149 - The World's Religious Traditions

The World's Religious Traditions
By Frank Whaling, ed.
Edinburgh, T.&T. Clark, 1984. 311 pp. $22.50.

This collection of essays is a Festschrift in honor of Wilfred Cantwell Smith. The Festschrift is a dubious literary genre at best. Often they contain a few gems in the midst of essays either so highly technical or so specialized as to border on obscurity. Such is not the case with this collection, nor would obscurity be appropriate in a book honoring as creative a scholar as Wilfred Cantwell Smith. This book is not only for specialists in history of religions, theology, or philosophy, but for anyone seeking fresh insight into the human religious story. The introductory essay by Frank Whaling provides orientation to the unique contribution that Wilfred Smith has made to our understanding of the human religious story. Whaling presents Smith's unique analysis of religion as faith and cumulative tradition. This opens the way to a group of essays on Hindu, Confucian, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions by outstanding scholars.

The essays on the various traditions, the second part of the book, are its real heart. J. L. Mehta, Tu Wey-Ming, Louis Jacobs, George Williams, and Anne-Marie Schimmel have all shown their unique genius in interpreting their religious traditions. In brief compass each one is able to introduce the historical development and unique flavor of the Hindu, Confucian, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. Each of these essays reveals the orientation of its author. Yet each one is nicely tuned towards expressing the methodology and the perspective given by Wilfred Smith.

The third part of the book deals with current approaches to the study of religion. It is a collection of methodological essays by John Hick, Gordon Rupp, Raimundo Panikkar, Sayyed Hossein, John Carmen, Geoffrey Parrinder, and Ninian Smart. These essays are more highly technical. They are also uneven in quality. The essay by Geoffrey Parrinder is of limited importance and its orientation seems hepatique. The contribution of Sayyed Hossein brings back into perspective the importance of mysticism and the Philosophia Perennis as a basis for the comparative study of religion. This orientation was dominant in a past generation of students of comparative religious studies but has now passed from sight. Raimundo Panikkar has made a clear and convincing statement of his viewpoint on dialogical discussion, while John Hick reasserts his thesis on religious pluralism. Important new contributions are made by Gordon Rupp, John Carmen, and Ninian Smart. The book concludes with a helpful bibliography on the work of Wilfred Smith.

This is a book to which minister, theological student, and layperson could turn in response to our growing awareness of religious pluralism. It reflects something Wilfred Smith once said to me about himself. He said, "I am a historian of religion moving in the direction of theology." This book is part of the emerging literature of those who believe that they can best serve truth on the boundary between the academic study of religions and faith commitment. To be able to witness to faith in Jesus Christ without strident arrogance or indifferent syncretism is the new frontier to which faithfulness is being called at the end of the twentieth century.

Donald G. Dawe
Union Theological Seminary in Virginia
Richmond, Va.