Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World by Stanley N. Gundry

Author:Stanley N. Gundry [Stanley N. Gundry / Dennis L. Okholm / Timothy R. Phillips]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780310872382
Publisher: Zondervan

We must therefore be intensely suspicious of the naive assumption that religion is a well-defined category that can be sharply and surgically distinguished from culture as a whole. The fact that classical Greek mythology, Confucianism, Taoism, the various and diverse religions of India that have been misleadingly brought together under the generic term “Hinduism,” Christianity, totemism, and animism can all be called “religions” points to this being an alarmingly broad and diffuse category without any real distinguishing features.

The first step in addressing religious pluralism is to eliminate notions of religion that reflect Western cultural bias. There is no place in global theology for an ethnocentric notion of religion, so clearly reflecting Western assumptions and misunderstandings of non-Western cultural phenomena. Western theology has singularly failed to do this. Sociology has been much more open to respecting the astonishing variety of beliefs within the religions. As Anthony Giddens, professor of sociology at the University of Cambridge, points out, “religion” cannot be defined in Western terms:

First, religion should not be identified with monotheism…Most religions involve several deities…In certain religions there are no gods at all. Second, religion should not be identified with moral prescriptions controlling the behavior of believers…Third, religion is not necessarily concerned with explaining how the world came to be as it is…Fourth, religion cannot be identified with the supernatural, as intrinsically involving belief in a universe “beyond the realm of the senses.”5

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