World Scripture
and Education for Peace
By Andrew Wilson, Ph.D.
This paper was delivered at a conference sponsored by the New Ecumenical
Research Association at Chateau de Bellinglise,
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
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
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 "
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.
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
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.
Ten Principles Common to All
Religions
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
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.
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.