Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Religious Diversity, Christian Faith, and Truth

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Faith, Reason, and Culture

Abstract

Having explained the idea of God that is common to most religious traditions, this chapter moves on to provide a preliminary understanding of the foundational Christian experience of God. Prior to that I argue that nature mysticism is not the only kind of mysticism that is natural to human beings; events of life (event mysticism) as well as inter-personal relations (person-mysticism) can also be the loci of experiencing the divine. Diversity of religions is explained in terms of the institutionalization of such diverse experiences. Christian experience is taken as an instance of person-mysticism where the disciples of Jesus experience the divine in the person of Jesus. The second half of this chapter takes up justification of religious beliefs. The grammatical rules of religion explored in the last chapter is used for the purpose and applied to show the divinity of Jesus. Finally, over and above the grammatical rules common to different religions, some additional grammatical rules that constitute Christian faith are set forth. Thus the book ends on a genuinely pluralistic note by weaving a rainbow of religious faiths that respects both commonalities as well as differences between religions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Ian T. Ramsey, Christian Empiricism, Studies in Philosophy and Religion (London: Sheldon Press, 1974), 123.

  2. 2.

    Ingolf U. Dalferth, Radical Theology: An Essay on Faith and Theology in the Twenty-First Century (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 81.

  3. 3.

    Stefan Einhorn, A Concealed God: Science, Religion, and the Search for Truth, trans. Linda Schenck (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2002), 33.

  4. 4.

    Cathy Glass, Will You Love Me? The Story of My Adopted Daughter Lucy (London: Harper Element, 2013).

  5. 5.

    This is a free rendering of Gen 28: 6–22; the story goes on to tell of Jacob meeting Rachel and eventually marrying her.

  6. 6.

    See John D. Caputo, ‘Radical Hermeneutics and Religious Truth: The Case of Sheehan and Schillebeeckx’, in Daniel Guerriere (ed.), Phenomenology of the Truth Proper to Religion (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990), 167–68.

  7. 7.

    David P. Gushee, The Sacredness of Human Life: Why an Ancient Biblical Vision Is Key to the World’s Future (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2013), 23.

  8. 8.

    H.L. Goodall Jr. and Peter M. Kellett, ‘Dialectical Tensions and Dialogical Moments as Pathways to Peak Experiences’, in Rob Anderson, Leslie A. Baxter, and Kenneth N. Cissna (eds.), Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in Communication Studies (Thousand Oaks, CA/London: Sage Publications, 2004), 160.

  9. 9.

    Roger Luckhurst, The Invention of Telepathy, 1870–1901 (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

  10. 10.

    Ibid., 1.

  11. 11.

    C. G. Jung, Psychological Reflections: An Anthology of Jung’s Writings, 1905–1961, ed. Jolande Jacobi (London: Routledge, 1971), 62.

  12. 12.

    John Hick, The New Frontier of Religion and Science: Religious Experience, Neuroscience and the Transcendent (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 35.

  13. 13.

    Non-locality is the idea that two quantum particles influence each other even when they are far apart, and there is no known interaction between them. For the view that quantum physics supports ESP, see John Nwanegbo-Ben, Quantum Physics and ESP(An Epistemic Resolution) in International Journal of Philosophy 4 (2016), 11–17. doi: https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20160403.11. For the opposite view that is critical of such support, see Alastair I. M. Rae, Quantum Physics, Illusion or Reality?, 2nd ed. (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University, 2004), 79.

  14. 14.

    See for example Stephanie Ortigue and Francesco Bianchi-Demicheli, ‘Why Is Your Spouse So Predictable? Connecting Mirror Neuron System and Self-Expansion Model of Love’, Medical Hypotheses 71 (2008), 941–44.

  15. 15.

    Victor J. Stenger, Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos, and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009); EPUB file.

  16. 16.

    Rupert Sheldrake, Foreword to Guy L. Playfair, Twin Telepathy, 3rd ed. (Guildford: White Crow Books, 2012), 8.

  17. 17.

    Playfair, Twin Telepathy, 94.

  18. 18.

    See Eli Franco (ed.), Yogic Perception, Meditation and Altered States of Consciousness, Sitzungsberichte/ Österreichische Akademie Der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2009).

  19. 19.

    See fn. 4; see also S. R. Bhatt and Anu Mehrotra, Buddhist Epistemology, Contributions in Philosophy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), 43–44.

  20. 20.

    Jess Byron Hollenback, Mysticism: Experience, Response, and Empowerment, Hermeneutics: Studies in the History of Religions (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 299.

  21. 21.

    For such speculations, see the report in Mail Online. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2747131/Is-proof-humans-TELEPATHIC-powers-Two-men-4-600-miles-apart-send-messages-using-just-minds.html. See also Alexander Ya. Temkin, ‘Telepathy for Interstellar and Intergalaxies Communications’, NeuroQuantology 14 (2016), 683–91.

  22. 22.

    See Edwin C. May, ‘PsiSpy: Recollections from a Psychic Spying Programme’, in Sudhir Kakar and Jeffrey J. Kripal (eds.), Seriously Strange: Thinking Anew About Psychical Experiences (New Delhi: Viking/Penguin, 2012), 87–125.

  23. 23.

    See, Colleen Mauro, Spiritual Telepathy: Ancient Techniques to Access the Wisdom of Your Soul (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books-Theosophical Publishing House, 2015).

  24. 24.

    Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi (London; New York: Rider, 1950), 23–24.

  25. 25.

    Phillip H. Wiebe, Intuitive Knowing as Spiritual Experience (New York,: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 91.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., 90.

  27. 27.

    Paul Tournier, The Meaning of Persons, trans. Edwin Hudson (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1957), 21–22.

  28. 28.

    Cited in Fran Grace, ‘The “Map of Consciousness”: A New Paradigm for Mysticism and Healing’, in Thomas Cattoi and June McDaniel (eds.), Perceiving the Divine Through the Human Body: Mystical Sensuality (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 197–98.

  29. 29.

    Conducting a saliva test on students who watched a documentary on Mother Teresa, it was seen that they had ‘enhanced levels of immunoglobin A’. See ibid., 213.

  30. 30.

    Ibid.

  31. 31.

    Joe Dispenza, Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2017), xxii.

  32. 32.

    Steen Halling, Intimacy, Transcendence, and Psychology: Closeness and Openness in Everyday Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 183; italics added.

  33. 33.

    David Tacey, The Spirituality Revolution: The Emergence of Contemporary Spirituality (Hove/New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2004).

  34. 34.

    Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, no. 1 http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est.html

  35. 35.

    In clear contrast with this developmental approach, we have William Alston who takes God (understood in the culturally conditioned Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sense) as directly perceived while neglecting other possibilities like the non-dualism of Śankara. See W.P. Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1991), 29. Phillips follows Alston in this matter with regard to his treatment of non-dual Brahman, although he comes to the opposite conclusion, arguing that the parallel between sense perception and mystical perception does not hold. See Stephen H. Phillips, ‘Could There Be Mystical Evidence for a Nondual Brahman? A Causal Objection’, Philosophy East and West 51 (2001), 492–506.

  36. 36.

    See, for example, the five-volume work of John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1991–). The later volumes were published by Yale University Press, down to 2016.

  37. 37.

    Gushee, The Sacredness of Human Life, 38.

  38. 38.

    Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 10.

  39. 39.

    Gushee, The Sacredness of Human Life, 39; italics original.

  40. 40.

    Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 9.

  41. 41.

    Ibid., 14.

  42. 42.

    Ronald Hendel, ‘The Exodus in Biblical Memory’, Journal of Biblical Literature 120 (2001), 604.

  43. 43.

    Michael D. Coogan, ‘The Exodus’, in Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (eds.), The Oxford Companion to the Bible (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 210.

  44. 44.

    Ibid., 210–11.

  45. 45.

    For the ‘hermeneutical chaos’ in the use of this expression, see Daniel Lynwood Smith, ‘The Uses of “New Exodus” in New Testament Scholarship: Preparing a Way Through the Wilderness’, Currents in Biblical Research 14 (2016), 207–43.

  46. 46.

    Gushee, The Sacredness of Human Life, 95.

  47. 47.

    Gerald O’Collins, Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 23.

  48. 48.

    Mortimer J. Adler, Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth: An Essay in the Philosophy of Religion (New York; Toronto: Collier Macmillan, 1990).

  49. 49.

    Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 1.

  50. 50.

    See James W. Boyd and Donald A. Crosby, ‘Is Zoroastrianism Dualistic or Monotheistic?’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 47 (1979), 557–88.

  51. 51.

    Nathan Soderblom, ‘Holiness’, in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings, John A. Selbie, Louis H. Gray, (Edinburgh/New York: T. & T. Clark; Charles Scribners’, 1913), 732.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., 731.

  53. 53.

    https://scroll.in/video/934282/watch-about-100-people-were-injured-at-a-ritual-stone-throwing-festival-in-uttarakhand

  54. 54.

    For a brief overview of these developments see Helen De Cruz, ‘Naturalness of Religious Belief: Epistemological Implications’, in Kelly James Clark (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), 481–93.

  55. 55.

    See for example, Pascal Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 201.

  56. 56.

    Craig A. James, The Religion Virus: Why You Believe in God: An Evolutionist Explains Religion’s Tenacious Hold on Humanity (Ropley: O Books, 2011).

  57. 57.

    Ann Taves, Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 26–29.

  58. 58.

    There are also ethical reasons to seek justification of religion, which comes from the moral depravity of mythical deities. But since I have not applied pluralistic realism to develop ethics, I shall leave it aside.

  59. 59.

    Milton Scarborough, ‘In the Beginning: Hebrew God and Zen Nothingness’, Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000), 191.

  60. 60.

    Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 176, 217, etc.

  61. 61.

    As a matter of fact, causalism did not occur as a grammatical rule of religion/God.

  62. 62.

    Amy-Jill Levine, Dale C. Allison, and John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus in Context, Princeton Readings in Religions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 1.

  63. 63.

    https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/amazed/

  64. 64.

    Ed L. Miller, ‘The Logos of Heraclitus: Updating the Report’, Harvard Theological Review 74 (1981), 161–76.

  65. 65.

    George Soares-Prabhu, ‘The Dharma of Jesus’, Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies 18 (2015), 16; italics original.

  66. 66.

    Henri de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 20.

  67. 67.

    Letter to Diogenetus cited in http://www.vatican.va/spirit/documents/spirit_20010522_diogneto_en.html

  68. 68.

    See Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 71.

  69. 69.

    Cited in James Lesher, ‘Xenophanes’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/xenophanes/>

  70. 70.

    M. J. Gentes, ‘Scandalizing the Goddess at Kodungallur’, Asian Folklore Studies 51 (1992), 302.

  71. 71.

    Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), Chap. 5.

  72. 72.

    See R.N. Dandekar, ‘Dharma, the First End of Man’, in William Theodore De Bary, et al. (eds.), Sources of Indian Tradition (Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1988), 218.

  73. 73.

    Jan Assmann, ‘Monotheism and Polytheism’, in Sarah Iles Johnston (ed.), Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 24.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Philosophy, Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, India

    George Karuvelil

Authors
  1. George Karuvelil
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Karuvelil, G. (2020). Religious Diversity, Christian Faith, and Truth. In: Faith, Reason, and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45815-7_10

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation