“Judaism is that rarest of phenomena: a particularist monotheism. The God of Abraham, according to the Hebrew bible, is the God of all humanity, but the faith of Abraham is not the faith of all humanity. So strange is this idea that it was not taken on by the two daughter monotheisms to which Judaism gave rise, Christianity and Islam. These faiths are both universalist monotheisms, holding that since there is only one God, there is only one true religion, one path to salvation, to which ideally all mankind will be converted.
To attempt to eliminate diversity (by conversion, missionary activity, or holy war) is to fail to understand the dignity of difference. Hence the great command in the Bible is ‘Love the stranger', the person who is not like yourself. Fundamentalism –the attempt to impose a single truth on a plural world- is religiously misconceived. The spiritual challenge is to recognise God’s image in one who is not in my image."
(from Jonathan Sacks 'A Jewish Perspective' contribution to "Making Globalisation Good", Oxford, Dunning, 2003)
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1 comment:
what an insight... this Sacks stuff is fantastic. Thanks for sharing!
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