We will proceed by first identifying the possible roots of reductionism. Then we will try to uncover how that reductionism impedes fuller understanding, and may render a given concept of God exclusive. Exclusivity, historically, has generally created barriers to the exchange of understanding between peoples. It is, ironically, the antithesis of the inclusivity proclaimed of God by all the major religions, for each tradition tends to be only inclusive of those who accept its particular version of the truth. Those who do not ascribe to it unreservedly are often then condemned. Our job is to logically expose the different manifestations of this mood of thinking that may breed radicalization toward others. 

In the next section, we will attempt to find a cross scriptural common thread of beliefs that maybe used to challenge ideas of reductionism with the hope of discounting sources of radicalization on religious grounds.

Faith in the ultimate must not be historically bound, yet should be relevant to human history. If faith in the Creator is natural to humans, regardless of historical setting, it is only fair then to say that to know the Creator, one does not need to believe in a given historical event, the assertion of a specific prophet, the “birth” of a God9, or the appearance of some supernatural being or angel. Such belief runs the risk of reducing God (and faith) to a particular time and place, a momentary event revealed to a particular person or people. In that case, God becomes relevant only to the limited number of people who believe they have experienced the revelatory message. God must be more universal than this, because people continue to doubt, redefine and rewrite history, yet an eternal God’s existence must logically be unaffected by the vagaries of human doubt.

Yet, if God is Omnipresent, God must also be relevant to history. Here the phenomenon of prophecy is illustrative. Prophecy is a recurrent worldwide phenomenon. Prophecy is manifest in individuals of different racial origins and from different geographical settings, who appear on the historical scene in order to tell their people with passionate conviction about the need to look at things differently. Their messages are often very similar10 in their basic ideas:  They speak of the need for a change of heart and mind, to recognize an inner human awareness that anything that is organized must have an organizer, and that we ourselves therefore, must be the product of an organized mind who must be more sophisticated then we are. Moreover, when we fall out of harmony with that intended order and presume to dominate it, we are bound by nature to seek restoration.

 By the same token, the universe around us also must have an organizer whose capacities must be beyond our understanding, for we do not    yet comprehend many of the universe’s elements, despite the clearly observable orderliness of the universe and its functions11. Nature, like humankind, inherently seeks balance. From the ecosystem to the orbits of the planets, we and all the universe seem to be inexorably held in a continual dance of interdependency on the One force that holds it all together.

 What is needed here is to rise above historical dogmas of one sort or another, so that we all can admit out loud to a natural feeling common to every human being, regardless of his or her history. Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics and celestial mechanics, draws attention to the relationship between faith and nature, which prophets have told us about since the dawn of human history.

Newton states:

“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could proceed  only  from  the  counsel  and  dominion  of  an  intelligent  and powerful  Being.  This  Being  governs  all  things,  not  as  the  soul of the world, but as Lord overall, and on account of His  dominion,  He  wants  to  be  called  Lord  God,  Universal  Ruler”12.

This source of everything, as we are told by many of the prophets, is assumed to be the origin of existence. It is the source of all shapes, forms, and colors, yet is unformed, un-originated and uncreated, to borrow the words from Buddha’s scripture13. It is something that endures beneath the shifting appearances of the visible world. Its positive character is inexpressible in any terms of finite historical experience, because its reality transcends the very time which is used to measure history itself14.

Based on the above analysis, the defining criterion to reach God clearly

should not make faith in God dependent on having to believe in a  given prophet or a given historical event.  It must, however, maintain   a historical relevancy sufficient to include those who do not share the same history or who are remote in time from a given foundational event. By repealing historical constraints on faith, belief in God becomes more possible for more people. After all, if there is only one Just God, then that God must be accessible to all, and not limited to any human historical constructs.15

The prophets also speak about some sort of accountability for our actions that extend beyond our current life, and even beyond history, as we know it. This special type of eternal accountability, whether construed as what some cultures call the Day of Judgment, or the law of karma, expands the time horizon of humankind into another realm or dimension. If such be the case, the concept of human history, as we know it, is thereby rendered merely contextual or circumstantial, rather than fundamental or essential.

God cannot be contained in a given man-made shape or symbol16. Encapsulating the Creator and divine grace in a unique symbol, shape, or status is the simplest and most predominant form of distorting God’s existence. Paganism sprang from such an approach to the Ultimate God. At first it was probably a simple representation, designed to remind people of the higher power that seemed to control our existence. Such mnemonic devices may be an aide to devotion, but run the risk of being mistaken for the actual Source they are intended to represent, in which case they may actually frustrate the purpose for which they were designed.

The more object-oriented our faith in God becomes, the more we stray from our experiential awareness of God’s true existence. Those who look for God as an internal experience by reflecting on what they see in the external world will find God, while those who try to describe God as an external shape, or an object of some sort, may never come  to actually experience that higher Presence. This is not because God is difficult to find, but more because people have chosen to limit Divinity to an object of their own choosing, and thereby miss the point. Such object containment is usually promoted by people to serve parochial economic, social, or political goals that have little to do with faith in God.

In general, we can say that the more sophisticated the individual is in terms of knowledge, the more likely she/he is to reject the worship of mere symbols and status. Scientists in all cultures, even without belief in any specific religion, may actually be more likely to reach God than some of those who profess to be religious. The scientists’ knowledge  of things, whether at the micro (detail) level or macro (grand) level (an atom or a solar system), leads them to focus less on structures and more on a hidden or transcendent, organizing force or principle from which that structure is derived.

Relevant to object  reductionism  is  the  human  tendency  to also reduce faith in God to faith in a given  locality.  The supposition here  is  that  to  feel  God’s  presence,  the  individual  must go to a certain site, and that only there will s/he find the One.

Even though there are certain locations on earth that some prophets have designated as sacred sites for remembering the One, the fact remains that it is the human heart, and not the geographical location, that would render the individual experience meaningful. Hence, in order to overcome reductionism of the One to a given locality or object, we have to emphasize that God is everywhere, and that objects (such as symbols, status, or ceremonial traditions) are not to replace or disrupt the  efforts to be exerted by the heart in reaching God in the place of worship. In essence, it could be said that God is not only the ultimate Source, but even the ground of our own being, permeating all existence. St Paul is credited with such an awareness in his prayer paraphrasing an ancient Greek poet. Addressing whom he deemed the God and Father of us all, Saint Paul prays, “Heavenly Father, in you we live, and move, and have our being. We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit that, in all the cares and occupations of our life, we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight” (The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, Morning Prayer Rite II, p 100).

In the fight against this type of geographical and material reductionism, the Prophet of Islam tore down the idols around the Kaaba in the city of Mecca, hoping to purify faith in God from having to stand in front of an image that, at best, could only misrepresent the fullness of the One, and at worst, became a complete deviation of faith towards the limitations of material existence. A millennium later, Martin Luther, the great  reformer  of  Christianity,  felt  logically  compelled  to  take a similar step. In 1522, for example, he insisted that proper worship needed no lights, candles, paintings, images or altars. “For these are all human inventions and ornaments,” he explained, “which God does not heed, and which obscure the correct worship, with their glitter.” As the Protestant Reformation developed, genuine Christian religion came to be defined by the reformers as an iconoclastic war against the worship of idols. Though the aversion to imagery in favor of written scripture or spoken word can become its own form of idolatry, this purgative trend is cyclical throughout the history of religion- as is its corollary, the effusion of imagery to celebrate the infinite creativity of the Divine. Properly understood, they each can point the faithful to a deeper experience of the One. Misunderstood, they each can impede that experience.

Is the ultimate a One or a multitude? Basically the question here relates to the claim that the power source of Creation is One and not many. If the source of things comes from different gods, then the Creator cannot be a unifying force. Such pluralism has often led different cultures and societies to fight with each other for supremacy, much as the gods or goddesses of some ancient mythologies argued about their own control over Creation.

But, such a humanly imagined reductionism does not seem to logically persist if one looks deeper into nature and how the material world is functioning. Current scientific discoveries provide evidence that the universe is coherently inter-connected and, regardless of the nature of that power source, it’s source can’t be but One. The following facts support the idea of a singular source:

• According to the most plausible theory of creation, known as the theory of the Big Bang, the universe emerged from a single explosion of matter which created both space and time. In other words, our universe emerged from a situation of singularity or total unity, whereby space, matter, and time came into being in a single explosion.17
• There is a design similarity among the various large and small systems across the known universe. The macrocosm is clearly and precisely reflected in the microcosm. Given the spatial difference, a solar system is not very different from the structure of molecules and atoms, in terms of its predominant type of motion (circular), the proportion of elements to each other, and the orbiting mode of design around the center18.
• The materials of which the many complex structures of the universe are composed seem to be very limited and consistent across the known universe.
• The interdependency of a multitude of separate complex systems in a harmonious whole across the universe speaks logically to a unified organizing source, because the function of one system requires that other external systems continue to operate in a certain fashion. For example, the structure of our skin, which encloses the many systems of the body, is dependent on a daily dose of light, not too much and not too little, coming from the sun. The sun must maintain a specific distance from earth, and the sun, in turn, depends upon the gravitational pull of outer objects that are also beyond our control. If the sun were to draw nearer, our skin would burn and we would die, and if it were to go further away, our skin would freeze and we would also die. Only in recent years have we started to discover that the earth requires an acute balance between a multitude of totally separate but interconnected systems of different shapes and sizes, both within the domain of earth and outside it.19

Beyond the above logical/scientific explanation of the oneness of the source behind the universe, one may ask if there is evidence in the books that have been said to be of divine inspiration or origin. Here, we notice that the most common theme among all the books of the great religions of the world is the constant emphasis on the Oneness of the organizing source of all things (see previous quotations from different religious texts that speak of God as One).

This is, by far, the most intentional and destructive type of reductionism. It has been used by politicians throughout human history to appeal to and express people’s feelings toward their respective beliefs in God or Gods, and then manipulate such feelings into whatever can serve the political interest. No matter how sincere the statements made by politicians may be to attract the attention of the public, personal ambition on the part of politicians or political institutions to gain support by appealing to the emotions of their constituents makes them prone to the abuse of those feelings for political gain.

Many Europeans in their long political relationship with Roman Catholic Christianity20 have reached the point of totally eliminating the role of religion from politics and secular life as a matter of legal principle. Both Americans and the French, have a legal doctrine of the separation of Church and State, but for opposite historical reasons. The French sought to assure that the Church could no longer control the State, whereas the Americans wanted to assure that the State could not control religious practice. In both cases, however, politicians have become adept in the manipulation of both religious and anti-religious sentiments for their own purposes, further frustrating the achievement of intercultural accord.

Logically speaking, the separation of Religion and the State is validated by the fact that faith is a heart-based issue, operating at the individual level, while politics is mainly related to the appropriation of the individual interest to the interests of those who lead, albeit theoretically in the interest of the common good. The two are separate realms, yet politicians, even in some secular societies, tend to cross the lines by building their case for support on some sort of religious claim21.

The process by which Evangelical Christianity is inserting itself into the political scene, as if it were an integral part of democracy, has been noted by many writers in the United States as a worldwide phenomenon. John Pottenger in his book, Reaping the Whirlwind: Liberal Democracy and the Religious Axis, describes such a process taking place on a global scale. He indicates that throughout the world, the religious energies encouraged by liberal democracy are spilling into the public square, creating political movements that seek to capture the state, impose      or privilege particular religious values, and thereby subvert the very principles that constitute liberal democratic states. Pottenger thinks that

“evangelical Christian and Mormon political activism has pushed liberal democratic institutions to their constitutional limits”.22 All this is done in the name of religious liberty and the essential freedom to worship, but has been taken hostage by the religious right as a tool of political domination. 

Nevertheless, reinforcing The Western solution of the separation of Church and State by constitutional means puts important constraints on the legal viability of religious manipulation of the State. It is the least that can be done to make the political competition focus on the social and economic issues at hand, rather then merely use or abuse faith in God and the hereafter as a political tool. In the long run, invoking a Universal God to rally exclusive support for a particular people, party, or leader only serves to harm faith in God, because it reduces faith in the perfect One to the specific agenda of a given group, politician, or institution and its inevitable flaws.

The One must necessarily also encompass all sorts of feelings, however contradictory, because if God is the Source of all and the Ground of Being, then no experience or sentiment can stand outside that Divine Existence. When we speak of the One Creator, many of us see that God only as the source of our material existence. In this sense, God is the ultimate organizer of the universe, including the different systems that function around us. Such an approach is not wrong, but it overlooks another aspect of our lives that also must have a source, namely, the feelings that are felt throughout the human race. These too must come from one common source, because they appear in similar fashion among widely separated nations and tribes. They seem to be intrinsic to our species and our existence.

If the analogy here is sound, then the one God must be the ultimate source of all sorts of feelings too, whether love or anger, joy or sadness, arrogance or humility. It is only our situational condition at any given time that leads us to express and to judge those feelings. How negative or how positive these may be depends, in part, on how aware we are   of both ourselves, and of the Source of all things (the One). A poor man may be very happy, because he has faith in God, and a rich man might be very sad, because he has faith only in himself. The judgment of happiness or sadness may seem relative to the individual, but the divine both transcends and encompasses such polarities. There is no human condition or feeling which can exclude the presence of an omnipresent God. It is only our own awareness that can fail to recognize that presence. It  is  implicit  to  the  idea  of  the  omnipresent  Oneness  of  God,  that  God  is  the  source  of  all  feelings,  but     is  not  contained      by  nor  limited  to  any  one  feeling,  however  emotionally   preferable    one    might    perceive    that    particular    feeling    to be.

The idea of looking at God as a manifestation of some particular active emotional force, whether of anger or love, which we come across in ancient mythologies from Egypt and Greece to India, China or the Americas, for example, can be understood as a way to compartmentalize the One God’s feelings into a particular force or phenomenon. The danger of such compartmentalization is that one particular manifestation may tend to dominate or obscure all others- which then limits the omnipotence of the One. However, God’s dynamic active force cannot be confined to a single feeling, form, or particular power, because the content would no longer be expressive of the totality of God, nor of the totality of human feelings and their internal dynamics. If, as the scriptures of  both East and West proclaim, human beings are reflective of the Divine Image (the imago dei), to exclude any of our emotions from the realm of divine operation is to diminish the God in whose image we were supposedly created, or in whose qualities we are somehow participants. That   is   tantamount   to   blasphemy   by   any   theological  standard.

Accordingly, if we believe that God is One and the unique source of all feelings, we must re-examine our understanding of divinity so as not to reduce God into some particular pleasurable or punitive feeling. To do so would imply that there would have to be someone or something else as the source of the “unacceptable” or “unholy” feelings. That dualism would be a contradiction of the logic fundamental to the omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience of the One.

It is not uncommon in human history for a given group of people of similar religious or racial background to claim God and divine mercy or privilege for themselves. The form of such a claims may vary, but in the final outcome, they are used to justify the arrogance of one nation over others by asserting that it is the will of God that has selected them from among all peoples to dominate other nations or groups.

Those who insist on such claims may even quote scripture selectively as a “proof text” to support their contention, but they generally ignore the spirit of the message of God in which justice and mercy supersedes racial or national identity. Examples of such selective reductionism  can be found in the practice of all the major world religions, whether Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. The level of importance of such reductionism to a given belief system varies more in degree than in substance. The phenomenon seems to be widespread throughout history.

To uncover the fallacy of such an approach one has to look at four problems associated with this type of reductionism:

1. The essence of the messages of God revolves around justice and good deeds. To speak of God as a God who favors people only because of racial or religious background per se is a direct contradiction of the unitive spirit of God’s messages.
2. History shows that there are no innocent or guilty peoples. A nation that seems to obey God’s at one time may appear to disobey it at another, and visa versa. There is an almost inevitable risk of cultural bias in the relativism of discerning what God’s will might be, as opposed to the will of an individual person or group.
3. God does not deal with people just as a collective sum, but can deal with each one of us individually, hence such grouping (i.e. by race or tribe) ignores the capacity of God to know who is sincere and who is not in each and every nation and respond to them
4. When we speak of God, we often forget that we refer to the God of every one of us. It is God who gives form, race, and color, and hence one cannot take color or race as a criterion for distinguishing between “godly” and “ungodly” people. Much less may we do so in the name of that Universal God!
5. We have to understand that, regardless of how we feel about ourselves or others, we cannot impose our limited understanding on God, because God alone is the ultimate Judge. For that matter, the purported laws of inevitable cosmic accountability suggest that a day of judgment may be necessary, but that no one human or group has the right to render ultimate judgment of others, for we all possess God-given

Another man-made idea of the One is to view God through the lens of our own gender categorization of things. Regardless of how normal such labeling of things may seem, and it is, in fact, unavoidable in some languages, we have to admit that such a description of the One tends  to ascribe human gender limitations and characteristics to the ultimate source of life.  Moreover, gender related reductionism may alienate  the other sex from God, because it implies preference or superiority    of a particular gender. In the Western triumvirate of the Abrahamic religions in particular, references to God have traditionally been  almost exclusively male and paternalistic, provoking documentable imbalances. It is interesting to note that in the case of the spread of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, each founder was considered radical, in part, because his teaching was both gender and class blind. That may well account for the rapid spread of each tradition beyond the borders of its country of origin, demonstrating society’s perception of a needed alternative to the male chauvinism which prevailed at the time. This is less central in some Asian traditions, where every male image of deity is countered by a female image as its consort.

In recent history, categorizing the One as male has understandably provoked a multitude of books by female authors, from all walks of  life and from different perspectives, who have tried to redress this male bias by indulging in the opposite kind of gender reductionism. God is described by some as a gentle and beautiful goddess, in stark contrast to the very male and often bellicose images of deity that have so often prevailed in the West.23 Though some such attempts may be guilty of the very imbalance they purport to redress, it is, nevertheless, arguably healthy for all of us to be more sensitive to the fact that any gender ascription to the One is, at best, a means of expressing an emotional approach to the unitive experience. If such language fails to lead us to the One, it is no longer helpful, and should not be considered a sacrosanct expression of either historical or theological truth. God is, by definition, beyond gender or form, yet may become known to us through both.  Reductionism by ascribing an exclusive sex to the Ultimate breaches the equality of creation and makes the One more accessible to one group than another. In order to understand God, we have to learn to disassociate the One from a specific gender, even though we might continue to use gender-specific terminology for cultural or linguistic reasons.

A still different kind of reductionism is caused by the way people communicate ideas and feelings to each other by visual and audible symbolism. In any context, each language system has its own limitations, yet this inherently limited system is used to explain the unlimited truth of the One. If our minds cannot comprehend the vastness of the universe, the speed of light, or how small an atom is, how can our communication systems, which are subservient to the mind, deliver adequately descriptive words regarding the source of these elements   of existence. If sometimes we have a problem with words when we   try to describe an event or a phenomenon that we have seen, how can these same words be used to describe an experience we might have with the source of all phenomena? Words are constructed together to describe both objective and subjective reality. They may sometimes motivate feelings, but their ability to do so depends on the receptivity of the listeners. It is because of these limitations that the experience of the One continues to be a personal one, and in many ways elusive to description. An aphorism from an Indian philosophical text called the Shiva Sutras, (Sutra IV), recognizes both the limitations and the power of language to shape our experience: “It is the un-understood power inherent in the letters of the alphabet which is the matrix of all existence”.

The scriptures of nearly all the major world religions contain a summary of experiences with the One. When a human being is curious, humble, or hungry enough to look for his or her source of existence, these scriptures serve as a pool of information to learn how to reach God. Cultural preferences are surely there, but the fact that the source of these scriptures is the same One will always bring believers to a common ground. Upon arrival at that One source, cultural differences disappear, or become blurred, and the appropriate language to express that experience not only becomes similar, but also sparks similar feelings  of love and joy in all who share it.  A  Christian believer will gradually discover that he has much in common with a Hindu monk, or a Muslim believer inspired by the Qur’an. Language that was part of the cultural divide may then become a unifying force, and the believers are ranked now not by their cultures, races, or even places in time, but by their capacity to use the common scriptural pool to enhance the experience of drawing near to the One.

In this sense, the contextual culture may remain a barrier for all, except for those who have evolved to the point of being willing to transcend the barriers that limit the One to a single language, race, or cultural preference. Rumi, the great Sufi, once said: “The roads are different, the goal is one. … When people come there, all quarrels, differences, or disputes that happened along the road are resolved. Those who shouted at each other along the way ‘you are wrong’ or ‘you are an unbeliever’ forget any differences when they come, because there, all hearts are in union.”24

What we have just written deals mainly with what God is not, but it does not really deal with what God might be. In this respect we should be able, by now, to rule out rigid culturally bound ideas of the One. If that is the case, we should start our search for common ground from scriptural writing itself, with two guidelines in mind: The first is that the collection of quotations we are to select from as many scriptures as possible should not be restrictive to any given people, time frame, locality, or for that matter, history. That is to say, they must have universal appeal and applicability.

The second guideline, in conjunction with the first, emphasizes that people of differing traditions and cultures should be able to reach similar understandings of the source, because if God is in fact One, then, logically, the descriptions of divinity throughout world scripture should lead us essentially to similar understanding, despite sometimes being couched in culturally specific terminology.

In the following we will apply these two guidelines in selecting texts from different world religion’s scriptures to show that, regardless of how much a given religion/culture has fallen into reductionism, there  is still a chance to bring about a Unitarian understanding of the source from each and every major religion of the world today.

Whether we are talking about Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, or the most youngest of major religions, Islam (600 C.E.), the concept of One supreme being, or the High God,25 could help to reduce religious tensions26 if introduced generically.

The following quotes about  the  basic  nature  of  God  espoused by different prophets in totally distinct historical and geographical settings, should make us more attentive to the commonality in the basic description of an overarching formative and integrative Power. The objective here is to show the possibility of different peoples arriving at a similar understanding of God in a way that may help us overcome all sorts of reductionism. If such an approach were to be accepted, faith in the One then might become a unifying factor, rather a divisive one.

In Zoroastrianism we read that the name of the creator is Ahura Mazda or Ohrmazd. Based on Zoroastrian scripture, He is the Supreme One. He is self-created, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Holy, Invisible, and beyond human conceptualization.27

In Hinduism, the name Hindus give to that ultimate reality, which is forever formless and beyond definition, is Brahman, which means in the Sanskrit language, “to breathe” and “to be great” at the same time. According to the Hindu religion, the absolute reality is conceived as the eternal presence of pure Being. All the different “gods” represent modes of this one reality; behind all multiplicity there is always the underlying indivisible and eternal unity of all things.28 The authors of the Upanishads continued to conceive of Brahman as the sacred power that controls the whole world. Moreover, Brahman is the source from which every thing springs, and the tie that holds all things together.29

Buddhism does not place as much emphasize on the idea of faith, preferring a try-it-and-see approach of empirical observation.30 Yet we can trace the idea of the One Consciousness beyond all name and form that is both the source and goal of human existence in a statement of Buddha to his followers:

“There is, O monks, an unborn, unoriginated, unformed, uncreated. For if there were not this unborn, unoriginated, unformed, uncreated, there wouldbenoescapepossiblefromtheborn,originated,formed,created. But since, O monks, there is this unborn, unoriginated, unformed, uncreated, an escape is possible from the born, originated, formed, created.”31

In Judaism, the belief of the oneness of the Creator is what distinguished the Hebrews from their neighbors, before the advent of Christianity and Islam. Psalm 139 asserts that there is no place we can be, in life or death, where the One God is not present. Even the Hebrew word for God, El, means “the One”. For other Mediterranean peoples, each major power of nature was a distinct deity, whereas, in the Torah, nature in its entirety was created by, and under the sovereignty of the Lord of all being, the One God of all, or Yahweh. The very name, Yahweh, is an expression of unlimited Being- as both a noun and a verb expressing the divine unmodified essence. The significance of the monotheism brought by Judaism lies in the focus it affords life. If Yahweh (God) is that to which one gives oneself completely, then to have more than one God is to live a divided and diminished life.32

The oneness of the Creator appears vividly throughout the Jewish scripture, for example:

Hear, 0 Israel: The Lord our God is One.” (Deuteronomy 6:4)

…that ye may know and believe Me, and understand that I Am He: before Me there was no God, neither shall there be

after Me. 1, even 1, am the Lord; and beside Me there is no savior. (Isaiah 43: 1 0-1 I)

The dominant aspect of this God of All is evident in the Psalms, as God is the One Lord of all beings, who constitutes also the source of both the ultimate love and the ultimate corrective anger, from which all feelings of man spring:

“His going forth issues from the end of the heavens, and his circuit unto the end of it: and there is nothing hid from the heart thereof. The Law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple: the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes: the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is thy servant warned: and for keeping them there is great reward. Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall they be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer”.33

In Christianity, which came to emphasize and confirm the Oneness first articulated in the Law of Moses, we continue to see a singular God. In the words of Jesus we are told to take the Oneness as our number one priority when approaching God.

And Jesus answered him: The first of all the commandments is this, “Hear, 0 Israel: The Lord our God is One, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your being”. And the second is like unto it, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”. On these two hang all the Law and the Prophets. (Mark 12:29)

… We know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but One. (I Corinthians 8:4)

The belief of Christians in the Oneness of God persists, even despite historically bound conceptual modifications and alterations by theologians, such as the concept of the divine sonship of Jesus (accepted as a creedal statement of fact at the Council of Nicaea on May 20, 325)34, the addition of the Holy Spirit as the “third person” of God’s tripartite Oneness (developed as the concept of the Holy Trinity in the Constantinopolitan Creed of 381)35, or the giving to Mary, the mother of Jesus, the title “Mother of God” (developed by Council of Ephesus in 431 ).36 (This latter suggests, at least, a response to an emotional need for a feminine aspect of the divine to compliment the masculine imagery chosen by the Church to express the essence of divinity- but defies the basic logic of a single Godhead beyond all name and form).

Such historical innovations may relate more to Greco-Roman archetypes than to Jesus’ initial teachings, but they could not reduce the intensity with which many Christians viewed the singular dominant God of All. This no doubt derives, in part, from unequivocal statements in both the Torah and the Gospels warning against deviation from the Oneness37. Christian literature is full of appeals to the same One God about whom Jesus spoke38. In that respect, the following are expressive of this essential Christianity:

“I am the light that is above them all. I am the All; the All came forth from Me. And the All attained to Me. Cleave a piece of wood, I am there; Lift up the stone and you will find Me there” Logion 108.39

“All Glory to You, most high, omnipotent, and good Lord, praise and honor forever, and every blessing.  To  You alone, most high One, should these be given, and no man is worthy of naming You. Glory to You, my Lord, for all Your creatures” Francis of Assisi.40

In Islam, the youngest of the world’s great religions, we find a very clear description of the One God of all throughout the Quran41. Implicit in the divine Oneness is a limitless variety of attributes expressive of that Oneness. Not a single page of the Quran is left without telling the reader an attribute or a name of the One God.

The following are examples of how the Oneness is presented in relation to the total dominance of God.

“He is God besides whom there is no other god; The Knower of all things; He is the Compassionate, the Most Merciful. He is God besides whom there is no other god, the Sovereign, the Holy One, the Source of Peace, the Giver of Faith, the Dominant, the Exalted in Might, the Irresistible, the Supreme! Glory to God! (High is He) above what they associate with him.

He is God the Creator, the Evolver, the Bestower of Forms. His are the attributes of perfection. Whatever is in the heavens and on earth declares His Glory, for He alone is the Almighty, the truly wise”.42

The bond of humans with the One is emphasized from the initial stage of creation of life, through the gradual attainment of knowledge, and the development of the process of learning itself.

The first five verses revealed of the Quran, state:

. Read: In the name of thy Lord who created,

. Created man from a clot.

. Read: And thy Lord is the Most high,

. He who taught by the pen,

. Taught man that which he knew not. (Quran, 96: 1to 5)

The pure meaning of Oneness can be found in chapter 112:

Say: He is God, the One! God, the eternal absolute, He begetteth not, nor was begotten. And there is none comparable unto Him.

Moreover, the believer in the One unique God of All has been protected throughout the Quran from possible digression by numerous verses that reject all manner of reductionism. Verses such as:

“And He does not inquire you to take angels and Prophets as Lords, would He then order you to cover the truth after He had guided you to faith?“ 

The oneness of God outside the middle eastern religions 

The belief in this Unitary power is not only a Middle Eastern phenomenon, because the One is traceable in other religions outside the Middle East. Even in the indigenous religions of North America, whose development was disconnected geographically from the rest of the world, we notice the presence of the same idea about the One creator. The following are some examples from Native American scripture:

“Sacred One, teach us love, compassion, and honor, so that we may heal the earth, and heal each other. O Great Spirit, Whose voice speaks in the winds, and in the trees, whose breath gives life to all the world, listen to your creature. I am small and weak. I need you. I need your wisdom. Let me walk in beauty. Make my hands touch all things that you have made with love, and help my ears to hear your voice in every thing. Make me wise, so that I may understand the sacred teaching you have taught. Help me learn the lessons hidden in every leaf and every stone.”43

Logically, we should conclude from the clear similarities between these messages that there must be a common source for them, because they appear hundreds of years apart and in different geographical settings. Moreover, such similarities stand witness for us that the Originator did not favor one nation over another, because that Unique Source is traceable in a similar fashion across cultures.

In this essay we have explored a number of man-made limitations to the accessibility of the One Ultimate God**, the source of all that exists in both the worlds of matter and spirit. Each of these human constructs can trigger an experience of the Ultimate truth behind creation, yet the One can not be logically limited to any of them. Moreover, when the construct is mistaken for its object, rather than triggering an experience of the divine it may trigger a reinforcement of limitation- the antithesis of the unitive experience the divine represents. Unfortunately, social, political and economic factors often conspire to support and protect these limitations, making them culturally more difficult to break.

It seems that human beings throughout history keep attempting by various means to create pathways to God. This may be evidence of what some scientists now call “neurotheology”- positing that, as a species, we are intrinsically hard-wired to seek transcendent experience. Our major pitfall is that we also tend to presume that unless we go through this or that gate of human design, actually attaining to God is impossible. Our fundamental error is in our confusion of outer practices with inner imperatives, for the experience of the One is essentially and inevitably internal, though it may be shared and experienced by many.

It would be helpful for us to recall the etymology of the word “religion”. It comes from the Latin, religare– to tie or connect again. The implication is clear that there was a primordial, unitive consciousness from which we have become severed, but which we are innately capable of regaining. That unitive experience is the very essence of humanity’s quest for both peace and meaning in life. Religion is then both the goal of reunion, and, rightly practiced, the means by which that reunion is achieved. It addresses the root cause of human suffering and its antidote.

In Kashmir Shaivism, one of the great philosophical traditions of the Indian sub-continent, it is claimed that all human suffering derives from five fundamental afflictions. The first is that we forget that our true nature derives from the indwelling presence of the One. That forgetfulness leads us then to identify with limitation, which, in turn, leads us to the see- saw of attractions and aversions, culminating in our extreme attachment to our bodies as the sum of who we are, and our equally extreme fear of its death. The antidote to these afflictions requires systematically deconstructing those attachments and returning to the Source- the One. Religion’s true purpose, by etymological definition, is to help us do just that. To the degree that any practice or belief accomplishes such unitive awareness, it is well and good. Too often, however, we have seen how both practice and belief can frustrate the unitive experience, and actually promote exclusivity and divisiveness.

Religious radicalism and narrow-mindedness in all religions manifests the human propensity to monopolize the limitless One. Religion itself then becomes a false idol. Religion can all too easily become some sort of label for which the believer might be willing to die, without even going to the trouble of finding out whether his or her labels for other people’s religions or beliefs bear any relation to truth or fact. But this  is not the true practice of religion that binds the individual to the One, much less one’s neighbor or oneself, in harmony and peace. It is, rather, an all too familiar approach to the One which history has amply shown will breed only prejudice, fear, and violence that can instigate political conflicts of all sorts.

Therefore, we have to act, by all means possible, to eliminate these barriers to our understanding, so that people of different cultures and races can share a common faith in a uniting, all-encompassing God  that we can trace and recognize across the religions of world. For the many who may sometimes doubt the often exclusive and even intolerant pronouncements of the clergy or the  professionally  religious,  but  who instinctively have faith in a higher reality they long to come to experience and understand more fully, a more inclusive approach – such as the one espoused in this paper- is clearly needed. Such an inclusive approach would certainly promote not only more tolerance for the many who are seeking, but even for those sincere but limited individuals afraid to look beyond the confines and comforts of their received traditions to embrace the Whole.

Our goal may be a dream, but a global interdependent world order that aspires to outgrow the legacy of the failures of communism and the new capitalist dictatorships*** cannot afford to dismiss the dream of spiritual interconnection and reciprocal respect of religions as a primary means of cultural bridge-building, if we are to be true to our call for world peace. From this perspective the goal, even though multidimensional, must be realizable, if we are to take the world’s scriptures at their word that peace is an integral part of the divine plan, and the expression of the will of that One in whom we are all participants. Neither a loving nor an all-powerful God would demand of us something that was fundamentally impossible. It is incumbent upon us all actively to seek peace, both within ourselves and with each other. Transcending religious barriers is a good place to start.

**     We have taken the idea of faith in some sort of a creator or first principle as one of assumptions of the research.