Dimensions of the Sacred: An Analysis of the World's Beliefs

Smart, one of the grandfathers of the study of the history of religion (along with Huston Smith and Mircea Eliade), offers a very interesting treatise on how the human animal has attempted to impose meaning on the paradox of the human condition: we are finite and time-bound, yet we are able to conceive of the eternal and the infinite. Smart walks the reader through a great mass of research, and for that alone we should be grateful. Through a series of chapters devoted to six dimensions of the world--Ritual, Mythic, Experiential and Emotional, Ethical and Legal, Social, Material--Smart delineates characteristics of religious worldviews. Two chapters, one on Doctrine and Philosophy and a final one on the Political Effects of Religion, provide bookends for his discussions. On the whole, Smart provides an extremely useful scheme for understanding the interrelationship among the various worldviews. A kind of anatomy of spirituality, designed to advance understanding of the practical and theoretical aspects of a variety of world religions, Smart's book is important reading for any serious student of religion. (Sept.)