Beyond philosophy.

Please let me take gentle issue with the last paragraph of David Toolan's review of Beyond Darkness [January 29], Shirley Du Boulay's recent biography of Bede Griffiths, and especially with the sentences suggesting that Griffiths's understanding of pluralism "merely exchanges the imperialism of Western metaphysics for an imperialism of Eastern metaphysics." In actual fact, Griffiths tries to liberate the religious mind from subservience to any particular system of philosophy by showing, first of all, that the Christ event is one thing and the philosophical terms (conceptual structures) in which we interpret it are quite another. Semitic phenomenon, Greek hermeneutics: historically linked but essentially distinct and potentially separable.

The Greek connection may have been the best available arrangement for the cultures of the Mediterranean world in the early centuries of Christian history, and it turned out to be remarkably adaptable to the peoples of northern Europe and Asia. But clinging to it in our day seems to amount to declaring that Christianity renounces its proper ambition to become a truly universal religion. Not all cultures in today's world see reality in terms of Greek thought forms. Nor should they be required to if they are genuinely attracted to authentic (but not necessarily Greek) Christianity.

John Blake More

Cancun, Mexico

The author replies:

I think I entirely agree with John Blake More that it is a grave error to think that the only proper framework for interpreting the gospel of Jesus Christ is classic Greek philosophy. That would be the "Western imperialism" I was talking about. And hence I can only praise Bede Griffiths's effort to interpret Christianity using the categories of Advaita Vedanta. My point, though, was that this effort was not entirely successful-because, in my judgment, it effaced some essential elements of the biblical tradition (for example, it's prophetic dimension).

David Toolan