Wilfred Cantwell Smith – författare

A distinguished historian of religion explores the contemporary culture of the Western world.As an historian of religion, Wilfred Cantwell Smith has investigated the way religious traditions define themselves, the nature of faith over the centuries, and the scriptures that have offered anticipations of eternity. In this book he turns to modern culture and finds that its past has been defined, not only by traditions that are normally called religious, but also by the disciplined quest for Truth. Philosophia, as this tradition may be called, draws its heritage from Greece, and has inspired scholarship throughout the ages.However, the ideal of objectivity, which has come to define the standard for this tradition, has had unfortunate results. The human encounter with transcendence, which overwhelms all existence, has been considered as no more than a peculiarity of the human alone, to be categorized and separated from other aspects of life. The result is a dehumanized view of truth, which all too often evokes fundamentalist reactions.Smith concludes with a call to rediscover the dimension of transcendence. Objectivity means more than reducing the human to the calculable. To treat people as they are in themselves is to understand them as subjects, to treat all aspects of their existence as worthy of respect and study, and to grasp what it means to be captured by a reality that overwhelms the confines of our limited world.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith investigates and contemplates religious experience in a variety of different traditions. This book is for those who seek understanding and tolerance of others and serves to reaffirm one's own faith, or illuminate one's lack of it, by revealing how others find paths to God.

Is what, or whether, one believes the significant religious question?Although the religious communities differ in belief, how much do they really differ in faith?Do two people who assert a particular statement of belief necessarily share the same faith?Written by a highly respected scholar in the field of comparative religion, these issues are directly addressed in this investigation of the personal quality of faith, and its relationship to the concept of belief.