Abstract
Many doctrines of a religious community have to do with the nature of human beings and the world they live in. They deal not only with various regularities but also, and more so, with special happenings in the history of the world, and with special human beings such as the founder and the teachers of the community. Other doctrines say how human beings ought to conduct themselves in the community and in the world. Instead of saying that certain assertions are true, these doctrines say that certain courses of action are right. These are the community’s practical doctrines.
Parts of this paper are taken from William A. Christian, Sr., Doctrines of Religious Communities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). Copyright © by Yale University Press, 1987. Used by permission.
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Notes
‘A Fatwā of al-Ghazzālī against the Esoteric Sects’, in A Reader in Islam, ed. Arthur Jeffery (The Hague: Mouton, 1962).
A. K. Warder, in Indian Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1970) p. 150, translates Sanskrit nitārtha (Pali nitatha) as ‘having its meaning drawn out’ and Sanskrit neyārtha (Pali neyyattha) as ‘Having its meaning requiring to be drawn out’. The following page number in the text refers to this work.
Another translation of Nāgārjuna’s kārikās is given in Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning (Nashville: Abingdon, 1967).
See also Streng’s essay ‘The Significance of Pratītyasamutpāda for Understanding the Relationship between Sarhvṛti and Paramārthasatya in Nāgārjuna’, The Problem of Two Truths in Buddhism and Vedānta, ed. Mervyn Sprung (Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel, 1973), in which Streng retranslates a number of the kārikās.
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© 1993 The Claremont Graduate School
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Christian, W.A. (1993). Studying Doctrines of Religious Communities. 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_8
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