In Fifteen Years Interreligious Relations Have Changed from a Field Of

HENDRIK M. VROOM

INTERRELIGIOUS RELATIONS

Incongruent Relations and Rationalities

Introduction In this article I will deal with the relations between religious traditions. People often think that the differences between traditions consist in their having different rituals and contradicting one another with respect to beliefs and ethical views on certain points and converging on others. That is not untrue, but the important differences lie on a deeper level, as I will show. Although we need “global” categories like “religion,” we must be aware of the structural differences between traditions. I will show how these differences appear in the views that those traditions have of other religions. These views are not congruent—in the sense that they spring from different paradigms and entail differing valua- tions of reasonableness. First, I will describe the urgency for deepening our understanding of the otherness of other traditions and the danger of an all too- easy acceptance that the “others” are “like us”—which comes down to an en- capsulation of the other and hinders a real understanding and the possibility of truly learning from other traditions. Second, I will describe the incongruent rationalities that follow from three “types” of religions: theistic, acosmic and cosmic. Third, I will make some comments on the incompatibility of the three types.

Religio-Cultural Differences Religious pluralism is one of the main cultural “problems” of global society, and neglect of the differences between cultures and religious traditions one of the main causes of serious conflict. These problems are very much apparent in societies in which many people from different cultural backgrounds and religions live together. Analyses of these problems tend, however, to neglect cultural differences. The causes of conflict and criminality are often attributed to socio-economic circumstances, but the fact that cultural conditions are neces- sary for the proper functioning of an economy (Fukuyama 2004: ch. 1) is often overlooked. In our present globalizing world culture religio-cultural differences have become more important than ever. Allow me to give an example. Many Muslims came to Europe in the 1960s and 1970s as so-called guest workers

59 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 16 (2006) 1 and more recently as brides and grooms and refugees from Bosnia, Iran, Af- ghanistan and Sudan. France, Belgium, and the Netherlands have a Muslim population of between 4.5 and 5.5 %—in certain urban areas about one third of the population and sometimes half or a majority of the population in some city districts. These people have to become inculturated in order to be able to get better jobs—or to get jobs at all. Many of them do well, but a great many young people are in danger of becoming part of a lost generation. Some of the highest percentages of all negative statistics are found in certain (not all!) groups of newcomers: middle or high school dropouts, joblessness, a high rate of delinquency and incarceration.

These are serious problems. And one primary cause is a matter of culture. For the descendants of neo-liberalism and Marxism it is common to neglect cultural and religious differences. Liberal politicians often think that all people are equal and, if they have jobs and salaries, will be happy, autonomous human beings who live just like “we” do. The accepted socialist explanation for conflict is that of social and economic exclusion: if we take care of the poor, provide them with jobs, they will be as happy as we are. Socio-economic explanations have become paradigmatic, as was nicely shown in an interdisciplinary discussion at the Vrije Universiteit. In a project on multiculturalism we invited a professor of criminology to discuss the question of whether the high delinquency rate among the youth of one national group in the Netherlands, Moroccans, had cultural roots or not. He accepted the invitation and wrote, by way of answer, that there were no cultural explanations at all for this. I thought, therefore, that he would indicate poor housing, not enough jobs, and, in general, unfavourable circumstances as causes for this group turning to crime. In his lecture, however, he pointed to their family life and the requirement that women be virgins when they marry, male-female roles in the family, and the less skilled or unskilled jobs held by the fathers who, for various reasons, often lose their jobs, loiter in tearooms and do not provide any role models for their sons. Of course, that is not the case with all Moroccan families, but it is indeed so with many of those where the young men go astray. Because of the honour culture and the purity of young women, the woman’s place is in the home and boys live on the streets without supervision by uncles and/or neighbours. The first generation and many who come to be married came and come from rather remote rural areas in their native countries and are not used to big cities—neither in Moroc- co or Turkey nor in Western Europe. Thus, our very well qualified criminolo- gist explained—contradicting his own claim—that religio-cultural circumstances are the main cause of the delinquency of these youths.

I will supplement this by some observations of my own. Their homes are all well supplied with equipment to help them receive television broadcasts from Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, Turkey or wherever. Their homes—and streets—are,

60 INCONGRUENT RELATIONS AND RATIONALITIES in a cultural sense, Moroccan, and the European language of the country in which they live is, for a great many people on the lower end of the education scale, foreign. That is the reason why they have unskilled jobs and why their children will not be educated well enough either. Girls, however, are better educated. Young women and their mothers are much more aware that education is the road to improving their situation. This example is taken from Western Europe, but it is typical for a great many urban areas in other parts of world. People live in areas in which cultural, ethnic and religious identities can easily become sources of conflict. Ethnicity and religion play a larger role in the world than they have in the recent past. This has been explained by the fact that nations have become less important. National governments—except, perhaps, in the USA—have less independent power than they did in the twentieth century. The world economy has made wealth more and more a common issue; businesses have to compete internationally. For various reasons one hundred million people are migrants and refugees. Therefore, nations and national bor- ders are less important for human identity. People have to find new groups with which they can identify themselves. This is what ethnic and religious groups offer. Where religious and ethnic identities merge conflicts between groups can easily occur (Carino 2005: 77; Schäfer 2005: 93f.). Therefore, it is urgent that we have a clear view of the relations between different cultures and religious traditions.

Incongruent Rationalities I will argue that not all views that religions have of other religions agree with the views that these religions have of themselves. On the contrary, some views are incongruent, as I will show in this paper. Because they are incongruent, it is difficult to see oneself through the eyes of the truly other. We project our way of perceiving others on to those others. We know that they are different from us, but in a way they are like us. We think that they will accept or reject us for the same reasons that we accept or reject them. How could we do otherwise? On the basis of our view of life we infer how other people see us—as if they are simply more examples of our religio-cultural approach. It is precisely this projection of our categories in our understanding of others that hinders a real encounter and can cause conflict. We should learn to understand the paradigms of other traditions, which can differ considerably. Professor Takada of Kyoto states it pointedly: “I am shocked by the idea of revelation” (Takada 2006: 21f.). It does not fit into his Buddhist view. He cannot understand it because it has no place in his paradigm. We can press this point a bit. Takada is a Pure Land Buddhist. Most Westerners who see a statue of the Buddha or perhaps the enormous statue of the Great Buddha of Kamakura near Tokyo will say that Buddhists, just like Christians and Muslims, have a God, because they think that the Buddha is a kind of God. But he is not. In fact, we can climb this statue just like we do the Statue of Liberty in New York. Could we imagine

61 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 16 (2006) 1 climbing a statue of Christ in Rome or one of Mohammed in Mecca? Of course, there are commonalities between the grace of God in Christianity and the boddhisatvas that help one to reach the Pure Land, but the Buddha is neither the Creator nor the Lord of heaven and earth.

I will simplify the discussion somewhat and reduce the wide variety of religious traditions to three types and sketch different paradigms for theologies of religions (cf. my 2006: chs. 6ff.). Before doing so, we have to remember, first, that such a typology does not mean that all Hindus or all Muslims belong only to one of these types. Second, there are profound differences within each type as well. Nevertheless, these three types can help clarify different approaches to the “others.” I am basing this on earlier studies and especially on a project un- dertaken with some colleagues, published as Religions View Religions, in which scholars from various religions and parts of the world describe how they view other traditions. A useful distinction is that between cosmic, acosmic and theistic traditions. Theistic Religions Theistic religions are those that hold that the world has been created intentionally by a Creator with a purpose in mind. The Abrahamic traditions are theistic—I will forego interesting discussions on this point. Some Hindu theologies can be understood as theistic, but they have acosmic elements as well.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam believe that God has created the earth, that there is one God, that God engages in relationships with humankind, and that God has revealed himself. God has provided creation with a structure through the natural laws and has given moral laws as well. These religions believe that human beings have to live according to those rules. We cannot say that the edi- fice of morality is completely clear and established for all time, but some central rules are the Noachite laws and rules of righteousness and humaneness.

From the ideas of relations, ethics, and revelation it follows that these religions have a normative understanding of what it is to be a good human being. People who do not live up this divine purpose do not fulfil their calling and are sin- ners. The idea of a created morality implies, for many believers, that God will judge the quick and the dead at the end of their lives.1 Of course, we all know about the discussions among Jews, Christians and Muslims as to what makes a good human being, what these laws are and how far they go. It is easy to quote

1 Why should there be one morality for all if there is no source of humanity beyond itself and the origin of the human species is purely contingent? In that case, adherents of theist traditions would say, all morality is contingent and therefore not obligatory—it rests merely upon a consensus.

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“Thou shall not kill” but not easy to indicate the circumstances under which a monarch or government is allowed to order that certain people be put to death. Although what the exact rules for humanity are cannot be easily determined, this does not mean that there are no norms.

This view entails how other traditions are to be valued. First, the idea that there are many Gods will be rejected. We should recall, e.g., the somewhat mocking discussion on the will of the many gods in Plato’s Euthyphro: if there is to be one good law, the gods should be in agreement about what they command. In- deed, I think the idea of a moral order in creation presupposes one God—otherwise the gods would need to be subordinate to another, higher order. Actually, from the theistic perspective, one claim that these gods are not truly God because God is one and thus the “highest” in the world.2 The idea of One God implies the rejection of idols or other gods. Second, the idea that God has established some moral rules for the life of human beings implies that theistic religions will reject traditions that violate divine commandments seen as central. Third, they have to acknowledge that followers of other religions have been created by the same one God and have to give account to God at the end of their lives. Fourth, from this it follows that most of them will reject the notion that all religions worship the same God, because not all traditions speak of God as a Creator or they reject the idea that God engages in a relationship with humankind.3

This view of other traditions is implied in the paradigm of the theistic view of the world, humankind and God. It includes a paradigm for meeting people of other traditions. The specific view of a particular other tradition will arise in the concrete encounters with people of other faith traditions, but the parameters for such a view are given by the basic insights of the belief in a Creator.

Of course, this leaves the possibility of dissension between various theistic religions. It is interesting how Jews sometimes view Christians and Muslims. In these encounters the emotionally charged history and the conflict around Israel and the Palestinians play a key role. In principle, Jews can honour theists easily if they themselves are granted their own Jewish life. They serve God as the people that has chosen to accept the Covenant and to obey the 613 commandments whereas others may live according to the will of God as expressed in the

2 I intentionally do not say “highest being” because that raises the question of onto- theology and that of the relation between esse and ens (respectively, “to be” and “being”).

3 This does not exclude the acknowledgment that adherents of other religions can actually have contact with God.

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Noachite laws alone.4 For Muslims, the theology of religions follows from the confession of the Oneness of God and the Koranic verses about Jews and Christians as People of the Book.5 For Christians, the person, life, death, and resurrection of Christ is fundamental for the idea of God. Christians differ in how they conceive of the Spirit of God working in other people and their religions. Nevertheless, although the parameters may vary, they are not so different that people cannot learn to understand the paradigms in which these theistic religions view one another. Acosmic Religions A very different approach to other traditions is found in purely acosmic religions like the Hindu Advaita Vedanta School. An acosmic tradition claims that the divine is not cosmic. God is not a creator. The material world is, more or less as in Neo-Platonism, non-real. The “real” is without beginning and is eternal. What is perfect is immovable. The visible “world” is temporal, changeable and perishable. Therefore, the divine is defined as that which exists truly and unchangeably. Temporal reality does not actually exist. The Hindu expression for the finite world is maya: it looks real, but it is not. We project an impermanent world onto what is stable and real. Therefore the real reality is the basis of all reality, but it is in itself of a different kind. The real is acosmic. The cosmic rests in the real but does not share in it.

In this strict Advaita tradition—a-dvaita = not-two, non-dual—the impermanent does not truly exist. Therefore, the divine is not personal and has no relations with human beings. The divine is satcitananda (true, full of bliss and love) in itself. There is no Creator. As in Aristotle, God is immovable and therefore could not begin creating the world—implying, therefore, that the world is eternal.

The theology of religions follows from this. All religious images and ideas are equally embedded in a non-real world. Religions are not ultimate. They reach for the ultimate, but the ultimate is higher then Mount Everest and K2. It is one and undivided and therefore beyond description or definition. Those who try to define the divine do not understand what brahman is. Therefore, all icons of the divine are just that—icons pointing to the ultimate beyond reach. For that

4 It is interesting to read in Ravitzky (2006: 75f.) that, while the Jewish community has little difficulty with young Israelis who are interested in Middle and East Asian spirituality, they detest those who immerse themselves in Islamic or Christian thought and practice.

5 See Waardenburg’s description of the classical Islamic theology of religions (Waardenburg 2006).

64 INCONGRUENT RELATIONS AND RATIONALITIES reason Advaita thinkers hold that people may worship brahman in images, sa- guna Brahman, but it is more appropriate to conceive of the divine without images, nirguna brahman.

From this it follows that all religious traditions that worship gods are on the same level. They are members of the same family. The following story of a Christian scholar illustrates this nicely. Several years ago she reported that she climbed a steep and rather high mountain for a Hindu festival. Halfway up a sadhu asked her, “From which family are you?” She responded in a friendly way: “I am from the Christian family”—following the Hindu approach to other religions. All religious traditions are put into the perspective of a broad-minded acceptance of other traditions. Shops on the streets around the big Menakshi temple in Madurai in southern India sell pictures of the gods: Krishna, Shiva, Jesus, Kali, Buddha and many other deities. They all point to the highest that is above all understanding. All are relative. In a sense they can be both lower and higher: higher because they expressly surpass the forms and names of deities and lower because they cling to name and form. Therefore, the common Indian expression that accompanies all God-talk is neti neti: “Not this and not that.”

The classical text for expressing this is Bhagavadgita 4:1: “In any way that men love me, in that same way they find my love: for many are the paths of men, but they all in the end come to me.” We are all familiar with the well- known parable of the six blind men and the elephant. One feels a tree trunk, another a hose and a third a sail. All feel and walk in darkness as long as they absolutize their images of the eternal. This story has become popular in many parts of the world. It presupposes that reasonable discussion of differences in beliefs is pointless. However, this presupposes that those who know that what the blind men feel is one and the same “thing,” an elephant, have more insight. This theory of religion presupposes that they have reached some form of higher knowledge.

This theology of religion can accept other traditions if they view their insights and rituals as relative. The absoluteness of this Advaita position is its view that all religions are relative.6 This absoluteness partly explains the tension between Hindu fundamentalists and Indian Muslims. It explains as well the critique by Buddhists in the Hindu kingdom of Nepal who oppose the appropri- ation of the Buddha as a kind of god and of Buddhism as a kind of Hindu tradition—which is seen as a misappropriation (Bhattachan 2006). Indeed, this

6 In this sense this is a kind of “Barthian” analogy in Hindu thought. Karl Barth con- demned all religions as human—all too human—attempts to control the divine. All religion is superstition, but the gift of faith transcends all religion (and cannot be possessed or truly grasped); cf. his Church Dogmatics I/2, § 17.

65 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 16 (2006) 1 approach cannot take seriously the Covenant of Sinai, the Christian belief in Christ, the revelation of the Koran, and the Buddha’s rejection of atman.

Of course, this Advaita view has long since been criticized. The medieval Hindu theologian Ramanuja already rejected the idea that the God Isvara is not a real God and that all worship of the statues of the Gods is vain. Nevertheless, the idea that all represent the One Brahman is deeply embedded in Indian religion as a whole. A famous passage in the Upanishads relates a question put to the wise Yajnavalkya: “How many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?” “Three thousand three hundred six,” he replied. “Yes,” said he, “but just how many gods are there, Yalnavalkya?” “Thirty three.” “Yes,” said he, “but just how many gods are there, Yalnavalkya?” “Six.” “Yes,” said he, “but just how many gods are there, Yalnavalkya?” “Three.” “Yes,” said he, “but just how many gods are there, Yalnavalkya?” “Two.” “Yes,” said he, “but just how many gods are there, Yalnavalkya?” “One and a half.” “Yes,” said he, “but just how many gods are there, Yalnavalkya?” “One.”7

Diana Eck says that this is not an esoteric doctrine but “part of the shared presuppositions of the culture .... There is only one reality, but the names and forms by which it is known are different” (Eck 1981: 20). This allows us to understand the typical position of Ramanuja, who affirms this one reality but de- nies that there is a divine substance “devoid of all difference” and takes the worship of the Gods seriously (cf. Ramanuja 1984: 39f., 80). On the one hand, he believes in the one, sole reality without beginning; on the other, he says that for devout meditation the Scriptures say that all things belong to God and people worship God rightly.

By way of conclusion we can state that Advaita Vedanta considers ultimate reality to be acosmic, beyond rational analysis and definition and that its theology of religions follows from the central tenets of its philosophy. Cosmic Religions The third type of religion is cosmic. Examples of this are Stoicism and Bud- dhist schools such as Zen. Masao Abe—related to the so-called Kyoto School

7 Brhadaranyaka-Upanishad 3.9.1., on pp. 85f. Cf. Vroom 1989b: 40f.

66 INCONGRUENT RELATIONS AND RATIONALITIES of Buddhist thought—once gave a lecture on the relation between religions from the perspective of Zen. And, just like other religious thinkers, he derived his view of other traditions from the experience of the world as passed on by Zen. One of the main ideas of Buddhism is that there is no soul nor anything else that can be said to be imperishable. In that sense all human beings are empty. Zen holds that we are connected with other beings in a immense force field, as Nishitani expresses it (1982: 159). Ultimately, even the expression “beings” is not accurate, because if no thing has any independence, there are, strictly speaking, no things at all. The only “thing” there is is the co-dependent whole that arises and changes and flows. The stress on the impermanence of everything is intended to help people open their eyes and discard images of reality that bind them to their own projections of themselves and everything else. Attachment blinds us. If we could open ourselves up to reality as it actually is, we could reach the point that we are aware of things as they are, i.e. as they appear. In this vein Nishida speaks of “pure experience” (Nishida 1990: 3-10). In such a state people accept everything as it is and react in a spontan- eously wise way and with great compassion (Abe 1990: 45f., 56). On this basis Masao Abe develops a very interesting view of other religions. Christianity, Hinduism and Taoism—all of them have arisen within the whole of existence. They are such as they are. The acceptance of things as they are goes hand in hand with the acceptance of other traditions just as they are (Abe 1989:78-81).

In a more or less similar way Eiko Hanaoka understands God not as a highest being but as the open field of emptiness. The trinitarian Christian God has a ground beyond God. God as “the groundless ground of the trinitarian Christian God ... can be represented as the field (=openness) of emptiness in Buddhism and enables religions to be seen as various manifestations of original life” (Hanaoka 2006: 289). Every phenomenon springs from the same well. Hana- oka combines Zen meditation and thought with Christianity in this way.

The Buddhist view that things are just as they are in their suchness opens a cosmic way to experience reality. Enlightenment is the unbroken awareness of things in their interdependent being. Everything is related to everything. Abe has challenged his monotheistic conversation partners in the volume The Emp- tying God by confessing his own involvement in the Holocaust: “From the perspective of the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I am not free from responsibility for the Holocaust in Auschwitz. I must accept that ‘Auschwitz’ is a problem of my own karma” (Abe 1990: 50). This confession was not understood correctly by the other contributors to that volume. Western people think in terms of causality, but, as interdependent co-origination, karma differs from Western ideas of causality. It is the interrelatedness of all with all. Actually, it is easy to explain it in a few sentences, but it is much more difficult to imagine. If no- thing has its own being and there is no thing behind any phenomenon, and no

67 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 16 (2006) 1 thing stands on its own—then everything is always part of the whole that arises and develops dynamically. Every (no-)thing is in one way or another related to all other (no-)things. This entails that thinking in the sense of analyzing the elements of things and doing research by examining molecules, hairs, legs, arms, persons, etc. does not reflect reality as it truly is. Scientific research is valuable in its own right. However, the experience of ultimate reality requires another way of thinking: the awareness of everything in its interrelatedness. This is not the place to delve more deeply into Zen Buddhist thought. We will simply con- clude that this theory of other religions is part of the Zen Buddhist view of reality and cannot be equated with either theist or acosmic theologies of religions.

Incompatible Approaches These examples of three models in the theories of other religions show how different they are. People often project their own approaches onto other traditions. Buddhists have been trained more than many others to be conscious of projecting one’s own attached view onto others. I have already referred to Tak- ada’s shock at the idea of revelation; he himself thinks that the idea of non- being will be shocking for Westerners (Takada 2006: 22).

In interreligious dialogue many misunderstandings and irritations have their origin in this mechanism of projection. Hindus often feel offended when their open acceptance of other traditions is not reciprocated. Orthodox Christians often feel overwhelmed by Hinduism’s integration of Christ into the Hindu pantheon. Buddhists in their Nepalese minority situation do not accept the embracing of Buddhism by Hindu scholars. Muslims have their own standards in the approach to other traditions. All approaches develop over the centuries, but these three models are not congruent: there is no way to integrate them fully. People often complain that interreligious dialogue does not meet with success, makes no progress and is no real help to further understanding and peace. On the one hand, politicians are right to insist that dialogue is the only way to prevent conflicts between cultural and religious traditions, but, on the other hand, as people point out time and again, not much progress is being made. My guess is that many people who do want to engage in interreligious dialogue and see that this is the way to deepen understanding, overlook these different approaches and level out the differences. The consequence of not taking differences seriously is that conversation partners feel that they are not accepted as they are—and not taking the otherness of others seriously is one serious cause of conflict.

I once spent an evening in discussion with a Buddhist scholar. Upon leaving, he said his farewells and added: “Be a good Christian, and, I am sure, in your next life you will be a Buddhist.” When I tell this story people sometimes react

68 INCONGRUENT RELATIONS AND RATIONALITIES as if this was an affront. On the contrary, for me it was exactly what he, from his position, should wish for me. We cannot make a Procrustean bed out of interreligious dialogue and studies. As the reader may know, Procrustes received his guests and offered them an iron bed. If they did not fit, he either cut off parts of their legs if they were too long or stretched his shorter guests until they fit his furniture. That is not the method of interreligious dialogue.

There is a caveat concerning the three types of theologies of religion: many sub-traditions combine elements of more than one type. Religious faith is not a coherent theory and believers may feel attracted to some practices and beliefs of another tradition. If religious belief never can be fully coherent, who can tell which beliefs cannot be combined? In one way or another people make their own bricolage of the “scheme repertoires” that they find in their culture (Droogers 1989; 2003; 2005). One cannot hold simultaneously beliefs that are straightforwardly contradictory, such as A and not-A. However, insights are often not straightforwardly contradictory and simply in tension with one another (cf. Vroom 1989a: 26-35). We can select some insights from other traditions that we integrate into our own views, but the basic insights of theistic, acosmic and cosmic traditions are too difficult to combine. Nevertheless, people from different paths can meet one another and share important feelings and insights. Because respect and tolerance depend on the greatest possible acceptance of otherness and not on the relativity of beliefs,8 dialogue should start with the acceptance of otherness rather than forcing other views into their own perspective. Too often interreligious dialogue, and especially analytical discussions of the beliefs of other traditions, starts from the presuppositions of one’s own tradition. On the one hand, religions do not become equal because we have a category “religion” and the ideas of gods do not become equal because we use the category “gods.” Nor does a common rationality arise from using “our” category “reason.” On the other hand, we are all human; in principle we can learn to understand one another and learn to live together right- eously and peacefully. This requires that interreligious dialogue take place on various levels—in the streets, in offices, between religious organisations and in the universities—about various aspects of life as religious experience, worship, and meditation, daily life, the meaning of life, and more explicitly about ethics and ideas about the meaning of life and transcendence.

8 This is not the place to delve into the limits of what is acceptable from different perspectives.

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