CULTIVATING CRITICAL RESPECT FOR ALL RELIGIONS AND SCRIPTURES

Abstract

It is a commonplace of contemporary thought that all religious thinking including our own is influenced by historical, social and cultural contexts, and so the era of exclusive claims is now passed and a new acceptance and cordiality between religions has dawned. That this new age of sweetness and light is itself conditioned by historical and social contexts is less impressed on our awareness. Yet we all know that the post-modern thinking of recent decades has had a marked emphasis on the relativity of all thinking and that this line of reflection has been seductive in academic circles, on and off, from the time of Plato’s Protagoras.