The Word as text and the Living Word

 

Once I just happened to be reading some sort of analysis of "Four Quartets" the poem by T S Eliot. There is a passage in the introduction that seemed to capture my own approach so well that I feel bound to quote it here.

The author is speaking of Eliot's use of various doctrines of various faiths.

......Eliot feels no compunction in alluding to the Bhagavad Gita in one section of the poem and Dante's Paradiso in the next. He neither asserts the rightness nor wrongness of one set of doctrines in relation to the other, nor does he try to reconcile them. Instead, he claims that prior to the differentiation of various religious paths, there is a universal substratum called Word (logos) of which religions are concretions. This logos is an object both of belief and disbelief. It is an object of belief in that, without prior belief in the logos, any subsequent religious belief is incoherent. It is an object of disbelief in that belief in it is empty, the positive content of actual belief is fully invested in religious doctrine.

There we are. My own Faith in the Word is mediated via Pure Land Buddhism and its teachings. Others can choose differently. And I truly find that the expression of the Word in other Faiths help my understanding of my own.

Just to add to this. To read of the lives, and to read the testimonies, the words, of others of various Faiths as they seek to give voice to their actual experience of "enlightenment", or the actuality of grace, to hear them express the selfsame thing but couched in varied words, supports and helps me see the reality that is often hidden from us in this world. As I have sought to say before, in Christian terms, the "work of Christ" goes far beyond our own experience or beliefs. And rather than fight such a thought, it should be cause to rejoice.

Interfaith dialogue is frowned upon by some, their opinion I assume being that if one has the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, then why enter into dialogue with another "truth" which must therefore be lie? However, for those interested, the Buddhist concept of "sunyata" (or "emptiness" ) is seen to be in correspondence with the mysticism of those in the Christian Tradition such as Eckhart and Jacob Bohme, in as much as their understanding of God is that as the "ineffable" or the "groundless". The tragedy is, that to mention "mystic" to some is to suggest the bending of spoons and suchlike, if not Ouija Boards and worse! Rather than to see it and realise that it is a rich source of Christian revelation of the Divine, by those who have sought the experience that belief can often only point towards.

One interesting dialogue took place between the Christian Theologian John Hick and the zen Buddhist Masao Abe. In this dialogue, Hick acknowledged that even within the monotheistic faiths the experience of God differed; the Jewish experience, the Christian experience of the Heavenly Father, the Muslim experience of Allah. And these themselves differed even more radically with the Buddhist and Hindu forms of religious experience. And yet each of these great spiritual traditions seems to be more or less equally effective as a context of the salvific transformation of human beings from self-centeredness to a re-centering in some manifestation of the ultimate. That they apparently produce essentially the same human transformation - though taking varying concrete forms within different cultures - suggests that through these traditions the same ultimate transforming reality is affecting us. Each giving rise to the fruits of the spirit that St Paul spoke of:-

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

This is because - as is suggested by John Hick - our human experience is always culturally conditioned. Or, as an ancient Hindu text says:-

"Thou art formless; thy only form is our knowledge of Thee"

The spirit blows where it will