If one were to be a religious pluralist, how ought one live one's life? It seems to me that, while one does have something of an obligation to explore other traditions, one should in the end root oneself in one's own tradition. If all traditions are really saying the same thing in one way or another, then they only thing left to do is to dig in deeply; and this is best done in a context in which one already knows the language, the imagery, and history, the texts, etc. So, if one is a pluralist, the worst thing to do might very well be to go off on spiritual highs in other traditions.
6 comments:
Good point, especially about not going off on "spiritual highs" - which I'm not sure are that helpful even in our own tradition (though certainly affective & even existential moments are both a necessary and, I think, beneficial part of a walk when guided by truth).
Where does this leave you, though, when you dig deep in one tradition and find an explicit denial of another? Just curious for your thoughts.
Grating your conclusion here, Michael, the next question should be (I think): how should religious pluralism shape one's Christian life?
What interpretation does pluralism put on the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all things?
What interpretation does pluralism put on the Missio Dei?
Or, is the point of "digging deep" in one's own tradition (Christianity in your case), that these questions do indeed have it backwards? Perhaps it is rather that, for the Christian pluralist, the proper biblical interpretation of Christ's Lordship and the proper biblical interpretation of the Missio Dei are just what give rise to pluralism?
In a recent conversation with a friend who is a "missionary" for Christ in the Muslim world, he said that he advocates that Muslims should become followers of Jesus as Muslims; their Muslim identity will be transformed, I take it, by their encounter with Christ, but they should still remain rooted in a sort of Muslim context--ritually, socially, culturally. A pluralist could also say that Muslims should continue to find meaning in the Qur'an and Muslim tradition. At the same time, in the pursuit of Muslim Christian understanding, or of Muslim-Disciple-of-Jesus and Western-Christian-Disciple-of-Jesus perhaps each should cross over and learn to find meaning in each other's scriptures and traditions.
Good points, you guys.
I would hold that, even if all paths lead to God (or the Real), one still needs to take one path rather than the others; one cannot serve two masters, even if both are good. So, the Lordship of Christ would entail that I seek to follow Christ instead of Buddha when the two conflict, for example. I could have done the opposite, but I have chosen differently and there is value in commitment.
It is like how one can live a married Christian life, or a celibate one (as a dedicated monk or priest, say). One could chose either, but once chosen, one must commit to the life to let it change oneself.
Also, I don't mean to say that religious traditions are imperfect. Even granting pluralism, there is room for both internal and external criticism. Within Christianity, I could still protest the treatment of homosexuals, and outwardly-facing I could condemn traditional caste systems.
So, sometimes differences are irreconcilable, and these demand change. Sometimes differences are different myths, which guide different practices but with equally good ends (maybe not the same end; if the Good is infinite, there may be infinitely many ends, and I would attain a different perfection as a Buddhist than as a Christian, although they would both be perfections). Sometimes differences are context-dependent and could be explained in a logical fashion, if we could ever get to the reality behind them (which may not even in principle be possible). And we can't tell ahead of time what a given difference is, so pluralism ought to demand more interaction with religious traditions and not less.
Oh, and the Muslim example is an interesting one; there is certainly room within Islam for devotion to Jesus, who at times is held up almost as high as Muhammad (and practically perhaps even higher, in some circles). I think that I may need to study that some more; it provides an excellent concrete example of how the faiths can interact.
Your analogy of choosing to be celibate or married, and speaking of different perfections for Buddhists and Christians makes your religious pluralism sound like moral pluralism. The idea, that is, that there are a plurality of good lives which are mutually contradictory not in their goodness (i.e., recognizing one kind of good life does not entail your denying another kind of good life) but in that you cannot pursue or realize all of them at once.
This could make good sense to someone who understands a religious tradition primarily in terms of an ethical system or a way of life.
Maybe this is too...something-ist...of me, but I guess I still emphasize doctrine and propositional truth. Religious traditions--I should say, particular teachings within those traditions--contradict each other not only in that they are practically irreconcilable (you cannot live in accord with all of them at once), but in that they have different truth values (*logically* contradictory religious teachings are not capable of being both true). (Whereas "contradictory" good lives are capable of being both good).
Perhaps I should clarify that I am using two different notions of contradiction: logical (or alethic?) contradiction, and practical contradiction.
You seem to be understanding "the Lordship of Christ" as a moral doctrine that one might pursue in one kind of good life, whereas submission to Buddha's teachings present an equally good (but practically contradictory) option.
My contention with your view is not so much that I think Buddha's moral teachings are actually immoral, nor even that Buddha's moral teachings are incompatible with Christ's moral teachings.
It is that I understand "the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all things" as making an ontological claim with practical, moral import. The confession, "Jesus is Lord" is not 'merely' an expression of a commitment to follow Jesus (although it certainly is that!), it is also a claim about cosmological reality. Jesus is Lord and no one/nothing else is. This parallels the Shema: "the LORD is One".
I would think that a religious pluralist would either be forced do deny the cosmological/ontological claim "Jesus is Lord" or else understand Jesus to include or be identical to whatever the ultimate being or authority (or maybe you could dispense with the notion of authority as metaphorical and find some alternate expression of "ultimate") is in Buddhism. Something like: "there is only One 'Lord', and Jesus is that Lord, but so is Buddha and Allah and Krishna. These are all different names/ways of metaphorically understanding the One."
In any case, I think you'd need to "demythologize" the NT--and not only Paul's writings--in order to say that the scriptures of Christianity are compatible with this sort of pluralism. If you already have independent reasons for thinking pluralism true, then you might have justification for that kind of hermeneutic.
But I'm still curious about what happens when a pluralist "digs deep" into the Christian tradition. If one borrows the language and metaphors of the Christian scriptures and later traditions but uses a semantics according to which "The Kingdom of Heaven is near" means something radically different from what it would have meant to Jesus' audience or what it means to the Christians in your community (I assume fellowship with other Christians is part of "digging deep"), it seems like you would be playing your own language game and would have little basis for communication with others in your community.
I think healthy churches can be very theologically diverse, but in order to participate in the active life of the church there would have to be at least some practical commonality in how members of the church understand things like the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the Mission of God, and the implications of these ideas/realities. I don't know that such commonality is impossible for a pluralist in a 'regular' Christian community, but I'm curious, as I said, as to how this would work.
Of course, one could always join or form a community of relatively like-minded pluralists. But that may not always be possible, let alone attractive.
I'm sure all of this is much more complicated than I make it sound. I can't pretend to be reading your mind or soul. Please be straight with me if you think I sound like I'm caricaturing you or in any way demeaning you or your position.
I think that you're providing some insightful feedback, Scott; I'm just thinking out loud, and I do value your thoughts on the matter.
I suppose that one could call it a moral pluralism, if morality is simply the sphere of practical concerns in its entirety. I'm a little iffy, though, since morality has tones of just being a good person and doing the right thing. The kind of practice to which I am referring is that of salvation/sanctification, and the perfection is that of Godliness and not merely virtue.
But yes, this would harm the ontological import of the statement, "Jesus is Lord." How would that be interpreted? I'm not sure. It could be just a practical statement (although that's rather dull). It could be a more robust mythological statement: not only does it guide practice, but it also partakes in reality in a fashion. We can't get independent access to this reality, so we can't tell how it does so and what the myth preserves about this reality, but even if it is straightforwardly false, it is a truer statement than most others which we have. My post Homomorphisms, Language, and God attempts to provide a way of parsing this out.
And finally, it could be possible that Christian inclusivism is the truth behind all other religions; it is them which are mythological, and ours which is true. The difference between the pluralist and the inclusivist is that the pluralist only would admit this as a single possible option.
Would we then have to demythologize the NT? Probably, to an extent; or perhaps "re-mythologize" it, as any specific demythologization is just another myth. And yes, this would only be attractive to someone who has independent reasons for pluralism (say, for example, that one believes that religious experience does yield evidence for a religious dimension in life, but one is also convinced that no particular religion can be historically or rationally supported on its own).
So, how would the pluralist relate to others within the church? It seems that, while she would have a difficult time signing statements of faith (unless she were to take a purely practical standpoint toward them, as statements of how she would live and what she could doubt in public), most activities within the church would not require explicit explanation of her own beliefs. I could go to bible studies and share my knowledge of theology and history, enriching the text and helping the others in the group as far as I am able, without needing to qualify everything by my own interpretation. I could sing the songs and recite the liturgy, without needing to explain my reworking of it. I could participate in service projects without any difference.
When speaking with other members of the community, I wouldn't mean quite the same thing as them; but it wouldn't be something completely different, either. I am not arbitrarily borrowing what they have to say, but using it along similar lines as them. So, we may disagree on whether Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, but we will agree that His descent shows how the Divine is most glorified when it is at its lowest (though, of course, this would need to be further requalified, and our qualifications would never be without myth).
Of course, the problem with trying to explain the pluralist's semantics is that pluralism, by its very nature, must always both speak from within a tradition and, at the same time, exceed the tradition.
Also, the pluralist would want to say that it is not the tradition as a static thing which is embraced, but as a dynamic reality. Christianity may be a proper avenue to the Real, and so might Hinduism, but part of what makes them such are their mutual tensions, critiques, and dialogues which cause them to grow and change. So, since the traditions are changing, "digging deep into the tradition" isn't just a statement about the past writings or a set body of statements. The pluralist would most likely be closer to the front than the back of these changes, as well. However, this is not blind change either, as if anything were to go; the specific historical trajectories do shape future options.
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