Response to Thatamanil

by Chris Boesel

John,

Thanks much for your thoughtful and engaging response. I believe you are reading me well, and the critical—though always generous—edges of your response rightly highlight the dicey stakes at issue in my questions, and helpfully call attention to some ambiguous phrasing on my part. I will not respond to all the issues and questions you raise here, but let them stand as invitations to further thinking and openings for others to jump into the conversation. In the interests of space, I will focus on a couple of points that are most interesting and provocative to me.

You correctly discern my worry about modernism, and with the way it can sometimes appear to dismiss tradition—and more importantly, the people who concretely inhabit traditional views and positions—from the outset. I will risk too long (and too self-referential) a response on this point, because the relation of tradition, modernity and postmodernity is written into the DNA of the TTC at its conception and is always worth revisiting and reflecting upon; it is to be expected that we may have both commonalities and differences around the table as to the nature and status of these discourses and their resources. Also, lingering over this issue will lay ground from which I can address a couple of further points.

Though you are right about my worry regarding modernism, you may slightly misplace the source of my worry. Defenders of “the normative and constraining power of tradition” from hasty dismissal are not the only folks who worry about modernism. So-called postmoderns, some of whom I understand can hold quite progressive positions on any number of issues, also worry about modernism. And they do so not for the sake of defending the unquestionable normativity of tradition, but in response to what is perceived to be the assumed unquestionable normativity of modernism. What complicates your reading of my nervousness about modernism, it seems to me, is the postmodern assumption that one in fact needs to be a postmodern to recognize traditions (including the Christian one) as “wildly luxuriant, full of robust conflict about fundamental matters of faith and so marked by considerable scope for theological creativity and play,” because this is precisely what is not recognized, but indeed often erased and suppressed, by so-called modernism.

All this to say, yes and no. Yes, I’m worried about modernism and its dismissal of tradition from the outset (especially as my interests skew toward the methodological: where to begin?). But no, not in the sense of defending the norming and constraining power of tradition in opposition to or in denial of its luxuriant and conflictual wildness. Rather, it is the extent to which modernism’s dismissal of tradition from the outset may entail its own erasure of this luxuriantly wild and conflictual nature that worries me. Correlatively, I suggest it is precisely this nature that allows one to inhabit tradition’s norming and constraining effects—very specifically understood (tradition binds one, but should not be a “power” possessed to bind others; it calls one to contest and appeal, surely, but in a manner distinguishable from control, mastery, domination)—while finding therein quite radical resources of self-critique; resources targeted on the very ways in which said norming and constraining effects inevitably and continually pretend to or are mistaken for certain forms of proprietary power over--. It is not, then, tradition’s own norming and constraining power I’m interested in, but rather the possibility that tradition might witness to—or be in response to—a reality radically distinguishable from tradition with some norming and constraining power of its own, e.g., the living God who has acted concretely and decisively in history as a part of history in an event that can only—the “constraining” part—be given witness as a piece of news (even here, then, “power” is carefully qualified, for as Lessing points out, such a witness is as weak and questionable as a “spider’s thread,” suggesting that divine power is more likely to be active in and through creaturely weakness, and in radical contradiction to creaturely power, of either the material or the hermeneutical-rhetorical variety); a distinctive witness and response, then, that are unaccountable and unjustifiable according to—i.e., that exceed, to use a sexy postmodernism—certain founding assumptions of modernism (and postmodernism, for that matter).

I am not saying that I am a postmodern rather than traditional theologian; or even that I am a combination of the two to the exclusion of the modern (as if that were possible). I assume I’m a messy combination of all three; both in the grips of all three while attempting to strategically use their various resources toward a certain vision of theological and ethical responsibility. For example, I absolutely agree with you that modernism is not entirely problematic (though I have sometimes been guilty of an intellectual laziness that speaks as if it was), and that the gifts of historical criticism, gender critique and notions of human autonomy that you mention as traceable to the Enlightenment are gifts indeed (though not without their limits, of course; as Derrida says, there is no such thing as a harmless remedy). And it is just here that your affirmation of modernism nicely exposes a self-contradiction in much of what passes for postmodern discourse, as the latter is often guilty of its own reductionist and monolithic reading of modernity while claiming the latter’s ethical impulse as its own (e.g., the allergy to imperialistic imposition of external authority).

However, your helpful reminder of the gifts of modernism also raises a central issue of my worry in relation to the themes and concerns of this conference, especially when seen in light of your response to my second question, about whether a comparative theologian is bound to employ ethical norms created apart from the dialogical encounter itself. In your response to that question you quite appropriately ask if I mean to say that Christianity is exempt from the “sad litany of misguided commitments” I suggest might be organically rooted in other religious traditions—“hierarchical, non-egalitarian, monarchical, patriarchal, militaristic, tribal blood feud, warrior code, etc.” I first want to say: I am absolutely not intending to exempt Christianity here (indeed, this is key to the critical edge of my developing “thesis”). And I thank you for raising the issue, as my phrasing could indeed be read that way. On the contrary, I assume that the history of Christianity has been riddled with all of these sad and misguided commitments at one time or another, and that some of them cannot be wholly eradicated from traditional Christian theology and faith—even in the (hopefully) nuanced forms that I inhabit. And I also assume that the modern project of liberal, progressive Christian theology (of which religious pluralism and comparative theology are a part, yes?) is to purify Christianity of these sad and misguided commitments to whatever extent possible and so render it both viable and safe for the neighbor and world. And this, precisely because these commitments are judged to be sad and misguided, and so render Christianity—or any religion in which they can be found—as ethically problematic and in need of ethical remedy.

Now, given that I am not exempting Christianity, but also that you do not attempt to exempt any number of “other religious traditions” from the possibility of being characterized by these various commitments in various ways, what strikes me about your response is the candid nature of your pejorative judgment of these commitments as sad and misguided. It is stated so off-handedly, and indeed, it seems so obvious, I missed it myself—and I would be surprised if it was caught by anyone participating in this conversation (except a practitioner of such a religion—Christian or otherwise—who I assume would immediately recognize themselves as the target of a demeaning dismissal; but would said practitioner be participating in this conversation? This was what I was getting at in the third question about who can actually experience themselves as fully welcomed at the table) so accustomed are we to the authoritative judgments of our modern philosophical and ethical instincts on these matters.

So: When seen in relation to your earlier reminder of the gifts of modernity (which I affirm) as seeded in part (but I would push this: in large part) by the European Enlightenment, how can an off-hand pejorative judgment like this—that I myself make all the time, so second nature is it to so many of us—avoid being seen as an unstated assumption of a philosophical-cultural privilege, and one that is embedded in the discourses of religious pluralism and comparative theology? Is there a sense, then, in which these discourses, rather than remedying exclusion with inclusion, may sometimes “move the goal posts” of exclusion from the religious to the ethico-cultural (the reducing-theology/religion-to-ethics part of my worry), where they—the lines of exclusion—are much more difficult to discern because embedded in assumptions that seem so obvious to us as to be part of the air we breathe, e.g., the assumption that the above list of religiously embedded socio-ethical commitments are sad and misguided? Please hear these as genuine questions expressing genuine concerns (albeit with some growing suspicion that I might be on to something) and not as my own final/fixed pejorative judgment in disguise; I am perfectly willing—and indeed, would not be overly surprised—to be shown that and how I have the wrong end of the stick here and/or am thinking too simplistically.

Having already taken up too much space, I will leave it here.

As to your last request for a more substantive engagement with the content of your paper beyond the introductory methodological issues, I will plead for patience, with hopes to give you a proper response in coming weeks. The focus on your introduction was intentional, as it so nicely demonstrated the connection with last year’s conference precisely in relation to our framing questions. However, I can give you a short yet incomplete answer to your questions here (leading to more questions): “yes, but—.” Yes, you bring very compelling philosophical plausibility to the doctrine of the trinity. But I skew Kierkegaardian, here (hopeless, I know); IF Christian doctrine such as the trinity is itself to be only a self-critical repetition of a highly questionable human witness to unaccountable and improbable divine action in history (and even more, IF that action has in fact occurred; is “actual”), then I’m not sure it is the task of theology to make said doctrine more philosophically plausible, for wouldn’t such plausibility necessarily “dismiss” the possibility (and so actuality) of said unaccountable and improbable divine action in history “from the outset?”

Likewise: yes, you persuade me that Hindus and Buddhists can help Christians do Christian theology, IF the work of theology begins with a question, e.g., the question of divine incarnation: does God take a body? Is this possible? How might it be possible? How might it be plausible? (your own example of a comparative theology project between a Barthian and a Hindu, by way of Francis X. Clooney, S.J.) But what IF Christian theology does not begin with (open) questions, e.g., of whether God takes a body, but begins with (constraining) witness—e.g., the report that God has in fact taken a body (and indeed, its crazier than that: not a body but the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and further, not “taken a body” as a provisional and discardable outer garment—behavior somewhat permissible for a proper if idiosyncratic and capricious divinity—but become this full human person—body and soul—in full, irreversible hypostatic unity for all eternity, etc., etc., you know the drill)? This latter IF is of course Barth’s a posteriori methodology; and this suggests, does it not, that a Barthian could only venture a comparative theological project as you’ve framed it—“beginning with the question”—by ceasing to be a Barthian (from the outset)?

Now I am NOT saying here that Hindus and Buddhists cannot help Christians who skew more Barthian than Tillichian do Christian theology (I really don’t know, and am curious as to how it might work); I’m simply suggesting that if they can it would play out differently than you seem to be suggesting here. I close, then, with a rephrasing of my closing question from last time: IF I am a Barthian—or a run-of-the-mill Christian schmo silly enough to actually believe the incarnational mumbo-jumbo in the parentheses above; or a run-of-the-mill religious practitioner of another religion similarly devout in relation to its own mumbo-jumbo—and the table of comparative theology (and/or religious pluralism) is set for a meal of philosophical (and ethical) plausibility, am I—are we—dismissed from the outset?

Response to Boesel

by John Thatamanil

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!

Trinity and Relationality, Theology and the Ethical

Chris Boesel

John, your introduction highlights two significant and related issues of recent theological work on the Christian doctrine of the trinity, both of which are central to the conversations out of which the theme for TTC10 emerged: how does the concept—or reality—of divine multiplicity (in this case, a Christian doctrine of the trinity) function as a site for affirmation of two creaturely arenas of mutual relationality (a) religious pluralism, and (b) just, egalitarian social orderings.

With regard to the former, you note how trinitarianism has recently been retrieved as a “distinctively Christian way of offering a positive resolution to the problem of religious diversity;” such that “Christians can account for substantial differences among the world’s religions as varying but nonetheless legitimate expressions of an encounter with God who will be experienced diversely just because God is not an undifferentiated singularity.” However, you contend that these efforts often remain in “the territory of hierarchical inclusivism in which Christian traditions have nothing to learn or gain from dialogue with other religious traditions,” and so the more radical possibility of religious pluralism and inter-religious dialogue—the “possibility of mutual transformation”—is missed.

As concerns the latter, you note that one major reason for the “resurgence of trinitarianism” in contemporary Christian theology is “the notion that trinity affords a promising resource for social ontology.” You go on: “If to be is to be in relation, then there is no clearer paradigm for that contention than the trinity itself.” However, you note that, despite the breadth of consensus on the significance of the trinity for egalitarian creaturely relations, there is strong disagreement on how to interpret this significance. For example, to what extent should this interpretation be rooted in and governed by “the intentions of the ancients”—i.e., by traditional theological assumptions and sources—or (I’m filling in the blanks here, re: Moltmann, Boff and co.’s rationale) the moral urgency of marginalized peoples’ experience of suffering as thematized in certain contemporary and progressive socio-political theories and analyses?

Your constructive proposal in relation to both of these arenas of conversation is the same (if I’m reading you well). It is to bring trinitarian thinking to these conversations as an open question—via the discourse of comparative theology—rather than as a “finished conception” or “pre-fabricated solution” whose content cannot be substantively altered by an engagement of mutual transformation; an engagement that entails actually including insights from other religious traditions (in the case of religious pluralism) or from non-theological disciplinary analysis of socio-political reality (in the case of social ontology).

In these introductory pages you manage to nicely surface a central thematic concern underlying the entire TTC series: the ontologically constitutive nature of relationality and mutuality—for divinity, and the cosmos, and betwixt the two. I just want to briefly highlight how your introductory framing helpfully raises certain issues and questions of particular interest to me, a Christian systematic theologian trying to think beyond—or otherwise than—the apparent opposition between orthodox doctrinal thinking and progressive commitments to inter-dependent mutuality and egalitarian social ordering.

1. First, I want to highlight the way in which the treatment of theology generally, and our evaluation of its value and worth—the criteria for distinguishing between good theology and bad theology—is framed in terms of use and function, e.g., Trinitarian theology as a “site for….” Further, in both arenas, that which theology functions as a “site for…” appears to be primarily ethical in nature: non-hierarchical, egalitarian relations of mutuality and inter-dependence. This raises the enduring question of the relation theology/religion to ethics. To what extent does our engagement with both arenas of theological conversation—religious pluralism and egalitarian social ordering—remain within the orbit of a modern framing of this question, and perhaps even a modern answer that reduces theology/religion to the ethical? And to the extent that it does, can such engagements be truly hospitable—genuinely open—to the convictions and experience of flesh and blood religious practitioners who inhabit their religious identities outside the orbit of the philosophical assumptions of the modern West that make said framing and reduction feel so obvious and necessary to many of us?

2. Relatedly, to follow upon your call to leave aside finished and prefabricated theological positions in favor of open, mutually transformative encounter with and inclusion of other religious traditions and voices. Given that this call appears to be driven in some measure by an ethic of non-hierarchical, egalitarian relationality of inter-dependent mutuality, to what extent is this ethical commitment itself relatively finished and prefabricated? Or 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?

3. Finally, to what extent does the goal of substantive alteration of trinitarian thinking (or conceptions of God more generally) in mutually transformative engagement with various religious traditions assume that the subject matter of theology and religion is ours to alter? What if the subject matter of theology is—as in certain traditions of Christian thought—not only the ineffable, abyssal essence of divine being experienced immanently in a variety of historically determined creaturely modes, but includes the rather scandalous news of divinity’s concrete and particular action in history in certain times and places. Or is this latter possibility necessarily excluded from the conversation at the outset, as, for example, the kind of over-anthropomorphizing of God into a being among beings that Tillich et al have “demonstrated is a contradiction in terms”? But if this is the case, are we not dealing here with the “self-sufficiency” of a finished and prefabricated philosophical doctrine that regulates what counts as viable religious conception of divinity while itself being immune to “mutual transformation,” having “nothing to learn or gain from dialogue” with those religious confessions and practices excluded and hierarchically marginalized as non-viable by its own regulatory ideal? And how many of the world’s indigenous, tribal religions—or indeed, how many actual practitioners of all religions—could be granted a seat at the table of conversation regulated by said philosophical criteria?

John—and Wesley (and others, as the conversation gets underway)—feel free to respond to one, any or all of these, in any way that is interesting to you, as time and energy permits!

Beginning the Conversation

In the introductory note to our posting of the Introduction to Polydoxy: Theologies of the Manifold on the website, we spoke of a continuity between the themes and concerns of last fall’s colloquium and our present shared project. That continuity is perhaps most obvious in John Thatamanil’s paper from last year, entitled, "God as Ground, Contingency and Relation: Trinity, Polydoxy, and Religious Diversity." With John’s permission, and participation, we’d like to try an experiment—something new in the way we prepare for our gathering at a common table of conversation; something to provide more concrete specificity about the content and complexity of our shared theme and its cluster of related issues, for you to think with over the summer. A link to John’s paper, now a chapter in the Polydoxy volume, is also available on the “related readings” page of the website (available in PDF and HTML formats).

In what follows, Wesley Ariarajah and Chris Boesel begin a conversation with John about the introductory framing of his paper, noting the ways in which it nicely raises many of the questions and issues that we find most central and most intriguing for our current theme. Given that John approaches the topic of his paper from the perspective of comparative theology, Wesley is a religious pluralist, and Chris repentantly orthodox doctrinally, they have different approaches to the issues and tend to come up with different answers to the questions; but they are shared issues and questions.

This conversation, then, is open to continue through the summer, as an invitation to all colloquium presenters and respondents (with a comments option for anyone else interested in these themes) to begin thinking and talking together as we work on our respective contributions to our meeting in the fall. We by no means intend this to narrow or restrict your own approach to the material. This is just one example of a cluster of questions as approached by several disciplinary perspectives in conversation. The wager is that, as folks choose to enter and contribute to the conversation from their own differing disciplinary and religious locations and thematic interests, the conversation will widen. We hope it will open up beyond the initial interests and concerns expressed by John, Wesley and Chris, and expose to all of us involved in the colloquium various transdisciplinary and inter-religious dimensions of our shared theme that may not be initially visible from our own particular disciplinary, methodological and religious identities and interests.

Chris’s initial post is a bit long, as it includes a brief summary of John’s introduction. Further postings should be briefer and more conversational. This blog is not meant to be a burden of further work, but a fertile stimulant for constructive and mutually transformative thinking.

If you wish to contribute a post, and need some guidance on the procedure, find basic instructions here.

Up and Running

Welcome to the blog for the upcoming conference, "Divine Multiplicities: Trinities and Diversities," to be held at Drew Theological School in Madison, N.J. between September 30 and October 3, 2010, as part of the Transdisciplinary Theological Collquia conference series.

Check back soon for posts by Chris Boesel, John J. Thatamanil, and other conference participants.

For more information, visit the conference web site.