdom everywhere, and with the professor’s fair and even-handed justice. I also find some important truth in all three answers to the question of comparative religions. In exclusivism because the theologies of different world religions do quite clearly appear to contradict each other. In inclusivism because the moralities and spiritualities of the world’s great religions do really appear to profoundly agree about the most important questions, and the saints of different religions are strikingly similar, even when their beliefs are strikingly different. And in pluralism because religions do really appear to be as individual as people, with no one simple, objective, and neutral way to rank them.
So this book is not an argument for only one of these three positions and a refutation of the two others. It is an exploration on a path whose end I do not clearly see. (I find that writing books and teaching classes are surprisingly effective ways of teaching myself things I did not know before.) That is why this book is in the form of a dialogue—or trialogue—rather than a monologue, like most books. It is Socratic. It is a trialogue in the double sense of a three-part conversation and a “try,” an “essaying,” an exploration.
The characters are not good guys versus bad guys. There is no hero and no villain, no Socrates and no Sophist. Thomas is an atheist (as I am not) but he is honest and rational. Bea is an inclusivist (as I am not—I think) but she is a Christian (as am I). The professor is a pluralist (as I am not—I think) but he is fair and reasonable.
You don’t have to agree with me or with any of the three interlocutors to enjoy and profit from this book.
I think I should say more. I should give you a full disclosure here: exactly where am I coming from? What am I most certain about? About Christ. That is why I am an exclusivist. There is only one Christ, only one God incarnate. Yet the fact that this Christ enlightens everyone who comes into the world (John 1:9) opens the door to the possibility of a kind of inclusivism. But this inclusivism is not divinely revealed data but only a human interpretation of that data or a deduction from it. If inclusivism is true, it is like the doctrine of predestination and eternal security—true from the divine point of view, but probably not from the human. And I do not have the divine point of view. (You may quote me on that!) Christ, who does have the divine point of view, never answered the question of comparative religions.
So Christ is the only one I am certain about. In a lesser sense I am also certain of Socrates—that is, of three features of Socrates and the Socratic method: the need for the honest use of reason (which seems to lead to exclusivism), the need for intellectual humility (which seems to lead to pluralism), and the need for open-mindedness and maximally charitable interpretations (which seems to lead to inclusivism). The strongest argument, to my mind, for inclusivism is the character of God, which always surprises and amazes us and exceeds our expectations in mercy, love, and welcoming.
For a Christian, Christ cannot be half of the way, the truth, or the life: he is all of it. If he is not all, he is nothing, he is a fake. But Christ is a mystery. All the essential articles of the Christian faith are “mysteries.” That was the word the early church fathers used for what we call doctrines or dogmas. And that word gives us a lot of room for speculation about issues not addressed clearly and explicitly by divine revelation, by the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. The issue of comparative religions is one of them.
By the way, I have received critical comments about my book Between Allah and Jesus: What Christians Can Learn from Muslims from both sides of the spectrum, from those who thought it too hard and those who thought it too soft; that is, from those who thought it too exclusivistic or “triumphalistic” and those who thought it too inclusivistic, too compromising and “ecumenical.” This proves nothing, but it suggests that those who admire and try to imitate Socrates will be criticized both by traditionalists or “establishmentarians” (at one point in American political history they were called “antidisestablishmentarians,” the longest word in the language) and by people like the Sophists, who were radical critics of the tradition and the establishment in Socrates’s society. Jesus was criticized by both Pharisees and Sadducees in theology, and by both Herodian collaborationists and revolutionary Zealots in politics.
So I’ve told you where I’m coming from. My stance is probably unacceptably dogmatic for some readers and insufficiently dogmatic for others. If that is true, far from disturbing me, it comforts me. For that puts me in the high and palmy company of Jesus and Socrates. One cannot, of course, argue that to have opponents on opposite sides, as they did, is a guarantee of being right. But one can argue that if one is right, one will have opponents on both sides.
1
WHAT IS RELIGION?
The Problem of Definition
Bea and Thomas have just come from the first class in Professor Fesser’s course on world religions.
Thomas:
Well, that was a surprise!
Bea:
To me too, frankly. I think I’m going to drop this course.
Thomas:
Oh. Apparently your surprise was the opposite of mine. I didn’t think I was going to stay, but now I think I am. I thought the professor would be vague, but he’s not. He made us think.
Bea:
You think he made us think just because he asked a question we couldn’t answer and then shot down all our answers and left us hanging?
Thomas:
Yes! That’s exactly what Socrates used to do. And it’s a lot harder than most people think it is. And more valuable.
Bea:
But it didn’t help us to understand the thing we all came there to understand.
Thomas:
What thing is that?
Bea:
The religions of the world. That’s the course title, after all.
Thomas:
And that’s what the professor talked about. So what’s your complaint?
Bea:
He proved that we didn’t even know what the word religion meant. So we don’t even know what we mean when we call these things religions. If we can’t even define the most basic term in the course, why bother taking a course in it? It’s ridiculous. Throughout history we keep having arguments about religion, and we fight wars to the death about religion, but we don’t even know what it is, what we’re fighting about! It’s ridiculous.
Thomas:
I quite agree that that’s ridiculous. So let’s make it less ridiculous.
Bea:
How?
Thomas:
Don’t you think we made any progress in doing that today?
Bea:
In understanding the religions of the world, the thing this course is supposed to be about? No! In understanding what religion means? No!
Thomas:
Don’t you think it’s progress to understand that we don’t really understand what we thought we did understand?
Bea:
I understand how that Socratic skepticism may be fun for you. You like to play those games.
Thomas:
It’s not fun and games. It’s understanding. That’s what you’re paying big tuition bucks to this university for, isn’t it?
Bea:
You are, maybe. You just love to tear ideas apart, like Socrates, don’t you?
Thomas:
But the Socratic method isn’t “me versus you.” It’s logic.
Bea:
Your logic, maybe.
Thomas:
No, no, there’s no such thing as “your logic” or anybody else’s logic. There’s just logic. Two and two still make four when it moves from one mind to another.
Bea:
I know that. I just took a course in logic.
Thomas:
What grade did you get in it?
Bea:
None of your business.
Thomas:
That’s a pretty low grade—“none of your business.”
Bea:
You have no way of knowing what grade I got.
Thomas:
Yes, I do. Nobody who gets an A ever labels it “none of your business.”
Bea:
So you think I should have been grateful to the professor for undermining everything I thought I knew about what religion is?
Thomas:
Absolutely.
Bea:
Why?
Thomas:
For the same reason you should be grateful to anybody who cleans your kitchen before you cook a meal in it.
Bea:
Oh. You mean the Socratic method is kind of like garbage collection?
Thomas:
Exactly.
Bea:
Okay, but what meal can we cook up in a kitchen that’s empty of food as well as garbage? Because that’s the upshot of what the professor said: that we have no food in our mind’s kitchen; that all our ideas about what religion is, all the ideas that we thought were “food for thought,” are really only garbage. So we’re left with an empty kitchen.
Thomas:
That empty kitchen is called “an open mind.” Haven’t you heard the news? For 2,400 years, ever since Socrates, that has proved to be the very best approach for everything you want to learn. You can’t put knowledge into a closed mind any more than you can put food into a closed mouth.
Bea:
But what good is an open mouth or an open mind unless it finds some food for it to clamp down on and eat? What good is it to starve? The professor showed us that we had no logical answer to the most basic question of all about religion—the question of what it is, what the word means, how to define it, what its essential nature is. And if we can’t take that very first step, how can we take the second? You should understand that, Mister Logic.
Thomas:
Maybe we can take that first step. Are you sure we can’t? We won’t know until we try, will we? Do you want to give up after only one try?
Bea:
Hmm . . . maybe you’ve got a point there, Thomas. Maybe I should stay, for one more class at least. Yeah, I think I’ll give the course one more chance. I didn’t learn anything valuable today, but I might next week.
Thomas:
Do you really think you didn’t learn anything valuable today? Don’t you think it’s valuable to learn that your kitchen is full of garbage, that your mind is full of ignorance and fallacies? Isn’t that progress?
Bea:
I wouldn’t call it all garbage.
Thomas:
Oh? So you think you do know what religion is?
Bea:
Well, yes, I do.
Thomas:
Even though you can’t define it?
Bea:
Yes, even though I can’t define it. We know all sorts of things we can’t define.
Thomas:
Like what?
Bea:
Like beauty, or love, or time. Can you define time, Thomas?
Thomas:
I think so.
Bea:
I’m waiting.
Thomas:
Okay, let’s say I answer “No, I can’t define time.” So what?
Bea:
But you know what it is, what it means, don’t you? In practice you know it, even though in theory you don’t. You use a watch, and you live by a schedule, don’t you?
Thomas:
Yes, but that’s different. Defining time is different from defining religion. There’s no argument that proves we can’t define time, it’s just very tricky to do it. But we can’t define religion. It’s just a vague feeling or superstition.
Bea:
Oh, so now you are defining it. Can you prove that definition?
Thomas:
That’s not a definition. It’s too general. It’s not specific enough for a definition. It doesn’t say what kind of vague feeling or superstition it is, what makes it a religious feeling or superstition.
Bea:
So take it back.
Thomas:
Okay, I do. But that’s what the professor proved: that we have to take back all our attempts to define religion. It looks like it can’t be defined.
Bea:
I don’t think he proved that at all.
Thomas:
Of course he did, and very easily too. Didn’t you follow his logic? Shall we go over it again?
Bea:
Yes, let’s. Because I care about religion. And I think you, of all people, might be able to help me, even though you don’t care about it as I do. Because you have a very logical mind.
Thomas:
Thank you. But I do care about avoiding the world’s number one superstition.
Bea:
Why must everything be black or white for you?
Thomas:
Not everything. But this certainly is. Because if there isn’t any real object for religious belief, if there’s nothing real that’s religious, or Godlike, or superhuman, or supernatural, or whatever religion is about, then religion has got to be the world’s number one superstition or myth or illusion. Freud even calls it a collective hallucination.
Bea:
Why?
Thomas:
Why did he call it a hallucination? Well, Freud’s analysis of religion is . . .
Bea:
No, I’m not asking about Freud, I’m asking about you. Why do you say it has to be either/or, black or white? Why does religion have to be either true or a hallucination? If you live by a hallucination, you’re not just wrong, you’re nuts. Are you saying religious people are all nuts?
Thomas:
Did you ever see the old Jimmy Stewart movie Harvey?
Bea:
Is that the one about the invisible rabbit?
Thomas:
Yeah. Harvey the invisible thirteen-foot rabbit. It was Jimmy’s best friend.
Bea:
I’ve heard of it.
Thomas:
But Jimmy wasn’t four years old, he was forty. So if he really believed in Harvey, he’s nuts. It’s not only superstition and illusion, it’s insanity.
Bea:
Of course. If he really believed it and it’s not there.
Thomas:
But God is just a big Harvey! So to believe in God, or Nirvana, or Brahman, or Allah—whatever the indefinable religious thing is—that’s at least as crazy as believing in Harvey. More so, even, because God is even bigger and more important to a believer than Harvey was to Jimmy Stewart.
Bea:
No, that’s a bad analogy.
Thomas:
Why?
Bea:
It isn’t crazy to believe in God.
Thomas:
Why not?
Bea:
Because you can’t know that there is no God.
Thomas:
But you can’t know for sure that there is no Harvey either! You can’t know there are no little green men from flying saucers out there somewhere hiding behind an invisibility shield. But you can’t know that there are either. So what makes more sense: to believe or not to believe in your big Harvey?
Bea:
I have good reasons to believe in God.
Thomas:
Are they better than Jimmy’s reasons for believing in Harvey?
Bea:
You bet they are.
Thomas:
And I also bet you can guess what my next question is going to be.
Bea:
I won’t fall for your strategy, Thomas. We’re not arguing about God’s existence yet. We’re trying to define religion before we argue about it. That’s logical, isn’t it?
Thomas:
Yes.
Bea:
And that’s what the class was about today.
Thomas:
Right.
Bea:
Because the professor is a logical man.
Thomas:
That he is.
Bea:
That’s why he takes one question at a time.
Thomas:
And he’s right.
Bea:
So let’s get back to his first question. Let’s go over the professor’s argument again. Maybe we can find a weak point. Maybe we can define religion after all.
Thomas:
Good for you, Bea. You’re starting to think logically now.
Bea:
What are you, my professor?
Thomas:
Sort of. I’ll be yours if you’ll be mine. Deal?
Bea:
Deal.
Thomas:
Let’s see, then, what was his argument? He started with the basic logical rule about definitions: that a definition has to be “coextensive” with the term defined, neither broader nor narrower. Because it has to cover only the thing defined, not other things too (that would make it too broad), but it has to cover all the examples of the thing defined, not just some of them (that would make it too narrow). Is there anything wrong with that principle?
Bea:
No.
Thomas:
And then he asked us for a definition of religion that would obey that rule and not be either too broad or too narrow. It would be too broad if it covered some things that weren’t religions as well as things that were; and it would be too narrow if it covered only some of the things we call religions but not all of them. Okay so far?
Bea:
Yes.
Thomas:
And you came up with the first attempt, remember?
Bea:
Yes. I said religion meant worshiping some kind of god or gods. And he said that was too narrow because it didn’t cover Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, which don’t usually have any gods.
Thomas:
And everybody acknowledges that those are religions.
Bea:
Right.
Thomas:
And therefore religion can’t be defined as worshiping gods. Did you follow that logic?
Bea:
Yes. And then nobody else dared to give another answer, so I tried again. I said religion was the deepest concern of the human heart. And the professor knocked that down too.
Thomas:
Do you remember why?
Bea:
I thought he’d say something about the “heart” being indefinable, or “deepest” being only a metaphor, or “concern” being ambiguous . . .
Thomas:
Which he certainly could have done!
Bea:
But all he said was that my definition was too broad. He said it covered so many other things that nobody classifies as religions—like sex and surfing and family, and nonreligious philosophies like Marxism and Stoicism and Epicureanism.
Thomas:
So what’s your complaint now?
Bea:
That he didn’t answer his own question, he just showed us that we couldn’t answer it.
Thomas:
Do you know why he did that?
Bea:
No, do you?
Thomas:
Well, let’s figure it out logically.
Bea:
How?
Thomas:
Well, either he knows the answer or he doesn’t, right?
Bea:
That’s logical.
Thomas:
And if he doesn’t know, he can’t tell us.
Bea:
But in that case, why is he teaching this course?
Thomas:
Maybe he wants to learn.
Bea:
Then he should be paying us tuition. And if he does know, why do you think he wouldn’t tell us?
Thomas:
Maybe he wants us to figure it out for ourselves.
Bea:
Oh.
Thomas:
See? You did learn something after all.
Bea:
Okay, but if that’s all I’m going to learn—well, I’m not going to pay good tuition money for that.
Thomas:
Who said that was all you’re going to learn? Why do you think there are more classes coming?
Bea:
Okay, maybe we’ll learn a lot in those other classes. But if that’s all we can learn about this question, about the definition of religion, then that’s a bummer.
Thomas:
Why?
Bea:
Because now we have to give up on that question. We can’t define religion. And then how do we learn about religions in the rest of the course without even knowing what religion means?
Thomas:
Didn’t you implicitly answer that question yourself a minute ago by your analogy with time?
Bea:
How was that an answer?
Thomas:
Even if we can’t define it, we know what it is because we know how to use the word. And if we know what it is, even if we can’t define it, we can still learn a lot about it. For instance, we can progress from Newton to Einstein, from the fallacy of absolute time to the truth of the relativity of time, even though we don’t have a perfect definition of time itself. Did you disagree with that analogy?
Bea:
No. In fact, I think it’s a pretty good one.
Thomas:
So we don’t have to start with a clear, logical definition of religion either. We want to end with it, but we don’t have to start with it. Even if we don’t have one, we don’t have to give up and become skeptics. So we can talk about religion even though we don’t really know exactly what we’re talking about.
Bea:
I guess you’re right. But that’s a surprising thing for you to say. I know you, Thomas; you’re an inveterate skeptic.
Thomas:
Well, sure. But there are two kinds of skepticism: a lazy kind and a hard-working kind. The lazy kind wants to give up to save the wear and tear on the gray matter. That’s not me. The hard-working kind wants to do the opposite: to critique every idea and not assume it to be true. That’s me.
Bea:
Oh.
Thomas:
Are you with me on this, Bea?
Bea:
I guess so. But I wonder: can you question everything? Can you go anywhere without any assumptions at all?
Thomas:
I think that’s the only way to go anywhere, to make progress: to treat every idea as false until it’s proved to be true. I think we should treat ideas in exactly the opposite way we treat people. We treat people as innocent until proven guilty. But the scientific method is to treat ideas as guilty until proven innocent.
Bea:
So that’s your assumption: the scientific method.
Thomas:
Well, sure, but that’s not an assumption that some idea or other is true, that’s just a methodological assumption, a practical assumption. It’s a path, not a destination.
Bea:
And what’s the justification for that path, that method?
Thomas:
I just told you: it’s practical. It works. It has worked remarkably well.
Bea:
Where? In the sciences, right?
Thomas:
Yes. All of them.
Bea:
But religion isn’t a science.
Thomas:
No, and neither is astrology nor alchemy nor any other superstition, and neither is schizophrenia nor paranoia nor any other mental disorder. But we can still take a scientific attitude toward those things.
Bea:
Now you’re assuming that religion is a mental disorder.
Thomas:
No, I’m not. I’m only assuming that it might be. But I think you’re assuming that it’s not.
Bea:
No, I’m not just assuming that. I have good reasons for believing it.
Thomas:
You said that before. But you didn’t want to examine your reasons when I asked you what they were.
Bea:
Later, maybe. But for now I just want to find out what religion is.
Thomas:
Fair enough. One game at a time.
Bea:
Religion is more than a game. It’s the deepest thing in most people’s lives.
Thomas:
Yes, and that’s why it’s either the world’s biggest truth or the world’s biggest superstition. And even if we can’t define it, we can target it, as we can target an animal that we’re hunting, and maybe we can catch it. Are you game for hunting that game? Or are you afraid to explore the seas of your faith in the ship of reason?
Bea:
I’m not afraid. Whether I stay in Professor Fesser’s course or not, I’ll stay in our course. I’ll talk with you about religion any time.
Thomas:
Thank you! Good for you, and good for me too.
Bea:
And I think I’ll stay in the professor’s course too, even though I didn’t get what I wanted today. Because I learned something else from class today than the definition of religion.
Thomas:
You mean my Socratic “lesson one” about how little you really know?
Bea:
Oh, that too, but I was thinking of something else, something more positive.
Thomas:
You mean the professor’s explanation of how this confused idea, the idea of “religion,” originated in history?
Bea:
That’s a second point. But that’s not what I was thinking of either. But what was that point again?
Thomas:
That the term religion arose in history only when different religions confronted each other and they needed some generic term, some X, when they started to argue that their X was a better X than the other X.
Bea:
Oh, that was an enlightening point too. I never knew that before. Wasn’t that where the professor quoted from that guy who was the dean of the Harvard Divinity School some time in the last century? What was his name?
Thomas:
Wilfred Cantwell Smith. His book was The Meaning and End of Religion. Did you get his main point?
Bea:
I think so. It was that no religion in the world ever called itself a “religion” until it had to compete against other religions and needed some generic term for “that kind of thing” so that it could argue that it was a better “that kind of thing” than the other ones. So the term religion was imposed externally by historical circumstances instead of coming from inside the religion itself. And that was true for every religion, especially Christianity, which is the one he detailed the early history of.
Thomas:
I give you an A for your summary but not for your grammar.
Bea:
Why?
Thomas:
You ended your last sentence with a preposition.
Bea:
Ah, so ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which you will not put?
Thomas:
You plagiarized that from somebody. Churchill, I think.
Bea:
You can’t plagiarize a joke. They’re public property.
Thomas:
I accept your correction. So what’s the positive point you liked? Socratic critique was point one, but you said that was negative. And the historical origin of the term religion was point two, but you said you were thinking of another point. So what’s point three? And does it help us to define religion?
Bea:
No, but it’s a kind of substitute for a definition. The professor said that even if we couldn’t define religion, deductively, we could still describe it, inductively, by observation of particular cases. He said that we can observe the same three dimensions of every religion in the world.
Thomas:
Oh, yeah. What did he call them again?
Bea:
