Concept of Religious Pluralism of Seyyed Nasr and John Hick
Muhammad Legenhausen is proposing mainly about the epistemological distinction between Islam and Christianity. The topic that was chosen in discussion between two great scholars, Sayyed Nasr from Islamic point of view and John Hick from Christianity. Starting from the different point of view, Hick sees religion as a human creation but Nasr sees it as divine revelation. One thing that I admire the most about these two great thinkers are their believe of being a faithful person in each religion.
Ontologically speaking they did not deny the God divine borderless power and kept trying to explain the phenomenon surrounding or covering the matters. It is right that these two thinkers share some things in common despite of their more different opinion. Seyyed Nasr strong belief of the aspect of God Supranatural (above nature) in sense of having will, created a strong fundamental though of him. When he was questioned whether Jesus (a) is the incarnation of the second person of the trinity, he asks rethorically; if this was simply a mistake, how could God allow, with His infinite wisdom and justice, one of the major religions of the world within which millions of people have sought their salvation, to be misguided for two thousand years? Was this simply a mistake?...if one says that this was all a horrendous mistake of the thousand years, I cannot accept this. This opinion shows us Nasr belief in profound of his religion. Islamic doctrine told to its adherent to warship the one and only almighty God. God is powerful beyond any sensible power. There is nothing that could possibly missed from His knowledge. By having this belief as strong fundament Nasr told us to be aware of our weaknesses. He is the one who knows everything and we only know very little thing. So we can not say that only our religion is right and other’s are wrong. In this matter I agree with Nasr and Hick point of view of exclusivist statement attributed to Christ are meant only for Christian, not for Muslim and vice versa.
In my opinion the way of Nasr see the distinction among religion is something that we can propagate and provoke to be widely apply as a wise alternative way of thinking, that we can cultivate in conjunction with social development in Indonesia, especially in religious toleration. Developing sense of toleration, For Muslim, is through submission to the will of God. We must learn to better appreciate and respect the tolerance prescribed by Islam if we are to be worthy of calling ourselves Muslims. Culture is something to be created and not naturally privilege. Finally, the result of the social evolution will be the culture that we have developed in serious and conscious manner. As it is necessary to plan social change designed to promote the well being of the population as a whole in conjunction with a dynamic development process of social evolution itself.
