Hume’s Gentle Witness

From National Review Online:

January 6, 2010 2:30 PM

Hume’s Gentle Witness
We should welcome honest talk about faith.

By Peter Wehner

Brit Hume’s comments on Fox News Sunday — “I don’t think that [Buddhism] offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith,” and, “My message to Tiger [Woods] would be: Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world” — have unleashed a torrent of criticism from the Left, including the various circus acts over at MSNBC and the Washington Post’s Tom Shales.

Shales’s criticisms in particular are manifestations of a mind that is enraged and slightly unhinged; they are ad hominem and, in some respects, unserious. But there are two lines of argument worth examining as they relate to what Hume said. The first is that he “dissed” all Buddhists; the second is that urging Woods to turn to the Christian faith is inappropriate, offensive, and out of line. Let’s examine both claims in turn.

What Hume said about Buddhism is, I believe, accurate. Whatever its virtues, Buddhism does not offer the kind of forgiveness and redemption that are central to Christianity. Buddhism’s hallmarks are (among other things) reincarnation; the belief that wisdom, discernment, and enlightenment can emerge through meditation, self-control, and self-denial; that suffering ceases with the achievement of Nirvana; and that the path to liberation is found through the extinguishing of human desires and passions. One of the many theological differences between Buddhism and Christianity is that the former does not entail a belief in God, if God is defined as a personal being who created the universe by design; and it asserts that “the human self . . . has no soul,” in the words of the religious scholar Huston Smith. Hume did not say that Buddhism doesn’t teach virtues (it does) or that there are no good qualities about it (there are). But forgiveness and redemption are not cornerstones of the Buddhist faith in the same way they are in the Christian faith.

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