CHAPTER II

THE RELATION BETWEEN

ISLAMIC AND CHRISTIAN CULTURES

GEORGE F. McLEAN

The Challenge of Globalization: Unity in Diversity

          We come together to face a momentous choice, namely, the pathways to be taken by two extensive portions of humankind in the millennium which is about to begin: must they be conflictual; can they be cooperative? In this the task of philosophy is not to make that choice by constructing a determining ideology, for that would destroy rather than promote the responsible freedom in which the special dignity of humankind consists. Rather, the task of philosophy is to search for understanding in depth of the present juncture, to clarify the values involved and to envisage creatively possible ways for their realization.

          Seen philosophically, this turn of the millennium is not then a matter of mere numbers or even of chronology, but truly an historic juncture for civilizations and cultures. The totemic and mythic stages of the great cultures were essentially religious. These was formulated in the great religious traditions -- earlier in the East, and in the first millennium by Christianity and Islam. In the second millennium Western culture focused on human reason, beginning with the reintroduction of Aristotelian logic and its concomitant scientific capabilities. This was radicalized in the rationalism of the Enlightenment, whose denouement was the pogroms and holocaust of World War II followed by the Cold War and its threat of mutual annihilation. The millennium has come to a spectacular end in the implosion of communism ten years ago and the questioning of an uncontrolled market in these last months. Such a total end necessitates a new beginning. What then is to follow: which are the pathways into the future?

          Two major formative factors stand out. The first is horizontal -- globalization. With the sudden end of the bipolar world system, we are now in a rapid reorganization without borders. This is driven by economic opportunity grounded in the needs of a burgeoning population; it is implemented by rapidly advancing technology and communications.

          The second formative factor is vertical -- the opening to deeper dimensions of the human person. Negatively this appeared in the overthrowing of the totalitarian and colonial structures which had ruled in the 1930s. At a positive philosophical level it consisted in recapturing human subjectivity through the development of existential and phenomenological insight which has made manifest the uniqueness of the exercise of freedom. Socially this has meant a renewed sense not only of the universality of human rights, but of respect for the affective dimensions of human life, for the uniqueness of cultures and their religious foundations. Today there is an emerging sense of the distinctive character of cultures and of the diversity this entails among civilizations.

          In this lies the present challenge, namely, how to relate both the increasing unity of globalization and the increasing appreciation of the uniqueness and diversity of peoples and cultures with their religious roots. Indeed, the domination of either unity or diversity, here at the cost of the other, would lead to a great impoverishment of human life both materially and spiritually. Economic and cultural globalization at the expense of the diversity of persons and cultures entails a spiritual reduction and blandness to human life; diversity at the expense of effective interchange leads to physical impoverishment and cultural conflict.

Cooperation between Religions as Convergent

The Divine as Context for Human Meaning

          A response to this challenge must not flee the economic order of human interchange. Hegel and Marx were correct in underlining this as fundamental; any response must begin there. Globalization consists really (though by no means exclusively) in the intensification of economic interchange to unheard of degrees. Such goods, however, can be traded, but are not truly shared: what one possesses, the other does not. This mutual exclusivity of physical goods bases competition which, left to itself, leads to conflict. In the past, land and its resources have been the basis for wars whose outcome was the physical expropriation of the losers in favor of the victors. It is important to look for ways of cooperating on physical resources, but the willingness to do so is part of a broader set of concerns and must be inspired by higher values. It must be enabled by an imagination which is not enslaved to material goods, but capable of ordering and reordering these goods for higher human purposes.

          The political is a second level and is concerned with the exercise of power. This, too, is a major realm of human competition. Indeed, while the physical, technical and economic issues, e.g., of oil exploration and transportation, are daunting, they have been soluble. It is the political concerns which raise the greatest difficulties. Here the divergent interests of peoples enter and constitute broader patterns of overall national concerns and of the international power by which these are advanced or thwarted.

          Whether these can be related harmoniously depends upon the bases upon which power is exercised. If this be the economic goods involved, then political will becomes hostage to the mutually exclusive competition of expropriation and appropriation noted above. As has been said classically, politics then becomes war by other means. Hence, the challenge here is to set these political concerns in the service of peoples by developing a cooperative pattern in which all share. But if power be exercised only for power's sake, then again the result will be a pattern of dominance and subordination which can only lay the basis for economic or physical conflict or war.

          To break beyond this it is necessary to reach for principles of coordination at a third level, beyond the physical and the political. These must be goods which are not marked by exclusive possession, as is the economic order, or by competition, as is the political order, but which can be shared, as are the spiritual goods of the mind and heart. Knowledge, for example, can be shared without thereby being lost. Indeed, it is in discussion that ideas are cross-pollinated, bear fruit and unfold their full potential.

          This is mirrored in the overall sequence of the work of Kant. His first critique provided an understanding of the universal and necessary laws which rule the physical sciences. His second critique articulated the nature of the laws which rule the exercise of freedom. Then only did he recognize the need for a third critique, that of aesthetic reason, in order that both might be lived in harmony. This suggests that in an analogous manner at this time of conjoined globalization (corresponding to the first critique) and personalization (corresponding to the second critique) -- that is, of universalization and diversification -- we must look for a third religious sphere in which both dimensions can be harmonized. This third awareness is not superstructure but infrastructure; it has been present in all the cultures since their totemic origins. It needs to be brought out from behind Enlightenment hubris as the ground for creative relationships in the new millennium.

          This, indeed, is the thrust of the recent encyclical of Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio.¹ This is an extended disquisition on the dialectic of faith in evoking reason, of reason in guiding faith, and of the synthesis of the two in inspiring and mobilizing human action. The philosophical level alone responds only speculatively to the present challenge; it would not inspire people with a living vision or mobilize them to act accordingly.

          Here Muhammad Iqbal provides important orientation. Iqbal does not proceed far in his classic Reconstruction of Religious Thought² before coming to the heart of the matter, namely, that human consciousness consists of multiple levels, all of which are rooted in an awareness of the total Infinite³ in which they find their possibility as well as their meaning.

          He analyses deeply the nature of the scientific disciplines and their ability to serve humankind as instruments of our engagement in our environment. But the human issue is how people can rise above merely being a part of that order and subject to being manipulated and exploited, in order to become truly the masters of their work. He locates this in the ability of the human mind to transcend the physical order, like climbing above the trees of a forest in order to be able to see it as a whole and thereby to engage it with creative freedom. This, in turn, he bases upon the fact that the human spirit is created by and grounded in a total Absolute Being which frees the human person from being a slave of nature and installs him as Vice Regent of the world.

          But even this awareness may not be sufficient, for it might still be conceived in terms of possession and control. For this it would be sufficient simply to develop a system of management. But where the interests involved are so deeply human that they carry the hopes and fears of a people, much more is involved and must be addressed. Thus, Iqbal speaks of the need to recognize not only the physical and social realities and their corresponding sciences, or even philosophy as a matter of understanding. It is necessary to go beyond to the religious bases where the meaning of life, human values and personal and social commitment are anchored.

          The aspiration of religion soars higher than that of philosophy. Philosophy is an intellectual view of things; and as such, does not care to go beyond a concept which can reduce all the rich variety of experience to a system. It sees Reality from a distance as it were. Religion seeks a closer contact with Reality. The one is theory; the other is living experiences, association, intimacy. In order to achieve this intimacy, thought must rise higher than itself and find its fulfillment in an attitude of mind which religion describes as prayer -- one of the last words on the lips of the Prophet of Islam.⁴

          Metaphysics is displaced by psychology, and religious life develops the ambition to come into direct contact with the ultimate reality. It is here that religion becomes a matter of personal assimilation of life and power; and the individual achieves a free personality, not by releasing himself from the fetters of the law, but by discovering the ultimate source of the law within the depths of his own consciousness.⁵

          This has a twofold implication. First, religion is a matter of personal commitment on the part of persons and peoples. It engages not only their minds, but their freedom and moral sentiment, which are the great mobilizers of human action. Secondly, it does so in terms of the divine life expressed by such names of God as “Just” and “Loving,” “Provident” and “Caring.” It contributes to orienting the great technical projects of our day in ways that constitute a world that is marked by these same characteristics.

          Here Islam's devotion to the prophet is its unique strength. The human mind left to itself seeks clarity and control by a process of simplification. In contrast, the role of the prophet is to give voice in time to the Absolute ground of our being. It thereby reminds us that all of life, if it is to be understood and lived properly, must express in time the divine justice and love. The prophet does not leave this to surmise or indirect reasoning, but proclaims it with a voice that echoes through time -- not to mention through the neighborhoods of a city such as Cairo today.

The Human As Participation in the Divine

          When now we turn to the human, it is crucial to retain this total response to the Absolute, without which human life loses its meaning and value. In order to uncover the real meaning of human history, it is essential to see how the divine, as source of being and meaning, is expressed in and through creation. This is a matter not merely of the beginnings of the universe, but of the creative exercise of human life through history, today and into the future.

          This is the forgotten essence of the issue of peace for all humankind. Where rocks and plants just happen and animals live by instinct, humans are challenged by the need to shape their lives according to their self-understanding. In this they face a choice among three basic paths.

          Forgetfulness of the Divine. The first path is to forget or to prescind from the divine ground of human life and to proceed as if humans were self-sufficient. In 1700 J.B. Vico foresaw that this emerging modern attitude would lead to a new barbarism of conflict, meaninglessness and despair which has turned the 20th century into the bloodiest of them all. Islam has rightly rejected such “enlightenment.”

          For this, however, Islam has suffered a considerable, if largely unintended, penalty. According to Enlightenment theory, as elaborated, e.g., by John Rawls in his Political Liberalism,⁶ where there exist multiple integrating visions of life, one draws before these a "veil of ignorance." They are simply excluded from the public sphere which is thereby constituted as a neutral forum where all can interact indifferently. From this interaction there emerge patterns of agreements regarding human interchange. Those will be similar to the formal set of principles which Rawls himself worked out earlier in his Theory of Justice.⁷ In the title, Political Liberalism, the word "political" opens some possibilities of adjustment of these formal patterns to particular circumstances of place and time.

          In this approach, though a person may be religious in private life, as regards all public interchange the Islamic, Christian or any religious person prescinds from his or her religious vision and becomes effectively secular. This privatization of religion and secularization of public life is, of course, itself the theology described in Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.⁸ Only from that position does such a secularization of public life appear neutral, rather than neutering. This fundamentalism -- unrecognized and hence unwitting in much of the West -- has been the basis for the well-founded suspicions that liberal values will prove corrosive to Islam and destructive of its society. Indeed, Thomas Bridges describes this as its historically inevitable derivative.⁹ Religious cultures, including Moslem societies, could never accept this without ceasing to be themselves, indeed, without ceasing to be. It is essential that the West desist from desiring and expecting Islamic societies to do so.

          Forgetfulness of the Human. There is a second path, opposite to the first, namely, not to exclude religion in order to proceed with the work of history, but to reject history in order to preserve the religious meaning of life. This is the path of another fundamentalism, equally as radical as the first. All that was not found at the time of a Buddha or a Christ, or explicit in the text of the Bible or other sacred scriptures is seen as contrary and unfaithful thereto. In this way, the attempt to protect the religious meaning of life contradicts the development of such human institutions as legislatures and courts by which that meaning is lived concretely.

          Chief Justice Muhammad Said al-Ashmawy of Egypt has written Islam and Political Order¹⁰ in order to defend such institutions from the charge of being incompatible with Islam. But perhaps more important still, a number of younger Islamic scholars from Iran and Turkey have been working on this through the hermeneutic branch of philosophy. Seyed Musa Dibadj in The Authenticity of the Text in Hermeneutics¹¹ and Burhanettin Tatar in Interpretation and the Problem of the Intention of the Author¹² have shown how the text and the intention of its author live through history, continue to speak in the unfolding circumstances of human life, and inspire religiously creative responses thereto. This is to be faithful, indeed.

          Participation of the Human in the Divine. The damage done by the two exclusive paths, focused, respectively, upon the secular to the exclusion of the religious and upon the religious to the exclusion of the human, points to a third path. This sees the human as expression of the divine, which in turn promotes, guides and norms human development. This is the basic insight of Islamic as well as of Christian culture, not to mention the Hindu and Buddhist cultures of the East and the totemic basis of African, and, indeed, all cultures. The articulation of this vision in Islamic culture I would leave to those who have lived it with devotion, but I have included a chapter on al-Ghazali in my recent work on these matters, Ways to God.¹³

          This sense of the divine pervaded the totemic and mythic periods when all, even nature, was expressed in terms of gods. Later, at the very beginnings of Western philosophical reflection, Parmenides elaborately developed what would become the basic insight for Iqbal. Parmenides showed that to choose the path of life over death (of being over nothingness) is to see its source and goal not as a mixture of the two but as being or life itself. This transcends the world of multiple and changing things available to our senses; it is more perfect than could be appreciated in the graphic figures of the imagination which defined human thinking in its mythic stage. Thus, at the very beginning of philosophy Parmenides immediately discerned the necessity of an Absolute, Eternal, Self-sufficient Being as the creative source of all else.¹⁴ Without this all limited beings would be radically compromised -- especially human beings. It is not surprising, therefore, that Aristotle would conclude the search in his Metaphysics for the nature of being with a description of divine life.¹⁵

          The issue then is not whether the notion of the divine is conciliable with human thought and life; both emerge from and depend upon the divine. Without that which is absolute and hence one, humans and nature would be at odds, and humankind would lack social cohesion; without that which is self-sufficient, thinking would be the same as not thinking, and being would be the same as nonbeing.

          The real issue is how effectively to open this recognition of the divine to the full range of human history. In short, there is need to enable the divine source and goal to provide the basis for the human search for meaning and to inspire a vigorous itinerary of the human heart.

          To understand this Plato developed the notion of participation, expressing the many as deriving their being from the One which they manifest and toward which they are oriented and directed. This operates on all levels because it is the mode of being itself. Hence, participating in the divine is not something beings do; it is what they are. The self-sufficient and infinite One or Good is that in which all things share or participate for their being and identity, truth and goodness.

          This is truly a third way. It does not prescind from God -- the formula of Paradise Lost -- nor does it prescind from humankind and human history. Instead, God is affirmed in the creativity of His creation and the human is affirmed through creation by its divine source and goal. Thus, the religious basis of cultures inspires their processes of human exploration and creativity.

          In sum, instead of considering the religious basis of culture to be inimicable to human progress and undertaking a futile effort at exiling it from human life, this suggests recognizing that the religious view is an essential and necessary foundation of human life and meaning. This implies searching out how this view can be enabled to fulfill its task of founding truth and inspiring efforts toward the good in all aspects of life.

The Convergence of Islam and Christianity

          In these terms there is a great convergence between Islam and Christianity. One can see how this convergence is perceived and responded to by Christianity in the text of the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church. The time was the early 1960s when the new sense of the person was emerging after World War II. At that point rather than simply fighting the new in order to repeat the past, this largest Christian body convoked its 3,000 Bishops from all parts of the globe in a most solemn three-year session. Its significance can be gauged from the fact that a Council has been held only at points of high crisis which generally emerge only once in two centuries. In order to work out the implications of the new interior sense of the life of the person for religion in the modern times the assembled bishops reviewed all phases of the life of the Church. Over 700 pages of official conclusions were drafted, deeply discussed, amended and adopted. It was a magnificent example of the structural strength of the Church to respond positively, creatively and with authority to the developments of the times. Hence, its statement on Islam can be taken as a uniquely authentic religious appreciation of Islam in our times.

          The statement begins with the statement that the Church looks upon the Moslems with esteem and with appreciation of their high value. It proceeds to give the reason for this esteem, namely, that:

          - they adore God who is one;

          - they adore God who is living;

          - they adore God who is enduring;

          - they adore God who is merciful;

          - they adore God who is all powerful;

          - they adore God who is the maker of heaven and earth;

          - they adore God who is speaker to men when they submit to His decrees, even when inscrutable after the example of our father Abraham;

          - they honor Christ and Mary, his virgin mother;

          - they await the day of judgment which will bring the resurrection and reward of each according to his or her due; and finally;

          - they worship God in prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

          Moveover, this esteem of Vatican II for Islam was not only notional, but practical. Thus, it noted the fact of past quarrels and hostilities, which it would not be realistic to ignore. But the Council then drew itself up to its full stature to declare that: "This most Sacred Synod urges all to forget this and to strive rather for mutual understanding."

          On this basis the Council looked forward to cooperation in safeguarding and fostering those virtues which are shared by all religions and exemplified eminently in Islam, namely, social justice, moral values, peace and freedom.

          In view of the above, we can conclude then that there is a shared religious base to all cultures, that this envisages all creation as participations in a unique, unlimited and absolute source and goal; and that this entails a radical compatibility, though not homogeneity, of cultures and their religious bases.

          This is important to remember precisely because there is no lack of misunderstanding and fear. It has been said well that whatever humans can do, they can do broadly. This is true also of religion as a virtue and work of man. The exercising of this virtue inevitably is affected by all the human pressures from within and without, not least of which can be an ardent, if less wise or balanced, desire to serve God in one's own manner. This had led some groups, even acting in good faith, to ways that seem to impose unduly upon others in proposing their faith or even in suppressing the freedom of others to express or exercise their belief.

          Vatican II devoted a whole document to this issue of religious liberty as an acquisition of our times and called upon all to recognize, protect and promote it. If a small minority of unenlightened but ardent Christians or Moslems lack adequate respect for the beliefs of others, it is important that this not be allowed to hide the tolerance long revered by Moslems or the freedom newly proclaimed by Christians. Extreme minorities, precisely as such, do not reflect the deep truth and convergence of these two religious cultures. It is important that they not be allowed to cloud the issue, and that other religions not take them as expressing the authentic meaning and thrust of a culture or a people.

          Moreover, it can be said with the highest and broadest authority that this applies to practice as well as to principle; that the beliefs of Islam are shared by Christians; that Moslems are admired and appreciated for professing their beliefs and for the intensity and completeness with which they dedicate themselves thereto; and that Christians, individually and corporately, in living their beliefs need and wish to learn from the deep faith of Islam.

          This unity of vision makes it possible and urgent for Christianity to take up common cause on behalf of all humankind in safeguarding and fostering social justice, moral values, peace and freedom. But it is important to see that this can happen not only on the basis of the ways in which they are similar, but also or the basis of the ways in which they differ.

Cooperation between Religions as Diverse

External Cooperation

          By external cooperation we mean ways in which religious cultures can cooperate in facing challenges from outside of both. Today, we have a new reality. In earlier centuries the meeting of our cultures was carried out on the frontiers where the relations were often external, military and violent. There were the long combat with Byzantium, the Crusades, the wars of the Balkans. Now commerce brings materials, notably oil, from afar and makes it an indispensable part of everyday life; the new technology of communications brings distant reali­ties into our homes; the development of education makes them part of our growth and learning; the emerging sense of human subjectivity encourages us to interiorize these elements in our hearts and minds. We meet these phenomena inescapably in every facet of our lives. Consequent­ly, we can cooperate and we must learn to do so. But in doing so we must not destroy what is distinctive of each and thereby impoverish all, but engage what is distinctive in a shared cause. This can be done through learning from each other.

          Islam with its rich sense of faithfulness to God, based on its sense of His unity and primacy, can contribute to the religious life of the West what is most essential, namely, the sense of God.

          In return, the Church in the West has struggled for many centuries with the threats that Islam most fears, namely, reductivism, rationalism and material­ism. It has learned by its failures as well as its successes how to live religiously in a culture that is distracted by possessions and inundated by images. These are projected by techniques drawn from sophisticated psychologi­cal research and generally are at the service of commercial and ideological interests, often contrary to religion. It could be expected that Christianity, which has grown with these challenges in the West, might have insights which could be helpful in protecting and promoting religious life in Islam in these times of change.

          To recount these lessons would be a long study in its own right. They would include the need to distinguish the multiple orders of human awareness and to locate that which is proper to the religious; the process of relating religion in each of these modes with the levels of theoretical and practical consciousness to the mutual benefit of both; and, not least, the Vatican II document on religious liberty, affirming as a modern accomplishment the need to recognize the rights of conscience of every person with regard to his or her religious belief. This it considered less a deductive than an inductive insight drawing from human experience.

          In his book, Seize the Moment,¹⁶ Richard Nixon suggests a principle for such mutual Islamic-Christian exchange, namely, that it is not one's business to determine what others will be or do, but only to help them become what they will to be. This reflects well the new sense of the person and the new respect for the interiority of the spirit and hence for human freedom. It echoes the classical sense of the love of benevolence in which the good is willed for the other without seeking what it will do for us. We have all experienced this in our families where we first came to experience God's creative benevolence in our lives.

          This is the suggestion of Vatican II, namely, that we have much to share and we have the ability to cooperate in facing challenges from outside both Christianity and Islam, e.g., in safeguarding and fostering social justice and moral virtues. It is essential for religions to cooperate creatively in developing for the next millennium a broader world civili­zation which prospers through productive interchange, shared benevolence and peace.

Internal Cooperation

          There is also need for internal cooperation, that is, in helping one another to be able effectively to withstand contemporary challenges and even to draw more richly on our own resources.

          In the introduction, the challenge was stated to consist not only in globalization in which one reaches out to others and discovers points of convergent principle or experience, but in personalization in which there emerges a greater consciousness of the differences between peoples. Were dialogue and cooperation to result only from the ways we are the same then the road to peace would lie in suppressing that which is distinctive of persons and their cultures or rendering it inoperative in the public square. This has been a strong factor in the liberal “approach.” If, instead, personal life is appreciated as creative and, hence, as differentiating the pattern of one's life and culture, then it is necessary to find ways in which even the differences in human and cultural formation can be principles of cooperation, indeed even a means for the internal enrichment of traditions from their proper resources. Only this will make it possible truly to turn swords into plowshares for the tasks of the new millennium.

          To understand how this can be so it is necessary first to see how cultures are constituted of the cumulative exercise of that human freedom. If for a living being “to be is to live,” then for a human being “to be is to live consciously, creatively and responsibly.” Inevitably this creates the uniqueness and, hence, the diversity of our lives as we respond to different physical and social challenges with distinctive resources, each in our own manner. Further, as this is identically to live out our participation in the divine which is the essence of religion, we can expect that not only our cultures will be diverse, but also the religious roots of these cultures.

          As seen above, relation to the divine as shared by all peoples provides the basis for cooperation between the many peoples in their efforts at development. But, this is not a matter of theory separated from life or of practice separated from vision. It is, in fact, the wisdom core of the distinctive cultural tradition into which we are born and through which we interpret and respond to the challenges of development in cooperation with others in an ever more interconnected world.

          In order then to look for the bases of peace in the process of development, we must search not only for possible convergences of interests, but for the distinctive cultural contexts in terms of which these interests are defined; we must look also for the possibility of one culture contributing to the internal and self-consistent growth of another. This entails three issues: the uniqueness of cultural traditions; their roots in the religious commitment of each people; and the way in which peoples with diverse cultural and religious commitments can contribute positively one to another, not only through that in which they concur, as was noted above, but through their cultural divergences as well.

The Distinctness of Cultural Traditions

          Culture. A culture can be understood as that complex of values and virtues by which a people lives. The term `value' was derived from the economic sphere where it meant the amount of a commodity required in order to bring a certain price. This is reflected also in the term `axiology,' the root of which means "weighing as much" or "worth as much." This has objective content, for the good must really "weigh in" -- it must make a real difference.¹⁷

          `Value' expresses this good especially as re­lated to per­sons who actually acknowledge it as a good and res­pond to it as de­sirable. Thus, different individuals or groups, or possibly the same group but at differ­ent periods, may have distinct sets of values as they become sensi­tive to, and prize, alternate sets of goods. More gener­ally, over time a subtle shift takes place in the distinc­tive ranking of the degree to which various goods are prized.

          By so doing, among ob­jec­tive moral goods a certain pattern of values is delineated which in a more stable fashion mirrors the corporate free choi­ces of a people. Further, the exercise of these choices develops special capabilities or virtues, as it is in these ways of acting and reacting that we are practiced. These capabilities constitute the basic topology of a culture; as repeatedly reaf­firmed through time, they build a tradi­tion or heri­tage.

          By giving shape to the culture, values and virtues constitute the prime pat­tern and grada­tion of goods experienced from their earliest years by persons born into that heri­tage. In these terms they interpret and shape the de­vel­opment of their rela­tions with other persons and groups. Thus, young per­sons, as it were, peer out at the world through cultural lenses which were formed by their family and ancestors and which reflect the pattern of choices made by their community through its long history -- often in its most trying circumstances. Like a pair of glas­ses, values do not cre­ate the object, but reveal and focus attention upon cer­tain goods and pat­terns of goods, rather than upon others.

          In this way values and virtues become the basic orienting factor for one's intellectual, affective and emo­tional life. Over time, they encourage cer­tain patterns of ac­tion -- and even of physi­cal growth -- which, in turn, reinforce the pat­tern of val­ues and virtues. Through this pro­cess we con­stitute our universe of moral concern in which we struggle to achieve, mourn our failures and cele­brate our suc­cesses. This is our world of hopes and fears in terms of which, as Plato wrote in the Laches, our lives have moral mean­ing¹⁸ and we can speak properly of values. It is of this that the Prophet speaks the words of God.

          Cultural Traditions. To relate culture to tradition John Caputo, in Philosophical Founda­tions for Moral Educa­tion and Chara­cter Develop­ment,¹⁹ notes that from the very beginning one's life is lived with others. Even before birth, one's consciousness emerges as awareness of the biological rhythms of one's mother. Upon birth there fol­lows a pro­gressively broa­der sharing in the life of parents and siblings. In this context one is fully at peace, and, hence, most open to personal growth and social devel­opment. Hence, from its be­ginning one's life is social and histori­cal: one learns from one's family which had learned from earlier generations. This is the uni­versal condi­tion of each per­son, and conse­quently of the development of hu­man aware­ness and of knowledge.

          Interper­sonal depen­dence is then not un­natural -- quite the contrary, we de­pend for our being upon our creator, we are con­ceived in de­pendence upon our par­ents, and we are nur­tured by them with care and con­cern. Through the years we depend continually upon our fa mily and peers, sc hool and com­mu nity.

          We turn to other persons whom we recognize as superior in terms not of their will, but of their insights and judg­ment -- and precise­ly in those mat­ters where truth, reason and balanced judgment are required. The pre­emin­ence or authority of wise persons in the community is not some­thing they usurp or with which they are arbitrarily en­dowed. It is based upon their capabilities and ack­nowledged in our free and rea­soned response. Thus, the bur­den of Plat o's Repub­lic is precisely the education of the future leader to be able to exer­cise authority.

          From this notion of aut hority in a cultural community, it is possible to construct that of tradition by taking account of the preceding generations with their accumulation of human insight, predicated upon the wealth of their human experience through time. As a process of trial and error, of con­tinual correction and addition, history con­stitutes a type of learning and testing laboratory in which the strengths of various insights can be iden­tified and rein­forced, while their deficiencies are corrected and comple­mented. We learn from experience what promotes and what destroys life, and accordingly we make pragmatic adjustments. The cumulative results of this extended process of learn­ing and test­ing consti­tute tradition.

          But even this language remains too abstract, too limited to method or technique, too unidimensional. While tradition can be described in terms of feedback mechanisms and might seem merely to concern how to cope in daily life, what is being spoken about are free acts. These express passionate human commitment and personal sacrifice in responding to concrete dangers, building and rebuilding family alliances, and constructing and defending one's nation.

          Moreover, this wisdom is not a matter of mere tactical adjustments to temporary concerns. It concerns rather the meaning we are able to envision for life and which we desire to achieve through all such adjustments over a period of generations: it is what is truly worth striving for.

          This points us beyond the horizontal plane of the various ages of history and directs our attention vertically to its ground and, hence, to the religious bases of the values we seek to realize in concrete circumstances. The history of Abraham, our common father in faith, is a concrete account of the process through history of deep wisdom in interaction with the divine.

          The con­tent of a tradition serves as a model and exemplar, not because of personal inertia, but because of the corporate charac­ter of learning. This was built out of ex­peri­ence, consisting of the free and wise acts of the successive generations of a people in reevaluating, reaffirming, pre­serving and passing on what has been learned. The content of any long tradition has passed the test of countless generations. Stand­ing, as it were, on the shoul­ders of our forebears, those who come later are able to discover possibilities and evaluate situa­tions with the help of their vision of the elders because of the sen­sitivity they devel­op­ed and com­municated to us. Without this we could not even choose the topics to be investigat­ed or awaken within oursel­ves the desire to study those problems.

          Cultural traditions, then, are not simply everything that ever hap­pened, but only what has appeared significant to a particular distinctive people, been judged as life giving, and actively transmitted to their next generation. It is by definition then the good as humanely appreciated by a people; its presentation by different voices draws out its many aspects. Thus, a cultural tradition is not an ob­ject in itself, but a rich and flowing river from which multiple themes can be drawn according to the mo­tivation and interest of the inquirer. It needs to be accepted and em­brac­ed, affirmed and cultivated. Here the emphasis is neither upon the past nor the present, but upon a people liv­ing through time.

          Tradition is not a passive storehouse of materials to be drawn upon and shaped at the arbitrary will of the present in­quirer. Rather, it pres­ents in­sight and wisdom that is normative for life in the present and future, for its harmony of measure and full­ness sug­gest a way for the mature and per­fect formation of the members of this people.²⁰ Such a vi­sion is both his­torical and normative: historical, be­cause it arises in time and presents the characteristic manner in which a people preserves and promotes human life through time; and normative, be­cause it presents a basis upon which to judge past ages, pre­sent actions and options for the future. The fact of human striving manifests that every humanism, far from being indif­ferent, is com­mitted to the realization of some such clas­sical and perduring model of perfection.

Relations between Religious Cultures

          The danger, of course, and one that is foundational for this conference, is whether the combination of the deep immersion in, and commitment to, one's cultural tradition thereby traps one in insuperable opposition to the interests and strivings of those in other traditions. Can we overcome such opposition? Indeed, can the commitments we have to our own cultural tradition become a means for other peoples to look into their own traditions? If so, this would provide the key to effective cooperation between religions and cultures.

          It should be understood that cultural traditions will be multiple, according to the historical groupings of people, the diverse circumstances in which they shape their lives and the specific challenges to which they respond and, in so doing, ever more profoundly shape themselves. More foundationally, they reflect the specific mode in which God chooses to speak to his peoples and the message he conveys through his prophets to help peoples find their way on their pilgrimages.

          Contemporary attention to the person enables us to be more conscious of the distinctive formative pattern of our proper culture and its religious foundations. This can enable us to appreciate it as uniquely different from others. However, being situated among one's own people and hearing the same stories told in the same way, one's appreciation of the rich content of one's tradition could remain limited.

          The way to break out of this limitation of the human condition is to encounter other peoples with other experiences in order to check one's bearings. This is not to copy the other or to graft alien elements onto one's culture. It is rather to be stimulated by the experience of others and thus enabled to go more deeply into one's own cultural heritage and sacred books. Here the aim is to draw out meaning which had always been there in the infinite ground of my culture, but which thus far had not been sounded.

          Rather than abandoning or lessening allegiance to one's cultural tradition, this is a higher fidelity thereto. It is built on the conviction that my tradition, as grounded in the infinite divine, is richer than I or my people have thus far been able to sound, that it has more to say to me, and hence that I need to be open to new dimensions of its meaning.

          This is the special opportunity of our time of globalization, communication and mutual interaction. Rather than looking upon the other as a threat, communication with other cultures as they plumb their own religious tradition can enable one to draw more fully upon one's own. This enables one to cooperate with others in the development of their own cultures from the resources of their own religious tradition. In this way all religious cultures are promoted, each in its unique character. This is more than a dialogue between differences; it is cooperation in developing distinct but convergent pathways for the coming millennium.

                                                 NOTES

          1. John Paul II, “The Encyclical Letter:  Fides et Ratio,” in Faith, Reason and Philosophy, Series I: Cultures and Values, vol. 20 and Series IIA: Islam, vol. 7, ed. George F. McLean (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2000).

          2. Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought, ed. Saeed Sheikh (Lahore: Iqbal Academy of Pakistan and the Institute of Islamic Culture, 1986).

          3. Ibid., p. 4-5.

          4. Ibid., p. 49.

          5. Ibid., p. 143.

          6. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

          7. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1971).

          8. (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1994).

          9. (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1998).

          10. The Culture of Citizenship; Inventing Postmodern Civil Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), chap. I.

          11. (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1998).

          12. (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1999).

          13. (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1999).

          14. Parmenides, Fragment 8, see McLean and Aspell, Readings in Ancient Western Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NY: Prentice Hall, 1990).

          15. Fragments in G.F. McLean and P. Aspell, Readings in Ancient Western Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970), pp. 39-44. Neither being nor thought makes sense if being is the same as nonbeing, for then to do, say or be anything would be the same as not doing, not saying or not being. But the real must be irreducible to nothing and being to nonbeing if there is any thing or any meaning whatsoever. Hence, being must have about it the self-sufficiency expressed by Parmenides' notion of the absolute One.

          16. Richard Nixon, Seize the Moment (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).

          17. Ivor Leclerc, "The Metaphysics of the Good," Review of Meta­phys­ics, 35 (1981), 3-5. See also Vocabulaire techni­que et critique de la philosophie, ed. André Lalande (Paris: PUF, 1956), pp. 1182-1186.

          18. J. Mehta, Martin Heidegger: The Way and the Vision (Honolu­lu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1967), pp. 90-91.

          19. R. Carnap, Vienna Manifesto, trans. A. Blumberg in G. Krey­che and J. Mann, Perspectives on Reality (New York: Har­court, Brace and World, 1966), p. 485.

          20. H.G. Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Cross­roads, 1975), pp. 240, 246-247, 305-310.