Theological and Philosophical Responses to Syncretism: Beyond the Mirage of Pure Religion PDF
Preview Theological and Philosophical Responses to Syncretism: Beyond the Mirage of Pure Religion
Theological and Philosophical Responses to Syncretism Philosophy of Religion World Religions Editor in Chief Jerome Gellman (Ben Gurion University) Editorial Board Richard Hayes (University of New Mexico) Robert McKim (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) Rusmir Mahmutćehajić (Međunarodni forum Bosna/ International Forum Bosnia) VOLUME 7 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/prwr Theological and Philosophical Responses to Syncretism Beyond the Mirage of Pure Religion Edited by Patrik Fridlund and Mika Vähäkangas LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: The photo was taken in a bus in Delhi by Paul Linjamaa, one of the contributors of the present volume. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Fridlund, Patrik, editor. Title: Theological and philosophical responses to syncretism : beyond the mirage of pure religion / edited by Patrik Fridlund and Mika Vähäkangas. Description: Boston : Brill, 2017. | Series: Philosophy of religion. World religions, ISSN 2210-481X ; volume 7 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017032916 (print) | LCCN 2017037585 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004336599 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004352124 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Syncretism (Religion) | Philosophy and religion. Classification: LCC BL410 (ebook) | LCC BL410 .T44 2017 (print) | DDC 201/.5—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017032916 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2210-481X isbn 978-90-04-35212-4 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-33659-9 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents Contributors vii Introduction 1 1 Syncretism as the Theoretical Foundation of Religious Studies 9 Jerker Karlsson 2 Gnosticism as Inherently Syncretistic? Identity Constructions among Ancient Christians and Protestant Apologetes 25 Paul Linjamaa 3 Responding to Syncretism 41 Patrik Fridlund 4 Theo-Logical Positions vis-à-vis Syncretism 68 Mika Vähäkangas 5 Fair or Foul? Contextual Theology, Syncretism and the Criteria for Orthodoxy 88 Stephen Bevans 6 Assessing Catholic – Buddhist ‘Dual-Belonging’ in the Light of the Catholic Magisterium 104 Gavin D’Costa 7 Khrist Bhaktas and the Reconstruction of Syncretism 163 Jonas Adelin Jørgensen 8 ‘We are In-Between’ – Syncretism and Making Sense of Empirical Data 178 Lotta Gammelin 9 Is Dual Religious Belonging Syncretistic? An Evangelical and Missiological Perspective 190 Kang-San Tan vi Contents 10 Syncretism or Inclusivist Subordination? An Exploration into the Dynamics of Inter-Religious Cooperation 209 Elizabeth J. Harris Index of Names and Subjects 227 Contributors Stephen Bevans is a Roman Catholic priest in the missionary congregation of the Society of the Divine Word. He is Louis J. Luzbetak, SVD Professor of Mission and Culture, Emeritus, at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Educated at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome (STL) and the University of Notre Dame in the USA (PhD), he has been a missionary to the Philippines and has written and travelled extensively. Gavin D’Costa is Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol, England. He is an advisor to the Vatican and the Bishops of England and Wales on interfaith matters. His main research has focused on Catholic theology of religions, with special attention to Vatican II and the post-conciliar Church. He is also a pub- lished poet. Patrik Fridlund is docent (reader) in Philosophy of Religion at Lund University, Sweden. He was a member of the research unit Dialogue et conversion at the Catholic University of Paris 2009–2013. He is deputy director responsible for international relations of the open access review Logoi.ph. His main research interests are religious diversity, religion and politics, and philosophical questions about subjectivity, informed by readings of Derrida and Lévinas. Lotta Gammelin has been a PhD candidate in Global Christianity and Inter-Religious Relations at Lund University since 2012. Her PhD research project is an ethnographic study of a locally founded, prophetic and charismatic church in Mbeya, Southern Tanzania, focusing on healing, gender and authority. Her research interests include questions of gender and religion, African Christianity, and religious change informed by postcolonial theory. Elizabeth J. Harris is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Birmingham University (UK). Previous to this she was Associate Professor in Religious Studies at Liverpool Hope University (UK). She is the current President of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies and an International Adviser to the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. She specializes in Buddhist Studies and inter-faith studies. viii Contributors Jonas Adelin Jørgensen holds a PhD in systematic theology. His research field lies within World Christianity and Mission Studies, and he has written about present encounters between Hinduism, Islam and Christianity on the Indian subcontinent. He has taught systematic theology at the University of Copenhagen, and is now serv- ing as secretary general of the Danish Mission Council. Tan Kang-San is a Malaysian Chinese missiologist serving as Executive Director for AsiaCMS, a mission training network among Asian mission movements based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Previously, Kang San was Head of Mission Studies at Redcliffe College, United Kingdom. Jerker Karlsson is a PhD student in philosophy of religion and ethics at Lund University, Sweden. He is a member of The Nordic Network for the Philosophy of Science. His main research interests are ethical naturalism and how normative changes are driven by human experiences. His PhD project is a case study of some nor- mative problems associated with the application of refugee law by the Swedish board of Immigration. Paul Linjamaa is a PhD candidate in the History of Religions at Lund University, Sweden. His main research interests are ancient religions, more particularly early Christianity with a focus on Patristics, Hellenistic philosophy and Coptic lit- erature. His PhD project is devoted to early Christian ethics and The Tripartite Tractate from Nag Hammadi Codex I. Mika Vähäkangas is Professor in Mission Studies and Ecumenics at Lund University, Sweden. He is a former lecturer at Makumira University College (Tanzania) and President of the International Association for Mission Studies (IAMS) 2012–2016. His main research interests are encounters between Christianity and other faiths especially in Africa, contextuality in theology and empirical approaches to World Christianity. Introduction There has always been a strong tendency in the western cultural sphere to search for the ontologically pure and original in both theology and philoso- phy. This has often been combined with a marked methodological tendency to make distinctions in the form of discrete entities with clear borders. It has to be acknowledged that the clarity that follows is often practical and useful, as it facilitates reflection and action. Nonetheless, as has been pointed out, this methodological approach can be seen to presuppose a specific ontology of stability and clarity. To strive for methodological clarity based on the ontol- ogy of discrete entities with clear and stable borders is problematic. To find the ‘true something behind’ is a difficult enterprise, vain or even dangerous.1 This is not the place to enter into the debate on this point. What can be said, however, is that in history of religion, sociology and anthropology of religion, there is a common understanding that insistence on pure religious doctrines, teachings and practices is fruitless. Hence from that perspective, syncretism is almost a non-topic, if seen as a mélange of elements from two or more distinct entities. Such mixing would simply be a sine qua non for religion. On the other hand, in much theological discourse, pure religious traditions are seen as accurate descriptions of religious life. Many philosophies of reli- gion accept this position, and religions are approached as if they were clear-cut entities that do not overlap and mix with each other, unless by mistake, false- ly or illicitly. A given religion – in its pure and original form – is approached as an idea and as an ideological system almost hermetically sealed off from other religions, from ideologies and from cultures. Hence, academic study of religion, as well as theological and philosophical reflection in the field of reli- gion, appears to suffer from a sort of schizophrenia. On the one hand, scholars recognise unhesitatingly the plural and complex character of religious ideas, doctrines, teachings, interpretations and practices. Yet, simultaneously, much reflection and research is conducted on the assumption that religions are clearly separate and distinct entities with clear limits. Of course, one may hold that a given religion is a complex phenomenon with a mixed history and with influences from many various sources, on the one hand, and yet concurrently 1 Michel Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, in From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, ed. Lawrence Cahoone, 2nd exp. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 242–243. See also Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie (Paris: Minuit, 1967). See also Patrik Fridlund, ‘Ambivalent Wisdom as the Fruit of Reading’, Logoi.ph 1, no. 2 (2015): 169–184. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi ��.��63/9789004336599_00�
The list of books you might like
