Abstracts
Wesley Ariarajah, Drew University.
"The One and the Many: Are these Opposites? The struggle within the Indian tradition and its implications for religious plurality today"Much of the philosophical struggles on unity and plurality within the Indian tradition can be traced to debate between the pluralistic tradition of Sankhya and the non-dualism advocated by Sankara in the Advaita. Although the debates were over understanding the relations between the Ultimate Reality, the Soul and the World as philosophical issues, Indian traditions have always insisted on the practical implications of their positions to life and its destiny. What are the implications that were drawn from these discussions to religious plurality itself and what lessons can we draw from them to the contemporary debate on the Theology of Religions?
Loriliai Biernacki, University of Colorado, Boulder.
"Abhinavagupta's Theogrammatical Topography of the One and the Many"Resolving the conundrum of the one and the many has not only been a compulsive dialectical dance for the Western imagination. Indian thinkers as well have struggled with the divine and the world as orbital reflections instantiating the pendulous swing between the one and the many. In an Indian philosophical context this dialectic oscillates from the perch of a nondualism that sees only an absolute formless Brahman as the sole reality of all existence, to a celebration of the multiplicities of a Māyā brimming with a bodied life entangling itself and all of existence in a trinity of qualities; again, alternatively, from a loving bhakti that sees God as the essence and substratum of the creaturely jīva to an irrefragable dualism that mirrors the ineluctable longing and separation of creature and God. Uniting this twain is the skilled provenance of only a few Indian thinkers; one of the most notable is the 11th century Indian philosopher Abhinavagupta. An unwavering nondualist, Abhinavagupta's philosophical speculations underwrite a cosmology that is nevertheless multiple in its iterations and dynamic via his capacity to embed a notion of time and movement in the transcendent absolute. This paper presents an analysis of the interpenetration of the immanent and transcendent in this theocosmological mapping of consciousness that Abhinavagupta proposes. Particularly, I suggest that one finds the mode of interrelation between the transcendent and immanent expressed through a grammatico-theology. He creates a structural template underlying his theological cosmology through the modalities of the first, second and third persons of grammar, I, the You and the It. This paper explores this trinitarian syntax modulating the interpenetration of grammatical person as a means for bridging the boundaries between immanent and transcendent.
Chris Boesel, Drew University.
Philip Clayton, Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University.
"The God Who IS (Not) One:Of Elephants, Blind Men, and Disappearing Tigers"I begin with Stephen Prothero’s recent God is not one: the eight rival religions that run the world--and why their differences matter (HarperOne, 2010). The period of interreligious dialogue that sought to show the essential identity of (say) Buddhism and Christianity brought gains but also significant loses; the project of establishing "the" Judeo-Christian worldview, by contrast, was a license for colonization. Many of us use the story of the four blind men and the elephant to model interreligious dialogue today; here I take the story one step further and apply it to the Christian tradition by itself. Legs, trunk, tusks each bespeaks the mystery of the unity of "the one body" with its many members (1 Cor 12). Those of us who affirm rainbow coalitions have not been good at writing their theologies, however. I tell the elephantine story of "the God who is not one." In the paradox lies a deeper wisdom: the trinitarian inter-play, so peculiar to Christianity among its Abrahamic cousins, is also a model for a unity-across-differences that invites us in to a new era of interreligious theology and dialogue. Moving from elephants to tigers, monarch butterflies, and greenhouse gases, I conclude with the unity of the One Ecological Crisis in its Many manifestations, and the One call to action.
S. Mark Heim, Andover-Newton Theological School.
"Whose Trinities? Which Ultimates?: Thoughts on Trinitarian Theologies of Religious Pluralism"Theologies of religious pluralism, including "pluralist" theologies, have been driven by concern for religious diversity as an intellectual and practical problem. Diversity is a difficulty to be negotiated. Christian trinitarian theologies of religion, though also addressing these problematics, have tended to come to the fore in association with intimations of the positive meaning of religious difference. Diversity is a richness to be explored. If the diversity of religions is rooted in the diversity of the divine life itself, then the heart of the religions, their insights and realizations, become permanent parts of the content of Christian theology even though the privileged access to this content lies outside the traditional sources of Christian theology. The implications of this conclusion are enormous, though they are also as yet unclear and undeveloped.
There is an elective affinity between such theologies and what David Griffin calls "deep pluralism." The logic of trintarian theologies of religion fits with deep pluralism even though some trinitarian theologies of religion reject such pluralism (D'Costa) and some deep pluralists do not frame their thought as trinitarian (Cobb). To state this affinity, however, still leaves open a wide range of possible trinitarian formulations. This paper aims to explore some aspects of three options: John Cobb's process model as developed by David Griffin and Marjorie Suchocki, John Thatamanil's model as presented in his forthcoming book, and my own. In particular, I focus on two issues. The first concerns how we negotiate the tension between Trinity as a recognizable and confessionally Christian formulation and Trinity as a more generic variety of ontologically basic ultimates for which Christian terms provide one figuration, no more privileged than others. The second issue concerns a particular applied question of justice. If it is granted that persons are variously situated by circumstances of birth, culture and history in regard to religious differences in fact determinative for distinct kinds of religious attainment (and that divine power has some live role in the manifestations or availability that constitute this situation), are some (or all) persons unjustly disadvantaged in this respect?
John F. Hoffmeyer, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia.
"Multiplicity and Christocentric Theology"An emphasis on multiplicity is a valuable response against overbearing and coercive unity. The fruitfulness of this response depends upon the character of the multiplicity in question. Negatively, the "many folds" of multiplicity might turn out to be disturbingly the same, replicating ("re-folding") the same pattern over and over again. This is a worry about christocentric theologies: that the centrality of Christ tilts the dialectic of one and many in favor of oneness. This worry depends upon an understanding of center as: (1) paired with and opposed to a periphery; (2) holding primacy over the periphery. Is this understanding of center and periphery an unavoidable fixture of christocentric theology? If an important element of a christocentric theology is the claim that Jesus Christ reveals the divine, then attention to this concrete person may reveal different ways of thinking about centrality. In engagement particularly with Matthew 25:31-46, I argue that a theology attentive to the concrete person of Jesus the Christ must undermine the centrality of Christ in order to be consistently christocentric.
Cynthia L. Rigby, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
"The Universe, Raw: Endwelling the Endwelling of the Three-in-One"This paper explores how particularities, diversities, and multiplicities can best be honored and celebrated when they are known in relation to unities and syntheses. It does this, in part, by reflecting on what meaning "looks like" at the interface of particulars and universals. Engaging the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, it considers the kinds of meaning that emerge not only when particulars and universals are upheld as important but distinct realities that exist in tension, but when they are experienced in such ways that the boundaries between them are at one and the same time both maintained and dissolved.
The discussion is presented in four sections: (1) First, a section lamenting the loss of meaning that comes with setting aside metaphysical analyses because we think we need to do so if particularities, diversities, and multiplicities are to be honored. (2) Second, a section clarifying the thesis and beginning explorations of it. In short, the thesis is that metaphysics can actually support the honoring and celebration of multiplicities and diversities, when the "one" (which we cannot see, but do know) and the "three" (which we can see, but don’t always) are understood to exist in perichoretic relationship. This is in part because particularities (and diversities and multiplicities following from them) are best known in the context of relations, which generally rely on appeal to commonalities (both inherent and constructed). (3) Third, a section—divided into three uneven parts—exploring how saying something about everything can actually help us reflect on three things we wonder about most: (a) perceiving the unperceivable; (b) acting, as finite beings, in a world full of contingencies; and (c) knowing and being known by others. This section attempts, in part, to address a common "liberal" assumption that attentiveness to the universal, in the context of such wonderings, inevitably entails the de-valuing of the particular. (4) And fourth, a shorter concluding section that plays with a recent quote from the New Yorker to suggest, once again, that we really need to attend to reclaiming "perichoretic possibilities" if multiplicities and diversities are to be supported by simplicities and unities.
Kathryn Tanner, Yale Divinity School.
"Absolute Difference"One of the mysteries of classical formulations of the trinity is how to reconcile the one and the three, unity and diversity within the trinity. They appear to be at loggerheads with each and other; and, when push comes to shove, diversity always seems to lose out. Especially in neo-platonically inflected versions of classical trinitarianism, diversity within the trinity is qualified to do justice to unity without a similar qualification of unity to respect diversity. Because the trinity is perfectly one, the persons of the trinity can only be as different from one another as that unity allows; unity, in other words, sets a limit on how different the persons of the trinity can be from one another. The unity of the trinity, on the other hand, just because of its perfection, rules out similar qualification by diversity: the trinity is not any less one by reason of that diversity. The upshot of this priority of unity over diversity within the trinity is that the persons of the trinity do not seem to be as different from one another as other things are.
The intent of this paper is to show how diversity and unity can be put on a more equal footing given the assumptions of classical trinitarianism: one should say, for a variety of classical reasons, that the persons of the trinity are perfectly different. The trinity is both absolutely one and constituted by absolute differences among the persons, and those claims are perfectly compatible: in fact, what makes the persons of the trinity supremely different also perfectly unites them.
Respondents & Discussants
Peter G. Heltzel is Associate Professor of Theology and Director of the Micah Institute at New York Theological Seminary. He is the author of Jesus and Justice: Evangelicals, Race, and American Politics.
Hyo-Dong Lee is Assistant Professor of Theological Philosophy at Drew University. His research and teaching interests include dialogue between the Christian/Western theological tradition and Northeast Asian religious thought, including Confucianism Daoism, and Tonghak. His forthcoming book is tentatively titled Come, Holy Gi: A Cross-cultural Theology of the Postcolonial Spirit.
Serene Jones is President of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology. Her latest book is Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World.
Callid Keefe-Perry's research and speaking interests include communal hermeneutics, Paul Ricoeur, and theopoetics. He is a Quaker and travels in the Ministry with endorsement, coordinates the Transformative Language Arts Network, co-convenes an Emergent Christian Cohort, and studies at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. He maintains http://theopoetics.net and http://TheImageOfFish.com.
Catherine Keller is Professor of Constructive Theology at Drew University. In addition to coediting the forthcoming volume from last year's Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium, Polydoxy: Theology of Multiplicity and Relation, her most recent book is On the Mystery: Discerning God in Process.
Jason Mahn is Assistant Professor of Religion at Augustana College. He is at work on a book tentatively entitled, Fortunate Fallibility: Kierkegaard and the Power of Sin.
Karen Pechilis is Professor of Religious Studies at Drew University. Focusing on Asian Religions and Comparative Religion, she is the author of The Embodiment of Bhakti.
Mayra Rivera is Assistant Professor of Theology and Latina/o Studies at Harvard Divinity School. She is the author of The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God.
Laurel C. Schneider is Professor of Theology, Ethics, and Culture at Chicago Theological Seminary. Her latest book is Beyond Monotheism: A Theology of Multiplicity.
Christopher Taylor is Professor of Islamic Studies at Drew University. He is the author of In the Vicinity of the Righteous: Ziyara and the Veneration of Muslim Saints in Late Medieval Egyp.
John J. Thatamanil is Assistant Professor of Theology at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of The Immanent Divine: God, Creation, and the Human Predicament.
Lawrence Troster is the Jewish Chaplain of Bard College, an Associate of its Institute of Advanced Theology, and the Rabbinic Scholar in Residence for Greenfaith, an interfaith coalition in New Jersey. He publishes and teaches on theology, environmentalism, liturgy, bio-ethics and Judaism, and modern cosmology.
Michelle Voss Roberts is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College. Her forthcoming book (Oct 2010) is Dualities: A Theology of Difference.
