A Muslim’s View of Ecumenism
If anyone wants to know how enlightened Muslims look upon ecumenism he can hardly do better than read the works of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, perhaps the most erudite Muslim philosopher of our time.
Nasr, who received his Ph.D. in the History of Science and Philosophy at Harvard and subsequently served as Chancellor of Aryamehr University in Iran, has taught and lectured at America’s most prestigious universities.
“Ecumenism,” he writes, “is becoming an instrument for simple relativization and further secularization.” By “relativization” he means this. The tendency of ecumenism is to deny that any religion is the repository of exclusive truth. Ecumenism thus reinforces the doctrine of cultural relativism according to which there are no objective and universally valid standards by which to determine whether the beliefs and practices of one people are superior to those of another.
Moreover, because relativism denies what Nasr calls “transcendental truths,” it inevitably breeds secularism. That some religionists are also relativists or quasi-relativists is only evidence of their superficiality or desire for popularity. Many ecumenicals fit this description.
Like relativism, ecumenism is not concerned with truth of a transcendent order but rather, says Nasr, with “an outward and sentimental kind which cannot but reduce religions to their least common denominator.”
Ecumenism therefore minimizes the differences between religions. It “opposes intellectual discernment and emphasis upon doctrine as being dogmatic and anti-spiritual. And by opposing the particularity of each religious tradition, “it destroys the sacred on the tangible level in the name of a vague and emotional universalism envisioned by tradition.” The result is trivialization of religion and further secularization.
In ecumenical or interfaith “encounters.” one detects a powerful tendency to reduce religion to morality and morality to mere benevolence. In the process, revelatory knowledge and divine authority are replaced by human understanding and consensus. But this means, says Nasr, that ecumenism “cannot but fall into a kind of humanism which only dilutes what remains of religion. It is really another form of secularism.”
Samuel Huntington mains that “In Muslim eyes, Western secularism, irreligiosity, and hence immorality are worse than the Western Christianity that produced them (my emphasis).
This accord with the contention that one of the historical functions of Christianity was to secularize a large part of mankind by separating religion from politics. By confining spiritual matters to the Church and leaving a welter of political, social, and economic matters to the State, Christianity desacralized the religio-pagan laws of Rome, the source from much of Western jurisprudence is derived.
Incidentally, certain Christian Dispensationalists agree with the erudite Rabbi Elijah Benamozegh (d. 1900) whose magnum opus, Israel and Humanity, provides extensive evidence that the historical function of Christianity was to destroy idolatry and bring mankind to the only true catholicism, the Seven Laws of Noah. (This will remind some readers of today’s Bnei Noah movement.)
Returning, however, to Nasr, he argues that the use of interfaith programs for political purposes “ends in either diplomatic and polite platitudes or false oversimplifications which have simply glided over the [conflicting doctrines of different religions]”
But the same may be said of Nasr’s own belief in the so-called transcendental unity of religions. Like ecumenicals in general, he not only glosses over the Talmud, the sine qua non of Jewish survival, but he also ignores the prophecies concerning Israel. Nevertheless, Professor Nasr illuminates some questionable aspects of ecumenism.
Like others, he sees that ecumenicals are ever preaching tolerance. He insists, however, that truth involves logic, in consequence of which truth is not tolerant of half-truth and falsehood. Men of deep faith and learning, men who possess a religious world-view that endows human life and history with meaning, logically reject the conflicting world-views of other religions.
In contrast, says Nasr, “Those who attack this group as being prejudiced or fanatical and claim not to be so themselves—carry no advantage over the first group whatsoever. Nothing is easier than to be without prejudice about something which does not concern us.”
Perhaps, when all is said and done, what is called the “clash of civilizations” is basically a clash of monotheisms? Professor Nasr does not go this far, but his critique of ecumenism is penetrating and worth pondering.
