A senior scholar of religion offers a cautiously optimistic look at the prospects for the spirit at the turn of the millennium. Read full book review >

Increasingly philosophy of religion has been shifting from simply rational investigation of Christian faith claims to probing the meaning and validity of the religious viewpoint generally, drawing on all the great religions as resources. Hutton Smith, formerly of MIT and now at Syracuse, has blazed this trail, and his new book is a significant step toward a comprehensive philosophy of comparative religions. More abstract and skeletal than his best-selling The Religions of Man, now a standard introduction to the subject, Forgotten Truth is perhaps more elegant in style and its message more compelling. It is Smith's growing conviction that for all their diversity the major religious traditions have a common conceptual spine which represents virtually "the human unanimity." The only civilization out of step with this primordial tradition is our own, the modern West, and that is because our "scientistic" outlook, based on the mistaken belief that science offers a world view, has reduced the mansion-of-being to the ground floor of what is material and measurable. The heart of the book articulates the traditional, religious view, which true science opens on and which naturally suits the full complement of human sensibilities: that there are distinct but interrelated levels of reality, that both the world and the self exist in a hierarchy of being whose apex is the infinite, the fullness for which all things yearn. Smith's title is apt, his reminder timely. Read full book review >

Because Dr. Huston Smith, Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, St. Louis, has such a high regard for man, he is able to give us a book about man's major religions that an intelligent reader may read, understand and be thankful for. Refusing to be begged down by the details which so easily and often throw the interested inquirer off the track, he moves rapidly into the meaning these religions carry for the lives of their adherents. In this book, we both sea and feel why and how they guide and motivate the lives of those who live by them. The book, says Dr. Smith, is not a textbook in the history of religion, nor is it a book on comparative religion in the sense of king of their comparative worth. Rather, it "seeks to embrace the world", — by taking religions seriously. This may be accomplished by: 1) seeing their followers as and women confronted with problems line ourselves, and 2) ridding of all ions that will dull their sensitivity or al to fresh insights". For will do this, Dr. Smith will gladly, and truly, to transparent the which separates us from them. This is an important book for all who would under better by learning more about , Confusionism, Ta, Islam, and —yes— Christianity. Read full book review >