I finished Paul Knitter's No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions. In this post, I'll use as my starting-point something that Knitter says on page 269:
"[Alan
Race and I] both agree that religious truth-claims can be made only in
the actual praxis of dialogue and that whatever claims are made, the
mystery encompassing humanity will always be more than any religious
truth can express. Race, however, insists that the criterion for
verifying truth-claims within dialogue can be only subjective; any
further verification can come only 'eschatologically'...The criteria I
have drawn from Jung and from the liberation theologians try to reach
beyond such subjectivism; they are intended to examine whether the
'vision of life' of a religion actually promotes the psychological
welfare and the liberation of both individuals and societies. Such
criteria, it is hoped, can be applied now, in this ambiguous and ever
incomplete course of history, and do not have to wait for some kind of
eschatological judgment at the end of time."
How can we verify
whether religious truth-claims are true or false? Apparently, the view
of Alan Race is that we really cannot in this day and age, but we have
to wait for God to reveal himself to everyone at the end of history.
(Or so I am interpreting Race, based on what Knitter says.) But Knitter
believes that we actually can evaluate religious truth
claims. Do they promote psychological health and individual and
societal liberation? If so, then, according to Knitter, those religious
truth claims are true.
I should make a note about religion and
psychological welfare. When I think about this issue, my initial
impulse is to say that religious truth-claims that comfort me are true,
whereas those that do not comfort me are false. Overall, I wouldn't
throw this criterion totally out of the window. But I don't consider it
to be the end-all-be-all. On page 69, when Knitter is summarizing
Jung's view on religious truth-claims and psychological health, Knitter
states: "If religion is a crutch, if it does not allow us to assume
responsibility for our own lives...then its truth must be seriously
doubted." The notion that I should passively wait for God to do
stuff for me may comfort me, but that does not make the notion true or
psychologically healthy.
So what can I say about the views of Race and Knitter? Do
I agree with Race that we need an eschatological revelation to know for
sure what religious truth-claims are correct? Or do I agree with
Knitter that, on some level, we can evaluate religious truth-claims in
the here and now, according to whether they promote psychological health
and individual and societal liberation? I think about one
relative I have, whose worldview has elements of both. On the one hand,
he does not believe that God in this day and age judges people
according to what religion they accept (if any), for he does not think
that there is any clear evidence that one religion is right while others
are wrong. On the other hand, he himself is a Christian, and one
reason is that he feels that he has experienced God through
Christianity, and that he has seen that Christian morality works better
for him and makes more sense to him than other worldviews.
I have
to admit that there are religious truth-claims that work for many
people. The thing is, some of them are based on things that (in my
opinion) cannot be verified in the here and now. For example, I can
have inner peace if I accept the idea that Christ defeated death and the
devil by rising from the dead. But, in my opinion, there is no proof
that Christ rose from the dead. So there's a sense in which
even certain religious truth-claims that give Christians comfort,
courage, hope, and even inspiration to pursue liberation need
eschatological verification for us to know that they are true.
But
my impression is that, for Knitter, eschatology may not be overly
important. I'm open to correction on this, but he seems to me to be
rather utopian about humans' ability to get together and effect justice,
as opposed to despairing in the human ability to do so and waiting for
Christ to come back to bring about a paradise. As I read Knitter's
book, there was a part of me that had chills. Why? Because, over my
life, I've been influenced by an eschatological mindset that regards
people coming together to create a one-world government as the Beast
system of Revelation 13. Moreover, I was raised to believe in original
sin, the idea that humans are corrupt and thus cannot create a utopia on
their own. I don't take this in the direction of saying that I
shouldn't help the poor, even through support for certain political
policies. But I tend to regard globalist language as frightening, and
optimism as naive and sappy. Maybe I'm wrong on this. Or perhaps I can
believe that positive social change is possible, while also holding to a
degree of realism.