Respond toThe end of Religious Pluralism: A Tribute to David Burrel
The end of Religious Pluralism: A Tribute to David Burrel)
The problematic character of the concept of religion is reflection of any attempt to make sense of pluralism. Stanley said, pluralism is the ideology of people in power to comfort themselves with the presumption that they are in control of the world in which they find themselves. He proposed Joseph Dinoia as said that such thinkers like Kraemer, Rehner, Cantwell Smith, and Hick are those inclusive Christian; Christian who espouse some version of the view that all religion communities implicitly aim a salvation that the Christian community most adequately commends or at least that salvation a present possibility for the member of non Christian communities. Furthermore he said; Pluralist are but a variation of the inclusive type who believe that all religious communities aim at salvation but do so under a variety of scheme specific descriptions.
It shows how hard it is to accept the idea of pluralism, even among the great thinkers themselves. That is why Stanley other thinkers such as Rita M. gross proposing the third language in dealing with this issue. This third language is aimed to mediate between two traditions. Such language are anything but neutral. In Rita’s term such language is civic language.
Stanley explained, the problem of communicating the tradition is trying to talk with Christian fundamentalists. Stanley insisted that if you want to talk with Buddhists, you would just go talk to them. He gave an example question to begin to talk with Buddhists, ”What in the world are you guys doing in Conway?.”
The problem of third language itself is because it can not be fully neutral, its underwrite the superiority of those who represent the third language in contrast to tradition that do not see the need for such translations. Those representatives of the public with “all humality” assume they are superior to other tradition because they can appreciate other traditions in a manner that other tradition can not appreciate themselves. So in his argument as he attributed to Burrel he suggest to see the religion as a gift. By then people of different religion can learn each other.
A person who influence him a lot was his friend, David Burrel. David Burrel was chair of the department of theology when he thought at Notre Dame University University from 1970 until 1984. A philosophical theologian who has written grandbreaking books on Aquinas. Burrel was an Aquinas scholar. Aquinas, more over, was a student of Ibnu Sina and Maimonades. It is not surprising, therefore, that Burrel drew on his increasing knowledge of Judaism and Islam to write Knowing The Unknowable God; Ibnu Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas. In this book he show how each thinkers maintained the crucial distinction between essence and existence in the order of finite beings as crucial for maintaining the difference that creation makes. Without trying to force the tradition “to learn from one another,’ Burrel was able to show that some of Aquina’s most fundamental moves came from Jewish and Islamic scholars.
Stanley’s way of thinking remind me to Sayyed Nasr perspective in pluralism Idea. Seeing the nature of the religion as itself and no need to force other to do other’s tradition. By then we can see and learn the different of each other, as part of the beauty of God’s creation. I am not saying that both thinkers are having same opinion, but they have similarities on what suggestion they gave on how we supposed to react to religious pluralism.
