Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Benaras (review)

118 SHOFAR Spring 1999 Vol. 17, No.3 dialogue integral to or generated by the tension between understanding and misunderstanding ? We can only hope for an expanded edition in which Friedman will address these issues and speak further of the relationship between the human image and touchstones of reality as mutually constitutive components of becoming uniquely human in a multicultural context. Kenneth Kramer Comparative Religious Studies Program San Jose State University Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Benaras, by Diana L. Eck. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. 259 pp. $15.00 (p). If one were to state in a single sentence what Eck's book is about, one could plausibly give any of the following answers: Encountering God (1) makes a case for the importance of interreligious dialogue, (2) argues for pluralism as the fairest way of viewing the religious traditions ofthe world, (3) reflects critically on the nature of Christian faith in a global context, (4) provides a thoughtful account of many of the author's rich interchanges with other religious traditions (particularly Hinduism), or (5) reformulates various key Christian doctrines in response to these interchanges. Eck makes valuable contributions in each ofthese projects because she understands dialogue in an admirably comprehensive sense as comprising not only theological discussion but ritual behavior, mystical encounter, and social action. Understood in this inclusive sense, dialogue is a form of communication which can be used not just by trained theologians to formulate doctrines, but by any person of faith who has the openness and imagination to cross over into the faith of others and participate with them in their encounters with the sacred. Eck is also successful in showing that in these encounters, believers from one tradition can selectively assimilate some of the special insights and resist some of the contrary claims of the other traditions without compromising their own faith commitments. Citing her experiences in India, Eck speaks convincingly of ways in which she has found in Hinduism powerful evidence of the God whom Christians know through Jesus Christ. Her treatment of Hinduism is both candid and judicious. Where she fmds insights that clarify her own faith, she gratefully acknowledges them; where she finds ideas that are incompatible with her own faith, she cites the differences and lets them pass. Another issue on which Eck's thinking is especially helpful is pluralism. She argues persuasively that pluralism, far from being a disastrous capitulation to relativism, enlarges and solidifies humanity's grasp of the truth about God. When particular Topical Book Reviews 119 Another issue on which Eck's thinking is especially helpful is pluralism. She argues persuasively that pluralism, far from being a disastrous capitulation to relativism, enlarges and solidifies humanity's grasp of the truth about God. When particular traditions accept the relativity of their perspectives and share their partial truths, they edge closer to absolute truth. Each tradition, anchored in the particularities of its viewpoint, remains forever relative; but linked with other traditions, it reaches beyond its particularity to a larger vision of the absolute. Eck argues cogently that pluralism is logically called for by the very nature of the Christian concept of God. A God who is ultimate and many-sided "cannot be limited or encircled by anyone tradition." A transcendent God is always infinitely more than any human individual or faith community can fully comprehend. Hence, each tradition has something valuable to contribute to humanity's comprehension of the sacred. Further, if God is the gracious self-communicating Parent whom Christians see in Jesus Christ, then God intends for Christians to share in the "glimpse of glory" God makes available in other faith perspectives. Eck'sthoughts on the Holy Spirit demonstrate another line of reasoning by which Christians might be led from the privacy of their own spiritual understanding towards others. If Christians reflect carefully on their traditional images of the Holy Spirit as Breath, Fire, and Dove, they might see that as Holy Spirit, God "blows where it will." Spirit cannot be confmed by anyone group or controlled by its rituals and sacraments. Holy Spirit is everywhere present and leads human spirits where it will. One direction it might move is to the boundaries where...