April 25, 1961 Subscription: $2.00 per calendar year Vol. XII, No.4 CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO NON-CHRISTIAN FAITHS by Daud Rahbar, Ph.D. (Cantab.) and A SEIECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE WORLD 'S LIVING RELIGIONS by The Missionary Research Library ------------------------------------ In the Maroh issue of the Oooasional Bulletin we published a master~ artiole by an Amerioan missionary soholar on the relation of non-Christian religious systems to Christian theology. In this issue we are privileged to publish a paper by a Pakistani soholar whose brilliant researoh on the ethioal dootrine of the Qur'an has Just oome from the press, under the title God £.! Justice. Dr. Rehbar 1s father was Chainnan of the Department of Persian Studies at the Punjab Univel'sity in Pakistan and Principal of the Oriental College of that University. Dr. Daud Rehbar took his M.A. degree in Arabic Literature fl"OlU the Punjab University in 1947. Sinoe then he has oontinued his studies at Cambridge University and has taught at Cambridge, MoGill University in Montreal, Ankara University, and Hartford Theologioal Seminary where he is at present visiting Professor of Urdu and Pakistan Studies. Dr. Rehbar is a Christian. His paper, "Christian Approach to Non-Christian Faiths," was read a.t the Consultation sponsored by the South Asia Committee of the D.F.M., Ootober 31, 1960. It is followed by a review of Dr. Rahbar's new book, written espeoially for the MRL Oooasional Bulletin by Dr. A. Kenneth Cragg, author of The Call of the Minaret, Sandals ~ !h! Moseue, and other books. In the small suburb of Lahore where I spent by childhood days were two Hindu temples. The plots allotted by the municipal authorities for these places of worship were literally within traffic circles (or roundabouts). So we frequently had to detour around the temples. This unintentional ritual brought us no merit. In many years of its repetition we never had any curiosity and urge to know ..That happened inside those temples. Much less did we desire to know what happens inside a Hindu heart. Despite that complete jgnorance we believed we had the right to call Hinduism inferior and our own religion superior. Either we study other religions and compare them open-mindedly, or we confess that we are caught up too much by other purSUits to say anything on comparative religion with certainty. In Turkey I had a most interesting experience. The Faculty of History in Ankara assigned me a desk in a room that I shared for over three years with two Muslim Turks who were teachers of Sa.nskrit. Their Department Library stacks covered Single copies 25¢ -2­ the walls of the room. And for three years I enjoyed the darshan (blessed presence) of major Hindu texts, - only by looking at the volumes, but seldom finding time to read them. I was too busy learning Turkish for a conversation with my room-mates. Now at Hartford Seminary I have had the good fortune to study Sanskrit with Professor Malcolm Pitt. \fhile proclaiming the Christian message one caution is necessary. The unique­ ness only of those aspects of the Christian world-view should be proclaimed which actually are unique and it is my earnest concern to emphasize these. First: No scripture in the world other than the New Testament dismisses really effectively the egoistic aloofness of God. In the sacred literature of other world religions there are tendencies to see the deity in intimate relation with creatures human and non­ human. But these tendencies are by no means consistently dominant. Second: No scripture in the world other than the New Testa~ent gives an effective blow to the ultimacy of ritual and juridical structures. There are tendencies in some sacred literature where the primacy of spirit over law is stressed occasionally. However, no scripture but the New Testament has this emphasis at the heart of the message. Nobler seekers of salvation and spiritual peace in non-Christian religions do conceive God as a friend rather than an egotistic autocrat, or a God of unknown dis­ position. But if they do so and at the same time continue to be affiliated to the religion transmitted to them by their upbringing, their personalities become characterized by an incomplete revolt against the dominant echoes of the scripture of their profession. They seek refuge in an arbitrarily allegorical exegesis. We should not be afraid of affirming that no amount of human imagination unaided by the New Testament can conceive the degree of God's serving, lOVing, sacri­ ficing, and self-humiliating disposition which is found in the New Testament narrati~ True humility in worship and true self-giving to fellow beings can be learned only by knovfng the Lord Jesus • Without that knowledge the heart is not humbled com­ pletely before God. Nobler seekers of salvation and peace do revolt against the ritual and the juridical burdens of their scriptures but they try to convince themselves that they are adhering completely to the scriptures of their profession. Here again they turn to allegorical and philological devices of interpretation to be liberated from un­ easiness. The anti-legalism and the anti-ritualism of people who are worshippers of deities other than Jesus is thus characterised by a sarcastic bitterness. These two aspects of the uniqueness of the Christian belief should be given a very special place in the proclamation. Non-Christian religious communities have not become ready to confess that the noblest phases of their religious traditions have been subtle revolts against the central thrusts of their respective scriptures in one way or another. Such con­ fessions call for much preparation. The exact nature of such revolts will become clear to reasonable minds when the historical method of the study of religions is propagated. The multi-coloured theologies and mystical schools within a religious tradition which has long existed, should all be appraised by looking at the ways in which theological and mystical schools react or respond to, or use the canonized or semi-canonized literature of their profession. For religious communion, therefore, the first requirement is intellectual parity between the Christian world and the non-Christian. And, since the Christian world cannot de-intellectualize itself after haVing become intellectualized, the first preparation for a dialogue is sufficient intellectualizing of non-Christian communities. With intellectual parity inter-religious seminars will become meaningful. It does not take a discovery to point out that some degree of conversion already has -3­ taken place as soon as two persons, hitherto unable to use a term in the same meaning begin to use it in the same meaning. In such creative conversation the Christians will have to adopt some key­ phrases of non-Christian thought and put new connotations on them with or without slight modification of the phrases. One such phrase from Islamic theology occurs to me now. The theological venture of Islam has become endeared with the word Tanzih, which technically means divesting God of attributes of resemblance to man. The full phrase will be Tanzih 'an sifat al-tashbih. The word Tanzih can safely be adopted by Christian theology with a slight modification of the full phrase: placing al-sharr (the evil) in place of al-tashbih (resemblance). The phrase will then mean: divesting God of attributes of evil. And a wide propagation of the word Tanzih in this new sense may easily make the new meanings supersede the old, and the word Tanzih Will assume new connotations. This is only an illustration but a very important one. Early Christianity was not slow in adopting Greek phrases and giVing them new connotations. Hinduism defeated Buddhism in India by adopting Buddhist motifs, and injecting them with Hindu motives. One of the major contributions of St. Augustine's City of God is the title of that work itself. The phrase, City of God offered to the Roman world a phrase corresponding to the phrase, Kingdom of God, which was full of intimate meanings only for the Jew. - -­ From such an adoption of vocabulary results a transition marked by what may seem to some of the people involved as a logical confusion. But through such Illogical confusionsll alone the fusion of hearts and synJ.l)athies is born. Conversion or transformation of whole generations, like the conversion of individuals is always via heresies. I have not read Julius Caesar by Shakespeare for many years, but I hope it was Brutus who said to Cassius something to this effect: "I do not dislike Caesar, but his vices. 1I Christians should at least have this detached view of non-Christian communities, if not a truly Christian love for them. For a demonstration of such love in the twentieth century nothing will help more than continued charity, and intellectual charity too; no aspect of the Christian doctrine today will help more than a proclamation of the universality and eternity of the Logos. The Christian comnunity must revive its distinctions of the Logos-non-incarnate, the Logos­ incarnate and the Holy Spirit. The availability of the Holy Spirit is a fruit of the Incarnation and KnOWledge of the Incarnation. Those who have never read the New Testament cannot be accused of not knowing the Holy Spirit. Therefore, tribute is to be paid to great non-Christian reformers and servants of mankind as recipients of the gifts of the Logos-non-incarnate. And some clearer declaration is necessary on the comparability of Old Testament prophets with non-Hebrew messengers of God in different lands and centuries. The Christian community is tl~ custodian of the experience of the Holy Spirit. I have lately been realizing that a society with only nominal stress on biographies of great servants of men in the standard curriculum deprives itself of the availa­ bility of the Holy Spirit.