Abstract
The idea of a ‘focal point’ has been used in various ways. In this paper I propose to work toward the goal of articulating a technical meaning for the concept. Briefly, focal points are the objects of aspiration in religions. By ‘object’ here is not meant ‘empirical object’. Religious artifacts may symbolically represent focal points, but the focal point is not identical with an empirical object (except in idolatry). Typically religious systems hold interest for philosophers of religion by virtue of the fact that each religious system has at least one focal point enmeshed in a conceptual web which is capable of sustaining critical philosophical attention and which may evoke imaginative sympathy.
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Notes
I. T. Ramsey says that the basis of a model’s usefulness is the ‘possibility of articulation’ that it opens up: ‘The great virtue of a model is that it enables us to be articulate when before we were tongue-tied.’ Ian T. Ramsey, Models and Mystery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964) pp. 12–13. What he says of models here also happens to be true of a component part of models, the focal point, i.e., that it is to be pragmatically justified.
Frank J. Hoffman, ‘Remarks on Blasphemy’ in The Scottish Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 4 (1983).
Hendrik M. Vroom, Religions and the Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989) p. 382.
Frank J. Hoffman, ‘Towards a Philosophy of Buddhist Religion’, in Asian Philosophy (Abingdon: University of Nottingham and Carfax Press) vol. 1 (1990).
Gordon Kaufman, An Essay on Theological Method (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1979) p. x. AAR Studies in Religion 11, originally published 1975.
Paul Tillich, Ultimate Concern (New York: Harper & Row, 1965) p. 7. Edited by D. MacKenzie Brown.
Richard Gombrich, ‘Reflections of an Indologist’, Religious Pluralism and Unbelief, ed. Ian Hamnett (London and New York: Routledge, 1990) p. 261.
(Ninian Smart, ‘Buddhism, Christianity, and the Critique of Ideology’, Religious Pluralism, ed. Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1984)
B. K. Matilal, Logical and Ethical Issues of Religious Belief (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1982) p. xii. Stephanos Nirmalendu Ghosh Lectures on Comparative Religion.
Luiś O. Gomez, ‘Contributions to Methodological Clarification of Interfaith Dialogue Among Buddhists and Christians’, The Cross and the Lotus, ed. G. W. Houston (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985) p. 130.
Richard Gombrich, Precept and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971) pp. 267–8.
(Richard F. Gombrich, Precept and Practice, Oxford University Press, 1971) pp. 267–8.
Gombrich says ‘in so far as hope is desire it is the supreme Buddhist vice!’ (p. 268) Could it be that ‘in so far as hope is desire’ is a vitiating proviso, and that the ‘hope’ of nirvāṇa is indeed a very different sort of thing than ‘desire’ or thirst (taṇha) in Buddhism? Winston King’s In the Hope of Nibbana (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1964) p. vi, pointed out before Gombrich’s 1971 work appeared a connection between hope and Buddhist ethics.
George Sansom, A History of Japan vol. 2 (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1963) p. 348 has it that Hideyoshi’s edict expelling Christian missionaries expresses concern over the ‘wholesale conversions’ of the peasantry precipitated by lords (daimyo) who themselves had converted to Christianity or by the great Christian landholders.
Jon Carter Covell, ‘Christian-Buddhist Relations Revealed in Art’, Buddhist-Christian Studies vol. 4 (1984) pp. 119–123.
For brief general accounts of ‘Maria-Kannon’ in Japanese see Yakichi Kataoka, Kakure Kirishitan (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1959) pp. 242–3
in reference works, Yoshio Kobayashi, ed., Kirisutokokyō Hyakka-jiten (Christian Encyclopedia), Tokyo, 1972
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© 1993 The Claremont Graduate School
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Hoffman, F.J. (1993). The Concept of Focal Point in Models for Inter-Religious Understanding. In: Inter-Religious Models and Criteria. Library of Philosophy and Religion Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23017-4_10
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