Ethics and the Future of Religion

Can religions supply an ethics that can unite rather than divide peoples? In ancient times, many people believed in super-human powers spatially beyond them, whether above or below them. They conceived of them in anthropomorphic terms, and developed symbols, rituals, and general ways of life to court their favor because they felt dependent upon these powers for certain essentials of daily living such as warmth, water, or good health. Some deities were believed to have personally intervened in human history, and took a human form to fight their enemies, provided humans with rules for living, or re-created the world after its destruction.As time passed, these claims became more comprehensive, finally universal, even Absolute, even as the process of questioning the claims, which is called “desacralization,” became more widespread. Many sensed that if their absolutized deity were dislodged by doubt, the world would flounder without an ethic. Some religions tried to defend their deity by emphasizing that it was really beyond any “attributes,” beyond human reason. It became the Ineffable, the Incommensurable, even the “Wholly-Other.” If it was thought to have become Incarnate, that had to be defended in a similar way. In order to solve the problem of the Absolute, W. Royce Clark analyzes the thought of four prominent Christian theologians and philosophers— Friedrich Schleiermacher, G.W.F. Hegel, Paul Tillich, and Robert P. Scharlemann—as the grounds for the basis of a possible universal ethic.

W. Royce Clark dares to ask whether, even today in an age of religious pluralism, a universal ethic is still possible, and if so, how? Written from a Western philosophical approach, he provides detailed surveys and critical assessments with a new focus to guide future scholarly studies. This text will prove to be especially rewarding for those working in the fields of religious ethics, the philosophy of religion, and all those who feel a new approach is needed to truly secure a shared culture of mutual trust.--David K. Goodin, McGill School of Religious Studies and the Institut de Theologie Orthodoxe de Montreal, Can religion supply a universal ethic that unites rather than divides people from one another? To this point in the history of the human race, the answer to that question has been negative, since each religion has insisted on its own Absolute universality, thereby alienating the rest of the species. We have seen the lethal fruit of religious Absolutism across the globe time and time again. But ours is a global community in which isolation is hardly a luxury. Is it possible, then, to imagine a universal religious sentiment that might, in turn, inspire a universal ethic? This is the most urgent question for our time, the most urgent question, in fact, that one might imagine, and the question that Clark explores in this remarkable book.--Richard T. Hughes, author of Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy the Stories that Give Us Meaning

W. Royce Clark is professor emeritus of Pepperdine University.