Introduction: Religions and Their God-Men

Abstract

Religion has always supplied mankind with a way of aspiring toward the most profound possibilities of life. Starting from a deeply felt division between human limitations and God’s omnipotence and impelled by the desire to annul that division, religion attempts to form a bond between God and mankind which will bring them closer to each other. People know that they are finite and mortal yet they yearn for transcendence and infinitude, to eat from the trees of life and knowledge and be like the gods. The Nietzschean lament can still be heard upon the lips of the divinely intoxicated, that ‘if there were gods, how could I bear not to be one!’² Perhaps Bertrand Russell said it best: ‘Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.’³

Almost no theologian of stature, however, has yet evinced a serious awareness of, let alone has delineated intellectually, the Christian perspective as seen within the context of, and from the perspective of, other faith: human faith at large, in its polymorphic continuities. Now I am contending that this needs doing; but also that a doing of it will prove dramatically rewarding, enriching — will bring the human mind (including the Christian mind) closer to the truth.¹

(Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Former Director, Centre for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University)