The Concept of God, the Origin of the World, and the Image of the Human Person in the World Religions

Abstract

The contributions to this volume show unanimously, although in different ways, how inadequate it would be to talk in a sweeping way about the world religions, as if they were precisely-defined and homogeneous entities. The Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith once affirmed, in a rather provocative but accurate way, that “there are no such things as religions — on earth, or in heaven either.”¹ Hence, there is no such thing as the Christian concept of God, nor the Buddhist nor the Hindu image of the human person; and of course neither is there the Islamic nor the Jewish doctrine of the origin of the universe.

Cf. W. C. Smith, Questions of Religious Truth (London: Gollaniz, 1967), p. 66. For more detail, see also Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1962; 1991), pp. 119-53.