“All Faiths Are Paths”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayon Maharaj
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Common Goal ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Sophisticated Model ◽  
Truth Claims

This chapter reconstructs from Sri Ramakrishna’s teachings a unique and philosophically sophisticated model of religious pluralism. For Sri Ramakrishna, God is infinite, so there are correspondingly infinite ways of approaching and realizing God. Therefore, all religions and spiritual philosophies—both theistic and nontheistic—are salvifically effective paths to one common goal: God-realization, or the direct spiritual experience of God in any of His innumerable aspects or forms. Maharaj then examines Sri Ramakrishna’s response to the thorny problem of conflicting religious truth-claims. Sri Ramakrishna reconciles religious claims about the nature of the ultimate reality by claiming that every religion captures a uniquely real aspect of the impersonal-personal Infinite Reality. Regarding other types of religious truth-claims, Sri Ramakrishna maintains that while every religion errs on some points of doctrine, these errors do not substantially diminish the salvific efficacy of religions. Finally, Maharaj defends Sri Ramakrishna’s doctrine of religious pluralism against numerous objections.

scholarly journals Redefining Religious Truth as a Challenge for Philosophy of Religion

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 139-159
Author(s):  
Peter Jonkers
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Ways Of Life ◽  
The Way

One of the most important features of contemporary Western societies is the rise of (religious) pluralism. Whereas (philosophical) theism used to serve as a common ground to discuss the truth-claims of religion, this approach seems to have lost much of its plausibility. What I want to argue in this article is that philosophy of religion as a critical intellectual activity still cannot do without the notion of religious truth, but also that it needs to redefine this truth in an existential way, i.e. by interpreting religions as concrete ways of life. In this paper I develop this idea of religious truth by interpreting religions as traditions of wisdom, being a kind of truth that is able to orientate humans’ lives without being swayed by the issues of the day. In order to substantiate my interpretation I discuss three fundamental aspects of wisdom, viz. the fact that it rests on a broadened idea of reason, the way in which it discovers the universal in the particular, and the insight that all life-orientations are based on a principle that is subjectively adequate, but objectively inadequate (Kant).

Humble Confessionalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Holley
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Viable Option ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Rule Out

Abstract: Much of the appeal of religious pluralism for those who take religious truth claims seriously arises from the sense that confessionalist alternatives to pluralism that affirm the truth of one particular religion are unacceptable. Pluralists try to foster this sense by portraying confessionalist views as implausible for one who is fully informed about the facts of religious diversity. However, when pluralists attempt to rule out confessionalism, they tend to characterize it in ways that overlook the possibility of what I call humble confessionalism. When humble forms of confessionalism are considered, representations of pluralism as the only viable option become less persuasive.

scholarly journals SIGNIFIKANSI DAKWAH INKLUSIF NURCHOLISH MADJID BAGI MASYARAKAT INDONESIA

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-66
Author(s):  
Zaprulkhan Zaprulkhan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Religious Disagreement ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Islamic Values

Articulation of religion in the public sphere of Indonesia is still much to be exclusive and puritan, unilateral in monopolizing the truth claims of religious truth, and intolerance towards various religious disagreement. Whereas in the context of a pluralistic Indonesian nation, whether of race, ethnicity, culture, class, and religion, religious messages should be delivered by inclusive proselytizing. Anyone who would articulate religious discourses in the public sphere of Indonesia, should ideally be through inclusive proselytizing. In the context of inclusive proselytizing, Islamic values such as justice (al-'adl), human rights, freedom (Hurriyah), democracy (Shura), universal benevolence (Khoir), egalitarian (Musawah), tolerance (tasamuh), balance ( tawazun), social ethics (morals), universal humanity (an-nas), as well as peace and safety contained in the doctrine of principle Islam but those are inclusive. Inclusive priciples could embrace all people regardless of race, culture, race, class, and even religion. This article is going to discuss the significance of Nurcholish Madjid‟s inclusive proselytizing for pluralistic Indonesian society.

Ibn Tufayl, Abu Bakr Muhammad (before 1110–85)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shams C. Inati
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Direct Experience ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Blank Slate ◽  
The Way

Ibn Tufayl’s thought can be captured in his only extant work, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (The Living Son of the Vigilant), a philosophical treatise in a charming literary form. It relates the story of human knowledge, as it rises from a blank slate to a mystical or direct experience of God after passing through the necessary natural experiences. The focal point of the story is that human reason, unaided by society and its conventions or by religion, can achieve scientific knowledge, preparing the way to the mystical or highest form of human knowledge. The story also seeks to show that, while religious truth is the same as that of philosophy, the former is conveyed through symbols, which are suitable for the understanding of the multitude, and the latter is conveyed in its inner meanings apart from any symbolism. Since people have different capacities of understanding that require the use of different instruments, there is no point in trying to convey the truth to people except through means suitable for their understanding.

Pluralism and the Being of the Between

1998 ◽  
pp. 66-72
Author(s):  
Mark H Grear Mann
Keyword(s):  
Standard Model ◽  
Constructive Model ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The Standard Model ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Typological Approach

In this paper I attempt to reassess the age-old problem of conflicting religious truth-claims by utilizing the fundamental metaphysical insights of William Desmond. I first outline and critique ways that philosophers have traditionally attempted to address this issue, focusing my critique on the standard model (viz., exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism) used to describe different ways of making claims about truth. I then develop Desmond’s "fourfold sense of being" (the univocal, equivocal, dialectical and metaxological) as an alternative approach. My conclusion is that Desmond’s metaphysics provides a constructive model for addressing conflicting truth-claims, while also avoiding the pitfalls inherent in the traditional typological approach.

scholarly journals Bakens, drumpels en webbe: (Hervormde) Teologie as kreatiewe onderneming

2013 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Piet Van Staden
Keyword(s):  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Abstract Model ◽  
Linguistic Expression ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
Victor Turner ◽  
The Church ◽  
Three Phases

Beacons, thresholds and webs: Theology as creative endeavour. This article argues from the premise that theology is a creative undertaking. Nothing can be thought about God other than by thinking about people’s experience and understanding of God. Theology therefore speaks objectively about God from the subjective experience of God and from testimonies about that experience. Such reflections and testimonies are expressed in language. However, the inherent constraints of vocabulary and formulation render any linguistic expression of such spiritual encounters incomplete. Theology is always seeking for new possibilities of expression in order to overcome the constraints. It stands to reason that the figurative mode of expression will be preferred to the concrete or factual register of language because figurative language is more suited to articulate the elusive spiritual experience of meeting God through faith. Signposts, thresholds and webs are employed here as metaphors to emphasise the creative aspect of theology within the context of a changing world. They represent the three phases in the so-called rites of passage described by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep and refined by Victor Turner into an abstract model employed in the understanding of all similar experiences of ritual transference. Here the model is applied to the church and its theology.

Historical Truth in the Hermeneutics of T. S. Eliot

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 (2) ◽  
pp. 264-288
Author(s):  
Ryan R. Holston
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Philosophical Hermeneutics ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
The World ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Hans Georg Gadamer

AbstractA small number of scholars have noted T. S. Eliot's anticipation of the hermeneutical theory later articulated by the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. Eliot similarly concerns himself with the epistemological assumptions of positivism in the human sciences and the implications of objectivizing texts and other cultural phenomena by adopting the attitude of the scientific observer. For both thinkers, this represents an approach to social life which either distorts or altogether misses the truth claims of those whose ideas are to be interpreted. Furthermore, Eliot develops a theory of understanding that is similar to the historicizing of interpretation that one finds later in Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. However, among those who have observed these affinities, a key difference has been neglected. In his effort to confront such secularizing forces in the human sciences, Eliot comes to embrace an intellectualist philosophy of history, which relies on a tenuous dualism between the metaphysical and the physical, while Gadamer's philosophy of history collapses the dichotomy between the world of ideas and the existential realm. Thus, Eliot ultimately identifies what transcends history exclusively with the realm of the spirit. This essay argues that as the mature Eliot struggled with the empirically reductive tendencies of the human sciences and aimed to save religious truth from their deterministic assaults, he increasingly retreated to an intellectualism that misconceived the ultimate basis of religious truth. Consequently, the existing literature neglects the intellectualism that defines Eliot's understanding of truth within history and the more concrete understanding of that encounter that one finds in Gadamer's thinking.

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