What if Heaven is for Christians and Nirvana is for Buddhists?
Into a Pluralism of Religious Ends
Imagine you have two people were both playing the game of "business".
One person is in it in order to make ungodly sums of money. Their goal is to fulfill the motto, "the one who dies with the most toys wins".
The other, meanwhile, also wants to make a lot of money but wants to do so in order to give the money back to others and improve their lives. This person is driven by a personal mission to use their gifts to make the world a better place.
Both of them will use marketing. Both of them will have to consider things that they do in light of return on investment. Both of them strive to strengthen their bottom line year over year.
But are they really in the same game?
Their goals are very, very different. Winning is defined differently. The boundaries of the journey are very different. The only thing that makes them the same is their outward appearance as business owners and that they are operating in the same marketplace.
No, the games they are playing are radically different from each other.
What if religions, despite their commonality as “religions”, are playing completely different games?
This is basically what S. Mark Heim poses in his book, Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion.
He has a bone to pick with the pluralist theologians, which is the voice that I primarily represented in my last email.
Here's the problem he sees.
Pluralist theologians tend to assume that there is one ultimate reality and one ultimate religious end. We tend to talk about those as God and heaven, respectively. The way we achieve our religious end as Christians is known as “salvation".
So, when Christian theologians engage in multi-faith dialogue, they have to wrestle with the question, "Are adherence to other religions saved, and if so how?"
The pluralist end product tends to be some version of, "through the person and work of Jesus Christ we discover that God is love, and God works with all people wherever they're at to draw them into the Kingdom of God through Grace."
Stop and think about this for a moment.
Western Christianity is guilty of spreading itself globally through imperialistic behavior. The Christian religion has followed colonialism into new areas and supported its entrenchment. Only now are we truly discovering how horrible we have become by getting into this bed.
Hindsight is 20/20. Or is it?
Pluralistic theologians assume and support the idea that the God of Christianity is the ultimate reality to which all people are called through Jesus Christ. After all, "every knee shall bow," right?
This, is arguably just another form of imperialism, only this time it is ideological imperialism. In the name of openness to others, we are dismissing their ultimate differences. We are effectively annexing their sense of ultimacy.
I've got to admit, this could be a problem.
Salvations
Heim has a solution, though. He argues that the real issue is that the pluralists are not pluralistic enough. And he proposes that we truly embrace diversity in a way that we haven't done so before.
What if instead of one, single religious end we have multiple religious ends that are not the same thing?
And what if the various religions represent those various religious ends?
This is where his understanding of how perspective works comes into play.
Remember the story about the blind man in the elephant? One who touches the trunk says that the elephant is like a rope. One who touches the leg says the elephant is like a tree.
Correct, but if they could combine all of their perspectives they would have a much better idea of what it means to say "elephant"
For him, perspectives don't combine like that. Perspectives are unique. Each person has their perspective, and their perspective is true for them.
Consider two different witnesses of an event. Each sees the event differently, and they may see the event in a way that is contradictory to the other. Yet, both remain equally true.
This is called "orientational pluralism".
And this is why he is open to each religion defining its own religious end.
That means…
The religious end for Christians can be Heaven.
The religious and for Buddhists can be Nirvana.
The religious end for Wiccans can be the Summerlands.
And so on, and so forth.
Heim does not impose the Christian structure of ultimacy on other religions. He allows them the freedom to be themselves, the freedom to be different and not absorbed by a Christian theology of salvation.
Now, we can use the Christian word for attaining the religious end in the plural rather than the singular.
Now we can talk about “salvations” that are relative to a religion rather than just “salvation”.
An accommodating God
Interestingly enough, he argues for this conclusion based on a Christian understanding of God.
In short, he believes that the fullness of the Triune God and divine grace is such that God makes room for others to experience what they expect as divine fulfillment.
There's no reason that God could not gift the Buddhist who has worked all their lives toward Nirvana with actual Nirvana.
The implications for Heim's proposal on interreligious dialogue are profound. While we might find commonality in our humanity, it causes us to become more attentive and respectful to core theological differences.
My short critique
I absolutely love this orientational pluralistic approach to other religions. It has had a huge effect on me, especially the idea that God does not necessarily have to be tied to offering one, single ultimate outcome.
There are still some things, however, that I call into question.
First, I don't believe that it's one perspective to a person. I ultimately believe that we have a multiplicity of stories dwelling in us and they don't necessarily go together. Sometimes those stories live in contradiction with each other. And stories determine perspective. That means that we can have multiple perspectives on anything at any given moment. This leads to the experiences such as “feeling torn” about something or cognitive dissonance.
Second, I think he's taking the idea of the religious end more literally than I would like. I personally prefer a perspective that recognizes that our language about God evokes our experience with ultimacy, but doesn't define it. That means when I speak of heaven as my religious end, I'm not excluding Nirvana, reincarnation, or annihilation as other possible descriptors. I'm just talking about my personal hopes for what comes beyond this life.
Third, this doesn't take into account the ways that religions have influenced each other. He seems to want to approach different religions as if there are solid boundaries separating them. I think it's more realistic to say that when religious people meet and are truly open to what others are saying, those boundaries become much more porous.
Despite my criticisms, this book is downright amazing and should be on the shelf of anyone who is interested in the relationship between religions.
Again, here is the link if you want to buy it.
But that's enough about heaven. Next week, let's talk about hell.
Until next time,
Peace, Bo
www.evolvingchristianfaith.net
Want to Know More About My Perspective?
Feel free to pick up my book, Drinking from an Empty Glass: Living Out of a Meaningless Spirituality on Amazon.