The Qu’ran teaches that God has sent out many prophets. It acclaims Jesus as Messiah is the messenger of Allah. The Gospels are recognised as coming from God. However Muhammad only ‘included’ the Abrahamic faiths.

Second phase – exclusivism
In the course of time, however, Islam moved into a more exclusivist outlook. Islam was now seen as superior. It taught the uniqueness of God’s law and demanded universal obedience. This exclusivism reflected what was going on in the world at large. The Muslim empire had expanded across North Africa and penetrated Spain. Its expansionism provoked hostility and opposition from Christian Europe.

As a result of these conquests Muslim minorities found themselves ruling over a majority of others. Islam was becoming a more formalised religion. This led to exclusivity. It was asserted that Muslims must never be ruled over by non-Muslims. They would be humiliated and their faith would be restricted. They would be contaminated by Christian ideas. Thus Islam was beginning to seriously compete with Christianity. The stage was being set for the Crusades.

Modern times
The modern era is the age of nation states. In this context more freedom is allowed even though common values are sought. People move around more easily and the electronic media enables there to be a much freer communication of ideas. All this tends to challenge the exclusivist tradition.

Islamic fundamentalism is much in the news and this tends to mask the emergence of other groups. For instance, the Progressive Ijtihadis. These people are more influential as philosophers than as purely religious teachers. They are rationalists. They assert that change must happen within Islam. The Qu’ran must be updated. There needs to be stronger emphasis on social justice. With movements like this it is clear that inclusivism is back. There is now an emphasis on what Muslims have in common with ‘the other’, not what is particular.

Where society is multicultural, then religious pluralism becomes the norm. People of different faiths co-operate to enhance human dignity. Inevitably this leads to a more peaceful way.

On 5 September, Professor Abdullah Said, of the University of Melbourne, gave the annual Peace Lecture at the University of Otago

The Golden Calf

Wendy Ward

How can ancient Biblical texts inform our modern lives? The author Gerard Hughes (God of Surprises, DLT 1999) suggests that when we pray with Scripture, we imagine God speaking to us personally and continuing God’s story in us. I had reason to ponder the ancient story of the making of the Golden Calf recently (Exodus 32:1-35). Ironically, it was both real calves and gold that caused me to reflect on this story.

Newborn creatures cavorting around their mothers are a familiar sign of spring. However, dairy cow calves are removed a few hours after their birth to be reared in sheds or slaughtered as four-day-old ‘bobby calves’. The demand for milk overrides good animal husbandry practice.

So what about gold? The new gold is white and flows out of a cow’s udder. The production of milk is a great economic success, benefiting the nation generally and dairy farmers in particular. Fonterra is our most successful global business.

It is not fanciful to suggest that there is a new gold rush in New Zealand. The land is again being plundered, not for minerals but for grass. Approximately a hundred farms in Southland will be going out of sheep between January and May 2008. There is disquiet about polluted waterways, rivers and lakes. Prices of feed and fertilizer are rocketing as dairy farms soak them up. Dairy farming will soon be the province of the very wealthy, as share milkers and young farmers struggle to pay the millions required to buy a farm. Then there are questions about the effects of over-use of superphosphate on animals, people and the land.

How can the original golden calf story contribute to this debate? Here is a brief summary of the story.

The Israelites, having escaped from Egypt, are wandering in the desert wilderness. God, having taken pity on the people, desires to show them how to live in right relationship with God and all creation. As their leader, Moses has gone up a mountain to listen to God and return with God’s Law. The people become impatient and persuade the second-in-command, Aaron, to build them an object to worship. Thus, the Golden Calf is made from the melted down gold of the people.

When this pagan idol is discovered, Moses and God are furious. Moses intercedes for the people, and God relents to an extent. However, many of the unfaithful are killed and later a plague comes upon them. The remainder renew their allegiance to God and the relationship is restored.

The Israelites, unable to wait for Moses’ return, lowered their sights, wanting gods made out of their gold. Good leadership was essential for them and no less for us. When there is a vacuum, people can turn to wrong leaders. The Calf was a pagan idol that had no value except to bewitch the people for a short time. As we have seen, the idol cost them far more than the gold trinkets used in its making.

The white gold rush appears to be good news for New Zealand, but it is blinkered and hides issues that we don’t want to acknowledge. Profit before good practice never succeeds, as British farmers can confirm. Here, in the King Country, we wonder why Landcorp is selling all its farms around Lake Taupo. Excessive use of fertilizer endangers both the soil and animal welfare. The international farming community has put pressure on Fonterra regarding dairy cow welfare in New Zealand.

The story of the Golden Calf leads us to ask, “Is current dairy farm development and animal welfare practice in right relationship with the life of this nation?” Or are we so dazzled by dollars we cannot see the new idol being fashioned under our noses?

Antonio Rosmini (1797-1855)

On 18 November the Italian philosopher, patriot and priest, Antonio Rosmini, will be beatified by the church. The cynically minded might be forgiven for saying “So what?”. Just one more religious Founder honoured by the church – no doubt paid for out of the Order’s coffers! What did he really do to deserve it? And why now? What is so special about this obscure Italian who died 150 years ago? The short answer is he achieved a lot and has much to teach us today.

A lot of what? In my sitting room there is the remains of a scholastic library. The bottom shelf is taken up completely with Rosmini’s writings. The national edition of his works, in Italian, comprises more than 60 volumes. One, on moral conscience, is over 400 pages. His literary output was staggering.

Even if that sort of productivity hardly qualifies a person to be a saint, there are also some 10,000 letters – many to men and women, priests, bishops and lay people throughout Europe who approached him for spiritual guidance. In his native Italy especially he has long been celebrated for his spirituality and personal holiness.

Who was Rosmini?
Well, clearly, he was a very bright character. It is said he was found at the age of 12 poring over the writings of St Thomas Aquinas. He probably got his ears boxed for being so precocious, but it didn’t put him off. At the age of 21 while at University he spent the equivalent of $40,000 buying a monastic library! Today’s students appear to spend a fortune on beer. Rosmini spent it on books!

The Europe Rosmini was born into was a world dominated by the so-called Enlightenment, which secularised European philosophical thinking. Rosmini from his early 20s resolved to devote his life to putting God back again at the centre of human thinking. For instance, in an early published work, the New Essay on the Origin of Ideas (1830), Rosmini asserts that although we acquire all particular ideas via the senses, the idea of being itself is innate. It is God who infuses the human mind with this primal idea, which is the light of reason. Indeed, we can infer the reality of God from the very fact that we are rational beings. The ‘light of reason’ has to come from somewhere.

Likewise, in his moral writings Rosmini is insistent that at the heart of moral conscience is the voice of God. Human behaviour must be founded on the law of God, writ large on the human heart.

Even as a young adult Rosmini sought to surround himself with like-minded people who would devote themselves to the reform of human society. At the very time that the Utilitarians in England were placing self-interest as the mainspring of human society, Rosmini and his friends were asserting that nothing less than universal charity and the love of God must lie at the heart of every human endeavour.

The Rosminian question
Rosmini’s ideas were much admired, but they also aroused fierce and prolonged opposition in Italy. It is difficult for us in the Anglo-Saxon world to comprehend the malice of what is often called odium theologicum, the vicious attacks and calumnies heaped upon someone who dares to offer original and sometimes revolutionary ideas. In particular, a campaign of denigration led to Rosmini’s books being examined by Rome. Two of his political works were placed on the Index of prohibited books (and stayed there until the 1950s!).

Eventually, Pope Pius IX ordered a comprehensive examination of his religious works, which in 1854 completely exonerated Rosmini from any formal error. Unfortunately, out of deference to Rosmini’s opponents, the Pope refrained from publishing this Decree .

Perhaps nothing better underlines the true humility of this remarkable man than the way he submitted to these injustices. His only concern was that the works of the two Congregations he had founded might suffer – which they did. Now at last, the church has repudiated this condemnation (see TM July 2004) thus vindicating Rosmini and clearing the way for his beatification.

His relevance today
There are thousands of saints, mostly unsung. So why canonise this or that particular person? In a recent book Why the Catholic Church Makes Saints, the authors noted that often the church canonises people who speak to a particular age – ‘horses for courses’!

Nothing is more characteristic of our modern age than to divorce faith from life, to consign God to the attic. Yet for Rosmini, to leave God out of philosophy, ethics or any branch of human knowledge is to destroy the whole basis of human life. He consistently taught the centrality of God. And by placing charity as the central plank of his spirituality, he lived what he taught.

Rosmini has plenty to say to today’s world.

– Michael Hill