Rabbi Kook called for a sympathetic hearing to all ideas, for in all ideas there is a core of valid truth that waits to be recognized and claimed from its frequent exaggerations in order to enter the process of intellectual and spiritual fermentation by which a larger truth is born. As Rabbi Kook put it: &ldquoEach body of thought has its own logic and all ideas are tied to each other by a systematic relatedness ... There is no such thing as a vain or useless thought ... since each emanates from the same source in the divine wisdom. If there are thoughts that appear futile or empty, the futility and the emptiness are only in the outer garb in which these thoughts are enwrapped. But if we probe into all their inwardness, we shall find that they, too, offer us the sustenance of life ... And as man [woman] grows in the scale of perfection, he [she] draws upon all ideas, his [her] own and those of others, for the kernel of abiding truth. He [she] is made perfect through them, and through him [her].&rdquo
Rabbi Kook believed that the diversity of religion is a legitimate and permanent expression of the human spirit that the different religions are not meant to compete but to collaborate. &ldquoConventional theology,&rdquo he declared, &ldquoassumes that the different religions must necessarily oppose each other. But on reaching full maturity the human spirit aspires to rise above every manner of conflict and opposition, and a person then recognises all expressions of the spiritual life as an organic whole.&rdquo This does not erase the difference of levels between religions, between higher and lower, between the more holy and the less holy and between the holy and the common. But each has its place in the life of the whole. Each is a path through which G-d is seeking to raise man or woman to him/herself. |
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