By Dallas M. Roark, Ph.D.

If the discussion of a true religion is to be meaningful, it must have an objective starting point. In a sense it must parallel the scientific method. We cannot start with a given factor. The starting point must be one that all people can have and assume. It cannot be from the standpoint of a particular holy book. It is useless for the Christian to quote the Bible to a Muslim, or a Buddhist when one or both reject the Bible as authoritative. If we are to deal with the question of a true religion we have to begin before the books are used. We cannot start with the presupposition that one religion is better than another. Ravi Zacharias has said that it is more probable that all religions are false than that all religions are true. There are too many contradictions between religious systems. In the age of political correctness it seems the polite things to say that are religions are very similar and all have the same goal in mind. Only people who don't know what it is all about are inclined to say this.

Blaise Pascal, the French scientific and religious genius of the seventeenth century proposed a beginning point for discussing the issue of a true religion that may be common to all people.

Pascal attempted to put forth certain propositions, based in part on observation and in part on reason, which would help one to discover the true religion if it existed. Although Pascal never finished his proposed work, his fragmented thoughts (Pensées) have become one of the classics of world literature. Pascal's approach has a feature common to all men: each man may look, observe, and draw conclusions from where he is. It is really an inductive method.[1] Pascal maintains that for a religion to be true, it must give an adequate and satisfactory answer to the following criteria.

1. The true religion teaches the hiddenness of God: It is quite evident that if God is, he is not perceived by sensory perception. God is not an object that has been analyzed in the laboratory. If God exists, he exists in some hidden state or form; for we cannot see him. Concerning this, Pascal wrote, "God being thus hidden every religion which does not affirm that God is hidden is not true and every religion which does not give the reason of it, is not instructive."[2] The hiddenness of God, or to use the Latin phrase, Deus absconditus, is a basic beginning point for dialogue among religious traditions.

This is a common truth that all can agree on. The Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Jew, and whoever else, cannot see God. We can turn to the applications.

In applying this principle, one may begin with pantheistic religious systems. A popular definition of pantheism is that "all things or beings are modes, attributes, or appearances of one single reality of Being; hence nature and God are believed to be identical."[3]

Man as the observer cannot conclude from his examination of reality that nature and God are identical. To be a pantheist, one must bring something with his observation; namely, the faith that God and Nature are one. He will not get this out of nature alone. Pantheism applied to man's existence means that man is part of the divine essence. Man is a spark of divinity. But again, this is not something we know by observation, by sight, touch, or self-knowledge. It may be the grossest perversion of self-knowledge. All that the senses will approve are two alternatives: God is hidden, or God is not![4]

Pantheisms are dangerous because man is led to have an overly optimistic view concerning his own nature. Pantheism is caught up in trying to explain evil away or as an illusion, or false thinking, otherwise it is logically blamed on God because God is everything and evil would be part of his nature. Kraemer charges that the result of pantheism as in parts of Hinduism, is "that God or the divine never really exists."[5] The only thing that one really experiences is human consciousness which is regarded as a mirage at best. But paradoxically, those religions which identify man with God in some pantheistic form are those that stand in abhorrence of a true incarnation, in which God assumes human flesh.[6]

In a different way, this principle of Pascal is seen in the classical teachings of Buddha and Confucius as we know them. Neither of these founders was interested in discussing the existence of God. For all practical purposes, Gautama and Confucius were non-theists. In due time, not only were the founders apotheosized or elevated to godhood, but other gods were added. Gautama cannot be said to have received a "divine revelation." What happened was that he came to see a basic truth about the nature of suffering, the reason for it, and the possibility of escaping from it. It is an insight about the way to happiness if one views happiness as the escape from desire. However, it has been observed that even the desire to rid oneself of desire is desire.

Confucius taught nothing more than an ancient form of humanism. He declared that "absorption in the study of the supernatural is most harmful."[7] In true humanist style, Confucius "explained evil as human selfishness, delusion and incapability. When a pupil asked him about death and service of the spirits, he replied, "Till you have learnt to serve men, how can you serve the ghosts? ... Till you know about the living, how are you to know about the dead?"[8]

The irony is that both Gautama and Confucius, who had little to say about whether God exists or not, were declared to be gods by their later followers.

In the case of Islam, the deity is hidden but there is no explanation as to why he is hidden, which relates to the second part of Pascal's proposition. The Qur'an does not know of the holy God who has hidden himself because of man's sinfulness. Islam is a moralistic, rationalistic form of religion emphasizing the works of righteousness as a means of acceptability before God. Kraemer says that it is a "legalistic religion in which everything hangs upon the efforts of the believer and on whether he fulfills the requirements of the Divine Law. Thus it is, so to say, a religion permeated by a form - a somewhat inflected form - of self-deliverance, self-justification and self-sanctification with, in the end, no firm and settled basis for it."[9]

The hiddenness of God demands that a radically new concept of God be in evidence as the explanation. The concept of God must not be a construction of human thought, for man cannot ferret out that which is hidden as the hidden relates to God. If we are to know the reason that God is hidden it cannot be found out from the human mind. The answer must come from the hidden God. This can only be possible with the idea of revelation. Since Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Taoism do not claim revelation there is no word from the hidden God. In the case of Buddhism and Hinduism there is meditation, not revelation.

There is a place where the reason for God's hiddenness is revealed. Leviticus 11:45 "For I am the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that I could be your God. You must be holy for I am holy." Holiness required separation from the sins of the pagans and idolaters around them. It required personal moral purity in life and when the people of Israel continued to rebel against God, he withdrew from them and brought them to judgement for their sins. Jeremiah wrote, "Your own evil will punish you, and your turning from me will condemn you. You will learn how bitter and wrong it is to abandon me, the Lord your God." (2:19) "Your sins have kept these good things from you." (5:25) The summation of this is described in the book of Romans where God gave them up to go their own way to their own self-destruction.

The concept of Deus absconditus (or the hidden God) is closely related with the reason for its hiddenness. For Pascal the explanation of God's hiddenness is in man's sin. Where sin is not taken seriously, identification of man with the divine comes easy. Where sin is a grave, serious act against the divine, an ethical act and an ethical deviation, then it is not possible to identify man with God. The qualitative difference between God and man must be stressed. For the most part, the religious traditions of the world fail to take seriously the concept of sin[10]. Brunner declares, "The counterpart of unhistorical religion, religion without a mediator, is the failure to recognize the radical character of the guilt of sin. It is an attempt to create a relationship with God which takes no account of the fact of guilt."[11]

In the concept of the hidden God, one cannot conclude from observation that God is holy or that he is love. This is a message that has to come from God to man; it has not originated with man.

"The message that God is Love is something wholly new in the world. We perceive this if we try to apply the statement to the divinities of the various religions of the world: Wotan is Love, Zeus, Jupiter, Brahma, Ahura Mazda, Vishnu, Allah, is Love. All these combinations are wholly impossible. Even the God of Plato, who is the principle of all Good, is not Love. Plato would have met the statement 'God is Love' with a bewildered shake of the head."[12]

Brunner continues to say that it is possible to find a "gracious" God in some of the religions of the world, "but the fact that God is Love, and thus that love is the very essence of the Nature of God, is never explicitly said anywhere, and still less is it revealed in divine self-surrender. The God of the Bhakti religion, which is often regarded as parallel to the Christian Faith, is 'essentially - in his relation to the World - wholly uninterested.'"[13]

In conclusion to this section, we must affirm the hiddenness of God. If God is thus hidden, we must know the reason for it. This means that if we are to know of God and what he is like, this knowledge will not be found in any other way than for God to speak. Because God is hidden, we must reject those approaches to religious life that equate man with God. If God is hidden, the reason for his hiddenness will be given by God and will not be discoverable by man alone. A crucial question that enters here is: Has God spoken in a clear way concerning these things? This will be answered later.

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