14. The culture of interfaith dialogue in the 21st century

Lecture Plan

1. The concept of worldview; historical types of worldviews. Peculiarities of resolving the basic questions in various non-religious worldviews; the main features of religious worldviews.

2. God of the absolute religion as the highest principle explaining all that exists. Analysis of rational and non-rational arguments for the existence of God. 3. The foundations of dialogue between religious and non-religious worldviews.

4. The manifestation of dialogue at the everyday and theoretical levels of knowledge.

1. The concept of worldview; historical types of worldviews. Peculiarities of resolving the basic questions in various non-religious worldviews; the main features of religious worldviews

The significance of worldview in human life is conditioned by man's rationality, by the fact that his interaction with the surrounding world is mediated by consciousness. The need to orient oneself in a changing social and natural environment gives rise, in every individual, in society, and in humanity as a whole, to a need for a generalized system of views on the world, on one's place in it, and on the meaning and purpose of life.

The developed systems of contemporary worldviews include, in a generalized form, philosophical, social, natural-scientific, aesthet-

and actions of people. Within a worldview, cognitive, value-related, and normative-behavioral components can be distinguished. Any worldview is not merely a set of views and information, but a certain integrity, a system. It reflects the striving to see the world as an ordered whole, encompassing the human being, as well as the human being himself with his entire spiritual world — knowledge, moral, artistic-aesthetic, and practical-life experiences. In other words, a worldview reflects people's intellectual and emotional experience, their understanding of the world and their sense of the world.

Worldview, as a unity of understanding of the world and sense of the world, possesses its own inherent basic structure-forming elements. Among these belong, above all, the answers to the deepest questions of being — about the origin of the world and man, of natural phenomena and various human communities, about the nature of the forces governing this world, including man himself, and about the place and purpose of man in this world.

Worldview has a historical character; it changes in

of knowledge and skills, and the nature of social ties between people. Connections and contacts between social communities and individuals condition the mutual influence of various worldviews. The most general types of worldview can be considered mythological, religious, and philosophical.

The religious worldview is a broad, generalizing concept covering a significant number of different systems of understanding the world and relating to it, which have historically existed within the framework of numerous religions. The emergence of the religious worldview coincides with the appearance of a special group of people acting as systematizers and keepers of religious ideas and traditions.

According to the classification existing in contemporary theory of religion, there are thousands of different religions in the world. Some of them exist today and influence people's consciousness (living religions), while others, leaving behind only monuments of former sanctity, have disappeared (dead religions). Some are of natural origin, engendered by a particular people within specific socio-economic systems; others are religions of Revelation, arising from the belief that God himself reveals knowledge of himself to people and himself sustains the existence of the religious community.

Some religions are polytheistic in character, recognizing many gods, while others are monotheistic (believing in one God). By the criterion of officiality and sphere of influence, one distinguishes early tribal religions (shamanism, animism, and the like) and national-state religions (Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and the like), as well as non-traditional religions (contemporary sects) and world religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Islam) as the most influential and widespread.

All religions are divided into the most important worldview types based on the relationship between the absolute and the world. The most religious of these is theism — the view of God as the creator, lord, and ruler of the world. He is uncreated and not identical with the world, and while remaining transcendent to it, he pervades it with his energies, "holy logoi," and providential actions. The theistic understanding of God is personalistic; God is the "Absolute Thou," a Person who in a free act of will creates the world and thereafter cares for it (Judaism, Christianity, Islam).

Another type is deism, a position that admits God as the creator of the universe with its inherent laws and forms of development, but, unlike theism, does not recognize his further intervention in the fate of the world. Deism is a religion of reason, holding that God is not able to change logic and natural rationality, and that faith must be confined within the bounds of morality. The deistic doctrine, developed by philosophers of the Enlightenment (Herbert of Cherbury, Toland, Hume, and others), sees no meaning in divine revelation and constructs a natural-religious worldview that reduces everything to man as a value and as the psychological source of beliefs.

Pantheism is yet another religious-philosophical system, identifying God and nature. The world is divine, animate, but God is in no way distinguishable from natural things. The transition from divine potentialities to the world is not spontaneous but continuous, so that the natural light of reason and cognition can "penetrate" into God and even become identical with him. Reason and God are one and the same. The pantheistic worldview, the construction of religion on the possibility of mystical union with God himself, and the deification of reason, characterizes not only philosophical systems but also many other ancient religions (animism, Hinduism, Buddhism). In contrast to pantheism, in 1828 the philosopher Krause, distinguishing his position from a more idealistic one, formulated the doctrine of panentheism. Its essence is that everything abides in God, yet God does not dissolve into the world and remains a person.

The opposite of the religious worldview is atheism — a position denying the very possibility of religion. Atheism relies on the scientific method, in which it sees the sole basis of knowledge and belief. Regarding the ideal formations of thought as merely nominal, and miracles as facts not yet explained by science, it considers all religious experience an illusion. Atheism is often conscious and militant in character.

2. God of the absolute religion as the highest principle explaining all that exists. Analysis of rational and non-rational arguments for the existence of God

There exist various types of human conceptions of gods:

•polytheism, the notion of a multitude of gods, each personifying some aspect of human life;

•pantheism — belief in a God identical with nature and the world as a whole;

•deism — the idea of God the Creator of the universe, who does not intervene in human history;

•monotheism or theism (these concepts are often used as synonyms) — belief in a single God — the highest Being, personal and moral, the Creator responsible for his creation.

The monotheistic conception of God formed the basis of the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the definition of God, his infinity and unboundedness stand out above all. This calls into question most positive statements about God. As the greatest Protestant theologian of the twentieth century, Paul Tillich, wrote, we can only say that God exists; any definitions of God limit him, placing him on the same level as other beings. "The being of God is being-itself, not a being." The being of God infinitely exceeds all finite being; there is no proportion between them. Yet at the same time God is the ground of being, and the structure of being is rooted in him. Individual elements of finite reality can thereby become a basis for judgments about the infinite. Tillich calls such judgments symbolic, that is, judgments pointing to something beyond themselves, to the divine. The properties or attributes of God can be described only symbolically.

The first among the attributes that Christian thinkers named was existence, being in itself. God, in his own existence, does not depend on any aspects of reality except himself. He was not created by any higher being. Herein lies the difference between God and the world, where each thing does not exist in its own right, and essence and existence are clearly distinct. In God, essence is one with existence. The infinite fullness and perfection of his being are unconditional. One can say that God is absolutely ontologically independent.

•God is eternal, having neither beginning nor end; otherwise there would have to exist some primary reality that gave him being. The concept of eternity as applied to the being of God is not identical with "infinite duration." There is a qualitative difference between time and eternity. Time is a phenomenon characterizing the changeability of our world, whereas God's eternity places him outside the flow of change. In Him there is no succession of states, no past and future; He eternally abides in the present.

•God is the Creator of all that exists. In traditional theism it is held that God created the world out of nothing. This is a very important point, since it excludes the possibility of the pre-existence of matter as external material from which objects could be made. Everything arises out of non-being through the creative act of God, an act of his will and love. The medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas emphasized that creation was not necessary. God's creative acts are absolutely free acts. The world might not have existed at all, or might have been entirely different, and this would in no way have diminished the greatness and fullness of God. Creation does not occur in time. It would be naive to assert that the creation of the world was some fact that took place millions of years ago and was completed at that time. The account of creation set forth in the first book of the Bible is not now regarded as a literal basis for scientific concepts, but rather as a classical mythological expression of the faith that the entire natural order is a divine creation.

•God is a person, not a thing but a Someone. In the Old Testament God is described

in personal terms. "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Exodus 3:6). In Christianity these personal characteristics are intensified. The most common image of God used by Jesus Christ in the Gospels is the image of fatherhood. God is the foundation of everything personal; divine life participates in every life as its basis and support. The twentieth-century thinker Martin Buber wrote that there are two types of relation: "I-It" and "I-Thou." The world of things and objects constitutes the experience of It, entirely pervaded by causality. The relation to Thou is unmediated by anything; here an encounter takes place, free and whole. The encounter with God occurs when God reveals himself as the eternal Thou. "Every particular Thou is a glimpse through to the eternal Thou. By means of every particular Thou the primary word addresses the eternal Thou… People have addressed their eternal Thou by many names. When they sang of him, endowed with a name, they always meant the Thou: the first myths were hymns of praise. Then the names entered the language of It; people were seized by an irresistible urge to think of their eternal Thou as an It. But all the names of God remained holy; for they were not only speech about God but also speech addressed to him." Similarly, the Russian philosopher S.L. Frank notes that "to speak of God in the third person, to call him 'he,' is — from a purely religious point of view — actually blasphemous; for this presupposes that God is absent, does not hear me, is not turned toward me, but is something objectively existing." "God is always with me and beside me; he always sees me and always hears me; the moment I lose sight of this, I have already lost God himself."

The philosophical demonstration of the existence of God represents a series of arguments demonstrating the real being of God, clarifying the grounds on which the believer asserts that God exists. Two types of proofs can be distinguished: proof of the existence of God proceeding from the very concept of God as the most perfect being (the ontological proof), and proofs based on various aspects of the experience of the world and of man (cosmological, teleological, and anthropological).

The ontological argument was first formulated by Anselm of Canterbury in his treatise "Proslogion." This proof is not meant to convince an unbeliever of the existence of God; rather, it shows the inner logical necessity of divine being. Anselm takes the position of a Christian who already believes in God and reflects on the rational grounds of his faith. Cosmological proofs of the existence of God already existed at this time, but it was important for Anselm to find a purely logical proof, one that would be a priori, derived solely from the concept of God, without recourse to empirical knowledge. The basis of the proof was the understanding of God as "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." Anselm considers an extreme case, turning to the words of the Psalm: "The fool has said in his heart: there is no God." This fool who denies God nevertheless understands what he is saying, that is, in his mind he has the idea of God as an absolutely perfect being, even if he does not suppose that such a thing exists. "And certainly that than which a greater cannot be conceived cannot exist in the understanding alone. For if it exists at least in the understanding alone, it can be conceived to exist in reality also, which is greater. Therefore, if that than which nothing greater can be conceived exists in the understanding alone, then that very thing than which nothing greater can be conceived is that than which a greater can be conceived. But this is obviously impossible. Hence, without doubt, something than which nothing greater can be conceived exists both in the understanding and in reality." Anselm shows that the notion that the greatest of what can be conceived does not exist is internally contradictory. For that which exists in itself, outside our mind, is evidently greater than that which exists only in the mind or in possibility. When we pronounce the definition "God," meaning the most perfect being, this very definition includes the characteristic of existence.

The ontological argument provoked debate already during Anselm's lifetime and continues to be discussed to this day. The first refutation was presented by Anselm's contemporary, the Benedictine monk Gaunilo. He proposes considering the idea of a perfect island, more beautiful than which cannot be conceived. We can conceive of such an island, but its existence in no way follows from this. From the concept alone one cannot draw a conclusion about the real being of that entity. In his reply, Anselm argued that one cannot compare the concept of a perfect island with the concept of God. The concept of God is unique; it alone is the concept of that than which nothing greater can be conceived. Later, many medieval theologians, and above all Thomas Aquinas, did not accept the ontological proof. The great philosophers of the modern era — Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz — considered the ontological argument valid and developed their own versions of it. The most striking refutation of this argument came from Immanuel Kant in his "Critique of Pure Reason" (for Kant's own account of religion, see reader 11.2 in detail).

In order to understand Kant's arguments, one must bear in mind that he divided judgments into analytic and synthetic. In analytic judgments, subject and predicate are identical. They do not extend our knowledge but merely analyze what is already contained in the concept. Synthetic judgments add to the concept of the subject a predicate that was not thought in it at all, thereby yielding new knowledge about the object. For Kant, definitions are analytic, while judgments of existence are synthetic. Our concept of an object does not become richer if we add existence to it. For example, the concept of a triangle does not change depending on whether I merely represent it or whether it also exists outside me. The same holds true for the concept of God. Existence does not belong to the content of the concept; that content remains identical whether or not the thing exists. "It is evident that being is not a real predicate, that is, it is not a concept of something that could be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations, in itself. In its logical use it is merely the copula of a judgment." Existence or non-existence changes only our relation to our knowledge. In the first case, it is merely an object of our thought; in the second, an object of our experience. Thus the concept of a hundred thalers remains unchanged in all its characteristics whether or not I actually have those hundred thalers. In this case the moment of existence does not change the concept of the thing, but only the state of my possessions. From this Kant concludes that "the concept of a supreme being is in some respects a very useful idea; but for the very reason that it is merely an idea, it is quite incapable, by itself alone, of extending our knowledge in regard to what exists." Consequently, "all the labor and effort expended on the famous ontological proof of the existence of a supreme being from mere concepts are lost, and a man can no more enrich himself in knowledge by mere ideas than a merchant could improve his financial position by adding a few zeros to his cash balance."

For a long time it seemed that Kant had finally buried the ontological proof, but in the twentieth century interest in it revived. In the works of the English philosopher Norman Malcolm an attempt was made to revive the ontological proof, based on a distinction between logical and factual necessity. If the statement "God exists" possesses logical necessity (belongs to analytic judgments), then the statement "God does not exist" is internally contradictory. If the statement "God exists" is a factual necessity, this means that without the existence of God things could not be as they are, and hence God in fact cannot but exist. Other versions of the ontological proof rest on the logical distinction between possibility and necessity. The existence of God as an absolutely perfect being would be impossible only if the internal contradictoriness of such a concept were demonstrated. Otherwise, the existence of God follows logically and necessarily from his very concept.

The cosmological proof has a very long history. In its original form it goes back to Aristotle. It would be more accurate to speak not of a single cosmological proof but of several. In all these proofs a particular aspect of the world is selected — the presence of motion, causality, degrees of perfection, order and harmony — and through these elements of the world the real presence of God in the world is demonstrated. The best known cosmological proofs belong to Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas did not regard them as scientific proofs, although they do have a logical structure. His arguments, as Maritain put it, represent rather "roads" leading to God. The general scheme of all the arguments is similar: we consider various aspects of the reality that surrounds us and discover that God is the center of the non-self-sufficient existence of all the things that make up the world. Each aspect of sensible being requires a first cause, and so the roads leading to God are various. At the same time, Thomas Aquinas does not suppose that on the basis of his proofs one can give a definition of God. Certainly the Prime Mover is God, the First Cause is God, but one cannot say that God is the Prime Mover or the First Cause. "The central point of such proofs is not what exactly the cause is (because we cannot even ask what a thing is until we know that it exists), but the meaning that the word designating this cause usually has." For St. Thomas, the effects that proceed from God are sufficient to prove his existence, but insufficient to comprehend what He is. Every proof of the existence of God based on data of sense experience presupposes the being of the world, but God could have chosen not to create the world and would still not have ceased to be God. Simply, the "roads" of Thomas Aquinas, each in its own particular way, show that there must exist a being whose essence is existence, which is the being-ground of the entire cosmos.

The teleological proof is based on the idea of order and the purposeful arrangement of the universe. It is assumed that the purposeful organization of the world testifies that this world has an intelligent and omnipotent creator. The teleological proof was especially popular in the eighteenth century. The best-known version of this proof was proposed by the English philosopher William Paley (1743-1805) in his work "Natural Theology." Paley observes that many things made by man have a purposeful arrangement, thanks to which all the parts correspond to a general design. Thus, for example, if we found a watch on the ground, having examined its mechanism, the interaction of its springs, screws, and hands, we would conclude that this device was created for a definite purpose — the measurement of time. Moreover, it is logical to suppose that the watch was made by a watchmaker. We may well not know this particular maker, but the very fact of the existence of a purposeful watch mechanism tells us of his conscious activity. Our world can be compared to a complex of mechanisms, arranged just as precisely as this watch. Moreover, in Paley's opinion, nature is organized even more subtly than any work of human hands. The motion of the planets in the solar system, the regular change of seasons on earth, the structure of living organisms — all are rationally coordinated. One can therefore conclude that there exists an intelligent Creator of this world, a kind of "Master," who in his infinite wisdom creates the astonishingly harmonious mechanism of our world. Here Paley uses the method of analogy between a man-made object and its maker, on the one hand, and the universe and its divine creator, on the other. Such an analogy is highly disputable, and it is no accident that the teleological argument has provoked a great many refutations.

The classical critique of the teleological proof is presented in David Hume's "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" (for more on Hume's views, see reader 11.3 and reader 11.4). Hume argues that even if we found that there is purposiveness and order in the world, this gives no grounds for drawing far-reaching analogies and leaping to the concept of God. "When we see a house, we conclude with the greatest certainty that it was built by an architect or builder, because we know from experience that this kind of effect follows from this kind of cause. But surely you will not maintain that the universe so resembles a house that we can pass with the same certainty from it to a similar cause." But the very perception of order seems to Hume quite problematic. "If a man were to open his eyes and contemplate the world as it actually exists, he would be utterly unable to point to the cause of any phenomenon whatsoever, still less the cause of the totality of all things or of the whole universe…" The world merely seems to us purposeful and meaningful; the ideas of purpose and intelligent design represent nothing more than a projection of human activity onto the external world, unsupported by any empirical facts.

The anthropological proof of the existence of God proceeds above all from man's personal experience. This type of proof appears in the twentieth century, after the "anthropological turn" in both philosophical and theological thought. The situation of human existence leads to the question of God. This is a path from man to the absolute "Thou." Man, a being limited and finite, is characterized by a striving toward the unconditional and boundless. Acts of human cognition and moral action express man's relation to the absolute divine Person. God, in this context, exists as the foundation of the human person. The French philosopher Jacques Maritain proposes a proof of the existence of God based on the existential experience of human thought. Careful examination of such experience leads us to the conclusion that our thought is immortal and "pre-exists" in the divine mind. But it is not only human reason that testifies to the divine. Maritain also speaks of "paths of the practical intellect" to God. In artistic creation, divine Beauty is grasped through poetic intuition. Divine Goodness is manifested in the act of moral choice.

3. The foundations of dialogue between religious and non-religious worldviews. The manifestation of dialogue at the everyday and theoretical levels of knowledge

Is a dialogue of worldviews possible? If one turns to the history of humanity, it is easy to see that various kinds of relations arose between different types of religious worldview and their followers — ranging from loyal to openly hostile and intolerant. It suffices to recall Ancient Rome, in whose vast state various types of religious worldview coexisted, or, conversely, the period of the Crusades of Christians against Muslims, and the military clashes between Catholics and Protestants. And it is precisely representatives of different types of religious worldview who, from the middle of the twentieth century, began the path toward dialogue, toward joint action while still preserving all their differences.

It is notable that at present many theologians acknowledge that, for example, the conflicts between Christians and Muslims in the tenth to twelfth centuries were conditioned not so much by differences in worldview as by socio-economic and political interests. And despite the still-existing facts of hostile relations between representatives of different types of religious worldview (for example, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, Christians and Muslims in Lebanon), the general prevailing tendency is toward uniting representatives of different confessions — Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and followers of other varieties of religious worldview — in joint action. Dialogue

between different types of worldview does not mean that either side abandons its principles; it is aimed at seeking out those questions in whose resolution there is a coincidence or closeness of positions. This principle is also applicable to the relations between religious and non-religious worldviews. What conditions, then, are necessary for the transition to a dialogue of worldviews to take place?

In the last quarter of our century, there has been growing awareness that a common threat of destruction — from possible thermonuclear war, from ecological catastrophe — hangs over all the inhabitants of the Earth, regardless of worldview differences, and that these threats can be averted, a way out found, only through the joint efforts of all. The path of forcibly resolving disputes, including worldview disputes, is becoming inadmissible under the conditions of contemporary development. A common basis for dialogue between religious and non-religious worldviews can be provided by the principle of humanism, by human interests. The recognition that the highest value for man is man himself can and should serve as the basis for dialogue among adherents of any worldview. Dialogue does not presuppose leveling out or abandoning differences.

On the contrary, understanding these differences, including fundamental ones, knowing them deeply, and viewing them without distortion is one of the conditions for conducting a correct dialogue. For example, ontological questions are resolved differently in religious and non-religious worldviews. In certain cases this difference is of a fundamental character, but in real life the more important factors turn out to be the specific interpretations, the practical consequences as applied to real-life situations, and the concrete-historical application of these principles. And here an interesting tendency can be observed: in the axiological aspect, in particular with regard to improving people's living conditions, positions converge. The same is true of the attitude toward the regularities, the laws, operating in the world. If science proceeds from the assumption that regularities are inherently present in the world and comes to know them, while adherents of the religious worldview consider them divine principles, thoughts placed into the world, then the difference comes down to the understanding of the nature of the laws. What they hold in common is the recognition of their existence independent of man.

The differences between the religious and non-religious worldviews also lie in the plane of understanding the relationship between faith and reason. The question of the relationship between faith and reason has occupied a significant place in both the religious and the philosophical worldviews. Philosophical rationalism, concentrating attention on demonstrating the advantages of reason over faith, often in effect excluded the study of the socio-psychological phenomenon of faith from scientific investigation. At present there is an emerging tendency toward finding interaction, rather than opposition, between faith and reason within both the religious and the non-religious worldviews. Without abandoning their original principles, theologians give due credit to the achievements of human reason in those fields of science that contribute to improving people's lives.

On the other hand, representatives of the philosophical worldview are increasingly reflecting on the significance of faith as a socio-psychological phenom-

enon, acknowledging that the fundamental theoretical propositions of a worldview, at the level of everyday consciousness, become, above all, an object of belief or disbelief rather than of rational justification.

Thus, the possibility and the limits of dialogue are determined by the extent to which religious and non-religious worldviews reflect one and the same really existing world, the degree to which they are oriented toward human interests and well-being, toward the affirmation of humanism, justice, and peace, and toward the creation of a society worthy of man.