Chris,
Thanks for the honor you do me in engaging my essay with intensity and care! For the sake of brevity, let me get right to the questions!
First, I hear an underlying apprehension that runs through the various specific concerns you raise about my piece: the worry about modernism. Am I trapped within a modernist frame of reference that dismisses the norming and constraining power of tradition from the outset?
Perhaps you are right. But does one have to be a modernist, narrowly construed, to recognize Christian traditions as wildly luxuriant, full of robust conflict about fundamental matters of faith, and so marked by considerable scope for theological creativity and play? I think not. Moreover, I do not regard modernism as entirely problematic! If the birth of historical criticism, gender critique, and a commitment to notions of human autonomy are seeded, at least in part, by Enlightenment philosophies and theologies, then perhaps we would do well to refuse the tradition vs. modernism dichotomy.
The more focused charge is that I may be reducing theology to ethics. My intention is just the opposite: rather, I suggest that the very texture of ethical commitments is intimately related to various ways of experiencing and encountering God. So, rather than insisting somewhat vaguely that all traditions point to the self-same generic calling to compassion, I suggest that compassion takes on different flavors, different configurations, when God or ultimate reality is encountered as ground, contingency or relation. Compassion feels different when it is performed and enfleshed variously as persons are grasped by divinity diversely encountered. Hence, we ought not to flatten out the rich repertoire of terms—agape, karuna, eros, and the like—into a generic English word like love or compassion. Ethics and theological ontology are intimately linked. Comparative theology must attend carefully to the particular configurations of the ethical and the ontological across traditions.
Your second query asks whether theologians are bound to bring to bear to the site of comparative theology some set of ethical norms created apart from the dialogical encounter itself. Or, you ask, “…does a comparative ethics accompany comparative theology, such that the content of said ethical commitment will necessarily be substantively altered in mutual transformative engagement with alternative—e.g, hierarchical, non-egalitarian, monarchical, patriarchal, militaristic, tribal blood feud, warrior code, etc.—ethical commitments organically rooted in and of a piece with other religious traditions?” I quote your query at some length because I am fairly sure that I must be misreading it. Surely you are not suggesting that “hierarchical, non-egalitarian, monarchical, patriarchal, etc.” convictions are rooted only in other religious traditions whereas Christianity is exempt from this sad litany of misguided commitments? And if you are not suggesting this, then I return the question to you. How are Christians to critique such elements within their own traditions? What principles do Christians use when undercutting our own patriarchalism? Might we not expect that other traditions are aware of and engaged in analogous forms of internal critique? If you are in principle open to all of this, then, yes, surely comparative ethics must accompany any comparative theology.
Your final question is multilayered: you ask whether the subject matter of theology is subject to alteration, you ask about the scandal of particularity and the philosophical criteria that I bring with me as I engage in comparative theology. Let me take a stab at a concise response. Whether or not God is subject to alteration is itself a disputed question for theology vis-à-vis process and classical conceptions of God as pure act. I point to this dispute to signal that that there is no single classical consensus about the nature of God or any other theological locus. So, of course, the subject matter of theology is subject to alteration. When has it not been so? The history of theology is a history of disputation!
Theological work—and comparative theology is no exception—is inevitably selective, normative, and creative. I can envision a very different comparative theological project ventured by a Barthian, for example, that might begin with the question of divine incarnation. Does God take a body? As Francis X. Clooney, S.J. has pointed out in his book Hindu God, Christian God: How Reason Helps to Break Down the Boundaries Between Religions (2010), this is a serious theological question for Hindu theologians. Even Barth has his counterpart in other religious traditions! Hence, the shape of comparative theology need not look like the particular post-Tillichian version that I venture here. That is all to say that comparative theology need not ignore the scandal of particularity. Indeed, my emphasis on contingency is an attempt to speak to particularity and singularity as features of both the world and the divine life.
Now, some final questions from me: I notice that most of your interrogations are meta-questions, questions about comparative theology in a constructive key. But I would love to hear you engage the specific content of my chapter: Does my discourse about God as ground, contingency, and relation shed light on trinitarian theology? Might such speculative theology serve even to bring new plausibility to the doctrine of the trinity? Have I persuaded you that Hindus and Buddhists can help Christians do Christian theology? I am most keen to hear you take up these questions if we go another round!
Thanks for the honor you do me in engaging my essay with intensity and care! For the sake of brevity, let me get right to the questions!
First, I hear an underlying apprehension that runs through the various specific concerns you raise about my piece: the worry about modernism. Am I trapped within a modernist frame of reference that dismisses the norming and constraining power of tradition from the outset?
Perhaps you are right. But does one have to be a modernist, narrowly construed, to recognize Christian traditions as wildly luxuriant, full of robust conflict about fundamental matters of faith, and so marked by considerable scope for theological creativity and play? I think not. Moreover, I do not regard modernism as entirely problematic! If the birth of historical criticism, gender critique, and a commitment to notions of human autonomy are seeded, at least in part, by Enlightenment philosophies and theologies, then perhaps we would do well to refuse the tradition vs. modernism dichotomy.
The more focused charge is that I may be reducing theology to ethics. My intention is just the opposite: rather, I suggest that the very texture of ethical commitments is intimately related to various ways of experiencing and encountering God. So, rather than insisting somewhat vaguely that all traditions point to the self-same generic calling to compassion, I suggest that compassion takes on different flavors, different configurations, when God or ultimate reality is encountered as ground, contingency or relation. Compassion feels different when it is performed and enfleshed variously as persons are grasped by divinity diversely encountered. Hence, we ought not to flatten out the rich repertoire of terms—agape, karuna, eros, and the like—into a generic English word like love or compassion. Ethics and theological ontology are intimately linked. Comparative theology must attend carefully to the particular configurations of the ethical and the ontological across traditions.
Your second query asks whether theologians are bound to bring to bear to the site of comparative theology some set of ethical norms created apart from the dialogical encounter itself. Or, you ask, “…does a comparative ethics accompany comparative theology, such that the content of said ethical commitment will necessarily be substantively altered in mutual transformative engagement with alternative—e.g, hierarchical, non-egalitarian, monarchical, patriarchal, militaristic, tribal blood feud, warrior code, etc.—ethical commitments organically rooted in and of a piece with other religious traditions?” I quote your query at some length because I am fairly sure that I must be misreading it. Surely you are not suggesting that “hierarchical, non-egalitarian, monarchical, patriarchal, etc.” convictions are rooted only in other religious traditions whereas Christianity is exempt from this sad litany of misguided commitments? And if you are not suggesting this, then I return the question to you. How are Christians to critique such elements within their own traditions? What principles do Christians use when undercutting our own patriarchalism? Might we not expect that other traditions are aware of and engaged in analogous forms of internal critique? If you are in principle open to all of this, then, yes, surely comparative ethics must accompany any comparative theology.
Your final question is multilayered: you ask whether the subject matter of theology is subject to alteration, you ask about the scandal of particularity and the philosophical criteria that I bring with me as I engage in comparative theology. Let me take a stab at a concise response. Whether or not God is subject to alteration is itself a disputed question for theology vis-à-vis process and classical conceptions of God as pure act. I point to this dispute to signal that that there is no single classical consensus about the nature of God or any other theological locus. So, of course, the subject matter of theology is subject to alteration. When has it not been so? The history of theology is a history of disputation!
Theological work—and comparative theology is no exception—is inevitably selective, normative, and creative. I can envision a very different comparative theological project ventured by a Barthian, for example, that might begin with the question of divine incarnation. Does God take a body? As Francis X. Clooney, S.J. has pointed out in his book Hindu God, Christian God: How Reason Helps to Break Down the Boundaries Between Religions (2010), this is a serious theological question for Hindu theologians. Even Barth has his counterpart in other religious traditions! Hence, the shape of comparative theology need not look like the particular post-Tillichian version that I venture here. That is all to say that comparative theology need not ignore the scandal of particularity. Indeed, my emphasis on contingency is an attempt to speak to particularity and singularity as features of both the world and the divine life.
Now, some final questions from me: I notice that most of your interrogations are meta-questions, questions about comparative theology in a constructive key. But I would love to hear you engage the specific content of my chapter: Does my discourse about God as ground, contingency, and relation shed light on trinitarian theology? Might such speculative theology serve even to bring new plausibility to the doctrine of the trinity? Have I persuaded you that Hindus and Buddhists can help Christians do Christian theology? I am most keen to hear you take up these questions if we go another round!
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