The Quest of God . . .
GOD’S
QUEST IN THE GREAT RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD
While
those who profess to be Christians in one form or another, some 900
million in all, are by far the largest of the great religions, they
are far outnumbered by all the nonchristian religions combined. There
are 400 million Moslems, who are improperly called Mohammedans; 350
million Confucianists; 150 million Buddhists; Hinduism numbers about
350 million.
That
makes more than a billion in the four largest of the religions. There
are many more in the lesser known groups. Jainism, an Indian
religion, numbers only a million and a half, while Shintoism, with
its 13 sects in Japan, numbers upward of 7 million; and Taoism, one
of the Chinese religions, is estimated at 43 million. While Judaism
is one of the most influential of the religions, it numbers only 13
million.
This
means that far more people profess the religions of the East than
profess Christianity and Judaism of the West. The oriental religions
likewise lay claim to greater antiquity. Lao Tze, the founder of
Taoism (Tao meaning “the Way”), was teaching men
to deny the world and set their hearts on spiritual things 600 years
before Jesus was born. The priests of Hinduism were giving the world
their “sacred knowledge” long before the prophets of
Israel raised their voices. And it is Hinduism that has the oldest
sacred literature, the Rig-Veda, which was composed something like
2500 years before Moses gave the law to Israel!
All
this should cause us to pause and ask ourselves about these religions
that are both larger and older than our own. Has God concerned
himself with these religions, or has his interest been restricted to
the Jewish-Christian tradition? Are we to say that these religions
are false, that they are injurious to mankind, and inimical to
Christian truth? Or has God in some way revealed himself through
them, and do they preserve truths that bring men closer to heaven and
to God? Should we ignore them or shall we seek to understand them? If
we believe that God sent Moses, Isaiah, and the Christ, can we
believe also that he sent Confucius, Zoroaster, and the Buddha?
If
our response to these questions is wholly negative, which means that
we cannot in anyway see the quest of God in them, then we have to
conclude that through much of human history God’s revelation of
himself to man has been incredibly limited. The vast expanses of
India and China have been largely ignored all these centuries by a
loving God if he has nothing to say through Hinduism or Buddhism.
There has been no witness on heaven’s part to the Japanese
during their long history if there is nothing at all divine in the
testimony of the Buddha or Lao Tze. Indeed, God has withheld an
expression of his will to the most ancient, the most cultured, and
the most numerous of the nations of the world. This appears to be an
impossible conclusion to draw concerning a God who finally gave
his own Son to the world.
It
is the thesis of this essay that while none of these religions is
God’s chosen religion, as we believe Judaism was and
Christianity is, God has nonetheless chosen to pursue man, whom he
has always loved and always wanted for himself, within the framework
of all these religions. They all teach vital truths, and all truths
are of God. While the way to God to which they point may be obscure,
they nonetheless bring men closer to God than they would otherwise
be. They are light glimmering in the darkness. If even Christians are
so limited as to “look through a glass darkly,” we would
expect these religions to be more like satellites, reflecting
something more glorious than themselves, rather than like the
brightest stars. But surely there is light in them. They are not
total darkness. Whatever light there is is of God.
It
should be sobering to Christians to realize that they are what they
are very largely because of birth and circumstance. Hardly any of us
would be Christians had we not been born in the western world. Must
we conclude that the first prerequisite for going to heaven is
getting yourself born in the right part of the world? Is God the God
of the West but not of the East? Can any of us really believe that we
would be anything other than a Moslem or a Hindu had we been born in
India? If China had been our birthplace would we have had no
knowledge of God at all, no overture on his part toward us? Is the
Hound of Heaven on men’s trail only in the Western world?
It
is all the more sobering for us to realize that if but one page in
the annals of history had been written a little differently, we in
America and all the occident might well have been Zoroastrians (or
Parsi they call it) instead of Christians. Xerxes, the Persian
monarch, back in 480 B.C. had carried his army and his religion as
far as Greece. At the pass of Thermopylae he had defeated the
Spartans, and only the Greek fleet stood between him and the western
world. Ten years before the Greek fleet had defeated him at Marathon,
but now his ships outnumbered theirs three to one, and victory was
almost certain. It was one of history’s greatest dramas of the
sea. The Greeks destroyed 200 Persian ships, causing the
terror-stricken Xerxes to flee Europe and forget his dream of
conquest.
Had
Xerxes won that battle he would no doubt have made all of Europe
Zoroastrian. One historian thus describes the Parsi as “the
religion which might have been ours.” Those of us who believe
that God is at work in history can believe that his purposes were
realized in that battle in the Aegean sea long ago. He must have
wanted Greece and Europe to be free to receive the gospel of Christ
when it was brought to them 500 years later. Had Xerxes won that
battle and moved on into Greece, the way would not have been open for
Paul when he went to Athens in 50 A.D. It is noteworthy that Paul
went west to Greece rather than east to Persia, even though it was
philosophers from the east rather than from the west that came
so far to honor the Christ’s birth.
In
believing that God is a history-making God we do not have to suppose
that he has made only western history. Has he not raised up men in
the orient as well as the occident to give testimony to his love for
mankind? In fact, the Zoroastrian religion that nearly became the
religion of Europe was at that time one of the most vital religions
of the world. Its virtues were so remarkable that they made their way
into Europe despite the Persian defeat, and lived on to become a part
of the Jewish-Christian tradition that was later to emerge. Was not
God then at work in ancient Persia, not only in sending the wise men
to see the infant Christ (a very significant incident in the history
of the orient), but also in using Zoroaster to soften the heart of
Europe for the implantation of the Good News?
Zoroaster
was born about 660 B.C. in Persia, and there was the tradition that
his mother was a virgin. She drank milk from two virgin cows that had
eaten from a sacred plant on which angels had carried the spirit of
Zoroaster to earth. This is common in the old religions. How-tsieh,
one of the prophets of ancient China, was conceived when his mother
“stepped upon a footprint of God,” and Buddha was born as
a result of his mother being struck in the side by a white elephant,
which was really the spirit of Buddha. We can therefore understand
how historians associate the story of Mary giving birth to Jesus by
being conceived of the Holy Ghost as just one more story of “sexless
births” of the founders of great religions. We can hardly say
that they were crude copies of the Christian story, for these stories
had long existed in various parts of the world when Gabriel made his
visit to Mary in a Palestinian village. It shows, we may suggest,
that men have always had unfortunate ideas about sex, that their
saviours must come to them without anyone having intercourse, and the
saviours themselves must not be tarnished by any such behavior. We do
not hesitate to testify here to our implicit faith in the virgin
birth of Jesus, and yet express appreciation of the fact that it
never became a part of the Good News. It was not included in the
Kerugma (the thing preached) and no big point is made of it by
the Christian writers, with most writers of the New Testament not
even referring to it. For this reason we would err if we tendered
anything less than “the fellowship of the saints” to the
brother who may be having honest difficulties with the virgin birth,
though no problem at all in loving Jesus and honoring him as both
Lord and Christ.
When
Zoroaster died at 78, he left behind a religion of love for the earth
and its fruits, whole-souled worship of one God, and a belief in the
healing goodness of work. He created one of the highest ethical codes
of all history, centered as it was in complete cooperation with the
beneficent forces of nature. He taught that God (called Ahura
Mazda) created the earth and then turned it over to man to till.
God demands of man to be honest, kind, benevolent. He stressed good
works, insisting that weedless stands of grain are more efficacious
than are prayers.
To
the Parsi the earth is so good that it must not be contaminated by
dead bodies, so they do not bury their dead, but place the bodies on
a grill in a tower so that the birds may pick the bones. God is thus
described as creator of a beneficent material world, a world that
will continue to bless men as long as they treat it as God’s
creation.
The
similarities between this religion and Christianity are remarkable:
both believe in one God as father and creator, and as one who is
concerned for his children; both believe in a coming kingdom of God
on earth; both believe in a heaven and hell, and the Parsi has its
devil (Angra Mainyu) just as we have Satan. Both have their angels
and archangels, and both have a belief in the resurrection of the
body.
Some
historians believe that Zoroastrianism, with its strong monotheism,
influenced Judaism, causing it to become more monotheistic,
especially after its exile in Babylon. While some of us might be
uncomfortable with such a view, we can certainly say that if what
Israel believed was the truth and was of God and was a blessing to
the world, no less can be said for the same ideas when taught by the
Parsi.
Zoroastrianism
was once a vital and significant religious faith, one in quest of
truth wherever it could be found. Almost certainly the Magi who
visited Jesus as a child were Zoroastrian priests, who, guided by
their sacred writings, were in search for fuller manifestations of
the glory revealed to them. With one eye on their rich spiritual
tradition and another on the stars, they calculated, aided no doubt
by God’s Spirit, that the world ruler had been born. They were
thus literally led by the heavens to Jerusalem.
This
religion has fulfilled its mission and has moved off the stage. While
once attractive to millions, there are now no more than ten thousand
followers of Zoroaster. But is there not evidence that God was in
pursuit of the human heart in ancient Persia, using Zoroastrianism
for all it was worth?
The
same can be said for the other oriental religions. It is noteworthy
that when a Buddhist in China is converted to Christianity he may
still hold to much of his Buddhist faith and find no inconsistency
between the old and the new. Some scholars insist that Christianity
could just as easily have absorbed much of Buddhism as it did Judaism
had the Christ not been a Jew.
Buddha’s
“Four Noble Truths” relative to the human predicament
might serve also as a Christian explanation:
All existence involves suffering.
All suffering is caused by indulging desires.
All suffering will cease with the suppression of desires.
To achieve this one must follow the “Noble Eightfold Path” of right belief, right aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right endeavor, right thought, and right meditation.
Buddha
rejected the caste system of his own culture, declaring truth about
equality that would befit any Christian in racial-stricken America:
“My doctrine makes no distinction between high and low, rich
and poor; it is like the sky; it has room for all, like water it
washes all alike.”
But
the ruling law of Buddhism was Karma, which goes a step beyond the
Christian teaching of sewing and reaping, for to Buddha the effect of
one’s deeds carried over from rebirth to rebirth. Reincarnation
is of course rather generally believed in oriental religions, as it
was by Plato and other important thinkers.
There
is much in Buddhism that appears both trivial and wrong to a
Christian observer. When I was in Taiwan in 1963, it was my unique
pleasure to spend the night in a Buddhist monastery, eating and
sleeping with the monks and priests. Well before daybreak I was
awakened by the sound of gongs, piercing the cool morning air and
reverberating through the isolated mountains that nestled the
monastery. This went on for an hour, and was followed by the
crackling of fire crackers and other weird noises. The statues of
Buddha, the chants of the priests, the burning of incense, and the
prayer wheels containing printed prayers all seemed ridiculous. A
fellow professor, who had joined me in this strange experience,
insisted that most of the wild show could be seen in any Roman
Catholic Church in the United States anytime. While he may have
overstated it, it is noteworthy that even professed Christians carry
on in ways that appear foolish, while at the same time holding to
much that is obviously good. So with Buddhism, for it made a noble
effort to alleviate human misery. It was a religion of love and pity
that Buddha gave to the ancient world. He spoke, for instance, of
“The Nine Incapabilities” of the good man. One was that
“He is incapable of deliberately depriving a living creature of
life,” while another was “He is incapable of sexual
impurity.” Much of what the Buddha wrote could claim a place
alongside the Bible. For instance: “Let a man overcome anger by
love, let him overcome evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by
liberality, the liar by truth!” And this one: “Four
things does a reckless man gain who covets his neighbour’s
wife—demerit, an uncomfortable bed, punishment, and lastly,
hell.”
But
it was Confucius in ancient China that gave the world such a high
social ethic. And social is the word, for Confucius gave himself to
the cementing of relations between man and wife, parent and child,
ruler and people, man and friend. Most oriental religious emphasize
meditation and asceticism, but Confucianism sought to turn men’s
minds away from the eternal imponderables and to fix them upon the
practical problems of daily life. He pointed to love as that which
heals what is broken. He taught that we come to love men as we come
to know them. “I will not be afflicted at men’s not
knowing me; I will be afflicted that I do not know men.”
One
cannot help but marvel at the wisdom of Confucius. He would only wish
that the erring world could be made wiser by the likes of Confucius.
The Analects of Confucius would surely bring men more decency,
self-respect, and reverence for God and man. Confucius was surely a
God-sent blessing to the Chinese.
This
is our point about all these religions. There is no problem in
listing their weaknesses and inadequacies. And if one wishes to argue
that they are false religions, a case can be made here too,
especially when they are compared with Christianity. The question is
whether these religions gave witness to the goodness of God, and
whether they were anticipations of Christianity, and intended by God
to be such.
Our
own Bible reveals to us the Hebrew background and how God used it to
fulfill his purposes in Christ. Are we to suppose that there were no
other backgrounds in other cultures likewise used of God? Are the
Hebrew prophets the only prophets God had over the entire ancient
world? If Isaiah pointed the way, why did not Zoroaster or Confucius?
“In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by
the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son . .
. “ Did not God have prophets in Greece, China and Persia as
well as in Israel?
One
can believe that God’s fullest expression of himself is in the
Christ, and yet believe that he has in various ways made himself
known to all nations of earth. Our own scriptures teach us that God
has never left himself without witness.
We
are not saying, nor could we say, that one religion is just as good
as another. We wish to avoid an indifference on the one hand that
sees all religions as pretty much the same, and an arrogance on the
other hand that labels all religions as vain but one’s own. We
are saying that there is some truth in all religions, and that this
truth is of God, and that even when the truth is marred by the
presence of error and folly, God can still make use of it to his
glory.
It
is like a range of mountain peaks, to use an illustration given by
Elton Trueblood, wherein one peak rises higher than all the others,
thus providing a better view of God’s eternal purpose. The
great religions are indeed mountain peaks of men’s religious
experiences. They have lifted men from the valley of despair to the
mountain of hope. They are now in a position to come up even higher,
if indeed their view is not obstructed by the very mountain that
bears them. It is our task to beckon them to Christ, to lift them
even higher. This we can better do if we view their religions as
anticipations of what God offers in Christ. Wholeness comes only in
Christ, and if a Buddhist or a Moslem is made whole, his wholeness
will be realized where mine is realized, if I am made whole, and that
is in Christ. This can: not be made to mean, of course, that God’s
mercy is necessarily withheld if one is not fully whole. We must
avoid the blasphemy of supposing that God condemns men for an
ignorance that they cannot help.
In
this series on The Quest of God we have expressed our
conviction that God is continually in quest of man, using all aspects
of culture and religion to win man to himself. He is the Hound of
Heaven who is in hot pursuit of man, a loving chase that may not end
even in death. We have suggested that the Hound has pursued man
through the arts and sciences, nature, philosophy and poetry, and
even man’s own consciousness.
And now we have said that the Hound follows man into the great religions of the orient. If God pursues man there, then might he find man there? The answer must be yes, realizing that God allows for soul growth as well as for bodily growth. Once man accepts what light God offers, there is reason to hope for even more light.—the Editor
Religion
is the bias of civil society, and the source of all good, and of all
comfort.—Edmund Burke
World
history is the exhibition of spirit striving to attain knowledge of
its own nature.—Hegel