宗教实在观与宗教信仰——一个跨文化问题的新探讨

Religious View of Reality and Religious Faith:A Cross-cultural Study

在一个诸宗教信仰并存的世界上,有必要从跨文化的角度理解诸宗教的差异性。实在观是宗教信仰的核心,因而理解它是理解宗教信仰的关键。通过宗教素朴实在论、宗教批判实在论和宗教非实在论三个层面的阐述,可以比较全面而客观地梳理纷繁复杂的人类信仰现象。

In this multi-value, multi-language and multi-culture world, we need to view religions form a cross-cultural perspective. This paper attempts to comprehend human religious phenomena from their respective views of reality. So far, there are three views of reality in religions: naive realism, critical realism and non-realism. An understanding of religions on such basis serves to promote religious dialogue and world peace.According to naive realism, the ultimate Reality is objective, independent of human being; it can be understood, but only by mystics, yogis, prophets, saints, not by common people.The naive realists often turn witnesses and revelational truths into propositional truths. They tend to see his religious understanding as a series of truths beyond the limits of time and space. They believe themselves to be the holder of truths, full of self-confidence. When they communicate with other believers, they always ask others to abandon their wrong ideas, accepting the truths they have chosen. If one refuses to listen to them, they will condemn him/her a hellish life privately or publicly.Philosophically, naive realism is not conscious of all the limits of and influences from culture, history, personality and other factors, insisting that things perceived are totally objective. All religions are declined to declare that they have received divine revelation or realized the ultimate Reality itself, thus assert that they hold objective and absolute Truth.But it is problematic for many philosophers of religion and theologies who hold critical realism. John Hick, a critical realist, says that naive realism rightly affirms that there is an ultimate Reality, to which human being can response, but it fails to see the complexity of the whole process. He reminds us that we responses to the Reality always through language and category. He believes that human recognition of the Reality is not necessarily complete and objective. It is an ever-deepening process.The critical realist adopts an open attitude to one's own religious understanding. We can revise the doctrines of religion.The critical realist believes that we can seek a kind of cross-cultural truth through religious dialogue and comparison, which is believed to be able to afford an epistemology for religious harmony and world peace.Non-realism is a reinterpretation of theism and atheism. Theoretically, it traces its origins in the insights of Xenophon, Feuerbach, D. Z. Phillips, and Don Cupitt. The theory denies the objective existence of God, and in this sense is actually a kind of naturalism. Using the fruits of contemporary philosophy of language and historical analysis, it confirms that all categories have their histories and everything is relative. It clearly opposes naive realism, believing it's a form of consciousness because of human immaturity.Though religious non-realism denies the objectivity of the ultimate Reality, it nevertheless admits people's need to have such a reality as an object, not realistically, but nonrealistically. We can see it as a cultural symbol, the core category in our culture.The religious non-realist thinks that we can't find any cross-cultural truth based on realism of religion. Truth is only provisional consensus emerging in a certain circumstance.