Professor Hick on Religious Pluralism

1986 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold A. Netland
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Pure Land Buddhism ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Jodo Shinshu ◽  
Ultimate Nature

The major religious traditions clearly seem to be making very different claims about the nature of the religious ultimate and our relation to this ultimate. For example, orthodox Christians believe in an infinite creator God who has revealed himself definitively in the Incarnation in Jesus. But while affirming that there is one God who is creator and judge, devout Muslims reject as blasphemous any suggestion thatJesus was God incarnate. Theravada Buddhists, on the other hand, do not regard the religious ultimate as an ontologically distinct creator at all. And even within, say, the Buddhist family of traditions sharp differences emerge: followers of Jodo-Shinshu (True Sect of the Pure Land) Buddhism maintain that salvation/enlightenment is attainable simply through exercising faith in the Amida Buddha and the recitation of the nembutsu, whereas Zen monks reject as illusory any worldview which implies dualism and hold that enlightenment or satori (viz, a direct, unmediated apprehension of the ultimate nature of reality which transcends all distinctions) is to be attained only through rigorous self-discipline.

scholarly journals The Philosophy of Religion in Nishida Kitarō : 1901-1914

Théologiques ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 39-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agustín Jacinto Zavala
Keyword(s):  
Academic Career ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
The Other ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Pure Land Buddhism ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Early Text ◽  
One Year ◽  
Nishida Kitaro

The Study of Religion (Shūkyō-gaku) is an early text from a one-year course, 1913-1914, which Nishida Kitarō imparted only once in his academic career. In this text, apart from references to mystics and to early and medieval Christian thinkers, Nishida tries to point out the basic elements of Eastern and Western religions through the writings of xviii-xxth century authors, among them participants in the Gifford Lectures, the Bampton Lectures and Hibbert Lectures. On the other hand, Nishida tries to find the corresponding characteristics of religion in Zen and True Pure Land Buddhism. In short, Nishida’s approach to a philosophy of religion gives us an overview of the problems concerning a Buddhist-Christian dialogue.

scholarly journals Los orígenes, difusión y conexiones interreligiosas en torno a las cuentas de oración: un caso de estudio de la evangelización de Japón

2021 ◽  
pp. 209-247
Author(s):  
Rie Arimura
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Asian Religions ◽  
Pure Land Buddhism ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Jodo Shinshu

Praying with a string of beads is not exclusive to Catholicism. Various Asian religions have had a similar tradition since before the advent of Christ. This paper addresses the parallels between different religious traditions, as well as the origin, formation and spread of the Holy Rosary and its variants called “crowns.” It also analyzes the intersections between Buddhist and Catholic prayer traditions during the period of the evangelization of Japan (1549-1639). To this end, it draws on a theoretical framework aimed at interpreting the acceptance of Christianity from the point of view of ordinary people, by comparing the similarities and differences between the beliefs, practices, and organizational structure of popular Buddhism (in particular, Jōdo-shū and Jōdo-Shinshū, branches of Pure Land Buddhism) and those of Catholicism.

Materiality and Spiritual Economies in Premodern Japanese Buddhism: A Problem in Historical Change

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galen Amstutz
Keyword(s):  
Good Deal ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Japanese History ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
Pure Land Buddhism ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Cognitive Shift ◽  
Jodo Shinshu

Abstract The recent emphasis on materiality in religion has encouraged a good deal of attention to materiality in Buddhism, but that attention has fallen entirely on Buddhist traditions with conventional monastic orientations. Yet the major Japanese Buddhist school known as True Pure Land Buddhism (Jōdo Shinshū) has also historically possessed a highly important, if different, material dimension, for which one touchpoint has been its merchant members called Ōmi shōnin who flourished in later premodern Japanese history. After alluding to the difficulty of isolating the ‘material’ in any religious culture, the article sketches the transition in Christian materialities in Europe which marked a cognitive shift from medieval modes of thinking (exteriorized, animistic-monistic, oriented to relics and ancestor religion) towards modern modes (interiorized, oriented to abstraction and the psychological individual). Against that paradigm, almost all premodern Buddhist materialities, including those in Japan, can be seen as medieval in nature. However, Jōdo Shinshū was a departure employing an innovatively interiorized doctrine. From that perspective, both Europe and Japan were highly complex civilizations displaying a long-term medieval-to-modern shift, which impacted the material manifestations of religions by gradually replacing older economies of ritual exchange with more modern-looking economies of preaching, religious publication and commercial life. Western scholarship has resisted appreciating these issues in an Asian setting.

Religie als bron van zingeving en sociale binding. Godsdienstpsychologische reflecties bij Gijs Dingemans’ In vredesnaam

2010 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
Hetty Zock
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
The Other ◽  
Stereotyped Behaviour ◽  
Existential Meaning ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
The One

The author argues that individual usage and appropriation of religious traditions has become increasingly important. Therefore, church leaders and pastors should pay more attention to the psychological functions of religion. On the one hand religion serves as a source of existential meaning-making and on the other hand as a powerful glue of group identities. By discussing the psychological theories of Erik H. Erikson, Hubert Hermans and James W. Jones, the Janus face of religion is highlighted. Religion may lead to intolerance and stereotyped behaviour (when it is only used to reduce identity anxiety and narcissistic problems), but it may also stimulate empathy and dialogical capacities.

scholarly journals Marching the devotional subject: The bodily-and-material cultures of religion

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 369-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Urmila Mohan ◽  
Jean-Pierre Warnier
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Cognitive Gaps ◽  
The One

Drawing on the Maussian notion of the technologies of the body, on the Schilderian theory of the Körperschema, on the neurocognitive sciences and the Foucauldian concept of subjectivation, this article shifts the study of religion away from the verbalized creeds, doctrines and texts towards the consideration of the bodily-and-material cultures that are prominent in most, if not all, religious traditions. This shift helps us to understand how the bodily-and-material cultures of religious practice contribute to producing the devotee and obtaining compliance. The potential synergies, tensions and cognitive gaps between the verbalized creeds, on the one hand, and the bodily techniques and material culture, on the other hand, are emphasized for a better understanding of the complexities of the devotional subject.

scholarly journals RECONSTRUCTION OF ISLAMIC FAMILY LAW IN THE FIELD OF LEGAL INHERITANCE IN RELIGIOUS PLURALISM AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO NATIONAL LAW (Ijtihad Study Of Judges Of Religious Court On Development Of Inheritance Law In The Compilation Of Islamic Law)

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 121
Author(s):  
Ahmad Khisni
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Family Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Inheritance Law ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Law Texts ◽  
Legal Discovery

The juridical-theological-philosophical distinction of religion is one of the obstacles of a person to be an heir. On the other hand, empirically-historically-sociologically isnot so, because of the existence of illat or other reasons that allow a person of different religions to gain inheritance from the heirs who are Muslims by considering the factors of justice. It is an act of makrufconstructive ‘wasiatwajibah’ to the relatives in need and oriented towards human values, usefulness and benefit which need to be realized in pluralist society of diverse life. It can contribute to the national law which is the result of ijtihad in the form of development of compilation The Islamic Law texts (tahrij al-ahkam 'alanash al-qanun) as a form of legal discovery with a progressive paradigm in realizing the function of the judiciary that the judiciary is a tool of social change.

Collectivistic Christianities and Pluralism: An Inquiry into Agency and Responsibility

2019 ◽  
pp. 36-59
Author(s):  
Slavica Jakelić
Keyword(s):  
National Identities ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Pluralism ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
Religious Others ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

This essay addresses the relationship between religious traditions, secularisms, and fundamentalisms by looking at collectivistic Catholicisms in the communist and post-communist Croatia and Poland. In response to both theorists of modernity and critics of secularism—who present modernity as a process of secularization and religion as modernity’s other—Jakelić advances the idea of ‘collectivistic religion,’ to refer to religions that are public in manifestation, historically embedded, constitutive of specific group identities—next to linguistic, territorial, cultural, or national identities—and defined in part by the presence of religious (or non-religious) others. On the one hand, she considers the collectivistic Catholicisms that reject the cultural and moral pluralism of modernity but, in the process, end up espousing one of modernity’s aspects—its homogenizing impulse. On the other hand, she traces two instances in which collectivistic Catholicisms in Croatia and Poland affirm the links between Catholicism and national identities but remain open to their Muslim and secular others respectively.

Part Lion, Part Wolf

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-438
Author(s):  
Mathieu E. Courville
Keyword(s):  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Complex World ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

In this essay, I begin by examining arguments concerning “Orientalism” from the work of the late Edward W. Said. I then highlight the way that Kurban Said’s novella Ali and Nino is indebted to this tradition, the author relying upon it in order to create a complex world within a few pages. On the one hand, this novella is a wonderful work of art with which to work out some of Edward Said’s key ideas, and on the other hand, appreciating Edward Said’s key ideas is also crucial for a better appreciation of this novella’s complexity. The second part of the paper focuses on the novella itself, so as to think of Ali and Nino with Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism in the foreground of one’s mind. In conclusion, I not only highlight why this also sheds light on art and literature, religion and politics, history and current affairs, in such a geopolitically important area as the Caucasus as well as elsewhere the world over; I also point out parallels between the Orientalist stereotypes examined in this essay and key ideas from ascetic religious traditions.

scholarly journals Surrender to Another Person: The Case of a Spiritual Master

2020 ◽  
pp. 002216782097563
Author(s):  
Amir Freimann ◽  
Ofra Mayseless
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Spiritual Integration ◽  
Extreme Form ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Common Experience ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Self Transcendence

The experience and posture of surrender has been espoused by religious traditions as key to spiritual life and development for millennia. Within psychology, on the other hand, surrender’s position has been likened to an “unwanted bastard child,” and its research has been neglected. Moreover, when occurring in the context of a relationship with another person, the terms “submission” and “obedience,” laden with negative connotations, have been commonly used. We propose that psychologically and spiritually developmental surrender is a common experience both when it occurs in relationship to “reality,” the Self or God, and in the context of relationship with another person, as in love, sex, patientship, followership, and discipleship. We focus on surrender to a spiritual master, which is in some respects the most extreme form of surrender to another person and the most challenging for the modern secular worldview to accept and suggest that, with all its complexity and potential pitfalls, it can be a powerful enabler and facilitator of the search for the sacred, self-transcendence, and spiritual integration.

scholarly journals Interreligious Dialogue, Comparative Theology and the Alterity of Hindu Thought

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ankur Barua
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Interreligious Dialogue ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
British India ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Crucial Difference ◽  
The One

A key question at the heart of contemporary debates over interreligious dialogue is whether the Christian partner in such conversations should view her interlocutors through the lens of Christian descriptions or whether any such imaging amounts to a form of Christian imperialism. We look at the responses to this question from certain contemporary forms of ‘particularism’ which regard religious universes as densely knit, and sometimes incommensurable, systems of meanings, so that they usually deny the significance, or even the possibility, of modes of bible preaching such as apologetics. While these concerns over the alterity of other religious traditions are often viewed as specifically postmodern, two Scotsmen in British India, J. N. Farquhar (1861–1929) and A. G. Hogg (1875–1954), struggled exactly a hundred years ago with a version of this question vis-à-vis the religious universe of Vedāntic Hinduism and responded to it in a manner that has striking resemblances to ‘particularism’. We shall argue that Hogg can be seen as an early practitioner of a form of ‘comparative theology’ which emerges in his case, on the one hand, through a textual engagement with specific problems thrown up in interreligious spaces but, on the other hand, also seeks to present a reasoned defence of Christian doctrinal statements. We shall note a crucial difference between his comparative theological encounters and contemporary practitioners of the same – while the latter are usually wary of speaking of any ‘common ground’ in interreligious encounters, Hogg regarded the presuppositions of the Christian faith as the basis of such encounters. The writings of both groups of theologians are structured by certain ‘dilemmas of difference’ that we explore.

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