Religious Studies

I teach courses on world religions in universities in different parts of the world, and I always love it, and I know I will enjoy being with you these days very, very much. Oh, but a big question,...

First, I want to just say a word about my journey through life, because my life has been very involved in the world of religions. And so I'll be referring to my experience in that journey among the...

And now, thirdly, within the world of Islam. When we arrived at the Mogadishu airport, I think it took about 90 minutes to go through the immigration. Very noisy immigration. People shouting. And I...

And in the meantime, I was pastoring a church in Nairobi. I and my family, by that time we had four children, and as a family we were all involved in that, developing a fellowship of believers there...

In the United States, I very frequently go to mosques and meet with the Muslims in the mosque. I go with a group of Christian friends and we spend an evening discussing faith together and learning to...

As we think of persons living in China, or in Africa, or in Europe, or North and South America, or the islands of the sea, the six billion some people on earth today, there are three ultimate...

Now, the religions, however, bring different understandings, different answers to those questions. For example, let's take question number one, the meaning of life. Some years ago, I was taking a...

Now, let me ask this question. So what difference does Jesus make? What does Jesus say about these three questions? Let's take the first one, the meaning of life. Why am I here? What does God say...

We talked in the last session about the three ultimate questions, the great questions that everyone on earth asks. And we will come back to those questions again and again through this course. We...

There are many religions and there are many religions which each of which contributes in various ways answers to the important questions and answers to the ultimate questions. How do we sort out then...

In our last sessions we have been commenting very briefly on some of the beliefs and practices of some religions. We have referred to Buddhism briefly, a little bit about Hinduism, African...

Now, another approach, and by the way, as we go along, if you have questions, just jot them down, please, and bring them along to class tomorrow and we will seek to respond to your questions. I...

Transcipt Another approach is Universalism. Universalism says that all religions are basically the same. They all lead us in the same direction. What they will say is, this is the mountain peak...

The topic for this section is characteristics of the religions. The last session we talked about different approaches to the religions and now we look at characteristics of the religions. We can look...

One can think of the religions as ontocratic, or transcendent, or philosophical. So what does it mean for a faith system to be ontocratic? I use that word in a book I wrote one time, and a college...

So, our societies, our cultures are organized like a cultural onion, like an onion which represents culture with its different layers. At the center is the worldview, the answers to those ultimate...

When God makes his residence in the center of our culture, then transformation and change starts taking place in a life-giving way. Now there's where, of course, persons involved in missionary work...

In our last segment, we talked about the question of what happens when a person is living in a particular culture and he converts to the Christian faith. What happens? And we were saying that a...

Transcipt The worldview is communicated through narrative, through story, and we call this narrative that communicates the worldview meta-narrative, meta-narrative, meta-narrative. Meta means great....

One of the reasons that we study world religions is so that we can understand each other. That's one of the reasons I'm so happy about this book, which is a dialogue between myself and a Muslim. And...

Now, looking at the religions of the world from a Christian understanding, we find that there are signs of truth within all religions. The Christian believes that the gospel meta-narrative is true,...

Now, there's not only signs of truth within the religions, there's also deception. We also find falsehoods within all religions. And sometimes these deceptions can become very, very strong and very...

Now, I want to say one more word about the Christian faith being received within a culture and the transformations that take place within that culture as the Christian faith is received. Remember, we...

What is it about the Christian faith that is distinctive? If you speak with a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Confucianist, they will in all likelihood say there are things about the Christian faith that...

A third distinctive is creation. Now both Judaism and Islam would embrace the same understanding of creation as is true of the Christian faith, but creation. Some years ago a friend of mine was...

Yahweh, the righteous, just, and personal creator God who reveals himself to us and encounters us. Jewish theology also talks about that. Islam does not talk about God encountering us. Judaism does....

We'll continue looking at distinctives of the Christian faith, or we could say gifts of the Christian faith, that people observe as they see the function of the church in their communities and around...

Another distinctive is the Eschaton, meaning the second coming of Christ in the future. The whole church caught up in that expectation that the Jesus who came and lived among us back there 2,000...

We want now to look at various religious systems. First of all, we'll be looking at the religious systems of Klan and other religious systems such as Confucianism and so forth. And I think as we look...

Now, another feature is mana. Mana is a life force which is impersonal but powerful. I think of electricity as an analogy to this mana power. It permeates everything. It's sacred, must be handled...

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