Ninian Smart

Worldviews : crosscultural explorations of human beliefs

1. Exploring Religion and Analyzing Worldviews. 2. Worldviews: An Inventory. 3. The Experiential Dimension. 4. The Mythic Dimension. 5. The Doctrinal Dimension. 6. The Ethical Dimension. 7. The Ritual Dimension. 8. The Social Dimension. 9. Reflections on the Twentieth Century. Postscript: Further Explorations in Worldview Analysis. Further Reading. Index.

The world's religions : old traditions and modern transformations

Preface Introduction Part I. 1. Earliest Religion 2. South Asia 3. China 4. Japan 5. Southeast Asia 6. The Pacific 7. The Americas 8. The Ancient Near East 9. Persia and Central Asia 10. The Greek and Roman World 11. Classical and Medieval Christianity and Judaism 12. Classical and Medieval Islam 13. Classical African Religions Part II. 14. The Explosion of Europe and the Re-Forming of Christianity 15. North America 16. South Asia and Reactions to Colonial Intervention 17. China and Korea in Modern Times 18. Modern Southeast Asia 19. Japan in Modern Times 20. Islam Passes Through the Shadows 21. The Colonial Impact in the Pacific 22. Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union 23. Africa in the Modern World 24. Latin America and the Caribbean 25. Some Final Reflections on Global Religion Bibliography Credits Index.

Interpretation and Mystical Experience

Professor R. C. Zaehners distinction between panenhenic, monistic and theistic mysticism will be examined. It will be argued that there is no necessary reason to suppose that the latter two types involve different sorts of experience: the difference lies rather in the way the experience is interpreted. Likewise it will be argued that the Theravādin experience of nirvana, which is interpreted neither in a monistic nor in a theistic sense, may well be identical substantially with the foregoing two types. All this raises important methodological problems, in relation to the contrast between experience and interpretation. The fact that mysticism is substantially the same in different cultures and religions does not, however, entail that there is a ‘perennial philosophy’ common to mystics. Their doctrines are determined partly by factors other than mystical experience itself.

Nineteenth Century Religious Thought in the West

The successful three volumes of Nineteenth Century Religious Thought in the West provide a fresh appraisal of the most important thinkers of that time.

Models for Understanding the Relations between Religions

In considering the possibilities of differing models of the relation between the various major religious traditions, we had better ask: From what point of view are we doing the modeling? Are we thinking to be neutral somehow? Or are we standing within a tradition? Or, more nebulously, are we occupying a certain religious position, though not precisely identifying with one tradition? Moreover, are there models which work with some pair or group of religions but do not work with others? And again, are there models which function across religions, but only in relation to sub-traditions within them?

The Exploration of Religion and Education.

The theory and practice of religious education and more generally of the study of religion are entangled in unnecessary confusions. We shall see why. In the meantime it is, in my opinion, a straightforward task to exhibit the principles of the study-or as I should prefer to call it the exploration-of religion. True, there are some problems about defining religion and some questions about how understanding a religion is possible, but essentially these are marginal and have been unnecessarily inflated. What then is the study or exploration of religion?* First, religion means religions. It is elementary that in exploring religion we are at least involved in exploring religious traditions. Maybe in Britain we pay more attention to Christianity than to Buddhism, and conversely should pay more attention to Buddhism than to Christianity in Thailand or Sri Lanka. But there would be something irrational and insensitive in simply studying religion through one tradition. It would perhaps be analogous to studying political behaviour by concentrating on Wilson and la Thatcher; and forgetting altogether about Brezhnev, Mao and L.B.J. So first of all the study of religion is plural. I do not imply that every university and school should teach concerning all possible religions. Decisions about resources and selection need, obviously, to be made. Second, the exploration of religion ought not to be defined from a standpoint within the field. That is, it should not assume the existence of God or alternatively the nonexistence of God. No doubt an explorer may believe in God or come to believe in him; or may come to be a Buddhist or a Marxist. But this does not mean that individual conclusions should be built into the shaping of the study. This has two consequences. First, the exploration would involve institutional openness (for which reason it could not be easily undertaken in a totalitarian society). Second, its methodology must involve a certain style, a phenomenological style. Thus the study has to do justice to two points-firstly that the foci of religious belief and behaviour are real, and not just abstractions; secondly that their actual existence can be made subject to epoche, i.e. the suspension of disbelief or belief. To illustrate these two points: he who wishes to explore Hinduism will need to get a feel of the impact of Siva and Visnu upon their adherents. He fails properly to understand them if he cannot grasp their rich reality in the eyes of the faithful. But this grasp neither entails accepting or dismissing Hindu theology. Thus though the exploration of religion can be considered from one point of view the attempt to describe and understand a certain aspect of human behaviour, from another point of view it deals with the supernatural and mysterious foci of religious behaviour.

Methods in My Life

The invention of Religious Studies was a personal thing to me. When I say ‘Religious Studies’ I mean the study of religion as an aspect of human existence in a cross-cultural way and from a polymethodic or multidisciplinary perspective. Though there had been the comparative study of religion in my youth, it was not yet really combined with the social or human sciences. It was only with the combination of the study of the histories of religions with the social sciences that you get what I call the modern ‘Religious Studies’. Any tradition has its roots and its formation: these are two differing periods. For example, the roots of Hinduism lie in many places in the Vedic hymns, in early Brahmanism, in sramanic movements, in folk mythology, in temples, images, pilgrimages, caste. So though Hinduism has ancient roots it does not really gel together till the first to third centuries CE. Similarly though Religious Studies has its roots in the nineteenth century it scarcely is formed until the 1960s.

Religion as a Phenomenon

In part, talk of religion as a phenomenon has sprung from the tradition of philosophical phenomenology (from Husserl onwards), whose methods, with variations, have been applied to the study of religion. In part my approach in the previous chapter has been influenced by this school, for example in the notion of ‘bracketing’. Gerardus van der Leeuw, in an appendix to his ‘Religion in Essence and Manifestation, [1], has characterised phenomenological method as follows: (i) assigning names to what is manifested (e.g., ‘sacrifice’ and ‘purification’); (ii) the interpolation of the phenomenon into our own lives, sympathetically; (iii) the application of epoche; (iv) the clarification of what is observed, by structural association (comparison and contrast); (v) the achievement through the foregoing of understanding; (vi) control and checking by philology, archaeology, etc.; (vii) the realisation of objectivity, or in other words letting the facts speak for themselves.

Learning from Other Faiths II. Buddhism

over nearly the whole of South, South-East and East Asia. One main reason for its earlier missionary successes was its adaptability : this indeed became an explicit doctrine in the Mahayana-the so-called ’ skilfulness in means ’ (upäyakausalya) or ’diplomacy ’ where the Buddha adapts the teaching to the cultural and psychological condition of the different varieties of men. Buddhism did not typically attempt to supplant the cults and religi-

Survey of World Religions

a manner unparalleled in Roman Catholic theology in the same period. The anti-modemist attitude of the latter was responsible for the delay in the construction of a Christian doctrine of evolution. Thirdly, the most significant aspect of the book, however, is the contribution it makes to Teilhard studies. Dr. Benz demonstrates that the claim of the uniqueness of Teilhard de Chardin’s ideas is patently false. There is not a single idea of his which had not been raised in theological discussion at the turn of the century. His positive contribution lies, first within the field of his own denomination-in compelling it to recognize the obsoleteness of its views on palaeontology and biology; secondly, in his discerning the original image of evolution in the transformation of the material part of the physical elements into the Body and Blood of Christ through the Mass ; and thirdly, his revival of the concept of hope through the theological aspect of the theory of evolution, for a time which had become tired of existentialism and theological dialectics. J. McINTYRE