PART VI
THE
VOCATION OF MONOTHEISTIC FAITHS IN A CONFLICTUAL WORLD
Future development of monotheistic faiths with respect to the identity of
peoples. The living preservation of the religious and cultural identities of
people as bases of the social life of peoples; lessons to be learned from the
experiences of times; scriptural faith and the reconciliation of peoples in
conflict; the challenge of the increasing interrelation of peoples to render
newly active the implications of belief in one God, alpha and omega, for a
creative and harmonious life of the peoples.1
Editorial Introduction
But
the sheer increase in numbers outside Christianity must remain to the sensitive
spirit a deep aspect of the problem of religious pluralism, committed as we are
to the central significance of persons in societies.
-Kenneth Cragg
The
three concluding papers appear basically as they were presented in the final
symposium session. These papers, of course, had to be written in advance of the
meeting, and thus they are not based directly on what went before. Moreover, the
writers did not materially revise their contribution subsequently. Their essays
thus appear on a par with all those that went before. Ba-sically, then, while
some concluding editorial comments follow here and in the editorial conclusion
below, perhaps as it should be, this puts the task of summing up on the reader.
Recognizing
past and present involvements of the three Abrahamic traditions in ethnic
conflicts, the originating question put to contributors to this symposium was:
how can the healing potential of our several traditions be realized in these
conflicts, and what can we learn from past failures in this regard? For both
substantive and logical reasons, each panel proceeded chrono-logically: Jewish,
Christian, Islamic.
It
is hardly accidental that the beginning note on the panel is somber if not
indeed pessimistic. "I am not convinced," Rabbi Moline begins,
"that the monotheistic faiths can play a role in resolving ethnic
conflict." Effectively, if we have come with the ex-pectation that our
deliberations would yield pacifying political strategies, we were mistaken. That
expectation merely exacerbates the confusions that led to our impasse in the
first place. Our problem all along has been, in the words of George Mendenhall,
"the dissolution of religion into politics."2
I shall return to this claim in the concluding essay.
Moline’s
accent, however, seems to fall elsewhere. For him the route to the universal
leads through the (Jewish) particular. For him to stray from the Jewish -- or
Abrahamic -- particular is to lose the capacity to affect the universal. The key
appears to be the Mosaic duty to the stranger and ultimately to the enemy.
Recog-nition of the divine image in the other, it would appear, rules out the
warring behaviors that we here deplore.
Appropriately
enough, Duran applies the same logic to what he regards as the core commonality
of "the Abrahamic Family." Accordingly he would have the three
traditions work in much greater spiritual unison, a unity that would be evident
in common prayer. Nor is that reasoning unusual. At least in this pluralist USA,
where secularism appears as a common challenge, Muslim "cou-sins" on
occasion appeal to Jews and Christians to make common cause. Many in each of the
traditions will object to such "watering down" of the distinctive
features of their beliefs, and not without reason.
According
to both the Jewish and the Christian responses in this instance, however, the
commonality argument appears problematic. From the outside, the rise of
Christianity, followed some centuries later by Islam surely is problematic for
the original Abrahamic people. One might, from an outside perspective, proceed
in quantitative terms and ask what percentage of the legacy of faith would have
to be shared to sustain unified endeavor. In the US Congress a simple majority
rule is required for legislative enactment, or a two-thirds minimum for certain
weighty issues. If theologians could show that the three versions of Abrahamic
faith are in two thirds agreement, could they then pool their efforts?
While
the issues here before us are not thus quantifiable, it is doubtful that the
issues raised by both Moline and West, though different, would reach even a 50%
level. But that does not yet dispose of the case put by Duran. The presence of
the three stories, the three revelations, at the core respectively of Judaism,
Christ-ianity and Islam, somehow beckons each beyond its boundaries.
In
Section Two above, Michael Kogan traces the stage by stage unfolding of the
scriptural narrative in which successive hu-man default results in new divine
goal-setting. The nature of the divine response, instance by instance, is by no
means readily or immediately self-evident. Cosmology, history and final epiphany
remain intrinsic, yet mysterious, components of the Abrahamic trajectory.
Paradoxically the summons to each community -- Jews, Christians and Muslims --
to greater faithfulness to their particular covenant, rather than dilution or
amalgamation, may be precisely the most promising advance to the common action
for which Duran calls.
Paul Peachey
Rolling Ridge Study Retreat
Community
NOTES
1.
Original assignment to Moline, West and Duran.