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I

The issues of poverty and possessions have been central to biblical and Christian reflection. That does not mean that there is one clear position. It certainly does not mean that Christians have lived consistently by Christian teachings. Especially since the eighteenth century, confusion has reigned. It has been Christian (or post-Christian) cultures that have led the world in recent times into the unabashed worship of wealth.

The sharpest rejection of consumerism is found in asceticism. There was little of this in ancient Israel. The people of Israel were not discouraged by their teachers from participating in the good things of life. They believed that the created world is good and that human beings have the right to order it to their needs and to enjoy it. They were grateful for the fruitfulness of the land, for long life, and for numerous progeny.

The moral issue was whether people gained their possessions in ways that injured others and whether they took responsibility for those who lacked basic necessities. If one gained wealth by oppressing others, that was severely criticized. If one failed to share with the weak and powerless, especially with widows, orphans, and strangers, that was condemned. Obviously, to put the pursuit of personal gain ahead of moral concerns about justice and meeting the needs of the weak was completely unacceptable. Justice and righteousness come first, but there is no inherent conflict between obedience to God and worldly prosperity. Indeed, such prosperity can be a sign of God’s favor, although it can also arouse suspicion that the wealth was acquired unjustly.

The situation with Jesus is somewhat different. Nevertheless, he did not teach asceticism either. We are told that he commented in this respect on his difference from John the Baptist. For Jesus, as for the Jewish tradition generally, there is nothing wrong with enjoying good food and drink.

For Jesus, however, the issue of relative values was sharpened. It was crucial that one seek first the basileia, the Commonwealth of God. Furthermore, this is presented as an all-consuming quest, such that people are prepared to turn away from all ordinary pursuits. Even family relationships and responsibilities, so important to most Jews, may be set aside for the sake of God’s Commonwealth. People are assured that when they seek this first, God will take care of them with respect to their material needs. The rich young ruler, who obeys all the Jewish laws but is still not inwardly at peace, is urged to sell all he has, give the proceeds to the poor, and follow Jesus. Jesus is quoted as saying that it is harder for a rich man to enter the Commonwealth of God than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. His conviction that when we encounter a neighbor in need we should share what we have can explain how a follower can hardly remain rich!

This concern about how worldly goods inhibit spiritual progress is not prominent in the Jewish scriptures and has introduced distinctive debates into Christianity. Many Christians have continued essentially the Jewish tradition. That is, we must all put first the quest for justice and righteousness. If one’s concern for possession or consumption supersedes one’s commitment to justice and righteousness, then it is sinful. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins. But if one puts first the Commonwealth of God, then one may find that gaining or retaining property is still acceptable. The issue is then the responsible use of that wealth.

Other Christians have held that there is a deeper incompatibility between seeking first the Commonwealth of God and gaining or retaining wealth. The latter, at a minimum, is distracting. The fullest service of God, in this view, requires the renunciation of possessions. It requires also the renunciation of family and family responsibilities. Even this, however, does not necessarily entail asceticism. The renunciation of family responsibilities involved the renunciation of sexual activity, but the enjoyment of food and drink and other comforts may still be quite acceptable. The monastic movement provided a context in which people could devote themselves entirely to God while having their material needs taken care of.

Of course, ascetic tendencies did enter Christianity and play a considerable role within it. Paul’s dualism of spirit and flesh was understood in such a way as to condemn all bodily enjoyment. Denying the body its wants was felt to be spiritually positive. The judgment that sex was inherently evil played at least as large a role in the promotion of celibacy as the concern to free people from family responsibility. Denying other bodily desires such as those for rich food and bodily comfort could also be regarded as spiritually positive. A few Christians, for the sake of the spirit, have inflicted pain on their bodies. Nevertheless, most church teaching, even in the monastic traditions, has opposed asceticism as a normative ideal. That is, while there may be many circumstances in which faithfulness calls for sacrifice of bodily enjoyment, the bodily enjoyment that is thereby sacrificed for a greater good is, in itself, also affirmed to be good.

The Reformation opposed the monastic movement, which was the chief embodiment of this ideal. It held that the Christian calling is to serve God in the midst of all the ambiguities of life in the world, including family and business. This paved the way for a changing attitude toward the quest for wealth, but this was far from the intention of the Reformers. Their ideal was full participation in the processes through which money is made and then complete generosity in its use. As late as the eighteenth century, John Wesley, the father of my own denomination, taught that we should earn all we can, save all we can, and give all we can. Considerable sums of money passed through his hands, especially because of the success of his publications. He used some of this to take care of his own needs (and those closest to him) in a way that was frugal but not ascetic. But all the money that was not needed for this purpose was used to meet the needs of others.

Wesley’s instructions to his followers to adopt the same procedure were very explicit. Nevertheless, many of them were more conscientious about earning and saving than about giving. Before his death Wesley mourned the loss of the truly evangelical spirit of early Methodism occasioned by the accumulation of property by its members. Those with property, he concluded, could not give themselves wholeheartedly to Christ. Most Methodists, on the other hand, thought that as long as their quest for wealth did not interfere with their devotion to God, it was acceptable. And most thought that such a quest was possible.

II

The great change occurred in the eighteenth century with the rise of industrialization. Previously production per person was relatively fixed. This meant also that wealth per capita was largely static. If one person got more, another would have less. To be greedy was to desire to get more at the expense of another.

In the eighteenth century people discovered a way of producing that made individuals far more productive. By employing fossil fuels to replace human labor, on the one hand, and by having each person perform limited repetitive operations, on the other, total production could be greatly increased. This worked best in a market where each person undertook to acquire as much as possible for as little labor as possible. This was understood to be "rational self interest," hardly distinguishable from what had heretofore been called "greed." In this new context, the pursuit of self-interest, viewed by Christians as sin, turned out to increase the total wealth and hence the availability of goods and services to people in general.

This was noted first by secular authors. Early in the century, Bernard Mandeville published The Fable of the Bees. His subtitle, Private Vices, Public Benefits, suggests his thesis that such "vices" as greed actually benefit society as a whole. David Hume also argued for the positive social value of commerce based on the profit motive, although he feared unadulterated greed and thought that in commerce it was mixed with other motives.

The writings of Adam Smith firmly established the changed evaluation of the quest for wealth. Although Smith personally, and in other writings, emphasized the importance of acting in terms of sympathy for others, in his most influential book, The Wealth of Nations, he pointed out that the market works best when each participant acts in terms of rational self-interest. Attempts by government to establish "just prices," a practice going back to the Middle Ages, only inhibited and distorted economic development. So far as the economy is concerned, self-interested behavior turns out to serve the common good.

The change of nomenclature from greed to rational self-interest combined with the highly positive appraisal of its overall effects has confused Christian thinkers from that time on. The present state of Christian thinking and moral teaching has grown out of, and still reflects, that confusion.

Some have accepted the teaching of Adam Smith and the economists who have built on his work so far as the economy is concerned and then sought to contain the economy in a larger context. Government is asked to assume responsibility for those who are unable to succeed in the new, highly competitive, market. Of course, the church and individual Christians also try to contribute in this way. In addition, those who gain wealth are encouraged on a personal basis to share with others. But with respect to how the wealth is gained, except for the requirement of honesty and obedience to the law, these Christians have had little to say. To be effective in the market, one must play by its rules and not by traditional Christian teachings. And these Christians accept the market as a socially-needed institution.

Other Christians have reacted against the whole capitalist system. A system that inherently encourages individual greed and competition cannot, in their view, be affirmed. They have supported some form of democratic socialism. Socialism, as they understand it, meant that society as a whole would order its economic life for the good of all. The primary motive to which appeal would be made would be concern for the whole and cooperation with one’s neighbors in the realization of the common good. The people as a whole would select the leaders of this society.

It would be difficult to find any actual experiment with thoroughgoing Democratic socialism. The countries that have moved in that direction have maintained mixed economies, giving considerable space for market forces to work. Nevertheless, as an ideal it has played a large role in Europe, where the distinction between it and totalitarian Communism has been clear. The mixed economies partly expressive of democratic socialist ideals virtually abolished degrading forms of poverty and insured that the basic needs of all were met.

In the United States the distinction between democratic socialism and Russian Communism was successfully obscured, so that the former was associated with all the evils of the latter. Although many of the proposals of the American Socialist party have been enacted into law, they were accepted only in so far as they conformed to the first Christian response to capitalism, that is, governmental actions to deal with its abuses and to aid those who failed in the competition.

Any form of socialism, however democratic, employs governmental bureaucracy to operate nationalized businesses. On the whole it has turned out that this is less efficient than allowing business decisions to be shaped by competition in the market. Furthermore, the actual experience of employees of nationalized businesses is not necessarily preferable to that of employees of private business, when the government effectively regulates this. In short, it seems that most of the real gains from nationalization can be achieved by government regulations that safeguard the safety and health of workers, insure that they are taken care of when they are unemployed and when they retire, and allow them to organize to promote their own interests. The welfare state, expressive of the first Christian response listed above, has enlisted much of the support of those Christians who first called for socialism.

There are also Christians who criticize the welfare state. This state so reduces the penalties for irresponsibility and laziness, they argue, that many citizens are not motivated to make their proper contribution to the economy. The welfare state, in their opinion, does not take adequate account of human sinfulness. If we recognize that people are by nature strongly self-interested and motivated to serve the common good only by threats and promises that appeal to their self-interest, then we will avoid rewarding irresponsibility and laziness. We will limit our public care to those who are truly unable to take care of themselves.

These Christians do not suppose that true Christians share this irresponsibility. What they oppose is the naïve expectation that society as a whole can expect most of its members to be fully Christian in this respect. Also, they may hold that even Christians are not free from the effects of original sin, so that for them, too, the discipline of want, when they fail to perform their due service to society, is desirable.

The overall result of these developments has been that most American Christians today support something very much like the status quo. They want government to provide a modest safety net that does not discourage work and to regulate business in an evenhanded way for the sake of safety and the environment and to prevent discrimination based on race or gender as well as monopoly control. They want competitive market forces to operate within those limits. They want businessmen to be honest and to act according to the law. And they want those who do well to share their wealth with the church and with charities of various sorts.

This does not mean that thoughtful Christians favor consumerism, although most of us fall victim to it to some extent. We still believe that we should be content with a modest level of consumption and refuse to allow advertising to persuade us of our need for more and more. Nevertheless, as the general standard of living rises among those with whom we associate, our notion of a "modest" level of consumption rises. Most of us expect to have more space in our homes, more toilets, more electronic equipment, more varied food, better automobiles, more vacation travel, and larger wardrobes than seemed needful or desirable thirty or forty years ago. We have been changed by the consumer culture. The new levels of comfort and convenience in themselves can be affirmed as good.

In what way do we Christians, if at all, actually resist consumerism? Here we vary greatly. Some are truly frugal in their lifestyles. Others live more comfortably, but still give generously to good causes and more needful people. Many choose work according to their judgment of its value to others and satisfaction to themselves rather than according to how well it pays. Many devote time they could use to make more money (or enjoy spending) to volunteer work in the church and in the community. Many make decisions about their work with serious consideration of how they affect personal relations and other non-economic needs within the family. In short, although increasing consumption is a widespread social goal, and most Christians participate in it, Christian teaching about relative values has not altogether lost its potency.

The situation in the United States, then, is one in which Christianity still resists all-out consumerism, but only marginally. It has accepted the basic economic system of capitalism, but tries to preserve a sphere of personal life and decision-making that modifies and surrounds it. It rarely confronts the evils of consumerism head-on with much clarity or force.

III

I have myself been still more concerned about the silence of Christianity in the face of economism. I believe this is a more fundamental force in society than consumerism. Indeed, I believe that it is society’s commitment to economism that supports and encourages consumerism.

By economism I mean the conviction that economic values are the most important and the restructuring of society to express that valuation. It is the move from a market-economy to a market-society. Economism certainly supports consumerism since it regards the increase of consumption as the supreme value. But the relation is also more complex. For the economy to function well we need not only ever-increasing consumption but also ever-increasing investment, which requires ever-increasing saving. While some people take pride and pleasure chiefly in their purchases of goods and services, others take pride and pleasure more in the size of their portfolios.

The moderate Christian response to capitalism, as described above, gives a great deal of freedom to the market within its province, but requires that it be limited and regulated by political institutions that express other values. Economism works against this. It regards the growth of the economy as the first priority and sees the role of government to be primarily the creation of the conditions most supportive of this growth.

Since World War II this fundamental shift of power between the political order and the economic order has gone a long way. Economic interests have always played an undue role in political decisions. In the past, however, government has been understood to have purposes and goals other than economic ones, and economic decisions have been supposed to serve these goals. Today the primacy of economic considerations is often unabashed.

The change is even clearer in other major social institutions than in government. One may consider education as an important example. In the nineteenth century and prior to World War II, the chief role of the public schools was to prepare people for American citizenship. Students came from many cultures, and at least those from Europe were expected to adopt a standard American culture. Since this standard culture was Protestant, Roman Catholics developed an alternative. But the purpose of those schools was even more cultural and religious than was that of the public schools.

Today arguments in favor of using public funds for education are formulated in terms of investments in human resources. The task of the schools is to prepare youth for work in the market place. Issues of citizenship are rarely mentioned. Preparing youth for a cultured life plays an even smaller role.

Higher education has changed at least as dramatically. During the earlier period it was dominated by the liberal arts college. These colleges were understood to prepare people for leadership in society. This involved cultural as well as institutional leadership, and preparation included shaping each student’s moral integrity as well as personality development.

These concerns have not disappeared in liberal arts colleges, although they are muted. But these colleges now represent a small part of higher education as a whole. They are often considered to be preparation for professional schools rather than as fulfilling the goal of education in themselves. In any case, the dominant image of higher education is now the state systems of community colleges and universities. The purpose of these elaborate systems is to prepare people for particular jobs and professions and to be leaders in the world of business. A student who comes to such institutions simply seeking an education apart from any job orientation is viewed askance. The traditional liberal arts maintain a tenuous foothold partly because astute leaders in business recognize the value of breadth of historical and cultural perspective in a rapidly changing environment.

Still more dramatic is the effect of economism on the global scene. There has been a systematic and brilliantly successful effort to reorder human life on the planet so that it will all serve the market. Nations have not disappeared, but many of them now have little power to order their internal affairs. This ordering is determined by the need to make payments on debts and by the structural adjustment policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The task of governments in this new order is to make their countries attractive for investment by transnational corporations. To do this they must provide a docile and industrious workforce adequately prepared and ready to work for long hours at extremely low pay. They must insure that there are minimal restrictions on corporate activity for such purposes as environmental protection. And, of course, they must provide the requisite infrastructure for transportation and communication.

The new global economy puts pressure on wealthier nations to dismantle their welfare systems. These raise the cost of production so that those who produce within them have difficulty competing with those who produce elsewhere. The outflow of productive enterprises from Europe to low-cost sites has led to high unemployment there. Although European countries resist the reduction of their services to needy people, their ability to afford these services indefinitely in the context of the new global economy is in question.

The United States has taken the other route, the one dictated by economism. It never developed a full welfare state, and it is now moving in the opposite direction. It has allowed wages for less skilled work to fall and reduced both benefits and the safety net. Even so, many producers that were paying good wages here have moved to low cost countries. Other formerly well-paying positions have been abolished through computerization. Those who live from capital are doing extremely well as are those who have scarce specialized skills. The standard results of applying economistic principles are to enrich the wealthy and impoverish the poor, with a diminishing middle class. This is happening in the United States.

Obviously, unlike the governments of many poor countries, that of the United States is still very powerful. It has had the power to lead the world into the new economistic order. Fortunately, its efforts express some other values as well. For example, the government works to preserve the environment and protect endangered species. There is wide public support for these programs.

Opposition to some of these programs comes from those who could profit in the short term from activities that are forbidden. Economistic thinkers typically support this opposition, but as long as the issues are fought out within the nation, public opinion can support policies that involve some short-term economic losses for the sake of long-term environmental gains.

However, for the sake of promoting the globalization of the economy, the United States government has led in founding institutions that can overrule decisions about these matters made within the nation. This issue focuses especially on the World Trade Organization. That organization was created for the sake of overcoming barriers to trade. In at least three instances, other countries have protested to the WTO that US legislation designed to protect the environment or endangered species is in restraint of trade. In all these cases the WTO has sided with the protesters and required the United States to give up its laws.

IV

I am illustrating the enormous role that economism plays in world affairs today. I think of it as the first truly successful world religion. By religion in this context I mean that which organizes the whole of life and thought around a single vision or commitment. Economism is now playing that role. Much religion is idolatrous in the sense of encouraging devotion to goals or entities that are not worthy of such devotion. Idolatry is the great enemy of Christian faith. Wealth is a limited good whose pursuit undermines many other goods. Economism as commitment to the increase of wealth is clearly, even grossly, idolatrous.

Regrettably, Christianity as a whole has not recognized that it now faces the most powerful and successful idolatry of all time. There are several reasons for this. First, Christians of my generation, who until recently played much of the leadership role in the church, grew up understanding nationalism as the great idolatry to be combated. The reduced role of nationalism in world affairs long seemed a gain. The shift of focus from competition for power among nations to increasing the availability of goods and services desired by the world’s people was something Christians should celebrate.

Second, economic issues seemed too technical to justify close attention by most Christians. Long ago, as I explained above, we acknowledged the role of market forces as something outside our purview. The elaborate disciplinary development of economics as the study of the market seemed to have turned it into an entirely autonomous science about which Christians in general could have nothing to say.

Third, Christians were experiencing wave upon wave of valid criticism for their historical roles in promoting such evils as anti-Judaism, colonialism, racism, patriarchalism, anthropocentrism, homophobia, and sexual repression. Rethinking our faith in light of these criticisms has preoccupied us. Much excellent work has been done. Some of this rethinking, especially on the issue of homosexuality, threatens to split our denominations. Questions of world trade and a new international order run by transnational corporations have seemed remote.

Recently it has been possible to direct some attention to some of the more obvious evils associated with the dominance of the new religion of economism. The rise of sweatshops everywhere has troubled the Christian conscience. The misery of people in the poorest nations saddled with unpayable debts has evoked support for the Jubilee movement. But there is still very little fundamental theological reflection about the idolatry that commands the worship of most of the world’s leading politicians, technicians, financiers, industrialists, and academicians. Christians approach the evils they criticize as if they were abuses that could be corrected without changing the basic nature of the system.

This situation is unlikely to change as long as most Christians continue to believe that the basic policies that follow from economism also follow from Christian faith. Their thinking is as follows. Christians are deeply concerned about poverty. Communism tried to relieve poverty by redistributing wealth. The consequences were disastrous. The only other way to provide desperately needed goods and services to the poor is by so increasing total production that the poor can benefit along with all others. This is just the policy to which economism is devoted. Of course, as Christians we have other goals, and we should not subordinate all these to economic growth. But economic growth is of great importance, so that, on the whole, we can support the policies economism proposes. Granted, economism is an idolatry. But Christians recognize that few can altogether escape idolatry. We ally ourselves with those whose idolatry leads to actions close to those called for by our faith.

My own passion for the rejection of economism arises from my conviction that the policies to which it gives rise will never achieve the goods it promises and in fact lead to disaster in both the short and the long term. One way I have tried to show this is by demonstrating that the economic growth at which economism aims, measured roughly by Gross National Product or Gross Domestic Product, does not improve the economic condition of real people. The activities of corporations can increase the GNP or Gross World Product while leaving human beings on the whole no better off economically. To show this, some of us developed an Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (which has been further developed into a Genuine Progress Indicator) that shows that economic welfare in the United States has remained quite static as GNP has dramatically risen. It is now common knowledge that the vaunted national prosperity has not benefited the poor in this country. ISEWs have been prepared for a number of other countries with similar results. To continue policies that increase Gross World Product without benefiting those who truly need increased consumption should not receive the support of Christians.

My second argument is that even if by some measures vast growth does reduce the percentage of the world’s population that is desperately poor, present policies will destroy the natural basis for our life together long before they resolve the problem of poverty. We are already living unsustainably. To devote our primary energies to increasing consumption is to speed up the impending catastrophe. Indeed, in many parts of the world, the ecological crisis has already come. The poor experience it first and most bitterly. Some forms of growth are fully compatible with sustainability. But policies designed to promote growth in general rarely favor these.

My third argument is that all these economic considerations fail to deal with the real needs of people. Poverty is a real problem in the world, but it is not possible to define it in dollar terms. There are people with extremely little income who live happy and contented lives. There are people whose income is much higher who are unable to meet the critical needs of their families. And there are, of course, very rich people who are miserable and make all about them miserable. Policies designed to improve the real quality of life of human beings will prove very different from those designed to increase production and consumption overall. Such policies may also direct us in paths that will prove sustainable.

Probably the strongest obstacle to getting a hearing for this critique of economism is the widespread sense that there is no viable alternative to the current global economy. Christians agree that it is far from ideal, but many suppose that the most we can do is ameliorate the suffering it causes. Understandably, most of the Christians who adopt this view are ones who themselves are not seriously injured by the global economy or who see prospects of adjusting successfully to it. The voices of the hundreds of millions of its victims are muted in our ears. Yet even they often hope only to moderate its impact in peripheral ways.

V

If present directions dictated by economism are as profoundly destructive as I have argued, Christians are called to think about economics and society in much more radical, and truly theological, ways. I believe the best starting point in the tradition is Catholic thought of the late nineteenth century. The Church sought a third way to the alternatives of socialism and capitalism. It expressed this in terms of the economy serving human community. This was combined with the principle that decisions should be made at the lowest level possible so that people can participate in shaping their own lives. At that time, there was little thought of the natural environment of human life or of the value of the other creatures with which we share the world. These concerns must be added. With that addition, I believe we have the basis for a healthy and healing alternative to which Christians could give enthusiastic support.

It should be stated in advance that this is not a utopian proposal. It is open to abuse as much as any. The claim is not that it would solve all problems but that it would provide a context in which problems have a chance of being dealt with successfully by people of good will. This is in contrast with a system that inherently generates a race to the bottom and leads toward massive ecological catastrophes while working against efforts to solve the problems it generates.

Economism supports policies that systematically destroy existing communities. This is true alike of traditional agricultural communities and of factory towns. It favors agribusiness that substitutes machinery and oil for human labor, and monoculture for the varied production of family farms. It favors the closing of factories whenever capital can be invested more profitably elsewhere.

An economics for community seeks to produce for human need as close to the consumers as possible. It calls for the development of existing peasant villages so that they can become more productive rather than their replacement by agribusiness. It favors a decentralized economy of relatively small-scale production where that is feasible. The small, relatively self-sufficient communities would be grouped into larger units within which there would be production of goods that require larger markets.

Politically the world would be organized into communities of communities of communities. Many decisions would have to be made at the global level, but any that can be made regionally or locally should be made there. The more the economy can be decentralized to serve local and regional markets, the more political power can be decentralized to those areas. What must be avoided are markets that transcend political boundaries. The market must serve the community as that expresses its desires in government.

There is no guarantee, of course, that local communities would adopt responsible policies. We know that special interests can control local governments. On the other hand, it is usually easier for citizens to organize to express their will locally than nationally or globally. We know that majority ethnic groups can tyrannize over minorities. Often it is necessary to have civil rights protection enforced from higher levels to prevent this.

Furthermore, there is no assurance that people will take care of their local environment. Nevertheless, there is greater likelihood of this than that multinational corporations will do so. Furthermore, instead of having a global organization intent on breaking down all barriers to trade, such an organization would aim at encouraging local communities to become self-reliant in sustainable ways. Government at higher levels would restrict pollution that crossed borders and discourage unsustainable activities.

I have said that this system would not solve all problems but that it would provide a context in which efforts to solve them would be realistic. In a village or small town it is possible to organize Christians (and others who share our values) to press our concerns. We can work to reduce the excessive influence of wealth on political leaders. We can work to protect our natural environment from abuse. We can work to be sure that those who cannot meet their own needs are aided by society. We can work for fair wages and good working conditions without fear that these will make our products uncompetitive. We can work for good schools that prepare young people to live as productive members of society capable of appreciating the finer values of our heritage. We can work for acceptance of minorities of various sorts as full members of the community. We can work to keep the real values of consumption subordinated to the many greater values that are important to community life.

I have presented my statement in purely Christian terms. In no way do I wish to claim that only Christians have the concerns that I have identified. But we have a unique history on the basis of which to think and act today. One urgent feature of that thought and action is to reach out to others to establish alliances and patterns of mutual support.

In particular, I have been impressed by how close I come as a socially-engaged Christian to the views and concerns of socially-engaged Buddhists. On another occasion when paired with Sulak Sivaraksa, I suggested that for Buddhists the most natural focus is on consumerism, since that is a personal distortion based on obvious illusions as to what makes for happiness. I suggested that the distinctive Christian contribution would be on the overarching system, theoretical and actual, of economism, since Christians tend to attend more to overall historical movements and changes. That may or may not prove to be the case.

In any case, any difference between us is minor in comparison with our shared commitments. I am reminded of the irony that it was a conservative Catholic who wrote an influential essay on "Buddhist Economics." There is currently a significant decline in the ability of socially-engaged Christians to rally other Christians to deal responsibly with the crucial issues of the day. I rejoice that there seems to be a considerable rise in the ability of socially-engaged Buddhists to give leadership. May they continue to flourish!

The title of this discussion points toward the need to clarify what we mean by the common good. Is it the greatest good of the greatest number? I think not. But do we, then, think of it as describing a situation that is ideal in some independence of the people who participate in it? For example, is the good of the United States something other than the good of its inhabitants, so that all of its inhabitants may be called on to sacrifice for the common good? Is there a tension between the rights of individuals and the common good?

In my view a useful understanding of the common good depends on a clear understanding of community. But a good understanding of community is difficult to attain when we begin with modernist assumptions about human beings. For this reason I feel the need to make some points that I will repeat from a different angle tonight. We need to overcome the dominant modernist habits of mind.

We "process" thinkers like to blame much of what is wrong on substance thinking. Few people today consciously adopt substance metaphysics, but just because they do not think metaphysical issues are meaningful, they continue to reflect deep-seated metaphysical habits. Please forgive me if I take a few moments to explain what I mean by substance philosophy and to show how it has informed so much of modern thinking about human society. My point here is that it blocks adequate understanding of community and therefore also of the common good.

The philosophical idea of substance arises from reflection about the kinds of objects with which we are surrounded: houses and cars, sticks and stones, planets and stars, chairs and tables. These objects remain much the same through considerable period of time. They occupy definable regions of space and are contained within these boundaries. They may move through space without suffering significant alteration. What changes are the spatial relations to other substances, but these relations do not affect the substances themselves. A chair can be moved from one room to another while remaining the same chair with the same characteristics.

The chair as such can also be distinguished from its characteristics. It may be repainted, for example, without becoming a different chair. In this sense, at least, there is an unchanging substance underlying changing attributes. Much of our language refers to objects as the subjects of sentences and then to their attributes or actions. The carpet is blue. The cat walks around the room. This expresses and supports the emphasis on objects, understood as substances.

We may also think of ourselves as substances. "I" seems to name an entity that remains the same in many different contexts and with changing experiences and feelings. I am sometimes talking and sometimes listening. I am sometimes sad and sometimes joyful. But "I" seem to remain the same "I" through these changes.

Of course, the substances of which I have spoken thus far come into being and decay. Hence they are not quite satisfactory as fulfilling the metaphysical idea of substances as the unchanging reality underlying the changing attributes. Distinguishing them as composite substances from the simple substances of which they are composed can solve this problem. Compound substances can be broken up into these simple substances. It is these basic components of the larger objects that are the true substances.

This type of reflection led to the dominance of atomism in modern thought. An atom is a simple substance, that is, a substance that cannot be broken up into smaller substances. Because it cannot be broken up, it is everlasting. It does not change in any way except in its location. Modern thought supposed that the deepest truth about the world is that it is composed of material atoms in motion relative to one another. The goal of scientific explanation is to show how, following the laws of motion governing the movement of atoms, all the phenomena of the natural world can be explained. Although the course of physics has required many changes, the reductive program inherent in this metaphysics still guides most scientific work.

Our interest here, of course, is with human beings. Some moderns have supposed that the movement of the atoms can explain us, too. Much physiological psychology shares this program of research. Nevertheless, the more common form of modern metaphysics is dualism. Dualists exempt the human mind from the laws of physics. It is of a fundamentally different nature. The founder of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes, held that whereas the primary characteristic of the entities making up the physical world is extension, the primary characteristic of minds is thought.

What is striking, however, is that Descartes and the modern thinkers who followed him, believed that the thinking minds are also substances. That means that they are self-contained entities, underlying the flow of changing experience. The relations among them, like the relation among atoms, are external to them. These relations do not affect the mind as such. The philosophical implication is a radical form of individualism. This individualism dominated thought about society throughout the early modern period and has shaped much of late modern thought as well.

The most obvious examples are in ethical, political, and economic theory. I will be speaking of economic theory this evening. I will now speak briefly about ethical and political theory.

In ethical research, one asks about the situation of the individual. Since individuals remain what they are through time, their desire to achieve what satisfactions they can over the course of their lives is understandable. For some ethicists, a prudential hedonism must describe human behavior. The problem is then that in our ethical heritage there are many teachings that suggest we should seek the good of others. Such altruism is sharply distinguished from concern about one's own future, and there has been a strong tendency, continuing to the present, to explain apparently altruistic behavior in terms of a subtler or more indirect form of self-interest.

Christian theology often adapted itself to this egocentric view. The church called people to act in ways beneficial to others, promising that the rewards they would receive for such behavior after death far exceeded the costs in this life. Even persons who broke with much of the Christian tradition were inclined to think that the teaching of rewards and punishments after death was necessary to support socially constructive action here and now.

The judgment that this was needed was lessened by the discovery by advanced thinkers in the eighteenth century that when all seek their individual benefit, the result produces benefits for the whole society. The implication is that altruistic behavior is not needed and may even damage the society.

Nevertheless, the weight of Christian tradition remained strong through the nineteenth century. The most widely accepted ethical teaching in that century was utilitarianism. One should act so as to produce the greatest amount of pleasure for the largest number of people. This teaching is as fully based on individualism as is the assumption that self-interest reigns. But the individual is held to have a moral principle or intuition directing each to the well being of others generally.

The Kantian alternative in terms of duty is equally individualistic. For Kant moral reason requires that we act according to universal rules. We should act in the way that we can will that all act. It is contrary to reason to make an exception in one's own case.

It is significant that the major political theorists based their understanding of how the state came to be on the principle of self-interest alone. Individuals were willing to pay a price in freedom for the sake of security. Hence they entered a compact with one another and with someone selected to rule them to obey his rule as long as this rule provided security. Locke thought that somewhat more than security was required from the ruler.

The traditions of German romanticism and idealism could give rise to a different kind of political thinking. It could reify a nation or a group. Its most influential product was Karl Marx. Marx tended to reify classes. This was certainly a sharp break with individualism. But it did not break with substantialist thinking. It simply shifted the substances from individuals to nations or classes.

Now my point in all this is to note that the idea of community is missing from substantialist thought. This is because for substantialist thought relations are external to those who are related. They remain individuals, whether individual human beings or individual classes. This is true whether their relations are altruistic or competitive.

Hobbes and Locke explain how, given that human beings have this character, they nevertheless form societies. But a society is not a community when it is based solely on the agreement to obey a ruler in exchange for security and other possible services. Similarly, a collective in which individuals participate without distinction is not a community.

When there is no concept of a community, the idea of the common good is inevitably truncated. For utilitarian ethics, it is the largest total aggregate of individual pleasures. For those who reify groups, it is the well being of the group as a group. Individuals participate in the group, but their individual well being is not in view.

The most valuable development in the context of substantial thinking of the individualist type was in the field of human rights. When one reflects on the individual and attributes intrinsic value to each individual, one may also think of how that individual can be protected from the caprice of the ruler or the prejudices of neighbors. Especially in the eighteenth century, the focus on the individual gave rise to impressive ideas about the rights of individuals, rights that properly restricted the behavior of rulers and of fellow citizens in relation to all individuals. Although the declaration of individual rights does not guarantee that they will be respected, it has certainly made an important difference in a positive direction. One reason for hesitancy about criticizing individualism is that it is not clear what other basis there can be for strong assertions of human rights.

Nevertheless, the assertion of rights is not an adequate basis for a healthy society even when it is combined with a social compact. A healthy society must be a community, and rights by themselves may even inhibit community. I will move now to a discussion of the metaphysical ground of community thinking and return later to the way rights fit into authentic communities.

Let me make clear that I am by no means saying that there were no communities during the modern period. Quite the contrary. Down to the industrial revolution, the great majority of people lived in rather tight communities. Many no doubt found them oppressive. The emphasis on individualism is partly at expression of metaphysics but it is also a reaction to societies in which greater freedom of self-expression and personal autonomy was a real desideratum. Although the rise of industry initiated a sustained assault on traditional communities, community in general gave way only slowly.

Today we need a metaphysics to undergird community partly because the erosion of community has gone quite far. We might say, ironically, that in the modern world there was plenty of community and very little theory to support it. In the postmodern world we have the theory to support community and a great dearth of actual community.

The idea of substance has had great difficulty maintaining itself in philosophical circles. This has been one of the major reasons for the rejection of metaphysics. It is my view, however, that abandoning the discussion of what a substance is and of whether there is anything that fits this requirement has not removed substance thinking from a dominant role in academia as well as in much of our society. It can only be overcome by an alternative that will gradually reshape habits of thought and language.

The metaphysical alternative to substance is event. The world confronts us with objects that are easily thought of as substantial. But the world in which we live is also a world of occurrences, happenings, and experiences. There are conversations and games and wars as well as houses and cars. The dominant philosophy of modernity has analyzed events in terms of matter in motion. But contemporary physics, as well as rigorous philosophical analysis, suggests that what we call objects are ultimately better understood as complex patterns of energy events. In this case, we do not require a dualism between matter and mind. Events of human experience and quantum events are very different, but they share the same basic structure. Both internalize their worlds, that is, both are constituted largely by their relations to other entities in their worlds. They are both themselves successions of discrete events, each including much of their predecessors and adding something to what they have inherited from them.

Human experience is constituted largely by its relation to past personal experiences, events in one's body, and events in the wider world. Among the most important relations are those to other people. I am what I am in this moment as an expression of the relations I have to other people in the past and present. They are part of what I am.

Note how this changes the categories of ethical thought. Modern ethics took for granted that the ethical agent is a self contained individual remaining self-identical through time. Prudential concern for one's own future seems rational in this view but real concern for anyone else is problematic. Self-interest and altruism are sharply differentiated.

But if a human person is a flow of experiences that are socially constituted, the question is quite different. Each momentary experience is what it is by virtue of the way others have been in the immediate past. It benefits or is harmed by them. In turn it constitutes itself so as to flow not only into successor experiences in the personal stream but into other streams also. There is no reason to be interested only in what happens to one's personal future. The immediate influence on those around one may seem considerably more important than the effects on one's personal more distant future. That this is so requires no special explanation. Exclusive concern for one's personal future would be expected to be a rarity, just as would neglect of the importance of that future. Total indifference to the effects on others would also be expected to be rare.

We have here a metaphysics of community. A community is distinguished from other social forms by virtue of the ways in which people enter into one another's lives. For most people the strongest community is the nuclear family. One internalizes one's parents and siblings. Their influence is inescapable. Influence means flowing into, and in this metaphysics this is taken quite literally. The mother's experience flows into that of the child in infancy. So do those of the father and of other family members. The child does not first exist independently and then enter into relations. The only child there is is one who is largely constituted by these relationships.

This is clearest with the nuclear family, but of course it is not limited to that. Families are part of larger communities. Patterns of thought and behavior current in the community largely determine the thought patterns of their members. Of course, at least some of the members subtly reshape these thought patterns. The community does not exist except as the community of people who are influencing one another.

This is important. If we think that the community has an existence of its own independent of the individuals who make it up, we are likely to have little place for either rights or responsibilities. A human community is nothing if not a community of persons. But equally persons have no existence apart from community. We think as we think, feel as we feel, behave as we behave largely as we are led to do these things by our relations with other members of the community and with the institutions that express the community life.

In a community the idea of the common good takes on a far richer meaning than in a society understood as founded only on a compact and made up of atomic individuals. Because the good of each is bound up with the good of others, we can consider which changes in the society as a whole conduce to the good of those who participate in it. This will rarely be a change that benefits of a few at the expense of many others. The change may occur directly among some, but it will be the kind of change that through their influence flows into the lives of others also. Usually it will be a change that is decided on only after the insights and desires of diverse individuals have been heard and considered.

To clarify further how the common good functions in a community, the essential characteristics of a true community can be further analyzed. A healthy community is one in which all participate, to whatever varying degrees, in determining the nature and actions of the community. If some segment of a society is excluded from participation, it is not part of the community. A society in which only some of its people belong to a community falls sadly short of community status.

In a healthy community, the community as a whole takes some responsibility for all its members. That is, in a society that is a healthy community, the society as a whole will not be indifferent to the extreme poverty, resulting, for example, in hunger and homelessness, of some of its members. When hunger and homelessness are allowed to exist and increase, as in the United States today, it is clear that the nation has lost any character of community it may once have had.

In a society that is a healthy community, participation in the society contributes to the self-identification of its members. To whatever extent Canada is a community, individual members of Canadian society identify themselves as Canadians. This identity informs the way they think about themselves, about other Canadians, and about the world as a whole. If many members of Canadian society are alienated from their Canadian identity, Canada ceases to be a unifying community.

Now, how are we to think of human rights in a community? They include what human beings must have in order to participate in the decision-making of the community. To deny these powers to the individuals is to fail to be a community. One set of rights then constitutes the requisite conditions for participating in the political life of the community. The accompanying obligation is to exercise these rights responsibly and to make sure that all share them.

Other rights are the conditions below which other participants in the community will not let any member fall. These will include sufficient food and clothing and shelter and health care and education to function within the community. For those able to work, these rights will include the opportunity to do so, so that functioning within the community is also contributing to the community. The accompanying responsibility is to take advantage of opportunities to work and to find other ways of contributing to the community. There is also a responsibility to insure that other disadvantaged members of the community also share these rights.

Although all members of a true community have both rights and responsibilities simply by virtue of being members, there remain great differences among them. Communities are not homogeneous. Members vary greatly in their abilities and their interests. They allow great diversity in the behavior of their members. Some will focus attention on the strengthening of community. Others will take the existence of community largely for granted and immerse themselves in their scholarship or art. The interests of others will be personal relationships or getting ahead in their work. It is important to avoid laying out responsibilities shared by all beyond the minimum of what is entailed in being a participant in community.

Finally, a healthy community will also understand itself to be in community with other communities. The atomistic vision tends to place political units in competition with one another, especially at the level of nations. The relational vision growing out of this postmodern metaphysics of events sees nations as well as individuals as needing one another and gaining from one another's well being. Our shrinking planet cannot afford the continuation of the view of individual people or individual nations competing for scarce resources. It can only survive if the movements toward cooperation for the common good gain dominance. A changed metaphysics will not by itself change the world, but without the continued spread of a changed vision, it is difficult to find much basis for hope.

In the 30^th chapter of Deuteronomy, after many laws have been laid down, many warnings and promises given, we encounter the climactic exhortation. We have been shown the way of life and the way of death. We are urged to choose the way of life. Judaism has been the vehicle for teaching and practicing this way. Through Christianity and Islam, the basic pattern of life has been taught to billions of others.

Of course, in detail it has changed. Judaism has its own system for continuously interpreting and developing the law that is laid down in the books of Moses. This is true of Christianity and Islam as well. Furthermore, and of central importance for us, in the New Testament generally, and most explicitly in Paul, our understanding of law as such has changed.

Paul taught that the law is holy, that its teachings do indeed describe the way of life. But when we encounter it as a law imposed upon us, instead of giving us life, it kills us. Struggling to obey rules, however good the rules may be, does not enliven us. Paul saw that in Christ we come to understand that the God we seek to obey is Love. We do not have to struggle to meet God's requirements. We can identify with Christ and participate in his faithfulness. In this way we fulfill the deeper intention of the law, that is, we find life in the way of life to which God calls us.

Neither the original exhortation to Choose Life! nor Paul's understanding of the new revelation of the way of life in Jesus is addressed to individuals. Deuteronomy is addressed to the Hebrew people. Paul addresses Christian communities. Of course, individuals are included in both instances. But it is the Hebrew nation that is to live, and we Christians can have life only in community. We need one another and a vital community of faith.

The life that Paul would have us choose is actually for more than just the Christian community. It is for all people. Jesus wanted us to be leaven in the loaf, so that all might benefit from the life he brought the world.

The "all" of which I speak has generally been understood in the church as all human beings. Certainly human beings were primarily in view with both Jesus and Paul. Yet neither of them drew the line tightly. Jesus believed that God clothed the lilies of the field and cared about every sparrow. Paul envisioned a final consummation for the whole world and not just its human inhabitants. In the background of their Jewish tradition lay the Genesis story in which God gave life to many species of creatures, saved them all from the flood, and made a covenant with them. "Choose life!" could not mean choose human life against the lives of other creatures. God is the giver of all life and the lover of all living things.

This wider extension of the life we are to choose has become increasingly important in recent times. We can wish that our ancestors in Christian faith had been more aware of it and committed to it. But we can also understand that they thought that the natural world took care of itself. Until recently nature was so vast in relation to human beings that people hardly thought their choices mattered to nature. The natural world with all its living creatures would take care of itself. Sadly, these attitudes and assumptions were retained even when in fact human actions began to have a large effect on other living things. We now know that nature cannot take care of itself, that human beings can degrade it not only locally but globally, that the species God created and saved from the flood are threatened by human expansion into their habitats, destruction of their food supplies, pollution of their air and water, and excessive hunting and fishing. In relation to them we are not choosing life.

Is it possible that we are in a situation in which we must choose between choosing life for human beings and choosing life for other creatures? The choice is often put before us in these terms, and sometimes this is quite compelling. In densely populated and impoverished parts of Africa, setting aside land for baboons and protecting them may prevent human beings from having the land they need to feed themselves. Forbidding a native tribe in Alaska to hunt whales may destroy its culture.

But these are not the primary issues. If they were, we could make compromises and adjustments that would be reasonably satisfactory. The primary problem is that as a people, as a nation, and globally, we have chosen against God. Jesus was very explicit. We cannot serve both God and wealth. Life is expanded and preserved in the service of God. Our choice has been for wealth. That choice is a choice against life.

Again, the life against which we have chosen is not primarily individual. It is primarily the life of society and humanity as a whole. But it certainly involves individuals.

In the world of business, the prevailing choice has increasingly been to serve wealth above all. The supporters of that choice can appeal to the idea that when each individual and enterprise strives for its own gain all benefit, because the whole economy grows. There is some truth to this. But when this principle is followed consistently it has socially destructive outcomes

I was rather shocked to discover that there is a book by a distinguished economist of the Chicago school explaining to businessmen when they should obey the law and when they should not. Moral issues play no role in his counsel. The issue is simply whether it is profitable to obey. One calculates on the one hand the gain from breaking the law and on the other the probable cost of paying fines. If the former figure is larger than the latter, then the author counsels breaking the law.

Obviously, if one's competitors act on the basis of such calculations, one is pressed in the same direction. Even business people who really want to be ethical and law abiding may be forced to behave immorally and illegally in order to survive in a world that is ruled by the service of wealth. .

Even within the world of business, the ethics of the market place is obviously destructive when it is adopted individualistically be the participants in a business enterprise. A business needs honesty and hard work on the part of its employees. It needs team spirit as well. If each employee relates to the others purely in terms of gaining advantage, the business will fail. When CEOs make choices that enrich themselves at the expense of stockholders and employees, the business will fail. The approval of self-seeking as rational, built into most economic theory, is a truth that works only when business operates in the context of a community that has other values. It works only when integrity and honesty and basic humanity are presupposed within the business community itself. When society as a whole makes wealth the primary object of service, a process of self-destruction sets in. There is no longer any check on corrupt practices. This is the way of death.

Our government would have us believe that in this country we have pulled ourselves back from the brink. I hope so, but I am not sure. The basic ethos of the market is still celebrated and taught. The values and commitments that alone can check it are much less clearly and convincingly communicated. We are still engaged in transferring power from our social and political systems to economic ones, hoping in this way to increase wealth more rapidly. We show few signs of shifting from the worship of wealth to the worship of the God of Life.

Meanwhile the ordering of life to the pursuit of wealth speeds up the separation of the rich from the poor. Israel knew that this is not the way of life for a society. It is the way of death. This is not to say that all differences in material possessions are to be eliminated. It is to say that great riches are harmful to spiritual life as is degrading poverty. The problem is worse, when they exist side by side. To preserve one's riches in the face of the misery of others requires hardening one's heart. That way lies death. To see others living in luxury when one cannot feed one's children causes bitterness and envy. These are the death of the spirit. The social health that is life requires mutual respect and responsibility for one another within a community. Our national and global service of wealth leads away from such health.

Our service of wealth hastens the pollution of the Earth, the exhaustion of resources, the elimination of habitat for other species, the degradation of water, soil, and air. Here, too, it leads toward death. Perhaps this is the most important reason of all for us to turn away from the service of wealth. There is real danger that our decisions now are having irreparable harm. A species once lost is lost forever. Climate changes are likely to be irreversible. Some poisons have half-lives of many thousands of years. Decisions made now in the service of wealth will dreadfully impoverish our descendants.

You and I cannot change the widespread commitment to serve wealth rather than God. We can, however, support one another in the decision to serve God and thus life. Even that is not easy.

I try to serve God. But so much of what I do each day is caught up in the culture and system that is in the service of wealth. I am distanced from direct contact with the poor humans and the other creatures who pay a price for my enjoyments. In particular, the future does not vividly impinge upon me. I enjoy the comfort and privilege that this culture have allowed me to have. Even when I try to act for God and life, my means of doing so are ambiguous. I travel by air and car, speeding up global warming and the exhaustion of resources, in order to attend conferences or give lectures calling for the service of God. I do not want to examine too carefully the sources of my monthly income.

A few individuals make more radical personal decisions. Myra House is a result of such decisions to serve God rather than wealth.

Most of us, however, continue to live in the world that serves wealth surrounded by influences that push us in that direction. That is why the church is so important. Few of us as individuals can stand against the dominant currents of our societies. We need a community of support that directs us in another way.

But the church alone does not suffice. It itself has yielded too much to the pressures of the society that serves wealth. It is too separated from the lives of those who are most injured by that society. It rarely challenges our alienation from the Earth. Just because it opens its doors widely to people at every point on the Christian path, it includes within itself many who still seek to serve two masters. We hardly learn in most of our congregations what it would really mean to choose life.

This is a sad commentary. We are not the first Christians to struggle with the issue of wealth, but it would be hard to find an earlier generation whose struggle has borne so little fruit. At least in North America and Europe, the church has largely come to terms with a society that is madly in the service of wealth. It hopes rather to profit from the increased wealth of the society than to call society to the choice of life.

It is important that we understand something of the history that has brought us to this point of ignoring such central parts of Jesus' message. In a very schematic way, I would like to share with you some comments on that history.

In the early church Jesus' critique of wealth was taken very seriously. Some people did in fact give away their possessions to become part of the Jesus' movement. But the teaching in unqualified form posed an obstacle for people of means. Must a landowner sell his land and a merchant give up his business in order to enter the church? The church wanted to include such people among its members. To require all to be stripped of their possessions might work if Christians expected the end of the world soon but not if the church must settle down to live in society. Nevertheless, the church could not give up its critique of wealth and its dangers.

Two solutions were devised. Some Christians gave up all their possessions and lived as hermits, and later as monks. Others cared for their needs, so that they could direct all their thoughts to God and not be distracted by the complexities of worldly life. This was widely considered the superior form of Christianity.

But for others who had families and social responsibilities that they could not or would not abandon, the teaching on wealth changed. The church did not compromise its opposition to the service of wealth. But it was not, the church decided, the sheer possession of wealth that was spiritually destructive. It was the attitude toward that wealth. If one accepted wealth in a spirit of stewardship, without attachment, its possession could fit into a Christian life. The question was what and whom one served, not the status in society in which one engaged in that service.

Some believe this was an unfortunate compromise of the radical teaching of Jesus. However, I suspect that most of us would have supported that move. Wealth exists. There is no advantage for all of it to be controlled by those who are not Christian. Certainly there is danger that we will be corrupted by its possession. But surely it is also possible to use wealth in the support of life. Learning how to do that may be more important than having the opportunity to devote oneself wholly to less mundane matters.

The Reformers rejected the first option altogether. They were convinced that all Christians should be in the same boat, that all should learn to serve God while immersed in the world. Martin Luther handled significant sums of money, but he did not accumulate it. John Wesley taught that we should earn all we can and save all we can. But he accompanied this positive teaching about how we deal with money by the third admonition. We should give all we can. In his intention, and in his personal practice this precluded amassing funds. Like Luther he handled considerable sums but died with no accumulation.

The followers of Luther and Wesley and other Reformers, however, did not take the third principle quite as seriously as the first two. Some accumulated money. Wesley was personally distressed that many of his converts became comparatively wealthy. He feared that with the new interest in handling and increasing their capital, they would be divided between the service of God and the service of wealth. He thought this would destroy the spirit of early Methodism. One can argue that he was right.

The greatest change, however, came about through another development in the eighteenth century. Prior to that time most ethical teaching assumed that the amount of wealth available in a community was more or less fixed. It could be increased as population grew, providing more labor. But then it must be shared among more people. This meant that the increased wealth of one person was at the expense of fewer possessions for others.

In such a society, greed was unequivocally wrong. It was the aim to secure more for oneself at the expense of others. That does not mean that it was rare, but it does mean that those who made themselves wealthy were not admired. Most admired were those who voluntarily adopted a life of poverty.

We should also recognize that what is socially approved and admired does affect the choices of many people. Denouncing greed as a sin did not eliminate it. But it is safe to say that it reduced its role in society.

What was discovered in the eighteenth century was that there was a way to increase the wealth available to the society. This was to make workers more productive, that is, to increase their hourly production. Two methods were employed. The first was simply organizing their labor so that each performed a repetitive task, with others performing the other needed tasks. Instead of individual artisans producing shoes and hats, workers could be placed on an assembly line. The same number of hours of labor resulted in far more shoes and hats.

The second method was to substitute fossil energy for human labor. Machines powered by coal could now do much of the work that had previously been done by human beings. Human beings could manage these machines, and thereby produce far more in a given period of time.

Christian opposition to greed and wealth had never been based on the view that meeting human needs was undesirable. Quite the contrary, the creation was good and to be used by humans. The discovery that more human needs could be met was good news for Christians.

But the price of that gain was high indeed. In addition to justifying greed, industrialization is dehumanizing to its employees, and it alienates society from the natural world. Let's look at the first two negatives before returning to the problem of greed.

When artisans make useful objects, they are personally involved in every stage of their work. What they do involves a measure of creativity. They can take pride in what they produce. Today many enjoy craftsmanship as a hobby that is humanly fulfilling.

The assembly line changes all that. Each worker performs one routine and boring operation. There is no creativity possible. There can be no sense of pride in the product. In short, work ceases to be a calling through which one contributes ones skills to society and receives appropriate respect and reward. Instead, work becomes a chore performed

Out of the necessity to earn a livelihood.

Industrialization also alienated people from the natural world. Previously, the great majority of people had lived on farms or in villages closely related to farming. The soil and the plants that grow in it along with the seasons and the weather were the stuff of continual urgent preoccupation. When land was eroded or poisoned, those who lived there were immediately, painfully aware. When land was carefully tended and improved, prosperity followed. That human life is intricately involved with nature was not an abstract idea to be considered but an evident fact daily experienced.

Industrial work, on the other hand, put an end to this close relationship for those who worked in factories and for many others besides. In the factory bits of the natural world appear as resources for industrial use. As cities grow, more and more people know nature only in tiny yards and gardens, which are luxuries on which their lives do not depend. Growing a few plants is an option for those who happen to enjoy them. Changes in weather are of importance for how we dress and how high our utility bills will be. In fact, our destiny is still inseparable from the fate of the Earth, but we know this only abstractly.

The nature of human morality was changed. The best way to make the needed changes was for ambitious people to act in those ways that would increase their personal wealth. The motivation for building a factory was to become richer. The greed, heretofore universally condemned, turned out to be a valuable motivation. It was renamed "rational self-interest", and society soon came to hold it in high esteem.

This change was a source of great confusion in the church. One response was relatively clear. In this view society as a whole, rather than individual entrepreneurs, should create the industries that would increase the goods available to all. There would then be no need to affirm greed as a motive.

It was believed by socialists that this procedure would also solve the problem of distribution. Although industrialization increased the total wealth, it increased the wealth of entrepreneurs and capitalists far more than that of workers. It changed the class structure of society from its earlier feudal form, but it did not eliminate that structure. If society as a whole owned the factories, it could distribute goods to all in a more equitable fashion.

Despite the theological appeal of socialism, it did not carry the day in Christian thought. Probably the main reason was the influence in the church of those who profited from the system of private ownership. But there was also doubt that the task could be well handled by government and fear of concentrating too much power in the hands of government. We now know that the concerns of those who opposed a thoroughgoing socialism had good foundations.

The primary teaching of the church on economic matters turned to alleviating the lot of the poor through charity and legislation. If the market were simply left to itself, each factory owner would pay employees as little as possible and work them as hard as possible with little concern for their well being. Market principles in themselves provide no basis for doing otherwise, and if one's competitors are able to pay less and so reduce the price to consumers, one is forced to adopt the policies that make that possible. In fact this led to employing quite small children and to extremely long hours of labor in quite terrible conditions. The early years of the industrial revolution in England contain many horror stories.

The church helped to change this by getting the government to restrict child labor and reduce hours of work for all, and by insisting on improved working conditions. When these requirements are placed on all producers, they harm none of them. This is the needed "level playing field."

But the church became largely silent on the subject of the rational self-interest that society now adopted as its norm. It still encouraged generosity, but not giving away everything that one did not need. It ceased to oppose the accumulation of capital. In general it abandoned the effort to speak on economic issues, leaving that to professional economists who were committed to rational self-interest. The church ceased to explain the meaning of the choice to serve God and life instead of wealth and death.

Myra House gives us a vivid example of what that choice can mean. Noone supposes that we should all try to create Myra Houses. But its establishment illustrates in a concrete way what it means to order our lives to life rather than to wealth. It is a costly decision by the standards of a society oriented to wealth. Many can hardly understand it.

The purpose of Myra House, of course, is not just to show what can happen when a Christian family decides to reorient its life to life. It offers us a brief glimpse of a style of life that supports life. It is enlivening for us as individuals. It shows us how to reduce the pressure we put on natural resources and sinks. And it gives some clues to that other way of organizing society that would follow from a broader choice of life.

Myra House brings us closer to the natural life from which we have been separated by urban industrial civilization. A retreat here is also an experience of working in the land. We are reminded of our interdependence with soil and the vegetation it makes possible. We reconnect with our own roots.

Myra House does all this in a very Christian way. We are not confronted here with a new set of laws. To observe and participate in life in Myra House is to be drawn to new possibilities. We can see the attractiveness of the way of life. We are pulled by the beauty of the consequences of the choice of life not driven by the threat of the consequences of choosing death. We are enlivened rather than being killed by the struggle with guilt.

To speak of religious pluralism is often simply to state the obvious. There is a plurality of religious traditions. Usually it means something more, that is, that we should be appreciative and respectful toward all of them instead of supposing that one is true and good and the others false and evil. In this sense, I am strongly committed to religious pluralism.

But some of those who have defined "pluralism" have given to it a further definition. For them, to be a religious pluralist is to assert that the various religious traditions are more or less equally effective means of arriving at a common end or meeting a common need. It is religious pluralism in this sense that I oppose. In fact, I believe, this form of pluralism is not sufficiently pluralistic. I disagree with some of its assumptions.

Probably the most basic assumption underlying this form of pluralism is that there is an essence of religion. This essence is thought to be both a common characteristic of all `religions' and their central or normative feature. Hence, once it is decided that Buddhism, Confucianism, or Christianity is a religion, one knows what it is all about and how it is to be evaluated.

I disagree with this essentialist approach. I do believe there is a family of traits or characteristics that guides the use of the term `religion' for most people. But the term is used even when only some, not all, the traits are present. For example, most people in the sphere of dominance of the Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, think of worship of a Supreme Being or deity as a religious trait. Yet when they find this absent in most Buddhist traditions, they do not automatically deny that Buddhism is `a religion.' They notice that it is permeated by a spirit of deep reverence or piety, that it aims to transform the quality and character of experience in a direction that appears saintly, that it manifests itself in such institutions as temples and monasteries in which there are ritual observances, and so forth. The overlap of characteristics suffices for most people, so that Buddhism is almost always included among the world's religions.

If one turns to Confucianism one finds a different set of overlaps with Abrahamic assumptions about religion and a different set of discrepancies. By a certain stretch of terms one can find in it a worship of a Supreme Being, but the function this plays is far less central than in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There is great concern for the right ordering of human behavior, but much less interest in transforming the quality and character of experience. So is Confucianism a religion? This question divided Jesuits and their opponents in the seventeenth century, and the vacillation by Rome prevented what might otherwise have been the conversion of the Chinese court to Catholicism.

In the twentieth century, the more acute issue is whether Communism is a religion. Theists notice at once the denial of God, but such denial does not exclude Buddhism. They notice also the evangelistic fervor, the selfless devotion evoked, the totalistic claims, the interest in the transformation of the human being, the confidence that a new age is coming. And in all this they see religious characteristics. One might judge that Communism actually resembles Christianity, at least in its Protestant form, more closely than does Buddhism, yet the features it omits or rejects seem to be the most `religious' aspects of Christianity. A popular solution is to call Communism a `quasi-religion,' whatever that may mean.

It would be possible to draw up a long list of characteristics that one person or another associates with the word `religion.' A list drawn up by a Buddhist would be likely to overlap with, but differ from, a list drawn up by a Muslim. Does that mean that one list would be more accurate than the other? That would imply that there is some objective reality with which the lists more or less correspond. But there is no Platonic idea `Religion' to which the use of the term ought to conform. The term means what it has come to mean through use in varied contexts. Users should be at some pains to clarify their meaning. But arguments as to what `religion' truly is are pointless. There is no such thing as `religion.' There are only traditions, movements, communities, people, beliefs, and practices that have features that are associated by many people with what they mean by `religion.'

One meaning of `religion' derived from its Latin root deserves special attention here. `Religion' can mean a binding together; it can be thought of as a way of ordering the whole of life. All the great traditions are, or can be, religions in this sense. So is Communism. All are, or can be, ways of being in the world. In most instances they designate themselves, or are readily designated, as Ways. If this were all that were meant by calling them religions, I would have no objection to designating them as such. But we would need to recognize that this use does not capture all the meanings of `religion' that are important to people. In fact we do not cease thinking of these traditions as religious when they fail to function as the overarching ways of life for people who identify themselves with them. In the case of Buddhism in China, most people who identified themselves as Buddhists also identified themselves as Confucianists. Neither constituted an inclusive way of being in the world. For many people, being Chinese provided the comprehensive unity of meaning, the basic way of being. In this context they could adopt Buddhism for certain purposes and Confucianism for others. When `religion' is taken to mean the most foundational way of being in the world, then being Chinese is the religion of most of the Chinese people. This meaning of `religion' needs to be kept in mind along with others, but in most discourse it functions more as one of the characteristics that may or may not be present than as the decisive basis of use of the term.

If one views the situation in this way, as I do, the question can still arise as to whether all the great traditions are of roughly equal value and validity. But the requisite approach to an answer to this question is then much more complex than it is for those who assume that all these traditions have a common essence or purpose just because they are religions. The issue, in my view, is not whether they all accomplish the same goal equally well -- however the goal may be defined. It is first of all whether their diverse goals are equally well realized.

Consider the case of Buddhism and Confucianism in China. How can we judge their relative value and validity? They coexisted there through many centuries, not primarily as alternate routes to the same goal, but as complementary. In crude oversimplification, Confucianism took care of public affairs, while Buddhism dealt with the inner life. Perhaps one might go on to say that they were about equally successful in fulfilling their respective roles, but that statement would be hard to support and does not seem especially important.

Questions about the relative value of the great religious traditions can all be asked, and asked with less confusion, if the category `religion' is dropped. Both Buddhism and Confucianism are traditions that are correctly characterized in a variety of ways. By most, but not all definitions of `religious,' both can be characterized as religious. But to move from the fact that they are, among other things, `religious,' to calling them `religions' is misleading and has in fact misdirected most of the discussion.

I oppose this `pluralism' for the sake of affirming a much more fundamental pluralism. Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, among others, are religious traditions, but they are also many other things. Further, of the family of characteristics suggested by `religious,' they do not all embody the same ones.

What strikes the observer of this discussion is that, among those who assume that religion has an essence, there is no consensus as to what the essence may be. Even individual scholars often change their mind. The variation is still greater when the scholars represent diverse religious traditions. Yet among many of them the assumption that there is an essence continues unshaken in the midst of uncertainty as to what that essence is.

I see no a priori reason to assume that `religion' has an essence or that the great religious traditions are well understood as `religions,' that is, as traditions for which being religious is the central goal. I certainly see no empirical evidence in favor of this view. I see only scholarly habit and the power of language to mislead. I call for a pluralism that allows each religious tradition to define its own nature and purposes and the role of religious elements within it.

II

If we give up the notion of an essence of religion, there remain two modes of evaluation of individual religious traditions: internal and external. We will consider first the internal norms.

A religious tradition may claim to provide a way of life that leads to a just, peaceable, and stable social order. In that case, we can ask whether, when its precepts have been most faithfully followed, the result has been a just, peaceable, and stable social order. Or a religious tradition may claim to provide a way to attain personal serenity and compassion toward all. In that case, we can ask whether, when its precepts are most fully followed, the result has been personal serenity and compassion toward all.

These evaluations are not easy, but they can be made with some reasonable plausibility. On the other hand, when goals are stated in less factual ways, the evaluation becomes more difficult or even impossible. For example, if it is claimed that dramatic historical changes would occur if for one day all members of a community perfectly observed all the precepts, and if such perfect observance has never occurred and is highly unlikely ever to occur, evaluation cannot be empirical. Even more clearly, when the results of following the precepts are located in another world and another life, no evaluation is possible. Nevertheless, most religious traditions make some claims that are realistically examinable.

My own judgment is that no religious tradition would long survive if it failed to accomplish in the course of history and personal lives some measure of its goal. Hence, on the whole, religious traditions fare relatively well based on the norms to which they themselves are committed. Generally, by its own norms, each succeeds better than do any of the others. No doubt, some do better than others even measured by their own norms, and within all of them there are massive failures as well as successes

The second form of evaluation is external. These external judgments can be based on the norms of other religious traditions or of secular communities. Here, of course, chaos ensues. Each does well by some norms and badly by others. The more important question is whether any of these norms have validity outside the communities that are committed to them. Is there any way in which one or another norm can claim validity of a universal sort?

This is where the essentialist view is so handy, and it may be one reason why it is clung to with such persistence. If religion has an essence, and if embodying that essence well is the primary goal of every religious tradition, then it becomes objectively meaningful to evaluate all religions by this normative essence. Since I have rejected the essentialist approach, I have no ready access to any universal norm. It seems that pluralists of my stripe are condemned to a pluralism of norms such that each tradition is best by its own norm and there is no normative critique of norms. This is the doctrine of conceptual relativism. It seems to do justice to each tradition, but in fact it vitiates the claims of all, since all claim at least some elements of universality.

Are we forced to choose between an essentialist view of religion, on the one hand, and conceptual relativism, on the other? I think not. The actual course of dialogue does not support either theory. One enters dialogue both as a believer convinced of the claims of one religious tradition and as a human being open to the possibility that one has something to learn from representatives of another religious tradition.

Furthermore, this duality of attitudes is often united. In many instances, precisely as a believer one is open to learn from others, believing that the fullness of wisdom goes beyond what any tradition already possesses.

The belief that there is more to truth and wisdom than one's own tradition has thus far attained is the basis for overcoming the alternatives of essentialism and conceptual relativism. It entails belief that while one's own tradition has grasped important aspects of reality, reality in its entirety is always more. This means also that the ultimately true norm for life, and therefore also for religious traditions, lies beyond any extant formulation. As dialogue proceeds, glimpses of aspects of reality heretofore unnoticed are vouchsafed the participants. This is felt not as a threat to the religious traditions from which the participants come but as an opportunity for enrichment and even positive transformation.

The problem with conceptual relativism is not that it sees a circularity between beliefs and the norms by which they are judged. This is the human condition. The weakness is that it pictures this as a static, self-enclosed system, whereas the great religious traditions can be open and dynamic. This does not justify someone claiming to stand outside all the relative positions and to be able to establish a neutral, objective norm over all. But it does mean that normative thinking within each tradition can be expanded and extended through openness to the normative thinking of others. For example, in dialogue with Buddhists, Christians can come to appreciate the normative value of the realization of Emptiness, and can expand the way they have thought of the purpose and meaning of life. The norm by which they then judge both Christianity and Buddhism is thereby expanded. Similarly, in dialogue with Christians, Buddhists may come to appreciate the normative value of certain forms of historical consciousness, and the resultant norm by which they judge both Buddhism and Christianity is changed.

Of course, the enlarged norms of the Christians and the Buddhists that result from this dialogue are not universal and objective. When a Buddhist who has gained from dialogue with Christians enters dialogue with Hindus, quite different issues arise. If the dialogue is successful, there will be further expansions in the apprehensions of norms. But again, such expansion, however far it goes, does not detach itself from its historical conditions. It becomes more inclusive and more appropriate to use over a broader range. It does not become ultimate and absolute.

There is one relatively objective norm that can be abstracted from this process. It is relatively objective in that it follows from features that characterize all the traditions to the extent that they acknowledge the pluralistic situation in which all are plunged today. I will summarize the implications of this situation.

First, all the great religious traditions make some claim to the universal value of their particular insights and affirmations. This makes unacceptable a sheer conceptual relativism.

Second, most of the great religious traditions teach a certain humility with regard to human understanding of reality in its depth and fullness. Hence, they discourage the tendency, present in all, to identify ideas that are now possessed and controlled with final expression of all important truths.

Third, as the great religious traditions become more aware of one another, there is a tendency for some mutual appreciation to develop among them. They acknowledge that they learn something from mutual contact. They may claim that what they learn is to value neglected aspects of their own traditions, for in this way they can maintain the tendency to claim the perfection of their own sacred sources. But in fact the understanding that emerges is not the one that obtains when only their own tradition is studied. Some adherents are willing to acknowledge this.

Fourth, as they are in fact transformed by interaction, the norms by which they judge both themselves and others are enlarged. The universal relevance of their own insights is vindicated as other traditions acknowledge their value. The comprehensiveness and human adequacy of their traditions is enlarged as they assimilate the insights of others.

It is important to reemphasize that the points above are drawn from the actual experience of dialogue. They do not characterize those sections of each of the traditions that are unwilling to engage in dialogue. The pluralistic situation can lead to fundamentalist self-isolation in all the traditions. What I am seeking in this paper is a way of thinking about the situation appropriate for those who are committed to dialogue. Fortunately, there are many of these in all the traditions, and it is among them that new ways of understanding the relations among the traditions can arise.

The implication of this summary of what happens in dialogue, then, is that one norm that can be applied with relative objectivity to the great religious traditions has to do with their ability, in faithfulness to their heritage, to expand their understanding of reality and its normative implications. A tradition that cannot do this is torn between several unsatisfactory options in this pluralistic world. One option is to claim that despite all appearances, it already possesses the fullness of truth so that all who disagree or make different points are to that extent simply wrong. A second option is to accept its own relativization after the fashion of conceptual relativism, asserting that its message is truth for its believers but irrelevant to others. A third option is to detach itself from its own heritage in part, acknowledging that this heritage absolutizes itself in a way that is not acceptable in a pluralistic world, and then to operate at two levels -- one, of acceptance of the heritage, the other, of relativizing it. The distaste most persons who engage in dialogue feel for all three of these options is the basis for claiming relative objectivity for the proposed norm.

It may be that judged by this norm, all the great religious traditions are roughly equal. On the other hand, it may be that some are more favorably situated than others to benefit from the radically pluralistic situation in which we are now immersed. Certainly the readiness for dialogue and learning depends in all of the great religious traditions on the sub-traditions in which people stand. All traditions have fundamentalist sub-traditions that reject all new learning, insisting on the total adequacy and accuracy of what has been received from the past. Even participants in those other sub-traditions that are most ready and eager to take advantage of the new pluralistic situation are not equally open to everything. The traditional understanding they bring to bear has a great effect on what they can receive through interaction. There are profound differences in the way the several traditions prepare their participants to hear what others are really saying. Whether they do this equally well is a question to be discussed and examined rather than set aside out of false courtesy.

III

In the first section I expounded my view that there is a radical pluralism of religious traditions. In section II I argued that this view need not lead to relativism, because most traditions are open to being influenced by the truth and wisdom contained in others. In section III I will consider first some ways Chinese and Indian religious traditions open themselves to others. I will then describe how Abrahamic traditions approach this matter and argue for the peculiar capacity of Christianity to become increasingly inclusive in its understanding.

In the previous sections I noted how in China different religious traditions could function in a complementary fashion, in a context that was determined by a more inclusive horizon, that of being Chinese. This is one strategy for dealing with religious pluralism. Being Chinese opens one to learning whatever can be incorporated into that culture and way of being in the world. Confucianism springs out of that culture, and the fit is excellent. Buddhism was imported and adjusted itself so that it too could play a large role, but one subordinate to the Chinese ethos. Of course, its presence also changed that ethos. The Abrahamic faiths have been more difficult to assimilate into a fundamentally Chinese ethos.

The method of the Indian religious traditions is somewhat different. Hinduism means little more than the traditional religions of the Indian people, but it does suggest a way of allowing this multiplicity of faiths and attitudes to coexist. They are all viewed as ways in which people respond to the ultimate reality or Brahman. Hindus in general celebrate the diversity of approaches to Brahman, with some sub-traditions worshipping various deities taken to be manifestations of Brahman and others seeking to realize oneness with Brahman through strenuous spiritual disciplines. The image of many paths up the same mountain expresses the way in which Hindus of many sub-traditions have been able to accept and affirm one another with a remarkable degree of tolerance. As Hindus have met other religious traditions, they have typically been prepared to extend this same accepting attitude toward them. They are willing to listen and learn about other paths up the mountain.

Hindus such as Radhakrishnan, who have given thought to the world religions, are convinced that Hinduism already has the embracing vision that is needed for all the religions to live with one another and to learn from one another. Unfortunately, this approach has not worked well in relation to the Abrahamic faiths. Hindus are prepared to accept these if they will understand themselves as paths up the mountain already well known to Hindus. But on the whole, representatives of the Abrahamic faiths cannot understand themselves in this way. They often express their refusal in exclusivistic terms, arguing that they alone have the way of salvation, so that Hinduism is a false guide. But even those representatives of Islam and Christianity who are not so arrogantly exclusivist resist being viewed as offering only another way to the goal already fully realized by the profoundest Hindu saints and mystics. This seems to entail viewing the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as only one among many manifestations of that one absolute reality known so much more fully and adequately by Hindus.

Buddhists can also think of many paths up the same mountain, but another image may be more illuminating for them. Buddhism has only one commitment, namely, to enlightenment. Enlightenment may occur in various traditions in various ways. One need not be a Buddhist in order to be enlightened. Indeed, enlightenment liberates one from all identification with historical or cultural movements. These are all superficial. Masao Abe characterizes the enlightened perspective as the "positionless position."(1) From this perspective one can be open to whatever truth and wisdom is discoverable in any tradition. Thus there is complete openness to learning through dialogue with others. At every level except the ultimate level there is willingness to change or be transformed through the dialogue. But all of this must be for the sake of an enlightenment that relativizes everything else.

It is because the positionless position relativizes Buddhism itself that the Buddhist can be so free. The question is whether others can accept that relativization of their insights and wisdom. In the case of the Abrahamic faiths, this does not seem to be possible. They can accept relativization of every specific formulation. But their faith in God cannot be subordinated to something else without abandoning the heritage.

My point in the above is simply to note a limitation in the forms of openness that characterize the Indian religious traditions. They can be open to a great deal, but it does not seem they can be open to the ultimate claims of the Abrahamic traditions about faith in God. The question is now whether the openness that is possible from the side of the Abrahamic faiths can deal any better with the wisdom of India.

If we quickly scan the history of these faiths, the answer seems to be that their record is much worse than that of the Indian traditions. Belief in one God and in that God's unique revelation has led these traditions to exclusivism and intolerance. Of the three, Judaism has been most willing to live and let live, but its core teaching is not inherently so tolerant. The tolerance comes from its preoccupation with the people of Israel, such that the destiny of others is of less concern. When, as in both Christianity and Islam, the core teaching about a God who is revealed in specific historical ways and calls for obedience to that revelation is separated from the ethnocentric features of Judaism, the zeal to bring the message to all has led both to heroic self-sacrifice and to brutal intolerance.

Yet there are features of this belief in God that have also led to openness to learning from others. It is generally believed that the God who is revealed in quite specific ways has also been present and active in the world always and everywhere. The believer can expect to see some signs of that activity throughout creation and especially among human beings. When members of the Abrahamic faiths have encountered what seemed good and true in other traditions, they have typically held that this, too, was the work of God. For example, all three traditions borrowed extensively from Greek philosophy. Especially in the case of Christianity and Islam, this borrowing involved, for good and ill, a profound transformation. In the case of Christianity, it can be argued that its ultimate victory over Neoplatonism for the commitment of the intelligentsia of the late Roman Empire was due to its ability to assimilate the wisdom of Neoplatonism, while the Neoplatonic philosophers were not equally able to assimilate the wisdom of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

One way of viewing the Christian advantage in this case is that Christians believed in a God who acted in history. For this reason they could believe that new developments expressed God's intention and purpose. It is more difficult to give religious meaning to current events when the ultimate is conceived as related in one and the same unchanging way with all events in the world. Then the truth is static and the way of coming to that truth is not through the changing course of events but through pure thought or religious experience.

The openness to being led into new truth in the course of events is accentuated in the Abrahamic traditions, and especially in Christianity, by the focus on the future. Christians know that they now see dimly, that the fullness of light is yet to come. The truth is what will be known, not what is already grasped. Of course, even in Christianity this future-orientation is always in tension with affirmations about the fullness of the revelation that is already given in Jesus Christ. Centering on Jesus or on Christ often functions as a form of closure, as an insistence that nothing more needs to be learned. Christians at times have wanted to purify the church from everything that was assimilated from the Greeks and Romans so as to be more purely Biblical. The deeper question is whether centering ourselves on Jesus or on Christ truly has this effect of closure, or whether this is itself a misunderstanding of the meaning of Christocentrism.

It is my conviction that Christocentrism provides the deepest and fullest reason for openness to others. I will give a brief indication of my reasons for believing this. It is hard to see how one can be truly centered on the historical Jesus if one does not share his hope for the coming Realm of God. This does not mean that we ignore everything about Jesus except for his future orientation. In his own ministry the coming Realm is already manifest. Hence we know something of the character of the future for which we hope, and we order our lives now to realize that character as best we can. That character is, above all, love, not only of those like ourselves, but of those we are prone to count as opponents as well. Surely that includes love of adherents of other religious traditions, and surely, also, that love expresses itself both in sharing the good news with which we are entrusted and in sensitive listening to what they have to say.

If we shift our focus to Christ, understood as the divine reality as incarnate, foremost in Jesus, but also in some measure in the church and the world, then the focus on the actual course of historical events and on the presence of Christ in those events, seems necessary. The question is, then, what is Christ doing in the world today? It is not hard to think of that work as reminding us of our finitude and breaking our tendency to think that our own opinions are final and adequate. It is easy to think of that work as calling us to listen to the truth and wisdom of others. Many Christians certainly feel more faithful when they listen in love and respect to what others have to say than when they insist only on restating the ideas that they bring from the past. To learn from others whatever truth they have to offer and to integrate that with the insights and wisdom we have learned from our Christian heritage appears to be faithful to Christ.

The test is whether in fact one can integrate the wisdom of alien traditions into one's Christian vision. This is not easy and there is no simple recipe. St. Augustine's Neoplatonic Christianity was a major intellectual achievement that required personal genius and disciplined work. To do equally well today in relationship to Hindu and Buddhist wisdom will take equal daring and sustained effort. My point is not that it is easy. It is only that it is faithful to Christ and has precedents in our history. I have attempted myself to make some contributions to describing what a Christianity deeply informed by Buddhism may be like. Many others are working on this project. I am convinced that it is a task whose time has come and that Christian faith offers us unique motivation and unique resources for the task.

IV

So am I affirming Christian uniqueness? Certainly and emphatically so! But I am affirming the uniqueness also of Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. With the assumption of radical pluralism, nothing else is possible. Further, the uniqueness of each includes a unique superiority, namely, the ability to achieve what, by its own historic norms, is most important.

The question is whether there are any norms that transcend this diversity, norms that are appropriately applied to all. I have argued that the contemporary situation of pluralism does generate one such norm for those who are committed to dialogue --one that in this situation has relative objectivity. This is the ability of a tradition in faithfulness to its past to be enriched and transformed in its interaction with the other traditions.

I have qualified my claim about this norm by saying that it is relevant only to those who are committed to dialogue. But I have implied that interest in dialogue is characteristic of important segments of all the great religious traditions today. Indeed, it is my view that the dynamic sub-traditions in the religious world today are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a stance of indifference toward the presence of other religious traditions or even one of mere opposition. Hence I find it easy to move from a norm relevant to those involved in dialogue to one with broad implications for the religious world today.

I may be claiming too much. Some traditions may understand their primary task to be maintaining the separateness of their people from others or keeping their inherited wisdom intact and unaffected. For them the ability to be enriched and transformed is not a norm at all. It is only insofar as a tradition claims universal relevance that its exclusion of the insights of others is problematic in terms of its own norms. Of course the claim for universal validity can continue to be made while ignoring the similar claims of others. But in this form it remains a mere claim. To demonstrate the validity of the claim requires that the claims of others also be understood and the relation among them explained. The ability, in faithfulness to one's heritage, to display the universal relevance of the wisdom of all traditions in a coherent way has a certain relative advantage once the aim at universal relevance is thought through in a pluralistic context.

The argument of the previous section is that Christianity is well equipped to move forward to the fuller universality I believe to be desirable. I have not said enough to establish that no other tradition is equally well equipped for this task. Negative argumentation of this sort is an ungracious work. I hope that other traditions will compete vigorously with Christianity. Whereas much past competition among the traditions has been mutually destructive, competition in learning from one another and being transformed by what is learned will prove constructive. I hope that the Christian advantage in this competition is less that I have supposed.

I have avoided in the foregoing the issue of conflicting truth claims. This is because I do not find this the most productive approach. Of course, there are such conflicts. There are conflicting views of the natural world, of human nature, and of God. It is not possible that everything that has been said on these topics can correspond with reality, and for this reason many thinkers regard the sorting out of these claims and adjudication among them as crucial for religious thought.

My view is that none of the central claims made by any of the traditions are likely to be literally and exactly correct. Indeed, in many traditions there is an internal emphasis on the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of grasping the truth and expressing it in language. Laying out the conflicting doctrines and developing arguments for and against each is a questionable preoccupation. Instead, it is best to listen to the deep, even ultimate, concerns that are being expressed in these diverse statements. My goal is to transform contradictory statements into different but noncontradictory ones. My assumption is that what is positively intended by those who have lived, thought, and felt deeply is likely to be true, whereas their formulations are likely to exclude other truths that should not be excluded.

I will illustrate what I mean by the clearly contradictory statements: `God exists.' and `No God exists.' If we approach these statements with the assumption that the words `God' and `exists' have clear and exact meanings that are identical in the two statements, we have no choice but to say that one of them is wrong. But surely we are past this point in our reflections about religious discourse. We have to ask who is speaking and what concerns are being expressed. When a Buddhist says that no God exists, the main point is that there is nothing in reality to which one should be attached. When a Christian says that God exists, the meaning may be that there is that in reality that is worthy of trust and worship. If those translations are correct, at least in a particular instance, then it is not impossible that both be correct. Of course, the Buddhist is likely to believe that the Christian is wrong, and the Christian is likely to see no problem with attachment to God. There are then real disagreements between them. But the Buddhist could in principle acknowledge the reality of something worthy of trust and worship without abandoning the central insight that attachment blocks the way to enlightenment. And the Christian could come to see that real trust is not attachment in the Buddhist sense. Both would thereby have learned what is most important to the other without abandoning their central concerns.

Of course, there are many grossly erroneous statements that have been affirmed with great seriousness by adherents of the great religious traditions. It is not true that the world is flat. There is no point in seeking some deeper meaning behind such statements, since we know how they arose from a literalistic reading of certain passages of scripture. There are similar ideas in all the traditions. There are also far more damaging ideas, such as misogynist ones, in most of the religious traditions. These, too, should be condemned as false. But my assumption is that alongside all the errors and distortions that can be found in all our traditions there are insights arising from profound thought and experience that are diverse modes of apprehending diverse aspects of the totality of reality. They are true, and their truth can become more apparent and better formulated as they are positively related to one another.

Whether Christian thinkers as a whole will open themselves to learning from others in this way remains to be seen. Faith in Jesus Christ is often, perhaps usually, expressed in idolatrous forms, such that the relative is absolutized, the partial is treated as a whole. For the sake of Jesus Christ, people make their own beliefs normative for all and close themselves to criticism and new insight. In the name of Jesus Christ people have gone to war with the `infidel', slaughtered Jews, and tortured Christians whose opinions differed. There is no assurance that all this is at an end. Christians know that the power of sin is often peculiarly manifest in the expression of lofty ideals and commitments.

My claim is simply that all this is not truly faithful to Jesus Christ, and that the true meaning of faith has expressed itself, imperfectly but authentically, in other features of our past history. I believe it is expressing itself today in movements of liberation and also in enthusiastic efforts to encounter other religious traditions at a deep level. Roman Catholics have appropriated many of the meditational methods of the East, and the experience generated by these methods cannot but be transforming. Both Catholics and Protestants are struggling with new ideas and ways of thinking. The Christianity that emerges will be different from anything we have known before, but that does not mean that it will be less Christian. On the contrary, it will be one more step toward that fullness that is represented by the coming of the Realm of God.

All traditions are unique. The role of each in history has been unique for good and ill. Each responds uniquely to our pluralistic situation. The potential of each for becoming more inclusive is unique. Let us celebrate the uniqueness of all of our religious traditions.