302 - Symposium: Faith and Faiths

Symposium: Faith and Faiths

WE used to call it "comparative religion," and Frazer's Golden Bough epitomized the approach. But most of the comparison resulted in contrast. Between Christianity and other religions, that is-hence Kraemer's pretentious The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World. Then phenomenology, pretending to be purely descriptive and value-free, commended itself to many, and still does. So it is now "the history of religion," with Eliade's library of books covering every conceivable datum. Still others hope to transcend both the encounter mentality and the non-normative angle, and so we have Hick's placable Christianity and Other Faiths.

If debate has given way to dialogue and proselytism to religious collegiality, we still seem not to have progressed much beyond Hocking's three possible "ways" or options: "radical displacement," "synthesis," and "reconception" (cf. his Living Religions and a World Faith, 1940). But in the meantime, as the world shrinks and the scientific study of religion continues, there are certain practical, even existential, positions that some in the midst of religious pluralism must adopt-good or bad.

What, for example, would it mean for a Christian to be in respectful and acceptive mood toward, say, a Hindu neighbor, and yet at the same time be utterly faithful to the Western Christian tradition? That may not be an ultimate way of putting it, since "the Western Christian tradition" will strike many as ambiguous, to say the least. But beyond sectarian triumphalism or religious permissiveness, what would it mean to "reconceive," say, a Christian's relationship with, say, a Hindu-allowing each to retain the distinctiveness of both religious traditions?

We have put together a little Symposium of items with questions such as these in mind. The first, by Douglas Webster, is a reprint of an article that first appeared in THEOLOGY TODAY in the January 1960 issue. We received more reader response from this article than almost anything we have ever printed. So, in celebration of our fortieth anniversary year, we reissue the original text, somewhat revised and with a new up-dated postscript by the author. If "foreign missionary" now seems an anachronism, as Webster readily admitted more than twenty years ago, it is always necessary to be reminded that there is something essentially "foreign" about the Gospel, as Jesus was a "foreigner" to his own people in his own day.

The next three short items relate to correspondence between Indian Christian friends about witnessing to their faith among Hindus. Together with the responses, this unit raises most of the contemporary issues now being discussed about religious pluralism in our day.

The final item in the Symposium is a critical, reflective review by

303 - Symposium: Faith and Faiths

Donald K. Swearer of Wilfred Cantwell Smith's important volume, Towards a World Theology (1980). Here, in somewhat different context, the same question is posed. How does a person of faith enter into another person's faith without theological betrayal or philosophical reductionism? The question is peculiarly pertinent for the teacher of religious studies in colleges and universities. It is easy enough, and perhaps all too common, for such a teacher to remain aloof from religious value judgments or the expression of personal preferences, while teaching "the history of religion" in phenomenological, sociological, and academically neutral categories. But what if the teacher is also, as in this case, a committed Christian? Then what?

We hope this Symposium on faith and faiths will be of wide interest to our readers, and that we can return to this far-ranging topic in another time in another way.