WORLD SCRIPTURE AND EDUCATION FOR PEACE
by
Andrew Wilson, Ph.D.
October 8, 1991
This paper was delivered at a conference sponsored by the New Ecumenical
Research Association at Chateau de Bellinglise, Elincourt Ste-Marguerite,
France, May 7-12, 1992. Copyright International Religious Foundation.
Introduction
This essay gives me an opportunity for reflection on the work which I have
recently completed as editor of World Scripture: A Comparative
Anthology of Sacred Texts. This volume was commissioned by the Reverend
Sun Myung Moon in 1985, and it required the cooperation and assistance of
more than forty scholars and religious leaders representing every
tradition before it was completed last summer. World Scripture
is a substantial book: its 928 pages contain over 4,000 passages gathered
from 268 sacred texts and 55 oral traditions. All the major religions,
the primal religions, and even the new religions are represented by their
scriptures or sacred words. The passages are arranged comparatively by
gathering them around various topics (165 in all) which cover all the
significant issues of the religious life: God, the purpose of life, sin,
salvation, faith, prayer, self-denial, providence, prophecy, messianic
hopes, etc. Poring over any of these topics, the reader is immediately
acquainted with the wisdom of all religions as they each deal with these
universal human concerns.
World Scripture was unveiled at the inaugural assembly of the
Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace [IRFWP] in Seoul, Korea on
August 27, 1991. In his Founder's Address, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon
thanked the scholars and religious leaders who worked for the publication
of the book, and described it as a textbook for world peace.
Completed after five years of cooperative effort among scholars of
religion and after review and endorsement by heads of the world's
religions, World Scripture will become a shining light, a volume
of holy scripture that puts together the universally valuable contents of
the world's religions. In particular, it will become a precious textbook
for educating the younger generation who are to live together as one
global family. It will teach them to overcome barriers between religions,
between races, and between cultures. I believe that, through this text,
all people will not only free themselves from religious ignorance and
self-righteousness, but also realize the fact that, among religions, there
are shared values and a universal foundation which are of greater
significance than the differences which have historically divided
religions.
This essay will discuss how World Scripture may serve as a
textbook to promote world peace through interfaith understanding. The
concept here is that all scripture has an educational function, and that
modern religious education must include an understanding of other
religions and an acceptance that they are legitimate ways. Furthermore,
we can reflect upon some of the larger implications of World
Scripture and the program which it seeks to advance. First is the
claim that the religions of the world indeed show convergence to an
organic unity. Is the methodology of the book sound, so as not to
prejudice this claim? If so, then is the convergence of religions
evidence for the existence of Absolute Reality? Then again, what is to
become of the particular genius of each religion? Is it ultimately
submerged in a new uniformity? What is the value of particularity in
religion that it ought to be preserved? Next I wish to reflect on the
role of World Scripture in promoting what the Reverend Moon
calls "Godism." This is the effort to establish universal religious
values which can become the basis for public discourse in a democracy that
is pluralistic and religious at the same time. Instead of dealing with
the problem of tolerance for religious minorities by banishing religion
from the public square, the religions should reform themselves to support
inclusive religious values as the public values of democracy. Finally, we
make some remarks on the open-ended nature of this project, which will
ultimately involve unifying knowledge in all fields through the making of
many books with a similar holistic approach to that found in World
Scripture.
A Textbook to Promote World Peace
Sacred scripture lies at the very heart of religion. As the standard of
truth and bearer of the founder's revelation, sacred scripture gives
religion its stability and identity. As the starting point of education,
sacred scripture conserves cultural identity and is a basis for ethics.
But sacred scripture also promotes exclusivism and separateness. Based on
a narrow-minded reading of scripture, each religion can assert that it is
the sole possessor of truth. For example, the scriptures assert: "I am
the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me"
(John 14.6); "I, Krishna, am the goal of the wise man, and I am the way"
(Srimad Bhagavatam 11.12); "Mohammed is the Messenger of God and the Seal
of the Prophets" (Qur'an 33.40); "Outside the Buddha's teaching there is
no saint" (Dhammapada 254). Yet as long as the world remained divided
into discrete spheres of culture with little interchange among the
different regions and cultures, it was fitting that within each cultural
sphere, its scriptures be affirmed as absolute and their teachings as
unique.
Today, however, progress in transportation and communication has brought
all the peoples of the world into close contact as members of one global
village. There is the divine call, issuing from many quarters, for the
religions of the world to take responsibility for building world peace.
This will require mutual cooperation among the world's religions, races
and nations to build a harmonious family of humankind centered upon our
Heavenly Parent, whether he is called Allah or God or Krishna or Ultimate
Reality. Therefore, each religion can no longer remain exclusively
focused on itself; it must take into account the legitimacy and validity
of the other religions--and of the truths embodied in the other religions'
sacred scriptures.
In secular education, it is an accepted educational goal to teach about
other nations and cultures in order to dispel the ignorance and prejudice
that could fuel nationalistic passions. Even from elementary school,
students study world history and world civilizations in addition to the
history and culture of their own nation. In this regard, religious
education is far behind. With the exception of courses in comparative
religion, which are usually taught at secular universities and not by the
religious establishment, religious education is largely an insular
enterprise. In the modern global village, religions, no less than secular
institutions, have the obligation to educate people to understand and
respect people belonging to different communities and holding different
beliefs.
Sacred scriptures are the chief textbooks for religious education. Yet
these deal almost exclusively with the truth of one's own faith, and
encourage the impression that it is the sole possessor of truth. New
textbooks must be forthcoming for religious education that can change this
deficiency. But conventional world religions textbooks suffer in
comparison to the primary textbook, sacred scripture. They lack
comparable authority and are relatively superficial. The best way to
learn about another religion is through an encounter with its living
practitioners and teachers, in dialogue and shared worship--and such
interfaith encounters are becoming more frequent all over the world. But
another good way is by studying their sacred scriptures, with a good
commentary as a guide. In the scriptures of other faiths one finds texts
comparable to one's own scripture which treat the problems of human
existence in a profound and authoritative manner. One finds in another
religion's scripture the original revelations and insights of the founders
that have made it compelling to millions of people.1
World Scripture can serve this educational purpose as a guide to
the scriptures of other faiths. It places passages from other scriptures
side by side with passages from one's own sacred scripture. Therefore,
immediately, the student recognizes how the truth in his own scripture is
reflected in others, and sometimes is even illuminated by additional
insights from the other faiths. The thematic arrangement, besides
providing an endless source of comparative material, also clues in the
student to the interpretation of difficult passages by providing a ready
context. Of course, occasionally additional explanations must be provided
in order to prevent misunderstanding of certain passages. As the student
discovers gems of wisdom, some which may seem surprisingly familiar, he is
led to rethink such prejudiced opinions as: the scripture of his own faith
is the sole repository of truth (Christianity), or other scriptures have
been mutilated and distorted (Islam). He will also recognize the weakness
of many of the common caricatures of other religions, for instance the
Christian view of Judaism as legalistic and lacking grace, or the western
view of Theravada Buddhism as a kind of atheistic humanism. As the
student recognizes how many teachings of his own faith are also reflected
in the scriptures of other faiths, he will come to respect and admire them
as divinely inspired in their own right.
Inevitably, the goal of education for peace must inform World
Scripture's editorial treatment of certain passages of scripture
which are often used to justify exclusivism and hostility to other faiths.
Such passages, for example: Jesus' curses on the Pharisees, the Quran's
criticism of hypocritical Jews, Sikhism's criticism of empty Hindu and
Muslim rituals, or the Lotus Sutra's criticism of Hinayana Buddhists as
lacking in faith, are necessarily deemphasized. When seen in the light of
ecumenical reflection, such passages should be understood as typical
prophetic pronouncements by an inspired leader critical of the ossified
institutions in his own community. (None of them regarded himself as
leading a separate religion; e.g., Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees as
a fellow Jew; Muhammad was addressing Jewish tribes who had been his
allies; Guru Nanak spoke as a Hindu to Hindus and a Muslim to Muslims; and
the Lotus Sutra was remarking on the faith of fellow Buddhists.) World
Scripture notes that in every tradition, these passages have been
justly interpreted as warning against those same evils within the
community for which that scripture is authoritative. To turn them into a
weapon with which to brand outsiders does violence to their original
intent. Thus, these passages are to be taken as criticism of the
corruption and hypocrisy which afflicts every religion, and they certainly
cannot stand as criticism of any religion at its best and most authentic.
Thus World Scripture is designed to serve as a textbook in the
religious education curriculum of every religion for promoting world
peace. Every religion should give it the status of a "scripture" in its
own right, first because it contains excerpts from that religion's own
scriptures, and second because the comparable passages from the scriptures
of other faiths are often of equal profundity and worth. By directly
comparing the scriptures of one's own religion with scriptures of other
faiths, World Scripture demarcates a common ground which people
from each religion can recognize for themselves and on their own terms. By
downplaying prejudicial passages in scripture, the book lifts up the
things that make for peace. This approach can universally reduce prejudice
and open the doors to interreligious understanding and cooperation.
The Basis of Religious Unity in World Scripture
But do the religions in fact share much in common? Does World
Scripture err in homogenizing the different religions in order to
arrive at a unity that is artificial? We were, of course, aware of this
pitfall, and made every effort to avoid it. The members of the Editorial
Board and other academic advisors were continually consulted in order to
assure that their religions were represented fairly and accurately. Where
scripture passages with several different underlying philosophies were
judged to apply to the same topic, we prepared some explanation for the
introduction to each topic which would distinguish the various viewpoints
in the following passages. Sometimes, particular difficulties in
interpretation are explained in a footnote. Thus have we safeguarded
against misrepresenting individual passages.
Yet modern opinion is prejudiced against viewing religions from the
standpoint of their unity. Most textbooks on world religions treat each
religion as a separate, independent entity, thus inevitably emphasizing
each religion's uniqueness. Western education is pervaded by nominalism
and relativism: by a habitual failure to move beyond the minute
examination of isolated facts to reveal larger wholes and a disinclination
to trust universal patterns. Of course, at a certain level of detail,
when doctrines are examined closely, every religion is different, even
every sect and denomination has its own unique version of truth. Yet from
a wider, holistic perspective, we can see convergence and common values.
Without denying the unique aspects of each religion, World
Scripture underscores the universal themes and insights that make up
the common ground which religions share. World Scripture demarks
the common ground among religions through the range of passages which are
gathered for a given topic, and these topics have sufficient generality to
accommodate various doctrines. Thus the topic "Immortal Soul" gathers
many doctrines on the survival of the soul after death, including Hindu
and Buddhist passages on reincarnation, Christian, Jewish and Islamic
passages on the resurrection, and various concepts of an afterlife. The
topic "Karma and Inherited Sin" includes various passages on the notion
that inequities of endowment are conditioned by past deeds, whether the
notion is understood doctrinally as the working out of one's own karma
accumulated in previous lifetimes or as the inherited burden of an
ancestor's sins. The topic "Unitive State" includes various types of
mystical union, including the impersonal unity of the Self with Brahman in
Vedanta, the Zen experience of mystical unity with all reality, and the
Christian Beatific vision. The generality of each topic depends on the
fact that the various doctrines all address a common human concern, be it
the riddle of personal existence after death, the problem of unequal
endowments in a just cosmos, or the mystical experience of union with
Ultimate Reality. The criteria of human concern and experience provide
broad fields for comparison and natural meeting points for the particular
doctrines which try to explicate them.
Furthermore, in preparing World Scripture we became painfully
aware how much conventional treatments of religion have created their own
stereotypes by trying to place religions within narrow dogmatic
definitions. The variety of religious standpoints within Christianity
alone is staggering, from the Protestant fundamentalist to the Roman
Catholic mystic, the spirit-filled Pentecostal, and the Latin American
liberation theologian. Other religions are just as broad. Despite the
specific insights of its theologians, it seems that religion as a human
enterprise is broad and diverse, taking forms corresponding to the wide
variety of human temperaments and needs. The scriptures of each religion
contain a great variety of material, not all of it suited to a single
dogmatic interpretation. Lutheran Christianity must put up with the book
of James. Monistic Vedanta coexists with dualists who follow Samkhya
philosophy and monotheistic Shaivite and Vaishnavite sects--all of whom
quote the same Vedas and Upanishads.2 Orthodox Islam coexists with Sufi
mystics who draw inspiration from the same Quran. Given this variety
within each religion, the overlap among religions is considerably greater
that what might be expected were religion a tight system of doctrines,
uniformly held. The topical organization of World Scripture
allows the varieties of belief within religions to speak in their many
voices.
World Scripture makes no attempt to write a systematic treatise
on the unity of religions according to some conceptual scheme--if that is
even possible. Systematic theology necessarily demands a conceptual unity
that is only possible by reductive interpretation. They offer conceptual
statements which are said to apply universally, but there are precious few
statements that can apply to all religions. Rather, a wide variety of
topics are laid out, and scriptures on that topic are presented wherever
appropriate. The variety of topics is great enough to accommodate the
different perspectives of the world's religions. Instead of a conceptual
straitjacket, these topics allow the natural affinities among religions to
emerge wherever they will, whether it be in the doctrine of God, or
notions of sacrifice, or prophecy, or ethics. Looking at the wide variety
of topics in World Scripture, we can see that the various
religions concur on about eighty percent of them. Our conviction is this:
instead of insisting on a religion's uniqueness on the basis of the 20
percent where it differs from the others, let's celebrate the common
ground on the basis of the 80 percent which is shared. The fact is, by
using a reasonably objective methodology, World Scripture reveals
a remarkable amount of convergence. Why this is so deserves an
explanation. If the religions were only relative expressions of a
malleable human nature, then their areas of agreement should be few. From
a human viewpoint, people have held every sort of opinion about the
concerns of life, yet the standpoints of the sacred scriptures are more
selective. The scriptures praise as virtuous and condemn as sinful the
same sorts of human behaviors. Many respectable philosophical positions
are absent from the options offered in the various sacred scriptures,
e.g., utilitarianism, hedonism, materialism, legalism. They are nearly
unanimous in affirming positions which are at variance with much modern
opinion on such contentious questions as the existence of an afterlife and
the virtue of self-denial.
One God and Religious Pluralism
The explanation for the rather remarkable convergence of scriptural texts
found in this volume may lie in the fact that all religions ground human
existence in a transcendent reality, be it called by many names and
described as many things. Human beings are not autonomous; their
existence is somehow dependent and subject to a Reality greater than
themselves. Many believers take it as axiomatic that all religions share a
common source in the one God. The doctrine of the unity of God would
require an incipient unity of religions.
Yet notions of God are so diverse among religions that it is difficult to
make meaningful statements that would universally apply. How can the
personal, gracious God of Christianity be related to the Hindu Brahman who
is the impersonal ground of all being, or to the Buddhist ultimate goal of
Nirvana or Emptiness which has nothing at all to do with the world of
being? Here, perhaps, we made the most significant methodological move in
setting up the plan of World Scripture. We made it axiomatic
that the religions' various depictions of an ultimate--whether personal or
impersonal, being or nonbeing, one God or many spirits, divine law or
mind-essence, Christ or Krishna--are all in fact denoting one Ultimate
Reality or God.
This starting point means that World Scripture has no need
classify the various notions of God, as though each religion had a
different God. Instead, we have set up topics according to the various
attributes of God and the ways in which the ultimate principle impinges on
the world. And as expected, it turns out that the scriptures of most
religions have passages which apply to most of the topics. For example,
the attribute of eternity applies to the Christian God as well as to
Buddhist Nirvana; the attribute of goodness applies to Allah, to the
cosmic Buddha, and to the collectivity of kami in the Shinto pantheon; and
the Oneness of ultimate reality is affirmed by Jews, Christians, Muslims
and Sikhs, but also in the Buddhist doctrine of Suchness and the Hindu
doctrine that all the gods are manifestations of the One Being.
I do not believe that our starting postulate--to treat all expressions of
an ultimate as denoting the same Ultimate Reality--is sufficient to
explain the phenomenon of the convergence of scriptural texts found in
this book. Their convergence is not the artificial result of method. The
convergence goes far beyond statements about God and reaches into all
aspects of human life. Our starting postulate, far from prejudicing the
case by creating a circular argument, is rather dictated by the facts at
hand. It is a reasonable hypothesis which makes sense of a great deal of
otherwise disconnected data. As in any scientific method, if a hypothesis
has the power to explain and bring order to otherwise inexplicable facts,
we may take it as true for the purpose of arriving at a theory. Finding
the convergence of religions to be an empirical fact thus makes a
theoretical case for the existence of one God.
The remarkable convergence of scriptural texts demonstrated by this volume
may also be taken as empirical evidence for a universal spiritual truth
which is variously reflected in the doctrines of all religions. Yet
World Scripture in no way demands that the reader abandon the
unique perspective of his or her own religion in order to assent to a
common truth, because the scriptures themselves make no such demand. The
scriptures call us to a decision, to embrace God's grace and accept a
spiritual discipline through one of the particular forms available to us.
One must go through a particular door, or none at all. Religious wisdom
is often opaque and contrary to the world. It is only through the
practice of one's particular faith that one comes to recognize the truth
of the statements in scripture. Having cultivated a religious mentality in
one faith, one can, by extension, also see the wisdom of analogous
statements in the scriptures of other faiths. Religious dilettantism is
never advisable. The experience of interfaith dialogue has taught us that
to truly understand another religion, one should first be deeply committed
to one's own faith and traditions.
Likewise, in the chapter comparing the lives and works of the founders of
the world's religions, World Scripture is reluctant to level them
all to figures of equal significance. It is expected that everyone who
comes to World Scripture is already devoted to one founder alone,
who established the faith in which he believes and is the light of his
salvation. Only on the standard of that founder's life and works do
statements about other founders derive any meaning.
For the Christian, it is the saving work of Christ alone that saves, not
withstanding the accomplishments of other founders, no matter how great
they may be. Similarly, the Muslim's faith is defined uniquely by the
message of Muhammad, and the Buddhist's by the enlightenment and teachings
of Siddhartha. The committed believer is confronted with one individual
as the standard of truth and love who defines the true way.... Then, on
that foundation, he may observe the comparisons made in this chapter. He
may find that the founders of other faiths have also been given insight
into divine truth and have lived out that truth in an exemplary manner.
He may regard them worthy of respect, if he finds that their faith is
comparable to the standard of faith set by his own tradition.3
World Scripture and "Godism"
Godism is the Reverend Moon's term for a universal religious perspective,
embracing the truths of all religions, a perspective which he believes
will become the basis for a God-centered, pluralistic society, nation,
and world. Yet to many, this vision may seem like a contradiction. Until
now, religious-based societies have acted in ways which are incompatible
with democracy and pluralism. This is due in large part to the current
limitations of religions, which tend to be exclusive and intolerant. Any
at tempt to establish a particular religious orthodoxy would inevitably
trample on the rights of religious minorities. For this reason, American
democracy set up a wall of separation between church and state.
Democratic societies have been able to accommodate religious pluralism
only by establishing a secular common ground, fostering civility at the
sacrifice of religious belief.
But what a cost that is! Society devoid of religious values does not
provide the nourishment that can sustain a civilization that will bring
out the highest qualities in people and allow them to fulfill their
purpose in life. For example, our public schools have lost their mission
to provide ethics and values to young people, since the most important
ground of those values--religious truth--has been made off limits. Parents
who appreciate traditional values find themselves fighting a losing battle
to stem the tide of secular culture which impinges on young people's
consciousness through television, popular music, pressure from their
peers, public schools--ways that are impossible to contain. Confused
about values, young people easily become a prey to destructive lifestyles.
Hence democratic societies are in crisis, without any solution in sight.
Yet we cannot go backward and restore Christian values if this would deny
an equal place for other religions. Even the values of Western
civilization as a whole, which are largely Christian, are under attack by
the proponents of multiculturalism. "What is especially valuable about
Western civilization?" they ask. America is a pluralistic society
containing all cultures. Why is European culture more important than the
others? Appeals to tradition or democratic values notwithstanding, the
fundamental reason is that Western civilization has been the carrier of
Christianity and Christian values. But that argument has been ruled out
of bounds for secular discourse. Thus education for values continues to
decline.
People will reject religious teachings so long as they lead in practice to
hostility and exclusivism. But secular values have also failed, and we
witness the corruption and debasing of democratic culture. Furthermore,
secular society fosters its own brand of exclusivism that is felt by many
minorities to be oppressive. Along with its disdain for Christianity and
its traditional values, secularism also strips away at the traditions of
minority cultures--African, Asian, Hispanic, Native American--which are
likewise rooted in religious worldviews.
Furthermore, as long as religions are divided, their truth claims
incompatible with each other, they will remain at an intellectual
disadvantage in the contest with secularism, which is undergirded by the
universal canopy of scientific truth. As I have argued elsewhere, the
ascendancy of scientific thought is based in no small part to its claim to
universal validity, and the decline of religion is due in no small part to
the private or communal nature of its opinions.4
One can surely argue that religious values are healthy for society, and
that restoring them is the key to overcoming our current moral and social
problems. Yet those who long for a return of religious values will most
likely remain frustrated so long as they remain within the narrow
perspective of their own religious and cultural fortresses. The
conventional Christian churches, despite their popularity, have not as yet
overcome their narrow and exclusivistic standpoints; the same can be said
for other religions. It is up to the religions themselves to establish
common ground and common cause--Liberal and Fundamentalist, Protestant and
Catholic, Jew and Muslim. The only way, in my opinion, for religious
values to return to the center of public life is for the individual
religions to transcend their exclusivism and lift up the values which they
share in common. Commonly shared religious values can become public
values, since they do not favor any one religion over others. Such
religious public values should support pluralism and protect minorities
better than secular values have done thus far.
The American experience is again instructive. Until the mid-twentieth
century, the American public consensus included the notion of "general
truths" of religion which were distinct from the doctrines of particular
sects. Benjamin Franklin, like many of the founding fathers, believed
that the good public order of American democracy presumed a belief in God,
in heavenly rewards and punishments, and in the requirement to lead a
moral life. From the beginning, universal religious principles stood on a
par with such Enlightenment principles as civil rights. The Declaration
of Independence declared both belief in God as Creator and the rights to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to be "self-evident" truths.
We can trace this notion of general religious truths to the Deism of
Locke, Herbert, Voltaire and Lessing, who were concerned to overcome the
religious wars of Europe by setting up a rational common ground. Although
the tendency of Deism in Europe was towards a rational critique of
traditional religion and rejection of all its supernatural revelations and
particular rituals, the strain of Deism that took hold in America
harmonized with the existence of particular sects. American thought was
most indebted to Locke, who taught that, in addition to the truths which
could be established by reason, there was also a place for mystery and
revelation as genuine elements in the Christian faith. The general
religious truths established by reason set up the bounds of religious
discourse in the public square which lacked an established church, while
the particular tenets of faith could be taught by the individual churches.
The Deist principles were broad and flexible enough to allow, in the
twentieth century, inclusion of Roman Catholicism and Judaism into the
public consensus.
But the relativism of the modern age has corroded the notion of
self-evident universal truths, and the rise of fundamentalisms has
sharpened our sense of the diversity and contention among religions. The
enlarged field of world religions makes most eighteenth- century Deist
statements seem hopelessly parochial. Some new elucidation of a religious
common ground is needed now more than ever, if we are to build religious
harmony and give a positive religious response to the dominant secular
worldview. Perhaps World Scripture can help us to restore some sense of
the common ground among religions by showing that common ground to be an
empirical fact.
From the perspective of the common religious values found in World
Scripture, the recent liberal fascination with secularism and
materialism (in either its eastern or western forms) seems quite radical.
It is out of step with the traditional values and viewpoints of all of the
religions and cultures which have occupied this planet for millennia. It
is likely that the religions of the world share more in common with each
other than they do with the secular humanist and materialist alternatives.
Based on the vast area of agreement among the
scriptures found in this volume, one might wish to deduce a set of
universal principles common to all religions. However, the overlap among
the scriptures is rather loose and distributed over a wide variety of
topics, and we would not expect all the religions to agree on every point.
A list based on the areas of agreement empirically determined by World
Scripture turns out to be more extensive and more detailed than the
older Deist lists established by rational argument.5 The list requires
additional generalization and alternative forms of expression in order to
accommodate the perspectives found in the non-Christian religions. I
suggest the following ten points:
- There exists an Ultimate Reality, or transcendent God, which defines
the purpose and meaning of life, and to which human beings are related.6
- The universe is moral and purposeful, human beings are subject to
spiritual laws, and each person reaps the fruit of his or her deeds.
- Each person has an eternal destiny, a life hereafter; the cosmos
includes various spiritual realms.
- There is a highest goal (salvation, enlightenment, liberation,
wholeness) which is potentially within the reach of every person.
- Human beings are tarnished by an evil condition that prevents people
from reaching the highest goal unaided.7
- Each person is free and responsible for his or her personal growth,
yet can never fully realize that freedom unless the aforementioned
condition of evil is dealt with.
- Each person has ethical obligations in the contexts of family,
society, and the natural world.
- To become a moral person, one should train oneself to control the body
and practice self-denial.
- The way of goodness includes an ethic of love and self-sacrifice.
- The fullness of spiritual truth goes beyond this common ground and
includes the teachings of the historical religions. Knowledge of Ultimate
Reality and the path to salvation comes to us through the unique founders
of religion, who were given insights and revelations transcending ordinary
knowledge attainable through reason alone.
These ten principles can be seen to hold in all religions. The fifth
principle, on the existence of innate evil, goes well beyond the typical
Deist viewpoint, yet it finds empirical support in numerous scriptural
texts. The tenth principle assures that such universal principles remain
only a common ground and do not become a regulative or critical principle
over against the diversity and uniqueness of religion. Indeed, while such
a set of principles may be a reasonable starting point, it can in no way
encompass the full extent of universal truth. The sacred scriptures and
the revelations to the founders of the various world religions have much
more to teach us.
Godism is the name given to the project of establishing the common ground
among religions and making it the basis for a God-centered, pluralistic
society. Godism is not a particular philosophy or set of doctrines. It is
rather a program for reforming and reviving society based on the existing
traditional religions and value systems. It will require that the various
religions realize harmony in practice and find common cause in
articulating solutions to social problems. On that foundation, people
will be able to recognize the common spiritual values which are testified
to by the various religions. Contemporary relativism will give way to a
budding moral consensus. It will then become practical for democratic
society to adopt such values as the basis for pluralistic culture.
What is distinctive about Godism is only its standpoint towards religion
and its view of the mission of religion (and by extension, of the role of
isms and ideologies in other fields). Its standpoint is Copernican, in
the sense that this term is used by the theologian John Hick: refusing to
absolutize any one religion and recognizing all religions as revolving
about a single transcendent and absolute Center, whom some call God. Yet
the content of the Absolute cannot be known absolutely, except perhaps by
those who live in God's absolute love, but how can their insights be fully
communicated? For the rest of us, God can only be known in part: through
individual illumination of the conscience and through the various ways in
which the religions have separately revealed him. The way to personal
illumination and salvation requires a serious commitment to one's own
tradition; shallow religious dilettantism is of little value. The
religions should be humble to God and accept that God may also have
revealed unique aspects of himself in other faiths.
Godism's view of the mission of religion is historical and providential,
recognizing that in the present age religions are called to fulfill a
mission that is greater than what they had known in the past. That
mission is to realize world peace in the new context of the global
village. It requires each religious community to revitalize itself and
realize its highest ideals, and then to serve other religious communities
as part of a harmonious whole. The principle that love is fulfilled in
the service of others should extend to religious communities: each
religion should manifest love by serving other religions and working
together to build a peaceful world.
Finally, Godism calls for the return of religion to the center of public
life. The retreat of religion into the private sphere must be reversed,
and religious values must once again become public values. Religious
teachings should provide the ethical foundations which are fundamental to
the social, political, and economic spheres, where secular values have
been found wanting. Once the roadblock of religious dissension is
overcome, religious unity can be the foundation for political and economic
unity, and world peace.
By illuminating the range of commonly shared religious values, World
Scripture can thus help to give definition and shape to what is
potentially the new set of public values for a pluralistic, God-centered
world. That is, it helps give definition to the program of setting up
Godism. It will also be an important educational tool for realizing this
program in practice.
The Reformulation of Human Knowledge
Let us, for a moment, venture one step further to define this common
ground. Does Enlightenment thought also have a place in the universe of
common values that constitutes Godism? The best insights of Western
philosophy, from Socrates to Kierkegaard, are certainly compatible with
the common truths of religion. Just as World Scripture
deemphasizes certain hostile passages which, when understood by the
mean-spirited, have fomented religious conflict, the hostility and
resentment against religion expressed by many Enlightenment thinkers will
likewise have to be digested. Hopefully, sober reflection will show that
such sentiments are directed properly against the abuse of religion and
its failure to practice what it preaches, not against religion in its
essence. Believers and non- believers alike, when in touch with the best
of their original minds, can grasp complementary aspects of spiritual
truths. The persuasive power of Enlightenment philosophy is due in no
small part to its grasp of such truths, sometimes better than that of the
corrupt churches of its day.
Yet it is an open question whether the welter of conflicting opinions in
the universe of philosophy can be brought into an organic synthesis, such
as the synthesis found in World Scripture. As was noted above, the
remarkable convergence of religious beliefs may be largely explained by
the fact that all religions share the conviction that there exists an
Ultimate Reality on which human beings are dependent. But without such a
unifying center, secular philosophies are much more unruly. Therefore, we
can expect that in the project of establishing common values, the values
upheld by philosophy will necessarily find their center in the values
established by religion. I expect that philosophies can be integrated
into a framework of common religious values, but they will be unable to
establish such a common ground apart from religion.
As I said, I take the Reverend Moon's understanding of the project of
Godism to extend beyond the realm of religion. For twenty years he has
been sponsoring the International Conference of the Unity of the Sciences,
which has as its purpose to promote the unity of scientific knowledge
around "absolute values," which I take to mean the transcendental truth of
God, manifest in both physical and spiritual laws, which we know only in
part through existing science and religion. For the Reverend Moon, the
highest absolute value is God's love. The unity of the sciences should
have a spiritual central point, and the cosmos should be found to be
regulated by both spiritual and physical laws which have their common
origin in God.
Likewise, at the Inaugural Assembly of the IRFWP in Seoul, Korea, at which
World Scripture was presented to the Reverend Moon, he spoke to an
assembly which included former heads of state and politicians who had come
to attend a meeting of the Federation for World Peace [FWP] the following
day. To the mixed audience of religious leaders and politicians, he spoke
of the complementary roles of religion and politics in realizing world
peace using the metaphor of mind and body.
As mind and body unite within an ideal individual through God's true love,
the mental and bodily worlds which are extensions of the individual mind
and body, should also come into a harmonious relationship, not
contradiction. Religion and philosophy represent the internal world of
mind; the bodily world is represented by politics and economics. Just as
the mind is in the subject and leading position, while the body is in the
object position to harmonize with the mind, religion and politics also
should achieve harmony and unity in a subject-object relationship.
This is in accord with the prescription of Godism, which holds that
religious unity provides the central point and basis for unity in other
fields. The other implication of these words is that the mission of
religion is indeed the most vital, since the religions hold the key to
providing the public values which can unify public discourse and thence
undergird peace in all areas of political and social life.
World Scripture is only one textbook for dealing with the problem
of peace among religions. There will undoubtedly be many others. In his
Foreword, Ninian Smart encourages others to write their own books of world scripture.
"World Scripture offers an admirable assemblage of quotations
from the holy texts of the world from a broadly theistic angle. Of
course, others might prefer a different articulation of the material...
they should create their own books of world scripture. Our world is
surely hospitable to a variety of approaches."8
In a similar vein but more broadly, the Reverend Moon at the IRFWP meeting
spoke about the need for more such books to foster the unification of
thoughts and values in every field.
"Why do we need books like this World Scripture? God's original
purpose for theories is to make for world peace. God's ultimate goal is
one nation, one world under God. However, in the present world there are
many varieties of belief. The conventional viewpoint is that there must
be such variety in the world of religion, and likewise in the fields of
politics and economics. How can they be combined into one direction? This
is the problem. God's final goal is absolutely one; therefore all this
must converge to absolutely one point. Among us here, how can we realize
that aim? Unless every religion, and every theory in the fields of
politics, economics, etc., is combined into one, making one direction, the
world cannot have peace. Therefore, I want to commend the making of
World Scripture, and encourage more books like it."
World Scripture can be a model for other syntheses of human
knowledge for establishing the common ground of shared values upon which
world peace can be realized. All such unifications of thoughts and
viewpoints will require a broadly synthetic approach that is respectful of
every viewpoint and lifts up what is valuable in each. They should eschew
reductive theory-making and analysis for the purpose of illuminating
difference or for the purpose of pursuing one side of a debate, as is the
norm in conventional academic study. Furthermore, since this unity is
centered upon religious values, it should be axiomatic that there is a
transcendent central point around which the various thoughts can converge.
While skeptical criticism can usefully expose partial or false
understandings of Ultimate Reality, if it tears away at the foundations of
unity it is counterproductive. True scholarship begins with humility
toward the divine Mystery and seeks to understand the place of theory in
relation to it.
Books like World Scripture should collect the varieties of human
reflection and considered opinion and range them within an inclusive
spectrum around the transcendental center. Each distinct opinion relates
to the others as one color, giving its own distinctive illumination to the
common human experience and its distinctive reflection of transcendent
truth. If the light is clear, the thought profound, then its contribution
to the spectrum of ideas will be an indispensable complement to the other
lights. Such is the quality of the sacred scriptures of humankind's
religions as ranged forth in World Scripture- -they are full of
illumination drawn from the most profound sources of the human spirit.
NOTES
1. The one example of a religion whose scripture also contains the
scripture of another religion is Christianity's appropriation of the
Jewish Bible as its Old Testament. Given the horrible history of
Christian anti-Semitism, it may seem to contradict the thrust of this
argument. But there are several mitigating factors. The use to which the
Christian Bible puts the Jewish scriptures is quite different from what is
being done in World Scripture. Perforce, the New Testament never
went through a systematic review to weed out hateful references to the
Jews. And unlike the Christian Bible, World Scripture includes
the Talmud and other scriptures of rabbinic Judaism. In spite of all the
hatred of the past, it is nevertheless the case that most Christians have
much greater sympathy and understanding for Jews than they do for people
of other religions.
2. For example the Bhagavad Gita, in its typically inconsistent manner,
praises in turn meditation (jnana yoga), good deeds (karma yoga) and
devotion (bhakti yoga) each as the best way to reach the absolute,
superior to the others. The Gita is interpreted both from the standpoint
of a personal and an impersonal Godhead. It is full of dualistic Samkhya
philosophy, yet a monist can quote passages which speak of God as all in
all. It is the supreme text of devotional Vaishnavite sects, and also the
favorite scripture of the social activist Mahatma Gandhi.
3. Andrew Wilson ed., World Scripture (New York: Paragon House,1991), 419-20.
4. See Andrew Wilson, "One Culture Centered upon God," Dialogue &
Alliance, forthcoming.
5. For example, Herbert's list of the innate principles of natural
religion, given in De Veritate: (1) That God exists. (2) That God ought
to be worshipped. (3) That the practice of virtue is the chief part of
the worship of God. (4) That men have always had an abhorrence of crime
and are under the obligation to repent of their sins. (5) That there will
be rewards and punishments after death. See James C. Livingston, Modern
Christian Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 36.
6. Theravada Buddhism lacks a creator-God, but it does have at least two
absolute principles which could fit this proposition: Nibbana, the
ultimate state beyond all change, and the Dhamma, the principle of
causality that is binding on all beings. Nibbana defines life's highest
goal, while the Dhamma establishes the relations and conditions of human
life.
7. By "aid" we mean either the salvation offered by a savior (Christ) or
the guidance of one who shows the way (Buddha, Muhammad, the sage in
various traditions). In Hinduism, "aid" may mean a rigorous program of
meditation and renunciation, under the guidance of a teacher.
8. World Scripture, xi.
Transcribed to HTML by Bruce Schuman, January 15, 1996
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