Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T08:00:18.777Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Whose Objectivity? Which Neutrality? The Doomed Quest for a Neutral Vantage Point from which to Judge Religions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Gavin D'Costa
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol, 36 Tyndall's Park Road, Bristol BS8 1PL

Extract

There is an impasse in the discussion as to how to judge a religion other than one's own. On the one hand judging another religion by the criteria and standards of one's own tradition has become a highly problematic exercise. The metaphor used by some critics for such an approach is that of jingoistic flag-waving. Criticisms of this strategy are numerous and interdisciplinary in their nature. For instance, it is argued that such an enterprise is part and parcel of the political–economic imperialism of western (Christian) history. Such geo-political–religious imperialism is intolerable in a post-colonial age. Sociologically, anthropologically, and philosophically it has been argued that disparate traditions are quite simply incommensurable, each operating with their own rules and grammar. Hence, to judge one religion against another is like judging the goodness of an apple against a vacuum cleaner. The degree of incommensurability varies, so that at the lower end of the scale, the appropriate analogy is that of judging the goodness of apples against oranges. Such criticisms involve a range of disputed questions such as the possibility of successful translation of one language into another alien and different language, the epistemological logocentricism of western philosophical thought, and so on. I should state before proceeding that despite such criticisms I am a supporter of a nuanced form of this first strategy. I shall return to this point in due course.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Milbank, J., ‘The end of dialogue’, in D'Costa, G., ed., Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered (New York: Orbis, 1990), pp. 174–91.Google Scholar

2 Ward, K., A Vision to Pursue. Beyond the Crisis in Christianity (London: SCM, 1991);Google ScholarNetland, H., Dissonant Voices Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth (Leicester: Apollos/Michigan: W. B. Eerdmanns, 1991).Google Scholar Subsequent references will cite page numbers in the main text.

3 For a discussion of other issues in the book, see my review forthcoming in Religion, 1992.

4 Christian, W., Doctrines of Religious Communities. A Philosophical Study (Yale University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

5 Surin, K., Theology and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).Google Scholar

6 See for example regarding the latter, Milbank, John, Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).Google Scholar

7 See my review of Ward in The Journal of Beliefs and Values, 1992.

8 See for example, MacIntyre, A., After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd edn (London: Duckworth, 1985).Google Scholar

9 See the useful essay by Kramer, M., ‘The moral logic of Hizballah’, in Reich, W., ed., Origins of Terrorism (Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 131–60.Google Scholar

10 See my analysis of Hick, John in these terms in ‘Taking Other Religions Seriously: Some Ironies in the Current Debate on a Christian Theology of Religions’, The Thomist, LIV, 3 (1990), 519–30;Google Scholar and also Loughlin, G., ‘Prefacing Pluralism: John Hick and the Mastery of Religion’, Modern Theology, VII, 1 (1990), 2956.CrossRefGoogle Scholar