Encountering God
Author:
Diana Eck
Reflection by John Lee
PRÉCIS
Diana Eck talks
about how her experience of other faith, specifically Hindu, transformed her
own understanding of God: the meaning of God’s manyness; the faces of God
through Christ’s incarnation; and the Spirit as breath of God. To the question,
“Is our God listening?” Eck, on the basis of the possibility that both
inclusivistic and exclusivistic can reduce others to an inferior state, rejects
both approaches for the plural approaches which would insist that our God is
our way of speaking reality, an ultimate, a ground of being that cannot be
contained in one religious tradition. Hence Eck claims that exclucivism and
inclusivism should give way to pluralism, which honours all faith-filled truths
equally.
ECK’S SUPPORTING ARGUMENTS
“Christians have
not only a witness to bear, but also a witness to hear,” states Eck, and in
“Encountering God,” she begins her journey with epoché through which she
experiences unbiased intersubjective relationship and structures her experience to understand
coherent whole. She engages into sympathic and empathic experience through
which she senses, at a Vaishnavite temple in Trivandrum, a gigantic presence
too vast to comprehend. Her participation leads her to pray with her Hindu
friends and inquires “Was our God the same God?”
Through her
experience in the pluralistic religion of Hinduism, Eck suggests that
perceiving the Divine is a matter of darshana,
of perspective, in which each gaze discerns a different facet of the whole. Eck
asserts that Incarnation also shows many
faces and “tastes,” rasas. By
mirroring Saiva and Vaisnava conceptions of five moments in the human vision of
the Divine, Eck suggests that we can also see five faces of the Incarnation,
reflected in hope, unconditional love, healing, suffering, and joy. Christian
conceptions of the uniqueness of Christ then become expression of total love
and commitment rather than assent to exclusive intellectual propositions. Eck
uses the concept of shakti, divine,
female, energy, to illustrate how the presence of the Holy Spirit induces all
life with power.
After discussion
of prayer and meditation, Eck outlines her pluralist response to religious
diversity and interreligious dialogue. Eck argues that pluralism represents
active engagement with pluralism itself by seeking understanding through
tolerance and real commitment to one’s own faith. Thus pluralism is manifestly
not relativism, for believers cannot be “relatively committed” to their own
tradition. (p. 196) Furthermore, Eck
clarifies that pluralism is not syncretism, but embodies respect for difference
in its pursuit of interreligious dialogue.
For Eck, truth is
central to the process of interreligious dialogue, but it is not something that
can be determined a priori. Eck
points to the life of Mahatma Gandhi as a profound example of such a commitment
not only to discern truth as honestly as possible but to develop a sense of
community beyond exclucivist claims. Eck’s entire framework for interreligious
dialogue is focused on a conception of Christian belief that emphasizes its
affective quality as an expression of commitment. Eck claims that the move to
pluralism enables Christians to imagine that God is greater than our knowledge
or understanding. Thus she states: “There are faces of the divine that must be
beyond what we ourselves have glimpses from our own sheepfold. It is God’s
transcendence which drives us to find out what others have known of God” (p.
186).
For Eck, both
inclusivism and exclusivism are negative aspects in our faith journey since the
former contends ‘my truth’ as more nearly complete while the latter inssits
‘mine’ as the only truth. Eck does not embrace relativism in her defense of
open dialogue with other faith and she
distinguishes between plurality and pluralism. Plurality or diversity can exist
without affecting me. Pluralism insists upon participation not to overcome or
eliminate others, not to water down our own commitment, not to emerge with a
“world-wide temple of faiths.” It is interreligious dialogue to find ways to be
distinctively ourselves and yet be in relation to one another. (p. 197)
IMPLICATIONS
Diana Eck
addresses on religious pluralism by asking theological questions rather than
about theology in our faith journey of the contemporary world where we confront
the problems of pluralism. Eck elicits without dulling weight of intellectual
abstraction and writes from her personal experience. We are called to respond
to her deep personal vision of religious harmony and understanding through
integrated journey of faith, knowledge and experience. What do I love when I
love my God? To whom do I think my neighbour is praying. Must the revelation of
God’s fullness have ended with Jesus Christ? These are valid questions for the
Christians who live in the pluralistic society.
Eck has combined
the openness to others with intelligently loyal commitment to her Christian
faith in worship, witness and practice. Still there remain questions: How
Christians, particularly, can encourage and initiate such dialogue, when for
centuries missionaries and imperialist governments propagate a line of the
inferiority of the pagans of other lands?; How do Christians overcome natural
suspicion without appearing to want discussions because we feel we are losing
ground?; What is the goal of dialogue and expectation after dialogue?
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