126
Cайт журнала: http://journal.asu.ru/wv
[Kaplan, 1936: 281]. Consequently, he believes that there is one divine entity above all
dierences of religions. It’s obviously an universalistic view.
For Kaplan, like for universalists, universe is theo-centric, notwithstanding his interpretation
of God is not classically theistic. e founder of Reconstructionism oen denes God via
nonsynonymos terms such as for example “dynamics”, “process’ etc)
*
. One of the denitions
is that God is “the sum of the animating, organizing forces and relationships which are forever
making a cosmos out of chaos. is is what we understand by God as the creative life of the
universe” [Kaplan, 1994: 76]. One more denition of God as the “power that makes for the
highest good” allows us to conclude, that with the notion of Kaplan’s God inseparable from
the ethics. He declares one universal ethics for every human: “Every normal society reects
some sensitiveness to the universal values of reason and to the eternal values of the spirit”
[Kaplan, Goldsmith, Scult, 1991: 175]. In other words, any ideal that is of universal signicance,
that belongs to the worship of spirit “is capable of adoption by, and adaptation to, any and all
religious traditions’ [Kaplan, Goldsmith, Scult, 1991: 184].
At rst sight, it may seem that Kaplan, like universalists, does not attach importance to
religious rites and practices. However that’s not the case. Kaplan aims to reinterpret traditional
Jewish symbols, rites and observances in terms, that “reckon with modern psychological and
ethical insights’ and that are relevant to the needs and interests of living Jews. He points out
the importance of these aspect of religion. Jewish people should adhere to Judaic rules and
norms but most of them must be rethought. For example, Jews should observe Yom Kippur
(Day of Atonement), that is the day of the forgiveness of sins and the resolve to improve
morally and spiritually as a symbol of a protest against the waging of war. Sabbat as Day of
salvation (“having a share in the world to come”) means nothing to the modern Jews, unless
the term “salvation” is given new meanings. en “… can we, as modern Jews, fully benet by
their observance” [Kaplan, Goldsmith, Scult, 1991: 179].
Kaplan, similarly to inclusivists and exclusivists, opposes Judaism to other religions. For
instance, Christianity has in its core (i. e. in its eschatology) spirit of fatalism that came from
Ancient Greek mythology and philosophy. is spirit of Western mind “has acted like a canker
which disintegrates the soul of every people it has attacked”. And for Judaic religion “life is
concieved not as the working out of doom but as the fulllment of a blessing… e suering
and the tragedy have always been viewed merely as interraption which have postponed the
fulllment of the blessing” [Kaplan, 1994: 66–67].
Let’s come to conclusions.
Brill added the term universalism in his model of religious diversity. Universalism partly
intercrossed by pluralism. It is absent in the Hick’s model.
By analysing the main ideas of some Judaic philosophers and theologians from Halevi,
Maimonides and Nahmanides to Rav. Kook, Henry Pereira-Mendes and Horace Kallen Brill
divides them accordingly to the four divisions: exclusivism, inclusivism, universalism or
pluralism. From my point of view it’s clear that in Brill’s denitions: 1. We are able to regard
universalism and pluralism as two more or less “so” forms of inclusivism; 2. Inclusivism,
*
Some aspects of Kaplan’s theory of God places him in close quarters with Whitehead’s, Cobb’s, Hartshorne’s
process-theology.
ISSN 2542-2332 • Народы и религии Евразии • 2019 № 3(20). C. 121–127