ic outlook is optimistic in spite of the material world rather than because of it. In India matter tends to be regarded as barbarian, spoiling everything she touches. Liberation lies ultimately in extricating spirit from its material involvement. How different the first chapter of Genesis, which opens, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth' and builds from there to its climax in which 'God saw everything he had made, and beheld it was very good.' Let the reader dwell for a moment on that wonderful little word 'very.' It gives a lift to the entire religion" (231-232).
Indeed, not only Judaism and Christianity, but also Islam, offer creation stories which take a positive outlook on the material world.
As Smith writes, "Archbishop Temple used to say that Judaism and its descendant, Christianity, are the most materialistic religions in the world. Islam should probably be added to the list. But if we take the three Semitically-oriented religions together, it does seem that no other insists so strongly that man is ineradicably body as well as spirit and that this coupling is no liability. From this basic premise three corollaries follow: that the material aspects of life are important; that matter can participate in the condition of salvation itself; that nature can become host to the divine" (232-233).
The God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is an all-powerful God. The relationship of man and God is a special one. In Judaism, the covenant between Jews and God marks the Jew as a member of the Chosen People who are destined to advance God's purpose on earth. In Christianity, the relationship between man and God is marked as a divine one by the incarnation of God as man in the person of Jesus Christ, who died for the sins of mankind and whose Resurrection gives man hope that he will be saved and experience the bliss of the afterlife in Heaven.
Both Christianity (at least in the writings of Paul) a...