Religious Dialogue and Theology - Essay Example

According to John Hick, all religions worship the same God in relation to religious dialogue. He argues that neither Muslims nor Christians have a close relationship with God which is more special than others. Hick says that God is universally available to Christians, Muslims, and all other religions. All religions have different or varying faiths. All our traditions aim at salvation to save the human distorted life. He argues that human life is immersed in a false state of Maya, sorrowful and unsatisfactory. All religions aim at transforming human life from a state that is self-centered to one that is real. He also argues that to conceptualize the awareness of humanity including people enshrined in Hindu, Taoist, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions we need to broaden our thinking. John Hick’s drawback does not clearly point out the similarities as well as and differences between the Bible and other guide books like the Qur’an, hence the author doesn’t give any directions to Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and other religions on how to create dialogue.

Amir Hussein starts by saying that the role of pluralism is to reach an understanding and not simply tolerate others. Like John Hick, Amir Hussein is against some peoples’ views that salvation is only found in their faith.  He argues that God appears to everyone regardless of faith. It’s good to learn from other faiths, Christians and Muslims can learn several lessons from each other. The discussions that people make are what bring good relationships and understanding among them. Christians can learn about Muslims by finding Muslim friends and engaging in conversations at workplaces or other places of association. A Christian can engage in dialogue with a Muslim doctor, teacher, professor, or driver and learn from them. Muslims can also learn from Christians. Christianity developments have different meanings from Islamic ones. For instance, the emerging paradigm considers the bible as a way of human beings responding to God but not as God’s word. Amir also argues that we all focus on Jesus as our savior regardless of our religions. Both the bible and Qur’an have related verses of alliance and dialogue.

Religion is classified to be an organic whole, a form of a system, the habit of some individuals who have the tendency to isolate prevailing phenomena but instead draw conclusions concerning other religions in most cases end up making mistakes and false assumptions about those faiths. The unknown danger in such kind of phenomenological attempts is the room they create which identify or to some extent connect religious features that have evolved over a very long period of time to operate as one yet they are distinct. Religion is compared to a living body that has different parts but operates together, therefore, their teaching cannot be separated.

Individuals are advised to keep off from overgeneralizing as well as having extreme positions because it is very sensitive and dangerous because may result in a form of naïve formulations and positions that are so extreme. Much knowledge acquires from religion sometimes leads individuals vulnerable to negativity and the false impression which in some quarters are not worth discussing. But with the modern knowledge that is so fragmented, the chances are likely that another form of influence might crop up, this time a positive one. Therefore, with too much knowledge available on different religions, all have one thing that is similar.