Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities : Cultivating Phenomenological Imagination 978-3-319-58196-5, 3319581961, 978-3-319-58195-8

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xii
Introduction: Comparative Theologies and Multiple Modernities (Paul S. Chung)....Pages 1-19
Comparative Theology, Religious Discourse, and Phenomenological Imagination (Paul S. Chung)....Pages 21-41
Comparative Theology of Justification and Interreligious Learning: Martin Luther and Shinran Shonin (Paul S. Chung)....Pages 43-63
Totaliter Aliter, God’s Mission, and the Postcolonial (Paul S. Chung)....Pages 65-81
Barth and Relational Theology (Paul S. Chung)....Pages 83-104
Phenomenological Elucidation: Karl Barth and Emmanuel Levinas (Paul S. Chung)....Pages 105-134
Theological Audacity, Analogical Relationality, and Religions (Paul S. Chung)....Pages 135-157
Barth, Comparative Theology, and Multiple Modernities (Paul S. Chung)....Pages 159-176
Ernst Troeltsch, Historical Method, and Comparative Theology (Paul S. Chung)....Pages 177-200
Comparative Theology and Interreligious Solidarity Ethic: A Critical Appraisal of Weber (Paul S. Chung)....Pages 201-228
Religious Discourse, Power Relations, and Interreligious Illumination (Paul S. Chung)....Pages 229-251
Confucian Moral, Phenomenology of Saying, and Multiple Modernities (Paul S. Chung)....Pages 253-275
Epilogue: Comparative Theology and the Postcolonial (Paul S. Chung)....Pages 277-303
Back Matter ....Pages 305-329

Citation preview

Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities Cultivating Phenomenological Imagination

Paul S. Chung

Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities

Paul S. Chung

Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities Cultivating Phenomenological Imagination

Paul S. Chung Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Chicago IL USA

ISBN 978-3-319-58195-8 ISBN 978-3-319-58196-5  (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940346 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image © Omar Jabri/EyeEm/Getty Images Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

Although religious diversity in some form is an ancient phenomenon, sustained Christian reflection on its meaning and implications is, relatively speaking, a fairly recent enterprise. This of course is not to say that Christian theology has totally missed careful theological assessment of what it means to live in a world in which more than one faith allegiance is voicing its claims; just think of some leading Christian theologians’ take on Islam and its challenge soon after the rise of the youngest Abrahamic faith. What I mean is this: for much too long a time, Christian theology had—or believed it had—the luxury to do its work without much or any consideration of other faiths’ teachings and insights. The situation has changed drastically during the second half of the last century. A flood of literature seeking to map out the location of the Christian Church and theology in the midst of a rapidly pluralizing world of living faiths has emerged. Often known under the somewhat elusive term “Christian theology of religions,” a highly productive and insightful body of reflection on the theological meaning of religions and the conditions and promises of a multi-faith world has come to light. As fruitful and necessary as that enterprise turned out to be, its liabilities are also obvious and well known. For me, among the most pressing limitations of such general and abstract thinking of religious diversity is just that: its general and abstract nature. You can only say so much on

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world-embracing topics such as these: What is the relationship among three Abrahamic faiths? What are the similarities and differences between Abrahamic and Asiatic religions? And so forth. To that lacuna speaks the second-generation approach among Christian theologians seeking a proper response to religious plurality, usually named “Christian comparative theology.” Gleaning from religious studies—an allegedly “neutral” analysis and investigation of specific features, beliefs, and rites of living faiths—as well as from the resources of Christian theology, including the theology of religions, this more recent paradigm seeks to tackle specific and limited “doctrinal” issues between two or more faiths. Similarly to Christian theology of religions, but differently from religious studies, Christian comparative theology is “confessional” by nature; the term confessional here does not mean some kind of dogmatic posture but rather a hospitable and inviting comparison of notes with the religious Other with full acknowledgment that the scholar approaches the task from the perspective of a specific religious commitment. Why am I rehearsing this well-known and quite introductory recent history concerning Christian theology’s take on other living faiths? The reason is simply to help locate Paul Chung’s Comparative Theology among Multiple Modernities: Cultivating Phenomenological Imagination. So, what is this fine essay’s place in the matrix of emerging and developing theological reflection on religious diversity? Without doubt, Paul’s fine and creative work represents the best of the Christian theology of religions tradition. Moreover, it does so in a way that goes beyond what most counterparts in the field are doing. He puts the theology of Karl Barth—one of the most widely used twentiethcentury theologians (who himself, regretfully, was only very thinly aware of the urgency of religious diversity)—and his interlocutors in a critical dialogue on several fronts. First, the philosophical–theological dialogue is extended to some of the brightest Christian comparative theologians working under the able leadership of the Jesuit Francis X. Clooney and others. Second, among the diverse philosophically driven resources, phenomenological approaches to religion and worldviews are introduced as well as a perceptive analysis of and critique of “multiple modernities.” Third—and here we are moving to the center of Christian comparative theology—Dr. Chung astonishingly is also able to bring to the dialogical and explorative task some key Buddhist and Confucian insights and

Foreword

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teachings relevant to the Christian doctrine. In this respect, he continues a long-term personal trajectory in the area of comparative Christian– Buddhist and Christian–Confucian studies. So here we have this rich and inviting theological table set for the readers. I imagine that both experts in world religions, familiar with Christian theology and philosophy, and theologians with some acquaintance with religions can equally well be guided and challenged with this bold proposal. As any constructive work worth its salt, this ambitious monograph hardly settles these big issues, nor does it wish to. What it does is to help interested fellow thinkers to appreciate new connections between ideas usually not brought together, to consider fresh perspectives on the questions of religious diversity, and—simply put—to be fed by “solid” theological–philosophical–religious nutrition! Palm Springs, CA, USA Lenten Season of 2017

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen

Preface

Comparative Theology among Multiple Modernities marks a different stage of my intellectual journey. Rather than taking on epistemological rupture, it can be understood as a mature stage of deepening my theological reasoning and comparative study of religions in a phenomenological frame of reference, as involved in the sociological study of religion. In my earlier book Martin Luther and Buddhism (2002), I dedicated the work to Helmut Gollwitzer, who is the theological father for my intellectual journey. An association of Gollwitzer, one of the most important Barth scholars, with a comparative study of religion, seems out of joint at face value, but I am much indebted to his theological thinking and critical social theory in my study of Karl Barth and religious discourse. In a move from Martin Luther and Buddhism toward the present project of comparative theology, I endeavor to phenomenologically renew and develop Barthian theology of the word of God. A notion of solidarity and blamage effect, which is developed in the sociological study of religion, is much indebted to Gollwitzer’s heuristic reconstruction of historical, materialist inquiry of religion and society. Through phenomenological construal of religion and culture, I have come to position myself to elaborate comparative theology with emphasis on a religious, prophetic ethic, and immanent critique for solidarity and emancipation. My reading together of Barth and Levinas is inspired

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by F.W. Marquardt, a successor of Helmut Gollwitzer and the exponent of theological audacity in the prophetic tradition of Karl Barth. Furthermore, this study wants to make a contribution to the correlation of comparative theology with postcolonial theory, in which a critical, emancipatory theory is undertaken in the problematization of an Orientalist mode of representation in an archeological analysis of the interplay of knowledge systems with power relations. My commitment to critical theory and sociology of religion, especially, Weber, Geertz, and Foucault, is articulated and developed in this volume for multiple modernities imbued with the postcolonial notion of trans-modernity. A critical model of comparative theology attempts to develop a regime of religious value rationality, especially for a religious inspired prophetic ethic in the study of religions. Comparative theology in the context of multiple modernities champions a hope of life and restorative justice vitiated under the hegemony of the racially injustice society of late capitalism. Shared with Benjamin’s remembrance of the innocent victim, this book attempts to elaborate the critical, emancipatory horizon of religious discourse and comparative theology in contrast to the blamage effect, as obviously seen in religious fanaticism and violence in our midst. Along with Max Horkheimer and Karl Barth, the existence of a theologian in the experience of despair and hopelessness is still characterized as a longing for the new meaning of life, as driven in a desire for the completely Other, that is, in a phenomenological, theological search of totaliter aliter. I am in gratitude with Prof. Craig L. Nessan who has helped me greatly to cut through moments of depression and frustration. I give my gratitude to Prof. Andreas Pangritz at the University of Bonn who ­provides substantial comments on the chapter on Barth, Levinas, and comparative theology. Professors Francis X. Clooney, S.J., and Prof. George Hunsinger must be thanked for their valuable exchange of Barth’s relational theology and the comparative theology. My gratitude extends to Peter Watters, who has done the meticulous editorial work and improved on limitations of my study through substantial critique and comments. I appreciate that Philip Getz, editor at Palgrave Macmillan, has accepted this writing project for publication. Hercules, CA, USA Easter 2017

Paul S. Chung

Contents

1

Introduction: Comparative Theologies and Multiple Modernities 1

2

Comparative Theology, Religious Discourse, and Phenomenological Imagination 21

3

Comparative Theology of Justification and Interreligious Learning: Martin Luther and Shinran Shonin 43

4

Totaliter Aliter, God’s Mission, and the Postcolonial 65

5

Barth and Relational Theology 83

6

Phenomenological Elucidation: Karl Barth and Emmanuel Levinas 105

7

Theological Audacity, Analogical Relationality, and Religions 135

8

Barth, Comparative Theology, and Multiple Modernities 159

9

Ernst Troeltsch, Historical Method, and Comparative Theology 177 xi

xii  Contents

10 Comparative Theology and Interreligious Solidarity Ethic: A Critical Appraisal of Weber 201 11 Religious Discourse, Power Relations, and Interreligious Illumination 229 12 Confucian Moral, Phenomenology of Saying, and Multiple Modernities 253 13 Epilogue: Comparative Theology and the Postcolonial 277 Glossary 305 Bibliography 309 Index 325

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Comparative Theologies and Multiple Modernities

A sociological study of comparative religion is by and large an expression used to refer to the study of religious rationality and ethics. Any general view or theory of religious ethos and rationality must take into account the similarities and dissimilarities between specific religious ethical traditions, and hence it is dependent on comparative inquiry. By correlating interreligious dialogue (practical engagement) with comparative, religious scholarship (theoretical foundation and elaboration), comparative theory bestows further theoretical method and clarification for ethical praxis in the sociological study of religion. Comparative theology is much needed in this context with respect to interreligious dialogue as a prophetic mission and the sociological study of religion. To what extent does comparative theology effectively relate to the postcolonial discourse of God’s mission as prophetic dialogue? If comparative theology is located in dialogue with the other religion, interreligious learning is appropriate in shaping a notion of Christian mission anew in this comparative context. America has become the most religiously diverse country in the world and becomes the background and context for doing theology comparatively in regard to the conflict of culture, as well as a “marbling of civilization and peoples.”1 The responsibility of the church finds its import in doing theology comparatively. In what follows, it is necessary to discuss Christian identity in religious diversities and postcolonial discourse of God’s mission with respect to the comparative study of religion. I proceed to deal with the comparative study in the context of multiple modernities and interreligious learning, © The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5_1

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examining “analogical” comparative theology (Tracy) and “commentarial” comparative theology (Clooney).2 Tracy and Clooney are primarily chosen as dialogue partners for the study of comparative theology because their respective theoretical approach (analogical or commentarial) stands in affinity with my phenomenological, hermeneutical inquiry of critical comparative theology in the sociological study of religion. To begin with, I take postcolonial discourse of God’s mission and comparative study as the point of departure.

Postcolonial God’s Mission

and Comparative

Study

We observe that the theological discourse of God’s mission takes on a postcolonial character and reorientation in the aftermath of colonial dominion and Orientalism. In the colonial era, civilizing mission was practiced as the imposition of the Western missionary agenda and value upon indigenous cultures and peoples. The cultural other is assumed as tabula rasa and its uniqueness and value as being the cultural other are violated under the colonial system of dominion. The mission deployed economic, political, religious, and intellectual alliances between the colonizer and the colonized for the service of the former.3 Comparative study of religions in this context has been much chided for its apologetic strategy and the dominating attempt to tailor other cultural, religious traditions for satisfying the interest of Christian religion in representation of other religions. Against this trend, today, a discourse of God’s mission in the postcolonial context and World Christianity reinforces a project of emancipation from colonizing the mind and provincializing European cultural hegemony. It also entails an indigenous attempt at expressing the biblical narrative and its message in the angle of inculturation. This perspective undergirds a heuristic concept of God’s mission in the project of translation, by relocating the discourse of God’s mission in the comparative study of religion and promoting solidarity with those on the margins; this postcolonial project entails emancipation from Western dominion and Orientalism toward transcending the limitation and the malaise of modernity. I assume that missional theology is not merely informed by systematic theology or confessional theology, but rather brings its unique experience of people of other cultures back to the theoretical presupposition and belief system of academic theology. Missional theology is of comparative, constructive character because of its dialogue, learning, and involvement in the lifeworld of people of other cultures. Mission as

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constructive theology holds its specific domain of local hermeneutics, as it concerns cultural practices and their symbolic meaning.4 If one can agree with Clifford Geertz that “culture is public, because meaning is,”5 a theological discourse of God’s mission needs to be discussed in the cultural realm, and it should incorporate the themes and method of comparative theology into its constructive frame of reference. Comparative theology helps missional theology better understand people of other cultures and embody the narrative of the biblical message in different religious contexts, with cultural sensitivity and respect. Comparative theology holds a distinctive vantage point in the study of religion, as conversed with the sociology of religion and the commentarial reading practice of religious texts, both in the home tradition and the other tradition. This comparative strategy facilitates systematic theology to adopt a constructive move, while reinforcing missional theology to be more faithful to the gospel of God’s mission in engagement with people of other cultures and religions in the reconciled world. As Clooney notices, comparative theology has a long history of missionary reflection of non-Christian religions in Western Jesuit scholars in India and China. Although in a moderate critique of older comparative theology, Clooney’s comparative theology holds missional relevance since the missional task is undertaken in the literal and figurative inscription of the world into the faith community, founded upon the Word of God. This effort of evangelization cannot be decoupled from comparative theology.6 Given this, interreligious dialogue as prophetic mission becomes an indispensable part for undergirding comparative theology in a more viable and practical manner.

Comparative Studies of Religion Modernities

and Multiple

A dialogue with people of other religions and cultures is inevitable to transcend the conflict, violence, and scapegoating of the other ensuing in the aftermath of colonialism. The comparative study of religion is undertaken in ways of envisioning non-violence and social justice for our own civilization. In Robert Bellah’s study of religion in the Axial Age, we see that the prophetic vision (Isaiah 65: 17–19, 21–22, 26) is elucidated in connection with Confucianism.7 His study marks an important achievement in featuring the reality of multiple modernities in the comparative study of religion in the context of axial ages. It refers to the civilizations

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emerged in ancient Israel, in ancient Greek, in Christian settings, partially in Zoroastrian Iran, in China’s early imperial period, in Hindu and Buddhist South and Southeast Asia, and in the Muslim world.8 A notion of multiple modernities contends that the classical view on modernity is not applicable to all modernizing societies. The European model is only one path to modernity, not the authentic one replacing and representing other non-Western ways. This refers to the notion of “multiple modernities.”9 Modernity is more complicated, diverse, and even culture-specific. Insofar as every “modern” society goes through its own “modernity,” the end result is very diverse and culture-specific, making the Western term “modernity,” as such, insipid and inadequate. As a rule, modernity characterizes socio-structural innovations and historical change in terms of functional differentiation occurring in the realms of economics, politics, and legal systems as well as communities and social systems; it had begun in Old Europe and throughout history. Its process of modernization refers to an evolutionary direction and scale reaching to modern and cultural-societal innovation. A global world system has emerged from evolutionary universals in which the Western model of modernity, along with its expansion, would prevail all over the world. Against this classical theory of modernity and modernization, however, the notion of multiple modernities calls into question such basic assumptions of the success of Western modernization, in which social structure has been shifted from medieval European civilization, politics, and economics to the modern society, especially after the French revolution. In fact, the notion of multiple modernities entails a multidimensional, theoretical description of structural evolution since global modernity is not derived from the West as a single pattern. A study of multiple modernities reveals a difficulty to accept the Western model of modernity as the homogenizing and hegemonic concept for the nonWest to follow and emulate.10 What is crucial in the study of multiple modernities is to analyze the relationship between cultural agency (creativity) and social structure in the socio-structural evolution, while vetting interweaved components of communication, interaction, and creativity. Social change is progressed by the interweaving complexity between the cultural and social structural dimensions in a concrete context and situation. The conflict and potentialities of social change and reconstruction differ and remain indeterminate to open spaces, or the degree of the particular development within societies

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and civilizations.11 This perspective entails a critique of the classical theory of modernity and modernization which does not describe a plurality of societal structures. Structural change continuously modifies belief systems and their implementation in a process of translation and social interaction. There are many modernities.12 Accordingly, axial civilizations and modernity can be re-systematized for multiple axial civilizations and multiple modernites. In distinction from pre-axial civilizations, the ancient Israelite prophets and priests, Greek philosophers, the Hindu Brahmins, and Chinese literati and their precursors assumed the role of autonomous intellectuals in social structural evolution, disseminating their religious visions. Axial civilizations are arenas for analysis in the relationship between cultural, religious civilizational vision and institutional formation in dealing with the interweaving of cultural dimensions with socio-structural construction.13 The various forms of modernities were established in the early twentieth century through imperialism and colonialism in Asia, Middle Eastern countries, and finally Africa. In the dynamics of a continual diversification of multiple modernities, it is hard to accept the Western-centric assumption of the “end of history” or the “clash of civilizations,”14 that holds a Eurocentric standpoint. In contrast, as Eisenstadt writes, “multiple interpretations of modernity” … attempts at “‘de-Westernization,’ depriving the West of its monopoly on modernity.”15 As a matter of fact, “modernity does not dissolve traditions, but rather that they serve as resources for modernity’s perpetual constitution and reconstitution.” Thus, “various cultures, when they are undergoing modernization, develop distinctive reaction patterns, conceptions of the good, and institutions. Whereas the first form of modernity emerged in Europe, the North and Latin American experiences are not fragments of the Old World, but rather the crystallization of a new civilization.”16 Multiple modernities, in contrast to the general end of modernity, emerge when non-Western people engage their own hybrid modernity. Modernity is an incomplete project and takes shape in multiple manners at every national or cultural site in terms of creative adaption and appropriation in their own terms and fashions.17 Furthermore, Charles Taylor argues that modernity is irresistible because “modernity is like a wave, flowing over and engulfing one traditional culture after another.” “A successful transition involves a people finding resources in their traditional culture to take on the new practices. In this sense modernity is not a single wave. It would be better to speak

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of alternative modernities … What they are looking for is a creative adaptation, drawing on the cultural resources of their tradition … [which] by definition has to be different from culture to culture.”18 At this juncture, I use multiple modernities as exchangeable with alternative modernities, but the former would be more relevant to the postcolonial character in its deconstructive endeavor as regard to the Western hegemonic form of modernity; it can be seen as an attempt to rethink and renew modernity from the standpoint of and on behalf of the margins.19 This perspective seeks to break through a pathology of an acultural form of Western modernity, in which Weber unilaterally analyzes modernization in the process of the disenchantment of the world and results in colonization and the iron cage of late modernity. Thus, alternative modernities in Taylor’s account refer to cultural theory of modernity juxtaposed with acultural modernity. For him, even though modernity may have started in the West, all cultures converge into the form one after another. Substantially, the same changes are comprehended partly in the loss of traditional beliefs which are undermined in the increasing of rationality.20 The project of multiple or alternative modernities may pave the way to religiously inspired ethics of solidarity in the global project of solidarity and emancipation in terms of the many stories and voices of resistance, innocent victims, and hope; it is undertaken on behalf of trans-modernity breaking through the pathology of societal modernization captive to the reification of late capitalism. A critical comparative theology sought after in this context entails a comparative, socio-historical study of religion and society, while challenging an Oriental representational interpretation of non-Western religions and their religious texts. A religious tradition, and also every human life, is more complex than one root metaphor: “Many metaphors are necessary and actually exist in a moral lexicon, while none alone exhausts the meaning of life and its worth.”21 This comparative religious perspective improves on the inadequacy and poverty of individualist ethics, which is caused by the modern banishment of religious sources from moral thinking. A project of multiple modernities is an important social critical background for giving an impetus to comparative theology, in which the sociological study of religion offers critical inquiry, conceptual clarity, and framework. It helps the participants of interreligious dialogue to deepen and enhance their practical effectiveness and public relevance. In an

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approach to comparative theology, sociological inquiry can be enriched in the hermeneutical-dialogical approach, which uses intercultural moral theorizing and praxis involving the quest for the cross-cultural understanding and the fusion of diverse moral and religious horizons.22 More than that, a narrative approach to the comparative study of religion undertakes comparative storytelling and spirituality. Ethical insights occur and are communicated within religious traditions through story and ritual. For example, Gandhi’s ethical views were shaped not only by his own Hinduism but by Tolstoy’s writings on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and King’s ethical views were deeply shaped by Gandhi’s insights into the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Narrative approach advocates passing over into the religions and cultures of others in order to finally come back with new insight into one’s own. Gandhi is a great example of narrative, comparative religious ethics.23 Narrative approach is convinced of the position in which “one may drink out of the same great rivers with others, but one need not use the same cup.”24 Nonetheless, a sociological comparatist complements: “It is not necessary to be Caesar in order to understand Caesar.”25

“Analogical” Comparative Theology In the philosophical, theological context, David Tracy presents an important approach to the comparative study of religion. His theology is undertaken in ways of correlating theology with philosophical reflection. His method is taken in a mutually revisionist way of the beliefs, values, and faith of an authentic secularity, while at the same time advancing a revisionist understanding of an authentic Christianity.26 For the study of religion, Tracy advances hermeneutical inquiry into religious and moral reasoning in diverse religious contexts. Analogical language and negative dialectic can serve as the principal candidates in service to comparative theology and interreligious study. Comparative theology in this regard can be characterized as a philosophical, theological reflection upon meanings, which are present in common to human experience, religion, and language. He is aware that the sociological inquiry of religion (Weber– Durkheim–Geertz) is quite different from phenomenological, experiential inquiry (Schleiermacher–Otto–Tillich). In the present pluralist situation, there is no need to attempt a single all-encompassing definition of religion.27 Tracy seeks to present a limit-language or a

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limit-experience in dealing with religious language, experience, and dimension. Religion implies a perspective which expresses a dominating interest in features of human existence, as articulated in the human desire for liberation and authentic existence. Such features can be analyzed as both expressive of certain limits to our ordinary experience and disclosing of certain fundamental structures of our existence beyond that ordinary experience (limit of or ground to our ordinary ways).28 Tracy maintains fidelity to both the intensity of negative dialectics and the similarities-indifference and order in all reality. His correlational method is framed in a revised and critical sense, undertaking theology as a mutually critical dialogue in correlation between the Christian message and other religious cultural experiences and practices. In a critical criterion correlating Christian symbols with other religious symbols, it describes a phenomenology of the religious dimension, which is present in everyday experience and language.29 Tracy demonstrates that the final or ultimate horizon is precisely a religious one in light of the radical mystery of divinity as the source of limit-question and experience. In his account, hermeneutical theory has merit in taking the historical context and the lifeworld of religious texts with full seriousness. We are all affected and shaped by the effects of history, the influence of that tradition, and religious texts in our language. Being faithful to the tradition would not be feasible in an attitude of merely repeating its tradita. Rather, it demands a critical attitude in engaging and investigating its tradition and history.30 His comparative theology allows for a historical-critical method in the reconstruction of the basic texts of one’s religious self-understanding.31 In the reinterpretation of religious symbols, comparative theology faces a reality of religious pluralism and is in need of addressing religious pluralism on theological grounds through the use of hermeneutics of retrieval, suspicion, and critique. Comparative theology is undertaken as a theological discipline within the history of religions. For Tracy, the ultimate incomprehensibility of divine reality provides the focal meaning for developing analogical comparative theology. Concerning the dialectics between “limit-to” language and “limit-of” language, he argues that any religion in a position of power demonstrates that religious movements are open and vulnerable to corruption. It is significant to take the ethical charges seriously in the critique of the obscurantisms, exclusivism, and moral fanaticism in the history of religion. Analogical comparative theology summons a paradigm shift from

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self-centeredness to liberating reality-centeredness, upholding ethicalpolitical criteria in a pluralistic attitude. However, in analogical imagination, his comparative theology tends to fall into radical relativism in his excessive emphasis upon the negative dialectic in view of the incomprehensibility of divine reality. The linguistic horizon of analogy is assimilated into negative dialectical language (via negationis). Analogies are produced by theologians involved in the dialectical relationship of participation and critique. Tracy’s hermeneutics has not managed to elaborate the linguistic horizon of analogy in the expression of divine mystery in which truth is expressed in language. But he elevates the negative dialectic to control a language of analogy for emphasizing dissimilarity in relativizing all religious truth claims.32

“Commentarial” Comparative Theology and Homo Lector Similarly, but in his own distinguished manner, Francis Clooney proposes comparative theology which entails an aspect of “faith seeking understanding.” It is undertaken as a procedure in the normative, constructive, and revisionist framework for the benefit of all religious believers. The confessional stance in distinction from the study of religion does not take its point of departure from a religiously neutral standpoint. But it takes an interest in the methods of comparison and the findings and results, which are based on the non-theological study of religion.33 The interreligious learning facilitates the gaining, for the comparatist, of fresh theological insights for the home tradition,34 such that it is a theology of interreligious learning in an in-depth study of the particularities of other religious traditions. Comparative theology seeks after learning across religious borders, in which the truth of the home tradition is disclosed in the light of the faith of other traditions.35 This perspective characterizes Clooney’s comparative theology as constructive theology that occurs after the comparative hermeneutic inquiry and result. Given this, “faith seeking understanding” implies a comparative epistemology in the understanding of other religious traditions, in which divine mystery is present. Such epistemology clarifies and illuminates the faith of the home tradition. In a nutshell, understanding seeks faith for being open and humble to the divine reality in the otherness of the other. For a proposal of comparative theology, comparison begins with the commentarial study of other religions, meticulously in reading and

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understanding their sacred texts, which are combined with personal conversations with the practitioners of the religious traditions. Exposing the identity of the comparatist to the other, even invulnerability to its truth claim and transformative power, the comparatist comes back to the home tradition. Comparative theology is a project of reading together (collectio) by intending a rethinking and rereading of every theological agenda, text, and belief system; it learns from and understands another tradition on its own terms, and it inscribes other religious texts within the home tradition.36 Critical correlations are taken in recognition of similarity, while not ignoring difference. Both similarity and difference are significant factors for comparative theology to respect the alterity of the other and recognize its transformative power.37 Paul Griffiths’ notion of religious reading remains an undercurrent for Clooney’s exegetical work. Religious reading establishes certain relations between readers and texts (at once attitudinal, cognitive, and moral), which imply an ontology, an epistemology, and an ethics. This distinctive set of relations between religious readers and their work is the first constituent in that “the work read is understood as a stable and vastly rich resources,” “a treasure-house, an ocean, a mine.”38 The second constituent with equal importance is that the “capacity for retrieving the riches of the work by an act of reading;” it qualifies the reader as homo lector to substitute homo sapiens without loss, but with considerable gain.39 Accordingly, Clooney establishes his position in terms of a homo ­lector that requires self-effacement before the text, patience, perseverance, and imagination. It is not a value-neutral position, but a humble practice seeking to reveal productive ways of thinking and changing the readers. As the reader is drawn into the world of text, even in engagement with the text of another religious tradition, this attitude remains crucial in face of the implications of the truth claims of religions.40 Commentarial comparative theology in our religiously diverse context endeavors to hold value in mutual learning and keep in balance diversity and tradition, as well as openness and truth, bringing correlation between the home tradition and others; thus, the meaning of the home tradition is not decided without recourse to the others.41 This commentarial theology is a text-based discipline with a constructive character, first undertaken in the phenomenological suspension of crossing over to the sacred text of the other tradition and then coming

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back to the home tradition, as deeply challenged by the encounter and learning of multiple religious and theological traditions. This comparative theology, which is allied with the inclusive position, does not abandon the starting point in faith and Christ and it reads the Advaita text, in ways that the Advaita text and its multiple literary riches and theological possibilities are all included in the position of Christian theological resources. It does not confuse the Advaita text with the Bible, for the Bible remains the privileged text, being formative of the inclusivist comparatist. This perspective entails a major revision of the theology of religions allied with the pluralist position: one religion is not accepted as the best of religions and salvation is mediated equally through many religions.42 However, the Christian comparatist under the efficacy of the Christian tradition is operative in the study of other religious texts. Thus, collectio in juxtaposition with the non-Christian texts implies the creation of a new significance for the non-Christian texts and also a distortion of their original meanings. A recovery of new meanings can be undertaken for the Bible and the theological system.43 A comparative reading of the Summa Theologiae after Vedanta must not create any changes in the Catholic doctrine, nor require the abandonment of its particular doctrines in any literal or constitutive sense. Even a revisionist interpretation of the particular doctrine cannot be expected because the comparatist reading “depends on the perdurance of what is said, read, taught, written in a tradition.”44 Comparative theology in commentarial exegesis and inclusive position remains faithful to the traditional teaching of Catholic theology, while implying an enhancement and a distortion of the non-Christian texts for the Catholic theological system. If Christocentric soteriology is incommensurable with Advaita’s teaching of Brahman salvation, it is left for the practice of reading and rereading the text and patient deferral. But “change occurs through a traversal of the path of reading, teaching and doctrine, and not in a timeless conceptualization,”45 in this practice of ongoing reading in light of the other traditions and its texts compared and juxtaposed. However, although the incommensurability remains between the compared two traditions, would not it be more significant to hermeneutically retrieve the unproblematized discourse in the text toward the recognition of other faiths, rather than remaining incommensurable and incomparable? For instance, if Aquinas insists that our intellect knows God from creatures, in order to understand God, the intellect forms conceptions proportional to the perfections flowing from God to creatures. These

12  P.S.CHUNG

perfections “pre-exist in God, whereas in creatures they are received, divided and multiplied.”46 If so, would not it be worth for a Catholic comparatist to contextualize and reinterpret this multiple abundance and manifestation of divine blessings in the other in a phenomenological-­ sociological context? In my judgment, collectio does not exhaust the rich abundance of the textual world into the critical consciousness and position of the Christian comparatist, but includes a source of knowledge, solidarity, and emancipation within its own texts and commentarial traditions. We read the tradition in a critical-constructive manner in order to rewrite the present history by problematizing the present since history and tradition are culturally transmitted and socially constructed in language, religion, and everyday forms of life. In interacting with the compared tradition, a recovery of new meaning and change may occur in the process of hermeneutical conversation and fusion of horizons. This recovery of a new meaning and self-renewal should come into play as the locus of immanent critique, as it regards the tradition’s set of belief systems by debunking its interplay with material interests and power relations, in the historical course of religious development.

A New Comparative Theology

and Multiple

Modernities

As previously examined, comparative theology in the project of Tracy (analogical) and Clooney (commentarial) is an important achievement in the area of constructive theology and theology of interreligious dialogue. Along with their achievements, I am more concerned with conceptualizing a critical comparative theology in the phenomenological study of religion, in which hermeneutical theory and sociological inquiry are explored and can be served for this purpose. For me, comparative theology is located within a systematic, constructive arena, yet entails its specific domain in the study of religions in history and society, as involved in the project of multiple modernities, imbued with practical intent to undergirding trans-modernity in the postcolonial context. The social dimension of religion, its economic rationality, and its moral contribution are elucidated along with the practice of reading together and commentarial works. Faith in God in revelation, say, the Word of God, seeks understanding of its mysterious presence in other sacred texts, as we are involved in explicating religious, cultural

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formation, economic ethos, and ethical contributions. In this critical fashion of comparative theology, I am concerned with developing the project of multiple modernities in terms of prophetic religious ethics for the global theory of emancipation, and in the problematization of the Western representational mode of Asian religious texts; in it the immanent critique seeks to transcend the malaise and vulnerability of ­modernity. For the study of comparative theology and multiple modernities, a phenomenological inquiry scrutinizes the extent to which the homo lector, under historical effectiveness, is connected with the homo socius and ethicus; this dialectical inquiry can be undertaken in engagement with understanding ensembles of cultural texts through problematization, immanent critique, and recovery of meaning. Theological phenomenology further shapes and characterizes homo socius by homo ethicus, existing under of the illeity of divine totaliter aliter.

Organization

of Themes and New

Orientation

For an organizational theme in each chapter and new orientation of comparative theology among multiple modernities, I make this ­chapter into a study of religion and society in terms of phenomenological inquiry. I shall ground and unfold a theoretical rationale for the necessity of phenomenological inquiry for the comparative study of religion and its practical relevance. Theological construal of phenomenology can be undertaken in scrutinizing the extent to which Barth and Levinas would be relevant to the phenomenology of culture in Clifford Geertz, Paul Ricoeur, and Michel Foucault. Then, we shall critically examine Tillich and Troeltsch in relevance for comparative theology, in terms of phenomenological inquiry and ontological hermeneutics. For comparative theology and multiple modernites, Chap. 2 begins an interreligious reflection of the comparative theology of justification, in regard to Luther’s teaching of grace of justification and Shinran’s in Pure Land Buddhism. A comparative theology of justification makes an attempt to read together faith and grace in interreligious learning, and revive the socially engaged dimension of Luther and Shinran for religiously inspired ethics of solidarity and universal grace. A comparative theology of justification finds its critical and constructive import in self-examination, mutual respect, and solidarity in affinity, yet without

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undermining incommensurability between Reformation theology and Pure Land teaching. In this phenomenological, sociological procedure, a comparative theology of justification is proposed as a theology of interreligious solidarity in examination and renewal of Luther’s theology. Chapter 3 is a study of Barth’s theological ideas of totaliter aliter, God’s mission, and the postcolonial in the context of World Christianity. If comparative theology is defined in faith epistemology, it is significant to elucidate the phenomenology of God’s mission and its religious discourse in church and world, to mediate its understanding of the church’s mission (first naiveté) in connection with other theological foci. Then, we shall elaborate its religious discourse in a broader dimension in recognition of cultural diversity and religious pluralism, which is more relevant to the dialogue with the postcolonial voice in World Christianity. From Chaps. 4 to 7, I endeavor to critically reread Barth’s relational theology by elaborating his “speech-act” theology through word and in otherness, in terms of analogical relationality, its irregular mode of thought, and analysis of his comparative study of religion. In this research, I seek to reinterpret his major theological insights into recognition of others, culture and religion, along with his prophetic political awareness on behalf of undergirding critical comparative theology and postcolonial transmodernity. For this task, Chap. 4 is a study of Barth’s relational theology in terms of a critical exegesis and renewal of Trinitarian election and analogia relationis. It concerns Eberhard Jüngel’s divine ontology (“God’s being in becoming”) by critically examining his critique of Helmut Gollwitzer’s social critical theology of “God Is” as transforming reality. This critical exegesis, drawing upon Barth’s social category of “God Is” and analogia relationis, cuts through limitations of Jüngel’s divine ontology underlying the subsequent project of the revisionist actualist ontology. A critical exegesis of Barth for social critical theology remains crucial in elaborating Barth as the exponent of relational theology for our development of comparative theology. Chapter 5 is a philosophical, theological elucidation of Barth and Levinas in their respective critique of Martin Heidegger. In this exposition, we would be in a better position to provide a theological, phenomenological rationale with the sociological study of comparative religions. A theological phenomenology is grounded in the theology of the Word of God, in the Barthian sense. But it is undertaken with clarification,

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critical exegesis, and renewal of his theology by way of phenomenological, archeological construal in reference to sociology and hermeneutical inquiry. Chapter 6 is a study of Barth’s theological audacity and dialectical theory of religion in respect to comparative theology, in which the analogical mode of thought (Anselm) and role of Ludwig Feuerbach are explicated in Barth’s understanding of revelation and religion. I seek to develop Barth’s analogical mode of thought in light of analogical relationality in critical exegesis of his complicated theology of the speech-act in analogia relationis, in critical view of the Catholic teaching of analogia entis. Based on the outcome and clarification, Chap. 7 is a study of Barth’s contribution to comparative theology and multiple modernities. I attempt to dissect Barth’s comparative study of Pure Land Buddhism; then, I proceed to critically examine Paul Knitter’s critique of Barth and Clooney’s comparative theology. A “speech-act” comparative theology can be reconstructed in evaluating Barth’s position in the analysis of the sociological debate of multiple modernities. Our engagement with Barth is to reinterpret his “speech-act” theology as the main source for undergirding further development of comparative theology in a phenomenological, sociological framework. Chapter 8 explicates Ernst Troeltsch’s contribution to the comparative study of religion in a critical, constructive manner. A phenomenological critique is undertaken against his limitations rooted in his historical, critical method. His weakness should be renewed and revised in hermeneutical reflection of fusion of horizons (Hans G. Gadamer), with respect to multiple modernities. I shall deal with the phenomenological significance of the transcendence of the Kingdom of God (totaliter aliter) in Troeltsch’s historicism in the comparative study of religion. Finally, I shall make Clooney’s commentarial theology more relevant to the historical dimension of comparative theology in Troeltsch’s sense, toward a critical comparative theology. Chapter 9 deals with a sociological inquiry of comparative theology in an analysis of elective affinity between the Protestant ethic and Buddhist rationality in Weber’s comparative study of religions. Critically exploring Weber’s inquiry, I shall retrieve Buddhist ideas of economic justice, as well as Luther’s, and develop the notion of immanent critique. This approach develops a framing of comparative theology for encountering

16  P.S.CHUNG

Buddhist phenomenological sociology in elaborating a notion of multiple horizons and a project of emancipation from modern cultural limitations and setbacks. Chapter 10 is concerned with problematizing the Buddhist text of Bodhicaryavatara (The Way of the Bodhisattva) in connection with the Buddhist principle of dependent origination, in which a Christian critical, constructive commentarial work should come into critical focus. A phenomenological inquiry calls into question religious ideas and social problems in terms of suspension and critical analysis of the blamage effect, unearthing elective affinity of the bodhicitta idea via the Heart Sutra in the Imperial Japanese context. This critical inquiry facilitates our project for developing the phenomenology of intertextuality and the comparative study of Buddhist compassion, as well as the Christian symbol of theologia crucis for mutual illumination and solidarity. Chapter 11 is a study of Confucian morals, its phenomenology of saying in otherness, and multiple modernities, in which the Confucian contribution to democracy, social justice, and moral practice will be elucidated. Particularly, Mencius’ position is taken care of in comparison with Weber’s charismatic role. Examining Confucianism as public religion, a study of basic features of Confucian ideas and ethics shall be explicated in dealing with the Confucian contribution to a reality of multiple modernities and civil society. Finally, a special elaboration of Mencius’ ethics of rectification is to be explicated in a phenomenological approach to vox Dei as vox Populi, as the source of ethics of solidarity in connection with its influential effect in Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming’s development in the Neo-Confucian context. This study takes on the significance of a postcolonial theory of religion in an East Asian context. The epilogue is not merely a summary of what has been discussed for phenomenology and critical comparative theology, but further articulates a postcolonial dimension of the comparative study of religion, in critical analysis of governmentality and mimicry. This epilogue includes prayerful exchange and interreligious elucidation in the comparative study of theologia crucis(Dietrich Bonhoeffer) and the Bodhisattva ideal of compassion for the ethic of solidarity. Textual reading and commentaries (homo lector) in the context of critical comparative theology turn into homo ethicus in solidarity with the other.

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Notes







1. Diana Eck, A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 4. 2. In addition to Tracy and Clooney, there are important scholars in the field of the comparative study of Christianity and Confucianism. For instance, Robert Neville and John Berthrong must be mentioned. Robert C. Neville, Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World (New York: SUNY, 2000). John H. Berthrong, Concerning Creativity: A Comparison of Chu His, Whitehead, and Neville (Albany: SUNY, 1998). 3.  Brain M. Howell and Jenell Williams Paris, Introducing Cultural Anthropology: A Christian Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 209–210. 4. Paul S. Chung, Reclaiming Mission as Constructive Theology: Missional Church and World Christianity (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012). 5. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic, 1973), 12. 6.  Francis X. Clooney, S.J. Theology after Vedanta: An Experiment in Comparative Theology (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY, 1993), 202; Clooney, Comparative Theology: Deep Learning across Religious Boarders (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 24–40. 7. Robert N. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 587, 476, 576. 8. The term axial age goes back to Karl Jaspers. The Origin and Goal of History, trans. Michael Bullock (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953). See Eisenstadt (ed.), The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations (New York: SUNY, 1986). 9. Dominic Sachsenmaier, Jens Riedel, and Shmuel N Eisenstadt, Reflections on Multiple Modernities: European, Chinese and other Interpretations (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 4. 10. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” in Daedalus (Winter 2000), 2. http://www.havenscenter.org/files/Eisenstadt2000_MultipleModernities. pdf. 11.  Eisenstadt, “Action, Resources, Structure, and Meaning,” in S. N. Eisenstadt, Power, Trust, and Meaning: Essays in Sociological Theory and Analysis (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 363.

18  P.S.CHUNG 12.  Gerhard Preyer, “The Perspective of Multiple Modernities. On Shmuel Eisenstadt’s Sociology,” 27–28. https://www.academia.edu/6966427/The_ Perspective_of_Multiple_Modernities._On_Shmuel_Eisenstadt_s_Sociology. 13. Ibid., 34–35. 14. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” in Daedalus, 23. 15. Ibid., 24. 16. Sachsenmaier et al. Reflections on Multiple Modernities, 10. 17. Gaonkar, “On Alternative Modernities,” in Alternative Modernities, ed. Dilip P. Gaonkar (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2001), 21. 18. Charles Taylor, “The Theories of Modernity,” in ibid., 182–183. 19. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000), 4. See further, Thomas McCarthy, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 183. 20.  Taylor, “The Theories of Modernity,” in Alternative Modernities, ed. Gaonkar, 191. 21. William Schweiker, Theological Ethics and Global Dynamics: In the Time of ManyWorlds (Malden: Blackwell, 2004), 214. 22.  Explorations in Global Ethics: Comparative Religious Ethics and Interreligious Dialogue, eds. Summer B. Twiss and Bruce Grelle (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998), 1. 23.  Darrel J. Fasching and Dell Dechant, Comparative Religious Ethics: A Narrative Approach (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). 24. Bruce Demarest, General Revelation: Historical Views and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 255. 25.  Max Weber, “The Nature of Social Action,” in Weber Selections in Translation, ed. W.G. Runciman, trans. Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 8. 26. David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 33. 27. Ibid., 92–93. 28. Ibid., 93. 29. Ibid., 46. 30. Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 100. 31. Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 49. 32. Tracy, Analogical Imagination, 410, 425–426. 33.  The New Comparative Theology: Interreligious Insights from the Next Generation, ed. Francis X. Clooney (New York: T. and T. Clark, 2010), xiii. 34. Ibid., 10. 35. Ibid., 15–6.

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36. Clooney, Theology after Vedanta, 7. 37.  The New Comparative Theology, ed. Clooney, xv. 38. Clooney, S. J. The Truth, the Way, the Life: Christian Commentary on the Three Holy Mantras of the Śrīvaişņava Hindu (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008), 9. 39. Ibid., 9; see Paul Griffiths, Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 41–42. 40. Clooney, The Truth, the Way, the Life, 9–10. 41. Clooney, Comparative Theology, 8. 42. Clooney., Theology after Vedanta, 195. 194. 43. Ibid., 194. 44. Ibid., 189. 45. Ibid., 188. 46. Ibid., 184.

CHAPTER 2

Comparative Theology, Religious Discourse, and Phenomenological Imagination

This chapter seeks to explicate the critical method, ethical orientation, and practical strategy of comparative theology in connection with the sociological study of religion. It furthers to develop a correlational research model between critical method and religious truth in a phenomenological-hermeneutical framework. A “critical” comparative theology sought after in this chapter does not merely remain in text reading and commentaries, because the social dimension of religion is not exhausted into the world of the text. The text reading and commentary are a key (but not the key) in comprehending religion and the society in which we live. Accordingly, this chapter deals with the social scientific study of religion in Max Weber and Emile Durkheim for their relevance to comparative theology; then, it shall examine the extent to which phenomenological inquiry would be foundational for developing comparative theology. We shall examine Clifford Geertz’s phenomenology of culture in connection with Paul Ricoeur. In interaction with this phenomenology, a theological construal of phenomenology is to be explored and construed mainly upon Karl Barth, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Tillich. We shall further to elaborate comparative theology in taking issue with the historical-critical method of Ernst Troeltsch in favor of the correlation research model founded upon a phenomenological-hermeneutical frame of reference. This procedure critically integrates Foucault’s notion of problematization into an archeological analysis of power relations, in regard to the elective affinity between religious ideas and © The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5_2

21

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material interests for immanent critique and solidarity. To begin, we pay attention to the relation between religion and society.

Religion

and Society

Religion is primarily the general framework and constant foundation by which to understand the world of people and guide their everyday life. For Weber, human act and behavior is social and purpose-driven with respect to its means because it is related in its meaning to other people. This purposive rationality is based on the means–end relation, doomed to be meaningful. Weber’s analysis is decisive in the fashioning of the practical way of life to finding an elective affinity between religious ideas and material interests through typological meaning and its social, ethical pattern. We find such inquiry and procedure in his exposition of the influence of the Protestant ethic upon the rational side of modern capitalism. This sociological study remains a classic example of exploring the relationship between religious ideas and ethical disposition and behavior.1 The Puritan idea of election and their ascetic methodical way of life find elective affinity in the historical course of modern capitalism, propelling the rational action of the capitalist spirit in the process of the disenchantment of the world. Puritan divines have combined religious ideas with material interest into an active ascetic life conduct, and the path to salvation is progressed in the disenchantment of the world.2 Religious ideas are also influenced by external interest situations, along with the way of life of the ruling strata (agency) corresponding to it, that is the social stratification itself. Reversely, when the direction of life conduct is methodically rationalized, it is also profoundly determined by the ultimate values which direct and govern the rationalization and social structure.3 However, Weber’s diagnosis of the last phase of Western modernity remains despairing and even pessimistic in his provocative notion of “iron cage,”4 to which Western modernization is captive. It implies that such modernity travels through Europe to the rest of the world. The world appears to be more denuded of irrationality. The world image, patterned and created in the progressive intellectualist rationalization, is governed by impersonal powers and rules. Against this background, Weber argues that human beings are cultural beings, endowed with the ethical capacity of taking a deliberate attitude through the prophetic religion in favor of a universalist brotherhood.5

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Weber’s exhortation is seen in an esthetical style of argument in that in music, the Pythagorean “comma” resists complete rationalization. We need the Pythagorean comma as resistance to the rationalization of practical life, as shifted into the realm of the irrational. This refers to Weber’s stance committed to securing “the only possible ‘beyond,’ added to the mechanism of a world robbed of gods.”6 For Weber, salvation aristocracy grounded in the particularism of grace and vocational asceticism has imposed violence upon the world because it regards the world subject to violence and under ethical barbarism.7 Inner worldly asceticism renounced the universalism of love and brotherliness. In Weber’s account, the principle of solidarity of brothers and sisters in faith might be in approximation to a universal communism of love (caritas); it is added to every ethical religion which retains the giving of alms as a universal and primary component.8 However, Weber failed to elaborate a religiously inspired prophetic ethic of solidarity in his exposition of world religions. In Eisenstadt’s account, Weber’s emphasis on the dichotomy of the two realms of religiously inspired ethics of solidarity and structural change of social institution would lead to a mistaken view. Yet, the explication of the combination between charisma and institution building is the best clue to understand Weber’s contribution to the interaction of two entities underlying “in the fabric of social life and in the process of social change.”9 In this critically revised notion of Weber, his sociology of religion may contribute to the reality of multiple modernities by elaborating prophetic religious ethic in connection with social structural innovation and change. Durkheim, in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, begins with a substantive description of religious phenomena, in terms of the sacred/ profane dichotomy, in which religion is defined by its general social functionality. Sacred things are characterized as “things set apart and forbidden” by society, which is united as the moral community, the church.10 Here, religion as “a unified system of beliefs and practices” creates and maintains social solidarity (solidarity effect), and it is grasped as a social fact, in which sacred things are socially constructed by collective imagination. The dialectical relation between religion and society can be expressed: “Religious representations are collective representations that express collective realities.”11 The lifeworld of collective realities is anchored and constructed in the relationship between religion and society.

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Social facts as things or consciousness exist sui generis, having their own nature as a collectivity. Collective life is made of representations (such as the idea of the gods, the myths and the religions, ethical duty, and moral discipline), and collective representations impose themselves on the individual. The method of studying the collective representations is strictly of a sociological character, because social facts must be objective and rational, taking place outside the individuals. Thus, this perspective dethrones the psychological viewpoint of religion and endorses a sociological-objective one to be investigated from the outside.12 In the tradition of Weber and Durkheim, Clifford Geertz furthers to articulate the cultural dimension of religious study. Sacred symbols work in a way of synthesizing people’s worldview, ethos, and moral configuration.13 According to Geertz, religion is a cultural system, that is a system of symbols. The religion acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and longlasting moods and motivations in human beings. It formulates conceptions of a general order of existence and clothes these conceptions with such an aura of factuality; thus, it makes the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.14 In religious symbols, moods and motives are made powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting, making up our way of life or ethos. This symbolic realism characterizes an individual’s emotions and motivations as uniquely realistic in terms of a general order of existence. As Geertz puts it, in ritual, “the world as lived [ethos] and the world as imagined [worldview], fused under the agency of a single set of symbolic forms, turn out to be the same world, producing thus that idiosyncratic transformation in one’s sense of reality.”15 This religious symbolism finds consonance with Durkheim’s position such that “collective effervescence” occurs in religious symbolism such as ritual, maintaining the communal sense of solidarity and belongingness.16 Given the sociological understanding of religious life, Weber’s study of religions provides us with an important tool for scrutinizing the elective affinity between religious ideas and material interests in a historical course of development. Durkheim’s association of religion, solidarity, and collective reality helps us see such a perspective in developing the immanent critique of the underside of religious discourse imbued with power relations. Furthermore, Geertz’s symbolic realism offers the point of departure for us to develop a phenomenological imagination in reference to comparative theology. This interdisciplinary perspective facilitates our concept of comparative theology for exploring the extent to which comparative theology would contribute toward a postcolonial endeavor

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of transcending the pathology of modernity in the context of multiple modernities. Let’s turn to phenomenology as a method for comparative theology.

Phenomenology: Intentionality

and Lifeworld

First of all, a phenomenological approach to religious studies can be seen in Rudolf Otto’s (1869–1937) book The Idea of the Holy, in which Otto discovers the characteristics of the frightening and irrational experience in religious persons. He characterizes all these experiences as numinous (from Latin numen, god), designating the two indispensable features of religion, respectively, as sense of the sacred, awe, mysterium tremendum et fascinans. The sacred is revealing itself as totaliter aliter (the wholly Other).17 This perspective is analogous to Heidegger’s understanding of phenomenology. For Heidegger, phenomenology implies “that which appears” (phainomenon) and logos (reflection or speech). Phenomenon means what shows itself, the self-showing. Logos, in the deeper sense, is itself to let something appear. The truth of logos is conceptualized as self-revealing. Since things show themselves, phenomenology investigates the ways in which appearances manifest themselves to us. This means “to the things themselves!”18 If the phenomenon appears, three levels of phenomenality are established in terms of: (1) its relative concealment in correlation with experience, (2) its gradually becoming revealed in correlation with understanding, and (3) its relative transparency with testimony.19 In the procedure of phenomenology, understanding is of special significance because it is comprehended within the structural relations, or hermeneutical circle. Comprehension is not restricted to the momentary experience of meaning since the meaning is interconnected with “the experience of a structural connection.”20 This phenomenology of self-revelation (aletheia) and hermeneutical circle takes issue with Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology of intentionality, which is developed in his critique of psychology and natural science. Husserl makes a distinction between a “natural” object and its idealized presence within human thought, which is established as a transcendental realm of “thought objects” against the object in the natural world. The essence of the “tree” and its “hyletic stock” (or raw being) cannot be understood by a natural attitude, for instance, by wearing different

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colored eyeglasses, whether red, yellow, or black. This could be analyzed by a pure logic established by apodictic inner evidence, a priori validity, which is unadulterated by “naturalized” consciousness or natural science. As the natural world can be “bracketed out” (epoche), one also suspends one’s judgment and traditional view of it, turning attention to one’s experience of the true, existing within the idealized meaning of intentional consciousness (the reduction proper). In the moments of epoche and the reduction proper, the phenomenological reduction implies a reflective inquiring back into consciousness. Since it contains an ideal “meaning” within it, the consciousness is defined as “consciousness of.” Intentionality is the fundamental characteristic of consciousness to recover the original thought by suspending our judgment upon the natural world. After phenomenological reduction, the world is recovered and then constituted by thought.21 Because the intentionality is the act of bestowing a meaning, phenomenology is a method for the analysis of noetic– noematic relation as the paradigm for all experiencing, or a discipline of transforming human beings with a natural attitude into a critical, transcendental subject.22 Certainly, there is the limitation of an “ahistorical” theory of consciousness and eidetic reduction for “presuppositionless” knowledge, but later Husserl proposed multiple notions of lifeworlds; it is a historically and cultural pre-given, correlating with and deepening phenomenological reduction. As Husserl writes, “We become aware that we scientists are, after all, human beings and as such are among the components of the lifeworld which always exists for us, ever pregiven.”23 The multiple notions of lifeworlds are historically given, culturally transmitted, and socially constructed; thus, Europeans, Africans, and Asians have their own truths, facts, and meaning, but in radically different manners. Despite all relativity, the lifeworld (history, language, and culture) has a general, common structure that is not itself relative. The multiple interpretations of the varieties of lifeworld are conceived of as the totality of life in its multitudinous facets, in which life in general carries itself out in its particular everyday life: labor, language, and life in relation to the Other. The noematic (the world) correlates with the noetic (the subjective, living) aspect, such that this lifeworld is the horizon of all different diverse horizons for any kind of action in everydayness: the natural attitude.24 The noetic–noematic structure of lifeworld

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signifies the essential relatedness of world and conscious life. Because there is no “pre-suppostionless” knowledge apart from history or culture as mediated in language, the noesis–noema paradigm is embedded within the lifeworld as the domain of self-revelation and influences upon human consciousness. Given this, phenomenological method can be undertaken, first, by detachment from the natural world in suspension of one’s judgment, then proceeding back to the intentional act of consciousness. If the noema–noesis paradigm is already with the “interior” lifeworld transmitted within the life of consciousness, this phenomenological epistemology (in distinction with mere opinion of the natural world) may entail a critical method in analysis or problematization of the natural world. All in all, consciousness “of” noematic meaning is consciousness “within” the multiple contexts of lifeworld. The correlational model of intentionality of human consciousness within the multiple realities of lifeworld provides an important research model for us to develop a comparative study of religion in terms of suspension (critical distance), return, and engagement with the world of religion in the problematization of power relations in the analysis of the interplay between religious ideas and material interest in society and history.

Phenomenology

and Culture as Semantics

Phenomenological theory based on intentionality and lifeworld finds its constructive import in Ricoeur’s hermeneutics. Developing “phenomenological” hermeneutics, Ricoeur opens up the paradigm of text interpretation at the level of methodology in taking up Weber’s definition of the object of sociology in terms of meaningfully oriented behavior. Ricoeur conceptualizes meaningful action to be considered as a text, developing methodology in terms of text interpretation. Meaningful action is an object for social science under objectification, which is equivalent to the fixation of a discourse by writing.25 For this purpose, he introduces the concept of discourse as language event, either spoken or written. In living speech, discourse is “saying” about “something” to “someone.” In written inscription, discourse is to be fixed because it disappears. The fixed discourse is the noema of the speaking, which refers to the meaning of the speech event. Initially, as an event and instance of discourse, the text had only a sense in internal

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relation or structure, but now it has a meaning, which finds its realization in the discourse of the reader. “By virtue of its sense, the text had only a semiotic dimension; now it has, by virtue of its meaning, a semantic dimension.”26 Insofar as the sign considers the depth of semantics as disclosed by structural analysis, the interpretation “is a re-saying which reactivates what is said by the text.”27 This perspective becomes crucial in Geertz’s phenomenology of culture. For Geertz, “at base, thinking is a public activity.”28 The symbolic structures or symbol systems that people have developed as the meaningful structure of experience “are historically constructed, socially maintained, and individually applied.”29 A phenomenology of culture seeks to describe and analyze everything tinged with imposed significance, which is to be “apprehended only through a screen of significant symbols”— the vehicles of its objectification.30 This anthropological inscription of social discourse or the symbolic structures is analogous to the phenomenological distinction between the event of speaking (saying) and the said of speaking (said). What one writes is the noema (content or gist) of the speaking as the meaning of the speech event. “The meaning (noema) and the intention (noesis) coincide or overlap.”31 More than that, Geertz heuristically deciphers the cultural event of social discourse as the ensemble of text. His theory of culture has a semantic dimension. Along with Max Weber, he argues that “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.” Culture is taken as those webs and the analysis of them is “an interpretive one in search of meaning.”32 For this purpose, Geertz travels toward early Husserl and late Ludwig Wittgenstein, who attacked on privacy theories of meaning in order to overcome a psychological theory of culture. “Culture consists of socially established structures of meaning”; “culture is public because meaning is.”33 In Wittgenstein’s account, “one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country’s language. We do not understand the people…We cannot find our feet with them.”34 For the thick description of the culture, Geertz treats the culture purely as a symbolic system in its own terms, avoiding the defects of psychologism and the “hermetical” schematism.35 For the description ­

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of the symbolic system in its own terms, Geertz mediates a semiotic ­significance in hermeneutical reference to Weber’s position. “The imposition of meaning on life is the major end and primary condition of human existence, that access of significance more than compensates for the economic costs involved.”36 What is crucial here is to comprehend the culture as an ensemble of texts. For instance, when the Balinese cockfight is taken as a symbolic structure, it can be seen “as a means of saying something of something.” Geertz’s notion of the text goes beyond the notion of scripture or ­writing, and a cultural hermeneutic is constructed to understand symbolic signification in indigenous, semiotic terms. Here, we are faced with social semantics from the event of speaking because the cultural practice is saying something meaningful to someone in its own semiotic terms. Regarding symbolic forms as “saying something of something,” the culture as an ensemble of texts cannot merely be handled sociologically, but also calls for hermeneutical need.

Theological Phenomenology

and the

Word of God

Geertz’s perspective strikes us as acumen to develop a theory of interpretation in the social, religious context. A theological phenomenology is concerned with the cultural event of living discourse as social semantics. A notion of a text beyond written materials and documents, even beyond dialogical practice, is grounded in the theological interpretation of creation as larva Dei (masks of God: Martin Luther) or theatrum gloriae Dei (theatre of God’s glory: John Calvin and Karl Barth), that is a sematic text of God. This theological notion of the world as the stage of God’s glory may be dated back to the tradition of interpretatio naturae in the Middle Ages which culminated in Spinoza attempting to read nature as a Scripture of God.37 The Scripture and natural world constitute a single text through which God continues to address through the symbolic system of culture and its people’s life. Theological phenomenology, which is concerned with the analysis of faith intentionality and the word of God through the transcendental Saying, seeks to locate “faith” and seeks “understanding” in the multiple domains of religion, culture, and society, faith seeking understanding in multiple contexts of religion, culture, and society. In a theological phenomenology, there is an affinity sought with Levinas’ phenomenology of Saying. Levinas

30  P.S. CHUNG

develops his phenomenology of the Saying as the transcendence beyond being, in light of the God of the Bible. The Saying of the infinite precedes all the said, in a way of signifying prior to all experience. If the Infinite passes in prophesizing, God’s saying begins in a cry of ethical revolt.38 If Levinas comprehends God as Infinite saying grounded in the process of prophesizing, it marks a new domain of interpretation of the dabar (God’s word in deed; self-revealing) and the tradition of prophetic significations. It paves the way to a phenomenological hermeneutic of Saying and the Other, through the face of which God speaks. Interpretation of dabar in prophetic signification is not separable from the Saying of the Infinite through the Other and ethical responsibility. This perspective helps us better comprehend Barth’s reflection of totaliter aliter in the speech-act regarding the relation between revelation (saying) and the scripture (said) while applying this inquiry to the relation between revelation and religion. Barth’s dialectical approach to the relation between revelation and religion is first in critical, dialectical evaluation of religion as unbelief because the revelation is sublation of the religion when the latter is driven in power relations, disgracing the original meaning of religion in what is called blamage effect. In this effect, the religious idea is distorted and blasphemed by material interest.39 In the next move, Barth sees religion, as established through the revelation, as the source of immanent critique. Revelation makes religion, through the critique, into one of the analogical witnesses to the divine reality as totaliter aliter. Seeing the revelation as the source of the critique of the historical course of religious development, it is hard to have a comparison of religions, with the intention of judging which religion would be better than the other. All religions, Christianity included, stand in a dialectical, yet “phenomenological” relation to divine transcendence in the self-revealing of speech-act, which relativizes religions as a human phenomenon. In Barth’s theology of the Word, there may be a dimension of phenomenological, hermeneutic deliberation of God’s speech-act through the world and in the otherness of the other as a field of the divine semantic; this is analogous to Levinas’ notion of alterity under God’s traces of Saying. The word of God challenges our natural, taken-for-granted attitude, or naiveté of faith about divine reality. Faith seeks understanding of the divine mystery in the speech-act by way of intellectual suspension, problematization of the interplay between religious idea and material interest, and analogical clarification. This refers to my utilization

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of Barth’s theology of the word in construction for comparative theology. This approach to speech-act theology brings us to examine Tillich’s phenomenological-existential approach to revelation and religion.

Paul Tillich

and Comparative

Theology

In the study of the encounter between Christianity and World religions, it is Tillich who undergirds a dynamic-typological model. His theology is one of the significant contributions for theological construal of phenomenology in the study of the history of religions. For him, the universal religious basis is rooted in the experience of the Holy within the human finite condition; first, manifested in a sacramental dimension applied to all religions. Then, it occurs in a mystical basis as a critical movement against the demonization of the sacramental basis in which the concrete dimension of the sacrament is devalued for the Ultimate. Finally, the ethical or prophetic basis comes into play by critiquing the corrupted consequence of the sacramental or the mystical for the sake of the justice. However, in the absence of the sacramental and mystical components, religious experience becomes easily moralistic and finally secular.40 Tillich’s term “the religion of the concrete spirit” refers to the inner telos, toward which every religion drives. It is of Hegelian character, leading to a union of the great religions, as identified in the synthesis of the three elements in Paul’s doctrine of the Spirit.41 The religion of the concrete Spirit is actualized in moments of kairoi in other religions, fragmentarily. Theonomy which implies from theos, God and nomos, that law points to the ultimate meaning of life, beyond heteronomous (religious authority suppressing human reason) and autonomous (self-actualization of reason in all the cultural functions). Theonomy appears in the religion of the concrete spirit in fragment, never fully. Tillich attempts to interpret the theological tradition in light of religious phenomena and his method of the history of religions first utilizes religious materials for systematic theologians to existentially experience them. Then, he shows the extent to which the religious question is located within human experience. Thirdly, it is to present a phenomenology of religion manifesting itself in the history of religion, for instance, the symbol, the rites, the ideas, and various activities. Fourthly, it attempts at clarifying the relation of these phenomena to traditional concepts in terms of relatedeness, difference, contradiction, and new problem arising out of this relation. Finally, it relocates the reinterpreted concepts into the framework

32  P.S. CHUNG

of the dynamics of religious and secular history in our own present situation for a new element of truth. Tillich’s “phenomenological” theology in an existential move and his religious symbolism are grounded in the totality of human experience surrounded in all social, political, and economic ramifications, partly in revolt against these surroundings. This perspective offers the way in which people understand themselves in their very nature rooted in religious experience. Without experiential basis, Tillich argues, no theology is feasible, and he seeks to formulate the basic experience in a universally valid manner.42 In Tillich’s existential approach, there is a Christian theistic inclusivism and Christian dynamic-typological approach in a threefold manner: sacramental, mystic, and prophetic. This typology is made meaningful in the Christian understanding of the self (Kairos of Christ) in connection with the history of religions (kairoi). Nonetheless, it would be hard to apply Christian ideal typology to other religions without further ado. A research of religions in historical course of development sometimes would contradict Christian ideal typology because religion is historically transmitted and socially constructed, shaped in cultural and linguistic connection with human life. Spiritual experience of religion in a sacramental, mystic, and moral basis is embedded within the socio-historical construction, entailing its particularity in difference from other religious manifestations. Existentially inspired theology in Tillich’s fashion needs to be apprehended in connection with society as the lifeworld, collective reality of religious representations; this has its own content in distinction from the spiritual culturalist representation of religion framed within sacramental–mystic–ethical basis.43

A New Comparative Theology: Problematization and Immanent Critique Along with Barth, Levinas, and Geertz, I am concerned with grounding a new model of comparative theology, in which the sociological study of religion and hermeneutic theory are taken into account, with utter seriousness. In this regard, comparative theology is theologically motivated and hermeneutically reasoned upon the word of God, bringing theological agenda on the interreligious table for comparative dialogue; then, it is “comparatively” interested, creating a frame of reference by learning

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religions in a sociological context. This comparative theology does not reduce theology to cultural or religious studies or pursuing metanarrative global pluralist theology44; nor is it intent in violating theological inquiry and subject matter by overwriting the study of the history of religion into its own theological argument and confession. The credibility and intellectual integrity in the sense of “faith seeking understanding” is not neutralized nor abandoned, but its theological horizon can be widened in dialogue with, and learning from other religions by respecting their adherents. Tillich’s insight into the phenomenology of religion can be incorporated into the constructive side of comparative theology, but transcending its existential reductionism and ideal typology. In the comparative study of religion, methodological inquiry adopts a stance of undergirding any value judgments (epoche) and critical method (problematization of the questionable domain in the analysis of the interplay between religious ideas and material interests), as regards ­ power relations and blamage effect. It develops an immanent critique in l­earning from the religious source, not from the non-theological ­position. I utilize the term immanent critique45 in the construction of religious-inspired ethics of solidarity and emancipation as the source of the critique by dissecting the questionable, even dangerous course of historical development. It comes into play by critically analyzing the conflict and contradiction between religious ideas and ethical orientation in the social context; it calls into question the interplay between religious ideas and material interests, embedded within power relations and hegemonic discourse. In doing so, it seeks the source of solidarity and emancipation within religious ideas and tradition in support of an endeavor transcending the pathology of Western modernity in the aftermath ­ of colonialism. Such comparative method and results can be ­ utilized for theological deliberation and judgment in dealing with the realty of ­multiple modernities. In our study of phenomenology, Husserl’s theory of intentionality within lifeworld can be revised as a critical method and analysis in the suspension or problematization of the regime of questionable elements, with respect to culture and religion. Since we are in-the-lifeworld as the structure of anticipation for meaning, the noesis–noema-correlated paradigm is not presuppositionless knowledge at all, but is already mediated and always formulated in self-reflection and meaningful discourse within the multiple reality of lifeworlds.

34  P.S. CHUNG

Archeology

and Critical,

Social Analysis

An archeological analysis of religious discourse and effects of power becomes crucial in correlational research in undergirding an analytical method of problematization, and exercising immanent critique of religion entangled within effects of power and dominion.46 In Foucault’s account, phenomenology has effected a union between the Cartesian cogito and Kant’s transcendental position, reviving the deeper meaning of the Western ratio. It has allegiance to the discovery of life, work, and language, and interrogation in matters pertaining to man’s mode of being and his relation to the Other as the unthought.47 It has always been driven by the question of ontology in its description of the empirical reality, led into an ontology of the “unthought” in forgetfulness of Being. This is what Foucault finds to be positive. But Foucault initiates a new method of archeology concerning the relation of man to the unthought, by interrogating their twin appearance in Western culture. There is an unavoidable duality of the Other in relation to Western man.48 In modern thought and movement, the other as the unthought is apprehended by reflection, the act of consciousness, which fundamentally “is advancing towards that religion where man’s Other must become the Same as himself.”49 However, Foucault’s notion of phenomenology tends to level down the difference between Husserl and Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit. Husserl’s notion of epoche and multiple interpretations of lifeworlds are out of Foucault’s sight, but I utilize and renew the phenomenological method in critical interrogation of the reified reality of labor, life, and language. This phenomenological revision model thwarts the modern thought which attempts to totalize the Other into the sameness of Western man, a la Hegel’s phenomenology. Husserlian phenomenological inquiry can be renewed and radicalized in terms of the immanent critique, and by way of interrogation of the questionable regime of the taken-for-granted “truth claim” in sociological analysis of the interplay between religious ideas and material interests. This correlational research cuts through the limitation of Foucault who runs short of analyzing the relation of the modern self and colonized Other. This said, my appropriation of Foucault’s archeological method does not follow in his Nietzschean footsteps of disseminating power reductionism and abandoning the modernity discourse. But it is critically

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utilized for reinforcing the sociological study of elective affinity between religious ideas and material interests in a social, historical context to vet and unearth the blamage effect. It is in service of immanent critique in a phenomenological-hermeneutical frame of reference, on behalf of anamnestic solidarity with innocent victims and those on the margins in the world of religion and society. For Gadamer, basically the hermeneutic phenomenon is not a problem of method at all, nor is it concerned with a method of understanding.50 More than Gadamer, hermeneutical reflection of religious text needs to be explicated in an archeological analysis of the interplay of textual ideas with social material formation. A critical, social analytical hermeneutics helps us clear the confusion between domination, authority, and violence with respect to the interaction between a knowledge system and social formation. This perspective reinforces and renews Gadamer’s position, in which the authority is based on recognition, not the abdication of reason. Thus, critical, social analytical hermeneutics has “nothing to with blind obedience to a command.”51 An appreciation of religious texts cannot be understood apart from the recognition of its claim through critical reason in the archeological analysis of power relations and effects in society. The meaning of tradition, for instance, the exodus tradition or the religious symbol of the cross, plays as the source of solidarity, but opposite traditions of crucifix and crusade are immanently criticizable in light of the original source of the religious symbol. The source of the solidarity effect is explicated through the act of suspicion, interrogation, analysis, and critique. Such inquiry deepens Gadamer’s statement: “The abstract antithesis between tradition and historical research … must be discarded. The effect (Wirkung) of a ­living tradition and the effect of historical study must constitute a unity of effect.”52 The hermeneutical, ontological model of unity of effect can be ­deepened and renewed in the correlational program in social, critical analysis of elective affinity of religious traditional rationality and social location. Truth sets us free, because truth is not in the progress of history nor in bondage to critical reason of the historical inquirer, but the history is judged in truth imbued with the living Word of God, as read and heard in the anamnesis reasoning upon the innocent victim in the text and social life. Aletheia (manifestation of truth) comes to language as expressed in it. This implies language as the house of being with

36  P.S. CHUNG

its universalist claim. But language is also disclosed as the house of ideology in which the lie manifests itself as propaganda and violence in the subjugation of those on the margins. If the ontological hermeneutic plays a boundary concept in “top down” influencing of human consciousness through language and the history of effect, a correlational method plays a concrete inquiry, taking on critical reasoning and method in terms of analysis and dialectical procedure involved in the local regime of culture, society, and religion. This correlational inquiry between “method and truth” supplements Gadamer’s ontology of “truth” over against “method.”

Correlational Research and Historical-Critical Method The phenomenological inquiry for correlational research circumscribes the privileged stance of ontological hermeneutics that tends to sidestep the critical method in the analysis of language, culture, and religious discourse. The phenomenological suspension (“an aspect of the intentional movement of consciousness toward meaning”)53 and its return with a critical method to culture and religion supplement the hermeneutical theory of distancing by qualifying it as a critical method to be more relevant to the historical-critical method in the comparative study of religion. This perspective takes issue with Ernst Troeltsch’s critical method (analogy, critique, and interconnection) in the historical study of religions in the context of the school of history of religions. For Troeltsch, religion has gained its particular form and content in interaction with the historical and cultural background and location. Here, God is identical with the Absolute, beyond all historical manifestation and relativities, but God is present relatively in historical religions. Thus, a revelation of God can be seen on the religious dimension and manifestation in history since the latter can be understood as the unfolding of the divine life. Religious a priori formulates such a dialectical relationship between the Divine Absolute and immanence, such that in fact, human life is religious.54 Religious a priori is expressed in the religious dimension and manifestation in history. This historical relativism in universal orientation toward divine future tends to undermine the site of history already affecting the inquirer in social location, since his/her critical consciousness always moves with the lifeworld of history, tradition, and social location. The past is no longer shibboleth, but is involved in shaping and effecting the researcher

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in the investigation of the history of religion. This perspective can be a corrective to Troeltsch’s psychological empathy and intuitive participation in the inner life of the past.55 Troeltsch’s serious flaw lies in sidestepping the blamage effect of religion in the historical course of development, because he establishes religious a priori as the source of religion in interaction with the relative revelation of the divine. However, religious manifestations founded upon religious a priori can be also exposed to corruption and distortion in historical development and social context. In articulating the significance of the history of religions for systematic theology, Tillich attempts at complementing Troeltsch and transcending him, at some points, in ways that revealing and saving powers are present in all religions. Religion, as such, is not the end in itself, but a means. The limited, even distorted adaptation and the failure are subject to critique assuming three forms: the mystical, the prophetic, and the secular.56 “Religion must use the secular as a critical tool against itself.”57 However, our inquiry is more concerned with elaborating the immanent critique by finding the source of critique and solidarity in religious sacred texts and ideas rather than borrowing the outside source from secular movement. It also widens existential narrowness toward social being (homo socius) with ethical responsibility in a society fused with a multireligious horizon. If the sacred is in the depth of the secular, the phenomenology of the sacred should be apprehended first in textual reading for finding the source of the immanent critique, while seeing the secular or cultural practice as the field of divine semantics in analogical procedure and approximation.

A Note in Transition Drawing upon our analysis and elaboration of critical inquiry for comparative theology, the next several chapters lay a theological foundation and rationale for foregrounding a new model of comparative theology by comparatively reading Martin Luther in regard to Pure Land Buddhism. My reading strategy shall be undertaken for interreligious renewal and solidarity, despite incommensurability, incomparable difference, and tolerant deferral between Luther and Shinran. Then, I proceed to engage Barth’s theology by developing his relational theology toward elaborating a new model of comparative theology. For this purpose, I endeavor to analyze and bring up his theological insight for a postcolonial horizon

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of God’s mission theology and culture, with respect to his prophetically inspired political theology (Chap. 3). To unpack his relational theology, I undertake a critical exegesis and renewal of Barth’s understanding of Trinity, God’s gracious election, and analogia relationis (Chap. 4). For a theology of phenomenology, a comparative study should be taken regarding Barth and Levinas, especially in their respective critical view of Heidegger (Chap. 5). Based on this clarification and argument, it would be more effective for us to discuss Barth’s dialectical theology of religions in terms of the study of Anselm and Feuerbach (Chap. 6). This research helps us better comprehend Barth’s comparative study of Pure Land Buddhism while critically examining critiques from Paul Knitter and Francis Clooney, and evaluating his “speech-act” comparative theology among multiple modernities (Chap. 7).



Notes 1. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (Mineola, NY.: Dover, 2003). 2. Weber, “The Social Psychology of the World Religions,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, trans. and eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 290. 3. Ibid., 287. 4. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 181–182. 5. Weber, “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions,” in From Max Weber, 330. 6. Weber, “The Social Psychology of the World Religions,” in ibid., 282. 7. Weber, “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions,” in ibid., 336. 8. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, trans. Ephraim Fischoff (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 212. 9. Weber, On Charism and Institution Building, Introduction by Eisenstadt, ed. S.N. Eisenstadt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), ix. 10. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York: Free, 1995), 44. 11. Ibid., 9. 12. Durkheim, “Sociology in France in the Nineteenth Century,” in Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society, ed. Robert N. Bellah (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973), 16–17.

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13.  Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic, 1973), 89. 14. Ibid., 90. 15. Ibid., 112. 16. Durkheim, Elementary Form of Religious Life, 9, 220, 228, 350, 424, 429 17. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950), 25–30. 18. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, NY.: SUNY, 1996), 30. 19. G. Van Der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation: A Study in Phenomenology 2, trans. J. E. Turner (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 671. 20. Ibid., 675. 21. Edith Wyschogrod, Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 45. 22. Paul Ricoeur, Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), 15. 23.  Husserl, “Elements of a Science of the Life-World,” in The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology, ed. Donn Welton (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), 369. 24. Husserl’s notion of the life-world is taken up in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Truth and Method, trans. J. Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 242–254. 25. Ricoeur, “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text,” in Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics & the Human Sciences, ed. and trans. John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 203. 26. Ricoeur, “What is a Text? Explanation and Understanding” in Ricoeur, Hermeneutics & the Human Sciences, 159. 27. Ibid., 164. 28. Geertz, “Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali,” in Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 360. 29. Ibid., 364. 30. Ibid., 367. 31. Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 19. 32. Ibid., 5 33. Ibid., 12. 34. Ibid., 13.

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35. Ibid., 17. 36. Geertz, “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” in Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 434. 37. Ibid., 449. 38. Levinas, “God and Philosophy,” in Emmanuel Levinas Basic Philosophical Writings, eds. Adriaan T. Peperzak et al. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana ­university Press, 1996), 146. 39. CD I/2: §17. 2. Religion as Unbelief. CD for the abbreviation of Church Dogmatics by Karl Barth, eds. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Trance (London and New York: T. and T. Clark, 2004). The notion of blamage effect and the source of the immanent critique in historical course of religious development is much indebted to Helmut Gollwitzer’s critical theology of religion. Helmut Gollwitzer, Befreiung zur Solidaritat: Einführung in die Evangelische Theologie (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1984), 110–111. 40.  “The Significance of the History of Religions for the Systematic Theologian,” in Paul Tillich, Christianity and the Encounter of World Religions (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 71. 41. Ibid., 70–72. 42. Ibid., 78. 43. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, xiv. 44. Keith Ward. “The Idea of ‘God’ in Global Theology,” in Naming and Thinking God in Europe Today, ed. Norbert Hintersteiner (Amsterdam/ New York: Rodopi, 2007), 377–388. 45. Robert J. Antonio, “Immanent Critique as the Core of Critical Theory: Its Origins and Developments in Hegel, Marx and Contemporary Thought,” The British Journal of Sociology 32, no. 3 (1981): 330–345. 46. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, trans. Colin Gordon and others, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), 131. 47. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 325. 48. Ibid., 326. 49. Ibid., 328. 50. Gadamer, Truth and Method, xxi. 51. Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology,” in Ricoeur, Hermeneutics & the Human Sciences, 71. 52. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 282. 53. Ricoeur, “Phenomenology and Hermeneutics,” in Ricoeur, Hermeneutics & the Human Sciences, 116. Our elucidation of phenomenology as the methodical inquiry for theology circumvents Van der Leeuw’s definition of phenomenology merely as human vital activity and attitude. Van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, 2: 676.

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54. Thomas W. Ogletree, Christian Faith and History: A Critical Comparison of Ernst Troeltsch and Karl Barth (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1965), 40–41. 55. Ibid., 48. 56. Tillich, “The Significance of the History of Religions for the Systematic Theologian”, in Tillich, Christianity and the Encounter of World Religions, 64–65. 57. Ibid., 65–66.

CHAPTER 3

Comparative Theology of Justification and Interreligious Learning: Martin Luther and Shinran Shonin

Martin Luther’s (1483–1546) theology of grace of justification marked a breakthrough to the Protestant church and theology in contrast to the medieval Catholic Church. Shinran Shonin (1173–1252) elaborated a radical notion of salvation on the basis of the Other Power of Amida Buddha, and he is regarded as the founder of the school of the true teaching of the Pure Land in Japan. A comparative theology of justification in the Buddhist–Christian context explicates the extent to which interreligious study could facilitate each faith community to be faithful to its own tradition and deepen the teaching of justification or salvation through comparative learning and elucidation. First, I deal with Shinran’s teaching of salvation by the grace of Amida Buddha in reference to his teacher, Honen; then Luther’s teaching of justification comes into analysis. My comparative approach is not simply based on textual juxtaposition, but it entails a historical, theological approach in dealing with each notion of justification or salvation. Thirdly, I shall endeavor in a comparative reflection of Luther and Shinran by reading them together, in regard to faith and grace. Then, I seek to interrogate Shinran’s understanding of grace and Buddha nature in an analysis of the wisdom of emptiness and dependent origination. In conclusion, I shall undertake a self-examination of Luther’s theology and its universal horizon in relevance to the insight of Shinran toward solidarity and prayerful recognition.

© The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5_3

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Honen

and Pure

Land Teaching in Japan

Pure Land Buddhism is an integral branch of Mahayana Buddhism, held to be one of the earliest streams in the first century BCE, whose central basis lies in the Three Canons dealing with the 48 primal vows of Amida Buddha. According to the Buddhist tradition (in Larger Sutra of Immeasurable Life), Amida Buddha was Dharmakara who lived in India a million years ago. After Enlightenment, he refused to reside in Nirvana, instead he made 48 vows to save people from the world of suffering for the West Pure Land. Common to all vows is the condition: “If this vow is not fulfilled, then may I not become a Fully Enlightened Buddha.”1 Amida the Infinite Light appears to those reciting his name at the time of death in order to bring them to the Pure Land. Those who believe in Amida and wish sincerely to be reborn in his Pure Land need to recite his name, no matter if they are evil. Yet, there is an exception for five serious crimes: Murdering parents, or an Arhat (a Buddhist monk who has reached or strived at the stage of enlightenment), harming a Buddha, or instigating schism in the Sangha (a Buddhist community) or slandering the Dharma (the teaching of the Buddha).2 The Three Canons of Pure Land Buddhism3 were translated and introduced to China around the fifth to the seventh century, and through Korea finally to Japan. When the Pure Land teaching came to Japan, Japan was beset by civil warfare, economic collapse, and the social predicament which finally accompanied the end of the Heian era (794–1185), ushering in the Kamakura age (1185–1333). The ghastly sufferings and other-worldly redemption offered a strong impetus to the eschatological theory of the Last Days (mappo). Pure Land Buddhism can be understood as a response to this spiritual reality and social predicament in ancient Japan. Shinran’s uniqueness in the Buddhist tradition lies in appealing to the universal grace of Amida in challenging other Buddhist practices of selfawakening. Involved in the various strands of Pure Land teaching proposed by Genku Honen (1133–1212), his teacher, Shinran expounded his teaching as the true teaching of the Pure Land (Jodo Shinshu). Honen learned the Pure Land devotion at Nara in Japan and took up the three disciplines of precepts, concentration, and wisdom as the most important teaching. In his formative practice, he found himself troubled in awareness that the more he strived to practice the disciplines, the more he failed to fulfill them. He was not even capable of observing a single precept or deepening concentration, needless to say wisdom. In his

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reading of Shan-tao’s (613–681) commentary on the Meditation Sutra in 1175, Honen put an end to struggle. When walking or standing, sitting or lying, only repeat the name of Amida, with all your heart. Never cease the practice of it even for a moment. This is the very work which unfailing issues in salvation, for it is in accordance with the Original Vow of that Buddha.4

Committed to this passage, Honen stopped the practices and instead focused upon reciting the name of Amida. Based on the exclusive practice of nembutsu, he discarded other teachings of the established Buddhist schools. For liberation from dukkha, he proposed two teachings, self-reliance on one’s own power or on Other Power, that is the Holy Path or the Pure Land. The Buddha’s holy intention is seen in selecting nembutsu since all those who invoke his name will be saved.

Shinran’s Life: Formative Period and Exile Shinran was trained as a monk (doso, a minor priest) on Mountain Hiei, which was the best center of Buddhist education at the time. He learned the Tendai teaching and involved in other meditations and practices originated in Zen. But he failed to attain Enlightenment during the 20 years of intense practice in the Tendai monastery and experienced despair.5 Shinran’s study under Honen (1201–1207) was the second phase of his formation and defended Honen’s teaching as being justified historically. Honen’s teaching of nembutsu threatened to undermine the traditional Buddhist establishment. In 1207, improper behavior and speech of some of Honen’s disciples resulted in complaints from other Buddhist communities, and two converted women to the Honen teaching were charged in court through their relationship with his disciples. This led to execution, prohibition, and abolition of the community by exiling the leading members, Shinran included. Shinran expressed his outspoken critique of the government measurement with no serious investigation of the charges. In his exile, Shinran was in close contact with common peasantry and their plight. Although his teacher Honen was eventually pardoned, Shinran remained a defrocked priest, married layman, and never met Honen again since his exile. Little of Shinran’s life in exile is known except for his marriage with Eshin-ni. In the eyes of the Amida Buddha, the distinction between monk and laity is redundant since all can become embraced.

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In the year of exile (1207–1212), banishment was lifted, and he moved with his family to the village of Inada in Kashima where in the year from 1212 to 1235 he propagated his teaching among the peasants and townspeople who were isolated from cultural life and political benefit.6 Significant transformation took place in Shinran’s understanding of religious life in 1213, when he stopped his practice of recitation and came to a radical understanding of Shan-tao’s (613–681) teaching; not recitation, but faith is the true way to repay the Buddha’s compassion.7 For Shinran, all human activity is entangled with ego interest, such that human beings are not capable enough to achieve Enlightenment as the goal of Buddhist practice. In his account, “With our evil natures hard to subdue, our minds are like asps and scorpions. As the practice of virtue is mixed poison, we call it false, vain practice.”8

Shinran’s Breakthrough to the Vow of Amida As we have seen, Honen emphasized nembutsu as the exclusive invocation without doubt; however, Shinran did not feel nearer to Enlightenment during his period of practices as a monk on Mount Hiei. Finally, he abandoned the nembutsu itself as a practice or means to attain Enlightenment. The self-power of practitioner is overwhelmed and replaced by the Other Power of Amida. If deliverance is completely dependent on the power of the Buddha’s realized vows, its soteriology retains the aspect of altruism in working for the deliverance and Enlightenment of all sentient beings. The religious life is understood as an expression of gratitude for the Buddha’s compassion and Shinran was assured of the final Enlightenment in faith/trust in Buddha’s vow. The concrete manifestation of this gratitude is the recitation of the name of Amida Buddha, and this gratitude beyond recitation is expressed in a compassionate concern to share the teaching with others and help the poor. In Shinran’s view, there are two types of deep faith. One refers to the dimension in which a person is aware of spiritual ailment and incapacity. Another is articulated in faith/trust in unconditional compassion and wisdom of Amida Buddha who embraces all beings without abandoning them. The deeper the awareness of one’s sinful condition grows, the more abundant and absolute the assurance of Buddha’s compassion and grace becomes. Sincerity, faith, and aspiration are in unity resulting from Amida Buddha’s universal grace.

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Shinran’s teaching is found in the Tannisho, a short work including Shinran’s oral teachings recorded by Yui-en, one of Shinran’s disciples who clarified Shinran’s teaching. In Shinran’s oral teaching we read: Amida’s Primal Vow does not discriminate between the young and old, good and evil; true entrusting alone is essential. The reason is that the Vow is directed to the being burdened with the weight of karmic evil and burning with the flames of blind passion. Thus, entrusting ourselves to the Primal Vow, no other form of good is necessary, for there is no good that surpasses the nembutsu. And evil need not be feared, for there is no evil which can obstruct the working of Amida’s Primal Vow.”9 The nembutsu is rooted in the Vow and in recounting his experience of faith, he exclaimed: “How Joyous I am, my heart and mind being rooted in the Buddhaground of the Universal Vow, and my thoughts and feelings flowing within the dharma-ocean, which is beyond comprehension.10

The difference between Honen and Shinran is striking. For Honen, even sinners enter into the life of nirvana, how much more the righteous? If an evil person receives Amida’s grace of salvation through the rectification of the name, a good person will also enter into the nirvana through self-power and good deed. In contrast to Honen, Shinran argues that if a good person attains rebirth in the Pure Land through self-power, it contradicts Amida’s primal vow. If an evil person or virtuous person abandons attachment to self-power and entrusts him/herself wholeheartedly to Other Power, he/she will come into the life of nirvana. This position leads Shinran to the affirmation of the statement: If the righteous enter into the life of the Pure land with the grace of Amida, then how much more in the case of sinners?

Luther, Justification,

and Grace of Christ

In view of Shinran’s breakthrough to the grace of Amida, we notice a similar spiritual struggle in Luther. Luther’s breakthrough to the Reformation is made in his suspicion of the scholastic teaching during the medieval period. Luther’s major concern is “how can I find a gracious God?” The idea of the righteousness of God is a punishing righteousness taught in medieval scholastic theology which was mediated to Luther in his early years. In struggle with the righteousness of God punishing a sinner, Luther began to realize that the righteousness of God

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means that the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith. The righteousness of God in the biblical context refers to a passive righteousness, in which the merciful God justifies us by faith.11 His breakthrough, later called the ‘tower experience,’ drove him to the forefront of the Reformation. Now the concept of God all Terrible turns into God All Merciful. Romans 1:17 became the open gate to paradise for Luther.12

Luther

and Medieval

Teaching of Justification

Luther’s discovery of the gospel opposes the late medieval teaching.13 According to Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), four requirements are demanded for justification; first, the infusion of grace, then a movement of free choice directed toward God by faith, thirdly, a movement of free choice directed toward sin, finally the forgiveness of sin.14 In the forgiveness of sin, there is an infusion of grace from without, as integrated within the context of the sacrament of penance. Furthermore, justification is also regarded as making a difference to people by the cooperation of the free will with God. Grace, as a gratuitous effect of the divine will, is operative in the forgiveness of sin as well as cooperative in making human deeds acceptable to God. Habitual grace in the human soul is operative in healing humanity’s wounded nature and justifies, rendering him/her acceptable to God. It is cooperative functioning as the principle and basis of meritorious action in cooperation with God.15 In Thomas’s statement, we read: “people cannot prepare themselves to receive the light of grace except by the gratuitous assistance of God moving them within.”16 Luther can agree with Thomas’ position in that justification is being made righteous from without. But for Thomas, justification includes that the Christian is made righteous before God and people through a fundamental change in his/her nature. In Thomas’ account, the good of acquired virtue (naturally, morally good) is distinguished from the superabundant good as the good of infused virtue (meritorious), in which habitual grace itself is distinguished from human cooperating grace (sanctifying grace) in the event and process of justification.17 Thomas distinguishes human meritorious work in two ways: First, congruous merit proceeding from free-will; secondly, condign merit from the grace of the Holy Spirit.18 God ordains an eternal reward to good deeds in human cooperation with God’s special grace. Sanctifying grace and human charity are regarded as prerequisites for any meritorious act in the sense of condign merit. A fundamental

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change in human nature is meritorious of eternal blessedness, but it is sharply rejected by Luther.19 In medieval times, discussion is centered around the concepts of merit and congruity. Congruous merit means that once a moral act is performed outside a state of grace, it is conceived as appropriate for accepting the infusion of justifying grace. Condign merit as real merit means that once a moral act is performed in a state of grace, it is worthy of divine acceptation in which God is under obligation to reward the individual merit. The axiom comes: God will not deny grace to one who does one’s best (facienti quod in se est). God rewards those who do quoud in se est, while punishing those who do not.20 William Ockham (ca. 1285–1349), an English Franciscan, argues that God may bypass created habits by God’s absolute power. God on the basis of absolute power could bypass what God intends to do on the basis of the ordained power. By divine absolute power, or covenant, God can also pardon sin without the infusion of grace. In Ockham’s via moderna (the modern way), God may grant the gift of justifying grace to those who do quod in se est.21

Luther’s Teaching of Justification: Forensic and Effective Luther’s formative time at the Erfurt Augustinian monastery had a close link with the University of Erfurt, which was considered a stronghold of via moderna. He studied Ockham and Gabriel Biel intensively, and was considered the second Ockham (ca. 1410–1495) in preparation for ordination. For Biel, one’s preparation for God’s justification, without divine aid, can make the subsequent justification congruous or appropriate. NonChristians are by nature capable of performing the first duty: facere quod in se est through the abhorrence of sin and the love of God. God rewards all who do their best.22 Luther critiques Biel’s position as a chimera, “for an act to be meritorious, …the presence of grace is sufficient.”23 In a breakthrough to the Reformation, Luther argued that the ­individual can be justified before God extra nos through the alien ­righteousness of Christ; it is imputed by grace through faith alone. With the principle that we are simul justus et peccator (at the same time, righteous and sinner), Luther rejects a righteousness essentially inherent in us. We are made totally righteous by God’s forgiveness through word and sacrament, but because

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of the sinful or creaturely condition, we are also totally sinners. This downto-earth position characterizes Luther’s prophetic critique of humanity as it is by radicalizing a notion of God’s grace. Against the scholastic concept of original sin (the lack of original righteousness), Luther proposes the notion of the radial sinner in the sense of incurvatus in se (being turned toward the self). Luther affirms that God turns the individual to Jesus Christ and God’s righteousness is revealed exclusively in Christ. Christ’s alien righteousness is in contrast to the human precondition for justification or human righteousness in cooperation with God’s grace. This refers to Luther’s theology of the cross in which he “comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.”24 The alien righteousness of Christ becomes the basis and the source of all our own actual righteousness, such that faith is formed by Christ (fides Christo formata). The believer, instilled by grace alone, progresses in the spiritual life by continually returning to Christ, ever to be justified anew.25 Luther was not concerned with distinguishing justification as event from sanctification as progress, but saw the justification in a forensic sense (the alien righteousness of Christ) as well as in an effective sense (the real presence of Christ in the believer). Luther’s teaching of justification can be seen in union with Christ (happy exchange), expressing a dynamic relation of faith to love, faith active in love (Gal. 5: 6). This refers to Luther’s paradigm for Christian life based on the grace of justification. “Having been justified by grace, we then do good works, yes, Christ himself does all in us.”26 Faith as the gift of the Holy Spirit refers to the reality of Christ present in faith, shaping and guiding faith. In The Freedom of a Christian (1520), Luther formulates Christian freedom: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.” Then, this freedom and emancipation through the grace of Christ leads us to the following stance: “A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”27 In commenting on Ephesians (5: 31–32), Luther takes benefit of faith to mean “unit[ing] the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery…Christ and the soul become one flesh…indeed the most perfect of all marriages.”28 Through the exchange of human sin with the grace of Christ, the living Christ who speaks, lives, and works within us leads Luther to oppose all the synergistic orientation implied in the scholastic theory of the facere quod in se est.

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Historical Resource and Reading Together: Faith and Grace The Jesuits came to Japan in the sixteenth century and came into contact with the adherents of the Pure Land teaching. Valignano found the Lutheran understanding of salvation in Amida’s grace.29 Such interreligious resemblance continues to unfold up to date, shaping and influencing the comparative study of religion. In the Buddhist context, the Pure Land teaching is degraded as upaya, a skillful device or subsidiary path to Enlightenment and rebirth by reciting the name in an easier way. However, the genuine path to Enlightenment belongs to spiritual practices and mediations in monastery life. Against this traditional background, Shinran insisted that even mediation and morality of the eightfold path should be regarded as upaya (skillful means) because all human efforts and self-awakening practices fail to fulfill the perfection in reaching Buddhahood. In Honen’s belief system, Pure Land teaching was regarded as an easier way of satisfying the requirement of redemption, by recitation of the name of Amida at the moment of death. An easier way based upon the recitation of the name is still accepted as human merit. Against this way, Shinran insists that the salvation of sinful human beings is effected only by Amida. There is nothing on the part of the human to contribute to the grace of justification, such that it discards human merit. The eighteenth vow of Amida corresponds to the stage of true faith and becomes the basis for deliverance. Thus, in Shinran’s account, the self-disciplined path to Enlightenment is regarded as subordinated to trust in and surrender to Amida’s promise of salvation. For Shinran, a forensic meaning of faith in a Lutheran fashion is connected with the belief in the name of Amida that is extra nos, imputed to the believers. This imputed power brings them to become efficacious in participation in the Buddhist teaching of compassion and social justice. This objective dimension of the imputed grace also involves an inner transformation of one’s mind which is in the strong self-evident truth and assurance of the universal vows of Amida for deliverance. For Luther, the teaching of justification is the doctrine on which the church stands or falls. The teaching of justification, when properly understood, is faith in Christ. Faith in Christ implies a double meaning of being declared righteous by God (extra nos) and of being acquitted, renewed in the gift of grace (Christ for us and dwelling within us). Faith

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is not understood as human work or repentance in preparing the stage to receive divine grace. Rather, in Luther’s account, faith is described as the reception of divine promise and grace. The grace of justification is received by faith in which Christ is present. The justifying faith “takes hold of and possesses this treasure, the present Christ.”30 In Luther’s formulation of simul justus et peccator (at the same righteous and sinner), grace of Christ and forgiveness of sin rule the life of the believer through the word and repentance. We are saved only by Christ, an unconditional, free gift of God who forgives us and renews us continually. Faith is active in love, but negatively, human work is not a precondition for salvation. Luther’s teaching of justification is purely grounded “on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive”,31 but it does not neglect the significance of human good deeds in the public sphere. Luther’s theological principle of sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus can be seen as his paradigm shift from the scholastic-nominalist system apprehended in human merit in collaboration with God. Likewise, Shinran’s teaching of Amida grace finds its critical, liberating significance against the self-disciplined practice and merit-based path of Buddhism in the medieval Japanese context. This being said, there is a strong parallel and a striking resemblance between Luther and Shinran in regard to the thought form of justification, faith, and grace. If Amida’s grace is for Shinran the sole ground for salvation, the act of nembutsu and faith are given freely to the believers by Amida Buddha extra nos. Faith as entrusting involves the conversion and transformation of the heart in shift from self-power to Other Power. This faith is not an easy way, but is an even more difficult way to realize than through the spiritual practices and perfect fruit of enlightenment because of the sinful human condition. Shinran in his understanding of faith finds himself located within the dialectical relationship between simul justus et peccator. Shinjin in Shinran’s words includes a believing heart and trust in the Other Power, which is the essence of faith. Amida realizes faith dwelling within the believing heart. Although under the reality of sinful condition, Amida’s promise and grace assure the believer of redemption. Amida already has done and embraced all, no matter how sinful and evil. Beyond the subjective side of belief, the Other constitutes the faith of the self, completely letting the self go. Grounded in the primal vow, religious faith becomes the natural expression of that which recognizes something greater that embraces our

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lives. In Amida’s, grace is expressed as the value and meaning of human existence, in which Amida Buddha manifests itself as the life and light of the universe, realizing itself in the dynamic life for spiritual fulfillment and deliverance. Although Shinran does not deny the subjective side of human faith, he relocates it in a more fundamental manner in that Amida’s compassionate promise and grace become the source of human personal trust. At this juncture, a radical aspiration for redemption in the traditional sense of Buddha nature is understood as a turning of the mind in conversion toward the truth of the vows in which the Amida Buddha assures the believers of deliverance. This has little to do with belief as an intellectual assent, but affirms “strong, inner conviction as awareness of the self-evident truth of the vows.”32 Certainly, such resemblance does not marginalize the incommensurability. In Luther’s experience of Anfechtungen (inner struggle), Luther comes into encounter with God’s wrath and love on the cross of Jesus Christ, by differentiating himself from Shinran’s experience with the Other Power based on the myth of the bodhisattva, named Dharmakara in India. Unlike the story of Jesus Christ, the Amida story is more metaphysical and more spiritual than historical, or factual. The Buddhist perspective on salvation is not neatly in accord with the Judeo–Christian notion of the sacrificial Lamb of God nailed and bled on the cross. This incommensurability remains a source of difference against the syncretic hybridity in the project of the totalization of difference into trivialization or generalization, but is not a hindrance to interreligious learning.

Problematization: Buddha Nature

and Other

Power

Mahayanists assert that all sentient beings possess Buddha nature, the disposition and capacity to attain Buddhahood. They are capable of becoming bodhisattvas through the bodhisattva’s vows, self-awakening, and the six Perfections (paramitas). The primary goal of Mahayana is to fulfill the bodhisattva vows to bring all sentient beings to Enlightenment. Given this, a question arises whether Shinran discards the notion of Buddha nature completely for the sake of the grace of Amida. There is a complicated debate of the Buddha nature in Buddhist history of interpretation. In the Buddhist teaching, there is a path leading to the cessation of suffering (dukkha) through the practice of the eightfold path. With this practice, we come to the realization of the relationship

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between suffering, dependent origination, non-self, and impermanence of reality. Everything is impermanent and always changing. Everything appears out of emptiness. The dependent origination may be a Buddhist epistemology of freeing the self from bondage to past experience and under the influence of karma. It dissolves the illusion of substantial self. Shinran’s radical shift was undertaken from the self-power (Buddha nature) toward the radical grace of the Other Power of Amida. A tension occurs between Buddha nature within human innate nature and Amida Buddha extra nos. Thus, I problematize his teaching of universal grace in reference to the teaching of Buddha nature linked with dependent origination (Sanskrit: pratitya-samutpada), in which everything without exception is dependent on something else. In the following passage from the Nirvana Sutra, we read: “All sentient beings without exception have the Buddha-nature: Tathagata (Buddha) is permanent with no change at all.”33 In the Madhyamaka tradition of Nagarjuna (ca. 150–250 CE), the idea of Emptiness overcomes all forms of dualistic thinking, becoming the true nature of the real, the Buddha nature beyond human words or concepts. It corresponds to the Buddhist teaching of no-self. The concept of emptiness (sunyata) is defined as the essence of all things as seen in the Perfection of Wisdom sutras. The cardinal doctrine of dependent origination refers to the independent relationships among phenomena, undergoing change. All dharmas (teachings) and all things are empty of inherent existence, having no essence, but are only relative. Against this background, a new attempt in the context of Yogacara was made to ground insight into Emptiness through a critical understanding of the mind. The aspiration to enlightenment (bodhicitta) is emphasized in relation to tathagata-embryo (tathagata-garbha), which refers to the potential for attaining Buddhahood inherent in all sentient beings. Buddha nature is the source of this aspiration (bodhicitta) to Enlightenment. Yogacara tradition, (known as Consciousness Only or Cittamatra) as represented by Asanga and Vasubandhu, favored the nature of the mind, known for its doctrine of consciousness only.34 Thus, Cittamatra texts generally speak of the Buddha possessing three bodies; the dharma-kaya is the essence body of ultimate truth, and sambhoga-kaya is the body of complete enjoyment. Finally, the nirmanakaya is the transformation body, or the manifest body of the historical Buddha, like Gautama Siddhartha. In the context of Buddhology, the dharma-kaya is the basis for the other two bodies, while the dharma-kaya

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is identified as the dharma-realm (the dharmadhatu), the totality of the cosmos. The essence of the Buddha is no different from the essence or true nature of all things, Buddha nature.35 If I comprehend Amida Buddha in light of sambhoga-kaya, Shinran’s faith would be grounded in this Cittamattra teaching in relation to the container consciousness of the mind (alaya-vijnana). The wondrous being of Emptiness is reaffirmed in the teaching of dependent ­origination. The Pure Land teachings in China are embedded within the Indian tradition of Madhyamaka and Cittamatra. Shan-tao (613–681) in China was regarded as an incarnation of Amida in the Japanese Pure Land tradition. In the teaching of Shan-tao, everyone fails to attain Buddhahood in the age of spiritual decay and is incapable of spiritual growth. “I am actually an ordinary sinful being who has been, from time immemorial, sunken in and carried down by the current of birth-and-death. Any hope to be helped out of this current has been wholly denied to me.”36 This position is universalized to all, Shan-tao himself included. In this teaching, sincere and deep faith in Amida, recitation of the name of Amida, and desire for rebirth in the Pure Land are integral in religious life.37 Shan-tao’s teaching marked a shift from self-disciplined practice and dependent origination in Madhyamaka and Cittamatra to the grace of Amida. Nonetheless, apprehended in absolute sincerity, deep faith, meditating on Amida, and a true desire to be reborn, it is argued that those of weaker faith are encouraged to practice sincere invocation of Amida’s name, while the more fervent practitioners are to perform better in combination between ethical conduct and meditation.38

Historical Encounter: Faith and Buddha Nature We know of a historical encounter between Shan-tao and Christians of the Church of the East in China. Jing Jing, called Adam, was a Persian bishop and missionary scholar, who composed a text on a tablet concerning the witness of the Church of the East.39 Shan-tao lived at the period when the Christian religion flourished in China. The Emperor Gaozong (650–683), a supporter of Shan-tao, helped the Assyrian church and is appreciated in an inscription text in which Gaozong completed the “True Religion” for the Assyrian church (this is also the name of the Japanese sect of Shinran Buddhism), and helped build a Christian monastery in every province.

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Shan-tao was on sympathetic terms with the Assyrian Christians, teaching salvation by faith in Amida and the doctrine of the Trinity. The Japanese Buddhist historians claim apostolic succession of Pure Land Buddhism in the tradition of Shan-tao and that Shinran was indirectly related to the Assyrian Church in China.40 Shinran adopted Shan-tao’s characterization of faith in terms of sincerity, trustfulness, and a desire for rebirth in the Pure Land as gifts from the grace of Amida working within us.41 In this historical encounter between the Assyrian Christian religion and Shan-tao, Jesus Christ may be regarded as Amida Buddha, whose teaching was fused with the Christian teaching of Christ. However, the Buddhist notion of dharma-kaya as the absolute Emptiness, in which the doctrine of dependent origination plays the controlling principle, cannot be neatly fused into the Christian understanding of the triune God. However, Amida is the manifestation of dharma-kaya in the sense of sambhoga-kaya embodied in the primal vow of Bodhisattva Dharmakara in India. A Christian comparative theology can be pursued in examining Christ with Amida at the level of sambhoga-kaya, in which the relation between Christ and Amida is seen in light of the ultimate Reality.42 In Williams’ account, Other Power of Amida implies complete abandonment of all notions of self, which is the Buddhist basic teaching of no-self. Good deeds, like the nembutsu, may flow from the innate nature, but faith is identified with the action of Amida, shining from within. This refers to the articulation of our Buddha nature, which is the grace of Amida. Here, faith, which is shining forth of our Buddha nature, is the Amida as such.43 If faith is understood as Buddha nature which is identified as the Amida without further ado, it contradicts with the traditional notion of Buddha nature, even discarding such a notion for the sake of the grace of Amida. If faith manifests itself in the recitation of the name of Amida, identified as the Amida as such, our innate Buddha nature would be replaced and negated by the grace of Amida. In the context of Pure Land Buddhism, Amida Buddha symbolizes the eternal Buddha nature, the cosmic body of dharma-kaya. Faith/trust is the realization of Buddha nature or Tathagata’s true mind, which is expressed in the aspiration to become Buddha for the deliverance of all beings. For Shinran, Amida Buddha, the Buddha of Immeasurable Light and Life, is called the cosmic mediator between the formless Buddhahood and all sentient creatures. Shinran’s soteriological understanding of the

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Buddha’s true mind as the essence of faith embraces the spiritual dimension of simul justus et peccator. It finds its import in Luther’s teaching of justification in the relationship between event and process in which the grace of Christ remains center.

Conclusion: Self-Renewal, Solidarity, and Universal Grace In Shinran’s explication of faith, religious life is also expressed in religious activity in terms of gratitude for the Buddha’s compassion and our assurance of salvation through faith/trust. Faith/trust is manifested by ethical compassion in concern for people in need, through which the compassion of the Buddha radiates itself. Because everybody receives faith equally from Amida grace, Shinran affirms the spiritual equality of all the faithful. He married publicly and gave up monastic precepts. His critique of the Buddhist order is grounded in his teaching of equal priesthood of all believers, in light of the universal grace of Amida. The issue of justice is central in Shinran’s reformed Buddhism. In the other-worldly character of the Pure Land teaching, Shinran urged his followers to have respect for other faiths, to be compassionate to opponents, and to address the unequal distribution of justice. He attacked Buddhist institutions and clergy for being negligent to Buddhist compassion and wisdom. They were chided for being outwardly Buddhist, but being an inwardly heathen. In his statement, we read: “When a rich person goes to court, it is like throwing a stone into water, while for a poor person it is like throwing water into a stone.”44 To be compassionate with the poor, his teaching of grace of justification says the nembutsu is in favor of the welfare of society, inviting all to the cosmic grace of Amida’s compassion. A paradigm shift takes place from the self-disciplined power to the other power of grace, emphasizing ethical responsibility for those in dukkha. Shinran’s notion of universal salvation is formulated as: “Even the virtuous man is born in the Pure Land, so without question is the man who is evil.”45 Shinran’s Buddhism is socially engaged and the principle of inclusive interdependence is also expressed in the Bodhisattva’s vows. In recognition that my well-being is not separate from yours or others, whether on the spiritual plane or on the socioeconomic plane, Bodhisattva Dharmakara was engaged, socially involved, and compassionately committed in seeking the highest welfare for all people.46 In developing

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Shinran Buddhism in terms of engaged Buddhism, it is after “a voluntary association of people guided by exemplary leaders and a common vision of a society based on peace, justice and freedom.”47 A study of Shinran encourages a Christian comparatist to undertake careful examination about Luther’s teaching of justification in a multifaceted dimension. Interreligious learning in collectio and mutual renewal helps illuminate the underdeveloped domain of Luther’s thought in connection to his teaching of justification with other theological foci. Justification is grounded solely in the grace of Christ who inhibits the believer through faith. Union with Christ (or happy exchange) is central in Luther’s teaching of the forensic and the effective aspect of justification. The teaching of justification cannot be adequately separated from God’s justice because the justified as servants and co-workers of God are called to care for those in need and undertake diakonia in the ­society.48 For Luther, being justified through faith, we further to proceed to an active life. The grace of justification culminates its critical import in anamnestic reasoning in solidarity with those in suffering. In the sacramental dimension of Christian faith, the believer is encouraged to render support to Christ present in his needy ones, challenging all the unjust suffering of the innocent. “You must fight [resist], work, pray and—if you cannot do more—have heartfelt sympathy.”49 More than that, Luther’s notion of faith linked to the theology of the cross entails his marvelous sense and wonder of traces of divinity in all creatures. A Christian faith, unless it is attentive to the beautiful music of God, it becomes a deaf faith. “The wonderful and most lovely music” of God comes “from the harmony of the motions that are in the celestial spheres”.50 God the creator is no other than God the redeemer, such that believers are awakened and enlightened to praise of God’s beauty in all living sentient creatures, reflected even in the smallest flowers. Luther’s theological esthetics of God’s beauty in creation is connected with God’s kenotic way to incarnation: “God himself is personally present in all things, without which presence even God could not have become [human] nor one person made of divinity and humanity.”51 If Luther’s teaching of justification is seen in the universal horizon, we sinners are saved only by God’s gracious act in Christ, which comes to us while we were still sinners. Christ’s saving work is definitely for all. In 1 Tim 2:4, God desires everyone to be saved, thus Luther affirms a universal dimension of sola fidei: “This is an exclusive proposition that is expressed in universal terms…He causes all men to be saved.”52

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The expression apokatasis panton (restoration of all, Acts 3:21) refers to the fulfillment of God’s promise and entails a hope that Christ restores all as God originally intended it to be.53 In the whole creation as the mask of God (Larva Dei), God is present, “with all creatures, flowing and pouring into them, filling all things.”54 In fact, Christ is “a lord of all things, has all things in his hand, and is present everywhere.”55 In Luther’s reflection of Jesus’ descent to hell,56 we read that “the curses of the godless sometimes sound better in God’s ears than the hallelujahs of the pious.”57 Despite a double outcome of judgment (Matt 7:3) or confessional particularism (John 14:6), God’s compassion in Christ is expressed in a universal horizon of God’s grace for Luther in the reflection of Ishmael: “For the expulsion does not mean that Ishmael should be utterly excluded from the kingdom of God …The descendants of Ishmael also joined the church of Abraham and became heirs of the promise, not by reason of right but because of irregular grace.”58 Luther boldly appreciates pagan authority, especially the Turkish state as a model of the task of secular authority. If we do not recognize God in God’s innumerable good acts and presence in creatures, it is not God’s fault, but ours, as if God wants to be hidden from the eye of faith. A comparative theology appreciates Luther’s notion of mission as the work of God against proselytization, as seen in light of the grace of justification,59 and reinforces its meaning in self-renewal and solidarity with Shinran Buddhism which entails an openness to self-examination and renewal in matters of Adima grace and the socially engaged story of bodhisattva. Luther’s notion of the irregular grace of God and his Christ-inclusivism may deepen the meaning of the teaching of justification in encounter with the invocation of the name of Amida and his primal vow. God grants a great deal of gold, silver, riches, dominions, reason, wisdom, language, and kingdoms to those who live outside the Christian world.60 This perspective remains decisive for me to undergird the project of multiple modernities in terms of politics of recognition and God’s embrace of the Other. Interreligious engagement can become an indispensable form of reading and practicing together for self-renewal, immanent critique, and solidarity breaking through the malaise and setbacks of a Western-centric form of modernity. Interreligious learning in comparative collectio, in a social-­ historical context, provides a domain of mutual learning and renewal for two

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different communities toward prayerful exchange and recognition. Invocation of the name of Amida with sincerity and trust comes from the promise for salvation, in which Christians may hear the irregular voice of God in Christ. In The Larger Sukhavatiyuha Sutra we read: “May I not gain possession of perfect awakening if, once I have attained Buddhahood, any among the throng of living beings in the ten regions of the universe should single-mindedly desire to be born in my land with joy, with confidence and gladness.”61 In so doing, along with Luther, I confess that “we do not yet have our goodness in re, but in fide et spe.”62

Notes









1. Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 253. 2. Ibid. 3. The Larger and Smaller Sukhavativyuha Sutras and the Amitayurbuddhanusmrti Sutra. 4.  Harper Havelock Coates and Ryugaka Ishizuka, Honen: The Buddhist Saint (New York: Garland Publishing, 1981), 187. 5. The Essential Shinran: A Buddhist Path of True Entrusting, comp. and ed. Alfred Bloom (Bloomington, Indiana: World Wisdom, 2007), 2, 6. 6.  Ibid., 3. See Bloom, “Shinran’s Way” in Buddhist Spirituality, ed. T. Yoshinori, World Spiritualty, Vol. 9. (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1999), 224. (Hereafter Buddhist Spirituality II). 7.  The Essential Shinran, ed. Bloom, 4. 8. Alfred Bloom, Shinran Gospel of Pure Grace (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965), 28–29. 9. Tannisho: A Shin Buddhist Classic, trans. Taitetsu Unno (Honolulu: Buddhist Study Center Press, 1984), 5. Cited in Bloom, “The Foundation of Shinran’s Faith: Supremacy of the Vow in the ‘Tannisho,’” 2–3. http:// bschawaii.org/shindharmanet/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2015/02/ Bloom-Foundation.pdf. 10. Ibid., 3. 11. Luther’s Works. Ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–1967). (Hereafter LW). LW 34: 336–338. 12. Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: God and the Devil, trans. E.W. Schwarzbart (Doubleday: Image, 1992), 154. 13.  “Disputation against Scholastic Theology (1517),” in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 2nd ed. Ed. Timothy Lull and William R. Russel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 34–39.

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14. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. The English Dominican Fathers (New York: Benzinger, 1947), (Hereafter ST). ST 1: 2 Q113. 6. 15. Alister E. McGrath, Martin Luther’s Theology of the Cross (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 105. For Aquinas, “habit is a disposition of a subject which is in a state of potentiality either to form or to operation.” ST 1: 2 Q 50. 1. 16. ST 1: 2. Q 109. 6. In De Veritate or the Summa Theologiae, there are no merits prior to justification, while in the Commentary on the Sentence, an individual can prepare him/herself for justification based on the natural abilities without the divine grace. 17. John I. Farthing, Thomas Aquinas and Gabriel Biel: Interpretations of St. Thomas Aquinas in German Nominalism on the Eve of the Reformation (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1988), 151–153. 18. ST 1: 2 Q 114. 3. 19. Luther’s critique of Thomas relates to this habitual grace coupled with human work rather than Thomas’ notion of justification in the sense of forgiveness of sin outside us. Brian Davis, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 339. 20.  Alister E. McGrath, Martin Luther’s Theology of the Cross (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 112. 21. Ibid., 151. In opposition to Ockham, Luther argues that “it is not true that God can accept man without his justifying grace.” “Disputation against Scholastic Theology,” article 56, in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 37. 22. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1963), 140–141. 23. “Disputation against Scholastic Theology,” Article 54. In Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Wrings, 35. 24. “Heidelberg Disputation (1518),” Article. 20, in ibid., 57. 25. “Two Kinds of Righteousness (1519),” in Ibid., 136. 26. LW 34: 111. Union with Christ: The New Finish Interpretation of Luther, eds. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, Michigan/ Cambridge, UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998). 27.  “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 393. 28. Ibid., 397. 29. Joseph Franz Schütte, Valignanos Missionsgrundsaze fur Japan 1. (Rom: Edizioni Di Storia E Letteratura, 1951), 387. 30. LW 26: 130. 31. LW 26: 387. 32. Alfred Bloom, “Shinran’s Way” in Buddhist Spirituality II, 230. 33. Cited in Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought, ed. William R. LaFleur (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985), 27.

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34. Kogen Mizuno, Essentials of Buddhism: Basic Terminology and Concepts of Buddhist Philosophy and Practice (Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Company, 1996), 44. 35. William, Mahayana Buddhism, 176. 36. Cited in Ibid., 261. 37. Ibid. 38. Julian Pas, Visions of Sukhavati: Shan-tao’s Commentary on the Kuan WuLiang-Shou-Fo-Ching (New York: SUNY Press, 1995), 275. However, it can be argued that Shan-tao’s teaching is not presented strictly in opposition to the self-disciplined path, rather leaving such contradiction open. Martin Repp, Honens religiöses Denken: Eine Untersuchung zu Strukturen religiöser Erneuerung (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005), 134. 39. The inscription text dates to 781 CE, witnessing to the Church of the East in China. Its missionary head was Alopen who arrived in Xi’an in 635 CE. The emperor in Tang dynasty welcomed the missionary delegates. Yoshiro Saeki, The Nestorian Monument in China, rep. (New York: The Macmillan, 1928), 75. 40. Ibid., 148. 152. See Chung, Postcolonial Imagination, 54. 41. William, Mahayana Buddhism, 272. 42. John B. Cobb, JR. Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1998), 125–126. 43. Williams, Mahayana Buddhism, 272. 44. Bloom, “Shinran’s Way,” in Buddhist Spirituality II, 234. 45. Keel,Hee-Sung, Understanding Shinran: A Dialogical Approach (Fremont, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 2000), 31. 46. Bloom, “Engaged Shin Buddhism.” 1–10. http://bschawaii.org/shindharmanet/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2012/04/Engaged-ShinBuddhism-complete_doc.pdf. 47. Queen and King, eds. Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia, 19. 48. Even Karl Marx recognized Luther’s prophetic critique of capital accumulation associated with usury. Karl Marx, Capital I: A Critique of Political Economy, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: penguin, 1990), 649–650. 49. “The Blessed Sacrament of the Holy and True Body (1519)”, in Timothy F. Lull, ed. Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, the first ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 247. 50. LW 1: 126. 51. LW 37: 63. 52. LW 28: 260. 53. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971), 170.

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54. LW 22: 26. 55. LW 36: 342. 56. “Formula of Concord (1577),” in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, eds. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 514. Luther’s reflection of cosmic soteriology of total liberation in this context relates to 1 Pet 4: 6: “The gospel was preached even to the dead.” 57. Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr. Trans. Isabel Best and David Higgins. DBW 12. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 160. This statement that Bonhoeffer cites comes from Luther. 58. LW 4: 42–44. 59. For Luther, mission has nothing to do with forced conversion, but viva vox Evangelii as an oral cry going out to everyone to become pure blessing. Martin Luther, The Church Comes from All Nations: Luther Texts on Mission, trans. Klaus D. Schultz and Daniel Thies (St. Louis: Concordia, 2003), 29. See Chung, Postcolonial Public Theology: Faith, Rationality, and Prophetic Dialogue (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2016), 37. 60. Gerhard Ebeling, Luther: An Introduction to His Thought, trans. R.A. Wilson (Minneapolis, Fortress, 2007), 189. 61.  Luis O. Gomez, trans. Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Immeasurable Light (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996), 167. 62. Luther, Lectures on Romans, trans. and ed. Wilhelm Pauck (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), 127.

CHAPTER 4

Totaliter Aliter, God’s Mission, and the Postcolonial

A comparative study of religion remains crucial in God’s mission as prophetic dialogue, which is reinvigorated by comparative theology. ­ God’s mission theology, re-imagined in the expansive global framework, functions as indigenous translations embedded within an emancipatory horizon in the aftermath of colonialism.1 Barth’s wholly other theology receives attention in postcolonial theology of God in which a vision of divine transcendence is projected within creation and between creatures. This relational transcendence is founded upon the notion of God as irreducibly Other, yet not beyond our touch, although beyond our grip.2 In the flesh of others, a notion of relational transcendence seeks to touch divine transcendence as the divine alterity. This postcolonial theology of divine alterity finds affinity with Barth’s wholly other theology.3 This chapter explicates Barth’s theology of God’s mission and reconciliation in terms of his speech-act theology as totaliter aliter, making it amenable to a postcolonial orientation and World Christianity. To contextualize theological themes such as totaliter aliter, God’s mission, and the postcolonial, I find it substantial to scrutinize the wider horizon of God’s mission underlying Barth’s theology of the word and reconciliation. Of special importance to this task is to broadly analyze and research Barth’s understanding of God’s mission, its postcolonial relevance for prophetic politics, recognition of the other, and activity of parrhesia.

© The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5_4

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God’s Mission

in Postcolonial

Background

The shift from the church’s mission to God’s own mission was accelerated after World War II, in which people were stunned by the Holocaust and the Japanese massacre of Nanjing, a beautiful ancient city in China. Furthermore, China closed its doors to all missionaries in 1950 after establishing a Communist government.4 This historical background had shaped the ecumenical discourse of God’s mssion in the aftermath of colonialism, calling into question the church’s mission during the colonial time. Barth articulated mission as an activity of God in a paper delivered at the Brandenburg Missionary Conference on April 11, 1932.5 Barth took issue with church mission that was embedded within theological liberalism and humanitarian optimism. In his account, mission begins with the divine sending forth of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The term missio is an expression of the doctrine of the Trinity. Thus, the church’s mission must be grounded in the activity of the triune God and in the service of the Word of God. The church can be missional only in obedience to God’s missional initiative. Mission and theology are driven by the free grace of God. God, in God’s own free omnipotence and mercy, shapes a church as a particularly missional church. Mission and theology are built upon the solid rock of God’s election in the Trinitarian framework.6 Barth’s theology of divine sending in the Trinitarian concept of election as the sum of the gospel became the arbiter of shaping and characterizing the ecumenical discussion of God’s mission in the 1952 meeting of the IMC in Willingen, Germany. The phrase was missio Dei, originally coined by German missiologist and director of the Basel mission, Karl Hartenstein in 1934. God’s mission has become a watershed in missional theology at large and in a global context in which a critical voice of World Christianity reframes the discourse of God’s mission as translation and emancipation, against the Western missional church and practices.7 However, in the ecumenical and global discussion of God’s mission, scant attention is paid to Barth’s theology of God’s mission in a broader spectrum, through God’s reconciliation and his speech-act theology through the world. As David Bosch correctly states, Barth’s missional theology penetrates his ecclesiology and reconciliation when it comes to teaching of justification in connection with “The Holy Spirit and the Gathering of the Christian Community,” to the teaching of sanctification with “The Holy Spirit and the Upbuilding of the Christian Community,”

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and to the teaching of vocation with “The Holy Spirit and the Sending of the Christian Community.”8 If Barth grounds God’s mission in Trinitarian activity and election, it is of special significance to scrutinize the discourse of God’s mission within the Trinitarian framework and God’s reconciliation in Christ with the world. I find this correlation paradigm between God’s mission and reconciliation to be substantial and indispensable for assessing Barth’s contribution to the postcolonial move and World Christianity. In what follows, this correlation model comes into focus; however, I shall deal with Barth’s reflection of Trinity and election in the next chapter.

Reconciliation

and Missional

Ecclesiology

Barth’s theological development of mission as God’s Trinitarian initiative finds its full expression in his doctrine of reconciliation.9 Jesus Christ as the living Word of God is the eternal subject of the gospel. This contradicts a missionary attempt at propagating and defending “any supposed Christian worldview of its own.”10 Witness to Jesus Christ contradicts a missionary attempt at disseminating, producing, propagating, and defending Western culture and philosophical-religious worldviews. In becoming incarnate and reconciling sinful humanity to God, God has established an ontological connection with all humanity through Jesus Christ. By the Holy Spirit, humanity shares in the work of Christ and a church is created. The old things have passed away and all things have become new. This is the work of God who is reconciled in Christ with the world and this perspective characterizes Paul’s ministry of ­reconciliation.11 Jesus Christ builds up Christianity in the world as his body, his earthly historical form, with the quickening power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ fits his church “to give a provisional representation of the sanctification of all humanity and human life as it has taken place in Him.”12 Thus, the powerful and living direction of the risen Lord and the Holy Spirit are understood as the principle of sanctification and the upbuilding of the faith community. The church is provisional, fragmentary, incomplete, insecure, and questionable because it is only on the way to the return of Jesus Christ for all.13 This perspective reinvigorates a classic notion of the one holy catholic apostolic church in a missional framework.

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To articulate missional ecclesiology, Barth clarifies the classical description of the church as una, sancta, catholica, and apostolica as stated in the Nicene Creed.14 The Holy Spirit is the awakening power in which Jesus Christ has established and continues to renew his body, the one holy catholic and apostolic church. In church as Christ’s own earthly historical form of existence,15 Barth depicts una in its singularity while sancta describes the particularity underlying this singularity. The community of the saints as the body of Jesus Christ is holy because Jesus Christ, the head of the body, is holy. The adjective “catholic” means general, comprehensive, by speaking of an identity and a universality which is maintained in all the differences. Barth argues that “catholic” means first of all being ecumenical in the narrower sense. It is identical in the whole inhabited world, in all parts of the globe where it can exist as the church.16 Apostolica describes the concrete spiritual criterion as known only in faith, which is the one and only mark of the church (nota ecclesiae).17 Apostolic means to be in discipleship under the instruction and direction of the apostles. The apostles are those whom Jesus Christ has chosen and called and ordained and sent as witness for the mission.18 The church is the apostolic church in terms of the ministry and mission of the apostles. The apostolic community means the community which hears the apostolic witness of the New Testament and becomes the community of witness to the One who was crucified and risen. Thus, apostolicity is the criterion of the existence of the church as the one true universal church. The community as the earthly historical form of existence of Jesus Christ is his body, and each community has its own locality, its own environment, tradition, language, etc. In the fullness of time, God made known God’s mystery to give all things their head in Christ―both in heaven and on earth (Eph 1:9). This is the Magna Carta of being of the church in Jesus Christ.19 The life of the church is located between Christ’s reconciliation and the final consummation of God’s kingdom.

Mission and Solidarity

with the

World

The church as the living community of Jesus Christ exists in and for the world. The very nature of the church is a missionary one, based on the triune God, on Christ’s reconciliation, and on the power of the Holy Spirit. Here, church is defined as the community of vocation.20 The church’s solidarity with the world lies in its active recognition that Jesus

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Christ, as the Savior of the world, can exist in a worldly fashion21; thus, it is led into the world by the enlightening power of the Holy Spirit. In terms of solidarity with the world, and in pledge and commitment to it, Barth argues that all members of the church participate in the mission.22 Mission is the whole task of the church, commissioned and mandated for proclamation of the missional message of the gospel, grounded in Christ’s work of atonement and reconciliation. The church, seen in its participation in God’s mission and Christ’s prophetic work, understands itself as a subsequent and provisional representation of the kingdom of God, which begins and is already revealed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The kingdom of God establishes the exclusive, all-penetrating, all-determining lordship of God in the Word and the Spirit in the whole sphere of creation.23 Barth contends that in the present situation, Christian diakonia should not be prevented from reaching out in a political and social direction. Its proper task should not be neglected.24 Sharing itself in solidarity with the suffering of Christ, the Christian mission in affliction is a reflection and an analogy to the suffering of Christ. This is the basis for the church’s solidarity with the world in affliction and suffering.25 The mystery of divine passion in the torture, crucifixion, and death is found in the person and mission of the crucified One. In this divine mission, the reconciliation of the world with God takes place.26 Evangelization is meant to attest to the goodness of God in the humanity of Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ is the goodness of God. The gospel is the good, glad tidings of Jesus Christ, who reveals the great and unconditional “Yes” of the eternal goodness of God to the world.27 Proclamation of the living Word of the living Lord contradicts appropriation, control, and domestication of the Gospel by dominant philosophical and scientific principles, and as a consequence challenges the inevitable mastering and deformation of the Gospel.28 When evangelization occurs in foreign mission, mission has nothing to do with strengthening confessional positions, extending European or American culture and civilization, or propagating one of the modes of thought and life familiar and dear to the older Christian world. Mission presupposes the value of the contributions that other religions and cultures make and it is performed by allowing each culture to construct the mission in their own way, psychologically, sociologically, aesthetically, and ethically.29 Cultural constructions and contributions must be appreciated and taken seriously,

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eradicating the crass arrogance of Western people, who are opposed to the gospel “in all its radical uniqueness and novelty.”30 The church’s work of mission as service to God’s Word takes the form of serving, both in its commencement and continuation, and this has little to do with mastering and ruling foreign people in a colonial manner. As Barth provocatively states, “the goal of missions is not to convert heathen in the sense of bringing them to a personal enjoyment of their salvation. Neither at home nor abroad can it be the work of the community to convert men. This is the work of God alone. When God does convert a man by His call, then he does, of course, come to personal salvation, but supremely and decisively he becomes a witness in the world.”31 Barth maintains that racially different people must be seen and taken seriously in their cultural particularity and orientation. The church’s witness to the mutual fellowship of the people of the world nullifies an attempt at dividing the church into special white, black, or brown congregations.32 The church does not turn a blind eye to sociological divisions when the prophetic mission is applied to the economic classes with their conflicting interests and ideologies. As Barth argues, it would be morally questionable and even sick if the church’s mission identified itself with a class, its concerns, and its interests; its faith and its ideology; or its ethos with its morality.33 Mission should be carried out with the greatest respect for the value in other religions. Mission involves the whole person and so cares for humans in their totality. Education, healing, help, and the needs of all are rightly associated with mission. God’s mission in this regard is a prophetic mission with a holistic view, following in the footsteps of Christ’s prophetic work. This perspective initiates a postcolonial horizon of God’s mission which reinforces human participation as the covenant partner in Christ’s prophetic history of fighting against the dangerous reality of nothingness in the aftermath of colonialism.

The Wholly Other in Speech-Act and Phenomenological Hermeneutic In the discussion of God’s mission and reconciliation, I am concerned with examining a phenomenology of God’s speech-act, which may become the driving force for understanding the model of intertextuality in a hermeneutical frame of reference. We can see such a perspective in

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Barth’s teaching of lights and words (Lichtenlehre) outside the churchly wall,34 in which Barth fully developed his earlier reflection of “The Speech of God as the Act of God.”35 Given this, Barth’s early notion of totaliter aliter in dialectical theology cannot be adequately understood apart from his deliberation of God’s speech-act as mystery. For Barth, biblical hermeneutics lies in understanding the Scriptures as a witness of divine revelation. Scripture constituted itself as the Canon because it imposed itself upon the church as such. The self-imposing of the Scripture was possible in virtue of its content, that is God’s revelation.36 A critical and constructive study of the Scripture can be possible, only respecting the Scripture as witness to God’s revelation. The Scripture as the witness of divine revelation is a special form of the universally valid hermeneutical principle.37 In Gadamer’s account, Barth’s Romans is a hermeneutical manifesto to overcome liberal theology. Barth’s Church Dogmatics contributes to the hermeneutical problem indirectly everywhere.38 Certainly Barth paves the way of a special hermeneutics as informed, prescribed by, and concerned with the subject matter of Scripture. At a deeper level, Barth conceptualizes the revelation in terms of Calvin’s notion of revelation as the speaking person (Dei loquentis persona). God’s coming to us as a speech-act is of phenomenological character and hermeneutical significance. The whole creation is the theater of God’s glory and the recipient and bearer of God’s Word by becoming the ministry of the Word of God.39 Barth’s contribution to theological hermeneutics can be found in his reflection of encountering God’s speech-act transpiring between the scriptural world and extra-scriptural world, anticipating the phenomenological horizon of intertextuality. Theological phenomenology of totaliter aliter in divine speech-act is not exhausted into an ontological, hermeneutical notion of aletheia. Conversely, such an ontological concept needs to be critically elucidated by the life horizon (or subject matter) of the divine speech-act. In the Heideggerian notion of aletheia, Barth acknowledges that such a concept denotes “the manifestation of something hidden, in human ideas, concepts and judgments.”40 In Barth’s account, however, aletheia cannot be fully accepted as truth if it is undertaken apart from the event of its being manifested. God’s act of speech in self-revelation first comes into effect, then hermeneutical reflection of it is maintained; “all our hermeneutical skill cannot be brought about by hermeneutical skill.”41

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More than an ontological hermeneutic, I notice that a phenomenological aspect of totaliter aliter comes into play in Barth’s hermeneutical reflection of God’s speech-act, in which we read that God can speak to us through a pagan or an atheist. When God speaks in actuality, we must listen attentively to God.42 In his later doctrine of lights, Barth argues that God cannot abandon any secular sphere in the world, existing outside the walls of the Christian church.43 Barth’s deliberation of true lights and words as free communications of God, as seen in light of intertextuality, does not necessarily contradict the hermeneutical project of the fusion of horizons when it comes to the Scripture, missional engagement, and the outside world in light of God’s speech-act. Of special significance is to make conceptual clarity regarding the extent to which Barth’s reflection of lights and words is in reference to his understanding of culture and religion.

Gospel, Culture, and Religion In his Amsterdam lecture (1926),44 Barth explicates a cultural horizon of theology to restore the broken relationship between Creator and creature “by virtue of the unbroken tie of reconciliation.”45 Barth takes the realm of culture to hold the promise conformed by the gospel of reconciliation since Jesus Christ in incarnation is the Lord in the whole domain of culture and world; the worldly regime can be a reflection or an analogical witness to the promise of the kingdom of God within the divine act of reconciliation. In light of reconciliation, Barth is not reluctant to critically and constructively assess Aquinas’ dictum that “grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.”46 If theologia naturalis intends to speak of nature and culture in a more reliable manner, it must not evaporate theologia revelatus in the act of reconciliation. All cultural activity can be seen in striving for “the highest possible evaluation of the goal”47 in the eschatological anticipation. Barth argues that the church swims along in the stream of culture,48 standing in solidarity with society and human culture. In Barth’s definition, “the culture is the task set through the Word of God for achieving the destined condition of man in unity of soul and body.”49 Calling for a prophetic objectivity, Barth endeavors to overcome the dualism between spirit and nature, soul and body, internal religious realm and external social realm. This refers to Barth’s third way to a

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prophetic-ethical understanding of culture in light of reconciliation under eschatological anticipation, in contrast to liberal or cultural Protestantism.50 Barth’s prophetic-ethical approach to culture is well expressed in his doctrine of the word of God in Church Dogmatics, in which the problem of culture becomes the problem of being human, existing being indispensable for the theologian. Since theology is a specific cultural activity of humanity, it is sheer nonsense to criticize culture in this regard. “The problem of theology and dogmatics can also be seen as wholly set within the framework of the problem of culture.”51 Along with cultural relevance for theology, Barth also analyzes the relationship between revelation and religion in a dialectical-analogical manner. Barth makes use of the Hegelian term of Aufhebung (sublation) in regard to religion. Unlike Hegel’s higher synthesis of religion for absolute knowledge, Barth entails polysemy of sublation in singling out religion (elective affinity), suspending religion (religion as unbelief), and upholding in critically and constructively preserving the religion (analogical witness) under the effectiveness of revelation.52 Through this polysemy of elective affinity between religion and revelation in terms of singling out, suspension, and critical-constructive institution, Barth utilizes the Hegelian dialectic of sublation in a limited sense. Accordingly, Barth’s provocative statement reads for the priority of revelation against the scriptures: “[T]he Veda to the Indians, the Avesta to the Persians, the Tripitaka to the Buddhists, the Koran to its believers: are they not all ‘bibles’ in exactly the same way as the Old and New Testaments?”53 In Barth’s statement we read, “In His revelation God is present in the world of human religion.” It is not plausible to hold any ecclesial triumphalistic attitude of Christianity over non-Christian religions. “The religion of revelation is indeed bound up with the revelation of God: but the revelation of God is not bound up with the religion of revelation.”54 Barth’s position “has nothing to do with arrogance towards other religions, but is a call to faithful self-examination.”55 Indeed, Barth encourages the church to adopt a humble attitude and openness by listening attentively to a very strange, profane voice of God.56 It remains central in his later teaching of the words and lights (extra muros ecclesiae).57 Barth implies a new way of presenting a critical, emancipatory proposal to the gospel in regard to culture and religion in his theology of reconciliation, which is driven in his deliberation of God’s speech-act in worldly realms and the otherness of the Other.

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Culture and Religion

as Ensemble of the

Text

In consideration of Barth’s openness to other religions and cultures, I sense that Barth still is left to be desired for conceptual clarity as to how to define worldly realms as the text of divine semantics. Barth accentuates cultural relevance for theological activity in light of reconciliation. And he regards the whole creation as the theater of God’s glory and the recipient and bearer of God’s Word by becoming the ministry of the Word of God.58 This insight calls for a critical exegesis of Barth’s speech-act theology in which a phenomenology of intertextuality is at play in Barth’s thought regarding the relation between the scriptural and extra-scriptural worlds. God’s speech-act in revelation allows for this correlational method and thought form. A multilayered dimension of theological Sache is grounded in God’s act of speech and hermeneutical mode of thought and it is driven in approximation toward the divine Truth, in eschatological openness. At this juncture, it is substantial to pay more attention to phenomenological clarification of hermeneutical significance in Barth’s theology. What is central in the hermeneutical tradition is a notion of fullness of language and dialogue linked to the scriptural text and human ontological experience. To say something of something is to interpret in every voice of signifying. In interpretation, we utter something, a part that is taken from the total meaning of the logos; in the complete meaning of the hermeneutic, there is signification of the sentence. The semantic voice, the signifying word is interpretation in a way that the symbol is a universal dimension. To the degree that we say something is real by signifying it, thus we interpret it.59 In Ricoeur’s account, “there is no general hermeneutics, no universal canon for exegesis, but only disparate and opposed theories concerning the rules of interpretation. The hermeneutic field … is internally at variance with itself.”60 If the hermeneutic field is at variance with itself in the conflict of interpretation oscillating between demystification of the language and recovery of meaning, I am theologically concerned with phenomenologically clarifying a new model of intertextuality correlated with the biblical text and the book of nature for postcritical faith and understanding, especially for theological phenomenology in the Barthian sense. “To say something of something” would be transposed upon Barth’s speech-act theology.

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Barth is not merely involved in the world of the Scripture, but also critically engaged with the social world and creation as the regime of the divine semantic. This phenomenological perspective implies plurality of meaning, provoking the church to critically test and examine whether they would be relevant to the scriptural world and confession, and community life. Given this, I am intrigued by Geertz’s phenomenology of culture in which culture is comprehended as text. For him, a notion of a text goes beyond written materials and documents, even beyond dialogical practice. Geertz is aware of the importance of the theological tradition in the interpretation of nature, as seen relevantly in theatrum gloriae Dei (John Calvin and Karl Barth), that is a sematic text of God. This theological notion of the world as the stage of God’s glory may be dated back to the tradition of interpretatio naturae in the Middle Ages which culminated in Spinoza attempting to read nature as a Scripture of God. Along this line, Geertz elucidates cultural practice as an assemblage of texts, or an ensemble of text which says something of something meaningful to us.61 Geertz’s phenomenological perspective provides us a clue to develop a theory of interpretation in the social, religious context. Conceived in a phenomenological perspective, I maintain that the Scripture and cultural worlds constitute a single text through which God continues to address through the symbolic system of culture, religion, and its people’s life. This perspective helps us improve on limitations of conceptual clarity and elucidation in Barth’s speech-act theology. An actualisic mode of thought in Barth’s speech-act theology tends to be abstract “from above,” unless it is conceptually clarified in terms of the analysis of culture and religion “from below and the Other.”

Barth, World Christianity, and Postcolonial Orientation In his later stage, Barth took a tremendous interest in the comparative study of religions. Barth, in his serious study of the 16 Latin texts of Vatican II, expressed his hope for this renewal and movement to continue. Barth also pays special attention to the matters of Israel and ­non-Christian religions. Such a confession of guilt in Barth’s view should be extended to Jewish pogroms and Muslims concerning the church’s fatal and deplorable role in the so-called crusades.62

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Furthermore, Barth’s lecture in a Mustermesse in Basel was held for 300 students from developing countries, in which he expressed his expectation of discovering a true Christianity in World Christianity: “There may be a religious West, but there is not a Christian West … It could well be that one day true Christianity will be understood and lived better in Asia and in Africa than in our aged Europe.”63 Actually, the rise of new Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is characterized as the coming of global Christianity for the next Christendom by promoting independence, inculturation, and liberation.64 In view of the global critical voice of World Christianity, it is important to take into account the concern for religious freedom and human dignity in different cultural contexts. It appreciates the world of the Other by recognition and gentleness. When approaching the cultural-religious place of the Other, it takes seriously the attitude of “taking off one’s shoes” toward the place of the other religion, regarding it as a holy place.65 The indigenous attempt to comprehend mission as translation emphasizes the translatability of Scripture into different languages and the indigenous naming of God in different religious contexts. Given the issue of translation, a phenomenological inquiry of the intertextuality between the scripture and other culture helps us prevent a crude syncretism or cultural accommodation through the dynamism of fusion of different horizons in approximation to the subject matter of the gospel. Although there is the zone of incommensurability and the untranslatability of central expressions in the process of translation, communication may occur as an adventure, creating open space for the dynamic movement of encounter, tension, and fusion between multiple horizons involved in translating the biblical narrative through indigenous language. Seeing culture as an ensemble of the text for understanding and learning, a new meaning emerges in a hermeneutical conversation with the Other, which is informed in analogical expression and dialectical inquiry. A phenomenological inquiry proceeds through this hermeneutical filter, as undertaken by suspension, appreciation, critical distance, selfexposure, and self-renewal in dialogue with the biblical texts and other cultural texts. This inquiry and procedure qualifies us to critically develop Barth’s concept of totaliter aliter in God’s speech-act, and it also keeps a project of translation from any crude notion of translation reductionism or indigenous syncretism.66

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Totaliter aliter

and Postcolonial

77

Theology

In the context of reconciliation linked to speech-act theology, we see that Barth’s wholly other theology is relational and radically engaged in transforming the society and world in a wholly, completely, and different manner. This perspective may find its critical import in postcolonial theology. Postcolonial missiologists, such as Jonathan Ingleby, advocate a prophetic tradition of the scriptures and other prophetic voices in religion and politics for the postcolonial mission of emancipation, striving to overcome the structure of hegemony and violence in the context of Empire.67 Lamin Sanneh’s model of indigenous translation is a commentary on interpolation and postcolonial re-presentation that can be done within the project of rewriting history in anamnestic passion, calling for archeological methodology, deciphering the regime silenced and subjugated in the underside of mission history. Ingleby challenges a psychological notion of mimicry, which tends to stabilize the status quo in imitation of Western colonial rationality and practice.68 More than that, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen draws upon Barth’s theology of reconciliation and initiates a constructive dialogue with Marion Grau’s postcolonial “Christology of divine commerce.” Kärkkäinen’s reading strategy of Barth seeks to utilize a model in illustration of the mutual conditioning of God’s initiative and human participation as the covenant partner in the gospel of reconciliation. This model is definitely of a postcolonial character in uncovering the complexity of the Western economic alliance with exploitation in a context of Neo-imperialism. Barth’s objective model of reconciliation completed by the triune God reinforces human participation in Christ’s prophetic work of fighting against the colonizing process of lifeworld under Empire.69 To advance the prophetic critique of Empire, I think that it is indispensable to undergird Barth’s preferential option for the gospel of Jesus Christ, who is partisan of the poor, in anamnestic solidarity with massa perditionis. Swimming against the stream,70 Jesus establishes his table fellowship with publicans and sinners, calling people out of the massa perditionis to set them at God’s side.71 Jesus’ solidarity with am ha haaretz and ochlos “can consist only in the attestation and proclamation” of God’s free grace which means Jesus Christ is the saving revolt of God.72 Evangelization in this regard brings the Good News to all, sharply challenging a patriarchal, dominant, social structure and institution,

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which is in support of structural violence, gender inequity, and injustice. Barth’s seminal notion of parrhesia is helpful for us to reinvigorate the postcolonial character of God’s mission. Evangelization in the sense of speech-act means “audacious speech” to the truth of the gospel, becoming the undercurrent in the ability of believers and their discourse before political and religious authorities (Acts 4:13). As Barth argues, in our participation in the veracity of God’s truth, our words become God’s own word, such that it receives the momentum of parrhesia which distinguishes genuine preaching from a mere speaking about God.73 In parrhesia, we live as Christians or as witnesses to the world, in which our life is undercut by the threat of inhumanity and one’s exploitation of one’s neighbor. Christian discourse of parrhesia resists ideologically distorted forms of inhumanity and exploitation.74 Thus, Barth encourages the church to be on the side of the victims of social order and to stand in immanent opposition to systems of social disorder. This sharpens evangelization of the kingdom of God to the proclamation of the protest of God against all ungodlinesss and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth (Rom 1: 18).75 In contrast to artificial flattery, there can only be truth in parrhesia. Thus, parrhesia is the kairos, the occasion in which individuals choose to speak the truth with regard to each other. Parrhesia as a verbal activity implies that a speaker utters his/her personal relationship with truth, in a shameless responsibility to help other people: critique instead of flattery, ethical responsibility instead of self-interest and apathy.76 Foucault’s discourse of parrhesia comes to terms with Barth’s political parrhesia which undergirds the discourse of God’s mission in the sociocritical analysis of the embedment of religious knowledge with an institutionalized power structure. A missional activity of parrhesia in witness to the truth of the gospel about the kingdom of God is of a prophetic, ethical character, providing more space for innocent victims to speak of themselves. A critical and emancipatory approach to God’s mission in the postcolonial context becomes meaningful and crucial in the activity of parrhesia and the integrity of our witness to the truth of the gospel, attentively listening to God’s speech-act in other cultural texts and through the face of the innocent victim.

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Notes







1. Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003). 2. Mayra Rivera, The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2007), 2. 3. Ibid., 4–5. 4. Classic Texts in Mission and World Christianity, ed. Norman E. Thomas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 102. 5. Karl Barth, “Die Theologie und die Mission in der Gegenwart,” (1932) in Theologische Fragen und Antworten (Zollikon: Evangelischer Verlag, 1957), 100–126. 6.  Classic Texts in Mission and World Christianity, Thomas, ed., 105–106. 7. Flett argues that Barth never used the term missio Dei in a Trinitarian sense. John Flett, The Witness of God: The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth, and the Nature of Christian Community (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2010), 12. 8.  David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011), 382. 9.  CD IV/3.2 §72 “The Holy Spirit and the Sending of the Christian Community.” CD is for the abbreviation of Church Dogmatics by Karl Barth, eds. G.W. Bromiley and T. F Torrance (London and New York: T. and T. Clark, 2004). 10. CD IV/3.2: 837. 11. CD IV/1: 74. 12. CD IV/2: 614. 13. CD IV/2: 621. 14. CD IV/1: 668. 15. CD IV/1: 643. 16. CD IV/1: 703. 17. CD IV/1: 712 18. CD IV/1: 718–719. 19. CD IV/1: 665–666. 20. CD IV/3.2: 682. 21. CD IV/3.2: 773–774. 22. CD IV/3. 2: 784. 23. CD IV/3.2: 792. 24. CD IV/3.2: 892. 25. CD IV/3.2: 637.

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26. CD IV/1: 247. 27. CD IV/3. 2: 798–800, 805. 28. CD IV/3.2: 821. 29. CD IV/3.2: 875 30. CD IV/3.2: 875. 31. CD IV/3.2: 876. 32. CD IV/3.2: 899. 33. CD IV/3.2: 900. 34.  Lichtenlehre in CDIV/3.1§69. 35. CD 1/1: § 5. 4. 36. CD I/1: 111. 37. CD I/2: 464, 468. 38. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 509, 521. 39. CD IV/3.1: 164. 40. CD 1/1: 270. 41. CD 1/1: 148. 42. CD I/1: 55–60. 43. CD IV/3.1: 119. 44. Barth, “Church and Culture,” in Theology and Church: Shorter Writings, 1920–1928, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith (London: SCM, 1962), ­334–354. 45. Ibid., 341. 46. Ibid., 342. 47. Ibid., 349. 48. Ibid., 351. 49. Ibid., 337. 50. Peter Winzeler, Widerstehende Theologie: Karl Barth 1920–1935 (Stuttgart: Alektor, 1982), 341–342. 51. CD 1/1: 284. 52. Sven Ensminger, Karl Barth’s Theology as a Resource for a Christian Theology of Religions (Bloomsbury: T and T Clark, 2014), 51–52. 53. CD I/2: 282. 54. CD 1/2: 329. 55. CD 1/2: 327. 56. CD I/1: 55. 57. CD IV/3.1: 110. 58. CD IV/3.1: 164 59. Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970), 22. 60. Ibid., 27. 25. 61. Geertz, “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” in Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 448–449. 452.



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62. Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, trans. John Bowden (Grand rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 478– 485. See further Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum, trans. Keith R. Crim (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1969), 36–37. 63. Busch, Karl Barth, 468. 64. Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 4. 89. 65.  Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2004), 174. 259. 66. Chung, Reclaiming Mission as Constructive Theology, 94. 67. Jonathan Ingleby, Beyond Empire: Postcolonialism and Mission in a Global Context (Central Milton Keynes: Author House, 2010), 29. 68. Ibid., 51. 69. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Christ and Reconciliation (Grand Rapids, MI/ Cambridge, UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2013), 371–372. 70. CD IV/3.2: 581. 71. CD IV/3.2: 586–587. 72. CD IV/3.2: 620, 774. 73. CD II/1: 231–232. 74. CD IV/2: 442. 75. CD III/4: 545. 76. Foucault, Fearless Speech (Los Angles: Semiotexte, 2001), 19–20.

CHAPTER 5

Barth and Relational Theology

In this chapter, I undertake to elaborate Barth’s relational theology in terms of Trinitarian election and God’s relationality to the world. Barth places the doctrine of the Trinity just after the doctrine of the Word of God in his Church Dogmatics because it belongs directly to the biblical context of revelation as divine lordship.1 For Barth’s relational theology, it is important to consider that the knowledge of God is bound to the Word of God because God speaks (Deus dixit) to us about God’s self as the Lord. The inner truth of God’s lordship consists in the fact that God is the triune God from eternity to eternity.2 His trinitarian theology is of practical and relational character to the world rather than speculative because the biblical exegesis of the Word of God remains central in shaping his reflection of the Trinity and election. God’s freedom is understood as God’s independence of the world as totaliter aliter, while in relationship to the world it is in eschatological coming. This correlational model between the freedom of God and the coming of God is set up within his speech-act theology in our midst. This becomes pivotal in Barth’s relational theology, in which God’s being in coming is free in its relationship with creation and revelation. Barth’s understanding of Trinity and election has become a field of debate and controversy in which an alternative question is at the center: Where is the priority of theological order concerning divine freedom in it and for itself or God’s self-determination in the gracious election for the world? Indeed, Barth’s relational theology includes God’s freedom and self-determination in the gracious election rather than separating © The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5_5

83

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God’s being as antecedence from the gracious election and historical revelation, but the priority issue becomes a problem of debate. Of special significance to the issue of priority should be a critical exegesis of divine freedom, its relationality, and God’s coming in order to reinforce Barth’s relational theology.3

The Basic Structure

of the

Trinity

The event of revelation as God’s self-interpretation provides the point of departure for Barth to understand the Trinity in terms of the biblical structure: revealer–revelation–revealedness.4 In Barth’s approach to the triune God, revelation as self-interpretation of God is a root or a ground of the “doctrine” of Trinity, by which to arrive at the doctrine of the Trinity in terms of analysis of the biblical concept of revelation. But Barth does not say that revelation is the basis of the Trinity5 because the eternally living God in antecedence is the source and the ground of God’s gracious election for historical revelation. If the doctrine of the Trinity has no such root of revelation as biblically attested in the sense of “God speaks,” eisegesis or revisionism would occur rather than undertaking exegesis of the relation between Trinity, election, and revelation.6 In Barth’s account, in the economic work of God in revealer, reconciler, and redeemer, this Trinitarian work relates to God’s work of grace, not to God’s essence as such.7 The basic statement in the Trinity is grounded in the threefold statement that God’s revelation as the Lord is the One who loves in freedom, and in deep compassion with “the threatened innocent, the oppressed poor, widows, orphans, and aliens.”8 More provocatively, the love of the triune God in freedom and righteousness is the One who changes everything. “God Is” is the fact “that not only sheds new light on, but materially changes, all things and everything in all things.”9 In the primary objectivity of “God Is” in the Trinitarian relationship, God is self-sharing and relatedness in the distinction of the three modes of God’s being, in terms of relations of origin and perichoresis (as divine participation in each other, encountering one another, and permeation into one another).10 The external works of the Trinity are indivisible (opera trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa; Augustinian rule). In relationship to the world, God is assigned or attributed to an individual mode of being as the triune God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier “by appropriation.” At the same time, the theory of appropriation does not deny

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God’s presence in all modes of being and in acts.11 Appropriation is as the heart of divine correspondence between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity and safeguards the freedom of God against the temporality of the world. It also entails a hermeneutical process and significance in bringing the particular mode of being to speech: creation, redemption, and sanctification.12

God in Self-Relatedness and God for Us In the divine inner life, there is order and succession “without destroying the persons or their special relations to one another” (modes of being). This refers to God’s own time, absolutely real time in God’s essence, in the form of the divine being in its Triunity.13 God’s being-for-us is a free unmerited gift as grounded in God’s free, sovereign decision and groundless mercy (God’s primary objectivity): God’s being in self-sharing is God’s being in-and-for-itself14; thus, “the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is…in God’s revelation and in eternity.”15 Barth refers to this aspect as “the primary meaning of God’s being in freedom, in aseity.”16 God knows no necessity of becoming subsequent, thus God’s being is more than necessary, “free from all origination, conditioning or determination from without.”17 The world must be seen “sub specie aseitatis, i.e., in the light of the primary creative freedom of God.”18 Then, in God’s secondary, historical act of revelation, God’s being in sharing ad extra is then life in the sense of “God’s being in person,”19 that is a divine and self-motivated person in seeking and creating fellowship with us in love and blessing (blessedness: beatitudo). The blessedness of the love of God is founded upon the triune God as expressed in the gracious election and actualized in God’s mission in revelation and reconciliation of Jesus Christ for us.20 In light of God’s being as a being in act, Barth describes God’s being as person in divine love and freedom: “To be a person means really and fundamentally to be what God is, to be, that is, the One who loves in God’s way.”21 God’s being is not personified, but “the personifying person,”22 in which God as the impersonal absolute is at the same time revealed in person as the One who loves in lordship and freedom. Barth’s notion of mode (or way) of being relates to God in a special way as Father, as Son, and as Spirit. It affirms one personal of God,23 while including a person aspect of God: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit

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in the event of revelation. The Trinitarian participation in the event of revelation runs counter to Jürgen Moltmann’s “Sabellian” charge against Barth.24 God’s being for us flows from the freedom and love of God’s being in and for itself, such that we perceive God the proper and divine essence in light of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. Given this, Gollwitzer refers to analogia relationis, in which the historical act in revelation comes to analogical description of the personal talk about God in regard to the biblical expression of the living God.25 But the essence of God is not comprehended in this analogical expression. Indeed, a notion of analogia relationis comes from Bonhoeffer in his exegesis of the image of God. Insofar as God is the one who in Christ attests to God’s being for humankind, the likeness of humankind to God is analogia relationis in contrast to analogia entis.26 This perspective is taken over by Barth who correlates the notion of analogia fidei with that of the analogia relationis. However, Gollwitzer’s distinction between the essence and the will of God is under fire by Jüngel who argues whether such a position “leave[s] a gap in a metaphysical background to the being of God which is indifferent to God’s historical acts of revelation.”27 Unlike Jüngel’s divine ontology, Gollwitzer is more concerned with securing God’s freedom in relation to God’s will related to work and giving ad extra, especially in reference to God’s coming in history and eschatology. The antecedence of God’s being cannot be adequately comprehended from the coming of God’s kingdom. In his relational theology of “God Is” in coming, Gollwitzer pays attention to Barth’s cardinal principle esse sequitur operari, in which there is an inquiry and procedure in analysis of God’s activity in revelation, by arriving at the immanent Trinity (the knowledge of God’s being follows the knowledge of God’s activity). God’s act ad extra toward creatures is anchored in God’s essence, but it is impossible per analogiam to conceptualize the essence of God in human words.28 Likewise, Barth maintains that God’s freedom is the basis for distinguishing the essence of God from the will of God related to God’s work of grace.29 The difference between God and creatures must not be supplemented through a philosophical ontology of God. God’s being in sharing characterizes YHWH as the living God in covenantal relationship with Israel and with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As Gollwitzer impressively states,

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‘God exists’ means: This event (‘today’ of Luke 4) and the ‘existence’ of God among us are identical…We bear witness to what is called Christ Jesus…God exists—what does it mean finally? It means this: In the Jubilee year (Luke 4:19), it becomes obvious that we exist out of grace, certainly God exists so that we are blessed, so certainly God eternally is blessed in Godself.30

“God’s Being in Becoming” and Analogia Relationis In our analysis of Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity espoused with relational theology, it is important to scrutinize Jüngel’s thesis of “God’s being in becoming,” which is founded upon the principle of correspondence and Hegel’s philosophy of history at the level of method.31 God’s being is ontologically located and conceptualized “as the ontological place of the being of God.”32 For Hegel, “without the world God is not God.”33 Jüngel values Hegel as the one who paid attention to the center of the Christian faith more than many of his theological contemporaries and also of our own.34 In contrast to Hegel, however, Barth argues that Hegel’s description of God as the process of absolute spirit, in existing eternally in itself, eternally proceeding from itself, is not a description of God, whose movement is infinitely more than our self-movement, even when the latter is projected into eternity.35 According to Barth, the ground for the “becoming” God would imply a deficiency within God’s own life. The being of God in movement or act is rich and complete in and for itself because God is more than necessity for self-enrichment and realization. The triune God constitutes the event of revelation as God’s self-interpretation because God’s being corresponds to itself.36 Barth’s notion of God’s “being and becoming” is taken by Jüngel to localize “God’s being in becoming” ontologically in a historical process a la Hegel’s philosophy of history. Jüngel takes into account Barth’s notion of divine correspondence as extra, in which Barth distinguishes the essence of God as such (the immanent Trinity) from the work of grace (the economic Trinity).37 Jüngel’s hermeneutical key lies in deciphering Barth’s Trinity in terms of the principle of correspondence as divine ontology.38 The modes of God’s being repeat or reiterate their substantial content in revelation, in which Jüngel conceptualizes divine reiteration or

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revelation as the correspondence to God’s self-relatedness, that is ­analogia relationis. To the degree that the revelation enables the very analogy of relation, Jüngel equates analogia relationis as the analogy of proportionality.39 For Barth, “between the relationship in God Himself and God’s relationship to the world, there is an obvious proportion.” Thus, God the Father is designated as Creator and vice versa per appropriationem.40 Unlike Jüngel’s divine ontology, Barth conceptualizes the very analogy of relation in terms of appropriation, not by analogia relationis. In unfolding all God’s attributes inward and outward,41 the reality of God in revelation encounters us in all depths of eternity. All statements about the immanent Trinity are understood as confirmation or underlinings or the indispensable premise of the economic Trinity.42 This aspect refers to an analogy of correspondence by appropriation. Other than Barth, however, Jüngel’s ontology seeks to relocate Barth’s doctrine of God in terms of “anthropological existentiale.”43 Even Jüngel calls the revelation “an anthropological existentiale,” in which human existence is constituted as such through this “existentiale” in the act of the love and fear of God. However, Barth does not intent to equate God’s revelation by appropriation with the notion of “anthropological existentiale” because our knowledge of the Triune God is inadequate and the being of God does not make itself into a human prisoner.44 Rather, Barth speaks of an analogy of anthropological participation as the covenant partner since God allows us to participate in God’s love, making our action into the reflection, the creaturely similitude, and correspondence of the divine.45

The Trinitarian Foundation

of Gracious

Election

The divine predestination is the election of Jesus Christ entailing a double reference to the elector and the elected. Jesus Christ as very God and very man is the electing God and also the elected man in pre-temporal eternity.46 The eternal election is of Trinitarian character and foundation because the Son of God elects “in company with the electing of the Father and the Holy Spirit,” while at the same time, elected in his obedience and own decision “in the harmony of the triune God.” The Son of God, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the electing God.47 God was all in all pre-temporally and is co-temporally, and post-temporally.48 “God is the One who is all in all.”49

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“Pre-temporality, supra-temporality and post-temporality are equally God’s eternity and therefore the living God Himself”50—this fundamental thesis is at the heart of Barth’s doctrine of Trinity as the basis for election in shaping the aesthetical dimension of his theology.51 Barth’s dynamic notion of God’s eternity as the source and simultaneity helps us better comprehend his notion of antecedence in light of the eschatological coming. This aspect, which is central in his relational theology, shall be elucidated in more detail when we come to Barth’s critical view of Augustine’s notion of the relation between eternity and time. At the moment, we turn to analysis of analogia relationis. The mystery of perichoresis belongs to mysterium trinitatis,52 in which Barth’s seminal notion of analogia relationis carefully distinguishes Jesus the image of God (“the outer sphere of the work of God”) from the inner sphere of God’s essence as such.53 God’s gracious election is related to God’s work ad extra in which the triune God participates, constituting and actualizing its historical election in the life of Jesus Christ. This perspective also runs counter to the revisionist position of actualistic ontology, in that the activity of the Reconciler is constitutive of the divine essence. In the revisionist account, “what God is essentially is itself constituted by an eternal act of self-determination for becoming incarnate in time.”54 Although the Triunity and divine self-determination to be God-with-us are each eternal, self-determination is necessary, while Trinity is contingent. God’s gracious election is the “necessary” principle for constituting God’s being in and for itself. Driven by his own scheme, McCormack argues that the doctrine of election should have been treated before the doctrine of the Trinity rather than postponed until after Triunity, certainly not until the doctrine of God (CD II/1). In so doing, “God is triune for the sake of revelation, reconciliation, and redemption.”55 Against this eisegesis, however, Barth has placed the doctrine of election in the context of the doctrine of God, by dealing with it as an integral and constituent part of the doctrine of God.56 Barth makes the doctrine of the Trinity into part of the teaching of the Word of God and incorporates the eternity of the triune God into relatedness to the world and actualizes its presentist dimension in light of the coming of God. If God speaks in the Word, the identity of God is revealed in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A trinitarian, theological approach to the threefold sense of the word of God constitutes Barth’s theological ground and criterion for treating God’s gracious election within the

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doctrine of God. God “is the One who already has and is in Himself everything which would have to be the object of His creation and causation.”57 As Barth definitely states, “The triune life of God” is…“the basis of his decretum et opus ad extra, of the relationship, which He has determined and established…it is the basis of the election of man to covenant with Himself.”58 Election as the sum of the gospel is an expression of God’s beauty, the love of the triune God as expounded in God’s perfections of loving and freedom in inclusion of the eternity, election of Israel and church, incarnation, and glory of God.59 Thus, Barth states, “We are not saying …that revelation is the basis of the Triunity, as though God were the triune God only in His revelation and only for the sake of His revelation.”60 No Trinity, no election! Deviating from Barth’s integrity, McCormack challenges how Barth knows that God’s being is triune in and for itself, apart from God’s eternal will to be revealed. He charges Barth to fail to correct his fundamental statement and reconsider his ordering of Trinity and election.61 In the divine eternal decision of election, humanity is taken up into the event of God’s own being, consequently “the human history of Jesus Christ is constitutive of the being and existence of [the second Person of the Trinity].”62 As McCormack furthers, Barth is supposed to secure the ontological ground for the action of God in time by means of a doctrine of election. Thus, the eternal being of God in se is constituted “by way of anticipation by the incarnation of God in time,” by the outpouring of the Spirit in time.63 If the electing act of God ad extra is “constitutive of the divine essence,” by way of anticipation by the historical incarnation, no being of God in and of himself is constituted without God’s relationship to the world.64 Thus, we notice that an actualistic theology of subsequence seeks the ontological ground between eternal election and historical incarnation; it occurs in a way that the historical revelation (historical temporality) is constitutive of God’s gracious election (eternity). The latter entails its inevitable logic that God has no perfect and determinate being in eternity prior to the decision of election. In so doing, this revisionism makes the gracious election into the “necessary” principle by subordinating the triune God in perichoresis to the “contingent” aspect. In this ontological scheme, I notice that such a theory would be in affinity to the Catholic dogma of ens necessarium that Barth sharply rejects. “The insight expressed in this way [the primal meaning of God’s being in aseity] is endangered when it is thought essential to complete and deepen the idea of the aseity of God by the Catholic dogma that God’s being

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is necessary …as the ens necessarium. “It is an intrinsic impossibility that He should not be or should be other than He is.””65 Barth is not an exponent of divine ontology. In Barth’s relational theology, God’s gracious election is not the “necessary” basis for the inner Trinitarian life, but it is an expression of grace of God in freedom who is actualized in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then the resurrection is seen in God’s eschatological coming. Thus, a counter charge finds its critical import to the revisionist theory of subsequence. The real concern of Barth contradicts the revisionist eisegesis of Barth,66 which eliminates Barth’s notion of analogia relationis. For Barth’s order of relational theology, a biblical analysis of God’s gracious election leads us to understand who God is in this election.

Logos asarkos and Communion of Grace Now we turn to a critical examination of Barth’s rejection of logos asarkos.67 Barth defines the second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, as the content of a necessary and important concept in the Trinitarian doctrine of election and revelation. The Son of Man, the Word made flesh, is the true and genuine basis of creation, such that one can see the ontological connection between Christ and creation in the context of the New Testament.68 Based on the conception of eternity and time, Barth regards the whole conception of the logos asarkos, the second person of the Trinity, as an abstraction. Jesus Christ incarnated is not a formless Christ or a Christ-principle.69 The antecedence of the second person of the Trinity remains an abstraction when it is seen apart from the temporality of the man Jesus. Thus, time itself is with and in God’s eternity. Eternity itself is not timeless “because it is the simultaneity and coinherence of past, present and future.”70 In Barth’s account, the incarnate Logos is included in the circle of the Trinitarian perichoresis,71 the preexistent being of the man Jesus. The mystery of this participation is the very foundation of Jesus’ true humanity,72 co-eternal, in which a logos asarkos (apart from the elected man) is rejected as “a disastrous speculation.”73 The biblical statement in the Gospel of John (1:1–2) speaks of the man Jesus as the eternal divine Logos, in which Jesus Christ is the electing God as well as the elected man. In the high priestly prayer (Jn. 17), Jesus shares in a revelation of the inner life of the Godhead and

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correspondence is developed.74 The whole Prologue, although it speaks of the eternal Logos, speaks also of the man Jesus.75 Barth affirms that “in the history of Jesus, we have to do with the reality which underlies and precedes all other reality as the first and eternal Word of God.”76 Here, Barth sees the eternal Word of God as Jesus Christ rather than conceptualizing it as a logos asarkos or a logos incarnandus (the Logos must be eternally toward incarnation). In the context of historical revelation, atonement, and reconciliation, Barth speaks of Jesus Christ the incarnate Word, in this incarnated Word, Jesus Christ is already the preexistent Deus pro nobis; otherwise, a logos asarkos would point to a Deus absconditus.77 This perspective also circumvents an argument that a logos asarkos disappears as if it is “absorbed into the incarnation without reminder.”78 The logos incarnatus assumed in human flesh is not both logos asarkos and logos incarnandus because the fellow humanity of Jesus for man is only in indirect relation with the divine essence. The eternal determination does not necessarily make the triune God logically into a function of divine election to be revealed.79 In the reformed Christology, the logos asarkos (logos outside the flesh) is terminus a quo (point of departure), while logos ensarkos (logos within flesh) is terminus ad quem (aim) for incarnation. The logos asarkos endangers the hypostatic union, leading to a dual concept of Christ.80 To avoid this peril, Barth is concerned with safeguarding the sovereign act of God in the incarnation and ensuring the dynamic relationship between vere Deus and vere Homo in the hypostatic union through the doctrine of anhypostasis (no other independent mode of existence apart from the eternal logos) and enhypostasis (the humanity of Jesus grounded only in and through the eternal logos). Barth elaborates the doctrines of anhypostasis and enhypostasis by which to interpret “the Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14). In his reflection of the incarnation, the second person of the Trinity became flesh in “a complete event” which is comprehended as a dialectical unity between a completed event (as seen in a static-ontic interest of Luther Christology closer to a monophysite tendency) and a complete event (as seen in a dynamic-noetic interest of reformed Christology closer to Nestorianism in extra Calvinisticum).81 Safeguarding the divine freedom from divine immanence, Barth’s agenda comes: “God gives Himself, but He does not give Himself away. He does not give up being God in becoming a creature, in being man. He does not cease to be God. He does not come into conflict with Himself.”82 Certainly, Barth accepts a particular veri of fatherly fellow

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suffering of God as the mystery and the basis of the humiliation and crucifixion of Jesus Christ.83 However, Barth distances himself from the Lutheran notion of communicatio idiomatum, in which the human nature of Christ, even in the state of humiliation, is entitled to take part in the divine attributes of majesty (genus majestaticum). But Christ relinquished them with his own will (kenosis). This theory entails the deification of the human essence of Jesus Christ “in full possession, and capable of full use, and participant in the full glory of the divine.” Against the will of the older Lutherans, Barth senses a Lutheran doctrine of the so-called Kenoticist of the nineteenth century (a genus tapeinoticum) which implies “a partial de-divinization of the Logos with His incarnation.”84 It is difficult to categorize Barth’s reflection of Christology in affinity to the so-called genus tapeinoticum which is Thomasius’ notion of self-limitation of the Logos in the incarnation, later becoming a part of the Neo-Lutheran Erlangen theology.85 Barth posits the doctrines of the communicatio gratiae (communication of grace) and the communicatio operationum (communication of operation) to safeguard Jesus’ specific personhood in the state of humiliation. That is, the total and exclusive determination of the (assumed) humanitas of Jesus Christ by the electing grace of God.86 This event is “by and in the event of divine act of reconciliation, by and in the electing grace of God.” “[T]he man Jesus] derives wholly from this; or concretely, from the will of the Father who sends Him, the Son who obeys, and the Holy Spirit of the Father and the Son; from the act which executes this will, He derives exclusively from this will and this act.”87 The grace of God alone is the origin and determination of Jesus Christ in the doctrines of the anhypostasis (Jesus’ human nature is not self-subsistent) and enhypostasis (the human nature of Jesus subsisting in the divine world).88 If the preexistent being of the man Jesus is understood in terms of anhypostasis and enhypostasis, this insight can be grounded in Barth’s understanding of the eternity as the simultaneity and coinherence of past, present, and future.

Barth’s Critical View of Augustine and the Coming God In Barth’s understanding of the relationality between eternity and time, God is the possessor of life to the inclusion of the various times, beginning, succession, and end. God’s stare is a fluere, without the instability, the fluere of empirical time, while God’s fluere is also a stare without

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immutuability. The dialectical notion of God’s eternity as the source and simultaneity of all time sets us free from the Babylonian captivity of an abstract opposite to the concept of eternity and time, as seen in Augustine and Anselm, who are too occupied with the confrontation between eternity and time.89 This perspective helps us understand Barth’s “qualified” acceptance of Augustinian rule by grounding it in his dynamic concept of eternity and time; thus, a principle of “appropriation” is kept intact in view of the economic Trinity and God’s eschatology rather than dissolved into the work of the economic Trinity. Barth’s notion of God’s antecedence is not metaphysical, nor dualistic in separating the immanent Trinity from the economic Trinity in creation, redemption, and consummation. The eternity of the triune God is already in the time of God’s economic life as “the present irruption” of God’s future, while “not yet” losing its own freedom and lordship regarding the final coming.90 Unlike Barth, in the classical Trinitarian scheme, the cross of Jesus belongs to the economy of God’s saving work, but the eternal logos is within the eternal immanent Trinity. In the Nicene–Chalcedonian ontology, the eternal logos is split from the temporal Jesus Christ, in a way of communication of the divine attributes to the human, not the reverse. Jesus has a human nature and could suffer and die in his human nature, while his divine hypostasis remains exempt, as safeguarded from suffering and death. This old doctrine offers that the Trinity is God, allowing us to affirm that the Triune God is related to the world. This perspective is implied and expressed in the Augustinian rule: the internal Trinitarian operations are divided; the external Trinitarian operations are undivided. Thus, the divine absoluteness or antecedence is protected at the expense of relatedness to the world, which does not relate to what is in itself divine. Embedded within his Neo-Platonic metaphysics, Augustine regards the timeless relationship of God to creature as a true description. There was no time prior to creation. Creation includes the creation of time because God has never created in time (in tempore), but with time (cum tempore).91 Against Augustine, Barth argues, as God speaks and acts as Creator, God’s eternity unfolds not only its pre-temporal (antecedence), but also its co-temporal and post-temporal essence. God’s opus ad extra internum is willed and planned in the divine decree of election and restored in the final consummation. But God’s opus ad extra externum takes place outside the sphere of divine inner life, thus in creation of the world.

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Mundusfactus cum tempore (with time), ergo in tempore (in time).92 The triune God, in the inner life, is the basic type and ground of all history, an inner readiness to create time, which is really in God.93 God’s eternity is “beginning, middle and end in fullness.”94 The eternal God does not live without time.95 As Barth writes, “The eternal fellowship between Father and Son, or between God and His Word, thus finds a correspondence in the very different but not dissimilar fellowship between God and his creature.”96 Barth incorporates this theory of correspondence into the one true God, but not merely in the time of Jesus Christ since the opus Trinitatis internum ad extra is primarily in the God in pre-temporal, co-temporal, and post-temporal eternity.97 The theory of correspondence is taken up with respect to God’s eternity, temporality, and the final consummation. Thus, I notice an analogy in Barth’s speaking of the prophetic office of Jesus Christ in terms of three forms of Parousia: resurrection, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the final Parousia.98 This correspondence may be seen in the doctrine of the threefold form of the one Word of God. Barth, in the unity and threefold understanding of the Word of God, sees a unique analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity. What we come to hear in the revelation, in the Scripture, and in the proclamation, is one voice of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a threefold sense. Threefold form of the one Parousia formally corresponds with the three modes of being in relation to the essence in Triunity; una substantia in tribuspersonis, tres personae in una substantiae.99 Trinitarian-Christological interpretation of the concept of eternity, time, and eschatology remains crucial in shaping his relational theology. The Easter is eschatologically meant and oriented. We are called the covenant partner to take part in the history of Jesus Christ in struggle and victory,100 in regard to the coming kingdom of God which has begun in Jesus Christ. God’s Future as the adventus (what is coming) is involved in God’s in-breaking or irruption into history, bringing about something radically new. The kingdom of God and history of God’s coup d’état have already taken place in Jesus Christ. It is the revolution of God which breaks, which has already broken the reality of lordless power and the unrighteousness of mammon. “Jesus is their Conqueror.”101 Barth’s theory of divine correspondence “by appropriation” is eschatologically driven in which his theory of correspondence needs to be comprehended in a qualified sense by cutting through the limitation of

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Augustine rule. God’s kingdom of eternity has irrupted in Jesus Christ, is eschatologically not yet; God being is in the historical coming. The redemption is not dissolved into the reconciliation. The whole Jesus Christ must be understood as the coming redeemer. As Lord of time, “the being of Jesus in time …is also a being in the future, a coming being.”102 Eschatology is not treated as the appendix of the doctrine of reconciliation. An alternative question, whether the present determines the future or the future determines the present, does not come into play in the New Testament. Barth maintains that the New Testament with its logical consistence thinks and speaks “on all sides and in all dimensions and relationships christologically. Therefore, with equal emphasis and seriousness it can always think and speak eschatologically as well.”103 Christological-eschatological connection (being of Jesus in the past, present, and the future) in the context of the New Testament is not in tension, nor in alternative issue regarding the antecedence and relationality. Barth conceptualizes faith, love, and hope in differentiation, but correspondence in terms of the “already,” the “now,” and the “then” in light of the one Parousia of Jesus Christ in its threefold forms. Thus, Barth does not elevate hope to the particular dimension of the Christian existence. Rather, he turns around from the theological endeavor a paneschatological dream because as the basis and presupposition of hope (Heb 11:1), “faith includes and gives rise to hope in the fulfilment of this promise.”104 To better comprehend Barth’s relational theology regarding the antecedence and eschatological coming, we sum up: Barth focuses three forms of the temporality of God (CD II/1) in the threefold time of Jesus Christ (already, present, not yet) by specifically elaborating the threefold stage of the one Parousia of Jesus Christ (CD IV/3.1.§ 69): “the resurrection, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the final return of Jesus Christ.”105 The three forms of Parousia in one event of the return of Jesus Christ are considered in analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity in the perichoresis, such that each of them contains the other two by way of anticipation or recapitulation.106 Barth does not conceptualize time by eternalizing it nor by localizing it in an ontological sense of “God’s becoming.” Barth also does not adopt the primacy of the future or advent to understand time. The future is not one-sidedly elevated to “become the theological paradigm of transcendence.”107 But Barth does not suppress the past and present, in which God is in compassion and solidarity with those victims and on

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margins. God will be all in all (1 Cor 15:28) does not mean that the creature will cease to be distinct from God’s self. Rather, the creature will see God in the final revelation to have attained God’s ultimate goal in all things with the creature.108 Barth thinks antecedently of the triune God as the source of time. Yet, the Word became flesh, becoming time. God’s time is defined for us in Christocentric as well as eschatological terms. Futuristic eschatology is concretized in the presentative, in which political consciousness of time is elaborated.109 Its particular concern is “the poor, the socially and economically weak and threatened”110 by a process of analogy and in a direction and a line toward the Kingdom of God. The present and the future are grounded in the coming of One, who has already come. This dynamism of relationality provides us an important insight by which to redefine Barth’s notion of antecedence and correspondence in the historical coming of the triune God for reinforcing relational theology with anti-metaphysical implication and political significance.

The Humanity

of God and Assumption of Human

Flesh

In the incarnation, there is only One here, the eternal Son of the Father, by nature God, but in our human likeness, in the form of a servant (Phil. 2:7), and in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom 8:3). “As a man, therefore, He exists directly in and with the one God in the mode of existence of His eternal Son and Logos—not otherwise or apart from this mode.”111 “In Jesus Christ it is not merely one man, but the humanum of all men, which is posited and exalted as such to unity with God.”112 In the divine act of the incarnation is a man, Jesus of Nazareth, but in this assumption of human flesh, His being and essence and kind and nature are “not a man,” but the Son of Man who could represent all people for God, collective person. “The Word became flesh” implies that Jesus Christ as the second Person of the Trinity adopted our human nature and kind, our human being and essence, that is our humanum. In a specific individual form of Jesus Christ, not merely man but the humanum is that of all people.113 “In His being as man God has implicitly assumed the human being of all men. In Him not only we all as homines, but our humanitas as such—for it is both His and ours—exist in and with God Himself.”114 This comprehensive character of the humanity of Jesus Christ is the totus Christus which is ­connected with his earthly historical form of the church. Thus, the incarnation as

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a hypostatic union can be known in its uniqueness and universal significance.115 “Thinking in terms of the humanity of God, we cannot at all reckon in a serious way with real ‘outsiders,’ with a ‘world come of age’… Thus, the so-called ‘outsiders’ are really only ‘insiders’ who have not yet understood and apprehended themselves as such.”116 This relational perspective characterizes Barth’s Christology in dialectical unity between “from above to below” (self-humiliated Son of God) and “from below to above” (exaltation of the man Jesus, his humanity) in light of the reconciling God and the reconciled man. The Son of God gives to the human essence of Jesus of Nazareth a part in his own divine essence as the eternal Son, making it participant in his divine essence.117 For the unity between divine and human essence in one Jesus Christ, Barth affirms that the mystery of incarnation is the simultaneity of divine and human essence in Jesus Christ in their mutual participation.118 In this mode of mutual participation, Barth maintains that the Son of God as the second Person of the Trinity is the acting Subject who takes the initiative in this event of incarnation, as “in Himself with the Father and the Holy Spirit in His divine essence and per assumptionem in His human.”119 Accordingly, Barth formulates the grace of impartation in which the grace of God is manifested and effective in Jesus Christ. The eternal Son of God existing in the pre-temporality, the co-temporality, and the posttemporality of God’s eternity is said of the “historical” man Jesus in a real participation of the “eternal” Son of Man in divine essence.120 In utilizing the communication of grace, Barth seeks to elaborate the concrete filling out of the concept of the communicatio idiomatum, more deeply the communicatio naturum, and even more deeply the uniohypostatica.121 Any work or action of Christ’s divine nature is fully communicated to the work of his human nature in a mutual sense, which refers to communicatio operationum, meaning “the cooperation of the two natures to specific ends and results.”122 This perspective critically renews and incorporates the proper concern of the communicatio idiomatum into the doctrine of communicatio gratiorum. In this Christological framework, Barth maintains that “the human essence of the Son of God will always be human essence, although united with His divine essence, and therefore exalted in and by Him, set at the side of the Father, brought into perfect fellowship with Him, filled and directed by the Holy Spirit, and in full harmony with the divine essence common to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It will be the humanity of God.”123

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Barth’s notion of the humanity of God cuts loose from the unilateral and consequential argument of the revisionist ontology, in which the death of Jesus Christ in God-abandonment, precisely as a human experience, is understood by him to be an event in God’s own life.124 In Barth’s account, the death of Jesus Christ must be seen first in “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” (Lk 23:46) which then might have exhausted the meaning of the saying “my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mk. 15:34).125 When Jesus Christ dies in his unity with this man, death does not gain any power over him. He acts as Lord over the curse and death of the contradiction; even he subjects himself to these.126 The death of Jesus Christ as “a divine-human experience” is understood not in terms of powerlessness, but in the following way: “in this humiliation God is supremely God, in this death, He is supremely alive. He has maintained and revealed His deity in the passion of this man as His eternal Son.”127 The resurrection of Jesus Christ is revealed as the one who reigns in terms of his death from the cross in the Christological structures of exinanitio (self-humiliation) and exaltatio (exaltation).128 Jesus Christ as very God and very man is the Lord who became a servant (humiliation) and the servant who became the Lord (exaltation), the reconciling God and reconciled man.129 Jesus Christ as the electing God and the elected man finds its significance in the concept of reconciling God and reconciled man for humanity of God. This is central in Barth’s ways of considering the incarnation as a whole. “Revelation takes place in and with reconciliation… Revelation takes place as the revelation of reconciliation.”130 The Chalcedonian definition remains normative in his Christological development of the two doctrines in mutual relationship.131 But more than Chalcedonian ontology, Barth affirms the fatherly co-suffering in the death of Jesus Christ as a divine human experience. Now his reflection of assumption of human flesh asks “how far could the one Son of God be not merely a son of man but the Son of Man, the man could represent them all, who could plead with God for them all and with them all for God?”132 Barth further differentiates homo from humanitas to posit Jesus as the Son of Man as the representative of the entire human race. If Barth reinterprets assumptio carnis in light of assumptio humanum, it is of special significance to see Jesus Christ as “the partisan of the poor” or as “the revolutionary,”133 who may embrace the suffering humanity under the sociopolitical mechanism of injustice and

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violence. Barth’s renewal of assumptio carnis cuts through the limitation of a Chalcedonian formulation toward universal significance and a strong political implication.

“God Is” in Coming

and Transforming

Reality

In the pre-time of the eternity of God, the appointment of the eternal Son for the temporal world took place. God’s gracious election comes from God’s free, eternal love and it is God’s turning to the world in Jesus Christ with whom the God of Israel, Yahweh is identical (John 8:58, Eph 1:4, 1 Pet 1:18).134 Barth’s explication of the triune God focused on the God of Israel who is revealed in Jesus Christ assumed in Jewish flesh. “[The Word] became Jewish flesh.”135 “Where the actualistic exists there is also the corresponding possibility.”136 This actualistic correspondence cannot be ontologically categorized, but calls for a clarification of the social and practical dimensions of “God Is in coming” in a Hebrew manner and category as the one who loves in freedom. “God is” denotes “Alles in allem real veränderdnde Tatsache.”137 “God is” has its truth in a real revolution, novum, and transformation of all life connections. God as the New is this New in historical coming.138 “God always takes His stand unconditionally and passionately… against the lofty and on behalf of the lowly; against those who already enjoy right and privilege and on behalf of those who are denied it and deprived of it.”139 Barth’s doctrine of God in a transforming act, which is of a Hebrew category and speech, requires a critical exegesis of elucidating the extent to which a social category comes into play in Barth’s dogmatic theology embedded with political praxis. Barth’s relational theology guides and qualifies the Church to be ordained to the ministry of reconciliation and to be grounded in its witness of the gospel to the humanity of God in the grace of Jesus Christ in relation to all, and solidarity, especially with the massa perditionis in the world.140

Notes

1. CD I/1: 304. 2. CD II/1: 47. 3. Trinity and Election in Contemporary Theology, ed. Michael T. Dempsey (Grand Rapids, MI, Cambridge, UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2011), 1. This edited book includes a collection of the debate and alternative question.

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4. CD I/1:295. 5. CD I/1: 312. 6. CD I/1: 310. 7. CD I/1: 371. 8. CD II/1: 386. 9. CD II/1: 258. 10. CD I/1: 370. 11. CD I/1: 375. 12. Eberhard Jüngel, God’s Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth (London: T. & T. Clark, 2001), 49. 13. CD II/1: 615. 14. Helmut Gollwitzer, The Existence of God as Confessed by Faith, James Cairns (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 217. 15. CD II/1: 261. 16. CD II/1: 306. 17. CD II/1: 307. 18. CD II/1: 309. In this light of freedom of God, Barth rejects a notion of panentheism as a mythology or mythologumen. CD II/1: 312. 19. CD II/1: 268. 20. CD II/1: 283. 21. CD II/1: 284. 22. CD II/1: 285. 23. CD I/1: 359. 24. Jürgen Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom, of God: The Doctrine of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (London: SCM, 1981), 139. See Hunsinger, “Mysterium Trinitatis: Karl Barth’s Conception of Eternity,” in Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2000), 191. Footnote 7. 25.  For this clarification, I use the German text. Gollwitzer, Die Existenz Gottes im Bekentnis des Glaubens, ed. Peter Winzeler (Munch: Kaiser, 1988), 146. 26. Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, ed. John W. De Gruchy, and trans. Douglas Stephen Bax, DBW 3. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 65. 27. Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming, 6. 28. Gollwitzer, Existenz Gottes im Bekentnis des Glaubens, 105. 29. CD I/1:371. 30. Gollwitzer, Existenz Gottes im Bekentnis, 198. 31. Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming, 116. Footnote 154. 32. Ibid., xxv. 33. Ibid., “Epilogue 1975,” 127. 34. Ibid. 35. CD II/1: 270. 36. CD I/1:364, CD II/1: 657, 660. 37. CD 1/1: 371. Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming, 47.

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38. Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming, 36. 39. Ibid., 38. 119. 40. CD III/1: 49. 41. CD II/1:657. 42. CD I/1: 479. 43. Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming, 71–72. 44. CD I/1: 371. 45. CD IV/2: 778–779. 46. CD II/2: 103. 47. CD II/2: 105. 48. CD II/1: 630. 49. CD II/1: 631. 50. CD II/1: 638. 51. CD II/1: 663–664. 52. CD 1/1: 368. 53. CD III/2: 219. 54. McCormack, “Grace and Being,” in John Webster, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 97. 55. Ibid., 103. Kevin W. Hector, “God’s Triunity and Self-Determination,” in Trinity and Election in Contemporary Theology, ed. Dempsey, 35. 56. CD II/2: 79. 57. CD II/1: 306. 58. CD IV/2: 345. 59. CD II/1: 625 60. CD I/1: 312. 61. McCormack, “Grace and Being,”102. 62. McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 223. 63. Ibid., 30. Footnote 28. 64. McCormack, “Grace and Being,” 96–97. 65. CD II/1: 307. 66. Hunsinger, Reading Karl Barth with Charity, 13–14. 67. CD IV/1: 52. 68. CD III/1: 51. 69. CD III/1: 54. 70. CD III/2: 526.CD III/1: 71. CD II/1: 617. 624. 71. CD III/2: 65–66. 72. CD II/2: 66. 73. CD IV/1: 181. 74. CD III/2: 66. 75. CD IV/2: 33.

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76. CD IV/1: 53. 77. CD IV/1: 52. 78. Hunsinger, Reading Barth with Charity, 19. 79. McCormack, “Grace and Being,” 103. 80. CD I/2:169. 81. CD I/2: 161–163. 170–171. 82. CD IV/1:185. 83. CD IV/2: 357. 84. CD IV/2: 77–78. CD IV/1: 182. 85. McCormack, Orthodox and Modern, 32. 86. CD IV/2: 84. 88. 87. CD IV/2: 90. 88. CD IV/2: 91. 89. CD II/1: 611. 610. 90. CD IV/3.1: 249. 91. St Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions, ed. David Vincent Meconi, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 11:13, 14, 15. CD III/1: 70. 92. CD III/1: 70–71. 93. CD III/1: 68. 94. CD III/2: 558. 95. CD III/2: 437. 96. CD III/1: 50. 97. CD IV/3.2: 484. 98. CD IV/3.1: 294. 99. CD IV/3.1: 294. 100. CD IV/3.1: § 69.3. 101. CD IV/2: 544. 102. CD III/2: 485. 103. CD III/2: 485. 104. CD IV/3.2: 912. 105. CD IV/3.1: 294. 106. CD IV/3.1: 296. 107. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Metaphysics and the Idea of God (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1990), 77; Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 24. 108. CD III/3: 86. 109. Dieter Clausert, Theologischer Zeitbegriff und politisches Zeitbewusstsein in Karl Barth Dogmatik dargestellt am Beispiel der Prolegomena (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1982), 251–252.

104  P.S. CHUNG 110.  The thesis of 17 in “The Christian Community and the Civil Community” in Karl Barth: Theologian of Freedom, ed. Clifford Green, 284. 111. CD IV/2: 49. 112. CD IV/2: 49. 113. CD IV/2: 48. 114. CD IV/2: 59. 115. CD IV/2: 60. 116. Barth, The Humanity of God, trans. John N. Thomas (Atlanta: John Knox, 1960), 58. 117. CD IV/2: 62–63. 118. CD IV/2: 65. 119. CD IV/2: 70. 120. CD IV/1: 75. 121. CD IV/2: 88. 122. CD IV/2: 104. 81. 123. CD IV/2: 72. 124. McCormack, “Grace and Being,” 98. 125. CD IV/1: 306. 126. CD IV/1: 185. 127. CD IV/1: 247. 128. CD IV/2: 291. 292. 129. CD IV/1: 136. 130. CD IV/3.1: 8. 131. CD V/1: 133–134. 132. CD IV/2:48. See a Chalcedonian limitation CD IV/2: 63–64. 133. CD IV/2:180. 134. CD II/1: 622. 135. CD IV/1: 166. 136. CD II/1: 5. 137. KD II/1:289; CD II/1:258. 138. CD IV/3.2:271. 139. CD II/1:386. 140. Chung, “The Liberative Dimension in Barth’s Theology” in Chung, God’s Word in Action, 419–448.

CHAPTER 6

Phenomenological Elucidation: Karl Barth and Emmanuel Levinas

This chapter has the task of clarifying the commonality in difference between Barth and the Jewish philosopher Levinas, especially with respect to Heidegger. Although Levinas is influenced primarily by Husserl, Barth is not of Husserlian influence, but his reflection of the totaliter aliter apprehended in the divine speech-act can be scrutinized in a phenomenological manner. For Levinas, Heidegger remains a central figure by initiating ontological or hermeneutical phenomenology in contrast to Husserl. But for Barth, Heidegger is indirect, yet questionable in his debate with Rudolf Bultmann and also in Barth’s brief, yet sharp assessment of Heidegger’s notion of “nothing.” For the comparative study between Barth and Levinas, I attempt to develop a phenomenological elucidation theme by theme in accordance with more commonality between the two thinkers in their respective view of Heidegger, rather than featuring their dissimilarity.1 My reading of Barth and Levinas provides a theological rationale and ground for us to elaborate comparative theology in a phenomenological and analogical fashion.

Levinas’s Phenomenology

and Comparative

Theology

Levinas is deeply indebted to the philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger, in which phenomenology is defined as the science of recalling forgotten thoughts. It is undertaken with full consciousness returning to the misunderstood thought in the naturally accepted world as a matter of © The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5_6

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course. All consciousness is consciousness of “something,” which is not describable without reference to the object it claims within the interiority of the lifeworld. Thus, the modes of consciousness are substantially dependent upon the essence of the object. Levinas finds this phenomenological method indispensable to all philosophical analysis.2 Unlike Husserl, however, Heidegger does not intend to study human activities by bracketing the world because we are already and always moved in-the-world. Identifying the fundamental question of metaphysics with the question of Being, Heidegger attempts to discover Being (later called a new ground of meaning), by analyzing authentic human existence (Da-sein). In Heidegger’s language, Da-sein is fundamentally being-in, or being-in-the-world, which is the starting point for Heidegger’s ontology in contrast to Husserl’s notion of intentionality of consciousness. For Husserl, phenomenology’s dictum is “To the things themselves!” Instead, Heidegger sees the field of phenomenological activity of the human being as a historical being-in-the-world. For his new definition of phenomenology, Heidegger goes back to the Greek root of the word: phainomenon or phainesthai, and logos. Phainomenon means “what shows itself, the self-showing, the manifest.” “Phenomenon is established as what shows itself in itself, what is manifest.”3 Phenomenon is identified with the Greek ta onta (beings: das Seiende)―what is. The truth of logos is defined in the concept of aletheia. The phenomenology in the combination of phainesthai and logos means letting things become manifest as what they are. This is Heidegger’s response to Husserl’s return to “the things themselves!” In Heidegger’s account, phenomenology as the science of the being of beings is ontology grounded in understanding and interpretation, such that hermeneutics now becomes an interpretation of the being of Da-sein. Heidegger reverses phenomenon in the Husserlian sense for the everyday activity of Da-sein. In Heidegger’s account, “the logos of the phenomenology of Da-Sein has the character of hermeneuein, through which the proper meaning of being and the basic structures of the very being of Da-sein are made known to the understanding of being that belongs to Da-sein itself.”4 Although Levinas takes up Husserl’s phenomenological method, he is also in agreement with Heidegger’s phenomenology of Da-sein, in which he sees a field of activity, action, or care.5 Nonetheless, Levinas’ critical position about Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is bittering and

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poignant. In the article “Is Ontology Fundamental?” (1951), Levinas begins to launch his critique on Heidegger. For Heidegger, the particular being is always understood within the horizon of Being. To comprehend the particular being, it is always understood with reference to the universal eidos (ideal form of Being) as grounded in the Platonic tradition of Western philosophy, in which Heidegger rejoins. In Levinas’ account, Heidegger, in comprehending the particular being, attempts at “go[ing] beyond (l’etant) into the openness and in perceiving it upon the horizon of being.”6 Levinas argues against the ontological comprehension and grounding of being-in-the-world within the horizon of Being in general because the alterity is no longer an object of comprehension nor interlocutor. Rather, the relationship with a being is the invocation of a face and speech since it is not exhausted into already existing within the horizon of Being. Thus, Levinas takes into account the signification of the other’s face in an ethical sense. He takes issue with Heidegger’s comprehension and signification of the individual being that is grasped within a general horizon of being.7 Levinas’ phenomenological inquiry and analysis entails a critical import against the reified world and ontology, and further creates a larger space for the Other to speak of itself within the lifeworld. This phenomenological perspective in Levinas’ sense remains crucial in my comparative study of religions. The comparative study of religion is first undertaken in suspension upon the reified literature of representing other religions caused by Orientalism. Phenomenologically speaking, other religions are not subordinated into “my” ontological and interpretative horizon, but they have their own horizons breaking through “my” consciousness, putting “my” judgment and pre-understanding into brackets. A comparative study and interpretation begins as engaged in the phenomenological horizon of intertextuality between the home tradition and the other tradition, which implies a newly formed lifeworld of juxtaposition underlying a dynamism of understanding in the fusion of multiple horizons.

The Biblical Thought Form: Levinas and Barth In the radicalization of phenomenological inquiry, Levinas places the priority of the saying (le dire; noesis) over the said (le dit; noema) because the former is addressed to an interlocutor. This distinction gives account of Levinas’ respect of biblical thought and God. “What the Bible puts

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above all comprehension would have not yet reached the threshold of intelligibility!”8 In Marquardt’s account, Levinas comprehends language as speech in a Hebrew manner of thought―dabar (Psalm 33: 9)―which implies the Word of God is in action and action is a speaking event. This is the unity between word and effect. Levinas’ notion of saying over the said is grounded in the structure of dabar.9 Dabar is in self-revelation in relation to God as the Subject of speaking because “the Infinite concerns and closes in on me while speaking through my mouth.”10 “The first word,” for Levinas, “says only the saying itself before every being and every thought in which being is sighted and reflected.” “This first saying is to be sure but a word. But the word is God.”11 The saying is a permanent significance of all said and thought. Levinas’ notion of the Word as God finds a strong consonance with Barth’s notion of God’s Word in the threefold sense of the Word of God in which “speaking” revelation over the Scripture aims at preaching, in contrast to Bultmann who seeks the kerygma for the center of the salvation event in “faith and understanding” rather than in “saying.”12 Thus, Barth in the concept of word as speech-act takes issue with the Heideggerian notion of aletheia which denotes “the manifestation of something hidden, in human ideas, concepts and judgments.”13 In Barth’s account, the notion of aletheia cannot be accepted or conceptualized simply ontologically as truth, if it is undertaken apart from the event of its being manifested. God’s act in self-revealing first comes into effect, then upon hermeneutical reflection it is maintained. If “all out hermeneutical skill cannot be brought about by hermeneutical skill,”14 for Barth, the Word of God means that God speaks in God’s mystery, thus the Word of God in revelation is God’s speaking person (Dei loquentis persona). God’s Word means the speaking God in a concrete way and ongoing manner, yet “provisionally comprehensible and comprehensible in all its incomprehensibility.”15 Barth’s fundamental thesis “God speaks” implies his critical renewal of aletheia for the freedom and mystery of God. In the explication of the speech of God as the mystery of God,16 his dialectical notion of aletheia of divine veiling in unveiling refers to the indirectness of human knowledge of the Word of God and in correspondence with it. The Word of God is one in its veiling and unveiling. Mystery denotes God’s revelation in a hidden, non-apparent way which intimates indirectly, in the mystery of its secularity.17 In the speech of God in divine mystery, “its veiling can

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change for us absolutely into its unveiling and its unveiling can change absolutely into its veiling.”18 From God’s standpoint, the Word of veiling in unveiling is the one and the same thing; thus, the dialectical dimension of faith is rooted in human fragility and limitation because God’s speechact entails its character of freedom and mystery beyond human faith. Given this, Barth’s grounding of the Word of God as the speaking God is aphoristically formulated in an irregular and provocative manner: God’s voice in alien form from without through Russian Communism (as reflected in Barth’s early experience of religious socialism in Safenwil), a flute concerto (in his experience of Mozart), a blossoming shrub (Moses), pagans (as reflected in Blumhardt’s correspondence with Richard Wilhelm in China), or even a dead dog (perhaps, a typical metaphor used by left-wing Hegelians about Hegel after his death, or Luther’s metaphor of the work of God even in the devil).19

Barth’s Critical Analysis of Heidegger’s Ontology Barth takes an analysis of Heidegger’s What is Metaphysics? that was delivered as the inaugural lecture to the Freiburg University faculties (on July 24, 1929).20 Heidegger explicates the term metaphysics as inquiry beyond or over beings, by driving it from the Greek meta ta physika. An inquiry concerning the nothing proves to be a metaphysical question. In unfolding a metaphysical inquiry, he poses it as a whole from the position of Da-sein.21 “Science wants to know nothing of the nothing,”22 but the nothing, more original than negation, “is the complete negation of the totality of beings.”23 To the degree that the nothing itself nihilates, human existence approaches and penetrates beings only on the basis of the original revelation of the nothing. In short, “Da-sein means: being held out into the nothing.”24 Da-sein in this regard is already beyond beings as a whole and Heidegger calls this being “transcendence.”25 Given this, Barth views Heidegger’s essence of nothing as the original nihilation, which is absolutely “other,” not “nothing.” Barth’s major concern with Heidegger is in his ontological view of the nothing. For Heidegger, the original nihilating other sets human existence face to face with being as such. If only on the basis of the original disclosure of nothing, human existence approaches that which is, its nihilation occurs in the being of that which is. Existence derives from manifested nothing, such that for Heidegger “existence means being projected into nothing.”26

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In Barth’s analysis of Heidegger, projection into nothing is the overcoming of the totality of that which is: transcendence. Inquiry about nothing is a metaphysical question of transcendence, in which “nothing” in Heidegger is the pseudonym which conceals the Godhead. Thus, Barth sees the Hegelian identification between pure being and pure nothing as accepted into Heidegger’s dialectic. Certainly Heidegger is not concerned with the equation: “Nothing is God.” As Heidegger cites, “pure Being and pure Nothing are therefore the same” in the proposition of Hegel’s Science of Logic.27 Given this, Barth sees that Heidegger revises the older affirmation of ex nihilo nihil fit (from nothing, nothing comes to be) to read that ex nihilo omne ens qua ens fit (“From the nothing all beings as beings comes to be”).28 In Barth’s account, Heidegger assumes that the basic event of human existence is identical with metaphysics. The revelation of nothing occurs in the mood of dread or anxiety, and existence projected into nothing reaches the stage of entering that which is, while transcending it. For Heidegger, the nothing reveals itself in anxiety which robs us of speech. The nothing is not the counter-concept of beings since the nihilation of the nothing occurs in the Being of beings.29 In dread or anxiety, one feels something uncanny. But Barth argues, if dread or anxiety reveals nothing, it is impossible to say what occasions this uncanny feeling. The revelation of nothing occurs in dread and it belongs to the essence of that which is. Nothing itself is prior to our negation.30 Barth’s argument with Heidegger and against him is not of philosophical character, but explicitly political, in his reading strategy of nothingness, linked to the reality of lordless powers in society, politics, and culture.31 As previously seen, Heidegger’s major concern was to carry out the existential analysis of Da-sein in light of Being, such that Being in the lighting-up process opens up in the regime and the locale of the Da (there). Every Da-sein within being-in-the-world refers to the individual existent in care, resoluteness, and determination. The historicity of Dasein within the horizon of Being is absorbed and entangled in its care, resulting in fate. In Heidegger’s notion of fate, his problem lies in the flight from the responsibility of the past under the sway of fate, as seen in collaboration with National Socialism.32 In the interpretation of Being, as Heideggar argues, traditional metaphysics forgets Being in the neglecting of the essence of the nothing (the Nihil). The nothing is the name for the source of all that is in anxiety

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and it unveils the nullity that determines Da-sein thrown into death, as “the complete negation of the totality of beings.”33 But Da-sein, as held out into the nothing, is already beyond beings as a whole, which occurs in the essence of Da-sein. This going beyond is metaphysics, which belongs to the nature of existence. Thus, human existence can relate to beings only if it holds itself out into the nothing, which “makes man a lieutenant of the nothing.”34 Accordingly, the Being beyond beings is called transcendence. Nothing only disclosed in anxiety “reveals itself as belonging to the Being of beings,”35 since the Being itself is finite. Thus, Heidegger redefines metaphysics as the basic occurrence of Da-sein.36 Later, Heidegger in “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth”37 attempts to clarify his notion of aletheia in critical explication of Plato’s allegory of cave. In Greek, unhiddeness is called aletheia; however, this concept of aletheia as truth has been replaced as the representation in the Western philosophical tradition predominating over the concept of unconceleament.38 In contrast to representational thinking and its mode of correspondence, Heidegger gives credit to Aristotle. For Aristotle, what takes place in the making of vocal sounds is the showing of what exists in the soul. Heidegger maintains that Aristotle’s notion of truth marks a change in the understanding of truth as explicated in the Platonic teaching of truth about one’s painful climbing toward the sun outside.39 Furthermore, in Letter on Humanism, Heidegger clarifies that the Being of da has the fundamental character of existence. “In [ontological] thinking being comes to language. Language is the house of Being.”40 For Heidegger, thinking is the thinking of Being, and a human being is the “there,” the clearing (open region) of Being. Being of the da has the fundamental character of ex-sistence in differentiation from the metaphysical concept of existentia.41 “Language is the clearing-concealing advent of Being itself,”42 in which “exsistence means standing out into the truth of Being.”43 Heidegger takes issue with Sartre’s expression: “Existence precedes essence,” that reverses the metaphysical meaning of “essentia precedes existential.” In this reverse, Heidegger maintains that Sartre “stays with metaphysics in oblivion of the truth of Being,”44 because for Heidegger, “man is the shepherd of Being,” which is the nearest yet farthest from him, when “existence is experienced as care.”45 Care is the Being of Da-sein in the structural whole of existence, an all-inclusive name for concern in everyday activity. In Barth’s account, Sartre is radically aware of dread and despair in his forceful denial of the existence of God. Barth acknowledges that Heidegger’s doctrine of dread and nothing intends to establish a positive

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basis for metaphysics as well as for the quiet purpose of science. Thus, Heidegger never became a Nihilist.46 This is where Sartre comes in, but in a careful scrutiny of dread and nothing, he undergirds the self-reliant man.47 It means a categorical Yes to human existence in Sartre which Barth does not reject explicitly, despite Barth’s hesitation of Sartre’s atheism.48 In Sartre’s sense, according Barth, “freedom depends on the freedom of others and on which the freedom of others depends.”49 In analysis of Sartre, Barth’s critique of Heidegger is sharp, in a way that Heidegger’s doctrine of nothing and Being is “a mythological theogony”50 since it has little to do with the biblical notion of God. Furthermore, Barth takes into account Heidegger’s position in Plato’s Doctrine of Truth (1947), in which Heidegger introduces the truth of being in the affirmation of being; it comes in place of the nihilation of nothing. Existence as a projection into nothing is now entry into the truth of being. In Barth’s account, Heidegger’s position has not changed from his earlier one because “nothing” as being may be holy or even God, arrogating and exercising a divine function. Barth sees in Heidegger’s dialectic a pursuit of older philosophy, Gnosticism, and mysticism. The revelation of nothing as being in Heidegger’s philosophy is, according to Barth, a useless instrument in the face of the threatening reality of nothingness (National Socialism), or lordless powers.51 We read Heidegger’s position in trivialization of the reality of lordless powers: “Plowing the fields is now a motorized food industry—in essence, the same as the production line of bodies in gas chambers and concentration camps, the same as the blockade and starvation of countries, the same as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.”52 For Barth, Heidegger’s account of human existence as care makes a human being so stupid, that an anxious individual is a mere grain of sand. It demeans any companionship, destroying fellowship or brotherhood,53 leading to the disintegration of society. Reified consciousness of Da-sein in empty obedience to the questionable “Being” has its own fate in accommodation to the nothingness of the German natural, biological world.

Levinas, Onto-Theo-Logy, and the Prophetic Hermeneutic Barth’s critique of Heidegger finds its place in Levinas’ ethical assessment of Heidegger’s philosophy. First, Levinas appreciates Heidegger’s critique of onto-theo-logy, which refers to theology in the guise of

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ontology. For Heidegger, Western metaphysics can be understood as onto-theo-logy in its contribution to the oblivion or forgetfulness of Being. Without recourse to metaphysics, Heidegger safeguards a language from its metaphysical veil, thus in language being can speak. But Levinas takes issue with the fundamental relation with being in Heidegger because it is not the relationship with the Other, but with death, in which everything in the relationship with the Other is denounced.54 For Levinas, the relationship with the Other must not be reduced to intentionality or an existential analysis of Da-sein. In a totality, consciousness embraces the world, becoming absolute thought without leaving nothing or the other outside of itself. Against a philosophy of totality, Levinas takes the term transcendence to signify the fact that one cannot think of God and being together. The true union between them is a togetherness of face to face, not a togetherness of synthesis.55 This is Levinas’ qualified critique of onto-theo-logy into which Heidegger is ensnared. Levinas’ notion of transcendence, which is founded upon the saying of God in the face of the Other, is opposed to the philosophical, or theological attempt at conceptualizing God and ontology together at the same level. God is infinite and breaks through the totality of being. Perceived in phenomenology of saying a la Levinas, Heidegger’s ontology is captive to the confinement of onto-theo-logy. As Levinas proceeds, the face is a straightaway ethical signification without context. Its meaning consists in saying: “thou shalt not kill.”56 An infinite God has put the idea of the Infinite into us. The Infinity is associated with the Saying which differentiates transcendence within immanence because the Saying breaks the definition of what it says. The Saying breaks up and interrupts the totality by its very speaking. One of the most important forms of Saying is prophecy. In prophesizing, the Infinite passes, refusing objectification and dialogue, signifying in an ethical way. Now, the Saying puts “my” consciousness or existential form of Da-sein into a bracket, awakening the consciousness for the ethical responsibility in the face of the Other. In contrast to Heidegger, Levinas takes seriously prophetism as the fundamental mode of God’s revelation for the Other. “God has spoken that you shall not prophecy?” (Amos 3:8). The prophetic reaction is compared to the passivity of the fear in which the prophet hears the roaring of wild beasts. In comprehending Infinity, God is not excluded from saying or signification, beginning in a cray of ethical revolt.57 Ethical responsibility is compared to an attitude of being consumed for the other in Abraham’s

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intercession for Sodom, the consuming of a holocaust: “I am the dust and ashes.” (Gen 18:27). Moses says more humbly “What are we?” (Ex 16:7).58 “Prophecy interprets itself in concrete forms, where it has become book and text.”59 If Levinas always distinguishes the saying and the said in discourse, the saying (noesis) must bear a said (noema) in a way that the Scripture interprets itself for ethical responsibility. Ethic and hermeneutic are in correlation when Levinas states: “The subjective condition of the [Bible] reading is necessary to the reading of the prophetic. But one must certainly add to this the necessity of confrontation and dialogue, and consequently the whole problem of the call of tradition emerges, which is not an obedience but a hermeneutic.”60 This position helps me develop homolector and homo ethicus in correlation for the comparative study of other religions. A “phenomenological” hermeneutic a la Levinas becomes feasible in a way that “meaning is not a modification that affects a content existing outside of all language.”61 The objectivity or subject matter becomes meaningful on the basis of language, but the language does not enjoy the privileged right in which the arrival of Being comes to language. Interpretation of the text is taken in an ethical manner because this signification to the Other occurs in proximity which is conceived of as a responsibility for the Other. Levinas’ phenomenology of Saying is not reduced to the thematization of the said in the Husserlian sense or Heidegger’s ontological hermeneutics. For Levinas, the very exposition of Being (ontology), its manifestation, or phenomenology are spoken, only in the said, in the epos of saying. Although the identical in temporality is rediscovered by an act of consciousness, it “has meaning only through the kerygma of the said.”62 In contrast, going beyond the said, the signification of the saying “imprints its trace on the thematization itself.”63 “Saying bears witness to the other of the infinite which rends me, which in the Saying awakens me.”64 There is an “irregular” aspect of God’s Saying in Levinas, which is of strong ethical implication in the face of the Other standing under illeity of the Infinite. God’s speech-act in the prophetic mode of thought challenges a taken-for-granted understanding of the Word of God on the part of Israel, awakening and surprising Israel to the mysterious act of God through the otherness of the Other. Formulated in a Barthian fashion, Levinas’ prophetic mode of thought in his phenomenology of Saying may maintain that the vision of Isaiah affirms God’s act of speech

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through the pagan king Cyrus. We discern it in Barth’s citation of Isaiah 55:8 in which God’s ways remain higher than our ways and God’s thoughts higher than our thoughts.65 Phenomenological interpretation can be developed by placing itself before the interpersonal order of the irreducible alterity and “to search for and recall, in the horizons which open around the first “intentions” of the abstractly given, the human or interhuman intrigue” “as the fabric of ultimate intelligibility,” “which is the concreteness of its unthought.”66 Phenomenology of Saying in Levinas’ sense is connected with the a-thematic reality of the “unthought” and “unsaid,” breaking through the omnipotence of the manifestation and sameness of being “in an adventure undergone with God or through God.” “Transcendence owes it to itself to interrupt its own demonstration and monstration, its phenomenality…. It requires the blinking and dia-chrony of enigma,” … “break[ing] up the unity of transcendental apperception, in which immanence always triumphs over transcendence.”67 In Levinas’ account, ontological hermeneutics in Heidegger has forgotten to comprehend the phenomenon of alterity in the epiphany of face on his hermeneutical structure. The understanding of the Other as a text by its context, or interlocutor which lives in the most ordinary social experience is a hermeneutic and an exegesis; this Other is not included in the totality of ontology.68 This implies “phenomenological” hermeneutics in safeguarding the position of the Other under illeity against the totality of being and its ontological imperialism.

Barth

and Levinas:

Transcendence of the Holy

and the

Idea

Barth’s notion of totaliter aliter as “God speaks and transforms” in coming finds parallel with the phenomenology of Saying, promoting the prophetic solidarity with those on the margins. His critique of indirect Carthecianism, which is comprehended in the thesis of divine totaliter aliter, may take issue with onto-theo-logy in the modernist form of the intermixing between theology and ontology. In the onto-theological framework, God’s mystery and incomprehensibility are reduced to the order of beings (analogia entis). A critique of onto-theo-logy in the Barthian sense maintains that a genuine theology of the Word of God in revelation dispenses with the problem of onto-theo-logy.

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The God of the Bible is fundamentally different from the God of philosophy. God of the onto-theo-logy in the framework of the moral-metaphysical God is not competent to comprehend the God of Israel who is revealed in the history of Jesus Christ in power of the Holy Spirit and involved in inspiring and empowering the community of the faithful as God’s covenant partner. Barth secures the domain of exteriority of the divine speech-act which provokes the certainty of human consciousness, safeguarding the living, emancipatory Word of God from becoming the predicate of human experience and consciousness. Barth’s critique of onto-theo-logy does not concur with a postmodern attempt at offering Derrida’s economy of différance to complement Barth’s Christology and Trinitarian soteriology for a logical coherence.69 Barth’s spirituality of the Word of God lies primarily in God’s speaking, then in the human faith of hearing, understanding, and obeying in correlation with this divine speaking. This aspect of divine action and human response in faith distinguishes Barth from Rudolf Otto’s idea of the holy which is related to human experience of the numinous.70 Barth reads Otto’s idea of the holy and developed the term wholly other in a completely different manner. Barth’s concept of transcendence of God entails social critical content and political significance in the sense of a theology of resistance.71 Barth’s theological foundation for “wholly other” is deeply grounded in the turbulence of his social-political context in his early Safenwil period. Barth defines the wholly other more than the epitome of existing Being, Transcendence, or Origin. For him, God as the wholly other is “der ganz and gar Ändernde,”72 namely the One who changes and revolutionizes the situation completely and wholly, thus “materially changes, all things and everything in all things.”73 God is the Novum. In Barth’s account, the numinous as the irrational cannot be differentiated from an absolutized natural force. Barth’s idea of the wholly other is exclusively bound to the word of God, while Otto’s idea of the wholly other is based on mysterium tremdum et fascinans in religious experience of the numinous. Otto does not give clear conceptual expression and clarity to such irrational.74 A Barthian critique of Otto’s idea of the holy and its numinotic experience finds its consonance with Levinas, who maintains that Judaism with moral revelation shows a non-coincidence or anachronism with the time of history and its upsurge. Prophecy refers to the phenomenon which is recalcitrant to the accommodation to a social institution; which

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can be most dramatically seen in the life of Elijah in isolation from economy, fed by ravens (1 Kings17:4).75 In comprehending Judaism as a disenchantment of the world, Levinas takes issue with Otto’s notion of the numinosity. Divine holiness in the Jewish context is understood as a way of undermining the significance of the numinosity in the life of rabbis. The human experience in the numinosity of pagan religion nullifies the relation between persons for an ethical foundation. Thus, it appears as a transgression of human freedom to Jewish consciousness. The God of Israel, who is not the sum of all power, is radically different from the mythical pagan deities. Jewish monotheism does not juxtapose the pagan manifestations of the numinous with its experience of divine holiness.76

Aletheia

and Analogical

Art of Structure

Heidegger formulates the notion of correspondence as the truth of aletheia in an Aristotelian sense in contrast to representational or technological thinking. Similarly, I see also the importance of an analogical mode of thought and correspondence as central in Barth. As previously discussed about Heidegger and Being, Heidegger rejects the technological notion of representation in correspondence, but in his later stage allows meticulously for the dialectical movement of unveiling and revealing in terms of an adequation in correspondence. Nearness occurs as language, and language itself as the house of Being. Insofar as language is the house of Being, the essence of language is conceived of as a correspondence to Being. The correspondence of language with Being is the home of man’s essence.77 Earlier on, for the sake of aletheia as the truth, Heidegger was critical of representational thinking in correspondence, but later he redefines the essence of language as saying because language speaks by saying as a showing.78 Now, Heidegger reintroduces the notion of correspondence, which is different from technological-scientific rationalization and its representational mode of thought. The notion of correspondence in the linguistic expression of Being appears as the truth of aletheia. Certainly in “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” Heidegger undertakes a self-critique in refurbishing his early position rather than Kehre (turning).79 He takes up again the phenomenology of Hegel and Husserl for “to the things themselves,” in other words, to the matter of aletheia itself. The matter is the concept of clearing (Lichtung),

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the open region, free openness as primal matter, in which everything becomes present and absent. The light of reason throws light only on the open and free space of the clearing of Being. In Parmenides’ poem, Heidegger finds again aletheia as unconcealment, itself as the clearing of what is open. As Heidegger writes, “we must think aletheia, unconcealment, as the clearing that first grants Being and thinking and their presencing to and for each other.”80 However, Heidegger no longer equates aletheia, namely unconcealment in the sense of clearing, as the truth proper. Rather, the clearing itself first grants the possibility of truth, in which aletheia is originally experienced only as the correctness of representations and statements; it is seen in the perspective of adequation in the sense of correspondence.81 Aletheia as clearing is experienced and thought in adeuqation, not as such, which still remains concealed. This is clearing and presence at the heart of aletheia; hence, Heidegger allows for the notion of linguistic correspondence of aletheia in the dialectical matter of revealing and unrevealing. Given this, Gadamer notices Heidegger’s later cautiousness in which Heidegger did not establish the experience of the thing as simple presence-at-hand. Gadamer’s position can be expressed: “Being that can be understood in language”. However, Gadamer belittles a way of elucidating the extent to which the revelation of the truth would be morally good in connection with the Other.82 At this juncture, I pay special attention to Barth’s reflection of the analogical mode of thought in correspondence, which seems similar to Heidegger at face value. But in the content of the subject matter, it is radically different from him. Barth develops a notion of analogia attributionis. What is common between the two exists primarily and properly in the first, such that the second is dependent upon the first. Analogans (subject matter) in the first is the one who makes the analogy. Analogata (in adequation of the subject matter) in the second is that which analogized. Barth seeks this analogy in the relationship of an analogans with an analogatum, which expands a horizon of analogia relationis in humanity, society, and political realms.83 As a matter of fact, Barth utilizes the Protestant scholastic theory of analogy in correspondence, but grounds his theory of analogy first in the inner-Trinitarian framework. It runs counter to the Catholic teaching of analogia entis (analogy of being) founded upon human ontological similarity with God’s being in a greater dissimilarity, yet apart from faith. If analogia entis concerns a correspondence and similarity of the human

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being in comparison to the being of God, Barth rather utilizes analogia relationis in terms of Jesus Christ. We are in the image of God only in relation to Jesus Christ, the image of God in the full sense (1 Cor. 11:7). Analogia fidei refers to the correspondence in faith concerning the word of God and the word of human being in thought and in speech.84 The divine revelation spoken to human being in faith is exclusively based on God’s grace and mercy which is basis for the analogy of relationship with us. To break through the ontological limitation of scholastic teaching of analogy, Barth contextualizes an analogical principle of attribution, especially with respect to social and political contexts as well as to creation. In thesis 14 in “The Christian Community and the Civil Community” (1946), Barth expands his analogical concept by elaborating co-responsibility between church and the state in light of the Kingdom of God. Since the state is grounded in divine ordinance belonging to the Kingdom of God, Barth regards its civil community as a parable, a correspondence, and an analogue to it. Social justice and righteousness in its existence are “a reflected image of the Christian truth and reality.”85 The state finds its mission in co-responsibility together with the church, bearing witness to “the politics of God,” “an implicit, indirect but nonetheless real witness to the gospel.”86 Barth’s analogical mode of relationality does not concur with Heidegger. What is crucial in Barth’s analogical teaching is political responsibility, whose aspect sharply differentiates Barth from Heidegger and Aquinas.

Some Clarification: The Complex Structure of Analogical Relationality In the last chapter, I undertook a critical exegesis of Jüngel’s “ontological localization of God’s being,”87 in reference to analogia relationis and analogia attributionis. Jüngel ontologically grounds the divine correspondence within God’s self-relatedness in terms of analogia relationis.88 Jüngel furthers to relate analogia relationis to analogia attributionis. Only in the sense of an analogia relationis and attributionis extrinseca (extrinsic attribution), as he argues, the modes of God’s being in the economic-trinitarian reality of revelation correspond to the immanenttrinitarian life.89 Therefore, the grace of God’s being for us must be able to copy the freedom or essence of God’s being for itself, while this freedom as the original of that grace becomes visible in grace as the copy of this essence.90

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This ontological interpretation contradicts Barth’s Christological interpretation. Indeed, Barth concurs with Quenstedt’s notion of analogia attributionis underlying extrinsic attribution. What is common between God and creature is primarily grounded in God (analogans; source of analogy), the creature (analogata as the predicate of the analogans) is dependent upon God. This analogy of attribution is different from analogia propotionalitatis (divine correspondence between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity by appropriation). It refers to Barth’s way of articulating the relationship between God and creatures in the context of the grace of justification extra nos.91 It is certain that there is unity of essence between the Father and the Son, but in the humanity of Jesus as the image of God, there is a complete disparity from the prior relationship of the Father to the Son; this is analogia relationis a la Barth.92 To better comprehend Barth’s relational theology, it is indispensable to sum up the complex and different structures in the art of analogical relationality in the following way. 1.  Original art of correspondence (in God’s primary objectivity to God’s self in the intertrinitarian life, in the perichoretic life of “coexistence, co-inherence, and reciprocity”).93 2.  An art of appropriation between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity (analogy of proportionality) is also of hermeneutical significance in designating the triune God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. 3. Analogy of correlation in Jesus Christ, vere Deus and vere Homo, in which the man Jesus for God is included in the perichoresis of the Trinityas, the preexistent being of Jesus Christ, but the fellow humanity of Jesus (assumed in flesh) is in indirect relation to the divine essence, that is within “the outer sphere of the work of God.”94 God of Israel is not reduced or generalized into an ontological localization of God’s becoming. Barth’s relational theology between God, the world, and humanity cannot be perceived or deduced from any ontology.95 4. The death of Jesus Christ, as a divine–human experience, refers to the humanity of God and its theology of grace in a relational manner, changing and renewing our life. The true theologia gloriae (exaltation of the reconciled man) has its roots in theologia crucis (the self-humiliation of the reconciling God).96 The Word of God

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may be concerned with God and human being, concerning the work of Jesus Christ pro me. But against the ontological attempt at cutting Jesus Christ in a bed of Procrustes, Barth strongly argues that “the Word of God does not contain any ontology of heaven and earth themselves.”97 5. An act of grace of God to the creature in revelation took place in the assumption of human flesh (including humanum of all), in which incarnation is the work of the whole Trinity, by appropriation.98 “The eternal Son of God is not of equal being and essence with the humanity assumed by Him.”99 This reinforces a notion of the grace of the impartation in the mode of mutual participation a la the communicatio operationem in the actualization of an operatio (event) in the self-humiliation of the eternal Son of God (reconciling God) and the exaltation of the reconciled man: Jesus Christ.100 This position rejects an ontological principle of a unio coessentialis, in which a twofold existence of the same being and essence in Jesus Christ is affirmed in terms of the perechoretic unity of Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Barth’s relational theology is of post-ontological character since his actualistic, historical mode of thought is grounded in the work of grace, in which he safeguards the divine over against the human.101 “God becomes man in order that man may not become God, but come to God.”102 Actualistic thought in Barth is historical and analogical in character and scope. 6.  An anthropological art of correspondence refers to the human being as the repetition of the divine form of life, its copy, and reflection. Despite the fall, God’s original blessing in God’s image and likeness finds hope in Jesus Christ in whom the humanity “may live in the strength of the truth and certainty of this hope.”103 The theological anthropology is grounded in the humanity of the man Jesus in his fellow humanity in the sense of analogia relationis, in which we are created to be covenant partners of God. Human correspondence to the ordination and determination to the covenant partner, through grace of God and “in the knowledge of faith thereby awakened.”104 The ontological connection between Jesus Christ and all other people is grounded in the humanity of God, sharpening a notion of anthropological analogy of participation in God’s grace of impartation in Jesus Christ, in contrast to “anthropological existentiale” (Jüngel).105 As we have seen, Barth sharply critiques a Heideggerian ontology of

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Da-sein because the co-humanity of human being is the grounding form of humanity.106 Language is not the house of Being because “we live in a constant deflation of the word.” “With suspicion and disillusionment in relation to the word,” nonetheless, “we must not in any circumstances allow them house-room.”107 For fellow humanity and analogia relationis, Barth sharply sees a dimension of onto-theo-logy in Catholic teaching of analogia entis in which “God and man are always comprehended together.”108 For Barth, Christology pro me and its existential relevance lead to “the necessary de-mythologization of the “I.”109 7. A political art of analogy (analogy of attribution) between state and the Kingdom of God in terms of line and direction, in which Barth gives a corresponding character to democracy, social justice, and solidarity with the poor. 8. A phenomenological art of analogy can be seen in the intertextuality between God and creation as theatrum gloriae Dei, in which analogia relationis and its horizon are expanded in universal significance through God’s speech-act in the otherness of the Other. Given the analogical structure, I notice Barth’s striking difference from Levinas. In his utilization of an analogical mode of thought, Barth is socially and historically involved and moves for political engagement. Barth’s analogical reflection in critical consciousness of the Word of God in the social political realm is not condemnatory of critical consciousness and reason within the realm of faith; “faith seeking understanding” is not linked to the ideology of Reason, but grounded in Trinitarian predestination. The issue of injustice comes from lordless powers in Barth. This diverges from the Levinasian argument in which injustice stems from consciousness and formal logic by uncritically taking them up as the ideology of Reason.110

God of Israel, Jewish Exegesis, Viva Vox Teaching The significance of Israel comes into play in Barth’s thought. Barth’s defense of Christian monotheism was and is precisely in the Church doctrine if the Trinity as such111 relates to the God of Israel. God’s being shares its life of grace and righteousness in the history of Israel. “[The Word] became Jewish flesh.”112 Israel is relevant to Jesus Christ because

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Jesus Christ is the Messiah of Israel as well as the Lord of the Church and the world “in such a way that the bow of the one covenant arches over the whole.”113 Barth’s doctrine of election embraces Israel as a natural and historical environment of Jesus. God’s eternal decree embraces “the people of Israel in the whole range of its history in past and future, ante and post Christum natum”).114 As Marquardt states, “According to Barth, next to the particular elect in Israel, the whole people of Israel also remains elect…Thus, in relation to Israel we are not to speak of a praedestinatio gemina [double predestination] but of a praedestinatio dialectica [dialectical predestination]: not of election and reprobation, but of a double election.”115 Christian theology of the Trinity and election must not dethrone the God of Israel in a supercessionist manner. Barth’s reflection of God’s faithfulness to Israel may be furthered with respect to Jewish self-consciousness and experience of God in the post-biblical history of Israel, rabbinic Jewish hermeneutics. It can be said that a hermeneutical issue remains crucial in Levinas’ study of the Talmud. The Talmudic view of “doing and hearing” (Ex 24:7) means that to know God is to obey God’s Word. Doing precedes hearing in Judaism and doing includes ritual practice “as a discipline toward justice.”116 Although Levinas puts priority of the ethical and the ritual prior to understanding and interpretation, he does not necessarily depreciate the theory of interpretation and pre-understanding, but reinforces it toward the hermeneutical problem and justice as seen in his study of the Talmud. The sacred texts refer to philosophical problems and are in need of textual exegesis and interpretation. Ancient texts are not subsumed and exhausted into a historical, critical investigation, but entail their own rights and horizons in providing adequate answers to contemporary questions and problems. For Levinas, the Talmud is the viva vox teaching, which is analogous to Luther’s understanding of the gospel as viva vox Evangelii (living voice of God in gospel of Christ). This perspective of the viva vox teaching is fully developed in Barth’s creative interpretation of Luther’s notion of viva vox Evangelii along with Calvin’s notion of revelation in favor of totaliter aliter in the divine speech-act.117 Without discarding the outcome of historical, critical research, the reader puts the question to a text in retaining a relation to the sacrality of the text. Reading the text is to elicit what the text intends, and its

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translation is made feasible into the contemporary language. First, the exegetical engagement is undertaken with particularism of Israel’s experience of the divine holiness, then developing its universal application. For Levinas, the Bible belongs to historical research proper in the requirement of scholarly critical interpretation, while the Talmud belongs to the continuity of textual exegesis in the sense of the viva vox teaching, in which Talmud in the Jewish community is analogous to the New Testament in Christian community.118 The signified (the said) of the written texts are the objects under critical scientific investigation, and the Talmud is the sign remaining latent in entailing the power for selfrenewal. Interpretation is concerned with the inner life or spirit of the texts. This symbol of the text remains what is yet to become the subject to the enrichment of historical accretion and the encounter with other sources. The meaning of the symbol of the text is a paradigmatic mode of thought in characterizing Levinas’ “phenomenological” hermeneutic. This may be a point of consonance with Barth’s theological hermeneutics. If phenomenology is concerned with enriching the world of our experience in terms of taking up neglected, “unsaid” aspects of our experience, the phenomenological procedure becomes one of the most viable attempts to explore the phenomena as essence or deeper meaning transcending the taken-for-granted attitude and understanding (the first naiveté). If hermeneutics is invested in involving the textual world in terms of appreciation, critical distance, and recovery of a deeper meaning, this inquiry is guided and driven by the horizon of the text in encounter with the horizon of the reader.119 Given this phenomenological-hermeneutical complementarity, I am not reluctant to categorize Levinas and Barth into the area of phenomenological inquiry and interpretation. Thus, my reading has little to do with an attempt to categorize Levinas’ hermeneutic thought form into Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology.120

Torah Hermeneutic and Language For Levinas, Torah offers a way beyond being, ontology opened by the face standing under the trace of illeity (Exod. 33). For Barth, the Word of God carries the same effect in cutting through the limitations and setbacks of ontological immanence. If God in sacred literatures is revealed upon a mountain, or in a bush unconsumed, this [non] phenomenological mode of self-manifestation is not fully exhausted into the fullness of

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language, but making the words always open to the interpretation of the non-phenomenal character of illeity or totaliter aliter. This biblical perspective also relativizes the phenomenological notion of essence in a deeper meaning, relocating its second naiveté in openness toward the mystery of the Infinite in relation to the Other. This is the reverse of phenomenon, called enigma, a meaning beyond meaning. Levinas’ phenomenology seeks to give access to the nonappearance of the Other. An enigma extends to the phenomenon of bearing the trace of the saying, insofar as we consider Moses’ answer “Here I am” in response to the voice from the Burning Bush.121 In Levinas’ account, Kierkegaard understands the philosophical notion of transcendence in the biblical idea of humility before God, but in Kierkegaard’s image of the Absolute, the wholly other is revealed only to be persecuted and unrecognized in revealing divine self in the measure that he is hunted; subjectivity, despairing in the solitude becomes the very locus of truth. The Kierkegaardian God is not measured by certainty; thus, its truth is “essential in a world which can no longer believe that the books about God attest to transcendence as a phenomenon and to the Ab-solute as an apparition.”122 In the Kierkegaardian notion of wholly other, Levinas does not discern that there is Enigma, rather sees what atheism brings forth without good reasons.123 Language can bring to light that which is, but the illeity goes beyond its power of the image-making in human comprehension. Levinas’ concern is of a phenomenological character in ethically relating the Infinite to the Other in hermeneutical skill and significance. Framed within the perspective of traditional rabbinic commentary, he deals with the relation between the divine and the ethical lifeworld in which he incorporates his philosophical orientation of the teachings of the Talmud, its hermeneutic skill, and the paradigmatic activities of the rabbis. Given this, hermeneutical exegesis may assume symbolic, analogical, or critical import. As Levinas argues, “experience is a reading, the understanding of meaning and exegesis, a hermeneutic…meaning is not a modification that affects a content existing outside of all language. Everything remains in a language or in a world…Language is the house of the being.”124 Indeed, in Heidegger, being is revealed out of the hiddenness and mystery of the unsaid. In counter to an ontological hermeneutic, however, Levinas argues that the world and language “have lost the univocity which would authorize us to expect from them the criteria of the meaningful.”125 Unlike Heidegger’s formulation of language as the house of

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being, speech delineates an original relation with the alterity, in which the function of the language is not subordinated to consciousness; the event of language is not situated at the level of comprehension.126 Now language is relocated in the ethical relation with the Other for fellow humanity, thus becoming an “open” house of being in welcoming and invocation of the Other. It is no longer a “cage” of being in appropriation or exploitation of the Other for self-consciousness and care. His strong critique of the ontological tradition finds elective affinity with Barth’s critique of analogia entis, namely the cardinal concept of ontological theology.

Barth

and Theological

Hermeneutics

Barth’s biblically inspired hermeneutic is grounded in his concept of the priority of revelation over scripture and proclamation. The historical criticism or the critical-scientific study of Scripture is accepted on the basis of God’s revelation. Understanding the Bible is a return to and inquiry into the Word itself, which is fraught with all its linguistic and factual propositions because the Scripture was written “in the human speech uttered by specific men at specific times in a specific situation, in a specific language and with a specific intention.”127 The Scripture as the witness of divine revelation is a special form of the universally valid hermeneutical principle.128 In Ebeling’s account, “Barth has not by any means surrendered his initial hermeneutical impulse, but has let it lead him on the path of his Church Dogmatics,” which “presents…an implicit answer to the hermeneutical problem.”129 Barth’s reaction against historicism or the historical-critical method paves a new way for “social history”-critical hermeneutics, including the background of the interpreter in social location; “the historical critics, it seems to me, needs to be more critical!”130 The subject matter of the Word of God is not exhausted into a historical-critical method, but is means to set the limitation of the consciousness as shaped and influenced in a life context. For Barth, theology cannot avoid the cultural framework of the current problem, in which theology is involved in explicating the contingent problem of social contemporaneity in a particular social historical context.131 This implies the position of the theologian is influenced and determined in the historically conditioned documentations and social-political context and life connections.132 Accordingly, theology in a self-critical, limited, and open-ended sense consists only in approximation toward the mystery of God in revelation,

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always standing in need of correction and renewal at every point.133 The hermeneutical integration of the word-deed and the theologian’s particular context guides our understanding of the Word of God in a critical and emancipatory manner, challenging the modernist consciousness of a historical, critical method in a relativist manner. Thus, historical critics need to be critical of their own social connection. The lifeworld of Scripture, grounded in the revelation, informs and guides a special hermeneutic, in which God’s coming to us is of phenomenological experience and hermeneutical significance bound to the living word of God. The whole creation is the theater of God’s glory and the recipient and bearer of God’s Word by becoming the ministry of the Word of God.134 Barth’s contribution to a “phenomenological” hermeneutic can be found in his deliberation of the worldly realm as the semantic field in which God may speak to the church. This implies a “phenomenology” of intertextuality in encountering and experiencing totaliter aliter in God’s speech-act in recognition of the alterity that is transpiring between the scriptural world and extra-scriptural world. I characterize this perspective as a phenomenological hermeneutic in Levinas’ sense, which is indispensable in Barth’s theology of Word. This perspective runs counter to Trutz Rendtorff’s thesis of Barth as an exponent of liberal theology. Rendtorff argues that Barth’s revolution in theology has initiated a new Enlightenment by safeguarding the radical autonomy of God upon which the religious, ethical sense of Church Dogmatics is founded.135 Against this argument, Barth’s critique of modernity can be seen in his endeavor to transcend the limitation of modernity by calling into question the accommodation of Christian religion to the Eurocentric modernity. Barth incorporates sociality into bourgeois subjectivity and renews individual subjectivity in the concept of God’s sociality. Therefore, Barth overcomes the asocial brutality of subjectivity through God who loves in freedom.136 (see Chap. 7 Barth, Comparative Theology, and Multiple Modernities)

Conclusion: Abraham’s Journey Against Odysseus According to Levinas, a philosophy is a mode of reflection that reduces everything to immanence. All experience arises in consciousness and there is a correlation between “my” thought and what “I” think about. Consciousness is an act that synthesizes the field of experience,

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representing it for the “I.” There occurs a priority of ontology and immanence in this philosophy of totality culminated in Hegel that Barth also discerns in Heidegger’s acceptance of Hegelian identification between pure nothing and pure being. In the Western tradition, according to Levinas, every Other is absorbed into the Same and its alterity is neutralized. This philosophical journey is likened to that of Odysseus, “whose adventure in the world was only a return to his native island—a complacency in the Same, an unrecognition of the Other.”137 However, human experience is bound to the Word of God in which the Infinite becomes an interiority through the sincerity of the testimony. My own passivity breaks out in saying, insofar as the Infinite passes in saying. The “here I am” (me voici) is “obedience to the glory of the Infinite that orders me to the other.”138 In Jewish mysticism, the faithful one begins by saying to God “Thou” and finishes the prayer by saying “He.” As if in the course of the approach of the “Thou,” its transcendence supervened into “He.” This situation is called the illeity of the Infinity in difference to Martin Buber’s model of “I and Thou.”139 In contrast to the journey of Odysseus, the prototype, and paradigm of the Western man,140 Levinas highlights Abraham’s journey which is conceived radically as a movement of the Same toward the Other. This faith journey is characterized by no return to the Same, a departure with no return to the consciousness of the same, acting “without entering into the Promised Land.”141 Perceived in a Barthian fashion, Abraham is the prototype of Christian faith in God’s providence in which God sees about Abraham and sees to the burnt offering for Abraham. God cares “for” Abraham, including the fact that God does basically see “before” God’s temporal creatures, divine seeing in the dynamic and active sense.142 Abraham as the father of many nations (Rom. 4:18) is called God’s friend (James 2:23). Abraham is a witness of God in strict obedience and trust; and his name becomes a term “blessing.”143 In Christian faith, in divine providence, Barth discerns a prophetic mode of thought in which God’s hand seizes the prophets (Is 8:11); a fire is kindled and burning in him (Jer. 20:9). The prophetic relationship to history refers to the belief in providence.144 In the story of Abraham (Gen. 22:1–19), God wonderfully foresees and provides, acting as the Lord of covenant in which finally God was not to spare God’s own Son.145 As Barth writes, “Abraham, and his descendants, and the prophets and apostles, and even Christians

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…[are] called and awakened to the consciousness, thankfulness, obligation and mission of covenant-partnership with God.”146 More than that, Barth can say that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is pleased to bless Abraham through Melchizedek, Israel through the pagan king Cyrus, or Balaam.147 God continues to address to us through strangers in which our understanding of the gospel can be enhanced and renewed from the first naiveté of it in approximation toward the mystery of God. This irregular, aphoristic style in provocative reflection of phenomenology of Saying and the alterity is crucial in a Hebrew manner of speech and category which respects the otherness of the Other and its transformative power under the trace of illeity in engendering surplus meaning. If I redefine a theory of “phenomenological” hermeneutics in terms of the understanding of alterity in an ethical sense, such an aspect does not need to remain only in the ethical realm, but can be enhanced and depend on the comparative study of religion and culture as the field of divine semantic; thus, phenomenological hermeneutics becomes a theoretical presupposition for the comparative study of other religions and cultures. Despite the difference of argument and theoretical reasoning between Barth and Levinas, I seek to critically utilize Barth and Levinas for the cultivation of phenomenological imagination in the comparative study of religion and multiple modernities.

Notes











1.  F. W. Marquardt, Eia wärn wir da – eine theologische Utopie (Gütersloher: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 1997), 467–539. See further Steven G. Smith, The Argument to the Other: Reason beyond Reason in the Thought of Karl Barth and Emmanuel Levinas (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983). 2. Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversation with Phillip Nemo, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 31. 3. Heidegger, Being and Time, 25. 4. Ibid., 33. 5. Wyschogrod, Emmanuel Levinas, 50. 6.  Levinas, “Is Ontology Fundamental?” in Emmanuel Levinas Basic Philosophical Writings, eds. A. T. Peperzak, et al. 5. 7. Ibid., 10. 8. Levinas, “God and Philosophy,” in Ibid., 131.

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9. Marquardt, Eia wärn wir da, 532–533. 10. Levinas, “God and Philosophy,” 145. 11. Michael Newman, “Sensibility, Trauma, and the Trace: Levinas from Phenomenology to the Immemorial,” in The Face of the Other & the Trace of God: Essays on the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Jeffrey Bloechl (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 103. 12. Marquardt, Eia wärn wir da, 534. 13. CD 1/1: 270. 14. CD 1/1: 148. 15. CD 1/1: 136, 249. 16. CD 1/1 §. 5.4. 17. CD 1/1: 165. 18. CD 1/1: 174. 19. CD 1/1: 55. 20. Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics?” in Heidegger, Basic Writings, rev. exp. ed. David Farrell (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 93–110. 21. Ibid., 106. 94. 22. Ibid., 96. 23. Ibid., 98. 24. Ibid., 103. 25. Ibid. 26. CD III/3: 335. 27. CD III/3: 343. Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics?” in Heidegger Basic Writings, 108. 28. CD III/3: 335. 29. Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics?” in Heidegger Basic Writings, 104. 102. 30. CD III/3: 337. 31. Sabine Plonz, Die herrenlosen Gewalten: Eine Relektüre Karl Barths in befreiungstheologischer Perspektive (Mainz: Grünewald Verlag, 1995), 319–317. 32. For the discussion of Heidegger’s, Martin collaboration with National Socialism (from May 1933 to January 1934), see David Farrell Krell, “General Introduction: The Question of Being,” in Heidegger Basic Writings, 26–28. 33. Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics?”, in Heidegger Basic Writings, 98. 34. Ibid., 106. 109. 35. Ibid., 108. 36. Ibid., 109. 37. Heidegger, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,” in Heidegger, Pathmarks, ed. William McNeil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 155– 182.

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38. Ibid., 168. 39. Heidegger, “The Way to Language in Heidegger,” in Heidegger Basic Writings, 115. 40. Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in Ibid., 217. 41. Ibid., 229. 42. Ibid., 230. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., 232. 45. Ibid., 234. 46. CD III/3: 339. 47. CD III/3: 340. 48. CD III/3: 339. 49. CD III/3: 341. 50. CD III/3: 343. 51. CD III/3: 348. 52.  Cited in Ulrich Duchrow and Franz J. Hinkelammert, Transcending Greedy Money: Interreligious Solidarity for Just Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 108–109. 53. CD IV/2: 466–477. 54. Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, 58. 55. Ibid., 77. 56. Ibid., 87. 57. Levinas, “God and Philosophy,” in Levinas Basic Philosophical Writings, 146–147. 58. Ibid., 144. 59. Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, 114. 60. Ibid., 116. 61. Levinas, “Meaning and Sense,” in Levinas Basic Philosophical Writings, 38. 62. Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 37. 63. Ibid., 47. 64. Levinas, “God and Philosophy,” in Levinas Basic Philosophical Writings, 145. 65. CD 1/1: 174. 66.  Levinas, “Transcendence and Intelligibility,” in Levinas Basic Philosophical Writings, 158. 67. Levinas, “God and Philosophy,” in ibid., 148. 68. Levinas, “Meaning and Sense,” in ibid., 52. 69. Ward, Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology, 9–10, 34. 70. CD 1/1:135. 71. Marquardt, Eia wärn wir da, 480.

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72. KD IV/4: 161. 73. CD II/1: 258. 74. Otto, Idea of the Holy, 25–26, 30. 75. Wyschogrod, Emmanuel Levinas, 179. 76. Ibid., 180–181. 77. Ibid., 237. 78. Heidegger, “The Way to Language,” 411. 79. In Krell’s account, Heidegger’s concern with being (as presence) and truth (as unconcealment) finds its mature stage in deepening aletheia as clearing rather than turning. Krell, “General Introduction: The Question of Being,” in Heidegger Basic Writings, 33. 80.  Heidegger, “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” in Heidegger Basic Writings, 444. 81. Ibid., 447. 82. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 474; 455–457. 83. In Barth’s critical discussion of analogia attributionis of Quenstedt, a Lutheran Orthodox theologian, see CD 2/1: 238–240. 84. CD I/1: 279. 85. “The Christian Community and the Civil Community” (1946), in Karl Barth, Theologian of Freedom, 281. 86. Ibid., 282. 87. F.W. Marquardt, Theologie und Sozialismus: Das Beispiel Karl Barths (Munich: Kaiser, 1972), 232. 88. Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming, 119. 89. Ibid., 38. 90. Ibid., 109. 91. CD II/1: 238. 92. CD III/2: 220. 93. CD III/2: 218. CD III/1:183. 94. CD III/2: 219. 95. CD IV/2: 38, 41. 96. CD IV/2: 9. 97. CD III/2: 6. 98. CD IV/2: 44. 99. CD IV/2: 52. 100. CD IV/2: 105. 101. CD IV/2: 116. 102. CD IV/2: 106. 103. CD III/1: 191. 104. CD III/2: 321. 105. Jüngel, God’s being Is in Becoming, 69–70. 106. CD III/2 § 45.2.

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107. CD III/2: 260. 108. CD II/1: 81. 109. CD IV/21 757. 110. Smith, The Argument to the Other, 216. 111. CD 1/1: 351. 112. CD IV/1: 166. 113. CD II/2: 200. 114. CD II/2: 198. See CD II/2. & 34. The Election of the Community. 1. Israel and the Church. 115. F.W. Marquardt, Die Entdeckung des Judentums für die christliche Theologie: Israel im Denken Karl Barths (Munich: Kaiser, 1967), 260. The dialectical predestination implies that God in Jesus Christ ordained life for humanity, but death for God. 116. Wyschogrod, Emmanuel Levinas, 182. 117.  This prophetic insight is deepened and renewed in F. W. Marquardt, who pioneers the critical, emancipatory model of Jewish–Christian relations as comprehended in the viva vox teaching between the Scripture and oral Torah. See Marquardt, “Why the Talmud Interests Me as a Christian,” in Theological Audacities. Selected Essays: Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, eds. Andreas Pangritz and Paul S. Chung (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010), 69. 118. Wyschogrod, Emmanuel Levinas, 186. 119. Herbert Spielberg, The Phenomenological Movement, 2, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 695, 700. 120.  At this juncture, I do not concur with Edith Wyschogrod who sees Levinas’ ‘irregular’ phenomenology of Saying in accordance with existential immanence of Heidegger and Bultmann. Wyschogrod, Emmanuel Levinas, 188. 219 footnote 6. 121.  Levinas, “Enigma and Phenomenon,” in Levinas Basic Philosophical Writings, 72. 122. Ibid., 71. 123. Ibid. Levinas may concur with Martin Buber’s critique of Kierkegaard, in which his image of the wholly other as the Absolute remains “partly pallid, partly crude, altogether false.” Martin Buber, The Eclipse of God (New York: Harper, 1952), 119. 124. Levinas, “Meaning and Sense,” in Levinas Basic Philosophical Writings, 38. 125. Ibid. 126. Levinas, “Is Ontology Fundamental,” in Ibid., 6–7. 127. CD 1/2: 464. 128. CD I/2: 468.

134  P.S. CHUNG 129.  Gerhard Ebeling, “Word of God and Hermeneutic,” in James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb, Jr, eds. The New Hermeneutic (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 84. 130. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (1922), trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), x. 131. CD 1/1:145, 283–284. 132. CD 4/3.2: 821. 133. CD II/1: 202. 134. CD IV/3.1: 164. 135.  Trutz Rendtorff, “Radikale Autonomie Gottes: Zum Verständnis der Theologie Karl Barths und ihre Folgen." in Rendtorff, Theorie des Christentums (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus Gerd Mohn, 1972), 161–181. 136. Dieter Schellong, Bürgertum und christliche Religion: Anpassungsprobleme der Theologie seit Schleiermacher (Munich: Kaiser, 1975), 109. 137. Levinas, “Meaning and Sense,” in Levinas Basic Philosophical Writings, 48. 138. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 146. 139.  Levinas, “Transcendence and Height,” in Levinas Basic Philosophical Writings, 20. 140.  Levinas may concur with Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s dialectic of Enlightenment in which Odysseus is portrayed as the prototype of Western bourgeois individual in exclusion of the other, in fraud and cunning. See. M. Horkheimer and Th. W. Adorno , Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 56. 141.  Levinas, “Transcendence and Height,” in Levinas Basic Philosophical Writings, 50. 142. CD III/3: 4. 143. CD IV/3.2: 577. 144. CD III/3: 24. 145. CD III/3: 35. 146. CD III/1: 37. 147. CD 1/1: 54.

CHAPTER 7

Theological Audacity, Analogical Relationality, and Religions

A hermeneutical question of how to read and actualize the theology of Barth is bound to unearth the extent to which his theological reasoning and inquiry center around the subject matter of the gospel as attested in the Bible, and interpreted in the confessional writings and symbols. Concentrating on the subject matter of the Scripture, his theological thoughts take a daring and audacious stance to the Word of God, humanity, and world. As Barth formulates, “theology can no longer be established through anything but audacity.”1 Barth’s theological audacity has not been brought up and explicated in his study of Anselm and his dialectical assessment of religion. This chapter seeks to take up Barth’s theological audacity in analysis of his analogical thought (Anselm) in hermeneutical import and experience, and to scrutinize his utilization of Feuerbach’s critique of religion in a critical-constructive manner. Drawing upon this analysis and clarification, we would be in a better position to evaluate Barth’s dialectical view of revelation and religion in connection with his irregular mode of thought and his teaching of lights and words within the doctrine of reconciliation. Barth’s “speech-act” perspective in the doctrine of reconciliation is intertwined with several motifs and styles of thought, an irregular style of thought underlying an analogical mode of relationality and political implication. This inquiry relocates Barth to be on the threshold of comparative theology in terms of recognition and solidarity. Finally, in excursus we shall critically compare Barth’s analogia fidei with the Catholic teaching of analogia entis in order to emphasize the act structure of Barth’ relational theology. © The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5_7

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Theological Epistemology and Analogical Mode of Rationality In the study of Anselm, Barth elucidates a dimension of analogical language in connection with the theological epistemology of “faith seeking understanding.” In Anselm’s faith epistemology, knowledge and truth are identical in God the proper because the search of knowledge is really immanent in faith.2 Barth’s relational theology implies a rational struggle with the mystery of God and maintains that rational thinking is internal to faith. The intellectus fidei refers to faith’s critical understanding of the Word of God, such that faith and its experience of the Word of God can be progressed and explicated through intellectual reflection and argumentation. Human critical thinking, along with dialectical method, is bound to the subject matter of revelation and gospel,3 which transcends human reasoning and dialectical method within faith. Credo makes the science of theology feasible in the intellectual inquiry and reflection of the credo, as already spoken and affirmed. It explicates the relation between subjective faith and the objective of confessions in church. Theological science is positively expressed as the science of the confession and doctrines.4 The objective Credo leads the believer to humility before God, the truth of rationality (ratio veritas). In ratio veritas, God’s revelation enables and establishes theology as theological science, in which every theological assertion remains inadequate to express the divine reality of the ratio veritas. As Barth writes, “Strictly speaking, it is only God Himself who has a conception of God.”5 God is not only wholly-other or “the inner dialectic of the Sache”6 because even the most worthy descriptions of God are only relatively worthy.

Analogical Actualism and Real Dialektik God shows the divine self to the inquirer, and intellectual thinking is of a dialectical method and analogical actualism. But God’s aletheia does not imply a divine dialectical and ontological movement from God’s side (a Real Dialektik) toward us.7 McCormack introduces Barth’s notion of the inner dialectic of the matter by Real Dialetik in order to portray Barth as a critically realistic dialectical theologian.8 Barth characterizes “the inner dialectic of the Sache and its recognition in the words of the text” as “the decisive factor in understanding and exposition.”9 Not the divine Real Dialektik as such, but the inner

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dialectic of matter leads Barth to a limited and qualified recognition of Kierkeggard’s notion of the infinite qualitative distinction between time and eternity, in a way that “God is in heaven, and thou art on earth.”10 After his 1922 Elgersburg lecture,11 Barth received from Erik Peterson a highly critical assessment of his dialectical theology. In a pamphlet “Was ist Theologie?,” Peterson’s critique is poignant. “God is just appearance as the dialectical question is appearance, and the answer of the dialectician is also appearance. Likewise, God the proper in this dialectic is only a dialectical possibility.”12 For participation in the Scientia divina in the event of revelation, Peterson calls for analogous knowledge of God in contrast to a dialectical understanding of revelation as paradox.13 Certainly Barth initiated a correlational model between dialectical method and analogical construal. In response to Peterson, Barth argues that revelation is neither dialectical nor paradoxical. But there is dialectic “when theology begins, when we think, speak, or write or argue on the basis of the revelation.”14 In Barth’s definition of the speech of God as the mystery of God,15 God’s speech is God’s act, that is God’s speech-act, which is not affected by sic etnon of that dialectic. God in se is free in the act.16 God’s Word remains God’s own, not bound or attached to the dialectical concept of this thesis or to that antithesis because it is the mystery of God, always a penultimate de-assuring.17 God’s aletheia in the dialectic of veiling and unveiling implies indirect human knowledge of God. Thus, Barth makes the distinction God in se from God for us by thwarting Gogarten’s direct identification or conflation of God in se with God for us.18 The Word of God is one, not dialectical, because the Word of God in its veiling is the claiming of human beings by God, while in the unveiling through the revealed Word God turns toward human beings.19 In biblical witness to the revelation in the threefold sense, Barth gives a clear answer to the aletheia of God in the dialectic of unveiling and veiling in Trinitarian-Christological context: veiling (Deus absconditus on the cross)—unveiling (Deus revelatus in resurrection)—impartation (Holy Spirit in Pentecost).20 This act structure of divine Self-determination in the Trinitarian, Christological sense is a free act of God in the divine speech-act. Certainly, God’s revelation both in veiling and in unveiling avails ourselves of the concept of analogy, together with dialectic in teleologically ordered. In Barth’s account, what converts the creature into an analogue of God lies only in the veracity of the God known “analogously in the knowledge of God, and therefore, in the veracity of God.”21

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Analogical actualism is strictly of a Christological character since a relationship between God and creature cannot be known apart from the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ. In Barth’s definition of the speech of God as the act of God, the Deus revelatus as the Deus absconditus, and vice versa, is not intelligible per se like Hegelian dialectics. The Barthian notion of actualism implies that divine modes of being and its actual occurrence are a historicity of revelation. God is revealed as the Lord in the three elements: unveiling (Easter), veiling (Good Friday), and impartation (Pentecost), which gives full clarity to Barth’s notion of “the unveiling and veiling of God in His revelation,” or “God in the dialectic of unveiling and veiling.”22

The Ratio Veritatis and Analogical Reasoning In Barth’s theological science, the undialectical, living, free act of God in revelation becomes the ratio veritatis which is identical with the divine Word. Barth’s actualistic mode of thought is based on the ratio veritatis which is inseparable from his analogical mode of thought (analogia relationis). Barth relates faith to the Word of God, which is identical with preaching in particular human words, such that faith is the presupposition of knowledge of God.23 Unlike Anselm’s identification of the ratio fidei with the ratio veritatis, Barth does not conflate the Scripture with Jesus Christ as such. All theological statements are under eschatological reservation since they are incomplete, broken, and inadequate in expression of the ratio veritatis. Human talk about God is undertaken per analogiam, per aliquam similitudinem aut imaginem, along with dialectical method and reasoning. If the knowledge of God in church and faith is “knowledge per similitudinem,” the revelation of God can be manifest in the world, “in speculo, per similitudinem, per analogiam.”24 God makes this analogical understanding of God’s reality into true knowledge of God’s nature and creates the fully efficacious substitute for the experiential knowledge of God.25

Analogical Relationality and Solidarity World

with the

Knowledge of God in church and faith, which is knowledge by analogy,26 entails a solidarity with the world in Anselm. In Barth’s account, Anselm is an important theologian who was probably able to speak about Christian

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faith transcending the ecclesia sphere and boundary. “The unbeliever’s quest is not simply taken up in any causal fashion and incorporated into the theological task but…it is in fact treated as identical with the quest of the believer himself.”27 God in revelation becomes the driving force for making a notion of analogy scientifically and intellectually related to the Word of God. It also makes dialectical inquiry and method an inherent part of the analogical construal and hermeneutical circle in openness for and solidarity with the world. God in revelation is known and apprehended analogically in human faith (analogy of faith), but our knowledge is self-critical and dialectical because it consists only in approximation, always remaining incomplete and open-ended, in need of correction at every point.28 In light of God revealed as “that which nothing greater can be conceived,” “there is a solidarity between theologian and the worldling… because the theologian is determined to address the worldling as one with whom he has at least this in common—theology.”29 Barth understands Anselm as the one who “did not really mean standing on the side of the gulf between the believer and non-believer, but crossed it.”30 I characterize this solidarity with the world in terms of an analogical relationality or relationalism in which Barth continues to deepen his relational theology in solidarity with the world in connection with early political reflection of social analogy, especially in his Tambach lecture (1919).31 Barth’s study of Anselm is not merely scholastically oriented in his understanding of analogy, but it grounds Barth’s notion of social analogy in the intellectual significance of Anselm for the outsider of Christian faith. In analogical construal, Barth’s concern about secular humanism and solidarity between the church and the children of the world is articulated in terms of God’s humanity in Christ. Dialectical method and inquiry work together with analogical-hermeneutical expression of divine truth. The correlation between analogical construal and dialectical inquiry in Barth’s thought makes Balthasar’s thesis of “replacement of the principle of dialectic by that of analogy” suspicious.32 Barth’s analogical relationality may supplement a theological actualism33 in social-critical, material terms because God as the Source of analogy (analogans) makes secular realms (analogata: predicates of the gospel) into the field of divine semantics, making use of secular parables as analogical witness to the kingdom of God.

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Analogical Relationality and Hermeneutical Circle Analogy means partial correspondence and agreement. In the revelation of God coming to us, as divine illumination, we, in the word of similarity, participate in the incomprehensible similarity which is posited in God’s revelation. Despite the limitation of human language, our language, concepts, and words as God’s creation should not be established apart from God’s revelation.34 “God gave himself as the object of his knowledge and God illumined him that he might know him as object.”35 The indirect Christian Cartesianism in the experience of the Word of God implies the possibility of making the Word of God into a predicate of human existence or human possession. Barth’s fundamental thesis of revelation as “God speaking in person” grounded in God the Insuperable makes human language into a constructive import in analogical expression and hermeneutical experience of divine word and truth. Barth’ analogical reflection of the Word of God and experience entail a locus of spirituality in terms of the possibility of human experience of the Word of God. Remarkably, this position does not argue against the notion of feeling, conscience, or the intellect in the experience of the Word of God, which runs counter to an indirect Christian Carthesianism founded upon “the certainty of the self-certainty of man in general.”36 For Barth, human self-understanding can become significant only to the degree that an individual understands him/herself as the one confronted with the divine promise by seeing him/herself in the specific light from it. When the Word of God encounters the whole existence of the individual in revelation, Scripture, and proclamation, human engagement in the experience of the Word of God takes place in the whole existence. As Barth argues, “there takes place an understanding, a personal involvement, an acceptance, an assent, an approval, a making present of remote times, an obedience, a decision, a halting before the mystery, a stimulation by the inner life, a basing of man’s whole life on this mystery that is beyond himself.”37 This implies “a sure and necessary correspondence to the Word of God” grounded in assurance of faith, a trembling assurance, in ongoing renewal and orientation to new faith, “anew to the free actualization of the grace experienced.”38 Accordingly, Barth takes up the restitution of human beings through God’s reconciliation in Christ, seeing it as a human possibility and reality

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in experience of the Word of God only in faith. Barth’s analogy of faith finds its critical and constructive import in Luther’s teaching of justification, in which Barth remarkably notices its forensic moment (extra nos) linked with the model of union between the Word, soul, and indwelling of Christ in us, taking place in faith and deification (In ipsa fide Christus adest). This mystical vocabulary cannot be avoided, though it has little to do with a changing of human nature into divine nature.39 It is true of Calvin, such that Reformation doctrine of justification and faith is incorporated into Barth’s hermeneutical experience of the Word of God in an analogical mode of relationality and hermeneutical circle of truth of the Word of God. Barth’s theology of faith experience with the Word of God affirms Luther’s experiential notion of real presence of Christ in faith, and especially Calvin’s notion of union with Christ for deepening a personal and social aspect of his analogical mode of relationality, “with, in and through” Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.40 Barth’s theology of experience, framed within the hermeneutical experience of the Word of God in faith, finds its unique locus of dynamism in the present and eschatological move within this analogical circle of the Word of God. There is a hermeneutical circle in the undertaking of faith in terms of human participation, God’s adaptation to analogy, and analogy in relation to revelation. This hermeneutical circle, namely the circle of verity of God (circulus veritatis Dei), renders Barth’s analogical relationality into a hermeneutical acknowledgment of God’s initiative and human experience in the grace of Jesus Christ. In human participation in the truth of God, we are allowed to appropriate God’s promise and grace in revelation, in which human words possess the entire veracity, becoming God’s own word. It receives the momentum of parrhesia in speaking the truth of God in which genuine preaching is distinguished from merely speaking about God.

Critical Note in Transition Before I proceed to analyze Barth’s acceptance of Feuerbach’s critique of religion, a summary and clarification of the previous discussion of analogical relationality helps us better understand Barth’s dialectical view of revelation and religion. My critical exegesis is undertaken in construction of Barth’s mode of relationality in the

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study of Anselm and Barth’s analogical-linguistic construal. It necessitates a phenomenological elucidation in matters of analogical relation between analogans (God’s speech-act) and analogata (the semantic field), if the latter says “something meaningful about something” of divine mystery in pointing to the subject matter of the kingdom of God. However, Barth has left this clarification open, causing a misunderstanding of his actualistic mode of thought from above (for instance, the doctrine of election in the pre-temporal context), which tends to marginalize social, material realms. The worldly realms have been left to their own device, as seen in an unfortunate charge of positivism of revelation against Barth. The analogical relationality in its hermeneutical significance is clarified to stand in solidarity with the world; it responds to Bonhoeffer’s notion of the world come of age.41 Barth’s theology of word in act and mystery cuts through limitations of dialectical negativism, and protests against theological justification in the existential co-position between the speaking God and the hearing human. Now, in Barth’s own revision, we read that in God’s free grace the human being is co-posited in the Word of God with factual necessity, but the human being is not essential to it.42 I take Barth’s own revision to be intact in penetrating his Church Dogmatics, as obviously seen in his poignant critique of the Christian indirect Carthesianism. Rather than developing an exercise of dialectical theology, Barth, in his study of Anselm, poses analogical reasoning of the Word of God and solidarity with the world. Nonetheless, Barth does not identify himself with Anselm’s proof of the existence of God.43 A linguistic concept of similarity, analogy, and partial correspondence and agreement within the hermeneutical frame of reference guides a dialectical reasoning of aletheia of the Word of God in veiling and unveiling as indirect knowledge of God; such indirect knowledge is seen in light of the circulus vertitatis Dei, which designates a way of speaking God’s coming to us in a gracious and living way, enabling parrheisa of divine truth to cut through limitations of negative dialecticism. The correlation model between dialectical method and the analogical reasoning serves in reinforcing Barth’s relational theology, from his Safenwil time, via his study of Anselm penetrating through Church Dogmatics. This critical note helps us better understand Barth’s discussion of Feuerbach and his dialectical-analogical view of religion.

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and Feuerbach’s

143

Critique of Religion

In the discussion of Barth and religion, it is of special significance to consider Barth’s attitude toward Feuerbach. Barth’s analogical theology can be seen in his overcoming, and also utilization, of Feuerbach’s critique of religion for a counterattack upon the humanization of God in NeoProtestant theology.44 In Feuerbach’s account of religion, the consciousness of God is the self-consciousness of humans, thus the knowledge of God is the self-knowledge of the human. The direct unity of species and individuality is the highest principle, in which the God of Christendom turns into the embodiment of the human species, realizing itself in the course of world history. To the extent that God becomes human, the human person is the true Christ in the consciousness of the species. Feuerbach’s question to modern theology can be sharply seen in his thesis: “theology has long since become anthropology.”45 Despite his recognition of Feuerbach, Barth safeguards his “wholly other” theology of God the Insuperable, immune from the former’s theory of human projection. Insofar as the critique of religion becomes deconstruction of idolatrous images and stands in service of the God of the Bible, Feuerbach’s anti-theological position can be accepted by Barth as “more theological than that of many theologians.”46 Feuerbach summons a turning from God to humanity and the world, from heaven to earth, and the bodiless supernaturalism to real life.47 In Barth’s account, the principle of Feuerbach’s philosophy centers on the actual and complete being of humanity, its bodily life in its entirety in contrast to the I of Kant and Fichte, or the absolute Mind, of Hegel. Feuerbach’s critique of philosophical idealism is seen in his argument against their supernaturalism seeking the divine essence in reason, apart from human bodily life. Feuerbach’s determined antispiritualism, or humanitarian atheism provides Barth with an opportunity to renew and heal a traditional limitation of theology and church in the area of social and economic matters. His project of humanizing religion constitutes an integral part in motivating “a struggle for emancipation,” influencing upon the scientific socialism of Marx and Engels, and undergirds “a fight for freedom which was initiated as well as limited by the Revolution.”48 Feuerbach’s critique finds its prophetic role in Barth’s critical examination of the church and theology of his time, as turned into anthropology. Church and also

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theology undermine a bodily dimension of the gospel in the social economic realm, for the sake of individualistic religious consciousness.49

Barth’s Way: From Christ

to Religion

Certainly, Barth overcomes Feuerbach’s anthropological reductionism in terms of a Trinitarian understanding of God’s self-revelation in Christ by “develop[ing] an extraordinary anthropological correlate.”50 First of all, Barth’s dialectical view of religion entails a critical import about religion as unbelief as being analogous to Feuerbach’s critique of religion. For his thesis of revelation as the sublation (Aufhebung) of religion,51 Barth deals with analyzing the problem of religion in theological tradition and context. Aufhebung, in a dialectical sense, has nothing to do with the one-sided meaning of abolition, wrongly translated.52 In his theological explication of religion, he does not reject the phenomenology of religion and historical study of it, in which the voice of the deity had been heard and asserted. Its meaning was investigated in the Veda of the Indians, the Avesta of the Persians, the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, the Koran of the Muslims. Their respective positions about the bible and belief systems, doctrine, the nature of people, and moral and religious laws, among others, can be regarded on the same scale as Christian religion, doctrine, and piety.53 For Barth, “in His revelation God has actually entered a sphere in which His own reality and possibility are encompassed by a sea of more or less adequate, but at any rate fundamentally unmistakable, parallels and analogies in human realities and possibilities.”54 Barth concerns “fundamentally unmistakable parallels and analogies” as the hiddenness of God in the world of religions which stands in consonance with Christian religion. Barth adopts his standpoint of God’s revelation in the assessment of religion since he is keenly aware that in theological tradition the revelation of religion has been discerned and declared rather than the religion of revelation. Since Neo-Protestantism means religionism, it does not comprehend religion in light of revelation, but revelation by religion.55 For instance, Schleiermacher found the essence of theology in religion as feeling, in which revelation becomes a definite impression in generating a definite feeling and then a definite religion. Troeltsch attempts to explicate the main task of the theologian to enter hypothetically into the phenomena of general religious history, such that Christianity is relatively

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regarded as the best religion for the time being in a comparative assessment of the various religions.56 Barth’s theological position centers upon revelation, or God in revelation as present in the world of human religion, in which he applies the Christological doctrine of assumptio carnis; very God and very man for his thesis of revelation as the sublation of religion. In the analysis of the relation of revelation and religion, Barth explicates the polysemy of sublation, first, singling out the church as the locus of true religion. But it does not mean that the Christian religion, as such, is the fulfillment of human religion, as fundamentally superior to all other religions.57 Barth seeks to treat religions, including the Christian religion, with a tolerance informed by the forbearance of Christ in the grace of God’s reconciliation with the godless people and their religions.58 Based on tolerance and the grace of reconciliation, Barth critically deals with religion as unbelief, “the one great concern, of godless man.”59 This suspension upon religion as unbelief does not necessarily mean a negative value judgment because first it is positively seen in light of tolerance and the grace of reconciliation. Then, this suspension or judgment affects and is applied, above of all, to the adherents of Christian religion. Thus, Barth warns that “we have not to become Philistines or Christian iconoclasts in face of human greatness… in this very sphere of religion.”60 But there is an exclusive contradiction because in religion the human ventures to grasp at God, a grasping against revelation by providing a substitute; religion is the contradiction of revelation, which expresses the concentrated form of human unbelief.61

Mysticism and Atheism Seen from within the standpoint of revelation, as well as from the history and phenomenology of religion, Barth maintains that religion is self-contradictory and impossible per se. This is because the religious individual unsettles himself/herself, being plunged into uncertainty. This situation calls religion into question by mysticism and atheism. Drawing upon the history and phenomenology of religion, Barth argues that the outward ritual and actual satisfaction of the religious need are only a relative necessity.62 Mysticism as the higher consecration of the human being is secured by human exercising toward the external world, in dedication to a higher

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consecration of human being, and it renounces religion in regard to expression, externalization, and manifestation.63 Atheism (nearly identical with secularism) in its most radical form has its same aim as that of mysticism, as seen in the Chinese Dao, the Indian Tat tvamasi, and Hegel’s absolute Spirit in which “mysticism is esoteric atheism.”64 Barth’s critical analysis of mysticism and atheism is context-bound, as analogous to Feuerbach’s proposal of the real, actual person against religious projection and illusionism.65 In Barth’s dogmatic reflection of religion, we may see that his critique of religion is embedded with his fighting against “German Christians” in collaboration with National Socialism, built upon a form of Christian religion via natural theology. Barth’s dogmatic reflection of religion cannot be adequately comprehended apart from his political context, in which he indicates and performs the Word of God in terms of faith seeking understanding.66

Critique, Recognition, and Solidarity of Religion

in the

Study

In the suspension of religion as unbelief, Barth then exalts religion for being upheld and concealed in revelation, in which Barth affirms Christianity as a true religion, not in the sense of having a polemic against the non-Christian religions.67 For Barth, Christian religion is the true one only as it listens to the divine relation in the forgiveness of sin, which is also linked to the divine speech-act in the otherness of religious others. “The religion of revelation is indeed bound up with the revelation of God,”68 not vice versa. God in revelation institutes other religions as an analogical medium within effectiveness of revelation. Christian religion is true only seen in light of divine election, justification, judgment, and sanctification, such that it has missional commission for God’s mission, by “confront[ing] the world of religions as the one true religion, with absolute self-confidence to invite and challenge it to abandon its ways and to start on the Christian way.”69 John Hick’s critique of Barth as “such sublime bigotry” relates to this statement. His argument against Barth is taken without unpacking Barth’s dialectical polysemy of religion.70 If this self-confidence based of the grace of justification extra nos relies upon other factors such as churchly institutions, theological systems, inner religious experiences, the moral transformation of the believers, and the wider civilizations effect of Christian religion, it is on the path to uncertainty, a returning of unbelief.71

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If Barth’s critique of religion as unbelief is primarily applied to Christian religion, Barth’s tone with absolute self-confidence of revelation needs to be seen, where Christian religion lost its faithfulness to the subject matter of the gospel: for instance, in the context of Corpus Christianum, Imperial Church, the crusade, Christian support of the First World War, German Christian collaboration with National Socialism, and finally Holocaust. Against this unbelief of German Christians as a form of blamage effect, Barth calls for spiritual poverty, humble attitude, and openness on the basis of the grace of justification, divine election, and sanctification (linked to the name of Jesus Christ) in encounter with non-Christian religions. Accordingly, it would be hard and even incompetent to evaluate Barth’s dialectal view of religion(s), unless we take into account his analogical notion of God’s speech-act connected with attentive listening to a very strange, profane voice of God.72 It culminates in its fully developed form in his later teaching of words and lights (extra muros ecclesiae) within the context of reconciliation.73 In his teaching of lights and words within the context of reconciliation, Barth takes into account the recognition of the religious other; God may speak to the church in the otherness of the other, speaking even from the mouth of Balaam where listeners recognize the wellknown voice of the Good Shepherd despite its sinister origin.74 As a discerning guide of lights in correspondence with the Kingdom of God, Barth’s guideline of discernment and recognition is framed within a supplementary and auxiliary criterion.75 In so doing, the church has the task of closely examining whether profane words and lights are in agreement with Scripture, church tradition, or doctrine. It also asks whether the fruits of these words outside Christianity are good, and if their effect in the community is positive. This perspective encourages the need to learn of other religions as well as includes critique of religion. Without an appeal to the sorry hypothesis of a natural theology,76 Barth positively embraces dangerous modern expressions like “the revelation of creation” and “primal revelation.”77 The divine work of reconciliation does not negate the divine work of creation, nor does it deprive it of meaning.78 The world, the cosmos, and nature retain their own lights and truths and therefore their own speech and words.79 There is the luminosity of the creaturely world in the theatrum gloriae Dei, functioning as the sphere of revelation and reconciliation.80

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Barth surprisingly argues in his posthumous writing of Christian Life: “God’s name, then, is already holy in the world that he created good long before Christianity begins to pray for its hallowing or to be zealous for the honor of God. Is not his name holy in every blade of grass and every snowflake?”81 Reminiscent of Luther’s metaphor of creation as larvae Dei (masks of God) in connection with Calvin’s theatrum gloriae Dei, God is objectively known from the side of creation through Christ’s reconciliation—in his reflection on the hiddenness of God.82 Barth’s theological hermeneutics affirm the knowability of God by God alone, as visible only to faith attested by faith in the grace of God’s revelation. But in the context of the integration of creation with reconciliation, Barth argues more provocatively that we are at fault if a subjective knowledge of God on the human side does not correspond to God’s objective knowledge.83

Critical Conclusion: Irregular Style in Speech-Act and Political Responsibility A critical exposition of Barth’s thought form, movement, and style seeks to retrieve his own insight into religion and comparative theology in a more coherent manner. Furthering Barth’s insight and initiation toward the comparative study of religion, I find his irregular mode of thought inherently structured in his deliberation of the living dynamism of the Word of God. It is undertaken through practice in an unmethodical, chaotic manner, like in guerrilla warfare. It has little to do with the regular scholastic practice of dogmaticizing, becoming hardened and wooden.84 In the doctrine of the Word of God, Barth correlates regular systematic style of dogmatic teaching with the aphoristic style of irregular teaching.85 Set within the framework of all cultural problems, theology as a specific activity of humanity must understand the Word of God in a completely new way: God’s speech, God’s act, and God’s mystery in which revelation forms the starting point, and proclamation the goal.86 Our intellectual reflection in faith-seeking understanding depends on and is bound to the subject matter of God’s act-speech in revelation because the name Jesus Christ “is not a system representing a unified experience or a unified thought; it is the Word of God itself.”87 This name is sharper than a two-edged sword (Heb. 4:12). I characterize this irregular system in the style of guerrilla warfare in terms of the

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non-identical motif, which reinforces and sharpens an analogical mode of relationality with prophetic awareness and social responsibility. This critical, emancipatory horizon of God in speech-act can be clarified and renewed in the phenomenological description of intertextuality between the text and the world as the realm of divine semantic, “saying something meaningful about something” to the church. It paves a path toward a comparative study of religion in terms of listening to and learning the strange, mysterious voice of God in the otherness of the Other, along with discernment, problematization (unbelief as blamage effect such as crusade and holocaust), recognition, and solidarity. This stance takes issue with postliberal textual theology. According to Lindbeck, intratextual hermeneutics interprets extratextual realities only through the lens of the biblical text, rather than engaging the biblical messages with extrabiblical languages under universal effectiveness of God’s speech-act: “It is the text, so to speak, which absorbs the world, rather than the world the text.”88 This intratextual perspective on absorption-of-the-world-into-the-text seriously undermines Barth’s speech-act theology. In the comparative study of religious texts, the Christian texts are not in an absolute position to describe and absorb the whole universe of meaning. Barth utilizes Luther’s notion of viva vox Evangelii to come into play in the constitutive epistemology in shaping Barth’s theology of the Word. God as the subject of speaking through proclamation remains central in Luther’s notion of viva vox Evangelii, implying the exegetical principle of “what promotes Christ” in interpretation of the scriptures. This finds a hermeneutical significance in Barth’s exegetical theology. “The gospel simply means a preaching and crying out loud of God’s grace and mercy merited and won by the Lord Christ with His death. …not what stands in books or is made up of letters, but rather [it is] an oral preaching and lively word and a voice that rings out in the whole world and publicly cried out loud that it may be everywhere heard.”89 This viva vox perspective remains crucial in Barth’s speech-act in its irregular style because Luther is credited as an irregular theologian.90 The historical account and the personal confession can become means only to this end in view of contemporary issues, unsettling, with no selfcomplacency, against the rigid dogmatics of the old style.91 The text does not absolve the world of other religions, but God in the living speech-act or God in viva vox Evangelii embraces the text, people, and the world, creating the intertextuality between the text of the home

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tradition and other traditions as the semantic field, “saying something meaningful about something” to each tradition. Herein, faith seeks understanding of the other through collectio, dialogue, and solidarity with the world, in which God awakens the Christian church to remain spiritually poor, adopting a humble attitude, and standing in openness before the divine mystery under which the otherness of the other finds its interstice. Barth strives to unmask the “unsaid, the ‘non-identical,’” and the marginalized in the society and the world in light of the mystery of God’s speech-act, in a responsible response to cut through such traditional hierarchical forms of old natural theology. An irregular motif as the non-identical stance reinforces and sharpens his analogical relationality in hermeneutical significance for the study of religion. This phenomenological description of Barth’s thought form registers him as the one who initiates a comparative theology in a critical, emancipatory manner. A theological audacity in the prophetic tradition of Barth may continue to find its import in the comparative study of religion and solidarity with those on the margins.

Excursus: Analogia Relationis

and Analogia

Entis

Excursus entails a critical elucidation of Barth’s complicated relationship to analogia entis. Considering the documents of Vatican II, Barth found it no longer necessary to discuss this life long debate because “we are in unity about what can be meant by it.”92 It is Jüngel who mediates hermeneutically ontologically Barth’s notion of analogia fidei or relation (analogia fidei seu relationis) with the Catholic notion of analogia entis since he thinks that Da-sein always implies a relation with the being.93 In his analogical approach to theological anthropology, Jüngel offers a new definition of analogia fidei in terms of “language form of faith” as founded upon Heidegger’s ontology: “God speaks—Human being corresponds.”94 This thesis seeks to qualify the analogia relationis or fidei to have its import for the possibility of theological anthropology.95 Furthermore, Jüngel defends Przywara’s concept of analogia entis formulated in the fourth Lateran Council: “greater dissimilarity in a so great a likeness” between God and the creature that is central in the structure of Przywara’s analogia entis. In Jüngel’s argument, the analogia entis is essentially rooted in “the inaccessibility of God”96 in which he charges Barth’s failure to comprehend Prazywara in this regard.

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However, it is not a new idea at all, though, because such inaccessibility is approached in ontological capacity within a greater dissimilarity. In a critical view of the document of Vatican I, Barth already affirmed his position that “God can be known only through God, namely in the event of the divine encroachment of His self-revelation.”97 Likewise, Barth is critical of Aeterni Patris in Vatican I which relates to Aquinas’s position in the Contra gentiles: “human reason is disposed to place the most ample confidence and authority in the Word of God.”98 More than that, Barth already adopted a positive stance toward Söhngen’s new interpretation of analogia entis as subordination to analogia fidei, even saying that if this version belongs to the mainstream interpretation of Roman Catholic theology, he must withdraw his earlier charge of the analogia entis “as the invention of anti-Christ.”99 In Söhngen’s position, Barth reads: there has to be an assumption of the analogia entis by the analogia fidei because “Analogia fidei is sanans et elevans analogia entis” through Jesus Christ.100 [Analogy of faith is healing and elevating an analogy of being through Jesus Christ]. Then, the analogia entis must be subordinated to the analogoa fidei, not superordinated to the knowledge of the activity of God. In Söhngen’s article, the word of God in assumption of human nature is analogia fidei in assumption of analogia entis. Faith’s participation in God as the children of God is not opposed to participatio entis; “it is participation in being” by “a truly human participation in God by reason only of the divine power of grace.”101 If analogia entis is structured within word and faith and it implies participation of believers as the whole existence in God, Barth does not reject such new, yet deviated version of traditional teaching of analogia entis. Nonetheless, esse sequitur operai (the knowledge of being follows the knowledge of activity) must not be reversed or changed into the Thomist principle of opeari sequitur esse (the dynamism or act of all being is preceded by its real existence). Barth runs counter to the ontological position in that there is no possible act if there is not being. Rather, Barth affirms that God’s word in action or speech-act remains a priority, without collapsing the priority of God’s word into its historical becoming or sequence. “The being of God cannot be compared with that of man.”102 Barth’s speech-act theology does not fit the modernist version of onto-theo-logy, whether in a Heideggerian fashion, in the Hegelian philosophy of history, or critical realism a la Hermann Cohen.103

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Barth’s analogia relationis is a correspondence of relations based on God’s “yes” to creation. God’s being is critically an all-transforming reality, and God conscripts the lights of the world, witnessing to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ as the reflection of the fatherly heart in the self-representation of God’s kingdom stands “in His corresponding partisanship of those who are lowly in the world.”104 In the prophetic work of Jesus Christ, we are called the covenant partner by living in contact, solidarity, and fellowship with God, the fellows, and the world reconciled.105 Thus, Barth does not bypass Marx’s critique of the church as “a relic of capitalism.” In his theological anthropology and eschatology, Barth critically integrates historical materialism which deemed per accidens (in accidental or non-essential character) not as per essentiam (in essential character).106 Barth’s prophetic-ethical understanding of culture is established within the framework of reconciliation and eschatological anticipation, in which he is opposed to liberal or cultural Protestantism in its accommodation to German culture.107 Barth’s relational theology always entails a critical response to theologia naturalis vulgaris or a disguised acceptance of logos spermatikos that is vulnerable to the threatening danger of nothingness imbued with the reality of National Socialism and lordless powers in our midst. The act structure of analogia relationis critically transcends an ontological form of language and it relativizes, integrates, and transforms the traditional and metaphysical structure of analogia entis materially and socially for radicalizing the theological “what” in light of God’s reconciliation in Christ.108 Barth is not reluctant to critically and constructively assess Aquinas’ dictum that “grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.”109 If theologia naturalis intends to speak of nature and culture in a more reliable and prophetic manner, it must not evaporate theologia revelatus in the act of reconciliation. Barth’s acceptance of Anselm against Aquinas turns upside down Aquinas’ notion of theologia naturalis as formulated in his so-called five ways in causal terms, and later Barth establishes his double agency of divine concursus. In God’s power expressed as grace, God’s loving and free activity (primary cause) makes human freedom (secondary cause) possible since God loves the creature in accepting solidarity with it on behalf of “the relative autonomy of creaturely activity.”110 Barth’s relational theology in the double agency of concursus is grounded in the Word of God and it takes issue with Aquinas who tends not to safeguard absolute unlikeness

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or pure difference between God and the creaturely life. In Barth’s view, there is a lack of eschatological thinking and dynamism in the Thomist model of the primary–secondary causation, which is separated from the new creation in Jesus Christ (Gal 6:15; 2 Cor 5:17); that is not the repetition of the first creation.111 Barth’s relational theology entails hermeneutical significance and political implication. A dialectical method supplements conceptual thinking, critical analysis, and constructive arguments in undergirding a critical-emancipatory dimension of analogical theology in light of kingdom of God. Certainly we read that Barth states more explicitly the relationship between analogans (God) analogatum (secular forms of parables) just before his death, as obvious in his letter to Bethge’s Bonhoeffer biography: Ethics—co-humanity—servant church-discipleship—democratic socialism—peace movement—political responsibility.112

Notes







1.  Karl Barth, “Unsettled Questions for Theology Today,” (1920) in Theology and Church: Shorter Writings, 1920–1928, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith (London: SCM, 1962), 72. 2. Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum, trans. Ian W. Robertson (London: SCM, 1960), 19. 18. 16. (Hereafter FQI). 3. George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 53. 4. FQI: 26. 5. FQI: 29. 6. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (1922), 10. This work refers to the second edition of revising the first edition of the Epistle to the Romans (1919). 7. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, 432. 8. Ibid., 11. 9. Ibid. 10. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (1922), 10. 11. Barth, “The Word of God and the Task of Ministry” in The Word of God and the Word of Man, 183–217. 12. Erik Peterson, “Was ist Theologie?,” in Theologosche Traktate (Munich: ImKoesel, 1951), 13. 13. Chung, Karl Barth, 253. 14. Barth, “Church and Theology,” (1925), in Theology and Church: Shorter Writings, 1920–1928, 299.

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15. CD I/1: 162. 16. CD 1/1: 157. 17. CD I/1: 164. 18. CD I/1: 171. 19. CD I/1: 179. 20. CD I/1: 332. 21. CD II/1:239. 22. CD I/1: 330. 23. FQI: 24. 24. FQI: 117. 80. 25. FQI: 167. 26. FQI: 29. 117. 27. FQI: 67. 28. CD II/1: 202. 29. FQI: 68. 30. FQI: 71. CD II/1: 127. 31. Marquardt, “First Report on Karl Barth’s Socialist Speeches (1970/81),” in Marquardt, Theological Audacities, 103–122. 32. Hans Urs v. Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. John Drury (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 116. 33. Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth, 31. 34. CD 2/1:232. 35. FQI: 171. 36. CD 1/1: 219, 209, 214. 37. CD 1/1:219. 38. CD 1/1: 220, 225. 39. CD I/1: 242, 222, 240. 40. CD IV/3.2: 551–554. 41. As Bonhoeffer argues, “‘Take it or leave it’: virgin birth, Trinity, or anything else; each is an equally significant and necessary part of the whole, which must simply be swallowed as a whole or not at all.” Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 286. 42. CD 1/1: 140. 43. FQI: 9. 44.  Barth, “Ludwig Feuerbach,” in Barth, Theology and Church: Shorter Writings, 1920–1928, 217–37. (=TC). 45.  “An Introductory Essay” by Karl Barth in Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), xxi. 46. Barth, “Ludwig Feuerbach,” in TC: 217. 47. Ibid., 219. 48. Ibid., 233.

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49.  “An Introductory Essay” by Karl Barth in Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, xiv, xxi. 50. Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth, 37. 51. CD1/2: §17. 52.  J.A. Dinoia, O.P. “Religion and Religions” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 245–246. 53. CD 1/2: 282. 54. CD 1/2: 282. 55. CD 1/2: 284, 291. 56. CD 1/2: 290. 57. CD 1/2: 298. 58. CD 1/2: 299. 59. CD 1/2: 300. 60. CD 1/2: 300. 61. CD 1/2: 303. 62. CD 1/2: 315. 63. CD 1/2: 318–319. 64. CD 1/2: 322; 320. Tat tvamasi in the teaching of Chandogya Upanisad refers to the equivalence of the self (tvam) with the ultimate principle of the universe (tat). In the analogy of salt dissolved in water, “You are that.” (tat tvamasi). Upanisad, trans. Patrick Olivelle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), Chandogya Upanisad, ch.6. 13: 154–155. 65.  Barth, “Ludwig Feuerbach” in Barth, Protestantische Theologieim 19. Jahrhundert: Ihre Vorgeschichte und ihre Geschichte (Zurich: TVZ Verlag, 1947), 488 at 484–489. 66. Plonz, Die Herrenlosen Gewalten, 271. 67. CD 1/2: 326. 68. CD 1/2: 329. 69. CD 1/2: 357. 70. John Hick, God has Many Names (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1982), 90. 71. CD I/2: 357. 72. CD I/1: 55. 73. CD IV/3.1: 110. 74. CD IV/3.1:119. 75. CD IV/3.1: 127–128. 76. CD IV/3.1:117. 77. CD IV/3.1: 40. 78. CD IV 3.1: 139. 79. CD IV/3.1: 139. 80. CD IV/3.1: 151.

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81. Barth, The Christian Life, CD IV/4: 121. 82. CD II/1§ 27.1. 83. Barth, The Christian Life, CD IV/4: 121. 84.  Andreas Pangritz notices this aspect of irregular theology in Karl Barth, see Pangritz, “Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt—a TheologicalBiographical Sketch,” in Theological Audacities: Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, 248. Footnote 71. 85. CD 1/1: 279. 86. CD 1/1: 292. 87. CD I/1: 181. 88. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrines. 118. 89. CD 1/2:102. 76–77. 90. CD I/1: 277. 91. CD I/1: 281–282. 92. Barth, Gespräche, 1964–1968, 337. 93. Jüngel, “Die Möglichkeit theologischer Anthropologie auf dem Grunde der Analogie, in Jüngel, Barth-Studien (Zurich-Köln: Benzinger Verlag, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus Gerd Mohn, 1982), 216, Footnote 7. 94. Ibid., 226. 95. Ibid., 227. 96. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 283. 97. CD II/1:79. 98. Cited in Eugene F. Rogers, Jr. Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Natural Knowledge of God (Notre Dame/London: university of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 206, 191. 99. CD II/1: 82. 100. CD II/1: 82. 101. CD II/1: 82. 102. CD III/2: 220. 103. Johann Friedrich Lohmann, Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus: Die Rezeption des Neukantianismusim “Römerbrief” und ihre Bedeutung für die weitere Ausarbeitung der Theologie Karl Barths (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), 70–77, 82–84. For the earlier relationship between Cohen and Barth, see Simon Fischer, Revelatory Positivism?: Barth’s Earliest Theology and the Marburg School (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 104. CD IV/2: 248–249. 105. CD IV/3.1: 248. 106. CD III/2: 387, 390. 107. Winzeler, Widerstehende Theologie, 341–342. 108. Chung, Karl Barth, 297–308.

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109. Barth, “Church and Culture,” in Theology and Church: Shorter Writings, 1920–1928, 342. 110. CD III/3: 97, 93–94. 111. CD III/3: 6, 133. 112. Barth, Briefe 1916–1968, eds. Jürgen Fangmeier and H. Stoevesandt (Zurich: TVZ, 1975), 404.

CHAPTER 8

Barth, Comparative Theology, and Multiple Modernities

In the previous chapter, we have attempted to dissect a “universal” dimension of crossing over religious borders in Barth’s study of Anselm which stands in solidarity with the world. His analogical relationality is clarified as that founded upon hermeneutical experience and significance. This perspective has helped us elucidate Barth’s acceptance of Feuerbach and remains crucial in his dialectical view of revelation and religion. His “speech-act” theology, which is framed in an irregular fashion, credits Barth as a contributor toward comparative theology and interreligious dialogue. The present chapter further analyzes Barth’s comparative study of Buddhism and dissects his notion of the name Jesus Christ in terms of the irregular horizon of speech-act theology, which finds its culmination in his Lichten lehre in the doctrine of reconciliation. Drawing upon this research of Barth’s comparative study of Amida Buddhism, I shall scrutinize Knitter’s theology of religions and Clooney’s comparative theology in their critical view of Barth. For the topic of Barth’s comparative theology and multiple modernities, I shall retrieve his fragmentary reflection of world religions, and reevaluate Barth’s speech-act theology embedded within the phenomenology of intertextuality with an irregular style.

Barth

and Pure

Land Buddhism

In Buddhist–Christian dialogue, Barth acknowledges the concept of justification by faith in affinity with Amida Buddhism in Japan. To be more exact, Barth means Jodoshinsu Buddhism, a unique sect of Japanese © The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5_8

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Buddhism represented by Honen and Shinran within the context of Mahayana Buddhism. Barth seeks to find elective affinity with Amida Buddhism by Shinran, only insofar as Barth recognizes the truth of revelation in judgment and affirmation in this Buddhism.1 If Barth finds the analogy, or a parabolic character of the justified sinner in Jodoshinsu Buddhism, it is important to clarify the language of analogy or parallel in light of the correspondence between Christian grace extra nos and a Buddhist notion of grace from the power of Amida. Firstly, Barth appreciates Amida Buddhism “as a wholly providential disposition,”2 in which he discerns a historical encounter and influence of Christian religion upon the Chinese tradition of Amida since the seventh century of ancient China, as linked to so-called Nestorian mission.3 Barth seems to understand correctly the major difference between Honen and Shinran. Honen (1133–1212), a teacher of Shinran (1173–1262), once stated: “Even sinners will enter into life, how much more righteous.” If a sinner enters into the world of redemption through the grace of Amida, it goes without saying that the righteous enters into the redemption through their good deeds. Amida made primal vows (especially the eighteenth vow: “Just call the name and you will be saved by Amida”4), in which he promised those who invoke his name by faith and trust upon his primal promise for redemption. Particularly in the decisive hour of death, Amida will not reject even the greatest sinner in his/her invocation of his name, allowing him/her to be in Nirvana; it is “locked up for 500 years in the cup of a lotus flower in some corner of Paradise.”5 But those in good works and religious practices are given a preliminary lodging in the extreme Paradise, replete with heavenly delights.6 However, Shinran radically reversed Honen’s statement: “If the righteous enter into life, how much more in the case of sinners.”7 In rejection of the possibility of meritorious work central within Honen, Shinran relocates the faith of the heart upon the other power of Amida. He emphasizes our gratitude to the redemption assured by Amida without any presupposition of human merit and good deed. Shinran does not reject instruction in sacred texts and the recitation of the Amida prayer, especially with the keen sense of the priesthood of all believers and social justice; but these things must be undertaken as our gratitude to Amida’s primal promise, in face of our utter sinfulness. “Faith is for everyone, … an unheard of invocation in the world of Buddhism.”8

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Barth sees the radicalism of justification in the grace of Amida in the example of Shinran, bringing it into relevance with the Reformation or evangelical reformed theology of grace and justification. Barth appreciates a providential disposition of the Japanese Protestantism of Honen and Shinran in striking parallelism to the truth of Christianity, expressing his gratitude for its abundant and evident lesson and teaching.9 In an analogical, dialectical fashion, Barth does not generalize or reduce two religious entities into the sameness; rather, he safeguards each particular uniqueness from a logic of totality or syncretic mysticism. For Barth, the Buddhist “god” may not be conflated with the Christian “god” in a pluralistic, relativist framework. As Barth argues, the path to salvation is not an easier way for Luther and Calvin, unlike Japanese Protestantism. In this Japanese form of Amida Buddhism, there is no teaching of wrath of Amida connected with the doctrine of law and the holiness. There is a lack of accentuation of struggle for the glory of God against the arbitrariness and arrogance of the human being in comparison to Paul, Luther, and especially Calvin.10 Even in regard to Amida, who has not reached the perfection of Buddhahood, Barth argues, what is central is not Amida or faith in Amida, but the human goal of radical desire for redemption as “the really controlling and determinative power.” Thus, “Amida, and faith in him, and the ‘pure land’ … are related to this goal only as the means to the end.”11 Later in his doctrine of lights, Barth states a radical desire for redemption as one of secular parables of the kingdom of God, although he does not explicitly include Amida Buddhism as an example of true words.12

Critical Exegesis: Amida Grace

and Buddha

Nature

As regards Barth’s interpretation of Amida Buddhism, I diverge from Barth’s unilateral evaluation about the accentuation of human desire for redemption as the end, to which Amida, faith, and Pure Land are related. In Shinran, Amida Buddhism is based on the doctrine of “noself;” thus, faith in the action of other power of Amida shines from within. Faith which entails sincerity, trustfulness, and a desire for rebirth in the Pure Land is a gift from Amida. This refers to the result of Amida’s grace, in which Buddha nature within is articulated beyond the ego of one’s own power. Thus, faith is a shining forth of Buddha nature, which is grounded in Amida or the Emptiness. At the rising of faith one can attain perfect Buddhahood (Emptiness), which is the Pure

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Land called the dharmakaya. The desire for seeking rebirth in the Pure Land is bodhicitta, the ethical ideal to help sentient beings.13 This radical desire for redemption may correspond to Barth’s notion of the controlling principle, but Amida’s primal promise is at the center which brings people to enlightenment, gratitude, and social responsibility; thus, faith is not only a pure gift but also a shining forth of Amida. Now I turn to John Cobb’s interpretation of Christian faith and Amida grace for a moment, in which Barth’s position is compared. Cobb emphasizes that Amida is the true principle of our own being, such that faith is the realization of Amida, leading toward the identity of the self with Amida. He tends to sidestep the relation between faith and Buddha nature in Shinran. If Barth sees Amida Buddhism as the predicate of the name Jesus Christ, Cobb comprehends Amida as subordinate to the Emptiness (the Dharmakaya), in which he unpacks Amida as Christ in a Whiteheadian frame of reference. Cobb’s “comparative study” is framed within the double movement of “passing over and coming back” and it is characterized by mutual benefit and transformation in each faith community engaged in a comparative study of Christ and Amida.14 At any rate, if Amida Buddhism entails a symptom of grace and truth which originates in Jesus Christ, Barth argues that the Christian Protestant religion of grace is not the true religion, but a religion of grace. For Barth, “we could quite reasonably say the same of Yodism, and with a rather more blunted sensibility, of the Bhakti religion” in reference to “a whole range of religions.”15 Symptoms of grace and truth as discernable in the world of religions become predicates of the name Jesus Christ.16 This name Jesus Christ “is not a system representing a unified experience or a unified thought; it is the Word of God itself.”17

The Name Jesus Christ

and Its

Irregular Horizon

Now we need to return to Barth’s reflection of the name Jesus Christ in reference of his irregular mode of actualism. The clarification of the Word of God in terms of irregular actualism should remain central in shaping and characterizing Barth’s initiation to comparative theology. If Jesus Christ is the report of an event rather than a system because of “the incomprehensibility of the nature of the Word of God in itself,”18 he needs to be comprehended in a variety of concepts and inquires rather than a unified conceptual system. The gospel implies what is in the divine–human person of Jesus Christ “who does not permit himself to

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be translated into a position.”19 The name Jesus Christ as an event may be seen in his concept of the word of God as a speech-act in mystery, in which the word of God can be heard in the world and in the otherness of the Other. Although the name Jesus Christ is not conflated with Amida, one can find and recognize the symptom and sign of divine grace within Amida’s primal vow and solidarity with those in dukkha. Barth’s reflection of the name Jesus Christ, which is connected with God’s speech-act, finds its culmination in his inquiry on “real parables of the kingdom of heaven”20 in the framework of the prophetic work of Jesus Christ in Church Dogmatics (IV/3.1 § 69. 2. The Light of Life). In this context, his earlier reflection of the Word of God in the theme of the Prolegomena to the Church Dogmatics and to the doctrine of the threefold form of the Word of God is in full swing.21 In Barth’s account, such good words of Jesus Christ may be spoken extra muros ecclesiae (outside churchly walls)22 because “the one true Word of God makes these other words true”23 as “real testimony to the real presence of God on earth,”24 which is seen “from the revelation of the reconciliation of the world with God effected in Jesus Christ.”25 As a matter of fact, “neither the militant godlessness of the outer periphery of the community, nor the intricate heathenism of the inner, is an insurmountable barrier.”26 Rather, the real parables of the truth as true words, genuine witnesses, and attestation of the one true Word may not lead their hearers “away from Scripture, but more deeply into it.”27 A possibility of comparative theology a la Barth could emerge in this move.

Speech-Act Theology

in Correlation

Model

I find an irregular style of actualism to be crucial in Barth’s speech-act theology which breaks through the natural theology. Barth rejects natural theology in this context because in the natural theology apart from the Bible and the church, only abstract impartations can be attained as regards “God’s existence as the Supreme Being and Ruler of all things, and human responsibility toward God.”28 In his reflection of church proclamation as the material of Dogmatics (CD I/1: § 3), Barth already paved a way to the irregular side of dogmatic theology, in which we read: “God may speak to us through a pagan or an atheist, and thus give us to understand that the boundary between the Church and the secular world can still take at any time a different course from that which we think we discern.”29

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This extrabiblical material is co-posited with the regulative material of preaching and sacrament in becoming a service to a ministerium verbi divini.30 This perspective leads Barth to affirm dogma as an eschatological concept underlying the distinction between theologia archetypos (God’s own) and theologia ektypos (human agenda). In contrast to the Catholic equation of Church dogma or a doctrinal proposition with veritas revelata (truth of revelation),31 Barth argues that the truth of revelation cannot be established as aletheia (the manifestation of something hidden) in human ideas, concepts, and judgments. The manifestation of the truth (aletheia) cannot be comprehended “apart from the event of its being manifested.”32 For this reason, Barth in his conception of dogmatics as a science,33 distinguishes the regulative, rational side (academic theology: theologia scholastica) from the actualistic event characteristic of the irregular side of the word of God (a regular dogmatics as free discussion of the problems arising for Church proclamation outside the theological school). Barth credits religious socialists, especially such people as J.C. Blumhardt and H. Kutter, to the aphoristic style and prophetic tone of proclamation in this irregular dogmatics. Barth’s reflection of God’s alien voice outside the walls of the Christian church belongs to the domain of irregular theology as a service of the Word of God, “as a means of grace in God’s free hand.”34 A regulative systematic theology has its origins in irregular, fragmented, and aphoristic forms and theses. In his conception of dogmatic theology in scientific and irregular correlation, Barth maintains that “the historical account and the personal confession of faith in the name of contemporaries can only be means to this end.”35 I characterize this correlation model of Barth’s systematic theology (in regular and irregular fashion) in terms of “theological phenomenology” as grounded upon the speech-act theology in incomprehensibility of the Word of God. I take this correlation model as the point of departure for undergirding a new model of comparative theology in a hermeneutical and sociological frame of reference. Thus, I elucidate the intertextuality of the divine speech-act between the Scripture and the world of religions (as God’s semantic field) in a phenomenological imagination. With this analysis, correlation, and constructive side in mind, I insist that it is of special significance to reexamine Barth’s comparative study of Buddhism in terms of the name of Jesus Christ in correlation with the irregular actualism of the divine speech-act and his matured teaching of the secular parables. Barth’s “comparative” theology is formulated in

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the following statement: “there can be no question, even in the future, of a real parallelism or coincidence between the doctrine and the life of the Christian and non-Christian religions of grace (however consistent). Instead, certain symptomatic distinctions will be visible here and there, in which the true and the essential distinction can always be preserved.”36 Barth does not argue against the need for inquiry into non-Christian traditions; rather, he finds it significant without conflating different traditions. For Barth, as the Lord of the church and the world, the name Jesus Christ nullifies the walls and barriers between the ecclesial sphere and extraecclesial world. God’s Word as God’s act means its contingent contemporaneity, and the Word of God makes history,37 in which faith particularly lives by God’s power before faith and without faith (efficacia verbi extra usum).38 To my reading, Barth’s secular parables can be seen as a consistent development and deepening of his speech-act theology in his earlier theology of the Word of God rather than implying an extensive commentary on Calvin’s notion of the cosmic, secret work of the Holy Spirit.39 Certainly Barth acknowledges a cosmic and universal dimension of Calvin’s pneumatology as the striking doctrine, but he fails to see Calvin’s theology of predestination framed in this pneumatological-inclusive dimension.40

Barth, Theology of Religions, and “Postliberal” Comparative Theology Based on our analysis and synthesis of Barth’s comparative theology, it is important to review Paul Knitter’s critique of Barth. Indeed, Knitter does not refute entirely the permanent achievements of the Reformation and Barth in terms of the proclamation model.41 But a biblical model of salvation through faith in Christ remains a problem for Knitter.42 Knitter’s major concern is to relativize the confessional question concerning the finality or normativity of Jesus Christ. His charge against Barth lies in Barth’s understanding of revelation in Christ as recorded and attested in the Scripture and “salvation through faith is possible only in Jesus Christ.”43 In Knitter’s orientation, we read: “God does offer answers, that there is the authentic revelation, apart from Christ.”44 However, Knitter’s critique remains limited since a complex mode of thought in Barth and the name Jesus Christ is not dissected in terms of his speech-act, its irregular actualism, and Lichten lehre. At any rate, in Knitter’s account, interreligious dialogue should be undergirded for the recognition of the possible truths in all religions as

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grounded in the hypothesis of a common ground and goal for all religions.45 In his hypothesis of a common ground and goal for all religions, he is convinced that the truth claims of various religions are rooted in a deeper common ground about the same reality, the same divine presence, and the same God.46 Without the double belongingness, interreligious dialogue would remain an informative conversation. The purpose of interreligious dialogue must be openness for the possibility of genuine conversion to other religious systems; in other words, conversion to God’s truth.47 For this task, Knitter utilizes Tracy’s analogical imagination for refining his concept of double belongingness. Then, he incorporates Panikkar’s experience of Hindu–Christian theology into a model of analogical imagination for the via negativa mysticism working in Hindu and Christian contexts. In the relativization of Christ, Knitter’s hybrid logic of mystic syncretism leads him to argue that “without Buddha I could not become a Christian,” shaping himself as a “Buddhist” Christian.48 Who does know whether Buddhists and Christians believe in the same God? Be that as it may, I notice an interest in Knitter who accepts the postliberal proposal as a fourth paradigm in the theology of religions for an “acceptance model along with discussion of “exclusivism,” “inclusivism,” and “pluralism.””49 Actually, the postliberal model emphasizes incommensurability and difference in the comparative study of religions, finding its interreligious insight and textuality in Francis Clooney. In distance from Knitter, Clooney, one of the best comparative theologians, finds an interest in Barth’s theology in Christian engagement with other religions. Clooney takes issue with Barth’s notion of revelation as the sole criterion for the judgment of religions. “Barth’s approach to religions is rooted in his insistence that all theological must begin with revelation. God’s communication in the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.”50 However, Clooney’s position “faith seeking understanding” does not necessarily contradict Barth’s epistemology. Thus, Clooney takes Barth’s position with a “mix of sympathy, Christian self-critique, and great disregard for other religions.”51 Comparative theology a la Clooney is related to a different direction from theology of religions since he is more concerned with developing his theology by drawing upon the resources of other religious belief systems through commentarial work. It does not adopt a religiously neutral standpoint or the principle of sameness,52 in contrast to the pluralist

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theology of religions. In this reading practice together with other religious texts (collectio), Clooney “does not require the abandonment of any particular doctrines, nor a revisionist interpretation of the meaning of any particular doctrine.”53 Given this, Clooney is closer to the cultural linguistic model in his study of Advaita and the intertextual commentaries and truth, in which he explicates the extent to which religious truth as a doctrine of a faith community can be consonant with the exegetical and practical enunciation. He utilizes Lindbeck’s postliberal theology founded upon a cultural-linguistic mode of thought, in which a religion is seen as a cultural-linguistic framework in shaping the entirety of life and thought, enabling us to describe realities, formulate religious beliefs, and communicate spiritual experience and sentiments. Religion, like language or a culture, is a communal phenomenon in shaping and cultivating individual subjectivity and life rather than manifested merely as the substance of culture. A religious system cannot be separated from a particular way of practice, conduct, and life. This postliberal definition of religion as a cultural system or lifeworld of culture–linguistic system in the Durkheim– Geertz tradition is applied to Clooney’s Text–truth–world relation.54 Furthermore, Clooney finds Aquinas’s theory of analogy to be in affinity with Lindbeck’s statement: “When we say that God is good, we do not affirm that any of our concepts of goodness (modi significandi) apply to him, but rather that there is a concept of goodness unavailable to us, viz., God’s understanding of his own goodness, which does apply.”55 Despite Clooney’s critique of Barth, postliberal theology utilizes Barth’s exegetical emphasis on biblical narrative as a chief source of intratextuality in the cultural-linguistic understanding of religion and a regulative notion of doctrine.56 In addition, Clooney adopts the inclusivist position which is a major revision of the theology of religions; “the perplexing complexity … does not abandon its starting point in faith and in a vision of the entirety of the world in Christ.”57 Within this commentarial, inclusivist framework, Clooney chides Barth for espousing “a strong, exclusive version of the Christian claim about the revelation and the world ‘outside the revelation.’”58 Clooney’s charge against Barth notwithstanding, I notice that there is a parallel, an affinity, and consonance between Clooney and Barth, in regard to faith epistemology, analogical mode of thought, incommensurability between God’s revelation in Christ and other traditions, and finally an inclusivist position of soteriology.

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Barth’s Fragmentary Reflection: Wisdom in Other Religions and Comparative Study Barth, in the discussion of the basic form of humanity, finds similarity in reference of Martin Buber, Feuerbach, and Confucius. His theological anthropology appreciates each different angle and description of humanity, although respective description is not the same as theological anthropology. In Barth’s account, “there are approximations and similarities; in this very fact we may even see a certain confirmation.” “Even with his natural knowledge of himself the natural man is still in the sphere of divine grace.” This perspective qualifies Barth’s theological anthropology for undergirding a comparative theology in learning and embracing worldly, i.e. non-Christian wisdom.59 Already in interreligious dialogue with Jewish people, Barth provocatively states: “[T]he Jew, even the unbelieving Jew, so miraculously preserved…through the many calamities of his history … is the natural historical monument of the love and faithfulness of God.” The Jew “as a living commentary on the Old Testament is the only convincing proof of God outside the Bible.”60 Of particular importance is that Barth retains his openness to the Islamic community in his dialogue with J. Bouman, from Lebanon. As Barth reported: “In theological appreciation of the situation there [in Lebanon]… we were but completely in agreement that ‘a new communication about the relation between the Bible and the Koran is an urgent task for us.’”61 A new communication about the relation between the Bible and the Koran reminds Barth’s urge for the church to adopt the confession of guilt regarding “the deplorable role of the Church in the so-called crusades.”62 What is crucial in his evaluation of Islam’s achievements is that Islam should be valued and taken seriously without the crass arrogance of the white Christian people. Its achievements and constructs can be viewed both in the primitive forms and in the higher forms: psychological, sociological, aesthetic, and ethical from the general human standpoint.63 Barth, in his serious study of the sixteen Latin texts of Vatican II, pays special attention to the matters of Israel and non-Christian religions. Such a confession of guilt in Barth’s view should be extended to Jewish pogroms and Muslims concerning the church’s fatal and deplorable role in the Holocaust and crusade.64 In appreciation of Barth’s dialectical theory of religion, it is of special significance to notice his initiation, in his later stage, to the comparative

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study of religions in his plan entitled “The general history of religion.” Markus Barth reported on his father’s plan of engagement with the history of religion at the Leuenberg conference of 1992, while proposing his father’s plan entitled “The general history of religion.” In consideration of Barth’s plan, Bertold Klappert introduces Barth’s research plan in the following way: (1) The relation between Christianity and Judaism; (2) The relation between Judaism and Islam; (3) The relation between Buddhism and Hinduism. This reveals Barth’s interest in world religions concerning Nostra Aetate in the Second Vatican council.65 In sum, Barth’s dialectical theology of religion is not possible without the critique of religion, nor without undertaking a deep learning of the religion.

Barth

and “Speech-Act”

Comparative Theology

Already in his early Tambach lecture (1919), Barth provocatively writes, “the children of this world are wise; judged by their own standards they do their work well—better than the children of light judged by theirs— and the Lord praises them for it.”66 For Barth, if the theological activity set within the cultural framework and social problem is embedded within a particular, social historical context,67 theological work cannot avoid the influence of the historically conditioned documentations and social connections.68 In doing so, “speech-act” comparative theology in a Barthian fashion “must concentrate first on the lower and lowest levels,” concerned primarily and particularly with “the poor, the socially and economically weak and threatened”69 in the underside of the religious world. Thus, in his interview about the Lichten lehre, Barth reminded readers of the presence of Mitbrüder (co-brothers and sisters) in the context of religious socialism. Stating his early political activity, he affirmed that there were those who inherited from the kingdom of God outside of Christianity.70 In sum, Barth’s theology of the name Jesus Christ emphasizes that there is no God without humanity, though there may be godless humanity. “Man may be hostile to the Gospel of God, but this Gospel is not hostile to him.”71 He does not equate his position with a protestant counterpart based upon all people as virtual Christians in regard to Karl Rahner’s notion of anonymous Christian.72 Barth draws upon the ontological connection between the man Jesus and other people, maintaining this; Jesus Christ as the royal

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representative is “their Lord and Head as well, whether they have known Him or not, are only provisionally and subjectively outside Him and without Him in their ignorance and unbelief.”73 However, Jesus Christ does not make people of other faiths into anonymous Christians nor prospective Christians, but “they can be claimed as His de jure.”74 Barth’s notion of analogia relationis grounded in the ontological connection between Jesus Christ, the image of God, and all people “de jure,” not “de facto” entails a different theological epistemology from Rahner’s notion of “supernatural existential” linked to God’s self-­communicative attribute. In Rahner, a possibility of a belief in supernatural revelation (anonymous Christian) is made everywhere. The memoria which is understood as active in faith through the interplay between Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit is common to all of humanity, such that Jesus Christ is present in non-Christian religions.75 However, for Barth, people outside the walls of Christian church remain co-brothers and sisters who may inherit the kingdom of God. The Jew or the Buddhist are not virtual Christians nor anonymous Christians. They may find their place in the mystery of God’s grace in the reconciled world, serving as a medium of analogical witness to the in-breaking kingdom of God. Thus, Barth does not intend to christianize or generalize people of other faiths into the Christian religious category. Danger lurks in generalities (latet periculum in generalibus).76 In elucidation of Lichten lehre, Barth is reluctant about Zwingli’s attempt (at naming Hercules, Theseus, Socrates, and Cicero, for salvation),77 in which a possibility would occur in incorporating the notion of universal salvation into a theological dogmatic system. Barth does not give the dogmatic, regular status and examples to such extraordinary, irregular ways and free communications of Jesus Christ. In reflection of its radical character of the investigation of true words, Barth also does not want to delimit or suppress the individual’s freedom of inquiry in involving these realms in their own context.78 If Barth’s position is grounded in spiritual poverty, humble attitude, and openness for wisdom and belief systems of other religions, it is undertaken with no intent of dogmaticization of any other religions, or christinization. Such a comparative stance may create a space for them to speak of themselves on their own terms. A comparative theology founded upon the speech-act theology becomes feasible, going into particular details, against the self-delusion of the Christian logic of sameness in integrating people of other faiths into the anonymous Christian; it is

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also against the double belongingness in which the triune God is collapsed into the Buddhist “god” or Hindu “god” without reservation. It also acknowledges a need of self-examination and renewal at every point in light of God’s speech-act and the religious other. In his later interview regarding the hidden Christ in the Indian context, Barth responded: “The wind blows where it wills (John 3:8): Break-through (revelation) of the hidden Christ is always and everywhere possible: Inside and outside the church; even in the life and work and message of strangers (Melchizedek! [Gen 14: 18; Heb 7:1–4]), heathens, atheists!”79 The universal horizon of the living Christ (“hidden Christ”), which does not dispense with a mystery and freedom of the Wholly Other, cannot be adequately comprehended apart from the universal work of the Holy Spirit and God’s speech-act in the reconciled world through strangers like Melchizedek and Cyrus, even Balaam.

Barth

and Multiple

Modernities

In this line of thought, I find Barth’s speech-act theology to be contributing to a new project of comparative theology among multiple modernities. The notion of multiple modernities is comprehended in the postcolonial or postliberal endeavor to break through the malaise of Western modernity in regard to the colonized reality of late capitalism. Certainly, more than that, Barth’s theology of the word entails an enriched source of epistemology, method, biblical hermeneutics, and a regime of confessional and ecumenical doctrines in terms of critical analysis of church tradition, argument with modern theology and philosophy, and recovery of meaning for the present. In this context, Barth’s faithfulness to the subject matter of the gospel (including the miracle aspect of the grace and event) and his biblical-­theological reasoning and analysis of the triune God entails a confessional-hermeneutical attitude in dialectical acceptance of the historical-critical method, but transcending its limitations and setbacks in light of the theological subject matter of God in revelation and its gracious activity and event. His profound and enriched vast array and treasure of thought form, dogmatic theology, biblical exegesis, and confessional explication are grounded in the evangelical tradition of the Protestant Reformation and are ecumenically engaged with Catholic doctrine and confession in a critical-constructive manner.80 Certainly it is hard to categorize Barth’s complex thought form imbued with diverse motifs of premodern, modern, and even postmodern or

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postliberal into a single quarter of multiple modernities. However, I find it substantial to start comparative theology among multiple modernities, by an exegetical critique of and learning from Barth. Therefore, it is substantial to renew his insights into the project of multiple modernities; it can be undergirded for the sake of critical comparative theology founded upon the word of God in a phenomenological-sociological frame of reference, and on behalf of postcolonial trans-modernity. Barth is critical of an acultural theory of modernity in which modernity is taken as falling prey to danger and the iron cage by hubris, denying human limits and human dependence upon God and placing unlimited confidence in the power of human reason. This asocial theory of modernity can be seen in Weber’s comparative study of modern capitalism and the Protestant ethics.81 Given this, it is hard to concur with the modernity-inspired interpretation of Barth, in which Barth dialectically employs the modern consciousness of freedom and autonomy in his theological working through modern autonomy; Barth’s theology expresses “the present status of the history of Christianity under the condition of modernity.”82 Rendtorff, based upon Troeltsch’s notion of autonomy, analyzes Barth within the framework of modernity. In support of Rentorf’s thesis of Barth and modernity, Jüngel relates Barth’s passage in his Lichten lehre: “In the world reconciled by God in Jesus Christ, there is no secular sphere abandoned by Him or withdrawn from His control.”83 What is missing in this modernist interpretation of Barth is a critical exegesis of Barth’s irregular actualism and analogical relationality of speech-act theology with a strong critique of capitalist modernity, and also with prophetic recognition of other cultures and religions. This modernist reading fails to recognize Barth’s serious critique of the Enlightenment. For Barth, “originally and properly enlightenment means …that things are not quite so bad with man himself…a natural self-understanding of man was adopted as the norm of Christian thinking. In the sphere of this understanding the assertion could not, and never can, be made.”84 Indeed, everything modern cannot be seen as belonging to one Enlightenment package. Against the Enlightenment package error,85 a notion of multiple modernities entails a project of colonized people involving resources in their own traditional culture and religions for a new practice and innovation. The project of multiple modernities goes beyond a patchwork solution which accepts the power-conferring science and technology of

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Western modernity into an unchanged way of life. But critical adaptation has to invent their own modernity in interaction with Western culture and religion by bringing about profound changes in traditional ways of life.86 This creative adaptation to Western sources and new interpretations of traditional sources of culture, morality, and religion may find in Barth’s theology his respect to other cultures and religions. Barth incorporates sociality, solidarity, and co-humanity as social critical categories in his own theological framework by challenging bourgeois subjectivity and consciousness of Neo-Protestant theology. He takes issue with the Eurocentric modernist culture imbued with Christianity and cuts through the pathology and malaise of individual subjectivity for fellow humanity in terms of the concept of God’s sociality and the kingdom of God. Barth transcends the asocial and ahistorical brutality of subjectivity and consciousness of modernity through God, who loves in freedom as the wholly other and completely changing everything.87 This perspective helps us develop Barth’s thought form for comparative theology in the context of multiple modernties toward a postcolonial trans-modernity. Barth’s dogmatic theology in correlation of regular and irregular dogmatics initiates a paradigm shift in radicalizing a theology of the word of God with a social critical consciousness and strong political implication, championing a new model of recognition of alternative modernity. Such a model of comparative theology can break through toward postcolonial trans-modernity. Beyond Barth,88 I am more concerned with deepening his understanding of revelation against and for religion in terms of unbelief, tolerance, and recognition. It is indispensable to explore such a complex understanding in a phenomenological-sociological frame of reference for a project of critical, emancipatory comparative theology. A prophetic critique in speaking parrhesia to the past wrongdoings of the church for metanoia is not forgotten in matters pertaining to the blamage effect such as Judaism (Shoah), Islam (crusade), and the backlash of religious fundamentalism and violence in our midst.

Notes





1. CD 1/2: 327. 2. CD 1/2: 340. 3. CD 1/2: 340. 4. Williams, Mahayana Buddhism, 271.

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5. CD 1/2: 340. 6. CD 1/2: 340. 7. CD 1/2: 341. 8. CD 1/2: 341. 9. CD 1/2: 342. 10. CD 1/2: 342. 11. CD 1/2: 342. 12. CD IV/3.1: 125. 13. Williams, Mahayana Buddhism, 275. 14. Cobb, Beyond Dialogue, 103, 128. 15. CD 1/1: 343. 16. Cobb, Beyond Dialogue, 128. 17. CD I/1: 53. 18. CD I/1: 249. 19. CD II/2: 73. 20. CD IV/3/1: 122. 21. CD IV/3.1: 114. 22. CD IV/3.1: 110. 23. CD IV/3.1: 112. 24. CD IV/3.1: 113. 25. CD IV/3.1: 116. 26. CD IV/3.1: 121. 27. CD IV/3.1: 126. 28. CD IV/3.1: 117. 29. CD I/1: 55. 30. CD I/1: 58–59. 31. CD I/1: 271–272. 32. CD I/1: 270. 33. CD I/1: 277, 275. 34. CD I/1: 54. 35. CF I/1: 281. 36. CD 1/1: 344. 37. CD 1/1: 145, 152. 38. CD 1/1: 154. 39. Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth, 234. 40. CD IV/3.2: 756. See Chung, The Spirit of God Transforming Life: The Reformation and Theology of the Holy Spirit (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 93–94. 41. Knitter, No Other Name? 87. 42. Ibid., 84, 91. 43. Ibid., 91. 44. Ibid., 92.

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45. Ibid., 208. 46. Ibid., 211. 47. Ibid., 212. 48. I sense that a problem lies in Knitter’s own confession that he does not know Pali, or Chinese, or Tibetan. Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), xiv. 49. Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2002), 178–191. 50. Clooney, Hindu God, Christian God, 132. 51. Ibid., 132. 52. Clooney, ed. The New Comparative Theology, xiii. 53. Clooney, Theology after Vedanta, 189. See Clooney, Comparative Theology, 111–112. 54.  Ibid., 115–116. George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1984), 33. 55. Ibid., 117; Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 66. 56. Linbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 135. 57. Clooney, Theology after Vedanta, 195. 58. Ibid., 157. 59. CD III/2: 277. 60. CD IV/3.2: 877. 61. Barth, Briefe 1961–1968, ed. Jürgen Fangmeier and H. Stoevesandt (Zurich: TVZ, 1975), 504. 62. Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum, 37. 63. CD IV/3.2: 875. 64. Busch, Karl Barth, 478–485. See further Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum, 36–37. 65. Klappert, Versöhnung und Befreiung, 50. 66. Barth, “Christian’s Place in Society,” in Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man, 317. 67. CD 1/1: 145, 283–284. 68. CD IV/3.2: 821. 69.  The thesis of 17 in “The Christian Community and the Civil Community,” in Barth: Theologian of Freedom, 284. 70. Barth, Gespräche IV: 1964–1968, ed. E. Busch (Zurich: TVZ, 1997), 401. 71. CD IV/3.1: 119. 72. Jüngel, Karl Barth: A Theological Legacy, 50. 73. CD IV/2: 275. 74. CD IV/2: 275. 75. Rahner, “Jesus Christ in the non-Christian Religions,” in Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, vol. 17 (23 volumes; Baltimore: Helicon Press, London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961–1992), 39–50.

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76. CD II/2. 48. 77. CD IV/3.1: 135. 78. CD IV/3.1: 133. 79. Barth, Gespräche IV: 1964–1968, 565. 80. Hunsinger, Evangelical, Catholic, and Reformed: Essays on Barth and Other Themes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015). 81. Taylor, “Two Theories of Modernities,” in Alternative Modernities, ed. Gaonkar, 174. 82. Rendtorf, “Radikale Autonomie Gottes,” in Theorie des Christentums, 180. 83. CD IV/3: 119. Jüngel, God’s Being is In Becoming, 137. 84. CD IV.1: 479. 85.  Taylor, “Two Theories of Modernity,” in Alternative Modernities, ed. Gaonkar, 180. 86. Ibid., 183–184. 87. Schellong, Bürgertum und christliche Religion, 109. 88. Timothy J. Gorringe, Karl Barth: Against Hegemony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 287–290.

CHAPTER 9

Ernst Troeltsch, Historical Method, and Comparative Theology

Ernst Troeltsch occupies a bridge for our study of “critical” comparative theology since his historical-critical method and social ethics facilitate our conceptualization of critical comparative theology, along with Barth and Levinas. Although Troeltsch is hailed on the periphery for theology of religions, my concern is not just with categorizing him neatly into the brand of religious pluralism, but constructively revising his social ethic and critical method to be more relevant for a phenomenological study of critical comparative theology. In the previous chapters, I have treated Barth’s theology from a theological-phenomenological perspective in which a new picture of Barth has been elucidated in reference to theology of religions and comparative theology. Certainly, Barth is regarded as an opponent to Troeltsch and many theological debates and arguments are made upon the difference and controversy between the two theologians. However, in my study of Troeltsch, I am not entering into this debate in detail, but seeking to explicate Troeltsch’s model of comparative theology. In this explication, I attempt to examine and incorporate his social ethics and historical-critical method into the phenomenological-hermeneutic research model. For this purpose, first, I focus on analyzing Troeltsch’s contribution to social ethics and his historical method. Second, transcending the limitations of Troeltsch’s project, I shall develop his model of involvement through hermeneutical inquiry (Gadamer). With this mediation and reorientation, thirdly, I seek to make Troeltsch’s historical-critical © The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5_9

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inquiry more amenable to the project of comparative theology. In this move, I am concerned with phenomenologically elucidating and revising Troeltsch’s method by safeguarding the intentionality of religious experience of divine transcendence from historicizing reductionism. Troeltsch’s comparative study of religion can be explained in its relevance for multiple modernities. Finally, a comparison shall be undertaken in regard to Troelsch’s historical study of religion and Clooney’s commentarial study. In so doing, I seek to advance critical comparative theology in correlational unity of the transcendence of the kingdom of God with its presence in the anamnestic solidarity of Jesus with those on the margins.

Christian Social Teaching and Sociology Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) can be regarded as a comparative theologian, who was involved in his social and political context in seeking to make a religious ethical contribution to the future course of history. His task was to bring the sociological significance of Christianity to contemporary relevancy, while refusing to relegate its meaning only to the private, personal sphere.1 Concerning the relation of the Christian ethos to the social environment, Troeltsch regards ethics as the apex of theology, which entails a comprehensive horizon to shape the future afresh.2 Troeltsch’s project is undertaken in the context of the whole religious, cultural situation of the time and, therefore, religion should find concrete expression in the real world. It is not separated from history and society. He is concerned with the further development of Christian thought and life in frank interaction with the forces of the modern world.3 Troeltsch contends that the Enlightenment breaks through European culture dominated by the church and theology, employing “a complete reorientation of culture in all spheres of life.”4 However, the Enlightenment is in part a religiously inspired process of liberation, which discovers the autonomous self-legislating individual as the most important feature of the modern world.5 In the analysis of the sociological contribution of Protestant Ethics, there is a parallel between Ernst Troeltsch and Max Weber. Weber, a lifelong friend of Troeltsch,6 elaborates a sociological method in terms of an ideal-typical meaning, and investigates the meaning of an individual’s social action in regard to a religious ethos. Weber’s sociological method becomes substantial in shaping Troeltsch’s historical-critical inquiry to the church’s social teachings by way of the church–sect–mystic-type

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distinction. The basic distinction of the three types of Christian churches implies that the church type and its principle is universal, open, and in accommodation to the world through the communication of grace and salvation. The church–sect–mysticism distinction comprehends the social teachings of the gospel, the early church, the Middle Ages, and the postReformation confessions in relation to the formation of the new situation in the modern world.7

Christian Ethics

and Social

Context

Any ethical compromise has to take place in the conditions of the contemporary world for a new synthesis and construction, which is valid to present life and condition. Nowhere does an absolute Christian ethic exist, which only waits to be discovered, an absolute ethical transformation of material life or human nature. What matters is a constant wrestling and struggling with historical and social problems. A Christian ethic of the present day and the future will only be an adjustment to the world situation, desiring to achieve what is practically possible.8 Christian comparative theology in this sense can be understood in an open-ended manner because its involvement must be seen in continued evolution and renewal in light of pressing world dilemmas. Christian ethics can be a form of adjustment and accommodation to a social context and the condition of the world. In the Christian contribution to the political arena, Troeltsch seeks to combine democracy and conservatism for synthesis. Democracy is an ethical idea, the great idea of human rights, which must be considered always as an end, not as a means. The declaration of human rights in the US and French constitutions is of great significance for ethics. The democratic principle, as being ethical in its nature, has the most extensive political application in its emphasis on participation and responsibility of the individual in public life, as well as its emphasis in equal sharing by all individuals in the material and spiritual benefits through the state.9 Modern democracy, in Troeltsch’s account, received the strongest impulses from Puritanism and the Reformed ideal of popular sovereignty.10 Protestant groups regard their alliance with democracy as a moral obligation for the sake of the gospel, while social democracy claims the true historical Jesus and his ministry for its own direction.11 In line with the principle of democracy, Troeltsch also recommends conservatism in the sense of conserving the principle of authority as

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such, rather than justifying absolutely the conserving of every given authority.12 In the identification of democracy and conservatism for Christianity, he argues that no political ethic is really derived directly and essentially from Christian ideas. First of all, Christian moral commands link exclusively to the sphere of private morality. The significance of Christianity for politics is indirect, such that the specifically political significance of Christian ethics is distributed and situated between democracy and conservatism.13 In Troeltsch’s study of social teachings of Christian churches, there is a mutually reciprocal relationship between the historical development of Christianity and its social context, exploring the influence of the social context upon Christianity. Social location becomes the arbiter in characterizing a Christian public attitude and religious ethos. Here, we perceive that a sociological–realistic–ethical outlook is critically juxtaposed with Christianity’s historical self-understanding. For Troeltsch, “all the relativism and all the subjectivism in the world can only mean … that we are always only moving toward the absolute truth”14

Historical Method

and Model of Involvement

In an article on “Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology” (1898), Troeltsch presents historical criticism, the importance of analogy, and the mutual interrelation of all historical developments (correlation).15 In the realm of history, only judgments of probability vary from the highest to the lowest degree, such that an estimate must be done to the degree of probability. Historical critique is applied to any religious tradition. Christianity is credited no privileged status by a historical-critical method. The criticism of history is possible on the basis of the principle of analogy, which provides us with the key to historical criticism. Assuming a basic consistency of the human spirit in its historical manifestations, a principle of analogy, which presupposes a common core of similarity, finds its importance in comprehending cultural, historical, and religious differences and similarities. This critical approach is based upon a probability judgment in which the analogies, drawing upon human customary experience of life throughout the ages, offer a criterion in applying probability to all historical phenomena. This analogical critique makes difference comprehensible, while also rendering empathy possible. Historical criticism recognizes the significance of the analogical approach in the study of the history of religion.

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Furthermore, historians acknowledge and recognize the interaction and interplay of all events in a historical life setting in terms of the principle of correlation. The method of correlation concerns “the interaction of all phenomena in the history of civilization” because there is no point within the history of civilization that reaches “beyond correlative involvement and mutual influence.”16 Correlation, which stands in favor of historical relativity, places limitations on all absolute claims of human knowledge. All is made relative as it is embedded within interconnection, tightened together in a relationship of correlation. However, it does not necessarily mean a rampant and aimless relativism resulting in a nihilistic skepticism, but cultural relativity. All historical phenomena are unique and individual configurations and every historical structure and moment can be comprehended only in relation to historical totality and context. Troeltsch evaluates Christianity with the general context of universal history, grounding his comparative theology on historical method in orientation toward universal history. His method is that of the historyof-religion (Religionsgeschichtliche Methode), subjecting all tradition to critique and starting from the total historical reality.17 Exclusive claims to revelation, seen in the method of the history-of-religions, contradict the totality of human religions, and collide in the practical competition and struggle of religions with each other.18 A particular significance of historical relativity for Christian social ethics is expressed in terms of compromise, which describes the historically inevitable relationship and accommodation of Christianity to its historical and social contexts in different epochs. Compromise also refers to “the phenomenology of involvement.”19 Its task is to think through and formulate the Christian world of ideas and life, in terms of unreserved and practical involvement in the modern world. For Toeltsch, Christian ethos is a constantly renewed search for compromise, while providing a fresh opposition to the spirit of compromise and engagement.20 Against this, the Christian ethos is rather a reluctant renewed search for comprise and accommodation to the present reality since it entails its prophetic spirit from the ethos of compromise and accommodation. At any rate, in interaction with history and society, comparative ethicists are in search of its feasible form, as context is constantly shifting. Christian comparative theology is in the making, and it is always searchable in each new case, driven in a creative act through faith, as expressed in ethical decisions. It is to be made anew as a creative act in every changing reality of human life. This marks Troeltsch’s inspiration for

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comparative theology, in its social ethical orientation and in historical interconnection of all religious ethics in order to translate and engage religious ideas with social cultural involvement in our present situation through a creative faith act. All Christian thought and dogma depends on fundamental sociological conditions because they are conditioned and constructed in historical effectiveness and social location.

Hermeneutic Inquiry and Historical Method Based on the analysis, clarification, and argument above, I find hermeneutical significance in Troeltsch’s triadic principle of criticism, analogy, and correlation, which is embedded with social context and historical effectiveness. His historical method can be placed in the initial stage, yet occupying an important component of hermeneutical inquiry for the phenomenological study of religion. Driven within the framework of the universal development of religion, and on the basis of a history-of-religions method, Troeltsch argues that there is no such thing as an unchangeably fixed truth. Due to the changing character of our world, there are increasingly new and vital attempts to construe the essential nature of reality in an ongoing process of evolution. The pluralism of rival analogous truth claims appears in place of a horizon that is dominated by the sole, supernatural truth claim.21 Troeltsch is interested in establishing the fundamental and universal supremacy of Christianity, while rejecting Christian religion as the absolute religion in the actualization and perfection of other religions.22 He stands on the threshold toward a hermeneutical inquiry, yet falls short of hermeneutical reflections of truth claims in understanding religious and cultural heritage. Phenomenologically speaking, critical reasoning “of” history does not exist outside of history, but is already influenced and shaped “within” the lifeworld of critical reasoning. Given this, Gadamer remains a critical import in cutting through limitations and setbacks of Troeltsch’s “method” linked to privileged reason of the individual. For Gadamer, the interpreter of history belongs to the tradition that he/she is interpreting and understanding, thus the interpretation itself is a historical event. The interpreter seeks to understand the text, what it says, and what constitutes the text’s meaning and significance. In so doing, the interpreter’s own thought plays a role in re-awakening the text’s meaning in a fusion of horizons between the text and the reader.23 Understanding the efficacy of history and the effect of a living tradition

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may influence and condition a historical-critical study of the inquirer. Understanding, which transpires in interpretation, is the participation in the event of a living tradition; it has little to do with elevating a subjective scientific investigation in control of historical materials and traditional texts. Certainly, Troeltsch retains a free appreciation of history as interpretation of history in understanding, and honoring historical memories of Christian religion. Different interpretations can coexist and each can be respected. Despite the historical criticism, Troeltsch does not doubt that “tradition and authority are required until religious thought has passed beyond them to know the internally necessary validity of the religious ideas.”24 “[The] fundamental religious power is faith in the union with God, leading to God-imbued personality and a community of personalities, and to the overcoming of sin and sorrow (Weltleid) in the certitude of grace.”25 Nonetheless, his historical, critical method and its subjective character of all religious faith and knowledge tend to judge the achievements of history through the lens of presentism, by today’s standards of the inquirer. Modernist historical thinking tends to subordinate the subject matter of the biblical Scripture and its distinctive message of Christian faith into a Eurocentric standard and civilization.26 It has lost much of the effectiveness of religion and tradition because it is not undertaken—“either by being tradition bound or by facile re-interpretation of the tradition.”27 However, in hermeneutical inquiry, truth is self-manifesting, like how a play reaches presentation through the actors.28 The truth of God’s revelation in Christ speaks to the inquirer in engagement with history, from, in, and through history, coming as an event effective in the understanding of the inquirer. The critical consciousness of the inquirer has his/her own horizon, as conditioned and limited within his/her standpoint, background, and lifeworld. Thus, historical, critical method must be located and developed in a self-critical manner, moving within the dynamic interplay between the history of effect and the fusion of horizons. As the right horizon of inquiry is acquired through an encounter with history and tradition in an ongoing manner, the inquirer’s understanding of history is expanded and opens up his/her horizon in the progress of a fusion of horizons; this hermeneutical procedure entails a critical force against false consciousness of history, distorted forms of language, and social institutions. One’s identity is historically influenced and socially conditioned through involvement with the historical text in which the fusion of

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horizons enriches and renews one’s self in dialogue with the otherness of history. This process is not exhausted into a historical, critical method. Hermeneutical inquiry keeps the source of history within a non-­relativist lifeworld, therefore keeping it at bay from sheer relativism. This procedure qualifies the historical-critical method to be more self-critical or immanently critical since it assesses the critical method to be embedded within the efficacy of history and the social location of the inquirer. Theologically speaking, the subject matter of the scripture, framed in God in the revelation of Jesus Christ, maintains that the biblical lifeworld is first rooted in the Hebrew tradition of Exodus and God’s revelation in the Torah. In prophetic expectation of the messiah, Jesus Christ, it is imbued with Jewish character in the Greek Bible.29 However, in Troeltsch’s understanding of the Bible, it is not the sole means, but stands in complementarity with the rich history of Christian religion. His major problem in the historical-critical method is that it reduces the biblical subject matter into historical relativities and pluralist forms of Christian history of religion. Thus, the Bible cannot any longer be the source of critique in the historical course of Christian religion embedded with compromise, adaption, and synthesis. Against the presentist interest of compromise, theological subject matter as biblical lifeworld may lead and guide the historical, critical inquiry and understanding of the biblical text. It should not be overwritten by existential hermeneutics, or captive to its anthropocentric understanding of Jesus Christ.30 This perspective helps avoid the pitfall of historical relativism and renews Troeltsch’s historical-critical method because the latter does not explore the dimension of the correlational unity of the critical inquirer within the lifeworld and the historical object of research, which shapes and influences the horizon of the inquirer. Given this, a hermeneutical notion of fusion of horizons does not necessarily discard phenomenological inquiry characterized by detachment, suspension, problematization, and critical analysis of the taken-for-granted attitude and its reified world. Fusion of horizons is a correlational paradigm involved in encountering the lifeworld, allowing for phenomenological procedure to be operative within the process of intelligibility in an ongoing manner. Along with hermeneutical inquiry through language and history of effect, phenomenological procedure incorporates historical, critical method in terms of analysis and dialectical process for problematizing the interplay pertaining to religious ideas, material interests, and power relations.

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Religious

a

Priori

and Comparative

Study

185

of Religions

Religious traditions have a special power to articulate moral intuitions, making religious speech into a serious vehicle for possible truth contents as translated for its public validity into a generally accessible public language.31 This calls for the arduous work of hermeneutical self-reflection from within the perspective of religious traditions. An epistemic stance toward other religions and worldviews relates their religious beliefs in a self-reflexive manner to the truth claim.32 In the face of international tensions and conflicts between Western major culture and world religions, people of non-Western cultures are capable of asserting their cultural distinctiveness in finding paths to alternative modernities or multiple modernities which are proposed against a capitalist world culture.33 The notion of multiple modernities helps us appreciate and renew Troeltsch’s notion of religious a priori and historical, comparative study of religion grounded in a method of history-of-religions. Troeltsch grounds the validity of Christianity within the universal development of the history of religions in an analogical mode of thought.34 In his account, dogmatic theology is more historically conditioned and shaped in the entire study of the history of religions than Schleiermacher’s articulation of religious consciousness. A religious a priori is not reduced into historical relativism, but still holds its constructive import in connection with the notion of the kingdom of God and the infinite worth of the individual soul. Troeltsch’s notion of religious a priori is in modification of Kant’s critical philosophy, grounding religious ideas in consciousness, or the structure of reason. In distinction from Schleiermacher’s notion of the universality of religious feeling in the utter dependence upon God, Troeltsch seeks to explicate the rational character of the necessity of religion. Religious experience and its history are interwoven within all other human events and histories for historicism, rather than establishing a different mode of formation and realization ascribed for psychology. Troeltsch differentiated his notion of a priori in the ethical, religious, and aesthetic methods of appraising the world from the Kantian a priori of science, which is theoretical reason universally apprehended in the manner of natural science.35 Thus, Troeltsch relocates Schleiermacher’s religious a priori as actively present in religious movement and manifestation from the standpoint of historicism.36 Troeltsch safeguards his position from dogmatic supernaturalism and psychologism, in which he would move toward phenomenology in his later stage.

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Toeltsch’s Self-Expression

for Religious

Studies

In My Books (1922), Troeltsch expresses his historical work related to Wilhelm Dilthey and commitment to historical theology in the religioushistorical thought world. But Troeltsch finds Dilthey’s new psychology to be unsatisfactory. Troeltsch’s concern is with the construction of historical religions within the universal development of the religious spirit since “the Enlightenment drove the supernatural powers of the church and theology into the background and reduced them to their narrower practical sphere.”37 Thus, Troeltsch is convinced of religion as an experience of consciousness; first, it is to be studied in the psychological analysis of various components and manifestations of religion. Only then does Troeltsch find it feasible to deal with the truth content and relative value of various historical religions. He remains in this position: from psychological description and analysis to critical studies of value and truth content, thus from psychological analysis toward recognition of it in terms of the theory of validity.38 This implies Troeltsch’s distancing away from Dilthey toward the phenomenological school of thought. In The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religion (1902), Troeltsch attempts to explicate the relationship between the historically relative and the substantively absolute. Under the influence of Max Weber, Troeltsch strives to clarify the historical development of religion in connection with all sociological problems in The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Sects. (1911, English translated 1923). Troeltsch expresses a hope for a return to religion and the completion of his philosophy of religion, which was his first love. The religious element remains central in his synthesis of contemporary culture,39 implying his interest in phenomenology. In On the Question of the Religious A Priori (1909), Troeltsch points to transcendentalism beyond Dilthey, in which Troeltsch defines religious a priori as the expression of the autonomy of reason; it is also universally necessary in distinction of reason from something psychologically grasped. This refers to “the rationally necessary and autonomous consideration and evaluation of the real from ethical, religious, and teleological points of view,” which is analogous to Weber’s definition of rationality in the fourfold sense (purpose, value, affection, and tradition).40 In the interpretation of Christian ideas, along the lines of the history of religions and in comparison with other religions, Christian religion entails a much greater capacity in qualifying its ideas for self-critique and

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rejuvenation. Troeltsch reinforces his comparative study of religion by broadening the history of religions with historical-critical thinking.41 Troeltsch comprehends Christianity as being among the great religions, and as “the strongest and most concentrated revelation of personalistic religious apprehension.”42 His notion of Christianity is established as the culmination or focal point. Although Christianity is “the focal synthesis of all religious tendencies and the disclosure of what is in principle a new way of life,”43 we cannot prove that it will always remain the final culmination. Absolute truth belongs to the future appearing in the judgment of God. We place ourselves in the forward-pressing impetus in all approximation to God and participate in the living power of the Absolute in our midst.44 Thus, Christian religion is in no way the absolute religion and it is a purely historical phenomenon as conceived in the universal framework of religion. It is nowhere the changeless, exhaustive, and unconditioned realization as the universal principle of religion45 in face of God’s future. But this historical-critical approach does not necessarily deny the Christian religion as being the culmination point as well as the convergence point, designated as the focal synthesis of all religious tendencies and the disclosure of a new way of life.46 But the transcendental future renders historical manifestation of all religions to be incomplete and open-ended in approximation toward the mystery of the Christian notion of the Kingdom of God. Troeltsch’s recognition of religious pluralism is based on Christian personalist theism. It has little to do with monistic pantheism that runs into a relativism of an innerworldly utilitarianism. This “changes anything into everything, robs every particular of its direct relationship to the Absolute.”47 Without losing the Christian identity of the propheticChristian idea of God, Troeltsch would be convinced of the project of multiple modernities.

Phenomenological Clarification

and Revision

I find a future-oriented dimension in Troeltsch’s study of religions, not to be self-contradictory per se, but rather consistent in his historical, critical method in light of God’s kingdom. For him, the Christian notion of God’s kingdom is not relativized, but elevated to be the critical transcendence in relativizing all social, historical realities and limitations, even including the present consciousness of religious pluralism. As Troeltsch states, “…God is the Lord of the world and of history, that even the present changes and situations are created and fulfilled by God,

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and that we, with the movement of our own life, stand in the movement of God’s life.”48 This perspective becomes daring, even indispensable to reframe comparative theology, in a Troeltschian sense, regarding the Mystery of the kingdom of God and faith. If phenomenology of the kingdom of God is not merely subsumed into the presentative form of eschatology (immanence), we may take it up for correlational unity with its transcendence. The phenomenological understanding of the transcendence does not merely relativize the self-manifestation of the Ultimate Reality into the sameness, but respects its particular experience and expression in similarity-in-difference. Troeltsch’s construction of the supreme validity of Christianity seeks to provide an adequate synthesis between relativism and absolutism. But later, his endeavor shifted toward a more relativistic notion of cultural validity in his 1923 lecture at the University of Oxford (“The Place of Christianity among the World Religions”).49 His notion of relativity as historical individuality and individual configuration50 is further sharpened and reinforced in the notion of different cultural circles of other religions, which is not so neatly reconcilable with the notion of supreme validity. The superiority of Christianity is no longer valid as the convergence or culmination point for all other religions. As Christianity is the best religion for followers, so Buddhism or Brahmanism is capable of appealing to their followers in the same manner.51 This does not necessarily mean an epistemological rupture in Troeltsch because he already, in his critical review of Hegel’s notion of the absolute religion, contends that Christianity cannot be set forth as the religion that perfects and actualizes in the final form.52 In his study of nonChristian religions, Troeltsch is more and more convinced that truth can have many cultural expressions in the relativist sense of “polymorphous truth,”53 such that an attitude of one better than the other is out of the question. Nonetheless, Troeltsch as a historical relativist is not simply identified as a religious pluralist in the bilingual sense of double belongingness to the two different religious traditions in identifying the Judeo–Christian God with the Hindu God. For Troeltsch, faith in God revealed in Jesus remains an indispensable component in his attempt at reinterpreting the Christological dogma of the church and its innermost motif in terms of the Christ mysticism. The latter’s “representation as the revelation and symbol of God constitutes the chief element of a properly Christian

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cultus.”54 Christian theism is not a dying religion, but “[Jesus] himself will always keep on living where the Prophetic-Christian belief in God is alive.”55 In faithfulness to a cosmic position of Jesus, meanwhile, Troeltsch keenly recognizes an infinite plurality of spiritual worlds among various cultures and human groups within the nexus of a vastly larger cosmic life in which “there are still other religious life-contexts with their own redeemers and paradigmatic figures.”56 On the one hand, there is the christocentric principle in Troeltsch, while other religious traditions, which have their own special ways of relating to the Absolute, stand alongside Christianity. Given this, Troeltsch conceptualizes a pioneering work on the teaching of lights. As he writes, “… there are still other circles of light, with other sources of light, within the great divine life of the world; … there may arise new circles of light of this sort out of the depths of the divine life. The eternal truth of God has its particular historical form for every circle and for every general stance…Every epoch stands immediately before God, and we stand immediately before God precisely as gathered together in the circle of light radiating from Jesus.”57 For Troeltsch, historical criticism cannot be an end for itself, but “the historical connection of faith is attached all the more to ‘the religious personalities of Jesus and Paul, of Augustine and Luther.’”58

Troeltsch and Multiple Modernities If the other lights radiate from God’s decisive self-manifestation in Jesus, his notion of Europaism as the locus of normative value cultural synthesis must be relativized by this radiating light of God’s revelation in Christ.59 Troeltsch’s liberal attitude of agreement and mutual understanding in a creative and open-ended manner is appropriate for our phenomenological inquiry to involve a project of conceptualizing the politics of recognition in the reality of multiple modernities; different histories, different cultures, different circumstances, including Western modernity, produce quite different modern cultures and societies. In other words, multiple modernities, drawing upon the politics of the recognition of the Other, reinforces comparative theology to support an alternative reality of plurality and hybridity in the coalescence of diverse patterns and forms.60 In terms of creative adaptation to Western modernity, a project of multiple modernites can be revivified; non-Western people begin to

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engage constructively their own hybrid modernities. In this project, a comparative study of religious ethos, value rationality, and prophetic religious ethic is of special significance. This project does not abandon the Western discourse because modernity has traveled from the West to all over the rest of the world, but this alternative form of modernity interrogates the present at every national and cultural site, offering a difference and challenge in destabilizing the universal metadiscourse of Western modernity. It entails a task of trans-modernity to overcome the Janus-like character of modernity in scientific progress, rationalization of social and cultural life, and material improvement, on the one hand; on the other hand it seeks to break through a phenomenon of iron cage or the reification in loss of meaning and freedom through economic compulsion and bureaucratic administration and control.61 Modernity as an incomplete project entails many stories of resistance and hope for the critical, emancipatory project in cutting through the limitations and problems of the Western form of modernity. Comparative theology finds its critical import in this multiple contribution of religious ethics in the study of the history of religions. “Everywhere, at every national/cultural site, modernity is not one but many; modernity is not new but old and familiar; modernity is incomplete and necessarily so.”62 This multiple modernities perspective remains crucial in Troeltsch’s account, “…in the movement of God’s life…God sits on the Divine throne (im Regiment) with God’s truth prevailing …We perceive to be the truth binding our conscience cannot be wholly false and must point toward the future. We may devote ourselves, therefore, seriously and faithfully to the task that we comprehend, and leave the rest to God.”63 In recognizing the other religious ways, Troeltsch has much in common with Barth, albeit in their theological difference and orientation. As already discussed in the previous chapters, Barth’s teaching of words and lights founded upon divine speech-act in revelation dispenses with natural theology linked to religious a priori. It is of an analogical, historical character, interpreting the secular realms as parables in witnessing to the kingdom of God. But Troeltsch’s notion of other circles of lights and sources is based upon the transcendence of God in connection with a religious a priori linked to the Absolute. Given the different orientation, I am more concerned with incorporating Troeltsch’s historical, critical method into the comparative study of religion in a sociological frame of reference. Faith epistemology grounded in God’s revelation is central, insofar as theological

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epistemology remains humble and open to other circles of lights and sources radiating from the transcendence of God in revelation, as heard in the otherness of the Other. Revelation as the source of the critique of religion does not necessarily mean a rejection of cultural, religious realms, but renders them into a semantic field in which God’s voice and presence may be heard. A phenomenology of eschatology, say, the lifeworld of divine transcendence remains a critical force for our present involvement with other religions and modernities, while it safeguards the “anti-anti relativist stance” from falling into sheer pluralist relativism in double belongingness or reconversion to other religions. For Troeltsch, the structures of religious experience, as well as interpretations and understandings in historical study will remain incomplete and open-ended. Notwithstanding, there is the full commitment to faith in the Judeo–Christian God. “As such, the cognitive element of [faith] depends upon revelation and is primarily faith in the fundamental revelation.”64 Although Troeltsch keeps the notion of religious a priori, he has not managed to comprehend the unique intentionality of religious phenomena embedded within a historical, cultural, and social context. The phenomenological epoche, which is a means of bracketing beliefs and preconceptions, normally imposes on phenomena, intending to overcome any kind of reductionism. Suspending one’s unqualified assumptions and judgments allows one to become attentive to a much fuller disclosure of the extent to which and how it manifests itself in religious experience and in a social historical context. Beyond the psychological analysis underlying Troeltsch, phenomenological procedure allows for greater awareness of the religious phenomena experienced, thus leading to new insights into the specific intentionality and concrete richness of experience. In religious experiences of totaliter aliter, its “power obtrudes into life,” bringing human beings to astonishment and faith.65 Thus, human beings intend a transcendent referent for communication in which religious language, expressions, and intended meanings are historically conditioned, culturally bound, and linguistically formulated. Instead of being relativized or removed in terms of historical-critical method, religious symbolism is linguistically and ritually mediated for meaningful religious action and communication in society and the world. This perspective relocates Troeltsch’s disposition of historical reductionism and quasi-psychological explication of faith at the level of

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correlation between the a priori structure of religious consciousness and the intentional characteristics of religious manifestations. Faith is in correlation with God, whose deed in Christ sets us free, creating us anew, making faith seek experience, understanding, and testimony to God. The revelation in a vertical way never becomes completely experienced in our participation in it or by means of purely intellectual capacity. It is because “we have the treasure only in an earthen vessel.”66

Collectio, Faith Epistemology, Critical Method For Troeltsch, the knowledge given to faith has its own certainty rooted in its practical indispensability and in an inner feeling of obligation as related to the totality of life apprehended through action and will. Faith knowledge as a cognitive principle relates to the transcendental as wholly inaccessible to theological science, and the transcendental imparts to it the idea of the absolute realities, truths, and values. This faith epistemology in Troeltsch aims at a relationship to reality, mediated by religion.67 Troeltsch’s concept of a dogmatic theology is part of practical theology with its impulse toward constructivism in speaking of a dogmatic theology on the basis of the history-of-religions principle. His doctrinal, comparative theology is constructed on the basis of the great historical revelation and performed on the basis of the comparative history of religion, developing historical religious significance and the Christian spirit in the direction of the absolute goal of the kingdom of God.68 Accordingly, Troeltsch’s dogmatic, comparative theology can be a complementary and renewed with commentarial comparative theology. A commentarial comparatist seeks to compare the juxtaposed texts for the comparative conversation in a hermeneutical sense.69 In the intentional, creative act of juxtaposition, the transmutative process is involved in semantic motion in the double sense of epiphor and diaphor; the former refers to the outreach and extension of meaning by comparison, while the latter to the creation of new meaning in terms of juxtaposition and synthesis. In the recovery of new meaning by comparison, juxtaposition, and synthesis, a semantic movement in reading together (collectio) is performed in an appeal to the practice of collage through decomposition and the subsequent constructive mode of thought.70 Clooney unsettles different traditions of religious texts with respect to the newly juxtaposed text materials under the disorienting power of decontextualization and recontextualization. This process of unsettling

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the collage is accomplished in correlation between the critical consciousness of the comparatist and the juxtaposition of the two different texts. This reading strategy is significantly helpful, along with a deferral of the strategies of a neat systematization, when the zone of incommensurability occurs.71 Although a comparatist reading after Vedanta does not result in any change or abandonment of Christian doctrine, a reading strategy of intertextuality between Christian soteriology and the liberation of Brahman does not recommend an immediate, alternative “either-or” attitude, or reductionism of the one truth to the other.72 When we open our eyes to collectio, neither words nor the Word should blind us to the living realities standing before us.73 The existence of commentarial comparatism is found within a sort of gap, finding that deference to two traditions, in a weaker way of double belongingness, without belonging to either fully.74 Perceived in a phenomenological manner, a new moment of intentionality (noesis) is located in the collage of the different texts through decomposition, decontextualization. Recontextualization entails a noema of semantic notion within the multiplied fused lifeworld. A suspension upon the multiplied fused lifeworld is not under brackets, and also the intentionality of the comparatist interacts with two different horizons of the textual world through conversation. The truth of the two texts comes to the critical consciousness of the comparatist in analogical construal drawing upon the correlation of the two different texts. It is also formulated in language for a recovery of meaning in a way that the truth claim of other religion is recognized under the transcendental. With respect to Clooney’s intratextual and commentarial achievements, I notice that a postliberal mode of cultural-linguistic thought is at play in his comparative theology.75 It tends to sidestep the fractured position of homo lector in collectio which is already influenced and conditioned under the effectiveness of history and tradition from its home tradition. In reading together the other sacred texts, the social location of homo lector would be out of sight because the cultural-linguistic model tends to overemphasize the incommensurability and dissimilarity between the juxtaposed traditions only for the sake of deferral. Other than the general trend of postliberal theology, Clooney’s notion of collectio is first influenced by Gadamer, and then makes a bit bolder space by way of Derrida, in which the process of reading is made a more unpredictable turn. As a double reader, Clooney defends a strong and vigorous

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learning across boundaries and indebtedness to all texts read. But his meticulous reading strategy and faith epistemology are not neatly translated into Knitter’s multiple belonging. Grounded in the Catholic tradition of inclusivism, Clooney’s work is detail-specific and his theological insights emerge after close study of other sacred texts. This is one of his great achievements that Tracy and Knitter have not managed to do. Clooney’s meticulous approach in the close reading of texts also leaves aside much of the theology of religions agenda. Undergirding an attribute of good reading, the reader must put aside presuppositions and agenda in order to read in order to learn. Clooney’s collectio is of phenomenological character76

Collectio in Wider Horizon and Troeltsch Renewal Integrating commentarial comparative theology with historical, critical method, I look to the collectio in wider horizon in terms of Geertz’s notion of thick description. This notion is developed in terms of the phenomenological notion of cultural practice as the ensemble of texts. Thus, a phenomenological elucidation of culture as the regime of “saying something meaningful to someone” should be incorporated into a correlational research model of critical comparative theology as regards God’s speech-act, and culture as the divine semantic field. This perspective critically widens and enhances the horizon of the cultural-linguistic framework, especially in the analysis of the interaction of religion, society, and culture through the problematization of the interplay between religious ideas, textual discourse, and material interests. Then, one can proceed to undergird the textual reading and its social practice in terms of immanent critique and solidarity in interreligious learning and exchange. Given this, Troeltsch’s historical-critical method retains a constructive import in the correlational research model. In Troeltsch’s triadic inquiry (critique, analogy, and correlation), practice of collectio is appreciated with the intention of reinforcing the historical, critical study of religion. The sacred text, as such, is first historically constructed and composed, and its own history and horizon are not deconstructed. But it plays as the source of historically effected consciousness of the comparatist when the comparatist is fused in correlation with other texts. The historical-critical method is involved in the process of a collage-forming context by problematizing the intended material texts in a critical method of decomposition and recontextualization. Then, in the reading process of the fused text world, a zone of incommensurability is deferred and recognized as

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different. A critical moment of distance from the unfamiliar and strange elements of the other texts is left to the future, rather than remaining a debacle. If every religion is relative in light of the transcendental, the position of interstice may be understood by way of passing over other sacred texts and coming back to the sacred texts of the home tradition. Troeltsch’s notion of lights, words, and religious a priori does not contradict commentarial constructivism since God is the source for undergirding and driving the other religions without totalizing them into sameness; they are recognized while remaining particular, and the non-identical; Christian truth claims are not compromised, yet are eschatologically open with affirmation of their historical character and in correlation with other religions in an interreligious encounter. “The expression of religious conceptions” is required for interpretation to deal with a concept of the nature of revelation, faith, and dogmatic theology; “since there is a constant flow of new constructions and interpretations of the fundamental substance of the Christian religious life.”77 Safeguarding himself from pluralist relativism and one-sided fideism in light of the Kingdom of God, Troeltsch’s historical-transcendental approach to “faith seeking understanding” remains on the way and in approximation toward the Ultimate Reality, in learning from and reinterpreting other religious ways and lights for Christian relevancy and interaction. If a commentarial comparatist argues that “all of the home tradition be reread after engagement in another tradition,”78 it finds a constructive import in Troeltsch’s theology.

Critical Conclusion: Comparative Theology: Solidarity and Emancipation Troeltsch’s dogmatic comparative theology stands in favor of propheticChristian theism, namely personalistic theism, seeking to illuminate its own ideas in interaction with other great religions. Christian religion is competent to self-criticism and rejuvenation in juxtaposition with world religions. For Troeltsch, the essence of Christianity is faith in God, a regeneration effected in the knowledge of God in Christ, and its consequence as union with God and social fellowship for constituting the kingdom of God. The exposition of the essence of Christianity is comprehended only in the new interpretations, adaptations, and synthesis in corresponding to each new situation, toward construction.79 Christianity as a living religion is sought in new synthesis to meet present conditions,

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and to adapt it to future exigencies as invested upon faith in the inexhaustibility of Christian religion.80 With and beyond Troeltsch, I am concerned with developing a critical position of comparatist, relocating a reading strategy under the priority of the anamnestic reasoning of Jesus Christ. Walter Benjamin’s concept of anamnestic solidarity with past injustice remains crucial in this critical comparatist stance because it “inspires a general awareness of collective responsibility for failure to cooperate in averting imminent disaster or even simply in improving shameful social conditions.”81 This perspective takes issue with Troeltsch’s synthesis of compromising democracy with conservatism because his method shows a lack of understanding of the prophetic contribution to the social and political arena in reference to Christian eschatology. Certainly, the idea of God’s kingdom or God’s living presence remains an undercurrent in Troeltsch, who acknowledges that Christian ideas of the infinite worth of God-filled soul provide the sharpest formulation to the concept of eschatology.82 For Troeltsch, “the gospel contains no direct political and social instructions. It is fundamentally non-political.”83 The otherworldliness of the kingdom of God is separated from the natural life of this world, and the religious inwardness of Christianity places the highest value on the individual soul.84 In critique of identification of social ethics with the social question at his time, Troeltsch applied sociological inquiry of the entire history of Christianity, adopting the stance of autonomy of the individual in modernity linked to democracy and conservatism. In Rendtorff’s account, the modern bourgeois problematic of individual subjectivity is characteristic of modernity in terms of enlightenment, rationality, and the competence of the discourse. Troeltsch has acknowledged the crisis in questioning of religion as the problem of the unity between culture and ethics for modernity and autonomy in European society.85 But Troeltsch’s limitation is seen in his excessively attaching to religious individualism and historical relativism confined within the European ideal of Enlightenment and humanity. This ensnares Troeltsch to relegate an idea of the kingdom of God to Christian individualism in opposition to all social Utopias. The kingdom of God is within us.86 Hence, I notice that his attachment to religious individualism and inwardness linked to the notion of the otherworldliness of the kingdom of God discourages Troeltsch to deepen the prophetic side of the gospel in a more sociologically relevant manner, in regard to the in-breaking

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reality of God’s kingdom in our midst. In contrast to Troeltsch, however, the transcendence of God’s kingdom is not merely otherworldly in separation from worldly issues, nor is it related merely to the infinite worth of an individual soul. The critical comparatist position is to be made anew by creatively acting through faith and hope in the expectation of God’s kingdom. Envisioning for the kingdom of God in the world and involvement for the world in God’s kingdom is driven by love and forward direction, without believing in the myth of progress, but in the living God. The spirit of hope is a driving force for a better world in the expectation of the kingdom of God through the creative act of faith, as heard in God’s speech-act through other lights and the face of the vulnerable, fragile, and victimized in our midst.

Notes







1. Mark D. Chapman, Ernst Troeltsch and Liberal Theology: Religion and Cultural Synthesis in Wihelmine Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 4–8. 2.  Bryce A. Gayhart, The Ethics of Ernst Troeltsch: a Commitment to Relevancy (N.Y.: Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 1990), 182. 3. Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, I, trans. Olive Wyon (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992), 19. 4. Chapman, Ernst Troeltsch and Liberal Theology, 152. 5. Ibid., 155–156. 6. Troeltsh, “Max Weber (1920),” in Religion in History: Ernst Troeltsch, trans. James L. Adams and Walter F. Bense (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 360–378. 7. Troeltsch, The Social Teaching, I, 25. 8. Troeltsch, The Social Teaching, II, 1013. 9.  Troeltsch, “Political Ethics and Christianity (1904),” in Religion in History, 181. 10. Troeltsch, The Social Teaching, II, 603. 11.  Troeltsch, “Political Ethics and Christianity (1904),” in Religion in History, 184. 12. Ibid., 185. 13. Ibid., 192–193. 14.  Troeltsch, “On the Possibility of a Liberal Christianity (1910),” in Religion in History, 357. 15. Troeltsch, “Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology (1898),” in Religion in History, 13. 16. Ibid., 14.

198  P.S. CHUNG 17. Ibid., 19, 20. 18. Troeltsch, “The Dogmatics of the History-of-Religions School (1913),” In Religion in History, 88. 19. Benjamin A. Reist, Toward a Theology of Involvement: The Thought of Ernst Troeltsch (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966), 161. 20. Rendtorff, Ethics, 1: Basic Elements and Methodology in an Ethical Theology, trans. Keith Crim (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 151. 21. Troeltsch, “The Dogmatics of the History-of-Religions School (1913),” in Religion in History, 107, 88. 22. Ibid., 95. 23. Gadamer., Truth and Method, 324. 388. 24. Troeltsch, “Faith and History,” in Religion in History, 140. 25. Ibid., 130. 26. Ogletree, Christian Faith and History, 76. 27. Troeltsch, “On the Possibility of a Liberal Christianity,” in ibid., 356. 28. Troeltsch, “Faith and History,” in ibid., 103. 29. Gollwitzer, Befreiung zur Solidarität, 66. Troeltsch, “The Dogmatics of the History-of-Religions School (1913)”, in Religion in History, 103. 30. My integration of historical-critical method into theological subject matter runs in the opposite direction from David Tracy who establishes Herbert Braun’s dictum that the christologies in the New Testament are the variable while a theological anthropology is the constant. Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 52. 31. Jürgen Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays, trans. Ciaran Cronin (Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press, 2008), 131. 32. Ibid., 137. 33. Ibid., 311. 34. Troeltsch, “The Dogmatics of the History-of-Religions School (1913),” in Religion in History, 90, 94. 35.  Troeltsch, “On the Question of the Religious A Priori (1909),” in ibid., 39. 36. Ibid., 41. 37. Troetlsch, “My Books,” in ibid., 369. 38. Ibid., 370. 39. Ibid., 375. 40.  Troeltsch, “On the Question of the Religious A Priori” (1909), in ibid., 36. 41. Troeltsch, “The Dogmatics of the History-of-Religions School (1913),” in ibid., 956, 98. 42. Troeltsch, The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religions, trans. David Reid (Richmond, VA: Knox, 1971), 112. 43. Ibid., 114.

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44. Ibid., 115. Troeltsch, “The Dogmatics of the History-of-Religions School (1913),” in Religion in History, 105. 45. Troeltsch, The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religions, 71. 46. Ibid., 114. 47.  Troeltsch, “On the Possibility of a Liberal Christianity, (1910),” in Religion in History, 345. 48. Ibid., 359 49. Troeltsch, “The Place of Christianity among the World Religions”, in Christianity and Other Religions, eds. John Hick and Brian Hebblethwaite (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980). 50. Troeltsch, The Absoluteness of Christianity, 89. 51. Troeltsch, “The Place of Christianity among the World Religions”, in Christianity and Other Religions, 23. 52. Troeltsch, “The Dogmatics of the History-of-Religions School (1913),” in Religion in History, 95. 53. Knitter, No Other Name, 30. 54.  Troeltsch, “On the Possibility of a Liberal Christianity (1910),” in Religion in History, 351. 55. Ibid., 348. 56. Ibid., 349. 57. Ibid., 350. Troeltsch cannot be neatly rejected as the one who removed all bastions for religious confession nor hailed as a precursor to the postmodern theology “in a relativistic, multiperspectival, and polycontextual web of experience.” Johnson, The Mystery of God, 16. 58. Troeltsch, “Faith and history (1910),” in Religion in History, 142. 59. Ogletree, Christian Faith and History, 52. 60. Thomas McCarthy, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 223. 61. Gaonkar, “On Alternative Modernities,” in Alternative Modernities, 8, 15. 62. Ibid., 23. 63.  Troeltsch, “On the Possibility of a Liberal Christianity (1910),” in Religion in History, 359. 64. Troeltsch, “Faith and History (1910),” in ibid., 124. 65. Van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, 2: 681. 66. Ibid., 681. 67. Troeltsch, “Faith and History (1910),” in Religion in History, 128. 68. Troeltsch, “The Dogmatics of the History-of-Religions School (1913),” in ibid., 101. 69. Clooney, Theology after Vedanta, 171. 70. Ibid., 173. 71. Ibid., 174–175, 179. 72. Ibid., 192.

200  P.S. CHUNG 73. Clooney, Comparative Theology, 105. 74. Ibid., 156. 75. Clooney, Theology after Vedanta, 115–118. 76. Clooney’s inclusive theology is a good example of his Catholic comparative theology, which is quite different from Tracy or Knitter. This perspective is seen in his Catholic perspective of Hindu goddesses. See Clooney Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 17–18. 77. Troeltsch, “Faith and History (1910),” in Religion in History, 123, 145. 78. Clooney, Theology after Vedanta, 196. 79. Troeltsch, “The Dogmatics of the History-of-Religions School (1913),” in Religion in History, 97. 80. Ibid., 102–103. 81. Cited in Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion, 241. 82. Troeltsch, “Eschatology (1910),” in Religion in History, 153, 155. 83. Troeltsch, “Political Ethics and Christianity (1904),” in ibid., 198–199. 84. Ibid., 202. 85. Ibid., 209. 86. Troeltsch, The Social Teaching, II, 1013.



CHAPTER 10

Comparative Theology and Interreligious Solidarity Ethic: A Critical Appraisal of Weber

If Troeltsch represents a comparative theology framed upon the history of religion, his historical-critical method is incorporated into a phenomenological inquiry of speech-act theology. Troeltsch’s teaching of lights and words, along with Barth, would pave the way toward a sociological study of religious ethics, despite their respective different orientations. In the previous chapters, we have explicated the extent to which we could undertake critical comparative theology in relating Luther, Barth, and Troeltsch to other religions and a project of multiple modernities. In this research, our intention is as much as possible to critically learn and ground their theological achievements for comparative theology in a phenomenological and hermeneutical frame of reference. This chapter seeks to scrutinize Max Weber’s comparative study of Protestant ethics and Buddhist economic rationality. Religion is not a separate activity apart from the thought and practice of life in human cultures. But it is eminently social in influencing and conditioning human life in its entirety. A sociological analysis of culture and religion facilitates a new attempt at exploring a new dimension of cultural, religious rationality in a more prophetic manner. A hermeneutical procedure in the sociological context is undertaken in a progressive step and driven in approximation toward the truth in terms of appreciation, critical stance, and recovery of meaning. This sociological, hermeneutical procedure facilitates our inquiry for immanent critique in seeking an ethic of interreligious solidarity. The term immanent critique, originally from the tradition of critical theory,1 © The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5_10

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is utilized to specifically undergird the prophetic and critical force in the reading strategy of religious texts for a counter-critique of the questionable direction of the course of history, which runs contrary to the prophetic, original ideas. Given this, I take issue with the purpose rationality underlying the process of Western modernization in the “disenchantment of the world” (Max Weber). A prophetic reasoning of religious value rationality needs to be elucidated for the immanent critique in critical juxtaposition with the purpose rationality and against the reification of the lifeworld.2 The first part entails an analysis of Weber’s comparative study between Protestant ethic and Buddhist economic rationality, in which his ideal typology and articulation of the elective affinity between capitalism and Puritan ethics are examined in terms of critical exegesis of Capitalism and its embodiment of irrationality. Based on the recent Buddhist scholarship in economic ethics, then I proceed to take an inquiry of Buddhist economic ethic, Nagarjuna, and his epistemology of the Middle Way as regards Buddhist teaching of emptiness, compassion, and dependent origination. Robert Bellah’s study about Buddhism and economic rationality in the Japanese context comes into focus regarding the reality of multiple modernities. Thirdly, I shall revive the significant role of economic justice as decisively implied in Martin Luther, in facing off against Weber’s evaluation. Luther’s prophetic ethic can be retrieved in comparison with the Buddhist ethic of compassion toward an ethic of interreligious solidarity. Finally, a Buddhist phenomenological sociology is examined in order to be more amenable to multiple horizons of culture and society.

Weber: Protestant Ethic, Economic Rationality, and the Iron Cage Max Weber’s (1864–1920) sociology is defined as investigating meaningful social action in terms of categorizing the social action in a fourfold way: (1) social action is rational in the sense of employing appropriate means to a given end (purpose-rational) for calculation, planned program, and organization; it is formal rationality or instrumental reason making possible the calculability of actions under the instrumental standpoint and the efficacy of available means under the strategic aspect; the choice of means is undertaken in given preference, means, and boundary conditions3; (2) it is rational in the sense that it is an attempt to realize

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some absolute value purely for its own conviction without reference to consequences (value-rational); it refers to substantive appraisal of values emphasizing subjective preferences; (3) social action is affectively and in particular emotionally determined (affection-rational); (4) it is traditional behavior, the expression of a settled custom and religious ideas (tradition-rational).4 Distinguishing formal and substantive rationality, Weber characterizes formal rationality as purpose or instrumental rationality, and is foundational in his explanation of the Western process of modernization. In his account, the rise and evolution of purpose rationality in Western society leads to the “disenchantment of the world” and of “religious worldviews,” in which Western people gradually have experienced a loss of meaning, freedom, and crisis of life. Weber focuses on understanding the influence of certain religious ideas on the development of an economic spirit, or ethos of an economic, moral system. Weber’s sociology seeks to understand the relationship between a social action and its meaning through and in terms of motive; sociologically relevant meaning constitutes a rational understanding of motive. The sociological inquiry of meaningful action gives a causal, yet elective explanation of the system of action in reference to the behavior of individuals in performing meaningful actions. This scientific inquiry should be undertaken in a “value-free” standpoint against value judgments. Weber requires the value freedom in acknowledgement of absolute value polytheism, in which the concept of progress can be used and explained in a completely value-free way.5 Weber’s ideal type linked to his insistence on a “value-free” science allows for him to arrive at a scientific study of society by alienating personal evaluation and judgments from the scientific object. Although social scientists cannot escape from their personal values and biases (cultural or value interest) in the study of the subject matter, it is important not to inadvertently confuse their own values and ideas with the object studied. This perspective leads him to an ideal typological model. In my view, however, this “value-free” inquiry does not necessarily reject how the social location of the scientist inquirer can influence their understanding of social reality. Anyhow, in Weber’s use of the term “ideal type,” it is linked with the comparative method by relating ideas and interests in terms of the concept of elective affinity. No pre-established correspondence is found

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between the content of a religious idea and the cultural economic interests of the religious community. By an elective process of elements, Weber finds their relevance or correlation to be in an affinity of the autonomous role of religious ideas for the rise of the ethos of modern capitalism. In exploring elective affinity, a sociological inquiry seeks to understand the real, meaningful action of human beings, which is of a hermeneutical character. This interpretive sociology helps avoid a subjectivist psychological extrapolation of the elective affinity or a point of consonance between religious discourse and cultural material formation and interest. This method stands against a unilateral materialist interpretation of cultural and historical causes, while equally standing against a unilateral spiritualist interpretation of them.6 This sociological inquiry is crucial in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which Weber develops a value-free approach to the elective affinity between Puritan Calvinism and industrial capitalism in terms of rational, meaningful action. For this inquiry, Weber identifies capitalism with “the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, and capitalistic enterprise.” Thus, a capitalist economic action is defined as that “rest[ing] on the expectation of profit by the utilization of opportunities for exchange, that is, on (formally) peaceful chances for exchange.”7 Weber argues that the development of the spirit of capitalism is best understood as part of the development of economic rationality embedded within the religious ideas of Calvinism. In Weber’s view, Luther’s concept of calling is not consistent with the spirit of capitalism, rendering it difficult to establish a “fundamental connection between worldly activity and religious principle.”8 However, Weber explicates the Calvinist doctrine of predestination in that God predestined some to blessing, some to damnation, and that even Christ died only for the elect. The influence of the doctrine of predestination becomes substantial in the elementary forms of conduct and attitude toward social economic life among Calvinist communities. Weber’s analysis of double election is mainly based on the Chap. 3 of God’s Eternal Decree, No. 3 in the Westminster Confession of 1647. “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.”9 However, this Westminster article of eternal decree runs counter to Calvin’s own position, in which we read: “God is said to have ordained

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from eternity those whom he wills to embrace in love, and those upon whom he wills to vent his wrath. Yet he announces salvation to all men indiscriminately.”10 Taking up Calvin’s concept of the electio generalis, Moyse Amyraut in the seventeenth century at the Huguenot Academy in Samur developed Calvin’s theology of election in light of a hypothetical universalism; it implies that the gospel can save conditionally under the condition of faith, while the consequence of election is conditional and particular because of the faith requirement.11 At any rate, Weber’s main concern is to analyze the doctrine of the Westminster article for the relevance to the spirit of capitalism. The elected Christian is in the world only to increase this glory of God by fulfilling God’s commandments to the best of his/her ability. The worldly activity grounded in the doctrine of predestination differs clearly from Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith. The doctrine of predestination becomes an impetus for Calvinists to prove their faith in worldly activity, running into the ascetic action of Puritan morality in the sense of methodically rationalized economic-ethical conduct. Weber evaluates Calvinists as the seedbed of capitalist economy since in the Calvinist view, the attainment of riches is a fruit of labor in a calling, that is a sign of God’s blessing.12 The religious valuation of restless, continuous, systematic work in a worldly calling is regarded as the highest means of asceticism, and at the same time, the surest and most evident proof of rebirth and genuine faith: “accumulation of capital through ascetic compulsion to save.”13 This faith attitude finds its elective affinity to the spirit of capitalism, such that such religious ideas and impetus to the purpose rationality have propelled Western modernization. However, all the other world religions, especially those in China and India, tended to reinforce economic traditionalism, and even sanctioning traditional action, religious behavior, and cultural custom in a purely conservative manner. By contrast, ascetic Protestantism, especially Calvinist Puritans, break through the constraints of cultural tradition imposed, transforming ordinary worldly action and behavior into upholding purpose rationality. This methodical conduct of life embodies the highest form of rationality, namely practical-purpose rationality, as an all-important catalyst and driving force in the process of Western modernization. When asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it played a part in building the modern economic order. “This order is now bound to the technical and

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economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism….with irresistible force….In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the ‘saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.’ But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.”14 The iron cage becomes the symbol of modernity and of a rationalization about which Weber now diagnoses in a negative way. The disenchantment with religious-metaphysical worldviews is coupled with the emergence of modern structures of consciousness, which has, in turn, brought progress and liberation, while causing the inevitable bondage of the iron cage, ruining meaning, freedom, crisis of society, and ecological sustainability. There is a notice in Weber’s ambivalent argument in dealing with the liberation and progress on the one hand, and also predicting modernity’s inevitable bondage to the iron cage on the other. Weber contends that there is an ethos of capitalism among all the religions, but no evolution can be found there toward the capitalist spirit in the sense of methodically rationalized ethical conduct of ascetic Protestantism.15

Critical Exegesis and Problematization: Capitalism and Embodiment of Irrationality In Weber’s ambivalent evaluation about purpose rationality and the iron cage, there is a lack of conceptualizing other important factors of rationality, that is cultural value rationality and prophetic rationality of religious ideas. Moreover, his analysis of capitalism framed upon Puritan ethics is of a myopic direction since it is not undertaken broadly in the domestic context of industrial capitalism as well as in connection with the Christian missional character of capital accumulation during the time of colonialism. Domestically, Weber undermines the reality of “Satanic” spinning mills in the context of industrial capitalism, which subjected the workers to inflexible regulations and pitiless movement of a mechanism. Under the slack and scrap heaps, the workers vomited forth from the satanic mills.16 Entering for the workers to a “Satanic” mill was like entering into barracks or a prison, replacing them by a mechanism operative within its system. The machine was the starting point for the industrial revolution and its capitalist development. People are accumulated and

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their bodies are controlled and inserted into the machinery of production, along with capital accumulation and rational organization of the production relations and cultural reproduction and proliferation of capitalist culture.17 In colonial expansion of capitalism, certainly, Weber does not sidestep the imperialist reality of exploitation in plantation labor and the acquisition of overseas colonies; these have brought up tremendous opportunities for profit in capitalist interest groups in view of the Spaniards in South America, the English in the Southern States of the Union, and the Dutch in Indonesia.18 In “The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in Europe,”19 Weber acknowledges that in every form of capitalist undertaking, there are some rationalizations of capital calculation, organization of political and social associations for acquisitiveness or the pursuit of profit. This capitalist enterprise has existed and is widespread in overseas policies and in all parts of the world. This kind of capitalist adventurer was invested “in purely irrational speculation or in acquisition by violence, and above of all in acquisition of booty, either in an actual war or by the fiscal plunder of subject-peoples over a long period” that has existed all over the world.20 However, Weber’s concern is not primarily about analyzing the irrational embodiment of the historical reality of capitalism in connection with the domestic context of industrial capitalism. His focus is cast upon an ideal type of Puritan capitalism, “a completely different form of capitalism” in the West, or “the rational capitalist organization of (formally) free labor.”21 For Weber, the ideal type of the rational capitalist organization of labor, in other words, the rational organization of production relations, was not known to the world outside the West, nor was the form of rational socialism known to us.22 Capitalist (material) interest played a significant role in paving the way for the domination in law and the administration by the status group of jurists specialized in rational law. Along with such material interest, there is a specific type of rationalism (ideal interest) peculiar, and specific to Western civilization. As Weber proactively writes, “Yet redemption attained a specific significance only where it expressed a systematic and rationalized ‘image of the world’ and represented a stand in the face of the world….Not ideas, but material and ideal interests directly govern man’s conduct. Yet very frequently the ‘world images’ which have been created by ‘ideas’ have, like

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switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interests.”23 To Weber’s statement, Habermas compromises Weber with Marx for his interest-constitutive knowledge for communicative rationality.24 However, my critical evaluation of Weber counters Habermas’ eclectic version of Weber mixed with a revised Marx because I am more concerned with cutting through Weber’s method by critique, solidarity, and emancipation. Thus, I problematize an inconsistency in Weber’s analysis of elective affinity between religious ideas and material interests because he has not managed to explicate the irrationality of capitalism in juxtaposition with the rational notion of capitalism. If Weber is concerned with the co-determination between economic interest and political expansion in the analysis of structure powers,25 his concluding thesis of instrumental rationality into the iron cage would be more compelling. Weber’s “unhistorical” type needs to be explored in connection with diverse types of capitalism in a social historical sense. As Sandro Segre writes, “Admittedly, some social historical conditions, which constitute together [Weber’s] theoretical model, are also presuppositions of idealtypical, unhistorical, generalized capitalism, even if these conditions in irrational forms of capitalism occur in weaker degree.”26 Accordingly, Weber applies an ideal type in an unhistorical sense to the analysis of the spirit of modern capitalism associated with the Puritan ethos. In the early history of the American colonies, the middle-class outlook of the Puritans dominated and favored a rational bourgeois economy, which became the cradle of the modern economic person.27 Weber’s evaluation remains questionable since the Puritan groups are not merely rational, but irrational, even of a colonialist type seen in the atrocity against Native Americans and the Blacks.28 Weber’s excessive attachment to the rational type of Puritan asceticism runs short of elucidating the religious idea of predestination in connection with the irrational, colonial type of racism. Thus, a serious defect in Weber comes from a lack of elaborating the immanent critique to cut through the limitation of a value-neutral position in terms of the sociological articulation between a rational type of Puritanism and its colonial type of racism. A negative, colonial type of the Puritan idea and conduct in the underside of history refers to blamage effect, say, a perversion of religion.29 Here, material (economic, racial, political) interest overwrites ideal interest; it exploits the Calvinist idea of election as a bulwark for the American

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awareness of being a chosen people, manifest destiny, and American exceptionalism. Without the explication of this irrational type of imperialist, colonial capitalism or exploitive type of modern, industrial capitalism, Weber’s typological sociology would cause a serious misunderstanding of capitalism in terms of the extreme of establishing a pure typological idealism. Its unhistorical character is maximized and overemphasized in favor of industrial capitalism in rationalized extremis.

Buddhist Ideas

and Economic

Rationality

Weber contends that there is an ethos of capitalism among all the religions, but no evolution can be found there toward the capital­ ist spirit in the sense of methodically rationalized ethical conduct of ascetic Protestantism.30 Certainly, Weber noticed that Buddhists made a concerted effort to comprehend the meaning of life in the sense of otherworldly mystical experience by flight from the wheel of karmic causality.31 The Buddhist emperor Asoka (ca. 264–226 CE) made religious appeals in commitment to the centuries-old oral tradition of Buddhism, initiating the spread of Buddhism.32 However, Buddhism was unconcerned with social issues in any direct way. Every connection with worldly interests leads to indifference to the world and idealization of a life of devotion to contemplation and nirvana. The monk sought enlightenment through “absorption into the eternal dreamless sleep of Nirvana.”33 This said, there is no path in Asia by moving from the world rejection of Buddhism toward any rational social economic ethic.34 To be short, in an Asian religious context, there is a definite underdevelopment of a thisworldly (or inner–worldly) ethic, which flourished, however, in the West and culminated in the Puritan Calvinist context. In critically examining Weber’s thesis, however, scholars maintain that Buddhism retains a genuine social ethic, which is equipped with a positive potential for changing society through a different notion of rationality. Weber deduced modern capitalist consequences only from the ancient forms of Buddhism and other Asian religions that were known in a limited way by scholars of his day.35 The Buddhist doctrine of karma and no-self does not necessarily constitute an obstacle to a drive for personality integration, social reform, and nation-building. In the form of

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a this-worldly non-attachment, Buddhist teaching does not agree with a natural expression of acquisitiveness and greed in a capitalist economy.36 In Apichai Puntasen’s account,37 Buddha sees the reality of dukkha (suffering) in craving or attachment to the external things in ignorance, anger, hatred, or to material greed resulting in the defiled mind. To be free from the reality of dukkha, a human being purifies the enlightened mind through the practice of Dhamma, keeping it from the defiled status as caused by ignorance, delusion, and greed. This Buddhist practice leads to sukha (happiness or good life). In the Buddhist tradition, ignorance consists of delusion or greed, hate, and anger, while these elements reinforce each other.38 Capitalism during the time of colonial expansion was supported by gunboat technology and political backup from Europe to colonies all over the world. The capitalist system has implanted three evils—greed, hate or anger, and delusion which have been accepted as a taken-for-granted standard practice in the form of commodity markets or stock markets in financial capital. Following self-interest in the teaching of mainstream economics constitutes rational behavior, and it emphasizes competition alone as the driving force toward progress. The Weberian notion of purpose rationality linked to rational calculation, self-interest, and competition is chided for being irrational.39 Self-interest and competition are replaced by compassion and collaboration in the Buddhist context, in which Buddhist ethics attempts to provide a pleasant work environment considering “people, plant and profit.”40 The ultimate goal must be right livelihood in collaboration with others, to be free from dukkha together in contrast to the continuous pursuit of accumulation and investment for more profit in a rationally organized manner.41

Buddhist Economic Teaching and Nagarjuna In the Mahayana context, a Buddhist understanding of Buddha nature can be seen in connection with its ethic of compassion. A Buddhist teaching of dependent co-arising is established as the Middle Way in the context of Madhyamika as represented by Nagarjuna (150–250 CE). Emptiness is not even a permanent and absolute substance, so that cause and effect are in interrelationship and complementarity. This challenges an essential unity between atman (self) and Brahman (ultimate reality), reducing the Upanishadic equation to the Buddhist Emptiness and Enlightenment upon which the Four Noble Truths are based. Buddhist

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doctrine serves only as a method or a guide for the practitioner in the experience of the ultimate reality. Here, we see narrative, symbolic, and metaphorical thought in the Buddhist Path to Dhamma, enlightenment, and nirvana. As the Buddha said, “He who sees the Dhamma sees me, he who sees me sees the Dhamma.”42 Dhamma is presented in the new sense of compassion, ethics, and wisdom to overcome the fragility of life. It aimed to overturn the Brahman ideology and the social caste system in early Indian society. All life in suffering through change (Dukkha)—the first Noble Truth―implies that all things are subject to impermanence, change, and vulnerability in the world of the endlessly cycled wheel of unsatisfactory lives. The Buddhist concept of suffering teaches that the root cause of social evil lies in the greed of human persons craving for material things. This is attachment to external and material things, which characterizes the second principle of the Four Noble truths. The second noble truth about suffering, which is caused by desirous greed, finds expression in an economic sense by the Buddha: “Thus, from the not giving of property to the needy, poverty became rife, from the growth of poverty, the taking of what was not given increased, from the increase of theft, the use of weapons increased, from the increased use of weapons, the taking of life increased- and from the taking of life, people’s life-span decreased, their beauty decreased.”43 The accumulation of wealth is endorsed for the purpose of meritmaking and generous donation and deed. However, it is not endorsed as an end itself. Generous donation is the most effective way to advance social concerns and contribute to social and economic influence.44 The Buddhist sense of economic justice entails an orientation for this worldly non-attachment. Simultaneously, the Buddha’s teaching is imbued with compassionate concern and care for the sick and the unprotected. The Buddhist precept of right livelihood in the Eightfold Path also teaches that one’s means of livelihood must not be dishonest, imprudent, and deceiving. It seeks to overcome wrong livelihood that is based on trickery, stealing, or greed. In his dialogue with Dighajanu, the historical Buddha advised persistent effort, good friendship, and balanced living. The Buddha expressed one’s skillfulness and diligence, whether it is by farming, trade, cattleraising, archery, or civil service. For balanced living, one’s income and expenditures should be balanced without being extravagant or miserly.45 The virtue of diligence and prudence in work is encouraged to use wealth

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properly for the self, the family, and community in a moral, compassionate, and generous manner. Nagarjuna, the representative of the Middle Way School, advised King Udayi to support doctors, to establish hostels and rest houses, and to supply water at arid roadsides for the blind, the sick, the lowly, and the wretched. The crippled should equally attain food and drink. The king must always care compassionately for the sick, the unprotected, and those who are stricken. It is important to eliminate high taxes, thieves, and robbers in the country and in other countries. Setting the prices fairly and keeping profits level are recommended when things are scarce.

Emptiness, Compassion,

and Dependent

Origination

For the relationship between Emptiness and Compassion in the Mahayana tradition, it is pivotal to see the Heart Sutra as the source. The Bodhisattva practice of compassion is deeply embedded in the meaning of the Heart Sutra (The Heart of the Prajnaparamita Sutra),46 in which we read that the noble Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva, took the practice of the profound perfection of wisdom itself; he penetrates that even the five aggregates are empty of intrinsic existence. The famous statement reads: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; emptiness is not other than form, form too is not other than emptiness.”47 In chapter 24 of his Fundamentals of the Middle Way, Nagarjuna comprehends the reality of phenomena or the world of form in terms of the two truths or aspects of the single reality of emptiness through dependent origination.48 This wisdom of emptiness imbued with compassion finds its significance in Shantideva’s Compendium of Deeds49 and culminates in his great compassion of bodhicitta. The emptiness of intrinsic existence which implies dependent origination helps us understand that form arises from emptiness, while emptiness is the basis allowing the dependent origination of form. “Thus the world of form is a manifestation of emptiness.”50 Emptiness is not separated from bodhisattva’s great compassion. “A deep understanding of emptiness can lead to powerful renunciation, which is the aspiration to free oneself from the suffering of cyclic existence, and it can serve also as the basis for cultivating strong compassion toward all beings.”51 This unity between the wisdom of emptiness and the ideal ethic of compassion has reached its climax in the ethical aspect of Bodhicitta in Santideva’s Bodhicaryavatara.52

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Nagarjuna’s social perspective grounded in the wisdom of emptiness sharpens the Bodhisattva practice of compassion through effective social action. He advocates the rehabilitative system of treating the prisoners against retributive capital punishment: “Just as unworthy sons are punished out of a wish to make them worthy, so punishment should be enforced with compassion and not from hatred or concern with wealth. Once you have examined the fierce murderers and judged them correctly, you should banish them without killing or torturing them.”53 Nagarjuna’s exhortation is therefore a way to epitomize a Buddhist vision of a welfare state in terms of a rule of compassionate socialism.54 One can see this prophetic tradition also in socially engaged Buddhist people today, especially in Thich Nhat Hanh who grounds his vision of inter-being in the Heart Sutra. As he writes, “the emancipation of the young prostitute will come as she sees into the nature of inter-being. She will know that she is bearing the fruit of the whole world. And if we look into ourselves and see her, we bear her pain, and the pain of the whole world.”55 This Buddhist non-dual hermeneutics from below articulates the priority of orthopraxis of compassion and experience of the ultimate reality, playing as the immanent critique in view of an irresponsible attempt at watering down the dark side of the history of effect within the Buddhist context. For the Buddhist economic vision from the web of relations in interdependence, Sulak Sivaraksa argues that we can stay closer to nature as our life companion in the web of life in interdependence. In the cosmic envisioning of a community, individuals, and communities, Buddhist principle de-emphasizes the structural hierarchies of institutions, and decentralizes power structures.56

Buddhist Way of Modernization in the Japanese Context In our analysis of Buddhist contributions to economic rationality, moral compassion, and communal well-being, the Buddhist economic ethic assumes a form of this-worldly non-attachment in striving to overcome one’s desire and greed. This perspective leads us to review the success of Japanese capitalism in the twentieth century, which provokes a new appraisal of Weber’s sociological thesis. In his Tokugawa Religion,57 Robert Bellah observes a this-worldly asceticism during the Tokugawa period (1600–1867) and the Meiji

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period (1868–1912). The Tokugawa period was a time of peace after experiencing European colonial powers and almost 400years of civil strife and conflict. Buddhism was supported by the military rulers, Shoguns, who were aided by the samurai warrior-knight class. In Tokugawa society, commerce had developed in the new, unified national market. Success in this life was appreciated in the form of an abstemious attitude, which supports advancement of the good opinions of others and material rewards.58 Bellah maintains that there is a parallel between the Japanese development of capitalism and the Protestant West. The Tokugawa society was readily open and adaptable to modernization.59 During the Tokugawa period, Buddhism put an emphasis on selfless detachment in collaboration with the people, especially in the case of Soto Zen monks. Japanese collective consciousness and culture was characterized by vertical loyalties (leader–follower), underscoring intensive discipline and stimulating a high labor output.60 Japan did not have the cultural, religious resources to initiate the process of modernization itself. However, the Tokugawa society was more readily adaptable to the acceptance of modernization than any other non-Western country.61 In a Buddhist context, work itself is accepted as Buddha action, that is the work of a Bodhisattva. One’s work as a Bodhisattva leads to enlightenment for the benefit of all in the Japanese context: “Perform your work as a public service to the Righteous Way of Heaven…Producing the five cereal grains, worship of the Buddha and the kami [Shinto gods]. Make the great vow to sustain the life of all men and to give alms even to insects and other such creatures, recite ‘Nama-Amida-Butsu, Nama-Amida-Butsu’ with every stroke of the hoe.”62 Given this, the spirit of profiting others emphasizes the Bodhisattva spirit, thus Bodhisattva deeds are identified as the deeds of merchants and artisans. The business lives of merchants and artisans are undertaken for the sake of the community.63 The merchants of Omi province under the influence of the Jodo Shin sect were known for their diligence, hard work, simplicity of life style, and dislike of waste.64 The influence of the Pure Land School on merchants is stated in the following precepts: “Cheerfully do not neglect diligent activity morning and evening. Work hard at the family occupation. Be temperate in unprofitable luxury. Do not gamble. Rather than take a lot, take a little.”65 The clear Buddhist contribution to economic justice and an alternative way of modernity provides a clear counterargument to Weber’s sociological evaluation. Bellah’s project

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in the sociological study of the Buddhist path to modernity remains one of the greatest examples to take into account a reality of multiple modernities in transcending capitalist greed and dominion through the Bodhisattva practice of compassion and advocacy of those in dukkha. A notion of multiple modernities contends that the classical theory of modernity is not applicable to all modernizing societies. The European model is only one in path to its own modernity, not the authentic one by replacing and representing other Non-Western ways. This refers to the notion of “multiple modernities.”66 Modernity is more complicated, diverse, and even culture-specific. A study of multiple modenities in the comparative study of religions reveals a difficulty to accept Western model of modernity as the homogenizing and hegemonic concept for non-West to follow and emulate.67

Immanent Critique and Interreligious Solidarity Ethic The Buddhist contribution to economic justice and local economic integrity entails ethical compassion for those economically weaker and all sentient beings. For the interreligious study of ethics of solidarity between Buddhist economic rationality and Biblical teaching, first we are concerned with critically reviewing Weber’s evaluation of Luther’s attitude toward the economic issue. For Weber, Western civilization has generated a consequence of what he calls disenchantment with the world. However, Luther’s concept of vocation has been interpreted as indifference to the spirit of capitalism because the society is regarded as already created and sanctioned by the divine order of creation. In Weber’s evaluation, Luther’s attack upon the great merchants of his time was undertaken in the sense of economic traditionalism rather than promoting economic rationality. Weber argues that Luther has a lack of ethical rationalism and was not capable of maintaining a fundamental relationship of worldly activity with religious ideas.68

Luther: God and Economic Justice In contrast to Weber, however, Luther was aware of the importance of economic life and justice in his theological deliberation of God, when it comes to the connection between the first commandment (religious

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principle) and the seventh commandment (economic attitude) in his Large Catechism.69 Contrasting God with mammon, Luther maintains that mammon is the common idol on earth. In the exposition of the seventh commandment, Luther contends that “they all misuse the market in their own arbitrary, defiant, arrogant way, as if it were their privilege and right to sell their goods as high as they please without any criticism.”70 In a reading strategy of Luther, I am concerned with God who fights against mammon through the grace of justification in the gospel of Jesus Christ, whose ministry can be sought in our archeological analysis of the elective affinity between the gospel and economic justice in advocacy with the margins. In fact, Luther prophetically criticized the Christian missional character of capital accumulation in his time, as seen in the practice of usury, speculation, and hoarding in reference to colonial missional practice. According to Luther, the big banking and trading companies increasingly pervading the whole of society were the systems of “devouring” capital. “Usury continues to devour and fetter us. If he [the rich] has a million, he earns an annual four hundred thousand, which means devouring a great king in one year. In that way a robber can sit comfortably at home and in 10 years swallow up the whole world.”71 Luther was aware of the irrational side and dangerous impulse of early capitalism in clearly seeing the political-economic alliance between the Catholic Church, Charles V, and the Fuggers. Luther’s prophetic stance against the structure of mammon, which is grounded in God’s grace and economic righteousness in the Hebrew Bible, forms a substantial impulse for the church’s responsibility for economic justice. Luther’s stance for God versus mammon is biblically inspired, prophetically driven, and deeply embedded within an endeavor of creating fair and just life arrangements (political realm, economic institution, and educational system).72 Luther remains one of the prophetic voices for God’s oikonomia versus the pervasive reality of mammon. A sociological inquiry of religious, economic ideas in Luther’s thought brings us to sharpen an elective affinity between prophetic religious ideas and economic rationality for the immanent critique of self-preservation and self-interest of faith communities. Such critique takes issue with the instrumentalized manifestations of economic reification in social and institutionalized realms. In an archeological analysis of the underdeveloped notion of economic integrity and justice, immanent critique is undergirded to the Church’s alliance with political power, and also remains a corrective to the history of an interpretation of the Reformation.

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In the archeological framework of a new critical thinking, the historical emergence of early modernity occurred from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, in which means–end rationality or formal rationality reigned the whole society in Europe. The Reformation began to articulate the emancipatory relationship between God and the believer in contrast to the medieval church which manipulated the people. Later, such liberating relationship in the teaching of Luther had been misused in classic modernity in the beginning stage of the Enlightenment (1789 to 1900) by legitimating possessive individualism. This critical notion of modernity counters the philosophical notion that the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries is the beginning of modernity, such that the philosophers of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century formulated the project of modernity.73 Rather, the concept of Enlightenment is based on the historical phase of modernity, which finds its expression and significance in the philosophical idea of the Enlightenment based on the subjectivity or autonomy of the individual, that is one of the peaks of modernity in its subsequent development. This critical perspective calls for multiple prophetic religious ethics for trans-modernity framed within a postcolonial project of emancipation with many stories of hope and resistance and solidarity from below.74 This critical position for multiple trans-­modernities seriously challenges Weber’s thesis of modernity, capitalism, and Puritan ethics, in which means–end rationality replaces all other forms of rationality in terms of profitability and accumulation in the competitive ­market.75 History of effect in shaping Luther studies should be critically juxtaposed, even imbued with social location, such that a reading strategy of the text for immanent critique is concerned with uncovering the extent to which an interpreter in their social location would condition and determine the one locus (grace of justification for religious individualism) as the metadiscourse of the text, while excluding the other locus (economic integrity and social justice) as deviating or even meaningless from the notion of religious individualism. A reading strategy in comparative theology is supposed to be undertaken in order to juxtapose the non-identical or suppressed element (economic justice) with the grace of justification. This is done by problematizing the metadiscourse of the grace of justification coupled with religious individualism, for renewing and deepening the grace of justification through the non-identical element of economic integrity for solidarity within Luther’s own thought.

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Economic Justice and Solidarity in the Buddhist– Christian Context For the Buddhist–Christian dialogue and solidarity ethic, Ulrich Duchrow, a theologian and economist, appreciates the Buddhist insight into economic life and justice because capitalist mainstream economics has made the core mistake in branding up self-interest with desire and greed. A Buddhist approach corresponds to Aristotle’s argument in which the means of life for the household (oikos) runs counter to a chrematistic economy. The latter utilizes money only as a means of exchange and unit of account. Furthermore, the Buddhist consideration concurs completely with the biblical approach to an economy of enough for all; in other words, a prophetic economy in the service of life and empowerment of the people.76 This marks an important field for prophetic dialogue and collaboration between a biblical understanding of God’s oikonomia and the Buddhist teaching of economic justice. Economy (oikonomia) is the law or the management of the household which compounds oikos (household) and nomos (law or management). Oikos retains the relationship with the living household and includes family, institution, market, state, and nature. In the Hebrew Bible, God’s grace of righteousness summons us to uphold a corresponding action because faith in the God of Torah is active and effective in love and service of our fellow humans as well as care for other creatures. God’s salvific work and the Christian faith, in the context of the Torah and the Gospel, are connected with the economy of God. If our relationship to God is influenced by a distorted economic reality, unjust economic conditions can threaten, even ruin the true worship of God. Worshipping God in distorted and abused ways leads to the abuse of human dignity in the dehumanization of economic life.77 A biblical prophetic economic ethic (especially represented by Luther) may come to terms with Buddhist economic rationality, wisdom, and compassion, such that they critically renew the limitation of Weber’s thesis. For the renewal of Weber’s thesis, it is of special significance to see his own argument for the prophetic ethic of reciprocity or solidarity against the Puritan ethic of unbrotherliness. Actually, Weber’s concern is not with idealizing the Puritan ethic for the rationality of capitalism. Rather in his diagnosis of this Calvinist trend caught up in the iron cage, Weber seeks another way for overcoming this pathology. In Weber’s account, the salvation aristocracy of Puritan Calvinism is grounded in the particularism

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of grace and vocational asceticism and it interprets God’s will and cause, imposing violence upon the world. It regards the world subject to violence and under ethical barbarism.78 The inner worldly asceticism renounced the universalism of love and brotherliness, and its aristocratic stance stands “in favor of the groundless and always only particularized grace” for ethical adoption of the standpoint of unbrotherliness.79 For Weber, the principle of the solidarity of brothers and sisters in the faith might be in approximation to a universal communism of love (caritas), and such an ethic of solidarity is added to every ethical religion which retains the giving of alms as a universal and primary component.80 The prophetic religions especially in the East may contribute to developing a protectorate of the weak, like Judaism’s jubilee year, or early Christianity. Against his will, however, Weber has not managed to develop a prophetic religious ethic in transcending the purpose rationality and provoking the reified reality of late capitalism. Unfortunately, his unhistorical typological research makes himself vulnerable to generalizing and universalizing the thesis of correlation between purpose rationality and modernization through the enchantment of the world. In contrast to him, one may find such a prophetic pivot in Luther and the Buddhist teaching of emptiness, compassion toward an interreligious solidarity ethic.

On Balance of the Result

and Buddhist

Sociology

Given the comparative study of Christian religion and Buddhism, we have discussed Weber’s thesis of Western modernity and Puritan ethic by reevaluating Buddhist’s and Luther’s contribution for a religious ethic of solidarity and economic justice. As we have scrutinized the Buddhist notion of Emptiness and Compassion in the historical course of development as well as Pure Land Buddhism in Japan, it is substantial to appreciate Buddhist’s own achievement and economic integrity for an alternative modernity. We have also reexamined Luther’s own idea of economic justice, which can be retrieved as the source of the immanent critique in matters pertaining to the historical course and development in the wrong, even opposite direction from the source. In this comparative study, we have endeavored to elaborate the notion of immanent critique in the problematization of the elective affinity between religious idea and material interest embedded with social location and power relations. This comparative study revises Weber’s thesis of Western rationality and Puritan

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Calvinism, and reconstructs Weber’s marginalized notion of religious prophetic ethic in terms of the contributions contributed by Luther and Buddhists. On the balance of our investigation, I take a further deliberation of Buddhist sociology which challenges Weber’s thesis. Buddhist scholars in a postmodern bent tend to argue that Weber superimposed his understanding of Buddhist rationality and ethic to be otherworldly or antipolitical, thus causing his image to be Western “orientalist.” Weber dismissed social concern in ancient Buddhism. On the other hand, specialists in recent studies of Weber and Buddhism are, by and large, in support of Weber’s thesis in that primitive Buddhism was more on the quest for individual enlightenment rather than promoting social service to others.81 In accusing Weber as an Orientalist, it seems to be far reaching, creating an unqualified understanding of Weber’s sociological method. Rather, his limitation lies in his despairing, yet unilateral analysis of the purpose rationality and capitalist system captive to the bondage of the iron cage. His materials and sources of Buddhism in his time were meager, even non-scientifically biased, and academically incompetent by today’s standard. Contemporary modernization in East Asia in encounter with the West has resulted in a variety of cultural manifestations and institutional forms, and social, political constellations. This reality is suspicious of and relocates Weber’s sociological inquiry at the level of multiple modernities by critically revising his limitations. On the other hand, scholars who represent Weber’s study of Buddhist economic rationality remain blind to the limitation and flaw in Weber’s typological model. In Weber’s sociological model of type concepts, one’s action has to choose between competing and conflicting ends and consequences, becoming rational with respect to its means. This purpose rationality based on the means–end relation is rational, while other factors (value, affective-emotional, cultural-traditional) are regarded as irrational.82 Weber’s interpretative sociology remains “unhistorical” and his “unhistorical concept” seeks to construct a model for each world religion in terms of typological simplification. “Unhistorical” inquiry embedded with typological simplification would be vulnerable to a historical falsification, exaggeration, or simplifying historical phenomena.83 Against Weber’s ideal type of purpose rationality linked to rational capitalism, Buddhist economic ethic does not see the capitalist system as rational because its innovation makes more money through investment

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and stimulates human greed even more. By increasing human greed, such an irrational system makes human beings into slaves through their own creation of money and capital. Against greed and competition driven by money accumulation, Buddhist economic rationality seeks a healthy body and mind to achieve sukha (the quality of mind in contrast to dukkha; contradiction, uneasiness, or suffering) in terms of peace and tranquility in a material world. If sukha is the basis and goal for transcending self-centeredness through the wisdom of interconnectedness, it is regarded as meaningful rationality.84 This economic integrity helps us cut through limitations of Weber’s purpose rationality mixed up with the ascetic desire of money accumulation and greed which runs into dukkha or the prisoner of the iron cage. If wisdom of emptiness and ethical compassion are in unity, operating as the driving force for economic rationality and the Buddhist’s own achievement of alternative modernity, this Buddhist source needs to be valued as the source of immanent critique in the problematization of the historical course of economic underdevelopment in the Buddhist ­context. In our comparative study, we assume that a Buddhist compassionate ethic and economic rationality may break through Weber’s thesis of Eurocentric modernization, and retain its own achievement of Buddhist integral modernity. Mutual recognition and learning in the context of multiple modernities help “us” and “them” rewrite the narrative of each particular modernity, along with a painful anamnesis of historical servitude, violence, and colonialism. In developing a comparative study of knowledge systems and power relations through problematization, I find a project of multiple modernities substantial for initiating the common endeavor between Christianity and Buddhism to transcend the limitation and setback of Western modernity. In this reorientation, it is important to scrutinize the extent to which a representation of non-Western religious texts is overlapped with social material interests and power relations, disseminating the triumphalist mode of thinking of Western Neo-colonialism.

Buddhist Sociology and Phenomenology In order to overcome the Western modernity discourse, Ken Jones in his reflection of Buddhism and modernity deals with Anthony Giddens’ sociological insight into emancipatory politics in Giddens’

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book Modernity and Self Identity. The objective of emancipatory politics can be achieved “by reducing or eliminating exploitation, inequality and oppression.”85 Furthermore, in Socially Engaged Buddhism and Modernity in Thailand, one can read that Buddhist people “are struggling to find a viable way of life as ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ forces collide, entwine, blend and keep changing. There are many non-modern elements in this culture….The foundations of traditional societies—ways of life, values and Buddhism—are being pulled out from under people. Maybe this is what scholars mean by ‘modernity,’ but it is not much of a conscious issue among Buddhists here.”86 Non-modern elements, especially cultural value rationality and religious solidarity ethic, are juxtaposed or articulated together with the Westernizing form of modernity, having a critical force against the colonization of these elements through technocratic rationality and capitalist domination. The Buddhist way to multiple or alternative modernities, which is differentiated from Western capitalist modernity, may reinforce a notion of reflexive modernity “which provides an ongoing narrative of self-identity, and which is subject to periodic revision.”87 For this direction, a socially engaged Buddhist finds interest in phenomenological analysis of the social construction of the self in which Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology is complementary to Buddhist insight into the interaction between self and society. Schutz’s notion of lifeworld may remain enormously significant for Buddhism because phenomenological sociology teaches how we experience the world is based on a social and historical undertaking of the world. “The forms and also the extent of delusive consciousness are not only personal to the individual in their origin but are also socially inherited.”88

Concluding Reflection: Comparative Theology and Phenomenological Critique Indeed, a theory of social construction of reality could help both Buddhists and Christians understand human perception of the Truth of Emptiness or the Infinity (totaliter aliter) as incomplete and open-ended. An engagement with Emptiness and Infinity in the comparative study may take issue with the status quo of socially constructed reality from a phenomenological perspective. However, Alfred Schutz in the context of sociology of knowledge is inclined to dismiss a critical import of Husserl’s phenomenology and its

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hermeneutic horizon. In a different move, it is substantial to reformulate and renew a critical force of phenomenological sociology for the comparative study of religion in a theological-phenomenological frame of reference. If the Infinite (totaliter aliter) manifests itself (self-revealing), sociology cannot circumvent the linguistic horizon in experience and clarification of this reality in which the linguistic horizon as the lifeworld has already shaped and conditioned the religious self and its understanding of revelation in a particular social context. In a theological-phenomenological frame of the totaliter aliter in the linguistic horizon, socially constructed reality and meaning need to be phenomenologically elucidated. In distinction from Schutz, I am more concerned with articulating a critical import of Husserl’s phenomenology in terms of a detached, critical distance from the naturally or institutionalized accepted form of religion and intend to return to the lifeworld of religion through the problematization of its elements. Husserl’s notion of “consciousness of” (noesis–noema structure) cannot be comprehended apart from “consciousness within” the lifeworld. Intentionality is socially directed for involvement in the lifeworld. Socially constructed meaning, in the Husserlian sense, is brought up to the continual dialogue and engagement with the lifeworld which makes the social reality feasible for human life in each different context. Neither realism nor idealism can hold its sway, but the correlational research to self and society in light of the lifeworld reinforces phenomenological sociology, which facilitates a comparative study for the elaboration of a source of solidarity, immanent critique, and emancipation from within the vantage point of religious ideas. For the clarification of this methodology, first, after suspension of the natural world of religion, or the reified form of religion, we come back to the ideal meaning of human consciousness, a givenness of the interiority of the lifeworld, within which is influential upon critical consciousness in shaping the first horizon of meaning. Second, with and beyond the first horizon of meaning, a phenomenological sociologist furthers to involve in the reality of the religious world, problematizing the regime of its questionable elements in enhancing and deepening the first meaning in sociological analysis of the exteriority of the lifeworld for the higher synthesis of meaning. This phenomenological co-relational critical research for the process of fusion of multiple horizons is framed upon critical detachment, problematization, and analysis of social location and power relations. It may strengthen a notion of immanent critique for

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an emancipatory politic in the socially engaged Buddhist context concerned with moral practice and recovery; it considers “subsequent liberation into a world of suchness.”89 A Buddhist goal in the sociological context “is either to release underprivileged groups from their unhappy condition, or to eliminate the relative differences between them” in the removal of exploitation, inequality, and oppression.90 If this objective can be undergirded and enhanced by the Buddhist narrative of Emptiness and compassion, the Buddhist principle narrative can be the source of emancipation through which one understands the reality of dependent origination in reference to socially constructed meaning, safeguarding its dynamism from falling into the status quo. In this context, critical comparative theology strives to salvage the credibility of religious and metaphysical worldviews, in which their critical force refrains from falling prey to religious inwardness; it also provokes a process of modernization and reification under the banner of impersonal powers within the global economic system. The common strategy in the Buddhist–Christian context searches for a project of transmodernity in immanently calling into question self-preservation and interest of instrumentalized religion, while striving to break through setbacks and limitations of global modernity on behalf of those on margins in the reification of the lifeworld. Despite different types of religious languages and orientations between Buddhism and Christianity, as irreducible to each other, comparative theology, together with Buddhist sociology, endeavors to pursue common ground for overcoming the cultural pathology attained at the last stage of modern civilization, the status quo of the iron cage: “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart.”91

Notes



1. Horkheimer elaborates his notion of immanent critique to challenge “the existent, in its historical context, with the claim of its conceptual principles, in order to criticize the relation between the two and thus transcend them.” Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (New York: Bloomsbury, 1974), 182. 2.  Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 332–345. 3. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, 1: 345.

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4. Weber, “The Nature of Social Action,” in Weber Selections, 28. 5. Weber, “Value-judgments in Social Science,” in ibid., 84–87, 92. 6. Ibid., 9–12; Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 183. 7. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 17. 8. Ibid., 85. 9. Ibid. 100. 10. Calvin, Inst, III. xxiv. 17. 11. Chung, The Spirit of God Transforming Life, 94. 12. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 172, 121. 13. Ibid., 172. 14. Ibid., 181. 15. Ibid., 125. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 269. 16. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon, 1957), 39. 17. Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, I, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1990), 139–140. 18. Weber, “Structures of Power,” in From Max Weber, 167. 19.  Weber, “The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in Europe,” in Weber Selections, 331–340. 20. Ibid., 336. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 337. 23. Weber, “The Social Psychology of the World Religions,” in From Max Weber, 280. 24. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, 1: I: 193. 25. David Beetham, Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1985). 26. Sandro Segre, “Max Webers Theorie der kapitalistischen Entwicklung,” in Max Weber heute: Ertrage und Probleme der Forschung, ed. Johannes Weiss (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1989), 447. 27. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 174. 28. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, called “a city upon hill” (Governor John Winthrop), was based on the Puritan principle, and became the first slave-holding colony in New England. Lorenzo J. Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England, 1620–1776 (N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1942), 16. 29. Duchrow and Hinkelammert, Transcending Greedy Money, Chap. 13. 30. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 269. 31. Ibid., 266. 32. Bendix, Max Weber, 169. 33. Ibid. 34. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 269–270.

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35. Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 207. 36. Ibid., 208. 37. Apichai Puntasen is the director of the Rural and Social Management Institute (RASMI) in Bangkok, Thailand and was one of the leading dialogue partners in Buddhist–Christian Dialogue Concerning Structural Greed in Chiang Mai, Thailand (organized by WCC and LWF From 22–26 August 2010). A Common Word: Buddhists and Christians Engage Structural Greed, ed. Martin L. Sinaga (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2012). 38. Puntasen, “Individual and Structural Greed: How to Draw the Greed Line—A Buddhist Perspective,” in ibid., 84. 39. Ibid., 89. 40. Ibid., 90. 41. Ibid. 42. Steven Collin, Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 245. 43. Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics, 197. 44. Ibid., 192, 193. 45. In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon, ed. Bhikkhu Bodhi (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2005), 124–125. 46.  Buddhist Wisdom: The Diamond Sutra and The Hear Sutra, trans. Edward Conze (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), preface by Judith SimmerBrown, xxiii. 47.  Essence of The Heart Sutra: The Dalai Lama’s Heart of Wisdom Teaching, trans, and ed. Geshe T. Jinpa (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2005), 60. 48. Nagarjuna, Fundamentals of the Middle Way, 24:8. Further see Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1967), 213. 49.  Essence of The Heart Sutra, 111. 50. Ibid., 117. 51. Ibid., 132. 52. Francis Brassard, The Concept of Bodhicitta in Santideva’s Bodhicaryavatara (New York: SUNY, 2000), 46. 53. Robert A. F. Thurman, “Guidelines for Buddhist Social Activism Based on Nagarjuna’s Jewel Garland of Royal Counsels,” in Eastern Buddhist 16, no.1 (Spring 1983), 19–51; cited in Ken Jones, The New Social Face of Buddhism, 47. 54. Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics, 199. 55. Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra, ed. Peter Levitt (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1988), 38.

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56. Sulak Sivaraksa, The Wisdom of Suitability: Buddhist economics for the 21st Century (Thailand, Chiang Mai: Silkworms Books, 2009), 38. 57. Bellah, Tokugawa Religion: The Values of Pre-Industrial Japan (New York: The Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1957). 58. Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics, 211. 59. Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Tradionalist World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 125. 60. Ibid., 126. 61. Bellah, Tokugawa Religion, 40. 62. Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics, 212. 63. Bellah, Tokugawa Religion, 120. 64. Ibid., 120–121. 65. Ibid., 119. 66. Dominic Sachsenmaier, Jens Riedel, and Shmuel N Eisenstadt, Reflections on Multiple Modernities: European, Chinese and Other Interpretations (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 4. 67. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,’ in Daedalus, 2. 68. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 85. 69. Luther, “The Large Catechism (1529),” in Kolb and Wengert, eds. The Book of Concord, 386–390, 420. 70. Ibid., 418. 71. Cited in Ulrich Duchrow, Alternatives to Global Capitalism: Drawn from Biblical History, Designed for Political Action (Utrecht: International, 1998), 219. 72. F. W. Marquardt., “Gott oder Mammon aber: Theologie und Ökonomie bei Martin Luther,” in Einwürfe, ed. Marquardt et al. (Munich: Kaiser, 1983), 176–233. 73. Habermas,” Modernity: An Unfinished Project,” in Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity: Critical Essays on The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, eds. M. P. d’Entrèves and S. Benhabib (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997), 45. 74. Duchrow and Hinkelammert, Transcending Greedy Money, 175, 228. 75. Ibid., 98–99, 123, 131. 76. Ibid., 81–82. 77. Chung, Hermeneutical Theology and the Imperative of Public Ethics: Confessing Christ in Post-Colonial World Christianity (Eugene: Pickwick, 2013), 159. 78. Weber, “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions,” in From Max Weber, 336. 79. Ibid., 333. 80. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 212–214.

228  P.S. CHUNG 81.  Christopher S. Queen and Sallie B. King, eds. Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996). 82. Weber, “The Nature of Social Action,” in Weber Selections, 29. Against Weber, other factors from the purpose rationality must be also rational as juxtaposed with the purpose rationality in calculation and competition. 83. Bendix, Max Weber, 274–276. 84. Duchrow and Hinkelammert, Transcending Greedy Money, 81. 85. Ken Jones, The New Social Face of Buddhism: An Alternative Sociopolitical Perspective (Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2003), 71. 86. Cited in ibid., 74–75. 87. Ibid., 76. 88. Ibid., 37. 89. Ibid., 83. 90. Ibid., 71. 91. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 182.

CHAPTER 11

Religious Discourse, Power Relations, and Interreligious Illumination

This chapter explores the extent to which a sociological inquiry of the comparative study of religion would be mutually beneficial through reciprocal illumination in reference of Francis Clooney’s comparative theology. Then, it is concerned with problematizing the Buddhist text of Bodhicaryavatara (The Way of the Bodhisattva) in connection with the Buddhist principle of dependent origination, in which a Christian critical, constructive commentarial work should come into focus. In view of a Christian commentarial interpretation, I further attempt to problematize the elective affinity of the bodhicitta idea via the Heart Sutra in its affirmative context as well as in Imperial Japanese accommodation. This sociological inquiry facilitates our project for developing critical comparative theology in terms of archeological analysis of religious ideas, material interests, and power relations and also on behalf of solidarity and emancipation.

Inquiry, Analysis, and Strategy A theme of religious discourse and interreligious illumination can be comprehended in sociological inquiry of religious ideas and material interests in terms of power relations, while requiring a hermeneutical clarity of this interplay in an interreligious, commentarial context for reciprocal illumination between Buddhism and Christianity. To elaborate a comparative theology in this regard, it is significant to involve and analyze its concept and strategy, which is characterized by commentarial, © The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5_11

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exegetical work. It is also equipped with the practice of meticulous and dedicated reading of one’s sacred text correlated with other sacred texts. Sociological inquiry of comparative theology is hermeneutically framed in a critical method, while exploring elective affinity between religious ideas and their material interests in the historical course of development. It seeks to incorporate Foucault’s method of problematization into a hermeneutical, commentarial practice of the sacred texts, explicating how and why a particular body of knowledge (Christian symbol of the cross, or Buddhist wisdom of emptiness) is entitled to be set up as a hegemonic discourse in subjugation of the non-identical in a (post) colonial regime. On the other hand, this inquiry develops the source of religious ideas for practice of solidarity and compassion in favor of the immanent critique. Immanent critique seeks to understand the contradictions that exist between society and its systems for the sake of a determinate possibility for emancipatory social change. Critical method conceptualized through problematization allows us to step back from the domain of the problem, rendering it as an object of critical analysis of the combination of an idea with material interest. Then effective inquiry notices such a correlation to be embedded historically and socially within a blamage effect through mutual adulteration in the regime of hegemony. It requires a definite attitude of ethics in this analysis of blamage effect via religious discourse and power relations. Thus, it transcends a notion of deconstruction embedded within a semiological deconstruction of the relation between signifier and signified.1 The utilization of the method of problematization is not strictly of Foucauldian character, but it reinforces a trans-modernity project of cutting through setbacks and limitations of late modernity by relating it to the hermeneutical notion of critical distance. This sociological-hermeneutical reasoning seeks to elaborate the immanent critique in dealing with the interplay between religious discourse, material interest, and power relations via blamage effect. In so doing, our inquiry circumscribes Foucault’s anti-humanistic and nihilistic trend. To begin with, it is substantial to feature sociological inquiry of religious discourse and interreligious reading with respect to the comparative theology a la Clooney.

Comparative Theology: Homo Lector and Self-Effacement Comparative theology rejects to reduce the studied traditions and other traditions’ faith to mere, safe, and disposable information as fitting and suitable to serve the home tradition of comparative theologians. Rather,

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it respects the transformative power and its claim to universal validity, without distorting the other tradition, nor by depriving its right of the imposing structure.2 The comparative theology envisioned as a project of collectio (reading together) intends a rethinking of every theological issue and a rereading and rewriting of every theological text in light of other sacred texts. Comparison belongs to a practice of reading, an activity of comparatist’s reading attentively and engagement in a purposeful and preserving manner.3 I find Clooney’s practice of comparative theological reading with commentary to be insightful because his style of writing has been based upon his lifelong experience and commitment to reading classical Indian sacred texts and their commentarial books. In so doing, comparative theology is of rigorous commentarial character, entering into a critical, intelligent commitment to the sacred texts and materials of the religious tradition studied. The activities of comparative theologians are theoretical, practical, interpretive, personal, and communal, as shaped in negotiation with the comparable activities of the faith communities compared.4 For this purpose, comparative theology seeks to inscribe other religious texts within the Christian theological tradition and to rewrite Christian theology as seen only from the newly composed standpoint and context.5 For the art of interreligious reading, Clooney maintains that a homo lector requires self-effacement before the text, through patience, perseverance, and imagination. It is not a value-neutral position, but a humble practice that seeks to reveal productive ways of thinking and changing the horizon of readers, as they are drawn into the world of text, even in their engagement with the other sacred texts and also in face of the implications of its truth.6 A practice of interreligious reading is furthered, in which self-effacement before the text emphasizes the primacy of the text over the concerns of the commentators; they do not assume the center stage. Clooney’s art of self-effacement in the interreligious reading is related to an erasure of personal creativity and intersects with a difficulty where commentators tend to submerge their identities and agenda into the text.7 If the reader doesn’t come to the interreligious reading with the necessary humbleness and self-effacement that Clooney espouses, then there is a very present danger of the unintended consequence of theological hegemony. Self-effacement tends to be vulnerable to an unethical aspect in submission to the religious authority and power structure caused by the text itself and its institutionalized structure. Despite the hidden dangers of the “self-effacing” method of comparative theology,

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I do not sidestep that Clooney’s strategy may reinforce indigenous hegemonies, too. In a project of a Christian commentary on a non-Christian text, selfeffacement does not necessarily discard a character of critical interpretation for rich application of the two different religions in interreligious reading and exchange. It is only in the constant exchange that we are in a better position to understand our misconceptions and latent values that we unintentionally impose. This procedure sharpens a notion of selfeffacement through recognizing our own social location and being open to constructing new meaning through the continual exchange with the religious Other. Clooney’s concern is rigorous, exegetical work, rather than sociological-hermeneutical, yet convinced of modern academic scholarship and its ­standard as a measure for judging the quality of the interpretation of the text. He supports a phenomenological epoche of bracketing personal beliefs for the sake of exegetical work as academic scholarship, by which to judge the art of interpretation. For this comparatist reading, Clooney advocates a Christian commentary for the commitment to close reading through contextual reading in a respectful awareness of indigenous tradition. Then, he hopes, based on such professional commentarial work, the comparative reader can be mindful of and attuned to Christian spiritual realities in the form of interpretation and reception of a text of another tradition8; On the one hand, writing a Christian commentary rules out any pretense of writing neutrally because Clooney maintains faith and loyalty in the Christian context. But if Christian commentary on the texts of other traditions is worthwhile, it is worthwhile to find a way through mutual respect and openness to the Other.9

Sociological Inquiry and Fusion

of Horizons

Shared with the concern of comparative theology, however, I am more concerned with elucidating a public dimension of religious studies and its social effect and ramifications through the sociological-hermeneutical analysis of the interplay between religious ideas and material interest in a historical course of development. A sociological hermeneutical inquiry is a way of integrating the ontological side of the hermeneutical notion of fusion of horizons with a phenomenology of culture a la Clifford Geertz. Social cultural regime and political practice can be accepted as the text of ensemble to be deciphered. Culture as the assemblage of the

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text, other than written texts or documents, is first to be explicated in its local domain, with respect to its socially constructed meaning and political ramification; then, a hermeneutical procedure of appreciation, critical distance, and recovery of meaning is to be undertaken for immanent critique and solidarity. This comparative hermeneutics, like Clooney, allows for self-effacement in the initial stage of appreciation in authentic listening and learning; then, it proceeds to find elective affinity between religious ideas and material interests to undertake a careful and deliberate reading praxis, which discloses prophetic insight as inherently underlying in the religious texts. In an encounter of different horizons, a new meaning can also be acquired for the Christian reader, so that interpretation is driven in an approximation to the truth in an open-ended and dynamic manner, say, in the progress of fusion of horizons.10 A comparative hermeneutics considers plurality and ambiguity, in which I argue that religions entail exercises in terms of immanent critique or self-critique and renewal (metanoia) in resistance to self-idolatry or absolutization of religious ideas and its power relations in the nexus of its institutionalization and dominant form of knowledge. In the process of understanding, one’s historically effected consciousness is co-shaped by one’s place in social location, in which religious language as social discourse is embedded within power structure; for instance, we notice Buddhist emptiness in support of Imperial militarism or Christian symbol of the cross turned into crucifix and crusade. The sociological inquiry provides a method of problematizing the i­nterest of homo lector in embeddedness with the subject matter of the one’s and other’s sacred texts, as juxtaposed, even critically imbued with their socially constructed meaning and exposure to political hegemony in each own particular context. The lifeworld of homo lector cannot be bracketed; rather, in the process of learning of other sacred traditions, an attitude of appreciation for the other sacred texts qualifies a notion of self-effacement and epoche to correlate with a critical method of calling into question religious ideas and material interest; this inquiry is not vulnerable to a mere submission to the strange, hierarchical elements of the religious text and discourse in justifying religious authority, dominion, and violence. Homo lector on its own, unless it acknowledges its lifeworld and the lifeworld of the texts it is comparing, has the potential to be Neo-colonial despite its professional practice of self-effacement.

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Thus, homo lector in this regard becomes homo socius and ethicus. An attitude of self-effacement is juxtaposed with a critical method, such that a horizon of homo lector is widened by learning from other sacred texts and is involved in pursuing a common cause in the public sphere. Homo lector as homo socius seeks a meaningful ethical action in acknowledging the particular, the irregular, and the non-identical in another sacred tradition. Our reading of sacred texts of other religions always remains incomplete, in need of renewal, revision, and unfolding. But inherent to our argument is that the religious Other has the platform upon which to speak and be heard. This procedure differentiates our theological position from Clooney’s comparative theology, while elaborating a “critical” comparative theology in terms of homo socius and ethicus. Through homo socius and homo ethicus, we can try to better understand the importance of the homo lector, while interrogating the interplay between religious ideas and material interests. This inquiry in turn allows for the prophetic voice of the gospel to speak loudly, creating a platform for the oppressed and marginalized to speak and be heard.

Faith and Understanding If faith seeks understanding, faith and understanding come together in a hermeneutic circulation through dialogue, and proceed in concretization of such a correlation in a social context. From a Buddhist side, the object of faith (or devotion) is discovered in critical reflection and understanding. Both faith (devotion in taking in the Three Jewels) and intellect are crucial factors in Nagarjuna, the second-century Indian representative of Mahayana Buddhism.11 Buddhist integration of faith and reason may invite non-Buddhist people to read and critically understand the Buddhist sacred texts, while a Christian notion of faith seeking understanding welcomes the non-Christian practitioner to critically engage with Christian symbols and sacred texts. For mutual learning and illumination, I am concerned with advancing an act of comprehending the language of faith in the commentarial framework, in dealing with a Buddhist sacred text of Bodhicaryavatara. The Bodhicaryavatara (The Way of the Bodhisattva) is one of the most important source texts, together with Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland12 and Asanga’s Bodhisattva Levels, in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, especially for the Tibetan tradition. The Bodhicaryavatara is known to have been

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composed in Sanskrit by a Buddhist philosopher in India in the eighth century. The name of the author in a slightly later version was called Santideva; although his life in a historical context remains unknown to us, his productive life is assumed to be located approximately between 685 C.E. and 763 C.E.13

Competition and Conflict in the Midst of Interpretation The term bodhicitta has usually been translated as the “thought of enlightenment” or “desire of enlightenment” (or sometimes awakening). The feminine verbal noun bodhi means the state of being Buddha, the awakened, in the Buddhist context, or in modern translation, it is enlightenment or awakening. Citta retains various technical meanings in the course of historical development, but its most basic and common meanings are mind, thought, attention, and desire.14 For Nagarjuna, bodhicitta is the root of enlightenment and it should be complemented by wisdom in the realization of emptiness. The three factors—bodhicitta, great compassion (the altruistic mind of awakening), and the wisdom of emptiness—are the essential constituents which realize and complete the path to full enlightenment.15 The term bodhicitta has acquired various meanings in the diverse Buddhist contexts and situations. In the Tantric tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, this term retains metaphysical connotations, in which The Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicharyavatara) remains an important source text of its tradition and spiritual formation. It is a source of spiritual inspiration and preliminary steps in the cultivation of bodhicitta. Within the Mahayana literary tradition, bodhicitta is rendered the arising of bodhicitta, or the cultivation of bodhicitta in the course of the Bodisattva’s spiritual practice. In another context of the Cittamatra (Mind-only) school, bodhicitta is conceptualized as a form of the tathagatagarba (Buddha-womb) or alayavijnana (substratum-consciousness), which is similar to the Buddha nature or Buddha essence. It even refers to the Cosmic Body of the Buddha (Dharmakaya), or Reality as such (Bhutatathata).16 In the Mind-only school, the term Buddha nature implies fundamental uncontaminated mind. When untapped, it refers to naturally abiding or existing Buddha nature in all of us; it is also known

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as natural nirvana. In the Middle Way School, Buddha nature is defined in terms of emptiness, mind’s emptiness of intrinsic existence. In diverse applications and interpretations, Francis Brassard suggests to take into account the soteriological context in which the religious idea of bodhicitta is articulated.17 This Buddhist soteriology may become a clue for sociological inquiry to trace and analyze the notion of bodhiccita in its historical course of development and its various social semantic applications. In the broader, comprehensive context, the bodhicitta is taken in relation to spiritual practice and ethical commitment. This perspective does not obliterate a sociological inquiry of the bodhicitta, which analyzes the process of assimilation or integration of the various social and cultural factors in terms of elective affinity between the Bodhisattva ideal and social way of life.

Middle Way and Two Levels of Truth In the Madhyamaka tradition, the Middle Way epistemology serves as an antidote to one’s mental perception and emotional attachment to the phenomenal world, while religious language and discourse are “relatively” utilized to explain the deeper reality of the religious experience of Emptiness, more than being reduced to a skillful means.18 In the discussion of the relation between relative and absolute truth, Santideva expounds: “Relative and absolute, these the two truths are declared to be. The absolute is not within the reach of intellect for intellect is grounded in the relative.”19 The Buddhist principle affirms the basic discrepancy between our perception of the things and the way things really exist. In light of our everyday experience, the reality of the world is conventional and relative, while the reality of the world is emptiness in light of the way things ultimately exist; it is the ultimate or absolute truth. The two truths refer to the twofold nature of one single reality, encompassing the ultimate absolute reality as well as the phenomenal reality.20 Acknowledging the conflict and tension within the Buddhist interpretation regarding the relation between the absolute truth and relative truth, one can find that absolute truth is related to the realization of emptiness, which should not be reduced into conceptual thinking and its truth validity. Likewise, the wisdom of the emptiness is not elevated to become like the Japanese Zen notion of the absolute nothingness, which radically relativizes the conceptual thinking and moral reasoning.

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In a Buddhist–Christian context, Paul Williams, a former practicing Buddhist, but now Roman Catholic,21 maintains that the Bodhicaryavatara “is, like the Madhyamakavatra, a statement of the Bodhisattva’s path to Buddhahood, but distinguished by a poetic sensitivity and fervor which makes it one of the gems of Buddhist and world spirituality literature.”22 He introduces the moving statement of Bodhicaryavatara (3:8–10), which characterizes the aspirations and hopes of a Bodhisattva who has generated bodhicitta compassion: May I be the doctor and the medicine And may I be the nurse For all sick beings in the world Until everyone is healed. ….. May I myself change into food and drink I become an inexhaustible treasure For those who are poor and destitute; May I turn into all things they cold need And may these be placed close beside them. 23

In Williams’ account, this poem is only applied to bodhicitta as the nature of emptiness and compassion, the ultimate type of bodhicitta, once the compassion, the conventional type is embedded in an awareness of the ultimate emptiness; it is extremely radiant, the pure radiant mind of an enlightened being, equal to the dharmakaya or tathagatagarbha. Conventional bodhicitta as the moral bodhicitta refers to aspiring and engaging bodhicitttas. Truly generating the bodhicitta, awakening mind, it results from deep compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings, but this level of bodhicitta is not an ontological absolute, but an ethical absolute for the Mahayana. This entails a completely life-transforming experience of “becom[ing] a Son or Daughter of the Buddhas” (Bodhicaryvatara 1:9).24 Nonetheless, Williams is suspicious of Santideva who tends to undermine a mainstay of the Buddhist coherent ethics of the Eightfold Path

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under the influence of Madhymaka philosophy and also in denial of personhood and God.25 In contrast to Williams’ suspicion of alleged atheism, Perry Schmidt-Leukel attempts to recognize the text as a powerful witness of such knowledge of God. Schmidt-Leukel is concerned with discovering a certain form of knowledge of God in the non-theistic sacred text from a Christian perspective and according to Christian discourse (love, revelation, longing for happiness, and the awareness of the ultimately mysterious nature of reality) for reciprocal illumination. His first thesis is that “everybody has a dim or implicit knowledge of Nirvana by longing for happiness.”26 For affirming this thesis, he cites from the Bodhicaryavatara (8:129): “All those who are suffering in the world are so out of longing for their own happiness. All those who are happy in the world are so out of longing for the happiness of another.”27 Schmidt-Leukel introduces the Mahayanist distinction between a dynamic and static nirvana; the dynamic nirvana refers to the altruistic presence of a Bodhisattva or a Buddha in the world of samsara.28 Certainly, Schmidt-Leukel is aware that the terminology of the dynamic-static nirvana is more relevant to the Mind-only school (Yogacara school) because such terminology is absent in Santideva. However, he relates the dynamic nirvana to Santideva’s nirvana-­ emptiness (3:11): “Nirvana is the leaving behind of everything: and my mind strives for release. If I have to give up everything, it is better to give it to all beings.”29 If striving for enlightenment or for Buddhahood is bodhicitta, the spirit of enlightenment, Santideva defines the Bodhisattva path in light of bodhicitta. According to Schmidt-Leukel, the Bodhicaryavatara teaches the way of generating and cultivating bodhicitta and wisdom (prajna), which is the perfect realization of emptiness, say, the perfection of bodhicitta. In so doing, the relationship between bodhicitta and wisdom in the Bodhicarayavatara is one of continuity, namely: the combination of the two (altruism and wisdom), which marks the true spirit of bodhicitta. To be precise, however, a gradual approach to enlightenment proceeds the three basic stages: renunciation, compassion, and emptiness, alongside mediations. The true spirit of bodhicitta is ultimate, when the compassion is embedded in an awareness of emptiness, such that bodhicitta entails the nature of emptiness and compassion. There are two types of bodhicitta: the ultimate and the conventional (relative) bodhicitta.30

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It is true that Schmidt-Leukel clarifies such terminology in his fourth thesis that “Buddhas and Bodhisattvas manifest the compassionate spirit of bodhicitta.”31 In his account, conventional or relative truth, say, conceptual thinking is not capable of grasping the ultimate nature of reality. But conceptual thinking points to the highest truth, helping people move forward in a spiritual way and lead to the experience of ultimate truth. Based on his argument for relative truth, Schmidt-Leukel argues that even in the case of Nagarjuna, conceptual thinking “forms the basis without which the ultimate nature of reality cannot be pointed to.”32 At this juncture, there is a need of some clarification in his argument for conceptual thinking or conventional truth. Ultimate bodhicitta is beyond this world, and cannot be formulated in concepts or language since it is equal to the dharmakaya. This emptiness devoid of any selfsufficient, independent nature, or intrinsic reality, has nothing to do with some ontological category or inconceivable entity, which is separated from things and events.33 The ultimate bodhicitta is seen as the mind stream of a Bodhisattva or Buddha, who is endowed with great compassion and directly cognizes emptiness.34 Conventional bodhicitta is the moral bodhicitta, aspiring and engaging bodhicitta. According to Santideva, the absolute truth is not within the reach of intellect, for intellect is grounded in the relative.35 The two truths, referring to the twofold nature of one single reality, maintain that there is the basic discrepancy between the conceptual perception of the reality and the reality as such. Developing our confidence in understanding of the world of conventional truth, we can enter into the examination of the ultimate truth, and fully recognize the discrepancy existing between our conceptual perception and the reality as it is. Fully appreciating such discrepancy, it is significant and decisive to challenge the level of absolute truth for arriving at a deeper meaning of the ultimate truth.36 Certainly, this Buddhist art of interpretation is rooted in a gradual approach to the truth, in contrast to the sudden enlightenment in the context of the Chan (Zen) school, such that interpretation varies according to the soteriological context. However, rather than differentiating a Buddhist soteriological approach, Schmidt-Leukel contends his fourth thesis that “concepts are adequate if they serve as suitable means for developing bodhicitta.”37 Schmidt-Leukel identifies the great compassion as selfless love and true happiness to be found in altruistic love. This perspective convinces Schmidt-Leukel to argue that God is known

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in genuine love and in our longing for happiness as well. It is not hard for a Catholic theologian to affirm his traditional understanding of God’s presence or knowledge in a natural manner. It is also true for a Catholic theology not to turn God and Nirvana into identical concepts, but to affirm that the terms God and Nirvana are “expressive of different, yet equally authentic patterns or ways of experiencing the same reality.”38 For his theocentric direction, Schmidt-Leukel argues that Santideva’s critique of God (ishvara) as the creator is not necessarily understood as an exclusive attack on any kind of theism. In light of dependent origination, God as the creator must be logically dependent upon the creation of the world, such that it would miss the intended absolute or independent nature of God.39 A Christian commentarial analysis goes that far by inquiring whether the whole idea of God is inconceivable because Santideva calls God inconceivable. “Inconceivability” does not necessarily entail a negative connotation in its entirety; even in Madhyamikas, the Buddha is designated as the Inconceivable in the third Hymn to the Inconceivable among the famous Four Hymns, as ascribed to Nagarjuna. Schmidt-Leukel interprets the relationship between conventional truth and ultimate truth as basically one of the possible means to an ultimate end, in which conventional truth can be seen as the manifestation of the unmanifest.40

Critical Exegesis and Christian Commentarial Undertaking Certainly, Nagarjuna conceptualizes two aspects of a single reality of emptiness rather than attributing metaphysical, ontological inconceivability to the Buddha. With conventional truth, we are capable of ­penetrating the ultimate truth of emptiness as grounded in the dependent origination. In the beginning of Fundamentals of the Middle way (1:1–2), we read: “He who taught dependent origination—No cessation and no origination. No annihilation and no permanence,….—This through claiming of conceptual elaborations: To you, who is supreme speaker Among all fully enlightened buddhas, I pay homage.”41 This Buddha, to whom Nagarjuna pays homage, teaches a dependently originated thing, which lacks or is free of intrinsic existence. On the ultimate level, there is the absence of intrinsic nature rather than the Buddha himself occupying the Inconceivable ontological reality. A

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Christian commentarial work is undertaken to cross over the unbridgeable gulf between Buddhist-dependent origination and Christian theism for God the Inconceivable. This concept also challenges the Christian community to prepare for admitting the radical inconceivability of God in Buddhism. Likewise, a Christian commentarial work challenges Buddhists to accept a concept of God, which admits divine inconceivability in speaking for altruistic love as knowledge of God. Insofar as the Christian concept of God has the force of promoting and triggering altruistic love, according to Schmidt-Leukel, Buddhist acceptance of the Christian God would be seen as “a further suitable means of developing the bodhicitta.”42 Finally, if Christians accept God as the inconceivable horizon of all conceptual understanding, the Buddhist critique of God in a personalist sense may be comprehended as expressing the awareness of the inconceivable nature of the ultimate reality on the part of Buddhists; Buddhist awareness of the embodiment is intrinsically connected with the affirmation of altruistic love.43 Schmidt-Leukel’s reading of the Middle Way school is anchored in an interpretive key concept from the Mind-only school, dynamic nirvana, or the conventional truth as the manifestation of the inconceivable or emptiness; it is interest-bound in revising the relationship between conventional truth and ultimate truth as basically one of the possible means to an ultimate end. If the conventional truth can be seen as the manifestation of the unmanifest, moral practice of bodhicitta is more valued for the soteriological path than the sacramental worship; from Santideva we read: “Merely desiring the benefit [of all beings] is more meritorious than worshipping the Buddhas; still more so is striving for the perfect happiness of all beings.” (1: 27)44 Furthermore, Santideva’s meditative spirituality of the exchange of self and others finds its strong consonance with Jesus’ identification with the lowest of the low (Matt 25: 40). Those who have realized the spirit of God (pneuma) in the context of Jesus’ identification with the lowest of the low and the spirit of Enlightenment (bodhicitta) are truly venerated by realizing themselves “the same spirit that they manifest.”45 Schmidt-Leukel’s commentarial reasoning of Buddhist texts has brought a radical concept of God into taking an inroad to the Buddhist way of bodhicitta and wisdom of emptiness for the openness to the God of Inconceivability. Creating the notion of God as inconceivable mystery, the Catholic commentary argues that Jesus as the moral example is

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an expression of the same reality of the compassionate spirit of bodhicitta. This Catholic reading practice of collectio seeks to transcend the unbridgeable gulf between Catholic theology and the Buddhist Middle Way, such that it would pave a way to a double belongingness or a reciprocal conversion to the radical God in Buddhism or Christianity. Methodologically speaking, if the conventional truth can be seen as the manifestation of the unmanifest, as much as the absolute truth, Buddhist nirvana-emptiness, which realizes and completes the great compassion as the absolute truth, seems to be undermined for Christian soteriological moral reasoning. Certainly, our own perspective in this regard does not necessarily mean discarding God the Mystery in St. Paul: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?’” (Rom 11:33–34) This text challenges theological overwriting or self-aggrandizement, especially in a Jewish–Christian context. Furthermore, in contrast to the Christian final pathos of eschatology over the other, I sense that Paul would affirm a priority of God in relationship with Christ creating a space for the mystery of God the Father in relation with the other: “…when he hands over the kingdom of God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power…The last enemy to be destroyed is death….When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.” (1 Cor. 15: 24–28). Paul’s theologia crucis can be found in its profound relation with the lordship and mystery of God the Father, such that Jesus Christ as the moral example and sacrament is not undermined for the sake of a notion of the radical God of Inconceivability. Theologia crucis is not of a parochial and exclusive character, but an expression of the particular confession of divine love under the universal reign of divine mystery. We may observe this line of thought in Luther and Bonhoeffer in which theologia crucis is a core in expressing the Christian compassionate solidarity with those suffering in dukkha on the margins.46 From the Buddhist side, however, a question would be raised whether Santideva might encourage the defender of God to pursue the wisdom of emptiness through the absolute or independent nature of God over creation? Maybe, conceptualized in the dependent origination, a conceptual thinking might formulate a notion of God the Pan-en-theist; God

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is dependent upon the world, as conversely the world upon the God—­ perhaps a theocentric imagination in encounter with Buddhist insight! No one knows which side would welcome such a concept of God.

Problematization: Emptiness, Bodhicitta, and Absolute Nothingness Bodhicitta has a dual character: the conventional bodhicitta and the ultimate bodhicitta. The cultivation of the former is the means to elaborate compassion for all sentient beings. Cultivation of the latter qualifies the mind to realize the phenomenal world in terms of suffering, impermanent, and emptiness, which is not expressed by concept or speech.47 The idea of bodhisattva has developed a sort of secular Buddhism which came to substitute the old school of ascetic monasticism. Its democratic social disposition has generated many great changes in Buddhist thought and social way of life. D.T. Suzuki attempts to analyze the process of enlightenment in a practical way, considerably affecting Buddhist ideas and material interests in the course of historical development.48 The Bodhisattva practice of compassion remains central in a Mahayana Buddhist’s spiritual quest, and it is also deeply embedded in the meaning of the Heart Sutra (The Heart of the Prajnaparamita Sutra).49 The Heart Sutra, part of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, is historically assumed to be made up approximately in the period between 100 B.C.E. and 600 C.E. The central theme of the Perfection of Wisdom sutras is grounded in a profound unity between compassion and wisdom. It is remarkable to see that Nagarjuna’s social perspective grounded in the wisdom of emptiness sharpens the Bodhisattva practice of compassion through effective social action. He advocates the rehabilitative system of treating prisoners, against retributive capital punishment: “Just as unworthy sons are punished out of a wish to make them worthy, so punishment should be enforced with compassion and not from hatred or concern with wealth. Once you have examined the fierce murderers and judged them correctly, you should banish them without killing or torturing them.”50 A practice of compassion precedes a belief system, dogmatic views, and fanatic ideologies, which are not far from being the answer to anything; rather, they are a sickness for which a remedy is required. In his Counsels, we read: “Cause the blind, the sick, the

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humble, the unprotected, the destitute, and the crippled, all equally to attain food and drink without omission.”51 Nevertheless, sociological inquiry problematizes the historical reality of Japanese Imperial Buddhism, in which emptiness is made as the supporting principle for enhancing a militaristic practice of Zen related to the genocide of innocent victims. An effective method of problematization seeks to analyze the object of investigation (militarist Zen practices) in terms of how it forms an ensemble of rules, procedures, and means for an end of colonialism. It also questions in terms of how it is possible to articulate true or false statements about the domain of investigation;52 the latter belongs to the regime of immanent critique which challenges the way of the system of domination and hegemony in the reality of a colonial practice in terms of mechanisms of power imbued with the Buddhist discourse. In the militaristic context of killing, “killing” of the others is undergirded by the stage of “no mind.” In D.T. Suzuki (1870–1966)’s Zen and Japanese Culture, we read his interpretation of emptiness in a disastrous, militaristic manner: “The art of swordship distinguishes between the sword that kills and the sword that gives life. …For it is not really he [the swordsman] but the sword itself that does the killing. He had no desire to harm anybody, but the enemy appears and makes himself a victim. It is as though the sword automatically performs its function of justice, which is the function of mercy. The swordsman turns into a first rate artist, engaged in producing a work of genuine originality.”53 For instance, a second lieutenant Tanaka in the Imperial Japanese army became the practitioner of this teaching at the sack of Nanjing, Chinese Holocaust, one of the greatest war crimes in the twentieth century. This interpretation of Zen and the sword does not necessarily mean a bias or distortion because Suzuki traces the genesis and historical unfolding of Zen (derived from the Chinese transliteration and in connection with satori, Enlightenment) for Modern Japanese Buddhism, as grounded in “the doctrine of Buddha-heart.”54 All the scriptures are simply reduced to a tentative and provisory character since in the tradition of Bodhidharma, this teaching is not obstructed by the canonical teachings, having nothing to do with letters, words, or sutras. “It is the absolute transmission of the true seal.”55 This iconoclastic tradition is seen in the figure of Hui-neng (638–713 BCE) in ancient China; even this nihilistic implication is conveyed and construed in the theory of

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Sunyata that is acquainted with the general teaching of the Madhyamika school, especially Nagarjuna.56 Despite an affirmative penchant, wisdom of emptiness, seen in light of Zen, turns into the doctrine of absolute nothingness without absolute bodhicitta. Even in Zen there are no four noble truths, no knowledge of Nirvana in approach to the Prajinaparamita of the bodhisattvas.57 In the modern Japanese Buddhist undertaking, Masao Abe makes an attempt to argue that in the stanza “form is emptiness” in the Heart sutra, the “form” should be emptied as non-substantial or formless in favor of the emptiness as absolute nothingness. Ethical “form” is emptied without cessation, when true Sunyata is realized, such that ethical form turns into “formless” emptiness, which is the wisdom without bodhicitta. This refers to the total dynamic movement of emptying as the true meaning of Sunyata.58 As D.T. Suzuki formulates, the Buddhist doctrine of karmic immortality is visualized in the history of humankind in all its manifold aspects of existence, which is nothing but a grand drama. “It is like an immense ocean whose boundaries nobody knows, and the waves of events now swelling and surging, now ebbing, now whirling, now refluxing, in all times, day and night, illustrate how the laws of karma are at work in this actual life. One act provokes another and that a third and so on to eternity without ever losing the chain of karmic causation.”59 D.T. Suzuki, a guru in the US of Zen in the 1960s, justified Zen militaristic expansion of Japan and its ruthless plundering of China and Korea in the 1930s. In the article of “The Zen of Japanese Nationalism,” Robert H. Sharf makes a sharp analysis of the history of Zen blended with Japanese culture in general, and the spirit of Samurai in particular, in which “the popular conception of Zen is not only conceptually incoherent, but also a woeful misreading of traditional Zen doctrine, altogether controverted by the lived contingencies of Zen monastic ­practice.”60 Suzuki’s notion of Zen as absolute nothingness and karmic theory, when applied to the problem of evil, for instance, the Holocaust or the Nanjing massacre, belittles human responsibility. According to Suzuki’s theory, even those who realize the collective karma deeply rooted in human ignorance as the ultimate cause of the event in Auschwitz or Nanjing argue that we are all responsible for everything including such tragedy. Individual morality and collective social and historical ethics do not mean a more fundamental religious dimension.61 A Japanese

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Buddhist view of the Holocaust or Nanjing replaces Nagarjuna’s wisdom of emptiness and bodhicitta by the Buddhist doctrine of karmic immortality, which, in turn, ascribes the responsibility of the perpetrator to the responsibility of the innocent victim at the same karmic level. The Sunyata as the absolute nothingness is neither good nor evil, yet both good and evil, such that the realization of absolute nothingness reduces, even totalizes the Holocaust or Nanjing as a relative one before the absolute nothingness. It is here that we find a keen opposition of emptiness and bodhicitta in the Nagarjuna–Santideva tradition in view of the modern Japanese version of emptiness as absolute nothingness also grounded in the Nagarjuna tradition. In contrast to militaristic development, the social dimension of the Buddhist ideas and material interests may find their culmination within a socially engaged Buddhist, especially Thich Nhat Hanh, who grounds the social vision in the Buddhist principle of dependent origination as expounded in the Heart Sutra.62

Reciprocal Illumination

in Interreligious

Commentary

Religious ideas become the catalyst for their practical realization, as they find elective affinity with material interest in the historical course of development, whether its positive effectiveness or negative consequences. The history of religion cannot be mono-causally explained, but must be analyzed in the totality of social history. Sociological inquiry in commentarial exegesis problematizes the extent to which the Buddhist idea of emptiness and spiritual wisdom is made disgraced, even dangerously accommodated to serve imperial power. Likewise, the Christian symbol of the cross has undergone similar ramifications; an ethical vision for solidarity with the poor is reinforced in connection with its ideal content of God’s sacrificial love. On the other hand, it is also made blasphemed, even accommodated to serve the power of the colonialist, turning into crucifix of dominion, genocide, and racism. An interplay of idea and interest becomes a viable project by problematizing which group drives and affects the historical course and social material interest with respect to its controversial blamage or blasphemy. In the theory of the problematization of the interplay between religious ideas, material interests, and power relations, it is important to take into account the ambiguity of religious ideas which would extend not simply to their subsequent (mis)use, but in their very formation.

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Religious ideas which are culturally constructed matter in their social effect as well as in their formation of a belief system. This perspective deeply challenges religious unethical attitudes rooted in irresponsibility and self-complacency just for the sake of the absolutization of a religious belief system, as such, by regarding the historical and social reality of blamage effect. (For instance, Christian crusade in the colonial era or Japanese colonialist practice of Emptiness). When the religious idea is grasped and exploited by the power group, it is easily deformed and severely manipulated to indoctrinate its dominating interest via the religious discourse. This social, political process of accommodating the religious idea is carried on not through the separation of the relation between idea and interest, but through instrumentalizing the idea content for those in power. At this juncture, commentarial work of the sacred source text remains crucial since most source texts are not neatly harmonized in accordance with diverse commentary books. What is decisive in sociological inquiry of the interplay between religious idea and material interest is a requirement of a definite ethical attitude and commitment on the part of interpreters, who interrogate the streaming course of religious rivers tied to commentarial works; they must choose what kind of sacred text must be accepted as the source and normativity since the text itself entails opportunity as well as danger. An effective method of problematization conceptualized in power relations must not be separated from immanent critique, in which the material interest (colonialism adulterating the religious idea) is also made disgraced and transcended by the idea (a genuine meaning of the cross). A meaningful project of comparative theology is to keep reformulating and reworking the idea in hermeneutical reading and through sociological inquiry, which stands in the service of immanent critique for a recovery of new meaning. If an idea becomes distorted by power and instrumentalization through material interest, sociological hermeneutics attempts to detach the idea from the oppressive material interest through critical distance, and re-express and restate the idea to refrain from the particular oppressive power. This critical procedure helps us block a gaining traction of the same oppressive power in the interreligious exchange. This is why it is of great importance that there is a genuine exchange with the religious Other, for without the input and critique from the Other, our one-sided reading can potentially become hegemonic and even Neo-colonial.63

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Insofar as the interplay of religious ideas with material interest is characterized by their blasphemy or blamage in its historical and social consequence, my sociological inquiry goes beyond commentarial skill, but involves clarifying their interplay by critique of its disgraced and blasphemed dimension as the ensemble of text to be deciphered. Here, moral relativism or ethical neutrality is sharply reprimanded in terms of immanent critique because homo lector is homo socius and ethicus. This said, a comparative intertextuality sharpens inter-scriptural reading in appreciation of other religious wisdom, ethical value, and spirituality by attentively listening to the texts. A Christian perspective on the practices of tolerance and patience, as advocated in Matt. 5:38–42, shows relevance with Mahayana Buddhism in the context of bodhisattva ideals. “Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors” is also known as the Compendium of Practices in a Mahayana Buddhist text. Santideva asks, “If you do not practice compassion toward your enemy then toward whom can you practice it?” The presence of an enemy is crucial in our spiritual path, providing us with the opportunity to enhance and advance tolerance, patience, and love. The Holiness Dalia Lama finds an illumination in his commentary of the gospel which says: “the sun makes no discrimination where it shines.” This gives a wonderful sense of compassion, impartiality, and all-embracing nature for Buddhists.64 The Christian symbol of the cross, when its horizon is fused within the Lotus (symbolic flower of enlightenment), may become a corrective to the Western theological imagery of forensic atonement tied to exclusivism and fundamentalism or the sacrificial language of violence and crusade, a part of ecclesial doctrine. The subject matter of the gospel, which entails a prophetic-emancipatory component, must be appreciated and deepened in the Christian reading of non-Christian sacred texts rather than accused of becoming a theological form of hegemony in the domestication of the Other. The gospel, in the sense of the living voice of God, is not necessarily confined to the ecclesial sphere, but its horizon is expanded in the grace of God’s reconciliation in Christ with the world, through which we hear God’s loving, mysterious voice in other sacred texts affecting and enriching us.

Notes

1. Foucault, “Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations: An Interview with Michel Foucault,” in The Essential Foucault, 23–24.

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2. Clooney, Theology after Vedanta, 5–6. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 10. 5. Ibid., 7. 6. Clooney, The Truth, the Way, the Life, 9, 10. 7. Ibid., 10. Footnote 8. 8. Ibid., 12–13. 9. Ibid., 13. 10. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 306–307. 11.  The Dalai Lama, Practicing Wisdom: The Perfection of Shantidevas Bodhisattva Way, trans. Geshe Thupten Jinpa (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2005), 3. 12. The Precious Garland: An Epistle to a King, trans. Ed. John Dunne and Sara McClinton (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1997). 13. Brassard, The Concept of Bodhicitta in Santideva Bodhicaryavatara, 16. Williams identifies the period of Santideva’s life (c. 695–743), see Williams, Mahayana Buddhism, 58. 14. Brassard, The Concept of Bodhicitta, 7–8. 15.  The Precious Garland, 36. 16. Suzuki, Outline of Mahayana Buddhism (New York: Schocken Books, 1970), 298. 17. Brassard, The Concept of Bodhicitta, 34. 18. Ibid. 19. The Dalai Lama, Practicing Wisdom, 17. 20. Ibid., 19. 21. Paul Williams, The Unexpected Way: On Converting from Buddhism to Catholicism (Edinburgh, New York: T& T Clark, 2002). 22. Williams, Mahayana Buddhism, 58. 23. Ibid., 203. 24. Ibid., 199. 25. Williams, The Unexpected Way, 203. 26. Perry Schmidt-Leukel, “Finding God in the Bodhicaryavatara: An Interim Report on a ‘Christian Commentary to the Bodhicaryavatara,’” in Journal of Comparative Scripture, Nr. 6 (July 2015), 23. 27. Ibid., 23. 28. Gadjin Nagao, Madhiyamika and Yogacara (Albany: SUNY, 1991), 23–34; Makranski, Buddhahood Embodied: Sources of Controversy in India and Tibet (Albany: SUNY, 1997), 85–87. 29. Schmidt-Leukel, “Finding God in the Bodhicaryavatara,” 24. 30. Williams, Mahayana Buddhism, 203. 31. Schmidt-Leukel, “Finding God in the Bodhicaryavatara,” 25. 32. Ibid.



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33. The Dalai Lama, Practicing Wisdom, 91. 34. Williams, Mahayana Buddhism, 203. 35. The Dalai Lama, Practicing Wisdom, 17. 36. Ibid., 19. 37. Schmidt-Leukel, “Finding God in the Bodhicaryavatara,” 27. 38. Ibid., 28. 39. Ibid., 30. 40. Ibid., 31. 26; footnote 28. 41. Nagarjuna, Fundamentals of the Middle Way, cited in The Dalai Lama, Essence of the Heart Sutra, 122. 42. Schmidt-Leukel, ““Finding God in the Bodhicaryavatara,” 32. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., 33. 45. Ibid. 46. Chung, Martin Luther and Buddhism. 47. Williams, Mahayana Buddhism, 203. 48. D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism (London: Rieder, 1950), 168. 49. Buddhist Wisdom: The Diamond Sutra and The Hear Sutra, trans. Edward Conze (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), preface by Judith SimmerBrown, xxiii. 50. Robert A. F. Thurman, “Guidelines for Buddhist Social Activism Based on Nagarjuna’s Jewel Garland of Royal Counsels,” in Eastern Buddhist 16, no.1 (Spring 1983), 19–51; Cited in Ken Jones, The New Social Face of Buddhism, 47. 51. Cited in Jones, The New Social Face of Buddhism, 48. 52. Foucault, “Questions of Method,” in The Essential Foucault, 251. 53. Cited in Jones, The New Social Face of Buddhism, 116. 54. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (New York: Grove Press, 1964), 32, 37. 55. Ibid., 46. 56. Ibid., 49. 57. Ibid., 51. 58.  Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation Masao Abe, ed. Christopher Ives (Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1995), 51–52. 59. Suzuki, Outline of Mahayana Buddhism (New York: Schocken Books, 1963), 207–208. 60. Robert H. Sharf, “The Zen of Japanese Nationalism,” History of Religions, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Aug., 1993), 2. See Sharf’s analysis of Suzuki’s theory of Zen, 25–26. http://buddhiststudies.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/sharf/documents/Sharf1993,%20Zen%20Nationalism.pdf 61. Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness, ed. Christopher Ives, 79.

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62. Thich Nhat Hannh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra, ed. Peter Levitt (Berkeley, CA: Parallax, 1988). 63. I appreciate Peter Watters who elucidates and sharpens this interreligious perspective. 64. The Dalai Lama, The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teaching of Jesus, trans. Geshe Thupten Jinpa, ed. Robert Kiely (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1996), 49.

CHAPTER 12

Confucian Moral, Phenomenology of Saying, and Multiple Modernities

Confucianism was an international religious and philosophic–ethical movement, especially from China via Korea to Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam. In this historical development, Confucianism has been reinterpreted in unique ways in each context, transcending a borrowed model of Chinese cultural life. Confucianism as a moral system is frequently accused by modern scholars in its legitimization of authoritarian rule, hierarchical pedagogy, nationalistic parochialism, and patriarchal systems. Against this charge, however, new modern Confucian scholars seek to find the seeds of democracy and scientific thinking inherent in Confucianism. They appreciate Confucianism as public religion, which may contribute toward a new social construction of reality, which upholds an Asian way of modernization and civil society.1 Religion is a key (not the key) to comprehending the underlying public life which promotes the common good, moral integrity, and social integration in civil society. Secularization, driven by the disenchantment of the world, does not always generate a crisis of credibility and religious value rationality.2 There is another reality of enthrallment of religious values and its resurgence. It is important to develop a prophetic notion of solidarity ethics in Confucianism,3 in regard to a reality of multiple modernities. In this chapter, I attempt to scrutinize a prophetic, ethical dimension of Confucianism, especially in terms of an elucidation of Mencius in his historical influence upon Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, in the Neo-Confucian context. First, I shall dissect Weber’s study of Confucian rationality, the role of Confucian literati, and its educational system. © The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5_12

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Then, facilitating our discussion of Mencius, I am concerned with briefly dealing with basic features of Confucian morals and rationality. After that, I shall elucidate Mencius’s ethics of rectification in critical view of Yearly Lee’s virtue comparative study. A phenomenological account shall be given of vox Dei as vox Populi in Mencius’s thought, which becomes the source of ethics of solidarity to Neo-Confucian scholars such as Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming. Finally, such investigation takes issue with Western philosophy of modernity in the case of John Locke while discussing the Confucian contribution to multiple modernities.

Comparative Study: Confucianism and Protestantism In Weber’s analysis of Confucianism, his focus is upon the role of the Chinese education system and civil system of examination. Literary education is the yardstick for Weber to understand the role of the literati and Confucian orthodoxy. Chinese education stipulated rules for self-cultivation and ritually correct behavior, and is undertaken “for a certain internal and external deportment in life.”4 Confucian pedagogy is oriented toward practical problems, status interests, and internal administration, which is similar to “the humanist educational qualification in the West.”5 If Puritanism rejects all trust in magical powers or sorcery, the popular belief in magic was an important factor in establishing the power of Confucian officialdom. Certainly the prestige of the literati consisted in knowledge of writing and literature rather than the attraction of magical powers or sorcery. Confucian self-cultivation created minimum tension between humanity and the world because the world and humanity are inherently good. However, the Puritan was guided by faith in God and God’s predestination, diligent to fulfilling their calling and work ethic. Prophecy in Weber’s view is understood as the agent of the process of breakthrough to a more rationalized cultural order, and the role of the religious prophet is the archetype of charismatic leadership. This type of ethical prophet is understood as an instrument of a divine will, calling for people to turn away from the world toward salvation. In Weber’s accounts, such ethical prophecy cannot be found in Confucianism.6 The Chinese literati are regarded as an intellectual group which have extraordinary capacity, through education, of conventional propriety and classical learning in familiarity with the sacred books. The literati served to advise the emperor and the princes in the ritually and politically correct conduct of affairs. The literati were the bearers of all knowledge and

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progress toward a rational administration, retaining a far-reaching, practical, and political rationalism in the feudal period.7 According to Weber, Confucianism represents a peculiar form of rationalism in seeking the order of Heaven, and the inner harmony and social order through virtue ethics. Economic life was based on the propriety of consumption critically concerning both lavish expenditure and undue thrift. The administration holds the right to regulate consumption and expenditure in times of crisis, disaster, and impoverishment. Confucius exhorts the educated people away from the pursuit of wealth. Although the educated merchants learned calculation in the business office, Confucius maintains that acquisitiveness is a source of social and personal unrest.8 Under patrimonial bureaucratic conditions, Confucian society did not develop expansive capitalist interests with sufficient strength as seen in the Puritan stratification in England.9 As Weber writes, “Confucian virtue … was greater than riches to be gained by one-sided thoroughness. Not even in the most influential position could one achieve anything in the world without the virtue derived from education.”10 Confucianism illustrates a different rationality from Puritan Calvinism, which pursues mastery over the world in an unceasing quest for accumulation of wealth in a rationalist manner; it is driven by religious calling rooted in the idea of predestination and for the glory of God. Although Weber sees that Confucianism rejects a messianic hope for a better world, he acknowledges the structure of charismatic domination in Mencius, breaking through all traditional and rational norms.

Weber and Charismatic Rule In Weber’s account, a charismatic leadership plays an important role in Mencius, according to whom the voice of the people is the voice of God. This is the only way in which God speaks. Weber evaluates an extremely revolutionary resonance in Mencius’s political ethics.11 In genuine charismatic domination, there is a rejection of the bonds of external organization because it upholds no abstract legal propositions and regulations and no formalized legal judgments.12 As Weber holds, a charismatic domination in the context of Confucianism may “[lead] to a revolutionary reevaluation of everything and a sovereign break with all traditional or rational norms.”13 Hence, “Confucian literati were the bearers of progress toward a rational administration and of all ‘intelligence.’”14 There is no caste order which has ever existed in China.15

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The Chinese literati-politicians were primarily oriented toward problems of internal administration in contrast to the Jewish prophets concerned with foreign policy. The Chinese view on economic policy is typical of patrimonial, bureaucratic conditions. It did not give rise to free exchange in markets in a purely economic manner, with powerful capitalist interests.16 Along with the charismatic leadership and patrimonial bureaucratic economic policy, Weber continues to maintain that Confucianism reduced tension with the world to an absolute minimum. Based on the ethical goodness of human nature, Confucian teaching does not necessarily present an autonomous counterweight for confronting the reality of the world. Weber furthers that, “Chinese thought has remained rather stuck in the pictorial and the descriptive,” so that “the power of logos, of defining and reasoning, has not been accessible to the Chinese.”17 Unlike Weber’s assumption of the lack of power of logos in Confucianism, however, there was a complicated debate over the interpretation of the Dao principle within the Confucian context. The Neo-Confucian formula “investigation of external things and the extension of knowledge” is highly creative, synthetic, argumentative, and rational in openness to the living voice of Dao, through people’s lives; this conflict of interpretation can be seen in the tradition of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, both of whom stood under the influence of Mencius. We shall return to this issue later in more detail. At any rate, Weber senses that Confucianism is only in accommodation to the world. In contrast, Puritan ethics established a tremendous tension with the world.18 Such a complex, brilliant, and enigmatic evaluation has aroused debate and controversy. In fact, it is countered that a Confucian personality is rather characterized by moral tension between virtue and political reality because it is beset by an anxiety-ridden need depending on social superiors for authoritarian guidance.19 Furthermore, Confucian charismatic leadership, as seen in light of Heaven’s mandate and rectification, has brought its position into sharp tension with the mundane order, on account of its commitment to the rights of people. Along with Mencius’ notion of rectification, it is substantial to consider Xunzi, one of the most influential philosophers in China’s Warring States period (479–221 BCE). Xunzi’s injunction concerning the ruler has not been entirely forgotten: “Follow the Dao and not the ruler, follow justice and not the father.”20

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Basic Features of Confucian Teaching The concept of Confucianism refers to the tradition of thought which was established by Confucius (Kongzi) in the fifth century BCE, and developed by Mencius (Mengzi) in the fourth century BCE and by Xunzi (flourished in the middle of the third century, and died sometime after 238). Confucianism became a dominant school of thought in China with Dong Zhongshu (ca. 179–104 BCE) in the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). Both the Five Classics and the Four Books were taken as canonical literatures, shaping and determining Confucian development. Confucius (551–479 BCE) was “a transmitter, teacher and creative interpreter of the ancient culture and literature” in shaping the Chinese mind and character.21 Certainly, Confucianism is a misnomer because it is normally referred to as rujia, rujiao, ruxue in the traditional context. The core of Confucian teachings centers on the self-cultivation of li (propriety), xioa (filiality), yi (appropriateness), and ren (humanness). This perspective characterizes the Confucian understanding of society as the fiduciary, harmonious community through moral persuasion. Thus, the concept of politics as rectification embraces the critical, humanist, and religious dimensions.22 In the study of Confucianism, the purpose of the Great Learning is to manifest the illustrious virtues, to renovate [love] the people, and to remain in the highest excellence (the “three items”). There are eight steps added to the three items: to be sincere in thought, people first extended their knowledge to the utmost, which lies in the investigation of things. An interplay between the investigation of worldly affairs and the extension of knowledge leads one’s thoughts to sincerity, which rectifies the heart. Hearts rectified, people are cultivated, families are regulated, and states rightly governed, and the world is at peace.23 The Confucian goal of self-cultivation comprehended in terms of “three items” (teaching the application of the Confucian doctrine of ren) and the “eight steps” are regarded as the blueprints. This transforms humanness into how we live, deliberately maintaining the balance and harmony between the individual and society.24 The two terms, ren (goodness in the translation of Waley) and li (ritual in the translation of Waley) are pivotal in the characterization of the Confucian teaching. Ren is the highest virtue because it includes all the other virtues, while it does not lose its mysterious and cosmological quality, as culminated in the Neo-Confucian context. Ren as benevolence

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is deemed appropriate as the primary translation only from the time of Mencius.25 A translation of ren as humanness may capture the element of religious, ethical aspiration for an ideal related with Heaven. Li (ritual/propriety) is generalized as a way of relating to the world and fellow humans, while it is expressed in the same ethical depth as ren. Confucian strategy leads people by virtue (de), restraining them with such ritual/ propriety (li), that they will keep and develop a sense of shame, a feeling of self-respect, and participation.26 In dialogue with his favorite disciple, Confucius defines the meaning of the ren in terms of the four words Kejifuli taken from Analects 12:1. Keji refers to self-subduing and goes on to explain fuli, the restoration of propriety or ritual law, as the recovery of Confucius’ own kind of ritual/ propriety (li). The Confucian notion of ren, as a return to ritual through mastery of oneself, implies that moral authority and freedom are not mutually exclusive in the notion of social solidarity. If to be free is to be master of oneself, ritualized society offers a condition for social solidarity and liberation. This ritualistic dimension continues in shaping filial piety in the family ritual of ancestors, underlying organic solidarity within family, relatives, and community life. In the fashion of Emile Durkheim, we may insist that the individual feels overpowered in the ritual by a force, which comes from collective effervescence. The individual is conveyed into a world, which is different from the world of everyday. In the collective effervescence, new ideals can spring up and new formulations are discovered to serve as a guide to humanity for more solidarity and more justice.27 Religious symbolism imbued within Confucian ritual plays an arbiter in sustaining family life and structural relations against a lack of morals in social structure, and such ritual aspects keep social life and adequate relationships in interpersonal life in intimacy, trust, and righteousness. “Collective effervescence” may occur in family ritual, rekindling the communal sense of solidarity and belongingness. Confucian ritual is related to seeing life as a process of transformation in different developmental stages. It applies and demands a proper behavior in a certain situation to fulfill the expected performance (family rites, filial piety, interpersonal moral relationship, and funeral service, among others). Li may refer to conventional morality, which is bound to propriety. Yearly’s explanation of propriety is helpful for complementing this notion. He includes such a meaning under two kinds of activities: (1)

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solemn religious activities, such as funerals and familial ritual of ancestry; (2) reasonable and humane learned conventions. It can be said that Mencius believes both are sacred ceremonies, expressing a spontaneous coordination rooted in reverence.28 Ren implies post-conventional morality based on the universal ethical principle. Ren is conceptualized in a social, interpersonal, and familial context. It has little to do with the autonomous and critical reason of the individual which is aloof from history and society. This aspect leads to complementary reciprocity and mutual affection, love, respect, and trust. In the Classic of Filial Piety for Women, we read of the right of woman in correcting the conduct of the husband. “The women said, ‘We dare to ask whether we follow all our husbands’ commands we could be called virtuous?’ Her Ladyship answered, ‘What kind of talk is this!… If a husband has a remonstrating wife then he won’t fall into evil ways. Therefore if a husband transgresses against the Way, you must correct him. How could it be that to obey your husband in everything would make you a virtuous person?”29 The admonition to treat others in one interpersonal and public life is undertaken by the golden rule, shu: What you do not want for yourself, do not unto others.30 Ren and shu (paired with zhong, loyalty) remain in the core teaching of Confucius, pursuing a universally adequate reflection of human conduct through yi (righteousness/appropriateness). The term yi means doing something proper or fitting,31 making a person’s conduct morally acceptable to others and justifying the morality of human action. In the Confucian tradition, yi entails a socio-critical dimension since for Mencius yi is the right path to ren as the secure human abode. Ren is the human heart, while yi is the human way.32

Confucian Righteousness

and Ethics of

Rectification

A socio-critical notion of yi is embedded within Confucius’ lamentation that the society and public life are out of joint. Axial China, like the other axial civilizations, was beset in a period of rapid growth—demographically, economically, and militarily in the midst of political turmoil. Confucius aimed criticism at the reality of moral evil driving the rampant pursuit of wealth, power, fame, dominion, sensual passion, and greed.33 The political situation in Confucius’ native Lu was in turmoil because three Huan families in the most powerful ministerial offices were in conflict with Duke Zhao of Lu in the year of 517. The Duke was forced to

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flee from Lu and had to spend the remaining years in exile first in the neighboring country Qi, and then in the state of Jin. Confucius went to Qi to serve as a retainer. In this stay, he was asked about the government by the Duke Jing of Qi who was troubled by the powerful Chen family and haunted by the fear of death. In Confucius’ response: “Let the prince be a prince, the minister a minister, the father a father and the son a son.” The Duke [Jing of Qi] said, “How true! For indeed when the prince is not a prince, the minister not a minister, the father not a father, the son not a son, one may have a dish of millet in front of one and yet not know if one will live to eat it.”34 Confucius’ task was to set the names right, rectifying reality in accordance with its name, which was later renewed and radicalized in Mencius’s teaching of rectification in terms of critical attitude against the injustice of society and authority of the state. However, the so-called teaching of the three bonds (about the relationship between the ruler/minister, father/son, and husband/wife) is charged as authoritarianism. Such a teaching, which is found in the Confucian classic, was only codified later in first-century C.E. Han, in which Confucianism became the ideology of the imperial state.35 Mencius (dates uncertain, but usually known about 390–310 BCE, or probably 372–289 BCE)—in Chinese, Mengzi—took Confucius as his ideal, developing the Confucian doctrine in a religious ethical direction and with an idealistic flavor. His context in the period of the warring States (475–221 BCE) imprinted within his work the social and political conditions, which were much worse than in the time of Confucius. Mencius takes humanness and justice/righteousness as essential ingredients of true humanity. Mencius develops his theory of four germinations or beginnings, in terms of the four basic human feelings or dispositions: commiseration, shame and dislike, deference and compliance, and right and wrong. Mencius’s position is expressed in that humanness/benevolence (ren), justice/righteousness (yi), ritual/propriety (li), and wisdom/intelligent awareness (zhi) (knowledge of good and evil) are common to everybody, interacting with each other in a variety of complex ways. We may arrange the cardinal virtue (humanness), the two primary virtues (humanness– wisdom), the three universal virtues (humanness–wisdom–courage), the four primordial virtues (or Beginnings), and the five constant virtues; all of these ethical virtues can be seen as an articulation of the concept of a progressive humanness.36

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Mencian ideas about the four fundamental virtues constitute human flourishing. They are informed by the powerful motivation for righteousness action.37 But human flourishing, in a Mencian sense, cannot be comprehended adequately apart from the social, critical import of a moral theory of rectification. It transcends and provokes the limitations of social conventional order and system. Mencius denounces the despotic ruler who has brought the people misery, poverty-stricken life, and moral degradation. What is central in Mencius’ political philosophy is that all economic and political measures must be established on behalf of the people. Of primary importance are the people; taking people as the most important factor is central to Mencius.38 Mencius seeks to radicalize the Confucian doctrine of the rectification of names in connection with the life and dignity of the people. The activities of the ruler and the ruled differ, but they are mutually indispensable in the sense of collaborative division. Since Heaven’s mandate can be known through the will of the people, the Emperor follows their will. One who knows one’s own nature will know Heaven. Nurturing one’s nature holding firm on one’s heart, one serves Heaven. One who stands in awe of Heaven’s mandate is capable of stabilizing one’s own state.39 In Mencius’ concept of benevolent government, the state should ensure a constant livelihood to the people and provide economic security, entailing social-humanistic and political implications.40 Thus, it is difficult to establish a blindly loyal relationship among the ruler, the officials, and the people. When the people in power and authority do not rectify their name and position, Mencius advocates even for the possibility of regicide and the dethronement of the king and officials. The people have the last word. A version of vox Populi vox Dei is well expressed. “Heaven sees with the eyes of the people. Heaven hears with the ears of the people.”41 To win the unification of the world, virtue for the ruler is the protection of the people.42 In the non-ideal context of the world, moral power may not work in the face of wicked oppressors and tyrants. Thus, people may have a right of resistance to depose their despotic rulers, including a notion of tyrannicide.43

Mencius and the Locative Religion In Yearly’s account, however, Mencius’s position is identified as the “locative” religion in contrast to Aquinas’s open, transcendental religion. In the locative religion, people locate themselves within a particular complex

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social order conceived of as sacred.44 In contrast to Yearly, Mencius’s theory of rectification is connected with Confucius’ definition of ren in terms of self-subduing and return to social order or ritual (li), and it entails an open, transcendental horizon, despite having no sacramental dimensions of grace or “divinization” in Mencius. Mencian theory of justice and rectification clearly sees the reality of the government in light of Heaven’s will, which can be heard in the outcry and predicament of people. It has little to do with a locative worldview in sanctioning the political system divinely and hierarchically in the case of Thomas Aquinas. When injunction and ethos are in conflict, or propriety and righteousness are in conflict, a Mencian position is driven by the notion of rectification. This position may not be regarded as “counterintuitive or simply wrong.”45 But it is related to homo socius and ethicus. Thus, “counterintuitive or simply wrong” is not a problem related to Mencius but to a comparatist’s bias. The virtue ethicist’s categorization based on the Aristotle–Aquinas tradition ignores the moral theory of rectification embedded within a historical, social context. It can be argued that a hierarchical-colonizing system of thought plays a part in Aristotle’s exclusion of women and pagans, and in the justification of enslaving those inferior by nature. Accordingly, Thomist synthesis undergirds an ecclesiastical unity of civilization and presupposes the natural goodness of the whole society; it provides theoretical justification for social hierarchies in a divinely appointed natural end, in contrast to Mencius’s rectification in solidarity with people.46 A Mencian perspective retains a revolutionary, charismatic resonance in contrast to the hierarchical system of patriarchy. Weber dimly discerns such a revolutionary, charismatic import. Confucian political ethics presents a normative standard by which to judge the existing reality and situation, sometimes entering in serious conflict with the powerful in the government. Remaining an undercurrent of this political ideal in Mencius, peace refers to a united world governed by benevolence (ren) for the protection of people in a non-coercive manner, rather than the absence of violence.47 Mencius’s argument for vox Dei and vox Populi can enhance the Confucian teaching about the rectification of language. When Confucius was asked to administer, he replied with the first measurement: “If language is incorrect, then what is said does not concord with what was meant; and if what is said does not concord with what was meant, what is to be done cannot be effected. If what is to be done cannot be effected, then rites and music will not flourish… Therefore the gentleman uses only such language as is proper for speech, and only speaks of what it would be proper to carry into effect.”48

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Phenomenology of Saying and Conflict of Interpretation In Yearly’s comparative study of Aquinas and Mencius, he develops a practical theory concerned with the comparison of virtues, obligations, and dispositions. He aims at advancing the comparative study for human flourishing and excellence in the teleology of Aristotle and Aquinas.49 He attempts to arrange lists of virtues and their hierarchical order to help distinguish ways or forms of life as protected by the injunction.50 Yearly’s virtue approach entails the achievement of clarifying and elaborating Confucian terms for more relevance for the Western reader, but it has little to do with relating Mencius in social effectiveness to Confucius, or the Neo-Confucian followers in the historical course of development. Yearly assumes that Mencius is arguably best understood by working a set of discourses as shared by most during the fourth century BCE.51 However, I take the comparative study to examine Confucian discourses in their historical social context and in their course of development. I attempt to find elective affinity between Confucian moral ideas and Western religious moral ideas, and to elucidate such similarity-in-difference in a phenomenological, hermeneutical manner to accentuate the social dimension of religion and estimate its prophetic religious orientation. It can be said that there is ambiguity and plurality in the Confucian interpretation of conflict, as seen in the debate between the Rationalistic School of Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and the Idealistic School of Wang Yangming (1472–1529) as regards the interpretation of classic literature and Mencian influence.

Zhu Xi and Analogical Mode of Thought To make Wang’s position clear in a phenomenological sense, first it is important to briefly examine Zhu Xi’s different notion of investigation of things and extensions of knowledge in competition with Wang. Zhu Xi incorporates the Confucian explanation of subduing one’s self and recovering the virtue of propriety (kejifuli, Analects 12: 1) into his theory of interpretation in terms of the investigation of things, with reverence and extension of knowledge, as grounded in The Great Learning. If virtue of propriety represents the objective norms, governing one’s relationship to society and subordinating one’s selfish desire to the good of the community, “subduing the self and returning to decorum” entails a broader horizon ranged from an enlightened practice of self-control to a religious experience of self-transcendence.52

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For Zhu Xi, the Principal in human beings is identical with human nature endowed at birth. The Principle is morally good, constituting the four cardinal virtues: humanness, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom, as Mencius earlier established.53 However, in Zhu Xi’s account, every person is also born with an endowment of psychophysical limitations and problems, such that he finds the self in a predicament, falling short of moral perfection. If we, through self-subduing, would be in a state of equilibrium, we overcome selfish emotional desires because a mind is capable of apprehending the principle in things. In Ivanhoe’s analysis, Zhu Zi modifies Mencius’s understanding of the original goodness of nature for proper ethical conduct through self-subduing for the rediscovery of the original good nature. Zhu Xi’s goal is to protect the mind and heart from the obscuring effects of selfish, agitated, and disturbed emotions and desires. This goal can be completed in pursuing an inquiry and study of the dialectic of the investigation of worldly affairs (things) and the extension of their knowledge residing in the reverential attitude.54 In this context, I notice that Zhu Xi critically develops Zhang Zai’s (1020–1077) teaching, in which the principle is one, but its manifestations are many (li yifen shu). This principle affirms the unity of the principle in the midst of its diverse particularizations. But it is framed in an analogical notion of self-manifestations in an open-ended direction toward the Ultimate Reality of the Principle. In the historical development of Confucianism, the concept of ren does not entirely lose its religious and cosmological dimension in the context of Neo-Confucianism. In it, the Confucian notion of ren is extended to embrace the whole universe, articulating that the principle is one but its manifestations are many (li yifen shu). For instance, for Zhang Zai, normally considered the father of NeoConfucianism, presented the unity of Heaven and Earth, including humanity and the myriad things becomes the cosmological family. This perspective underlines that the principle is one but its manifestations are many (li yifen shu).55 In Zhu Xi’s development, such a principle of unity needs to be clarified in an analogical sense. The Heavenly Principle is likened to the pearl lying in muddy water and it is present and immanent within all things, “is not a cup into pieces. It is merely like the moon reflecting itself in ten thousand streams.”56 The moon reflected in the streams means that the streams throw back the image of the moon. In other words, the Principle is mirrored in its diverse, particular manifestations in an early life context, in terms of an analogical notion of aletheia.

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The mirror image is analogically connected with the actual sight of the moon through the ontological investigation of things and the extension of knowledge. In the process of meditative and analytical thinking, the Truth reveals itself, but remains an inspiration in a lifelong process of self-cultivation and integral comprehension. At this juncture, it is of special significance to compare Zhu Xi’s metaphor to Gadamer’s metaphor of the castle in the lake. Gadamer grounds his hermeneutics on human linguisticality since language shapes human consciousness and is likened to a mirror relation: “the castle in the lake.”57 The lake throws back the image of the castle as essentially connected with the actual sight of the castle, like an appearance allows the thing to appear through the mirror image. In Gadamer’s account, “it is like a duplication that is still only the one thing. The real mystery of a reflection is the intangibility of the image, the sheer reproduction hovering before the mind’s eye.”58 Gadamer structures the mirror relationship linguistically, based on the speculative, universal function of language as the world horizon of being-in-the-world; “in language the word itself presents itself.”59 This articulates the logos in the structure of being coming into language, aletheia,60 such that Gadamer belittles an analogical, methodological horizon of language. However, Zhu Xi’s hermeneutical reflection assumes an analogicalmeditative character in regard to the mysterious manifestations of the Principle (Dao) by similarity-in-difference. Language as analogy is not structured in a hierarchical-authoritative manner, but in an ethical and pluralistic manner, notably in terms of the rectification of the world. Dao-Truth is not exhausted into the fullness of language. Following in the footsteps of Mencius, Zhu Xi argues that the ruler must rectify his mind and make his intention sincere. Every act of a ruler should conform to the principle of virtue. His critical moral attitude caused his impeachment by a censor for 10 crimes against the Confucian virtues: loyalty, filial piety, humanity, righteousness, and justice.61

Phenomenological Reflection: Wang Yangming and Rectification Now, it is significant to see Mencius’ notion of vox Dei and vox Populi for the right of the people, in connection with later development of Wang Yangming’s position. In the opening statement of The Great Learning, we read that the extension of knowledge and the investigation of things

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are the epitome of the Confucian moral and political program. Wang offers a creative interpretation of the investigation of things and the extension of knowledge by emphasizing the sincerity of intention. The word “intention” refers to activity. The original substance of intention is correlated with moral knowledge and an affair in the society. When the intention is directed to the service of one’s parents, such service becomes an affair or action. The unity between theory and practice occurs in the realm of sincerity, embedded within the social life. Seeking the sincerity of intention is the meaning of intersubjectivity in the investigation of things in the public sphere. In classical Chinese, to believe and to be worthy of faith is expressed by the word xin, in which the ideogram contains the signs for “person” and “speech.” To believe implies letting speech act. Sincerity is expressed by xing, which is a manifestation of Nature conferred by Heaven. This ideogram contains the signs for “speech” and “completion,” such that sincerity completes the human word, completing other people and things. This articulates that sincerity is comprehended through language in the life connection with others in society. The Confucian notion of intersubjectivity in speech and rectification of speech remains an undercurrent in Wang’s radicalized notion of sincerity and saying in reference to vox Dei and vox Populi This Confucian position can to be elucidated in a phenomenological fashion. If I formulate Wang’s position in a Husserlian fashion, an intentionality of the mind-and-heart (noesis) is not separated from its moral object (noema) within the lifeworld of Dao. In later Husserl, the noetico–noematic structure of intentionality is analogically framed within the lifeworld underlying the intersubjectivity. The intersubjectivity is grounded within the lifeworld. In Husserl’s account, one’s lived experience with the other always implicitly participates in intersubjectivity because it arises in an embodied, social experience within the lifeworld. In analogical apprehension, the other appears as a natural part of my being-in-the-lifeworld as an alter ego. Intersubjectivity is the ego’s opening to the world of others in communication, in which the world is always intrinsically a lifeworld shared by an intersubjective community. All other egos and myself belong to a whole objective world, the ideal correlate of an intersubjective experience in an intersubjectively communalized sense. In this primordial world, we have a kind of co-present making: appresentation defined as that which makes the intended consciousness of intersubjectivity co-present.62

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In the primordial lifeworld, ego and alter ego are always and necessarily given in an original paring designated as association. This is in contrast to identification or being designated as a critical source of the factuality of the Da-sein in care, fate, and anxiety. If the community is the foundation for all other intersubjectively common things in contrast to solipsism, then Husserl’s phenomenology of the Other can be sought in one’s engagement with the society in which there is the reality of negative moments such as dominion, or power imposed upon the bodily life of the people. If phenomenology is foundational for intersubjectivity and ethical life in the intersubjective world, phenomenology and ethics are interconnected with each other.63 Nonetheless, Husserl’s concept of logos as speech “is entirely one with logos as rationality.”64 A phenomenology of the Other in Husserl is not structured in the freedom of saying over the rationality of the said; it is not fully comprehended in one’s own manifestation and presentation in communication, standing in ethical responsibility for, and solidarity with the Other. As a matter of fact, Wang is deeply concerned with the “damaged” lives of people and awakening the rediscovery of their own rights in the present context, through act structure of noema–noesis (liangzji), which is ethically moved and guided by the phenomenology of vox Dei in and through vox Populi. The cultivation of the self is comprehended as manifesting virtue in relation to the self and loving people in relation to public society. This refers to his notion of the unity between knowledge and action (zhixing he yi). The substance of the mind-and-heart is the principle of innate, intuitive knowledge (liangzhi) underlying the unity between knowledge and action. The subject matter of liangzhi is not confined to the Confucian classics, even Confucius or Mencius. Rather, the classics are records of the operation of liangzhi in past contexts that everyone possesses.

Mencius as the Source of Solidarity Development

in Neo-Confucian

Perceived in a phenomenological fashion, I notice more commonality than dissimilarity between Zhu Xi and Wang, although their difference is not discarded in their respective notion of the Heavenly Principle. What is common in Zhu Xi and Wang is the priority of the Principle over the sacred texts in their respective understanding of the investigation of things and the extension of sincerity. The Mencian principle of

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rectification becomes the source of immanent critique and solidarity in the development of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming Zhu Xi’s hermeneutics of the classic literatures is not merely textbound, but is to be undertaken in acknowledging the Principle in 10,000 streams. In Wang’s critique of the classic texts, his intentionality grounded within the liangzhi as the correlational unity of noesis and noema is not deconstruction, but strives for safeguarding the subject matter of the text from bookish information and unethical knowledge. The texts of sages must not be degenerated into doctrines which tend to undermine the context-sensitive wisdom of liangzhi. This as the original face is the true meaning operative in the classic texts.65 Despite the different approach between Zhu Xi and Wang, the phenomenology of the living dynamism of Dao (Heavenly Principle or Linagzhi) finds priority in their moral connection with people’s lives. Language is not the house of being, but the moral is the house of being striving in an attempt of the rectification of ideologically distorted language, renovating human conduct, and correcting socially corrupted systems. In the prophetic tradition of Mencius, what is humanly good and what is good in terms of human action are related to the ethical self in engagement with the goodness of Dao in text learning, as well as in actual lives of people, though these Dao speak in awakening the ethical responsibility of the self for the Other. Wang’s radical hermeneutics of the subject matter led him to be socially engaged in the socioeconomic time of the middle period of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). There are sprouts of early capitalism in the late Ming period that shape and influence Wang’s new perspective. Official corruption, social and moral crisis, and economic injustice and burdens on the lives of the people demonstrate the discrepancy between talk and deed, knowledge, and action. Underlying an initial transition from agriculture to commerce there were burdens and injustices on the lives of the people. Wang is critical of such a mode of capitalist society in which “a sick man face[s] death.”66 Mencius’ notion of vox Poplui as vox Dei is revived and reinterpreted in Wang’s understanding of liangzhi and his solidarity with the rights of the people. Wang’s critique of the literal and conventional reading of the texts entails a prophetic denouncement of traditional hierarchical authority for the sake of the voice of Dao as infinite Saying, through the face of those who are fragile, vulnerable, and victimized in public society. Wang’s phenomenology of liangzhi implies Dao, great sayings in strange

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terms and bold words, which are found in Mencius’ position of human intuitive ability (four beginnings linked to the mandate of Heaven). For Mencius, people’s eyes are the eyes of Heaven, while people’s ears are the ears of Heaven. As Mencius states, “if the speech is not impartial I can see where lies the speaker’s lopsided view. If it is exaggerated I can see where he loses his footing. If he is deviant I can see where he goes astray. If he is evasive I can see where he is unjustifiable. Those four kinds of speech are all expressions of the mind, which will surely affect politics unfavorably. When embodied in politics, they will surely affect state affairs unfavorably.”67 According to Tracy, Wang’s Neo-Confucian insight is appreciated as the cardinal example of a mystical-political model among all religions. A responsibly pluralistic attitude grounded in ethical-political charge and criteria is open to mutual recognition and transformation in attention to the religious other.68

Critical Conclusion: Colonialism, Religious Moral, and Multiple Modernities In the time of colonialism, Confucian teaching had lost its relevance with democracy and social justice in China. It was attacked by Chinese intellectuals in the name of science and democracy in the early twentieth century. However, a renewal of meaning of vox Dei and vox Populi marks a substantial field of developing the democratic and social dimensions of Mencius’ ethics. In the Confucian view of the relationship between virtue and practice, we need to distinguish technical skills from virtues and practices. A Confucian notion of practices requires the exercise of moral and its relevant technical skills. It aims at being good and also entails intrinsic standards of excellence in the intersubjective context. The best way to cultivate virtue in the Confucian context is to engage in practices of morals and virtues in society. This perspective implies a critique of Western modernity and its individualism imbued with technical rationality.69 In Weber’s sociological study of religious ethics and modernity, we observe that the people of Western Europe have unfolded a unique type of rationality and individualism through the disenchantment of the world. The Puritan Calvinist ethic became the arbiter in shaping and underpinning capitalist rationality and possessive individualism in terms of purpose rationality.

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Other than Weber’s assumption, Europe’s wealth was built upon the establishment of a great transcontinental, triangular trade and commerce system from the seventh until the nineteenth centuries. Industrial capitalism and modernization under the hegemony of Great Britain were developed out of resources and capital accumulation through the working people at the domestic level and the colonial system abroad.70 If Weber sees the embodiment of the rational spirit of capitalism in the case of Benjamin Franklin, John Locke demonstrates a very different type of irrationality of capitalism. As McCarthy scrutinizes a questionable racial theory in representatives of Western modernity (Locke, Mill, and Kant), Western modernity should be treated in its connection with non-Western societies. Admittedly, John Locke (1632–1704) is deemed as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, and the defender of natural rights (or better, human rights), with a demand for equality for all people. His religious background is in the Puritan family. Locke’s individualism, his glorification of property rights, and his love of conscience remain indelible factors which were woven into the political, economic and social fabric of American life. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), author of the American Declaration of Independence, was greatly indebted to Locke who argues that we should resist a government in misusing power against our natural rights. In his Second Treatise of Government (1690),71 Locke marks his notion of property, democracy, and human rights. The best form of government is a democracy which can protect natural rights. However, in 1671, he was a major investor in the English slave trade. In Locke’s account, the European conquerors came to North America with peaceful intentions. They may treat the Native Americans like wild animals, or destroy them on the basis of the law of nature. Power becomes the prime criterion as it appeals to Locke’s law of nature. The war waged by power is a just war in defending the law of reason and humankind. Slavery is legitimate to the indigenous people of North America, who need to be colonized with the use of force. Locke is also regarded as a Puritan representative of capitalism linked to colonialism. Against Puritan Christianity, Asian societies are characterized by rich religious traditions, people’s multicultural ethos, political diversities, having undergone colonized experience, and caught into economic underdevelopment under the system of Empire. A current study of the Axial Age for multiple modernities entails a project of the de-Westernization

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of a God-ordained point of view. It takes issue with such a view which transcendentally unfolds a universalist stream of flow in history and time. Modernity does not dissolve traditions, but reversely, different traditions and various cultures serve as resources for modernity’s constitution and reconstitution; undergoing modernization, they develop their distinctive reaction patterns, conceptions of the good, and institutions in the process of the crystallization of a new civilization.72 Given this, Tu Weiming has attempted to assess the contribution of Confucian humanism to the project of multiple modernities. He argues that “Max Weber referred to ‘universal brotherhood’ as an outmoded medieval myth [that is] unrealizable in the disenchanted modern secular world.”73 Tu’s attempt at explicating the East Asian mode of modernity in light of Confucian humanism can be seen in his response to the multiple modernities perspective. However, unlike Tu, Weber did not reject the ethics of universal brotherhood as an outmoded myth, but has expected religiously inspired prophetic ethics of reciprocity or solidarity in contrast to Puritan inhuman aristocratic ethics. Even Weber recognizes that there would play implicitly the principle of solidarity, founded upon the giving of alms in Confucianism. The prophetic religions in the East were able “to create a protectorate of the weak, i.e. women, children, slaves, etc.”74 At any rate, in Tu’s account, East Asian intellectuals have been learning from Western science and scholarship to build their modern societies in accordance to wholesale Westernization. This model of creative adaptation in the aftermath of the Second World War or colonialism strategically positions themselves in forging a new synthesis. Herein, the Confucian tradition has been marginalized and is forever severed from its imperial institutional base.75 But Tu argues that in the context of East Asian modernity, “organic solidarity” (Durkheim) is complemented by humane rites of interaction rather than the law. More than law, the ritual act encourages people to live up to their own aspirations and moral rationality.76 Cultural, religious traditions continue to come into play in the modernizing process. “East Asian modernization has already assumed cultural forms so significantly different from those in Western Europe and North America.”77 In Tu’s argument, however, it is difficult to find the extent to which he would undertake an East Asian definition of the culturally significant form of modernity as an alternative form to Western modernity. When is East Asian modernity for Tu? In his understanding of East Asian organic

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solidarity, he tends to sidestep harm via law. When corrupted, the Confucian legal system and its social administration have stripped people of the humane rites of interaction and organic morals. In my judgment, for the task of seeking the alternative form of modernity, one must undertake a critical analysis of national resistance against colonial power relations and dissect scholars’ creative interpretations of religious classics in colonial and postcolonial contexts for the creative process of adaptation and synthesis. Creative work of agency must be investigated in correlation with social-structural unfolding and change, which also plays a boundary in shaping and driving agency’s creative involvement and synthesis; this implies a project of an alternative form of modernity, in critical response to Western modernization in East Asia. A project of East Asian modernity cannot be explained only by influence of Confucian ideas or ethical humanism unilaterally upon economic ethos, in which Tu would reiterate the limitation of Weber’s ideal type and his “unhistorical” form of rationality. For an East Asian project of multiple modernities, decolonizing the Eurocentric mind, the postcolonial inquiry may undergird a project of multiple interpretations of modernities to transcend the limitations and setbacks of Western modernity for alternative trans-modernity. This perspective helps critical comparative theology seek an exit, refraining from the epistemological violence of the Other through the shibboleth of Western rationality in racist and colonialist mooring. Western colonial modernity is not capable of subsuming and totalizing the tradition of the colonized into its own universalizing development. In an attempt at rewriting the history of present “from and for margins” in plural and diverse contexts, one critically involves the ramifications of Western global hegemony.78 In Bellah’s account, religious belief and narrative are intertwined, constituting the self. Narrative becomes the source of our religious ethics, politics, and religion.79 A study of religious ethics is based on comparative storytelling and spiritualties in a struggle against colonialism, racism, sexism, and violence. For Bellah, the hallmark of Confucian utopianism is based on the rule of virtue by ritual, moral example, and rectification in emphatic listening to the voice of the people in the public sphere. It is directed to replacing the rule of war and punishment by establishing and promoting the peaceful unification in the world. Herein we see that he transcends the limitation of Weber’s assumption against a utopian element in Confucianism, which is in sharp contrast to the hope of ancient Israel.80 In assessing multiple modernities for alternative trans-modernity,

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Confucian way of life and its solidarity ethic must become the interlocutor with the Eurocentric notion of modernity, imbued with the pathological logic of colonialism, racism, and possessive individualism.

Notes











1. Tu Weiming, Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). 2. Peter L. Berger, A Far Glory: The Quest for Faith in an Age of Credulity (New York: The Free Press, 1992), 25, 29. 3. “Religious Rejection of the World and Their Direction,” in From Max Weber, 330. 4. “The Chinese Literati” in ibid., 427. 5. Ibid. 6. Bendix, Max Weber, 137. 7. “The Chinese Literati,” in From Max Weber, 416, 418. 8. Bendix, Weber, 124. 9. “The Chinese Literati” in From Max Weber, 441. 10. Max Weber, The Religion of China, 160. 11. Weber, “The Nature of Charismatic Domination,” in Weber Selections, 229–230. 12. Ibid., 226, 228, 230. 13. Ibid., 230. 14. Weber, The Religion of China, 107. 15. Ibid., 111. 16. Ibid., 137. 17. Ibid., 125. 18. Ibid., 227. 19. Thomas A. Metzger, Escape from Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China’s Evolving Political Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 4. 20. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution, 479. 21.  Wm. Theodore De Bary and Irene Bloom, eds., Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 15. 22. Tu Weiming, Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Confucian Religiousness, rev. enl. ed. (New York: SUNY, 1989), 48–49. 23.  The Great Learning, ch.1.4–5, in Confucian Analects, the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean, trans. James Legge (New York: Dover, 1971). 24. Wing-tsit, Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1973), 84. 25. A. C. Graham, Disputes of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle: Open Court, 1989), 112–113.

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26. Confucius, The Analects, trans. Arthur Waley (Hunan, Beijing: Hunan People’s Publishing House, Foreign Langue Press, 1999), 11. 27. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 429–430. 28. Lee H. Yearly, Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage (Albany: SUNY, 1990), 37. 29.  Classic of Filial Piety, as cited in Wm. Theodore de Bary, Asian Values and Human Rights: A Confucian Communitarian Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 128. 30. Confucius, Analects, 15: 23. 31. Confucius, Analects, 3: 17. 32.  Mencius, trans. Zhao Zhentao, et al. (Hunan and Beijing: Hunan People’s Publishing House, 1999), Bk.7.10 BK.11.11. 33. Bellah, Religion in Human Revolution, 422. 34. Confucius, Analects, 12.11. 35.  Confucian Political Ethics, ed. Daniel A. Bell (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), 8. 36. Tu, Centrality and Commonality, 57. 37. Yearly, Mencius and Aquinas, 39. 38.  Mencius, Introduction. 27; see further Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, 1: The Period of the Philosophers, trans. DerkBodde (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 113. 39. Mencius, 31. 40. Mencius, 7; Fung, A History of Chinese Philosophy I, 118. 41. Mencius, trans. D. C. Lau (London: Penguin, 1970), 5A5, 144. 42. Mencius, trans. Zhao Zhentao et al. 15. 43. Mencius, trans. Zhao Zhentao et al. 43. 44. Yearly, Mencius and Aquinas, 42. 45. Ibid., 45. 46.  Aristotle, “Politics” in A New Aristotle Reader, ed. J. L. Ackrill (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1987), 514. Troeltsch, Social Teaching, I: 257–328 47.  Daniel A. Bell, “Just War and Confucianism: Implications for the Contemporary World,” in Confucian Political Ethics, ed. Bell, 236. 48. Confucius, Analects, 13,3. 49. Yearly, Mencius and Aquinas, 7. 50. Ibid., 8,12. 51. Ibid., 26. 52. Wm. Theodore, De Bary, The Liberal Tradition in China (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press; New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 27. 53. Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy II, 558. 54. Philip J. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self Cultivation, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000), 59–60.



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55. Chan, A Source Book of Chinese Philosophy, 497. 56. Cited in Fung, History of Chinese Philosophy II, 541. 57. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 466. 58. Ibid., 466. 59. Ibid., 450. 60. Ibid., 457. 61. Julia Ching, To Acquire Wisdom: The Way of Wang Yang-ming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 17. 62. Husserl, “The Appresentation of the Other,” in The Essential Husserl, 146. 63.  Joachim, Siles I Borras, The Ethics of Husserl’s Phenomenology: Responsibility and Ethical Life (London, New York: Continuum, 2010), 5. 64.  Michael Newman, “Sensibility, Trauma, and the Trace: Levinas from Phenomenology to the Immemorial,” in The Face of the Other & the Trace of God, 97. 65.  Philip J. Ivanhoe, Ethics in the Confucian Tradition: The Thought of Mengzi and Wang Yangming, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002), 130. 66. Wang Yangming, The Complete Works of Wang Yangming (Shanghai: Shanghai Classic Press, 1992), 814. 67. Mencius, trans. Zhao Zhentao, 63–64. 68. Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 102. 69. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 187. 70. Chung, Church and Ethical Responsibility in the Midst of World Economy: Greed, Dominion, and Justice (Eugene: Cascade, 2013), 84. 71. Ed. Thomas P. Peardon (New York: Liberal Arts, 1952). 72. Sachsenmaier et al. Reflections on Multiple Modernities, 10. 73.  Tu Weiming, “Multiple Modernities: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Implications of the East Asian Modernity,” 4. http://www.socionauki. ru/book/files/globalistics_and_globalization_studies_3/104-111.pdf. 74. Weber, Sociology of Religion, 214. 75. Ibid., 5. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid., 8. 78. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton University Press, 2000), 4. 79.  The Robert Bellah Reader, eds. Robert N. Bellah and Steven M. Tipton (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006), 10. 80. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution, 587. 476. 576. Weber, The Religion of China, 145.

CHAPTER 13

Epilogue: Comparative Theology and the Postcolonial

The epilogue is not merely a summary and but a furthering and elaboration of what has been discussed in the study of comparative theology and multiple modernities. The first part entails a reflection in complementing and elaborating the previous analysis and argument of religious discourse and comparative theology in a social, critical frame of reference. This complementation attempts to pave a way to initiate a “postcolonial” comparative theology by elucidating Foucault’s theory of archeology through the lens of Walter Benjamin. The second part is a continuity of undergirding the previous discussion about Buddhist–Christian engagement as begun in Chap. 10. For the first part, I begin with faith epistemology.

Faith and Understanding

in Comparative

Theology

Anselm’s epistemology fides quaerens intellectum (faith-seeking understanding) characterizes theology as a rational science framed in analogical construal. In this faith epistemology, the unbeliever’s quest for the truth should be treated as identical with the quest of the believer. A concept of God as mystery remains central in Anselm’s approach to God as the Insuperable. Anselm’s faith epistemology in analogical construal finds its significance in Barth’s relational theology in his distinctive manner and orientation to God’s freedom in speech-act. In the study of comparative theology, I take a phenomenological, sociological approach to God’s freedom in relationality to the world. In the theological scholarship, I have learned mainly from Luther and Barth, © The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5_13

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along with Levinas’ insight, while appreciating and revising Troeltsch’s historical-critical method into the correlational research model between lifeworld and intentionality. Faith epistemology is central in Barth and Troeltsch, despite rooted in their different modes of thought, argument, and orientation. Comparative theology becomes an indispensable part of systematic-constructive theology, as fully conversant with other religions in terms of a methodological appropriation of phenomenological inquiry and sociology of religion. According to Tracy, analogical language is an alternative vocabulary to a univocal language (where all is the same) or an equivocal language (where all is different). This analogical imagination facilitates a preparation for risking all present self-understanding, acknowledging the claims of the other, including scientific and interreligious challenges.1 Nonetheless, Tracy’s analogical comparative theology is subsumed in negative dialectics in which via negativa tends to replace analogical imagination and linguistic import for radical relativism of all religious experience related to the Ultimate Reality. The subject matter of the gospel is obscured and runs into existential reductionism in light of the sheer incomprehensibility of divine Mystery. However, in phenomenological suspension of via negativa, it is significant for us to focus upon God’s self-revelation in Christ in dialectical aletheia with respect to critical analysis of social discourse and power relations. Interpreting the religious classics includes our exposure to the difference of the Other. It also entails a critical method that is operative in the problematization of the suspicious domain of classic texts being vulnerable to being colonized or falsified. This critical method analyzes religious ideas and discourse as embedded in the nexus of religious knowledge, its social power, and its hegemonic discourse. Immanent Critique and Multiple Horizons In the study of economic rationality and its ethical integrity, a project of immanent critique is undertaken in critically renewing Weber’s underdeveloped notion of value rationality and religious ideas against purpose rationality. Purpose rationality lies beneath Weber’s analysis of Western modernization, which has generated the consequence of what he calls the disenchantment with the world, running into the reality of the iron cage. Against this direction, I took an archeological analysis of the marginalized notion of economic ethics and prophetic justice between

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Buddhism and Luther. A sociological inquiry reinforces a hermeneutical reading strategy to take into account social location and political, economic constellation. Thus, a reading strategy of the text is concerned with uncovering the extent to which the interpreter would determine the one locus (religious idea) as the metadiscourse of the text, while excluding the other locus (economic integrity and justice) as deviating or even detrimental. Faith in seeking understanding means that faith is not a private concept, but faith is active in love seeking the grace of God in forgiveness, reconciliation, and justice, challenging the reality of lordless powers. Faith in a humble attitude is characterized by attentive listening to God’s irregular and strange voice in the otherness of the Other, vexing and provoking Christian identity for spiritual poverty, humble attitude, and ongoing renewal toward the Truth of God. This critical stance actualizes the infinite horizon of God’s speech-act in the Scripture as well as in the world of cultural, religious strangers, which is comprehended as the “clearing” place (open region) of divine semantics. This procedure reinforces us to develop a notion of multiple horizons in elaborating theological belongingness to and also familiarity with critical distance, and social participation in communicating the Christian belief system to the discourse of the public sphere. The first sense of the fusion of multiple and complex horizons transpires, first of all, within the engagement of the self with its own tradition and history (in the suspension upon the taken-for-granted understanding of the horizon of familiarity about the classic text). This language familiarity qualifies a move to the social realm of language to account for meaning. Thus, the first naiveté of understanding is enriched and renewed in dialogue with the Other (the horizon of strangeness) in the procedure of effectively communicating the position of the self with and self-critical learning from the position of the Other (the second naiveté). In the comparative study of different texts (whether juxtaposed with one’s own text or independently selected under one’s own standpoint), the historical aspect of language is culturally transmitted and socially constructed in linguistic activity through dialogue and interpretation in a newly juxtaposed or selected text. Comparative hermeneutics upholds language as an activity or form of life in the textual world that is constituted by socially constructed rules. For instance, the Confucian notion of rectification and investigation of things, as well as the extension of knowledge is discussed and developed in different contexts of language

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games against the Catholic virtue comparatist’s work on Thomas Aquinas and Mencius. Insofar as language gains a new dimension through the pluralism of language games in the juxtaposed textual world, a linguistic horizon in the social form of life historicizes itself since language spheres include translation (dialogue) and tradition with commentarial interpretation (in the case of the debate of Zen in light of Emptiness). All linguistic understanding takes place within its local, particular horizon (whether socially engaged Buddhism or even Japanese Imperial Buddhism), in which the horizons meet and interact in its social, practical application and political interest. The hermeneutical self, in the process of learning from the Other, is located within the cultural-linguistic horizon, which includes cultural customs as a reservoir of cultural forms of the activity of language grounded in social consensus.2 A phenomenological notion of culture as context and an ensemble of texts sees the linguistic horizon in terms of cultural-socially constituted meaning and its social, political practice. An ontological claim of language as a universal medium is specifically socialized in attention to the Other, as involved in the juxtaposed textual world by the reading skill of collage, progressed in the fusion of multiple horizons. The procedure of recovering new meaning is constructed in critical analysis of the interplay of religious discourse and the power mechanism, which facilitates the second naiveté of the self to better understand its own tradition and religious text. The dialogue with the Other in the horizon of strangeness and unfamiliarity undergoes an appropriate procedure of mutual agreement in a non-coerced manner, yet while allowing for tolerant disagreement and deferral. It is also provoked with self-critical renewal in the attainment of the immanent critique in matters pertaining to each tradition in its questionable direction (blamage effect) from each distinctive religious idea and value (solidarity source). This phenomenological-sociological inquiry locates its critical, constructive import in differentiation from the postliberal celebration of incommensurability and difference. Thus, a difference, discontinuity, and undecidability of the truth is instituted and integrated in a theological notion of God’s speech-act in a transcendental-ethical framework, in which the discourse of the religious Other stands under God’s freedom and mystery for recognition and deferral in the context of multiple modernities. This phenomenological

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procedure is furthered in archeological analysis of power relations, legitimizing religious discourse of political domination and institutionalization in a social context. Accordingly, I value the achievement of comparative theology invested in an exegetical, commentarial manner and equipped with the practice of meticulous and dedicated reading. A commentarial theology can be complemented by sociological inquiry of religion and society as progressed in its critical understanding of the correlation between religious ideas and social expression. Clooney’s comparative theology is of a rigorous commentarial character, entering into a critical, intelligent commitment to the juxtaposed sacred texts and materials of the religious tradition studied. Its achievement entails a continually provisional character and practical arrangement in terms of a humble, self-effacing strategy. The critical mutual correlations are taken in recognition of similarity, without undermining difference. Both similarity and difference in the sense of an “analogical mode of thought” or “analogical imagination” are of significance for the sake of correlation in attending to its alterity and appreciating its transformative power.3 Shared with this practice, I am more convinced that comparative textual studies would remain partial without the critical analysis of social and cultural dimensions of religious ideas and doctrines in view of its institutionalized power through the problematization of the blamage effect. This inquiry does not depreciate commentarial skill nor does it remain neutral in the complexity of religious discourse in the course of historical development, which is socially conditioned and interest bound. The immanent critique, in this frame of reference, proceeds from within the religious discourse (solidarity effect, for instance, the subject matter of the Gospel or the Mencian notion of vox Dei as vox Populi) for each community rather than presupposing the privileged locus outside inserted into the religious world. Comparative Theology and Theology of Religions In interpreting the religious classics, Tracy argues that analogical procedure in a critical, negative sense allows ourselves to challenge them through every hermeneutic moment of appreciation, critique, retrieval, and suspicion. Thus, it is significant to take ethical charges and political stances seriously in the critique of obscurantisms, exclusivism, and moral fanaticism embedded within the world of religion, for the sake of

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the nature of Ultimate Reality. This implies Tracy’s contribution to homo ethicus in the comparative study of religion. In the analysis of his critical revisionist model of comparative theology, however, a question arises whether the agonies of Grunewald’s Crucifixion are the same experience as an image of Buddha, in light of the theocentric liberating reality. Via negativa in analogical imagination remains instrumental in building up the project of double belongingness in Knitter’s theology of religions. Against this trend, theological language in its practical forms of life has its own tradition and social context, which is not neatly translatable or identifiable with other religious languages and their cultural forms of life. Dissimilarity or incommensurability in hermeneutical experience needs to remain specific, unique, and context-variant for recognition, generous disagreement, and referral. Each lifeworld of the two different religions, formed in a particular and grammatical way of life, is influential and constitutive of meaning in an interrelated network within each own horizon. Against an analogical comparatist, a critical comparatist argues that when the power of the analogical imagination seeks to bring us into touch with the lives of strangers, we must first differentiate the elements of culture from the hermeneutic inquirer, by clearly identifying the internal network among those elements. In interpreting a culture’s web of symbols, the whole system is organized around the core symbols, while the semantic of the whole system is a surface expression or ideological principle of the underlying structure of the internal symbols. We cannot discover the culture’s import or its systems of meaning without grounding our feet within them. Culture is public, since meaning is there, such that a system of meanings produces culture and religion. The system of meaning imbued with culture or religion is of the public horizon, becoming “the collective property of a particular people.”4 The Confucian notion of rectification and its radical moral politics cannot be universally applied to the Hindu culture or Islamic culture, but remains the source of immanent critique and solidarity within the Confucian tradition and context; at the same time, it may come into play for common pursuit of recognition, justice, and advocacy in interreligious learning. A pluralist argument of sameness may say: “One may drink out of the same great rivers with others, but one need not use the same cup.”5 A critical comparatist is in search of the common ground of recognition,

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justice, and solidarity in the context of multiple modernities. He/she may concur with a need of using different cups to drink out of the same great rivers with others. However, to understand different meaning from the same great rivers, one must notice that the same rivers stream within their own context, flowing in a continuous current in a specified course and direction. Metaphorically speaking, the “Yangtze river does not necessarily flow in the same direction as the Ganzes river does, nor even plunging into the Ganzes.” The plunging of the Yangtze river into the Ganzes would imply a disguised habit of mimicry and emulation of the Eurocentric modernist dialectic of colonization for the sake of totalization, reductionism, and sameness. The Postcolonial and Comparative Study of Religion As Thomas McCarthy maintains, in the most universalistic of early modern philosophers (including Kant), there is a racial dichotomy between “us” and “hem,” a dichotomy of civilization versus barbarism. The Westerner is taken to be superior, even biologically to all the others. Euro-America stands at the apex. Colonialism or Imperialism was justified as educational for civilizing mission, bringing the possibility of liberty to those without Western civilization. John Stuart Mill, the author of the essay On Liberty, spent most of his adult life working for the East India Company. In his philosophy of freedom, Mill justifies despotism of British rule in India as a legitimate mode of government which deals with barbarians, if it provides and affects the end for improvement.6 Edward Said’s Orientalism7 unravels the discourse of representation in the colonial literature, insisting to see how such a dichotomy has dominated Western thought. In the study of religion, it is important to refuse an attempt at homogenizing or totalizing the Other into sameness underlying the logic of colonialism. The whole East entails a vivid and dramatic history for multiple modernities, which is not synchronized into the Western notion of history and progress. Given the problems of the history of colonization, Walter Benjamin remains an important interlocutor, who denounces the thought of history’s countless victims as nothing but stepping stones along the path of development.8 As Benjamin insists, even the dead as the colonized, innocent victims will not be safe from the colonizers if they win and still rule history. Nothing that has ever happened in the past should be regarded or sidestepped as lost and forgotten for history and for us.9 Benjamin’s

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anamnesis reasoning and solidarity facilitate an archeological analysis and re-writing, which seeks to arouse the spark of hope and resistance. This insight helps us explicate a social biography of those excluded and buried by colonialist historiography and in the dominant discourse of religion. Given this, a comparatist’s critique of capitalism and colonialism is indispensable in developing a religiously inspired prophetic ethic of solidarity, in terms of anamnestic reasoning against instrumental functional rationality. The essential placeless character of capitalism has caused an off-grounded economy, manipulating places in the marketing cult of commodities and images. The hegemony of modernist marginalization of local places to the global is of religious character. Capitalism has occupied a form of religion in service of the reified reality of lordless powers, especially Moloch-god (mammon), at the sacrifice of human life and nature by generating innocent victims. In the comparative study of religion, economic ethic and rationality is of special significance to cut through the pathology and malaise caused by functional, instrumental rationality and its social system of irrationality and absurdity. In Benjamin’s account, capitalism is revealed as an essentially religious phenomenon in its destructive power. In the religious structure of capitalism, it is a pure cult religion with no specific dogma. The cult is permanent, with no weekdays for escape in dominating everyday life. Capitalism as the only indebting religion has no mercy and atonement, but guilt and debt. The indebting god, mammon is kept secret.10 Commodity fetishism has cult marketing, sacrificing humanity and nature. Postcolonial scholarship is concerned with unpacking the reified character of religion through the empire which penetrates religious value rationality, rendering it to serve the religion of the empire. The Western mode of representation of other religions is an important tool in serving the interest of the powerful by manufacturing them into its own scheme and “oriental” enterprise. If all we know about a particular subset of Buddhism or Confucianism comes from those who have framed it from their own hermeneutic, then they have the power to define and categorize other religious ideas or virtue concepts for their own typology and interest. Although all of this is taken through the socially liberal notion of sameness or commonality, “coexistence,” or recognition, it would be hard to avoid the mechanism of a Neo-colonial mindset deep-seated in the name of representing or interpreting other religions in a comparative manner; here, comparatists

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tend to be deafened to the “true” voice of the Other which is socially and contextually bound and subjugated by power relations. The mutual demand or requirement for comparative writings comes to terms with a critical method of problematization in a mutual manner. I assume that “my” interpretation of Buddhist wisdom of Emptiness or the Confucian notion of vox Dei and vox Popluli stands in need of Buddhist or Confucian scholars’ critical evaluation for further learning, revision, and unfolding. But my intentionality in a comparative study is a way of encouraging each religious community to heed the source of solidarity and emancipation in its own tradition and context, undertaking distance from the regime of falsification in the course of historical development. Indeed, Clooney is also sensitive to the charge of postcolonial theory and the critique of Orientalism. He seeks to block interreligious arrogance and advocate for learning from traditional commentaries on that text. Clooney stands for a mutual corrective; a Christian might do another religious text a great service by reading a familiar text in a new way, just as a non-Christian reading of Christian classics does. Clooney’s comparative theology grounded in commentarial work entails a contribution to careful and dedicated reading for interreligious guide and spiritual exercise. Cutting through dogmatic differences and obstacles, Christian commentary on Hindu text is committed to close reading, going deeper into a text itself, finding ever deeper meaning within it for Christian relevance. A postcomparative theology of religions after Advaita Vedanta includes the dialectical act of reading by creating a new significance for non-Christian texts, while distorting and enhancing their original meaning. In like manner, new meanings can be constructed for the scripture and the theological systems in the event of juxtaposition with the nonChristian texts. A useful theology of religions for an inclusive model of soteriology can be composed in this attentive recognition of the dialectical, creative juxtaposition and hermeneutical conversation with the juxtaposed textual world.11 Nonetheless, his homo lector must be seen and clarified in the fusion of horizons in a juxtaposed textual world which may generate new meaning in the procedure: suspension, probematization, immanent critique, and a recovery of a new meaning engaged with homo socius and ethicus. The practice of collectio deals with the historical Sitz im Leben of the text and takes issue with its social effectiveness, hierarchical structure of religious,

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social system, and power relations; this social critical inquiry can be upheld in critically analyzing elective affinity or cultural consonance with agency or a bringer of religious ideas in society and culture. A comparative theology would remain fragmented, even an elitist enterprise unless taking into account a reality of blamage effect as anchored culturally within religious ideas and social stratification, in terms of inequality, discrimination, and segregation.12 Comparative Theology and Postcolonial Archeology In the postcolonial theory of religion, Foucault’s strategy of bio-power becomes a guiding principle for understanding political, cultural, and institutionalized discourse in the analysis of the interplay between knowledge and power in the colonist discourse of Orientalism. Said’s Orientalism becomes the watershed of postcolonial theory in an attempt to demystify the cultural representation of the Orient, which was undertaken by Western authorities in the colonial period. Associated with ideological and financial support for institutionalizing power and dominion over the colonized, the Orientalist depiction of the Orient has constructed an inferior world, a place of backwardness, irrationality, and wildness. Meanwhile, the West is identified with the opposite characteristics: progressive, rational, and civil. In Said’s account, “Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction between ‘the Orient’ and (most of time) ‘the Occident’.”13 However, Said’s limitation lies in his excessive emphasis on the passivity of the colonized, tending to undermine the ways in which people of the East have constructed their critical response to colonialism in interpretation of their own religious classics. When studying non-Western religious, ethical, and philosophical materials, it is substantial to transcend the limitations of Foucault’s relativistic anti-representationalism tied to Said’s logic of Orientalism.14 For a comparative theology in a postcolonial fashion, I find Foucault’s method of archeology to be significant in confrontation with the moment of the present, along with Benjamin. The moment of the present is not the greatest damnation or daybreak of the rising sun. Foucault’s archeology is part of a critical project toward the present.15 He writes a history of the past on behalf of problematizing the history of the present. Adopting a critical attitude toward the present, he analyzes

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the past and makes the problem of the present by means of distance, critique, and differentiation. In an archeological analysis of religious ideas and material interest, I find a critical method of problematization to be one of the most important epistemologies for exploring how and why certain things (behavior, phenomena, processes) became a problem in the critical analysis of the relations among science, politics, religion, and ethics. Its effective method explicates the extent to which and why a particular body of knowledge is entitled to be set up as a hegemonic discourse and develop practices, political structures, ethical forces, and religious thoughts.16 This effective method by critical thought circumscribes a notion of deconstruction, in the way that it is of sociological inquiry and may be undertaken in a phenomenological, hermeneutical manner; this is kept from turning into a deconstruction.17 Multiple Modernities Perspective and Critique of Western Man More than that, my archeological analysis of the interplay between religious ideas and material interests is social-historically grounded and founded upon anamnestic rationality in solidarity with those on the margins. This is differentiated from Foucaudian analysis of statement/discourse and his anti-humanistic stance. A critical inquiry of the relation between superstructure and base through the interplay or mutual effect cleans out a monocausality of explicating the totality of social relations unilaterally through the economic factor. The formation of production relations (material formation) includes diverse factors of interaction in politics, intellectual realms, religion, cultural hegemony, and economic life. The intellectual sphere and regime of rationalization and administration play a dominating role in the top-down influence in explicating human life anchored in the ensemble of social relations (social, cultural formation). In and through the correlation of all these instances and moments, diverse factors and moments participated in the interaction with material life. And this mutual interaction facilities our understanding of the autonomous role of religious ideas and discourse, in connection with the material, economic course of life. The process of social system reproduces and expands a system of rationalization in the differentiation of subsystems in politics, economics,

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education, and the legal system with which religious communities are in interaction for adaptation, conflict, and change. In the “interweaving” of the cultural and social structural dimensions in concrete situations, progress takes effect in our understanding of religion, structural evolution, society, and history. Social systems (along with history, tradition, and culture) are boundary-structured entities entailing a particular influence in shaping epistemological and ontological status (social agency) in the communications of their members in society. In this specific relationship between social structure and agency, social structure generates consensus, hegemonic power, and the access to resources in terms of structuration. “Thus, in a sense, such structures, or the tendency to such structuration, constitute what has been called the ‘evolutionary universals’ of any known society. They constitute the basic frameworks within which any action takes place. But their concrete specification continuously changes in history through processes of interaction which develop within such frameworks. Such processes which entail the interweaving of the concrete parameters of these frameworks change, but not the general tendency to the structuration of human activity within them.”18

Although the boundaries concept underlying evolutionary universals are constitutive elements for the self-selection of social systems, the maintenance of the structure causes conflicts and contradiction which may lead to change, transformation, or decline; it would finally reconstruct modes of boundaries of social systems. In the early phase of capitalism, an inner worldly ascetic and Puritan ethic contributed to the survival of the irrationality of capitalism through structuration in developing religious ideas in accordance with economic ethics. Such interweaving through interaction is embedded with justifying such religiously sanctioned discourse of predestination for capitalist rationalization, by uncovering the social reality of its irrationality. The interaction model between structures and agency is driven in the economic and cultural enterprise of the metropolis in relation to the peripheries in terms of capitalist expansion, infiltration, and exploitation at a global scale. This notion of evolutionary universals cannot be adequately comprehended apart from an archeological analysis of the interplay between ideas and material interests that are embedded with hegemonic power relations in subjugation of those on the margins. Based on the weaponry, economy, and propaganda, the metropolis has established structural injustice and dominion, inheriting the previous

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colonialism and capitalist expansion. The interaction model between structures and agency is driven in the economic and cultural enterprise of the metropolis in relation to the peripheries in terms of capitalist expansion, infiltration, and exploitation on a global scale. Accordingly, power relations are not merely inscribed in discourse and are disseminating in the penetration of the whole society. There were power relations in social structure prior to the discourse, in which Western man enters into power relations rather than merely being constituted by the power/knowledge constellation. Human life is dominated by life, history, and language in which those in power relations and social systems are sustained in subjugation of the colonial Other. Concerning what is “unthought” in Western modernity, Foucault has a lack of conceptual clarity without analysis of the underside in the appearance of man in connection with capitalist expansion and colonial other.19 The power relations penetrate and expand in terms of ideology as domination and false consciousness, exploitation, and structural violence. The being of language is no longer the house of being, but power of representing or totalizing the colonial Other into the sameness of Western man by depriving the unique dignity of its otherness. This analysis challenges the Foucauldian trap into Nietzschean experience, as indulged into the void left by the disappearance of Western man.20 God and Western man do not belong together because God is completely other than him, by changing him and coming to him by the face of the Other. My archeological, anamnestic inquiry, which opposes a modernist form of onto-theo-logy, is apprehended in the ethics of the other (Levinas) and radical politics (Barth). It takes issue with Foucault’s antihumanist structuralism built upon in his analysis of discourse and unilateral analysis of the historical appearance of Western man. There is no independent structure of a discourse statement outside of a life connected with labor, capital, language, and interest. Critical thought in the problematization of ascetic Calvinism and the capitalist ethos under elective affinity allows us to step back from the domain of analysis, rendering it as an object of critical thought; then, it questions the extent to which a religious idea comes to its meaning, condition, and goal in finding its material interest in the historical course of development. An analogical mode of thought in a phenomenological-anamnestic frame of reference concerns “unthought,” “unsaid,” “subjugated” regimes of knowledge in the history of interpretation and historical course of

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development. Phenomenology of the past is a return to the subject matter of the “unthought” and subjugated as transmitted partially in the memory of history. This critical method facilitates a sociological inquiry for reinforcing a notion of elective affinity between religious ideas and material interests by explicating its interplay with power relations and dominion; it also examines how forms of rationality inscribe themselves in ethical practices or systems of practices, and what kind of role they play within the regime of practices. The effective method of problematization seeks to analyze the object of investigation (militarist Zen practices) in terms of how it forms an ensemble of rules, procedures, and means in support of colonialism. The latter belongs to the regime of immanent critique. Governmentality, Mimicry, Parrhesia According to Foucault, “the critique is biblical, historically.”21 Those who do not want to be governed by ecclesiastic authority return to the Scriptures, seeking out what is really written and authentic in the Scriptures, while entailing a critical attitude of questioning, refusing, protesting, and limiting ecclesiastical rule.22 Critique challenges the governing way of system (govermentalization) which subjugates individuals in the reality of a social practice, in terms of mechanisms of power in adherence to a truth. The critical subject claims the right to question truth in its effects of power which is imbued with its discourse of truth.23 It refers to an archeological analysis of the knowledge–power interplay within the apparatus inscribed in a play of power. In the problematization of religious discourse and sexuality, Foucault uncovers the disciplinary regimes of religious institutions and shows how technological practices shape the emergence of sexuality. In the apparatus of a strategic future, types of knowledge interact with strategies of relation.24 His critical project, as revised in a phenomenological-anamnestic frame of reference, facilitates a sociological inquiry for deepening immanent critique and breaking open the hegemonic structures underlying Western modernist thinking and representation of other religions; it allows for non-identical thought, difference, and the Other to speak of themselves in the context of multiple modernities through the immanent critique, on behalf of postcolonial trans-modernity. Comparative theology is suspicious of the Western hegemonic interpretation of Mahayana Buddhism and Confucianism and is also critical of the blamage effect in an East Asian context. Text, as such, could

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be vulnerable to homo lector, to the degree that the reading practice is carried on in a form of governmentality or representation; this powerridden reading practice disseminates stereotypical imagery and institutionalizes the cultural and political ideologies imposed upon the backs of those religious and cultural lives studied and read. Homo lector must not cut loose, acting without restraint, but the reading practice, in hermeneutical conversation with other sacred texts, entails an ethical significance against an orientalist mode of representation in spreading an effect of mimicry. It belongs to the task of comparative theology to unmask the extent to which a reified mode of deformation is socially and politically imbricated with the social location of the homo lector. Mimicry, in an orientalist representation, creates a desire for the previously colonized people to imitate the Western way of life, language, cultural custom, and religion. A logic of binary opposition is made into a hegemonic tool by categorizing the Western (for educated, civilized, reformed) and the non-West (for illiterate, barbaric, primitive, ignorant). Mimicry suppresses one’s own cultural identity and leaves the person to ambivalence, around which the mimicry is founded and constructed.25 For Homi Bhabha, mimicry is not merely negative, but also an eccentric strategy of raising the question of the authorization of colonial representations.26 Its ambivalence leads one to think critically about a fetishized colonial culture as an insurgent counter-appeal. However, Bhabha’s theory of mimicry is deeply challenged because it is not tenable nor valid in the historical example of Shanghai writers who, without fear of colonization, openly embraced Western modernity in literary and cultural production. As Chinese nationalists, they turned Western culture into the process of constructing their own quest for modernity. In fact, “modernity itself was in the service of nationalism,” entailing diverse elements unlike British India, at least Bombay.27 In postcolonial culture, the Western culture and interpretation of non-Western texts are regarded as “the best” in their influence of literature, philosophy, and religion. Against this Neo-colonial penetration and governmentality, one cannot undermine cultural movement for national identity, and scholars’ endeavor to critically evaluate the Western form of modernity and engender a notion of multiple modernities toward a postcolonial endeavor of transcending the modernist hegemonic discourse. East Asia can be understood as a collection of separate societies with uniqueness and difference, in which a double negotiation between social and cultural modernity is undertaken in interaction with the West.28

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In the postcolonial context in China, Taiwan, and South Korea, the crucial thing is a creative adaption to Western modernity and critical, constructive interpretation of their own classic texts facing off against Western representation. This reading strategy, in the critical and emancipatory sense, becomes a watershed to resistance and mimetic rupture, deeply calling into question a psychological notion of mimicry as camouflage. A critical notion of mimetic rupture as a new mode of resistance against governmentality is founded upon an anamnestic movement in solidarity with the innocent victim during the colonial era, especially with comfort women in the context of the alternative form of modernity in China and South Korea today. It depreciates the psychological logic of mimicry as controlled under governmentality since it is no longer valid as an effective method of subversion in challenging the political issue in the aftermath of colonialism. An India-based psychological experience of mimicry as camouflage must not be a hindrance in problematizing a specific way of governmentality and elaborating the mimetic rupture as resistance on the part of innocent victims. Postcolonial resistance of memory at the moment of danger and conformism is taken against the way the state governs by sparking up hope in the past of East Asia. Archeological analysis of the damaged life in the past and culture undertakes an attempt, with cautious detachment, to keep the past from an exacerbated and perpetuated conformism to governmentality since conformism overwrites tradition. In conformity’s overwriting of the past, an image of the past is distorted and even falsified on the threshold to hegemonic power in burying the damaged life of those victims. Critical to the past, a text reading implies a break in conformity to tradition and calls into question the authority and documents in the history of interpretation in todays’ situation. Reading and listening to the text and history takes issue with the present in forgetfulness of the colonized life, refreshing the past from the kernel. Transmitted documents of civilization were not entirely exempt from writing practice in governmentality on the backs of the vanished and colonized. The angel of history in Klee’s “Angelius Novus” turns its face toward the past, expanding ruins of the past, rather than forgetting the past and dialectically moving forward into progress and future. The angel awakens the dead, restoring what has been smashed and destroyed.29 A critical archeologist in the comparative study of religion seeks to unfold the spark of passion of the return to the past, while away from a taken-for-granted attitude to the present, psychology of mimicry, and

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its governmentality. A critical archeologist in the context of comparative study undergirds resistance to the present under the homogenous course of history, with respect to colonialist discourse, psychological mimicry, and its governmentality. Homo socius and ethicus find their sharpened import in solidarity with and parrhesia for the downtrodden in the universal history of progress tainted with violence, subjugation, and exclusion. This is foundational for shaping the immanent critique espoused with archeological politics of counter-textuality against mimicry, with respect to the colonized life of the innocent victims. It turns way from a mimetic attempt at trivializing the crime of the past as banality of sin and undergirds the anamnesis rationality of subversion in an archeological analysis of the past in attentively listening to those innocently victimized under the trace of Infinity. Accordingly, discourse is not merely a written or enunciated form of statement, but is grounded in the activity of speech. Discourse analysis does not merely reduce meaning and knowledge to power relations, but reveals the hidden and distorted meaning and relationship of gender, class, and race, from which language is never free or neutral. Language is not ‘the house of being,’ but entails a weapon to domination or vulnerability to the house of being as an “iron cage” in subjugation of the other. The phenomenology of language is the speaking of truth or rectification of language in an ethical sense. Given this, I take up Foucault’s serious activity of parrhesia in connection with Barth and Bonhoeffer, both of whom remain a theological inspiration for critical comparative theology. This kind of discourse ethic speaks to the problem of present history, performing immanent critique in problematizing the non-identical place and the subjugated, in contrast to the hegemonic regime of discourse and power relations. An “archeological hermeneutics” in a phenomenological, anamnestic frame of reference encompasses a double distance or suspension from conformity to traditional history, as well as from the psychology of mimicry in the present, dissecting the domain of social discourse embedded within power relations. Finally, it promotes solidarity of parrhesia with the colonized alterity.

Reciprocal Illumination

and Prayerful

Exchange

Comparative theology in a commentarial undertaking endeavors to discern the presence of God and grace in other sacred texts through which God may speak. A richer, reflective reality of the gospel meaning and horizon of faith is deepened through prayerful exchange. Previously in Chap. 10,

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we have sought to critically analyze the Buddhist idea of bodhicitta and wisdom of emptiness in the Heart Sutra for elective affinity of its ideas with material interests, both in Japanese imperial Buddhism as well as in the socially engaged Buddhist vision of interdependence. For a historical development of Buddhist ideas, it is helpful to take a brief snapshot of its development in Hua-yen. Buddhist compassion finds concretization in the context of the Hua-yen notion of Indra’s net which is socially and culturally applied to enhance economic integrity and a practical way of life. Compassion in the context of Buddhist economic rationality is universally applied to all sick beings in the world. Wisdom of Dependent Origination in Interconnection For the sense of identity grounded in inter-being or interrelationship, Thich Nhat Hanh introduces a story of a young Vietnamese girl, the daughter of woodcutters, whose father is killed in battle when she was seven. To comfort her sadness, she takes her bamboo flute into the forest and plays. One day when she was playing, a plane drops chemical defoliants, which leaves her blinded. Now totally blind, she plays her flute for the birds to come. She meets a golden bird that sings to her for nine days. As time goes by, she becomes more and more a part of the world of the forest. Little by little, she forgets that she is a young girl. Rather, she becomes a tiny creature living in the forest. The flute sounds resonate with the cries of the other creatures. Tree, moss, grass, and roots dance as she becomes one with the forest. Her pain is finally resolved. The sense of inter-being or interconnection with all beings helps her gain a new sense and horizon of identity and empathy.30 The Buddhist principle of inter-being underlies Bodhicitta, playing the source of immanent critique and solidarity for Buddhist practitioners to involve in social economic justice and present a social vision. The meaning of civilization is seen as enhancing the well-being of all creatures based on the wisdom of inter-being. The Buddhist middle way in the Chinese tradition has especially developed more cosmically, and more compassionately with a view to all living beings in dukkha (suffering). All sentient beings without exception enter into a universal relationship with Buddhahood, so that they become Buddha (nirvana or emancipation). The reality of identity and interdependence in Hua-yen Buddhism, as expressed in the Avatamsaka (Hua-yen) Sutra, is reflected by the image of the Jewel Net of Indra, expounded by Fa-tsang (643–712).

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This image provides a pivotal foundation for socially engaged Buddhism by illustrating the holistic dimension of Indra’s net for complementarity between Sunyata and Fullness (wondrous being). In Indra’s net, each jewel exists only as a reflection of all the others, thus having no self-nature. In the infinite world of Indra, a jewel is placed at each knot so that each jewel is generated and sustained through the web of interdependence. Francis Cook, a noted Buddhist scholar, states this principle in his book Hua-yen Buddhism: “… it guides the aspirant in actual relationships, serving as a kind of template by means of which the individual may gauge the extent to which his actions conform to the reality of identity and interdependence.”31 In Chap. 8 of the Bodhicaryavatara, the principle of neutralization is characterized as a culminating point in the meditative practice of exchanging the self for others: “Whoever wishes to quickly rescue himself and others should practice the most secret path: the exchange of his own self with others” (BCA, VIII-120).32 A meditative practice for developing bodhicitta visualizes in front a friend or enemy through neutral imagination in the first mediation (called the six causes and one effect). This is intended to generate a feeling of equanimity and equality toward all. The technique of neutrality for generating the altruistic aspiration serves the spiritual practice of exchanging self with others for the benefit of all sentient beings.33 This meditative art of the exchange of self with others through the neutralization for equanimity may be seen in reference to dependent origination, as expounded in the Heart Sutra. “… even the five aggregates are empty of intrinsic existence. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; emptiness is not other than form, form too is not other than emptiness.”34 Emptiness does not refer to non-existence, but it is the emptiness of intrinsic existence. The world of form is a manifestation of emptiness, which is not identified with the ancient Indian concept of Brahman, an underlying absolute reality. Emptiness has little to do with a core ultimate reality lying at the heart of the universe, from which the diversity of phenomena or the illusory world of multiplicity emerges.35 The practice of exchanging selves can be seen in identity and empathy in the sense of dependent origination. Buddhist compassion anchored in the Middle Way embraces all without discrimination in a qualified non-dual relationship, which is closer to a modern concept of restorative justice. A theological insight into God’s reconciling embrace of the world can be seen in the fashion of a Buddhist hermeneutic of experience beyond a

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Buddhist system of doctrine. As Thich Nhat Hanh states, “as reality can only be lived and experienced, Buddhist doctrine would never have as an aim the description of reality; the doctrine serves only as a method, as a guide, to the practitioner in his experience of this reality.”36 For the Buddhist economic vision from the web of relations, Sulak Sivaraksa proposes the Buddhist symbol of Indra’s Net. In this web of interdependence, we can stay close to nature as our life companion. In the cosmic envisioning of a community, individuals and communities determine their own direction asking for structural support and symbiosis. It de-emphasizes the structural hierarchies of institutions, and decentralizes power structures.37 Christian Symbol and Theologia Crucis Buddhist wisdom of compassion and embracing can be practically enhanced in the public realm, becoming mutual illumination in encounter with the Christian symbol of theologia crucis and reconciliation. Buddhist qualified non-dual, analogical language does not necessarily obscure nor contradict a Christian expression of God’s wisdom in God’s foolishness, which “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, not the human heart conceived” (1 Cor 2:9). “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases… But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities… by his bruise we are healed….He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter.” (Isa 53.4–7) A theologia crucis, grounded in a slaughtered lamb, expresses God’s compassion and forgiveness in the act of embracing all, while denouncing the crucifix of crusade, a symbol of racial discrimination or exclusivism, and genocide. If the theologia crucis is not grounded in the subject matter of the gospel, its symbol and sacrificial language can be severely distorted in the colonial context or crusade, Colonial Christian religion, Holocaust, and Christian fanaticism in clash with people of other faiths. In contrast to this direction, the subject matter of theologia crucis is rooted in Jesus’ gospel about the kingdom of God (Luke 4: 18–19). God as the Immanuel can be radicalized in Jesus’ identification with the lowest of the low in suffering and his encouragement that whatever has been done to the those in suffering and victim has been done to him (Matt 25:40). In unfolding critical comparative theology, I am concerned with scrutinizing Bonhoeffer’s insight into the religious Other, as has been

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sidestepped in favor of his non-religious interpretation. Bonhoeffer in a letter written in February 1928 showed his interest in Gandhi and the world of the Buddha. Gandhi’s importance lies in his interest in Christianity’s origins in the East. Bonhoeffer took interest in Gandhi’s pacifistic method of nonviolent struggle. In another letter (May 22, 1934), Bonhoeffer argued that more Christianity exists in the world of the “heathens” than in the whole state church of Germany.38 Bonhoeffer’s non-religious inquiry for non-identical thinking must not be comprehended as a critique of other religions. Rather, it paradoxically paves a way toward interreligious exchange, which is grounded in the particular, universal horizon of the gospel and reconciliation. As Bonhoeffer poetically writes during the period of National Socialism: God goes to every man when sore bestead, Feels body and spirit with his bread; For Christians, pagans alike he hangs dead, And both alike forgiving39

A theology of the cross a la Bonhoeffer cannot be adequately comprehended without following Christ’s humility, such that a kenosis hymn reads: Jesus Christ, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross” (Phil 2: 6–8). Jesus’ self-emptying in the context of Colossians is explicated in a way of conceptualizing of God’s reconciliation with the world; “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his Cross” (Col. 1: 19–20). At least, a biblical sacrificial language specifically refers to God’s way of establishing reconciliation and peace, challenging religious misuse of justifying the sacrifice, scapegoating, and violence in the name of the crucifix. The self-emptying Jesus, the reconciler, is the image of the invisible God in whom all things in heaven and on earth were created, things whether visible and invisible. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Col 1: 15–17).

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Bonhoeffer’s poetic metaphor combines the biblical ideas of forgiveness, compassion, and reconciliation within the Christian symbol of God’s suffering and solidarity. The horizon of theologia crucis reinforces a subjective side of human faith to be more qualified in the universal dimension of the gospel through God’s reconciliation in forgiving both Christians and non-Christians. In a prophetic relief, Christ’s reconciliation summons the church to be faithful to and responsible for God’s compassion for and solidarity with those who suffer. The confession of the church is taken concerning the silence about “the spoliation and exploitation of the poor,” while justifying “the enrichment and corruption of the strong.”40 Bonhoeffer insists: “In the body of Jesus Christ God is united with humanity, the whole of humanity is accepted by God and the world is reconciled with God … There is no part of the world, be it never so forlorn and never so godless, which is not accepted by God and reconciled with God in Jesus Christ.”41 A radical horizon of the gospel in the context of reconciliation sharpens theologia crucis to entail a politics of recognition of the other in protest against bourgeois self-satisfaction, or “a convenient reversal of the Gospel.”42 This perspective adopts a social critical hermeneutic from below, that is in learning “from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled—in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.”43 Bonhoeffer provokes any attempt to draw lines between “us” and “them” in light of God’s reconciliation. Emphasizing Jesus and the church as existing for others, he argues that “the church is the church only when it exists for others.”44 When “Jesus’ existence for the other” is left behind, the church remains on the defensive, not taking risks for others.45 A notion of alterity, the dignity of the Other, may break into Bonhoeffer’s theological discourse about God’s reconciliation, under whose trace the Other as the innocent victim stands. The others under the divine trace are “the weakest and most defenseless brothers and [sisters] of Jesus Christ.”46 God’s reconciliation in theologia crucis implies divine solidarity with the innocent victim; this can also be built on an eschatological theology of the crucified Christ to kindle the sparks of hope and emancipation in our mist. Theologia crucis, in utopian longing for the wholly Other (Horkheimer), is pursued in a way that “the murderer should not triumph over the innocent victim.”47 God’s forgiveness and reconciliation embrace the perpetrator and the victim in the sense of restorative justice,

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while God the wholly Other changes a society in a completely new manner. The utopian longing must not be evaporated into religious inwardness and private affairs since it underlines a spirit of resistance inherent in the eschatological theology of the cross. It elaborates a critical theory of Jesus as the slain Lamb in an apocalyptic framework (the eschatological form of coming). The biblical witness to presentative eschatology retains its sharp contour from the messianic-apocalyptic eschatology, in which Jesus as the slain Lamb is the partisan in representing all innocent victims.48 The biblical symbol of theologia crucis and reconciliation may promote many metaphors and discourses already existing in a religious lexicon. These are irreducible to one form of thought or just one master metaphor or discourse. The symbol bestowing upon meaning for conceptual thinking enhances a range of metaphors and discourses about freedom, responsibility, compassion, and moral reasoning, therefore, welcoming the Buddhist contribution and insisting upon other religious ethical contributions to the reconciled world. Having said this, God’s mission in theologia crucis sharpens missional theology to heed and learn from those who receive the gospel in their own tradition, cultural system, and language. Polysemy of God’s mission cuts through an apologetic manner and the attempt at imposition of the Westernized gospel upon the recipient. A postcolonial notion of God’s mission and its critical reading strategy proceed from within the religious discourse rather than presupposing the privileged locus outside, inserted into the religious world. The critical comparative theology sought after in this direction is not so much concerned with theologizing excessively postcolonial terminology and discourse into a theological frame, but reversely, theological epistemology and biblical hermeneutics shape postcolonial reorientation by methodologically selecting postcolonial epistemology and discourse, and testing the waters as to whether such a postcolonial argument and rationale would be valid in a comparative and sociological study of the reality of multiple modernities, national movements, and intellectual scholarship of religions and society. Theologia Crucis and Parrhesia The Christian symbol of God’s solidarity in theologia crucis encourages our reading practice of the religious texts for archeological analysis of the

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extent to which metadiscourse silences other discourses as a deviation or trace in the textual world. This inquiry helps avoid the notion of binary opposition between theology from above and theology from below because all theological construal is contextual in deep engagement with the living word of God, text, belief system, faith community, and society. Theology from above or below needs to take into account theology from the alterity in which a critical comparative theology is to be constructed in finding its import. Accordingly, I am interested in developing a critical discourse of parrhesia in Bonhoeffer’s thought for comparative theology with ethical reorientation. The word of the cross can be assumed as a discursive form of parrhesia, “as much alive as life itself.”49 In “what is meant by telling the truth?”50 Bonhoeffer relates parrhesia to a context-particular horizon of the gospel because it is something different at each particular time and situation. Parrhesia as trustful speech of God in solidarity with the Other is therefore set against a metaphysical notion of God as deus ex machina. “Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute.”(Proverbs 31: 8).51 Bonhoeffer’s notion of resistant parrhesia is undertaken against cultivation and adoration of biological and nationalistic life in the context of Nazism, which utilized religious categories from biblical texts and made Hitler into a messianic figure in order to cajole and persuade his audience. A biblical language and discourse was politically manipulated and political life was sacralized in the figure of Hitler. The exposed flesh of the crucified Christ allows us to see God’s exposure in the face of Christ and his suffering people. “God’s truth has become flesh in the world and is alive in the real… The concept of living truth is dangerous.”52 In the new deliberation of theologia crucis conceptualized in parrhesia, critical comparative theology challenges the symbol of theologia crucis that is blurred and tainted with colonial images of assimilation, exclusivism, crusade, tabula rasa, and hegemony during the time of colonialism. A discourse of parrhesia demonstrates a spirit of resistance and solidarity, problematizing the extent to which the institutionalized authority and power are connected with the religious knowledge system in exclusion, dominion, and violence of the Other. A notion of telling the truth, according to Bonhoeffer, entails the immanent critique against God as a general principle or metaphysical idol as distorted in political, religious alliance because the living God has entered into the world through Jesus Christ in embracing the Other in the grace of reconciliation.

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Phenomenological inquiry of Buddhist compassion grounded in the Middle Way and theologia crucis in the biblical tradition of emptiness (kenosis), forgiveness, and reconciliation brings the two domains to elective affinity, in which a critical analysis of these conceptions is socially driven for an immanent critique of greed, dominion, and violence, and to undergird anamnestic solidarity with those subjugated, sick, and destitute, massa perditionis in the world of interrelationship. Lotus (symbol of Buddhism) is “not one” with the Rose (a symbol of theologia crucis), but “not two,” such that compassion and theologia crucis are neither too little, nor too much for each tradition, despite doctrinal obstacles and dissimilarity between Buddhism and Christianity. Accordingly, Bodhisattva vow and its meaning, as socially and culturally constructed in the Buddhist context, may find an illumination for a Christian comparatist to engage Christian symbol of the cross with the Buddhist prayer: Enthused by wisdom and compassion, Today in the Buddha’s presence I generate the mind for full awakening For the benefit of all sentient beings. As long as space remains, As long as sentient beings remain, Until then, may I too remain And dispel the miseries of the world.53



Notes



1. Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order. 32. 2. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 12, 14. 3. Clooney, Theology after Vedanta, 12. 4. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 89. 5. Demarest, General Revelation, 255. 6. McCarthy, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development, 168, 172, 180. 7. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).

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8. McCarthy, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development, 153. 9.  Walter Benjamin, Walter, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt and trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1968), 246–247. 10. Benjamin, “Capitalism as Religion,” in Walter Benjamin Selected Writings 1, 1913–1926, eds. M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 288–289. 11. Clooney, Theology after Vedanta, 194. 12. Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001). 13. Said, “Orientalism ,” in The Edward Said Reader, eds. Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), 69. 14. Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and “The Mystic East” (London: Routledge, 1999), 95. 15. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 31. 16. Foucault, “Questions of Method,” in The Essential Foucault, 251. 17. Foucault, “Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations: An Interview with Michel Foucault,” in ibid., 23–24. 18. Eisenstadt, Power, Trust, and Meaning, 389. 19. Foucault, The Order of Things, 329–30. 20. Ibid., 342. 21. Foucault, “What is Critique?” in The Essential Foucault, 265. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid., 266. 24. Foucault, “The Confession of the Flesh,” in Power/Knowledge, 196. 25. Homi K. Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” in The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 86. 26. Ibid., 90. 27. Leo Ou-fan Lee, “Shanghai Modern: Reflections on Urban Culture in China in the 1930s,” in Alternative Modernities, ed. Gaonkar, 116, 118. 28. Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia, ed. Jenny Kwok Wah Lau (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 9. 29. Benjamin, Illuminations, 12–3. 30. Thich Nhat Hanh, The Moon Bamboo, trans. Vo-Dinh Mai and Mobi Ho (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1989), 7–8. 31. Francis Cook, Hua-yen Buddhism (Pittsburgh: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), 109. 32. Cited in Brassard, The Concept of Bodhicitta, 60. 33. William, Mahayana Buddhism, 201–202. 34. The Dalai Lama, Essence of the Heart Sutra, 114.



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35. Ibid., 117. 36. Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Keys, trans. Albert and Jean Low (Garden City: Anchor, 1974), 47. 37. Sulak Sivaraksa, The Wisdom of Suitability, 38. 38. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theologe, Christ, Zeitgenosse (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1967), 138, 184, 379. 39. Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, 349. (Hereafter LPP). 40. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 115. (Hereafter E). 41. E 202–3. 42. E 64. 43. LPP 17. 44. LPP 382. 45. LPP 381. 46. E 114. 47. Ibid., 223. See further Max Horkheimer, Max, Critical Theory: Selected Essays, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell and others (New York: The Seabury Press, 1972), 274–5. 48. Marquardt, Was dürfen wir hoffen, wenn wir hoffen dürften? Eine Eschatologie I (Gütersloh: Kaiser, Güterloher, 1993), 387. 49. E 360. 50. E 358. Bonhoeffer’s essay “What Is Meant by Telling the Truth?” is now part of vol. 16 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Works (2006) because it was written when Bonhoeffer was already in prison (during the interrogations in 1943). Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Conspiracy and Imprisonment 1940–1945, ed. Mark S. Brocker and trans. Lisa E. Dahill (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 601–8. 51.  Bonhoeffer’s letter to Erwin Sutz (September 11, 1934), in Dietrich Bonhoeffer London, 1933–1935, ed. Keith Clements and trans. Isabel Best, DBW 13 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 217. 52. E 361. 53. The Dalai Lama, Practicing Wisdom, 166.

Glossary

Amida Buddha  According to the Larger Sūtra of Immeasurable Life, Amida is assumed as a monk named Dharmakāra in the very ancient times of India. After Enlightenment, he made the 48 vows, in which those invoking his name, even 10 times before death, were guaranteed to be reborn in his Pure Land (Sukhavati), as situated in the utmost far west. The veneration of Amida Buddha is widespread and becomes most popular in Central Asia, China, Japan, and South Korea. Aletheia    It is a Greek word translated as “disclosure” or “truth.” Truth as disclosure was used in Ancient Greek philosophy and is revived by Martin Heidegger in his Being and Time. Analogia entis   In the teaching of the analogy of being, the created reality is defined in its similarity with, yet in greater difference from God, who is the ground of the analogy of being. This refers to human natural knowledge of God through human reason. The analogia entis becomes central in shaping the principle of Catholic theology. Analogia fidei   Karl Barth rejects the notion of analogia entis and instead proposes analogia fidei (analogy of faith). The relation between God and human being can be known only in faith bound to the Word of God and the divine revelation in Jesus Christ. This means that the new relation between God and the human being is based on faith in the grace of Jesus Christ. Analogia relationis    In the teaching of the analogy of relationship, Barth conceptualizes a horizon of faith in the Trinitarian framework. The © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 P. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5

305

306  Glossary

internal relation between the Father and the Son is analogous to the external relation between God’s revelation in Christ and the human being. This teaching is expanded in his later teaching of lights and words in the world (his secular parables or Lichten lehre ). Thus, God (the source of analogy) may speak to the church through religious, cultural, or secular political realms (predicates of and in service of the Word of God) as the semantic field of divine speech-act for the analogy of relationship. Blamage effect   This refers to the negative effect of ideas, when they are distorted by material interests and power relations in history and society.When religious ideas are falsified to serve the powerful, they lose their own prophetic stance, becoming an ideology. The immanent critique takes issue with the phenomenon of the blamage effect in terms of the analysis of the interplay between religious ideas, material interests, and power relations by questioning the extent to which religious ideas would be deviated from their original source and disgraced in the service of the interest of the privileged. Condign merit   Once a morally good act is performed in a state of grace, namely in the life of the believer, it satisfies God’s demand. It is worthy of acceptance of divine reward on the basis of such merit. For instance, if the believer does a perfect form of repentance out of faith and love of God, with the assistance of divine grace, it removes guilt and eternal punishment due to mortal sin. Congruous merit    Once the believer performs a morally good act outside a state of grace, it is not regarded to be meritorious in the strict sense of the term. But it is considered an appropriate, or congruous ground for receiving the infusion of justifying grace. For instance, if one takes the imperfect form of repentance (attrition) out of fear of divine punishment prior to the sacramental grace, it suffices one appropriately to receive the sacramental grace of justification. Dei loquentis persona   God speaks personally in the gospel in Scripture and through preaching. Revelation is God’s speaking of divine self in Christ (John Calvin). Karl Barth expands this idea, along with viva vox Evangelii (Luther) by conceptualizing the notion of the divine speech-act through the church and the world. Habitus   The habit of grace refers to a created form within the soul of the believer, implying a permanent state or disposition. Through this grace of habit, the believer is changed to become more like God (deification). This grace of habit, as a created grace, is distinguished from the uncreated grace of the Holy Spirit.

Glossary

  307

Honen (1133–1212)   Honen was the religious reformer and founder of the first independent branch of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. As a Tendai initiate at an early age, he grew disaffected and sought an easier approach to Buddhism during the age of decline of Dharma. After discovering the writings of the Chinese Buddhist Shan-tao, he propagated the teaching of rebirth in the Pure land of Amida through “recitation of the Buddha’s name” (nembutsu). Immanent critique   This method is developed in the circle of critical social theorists, such as Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer. It is concerned with the object of its investigation, as well as unearthing the ideological basis of that object in the historical course and social situation. It pays attention to the role of ideas in shaping and influencing society, and provides a foundation for critique within historical reality, on behalf of social change. It highlights to uncover the gaps, breaches, and even contradictions by critically vetting what something stands for in respect to what is being done in actual terms. Iron cage   The iron cage is a term coined by Max Weber (or translated by Talcott Parson). Weber analyzes the increased differentiations of politics, institutions, and legal systems in regard to the process of the disenchantment of Western capitalist society. Driven in terms of rationalization and modernization in the Western capitalist society, finally the iron cage traps the life of individuals into systems based on purpose-driven efficiency, rational calculation, and control. It runs into losing the freedom and meaning of life in a society under power and authority. The original German term is stahlhartes Gehäuse, which literally means “shell or box as hard as steel.” Onto-theo-logy    For Heidegger, the term is used to critique the whole tradition of “Western metaphysics” because it is grounded in the forgetfulness of Being. But in the theological, phenomenological context, the term is critiqued against philosophical and theological attempts to reduce God into the realm of human ontology or consciousness. Against this trend, Barth, together with Levinas, safeguards the transcendental place of God coupled with the otherness, by taking issue with indirect Carthesianism and the logic of levelling down God as the predicate of human consciousness. Paramita    The term is commonly translated as perfection or most excellent. In Mahayana Buddhism, there is the list of the six perfections: 1. Generosity 2. Virtue or morality

308  Glossary

3. 4. 5. 6.

Patience tolerance, or endurance Diligence or effort Meditative concentration or contemplation Wisdom or insight

Shinran (1173–1263)   Shinran was a pupil of Honen and the founder of what ultimately became known as the Jodoshinsu sect in Japan. As a disciple of Honen’s, Shinran caused a great stir among society by publicly getting married and eating meat. Shinran took these provocative steps to insist that Amida’s salvation is for all people. After exile, a critical turning point occurred in Shinran's religious life. He emphasized so exclusively faith/trust in the other power of Amida Buddha, that later followers would use the term Jodo Shinshu or “True [Essence of the] Pure Land Sect.” The theology of the cros  The theology of the cross (Latin: theologia crucis ) is a term coined by Martin Luther who constitutes the cross as the only source of knowledge in matters pertaining to comprehend who God is and how God saves. It is contrasted with the Catholic theology of glory ( theologia gloriae ), which places greater emphasis on human will and human reason in natural knowledge of God. Viva vox Evangelii   Martin Luther understands the gospel in terms of the living voice through proclamation. God speaks God’s living voice to us in preaching. Viva vox Evangelii relates to the Hebrew manner of dabar (self-revealing) implying that God is the Subject of speech. Wang Yangming (1472–1529)   Wang Yangming was a Chinese idealist, Neo-Confucian philosopher during the Ming dynasty. After Zhu Xi, he is commonly regarded as the most important Neo-Confucian thinker. His interpretation of Confucianism challenged the rationalist school of the orthodox philosophy of Zhu Xi. Zhu Xi (1130–1200)  Zhu Xi was the leading figure in the Song dynasty, representing the School of Principle in the rationalist Neo-Confucian teaching. He made a synthesis of all fundamental Confucian concepts that had constituted the basis of Chinese literati, bureaucracy, and government. From 1313 to 1905, Zhu Xi’s commentaries on the Four Books (the Analects, the Mencius, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean) formed the basis of civil service examinations in China.

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Index

A Acultural modernity, 6 Adorno, Th.W., 134 Advaita, 167 Advaita’s teaching, 11 Advaita text, 11 Advaita Vedanta, 285 Aletheia , 25, 35, 71, 106, 108, 111, 117, 118, 132, 136, 137, 142, 164, 264, 278 Alternative modernity, 6, 185, 219 Alternative trans-modernity, 272 Analogia attributionis , 118, 119, 132 Analogia entis , 15, 86, 115, 118, 122, 126, 135, 150–152 Analogia fidei , 86, 119, 135, 150, 151 Analogia propotionalitatis , 120 Analogia relationis , 14, 15, 38, 86–89, 91, 118–122, 138, 150, 152, 170 Analogical comparative theology, 2, 7, 8

Analogy of proportionality, 88 Anamnestic reasoning, 284 Anamnestic solidarity, 35 Anhypostasis , 92, 93 Apokatasis panton , 59 Aquinas, Thomas, 11, 48, 61, 119, 156, 167, 261–263, 274, 280 Archeological hermeneutics, 293 Archeology, 34 Assumptio carnis , 99, 145 Assumptio humanum , 99 Aufhebung , 73, 144 Augustine, 189 Axial age, 3, 17 Axial civilizations, 5 B Bellah, Robert N., 3, 17, 38, 202, 213, 214, 227, 272–274 Benjamin, Walter, 277, 283, 284, 286, 301, 302 Bhagavad Gita, 7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 P. Chung, Comparative Theology Among Multiple Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58196-5

325

326  Index Blamage effect, 16, 30, 33, 35, 37, 40, 147, 149, 173, 208, 230, 247, 280, 281, 286, 290 Bodhicitta, 54, 161, 212, 226, 229, 235–239, 241–243, 245, 246, 294, 295, 302 Bodhicitta idea, 16 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 16, 62, 63, 86, 101, 242, 293, 297, 298, 300, 303 Brahman salvation, 11 Buber, Martin, 128, 133, 168 C Calvin, John, 29, 71, 75, 123, 141, 161 Chalcedonian ontology, 99 Charismatic leadership, 256 Christian Cartesianism, 140 Christian indirect Carthesianism, 142 Circulus veritatis Dei , 141, 142 Civilizing mission, 2 Classical theory of modernity, 4, 5 Clooney, Francis X., 2, 3, 9, 10, 12, 15, 17–19, 38, 159, 166, 167, 175, 178, 192, 193, 199, 229–234, 249, 285, 301, 302 Cobb, John, 162, 174 Collectio , 10–12, 58, 59, 150, 166, 192–194, 231, 242, 285 Collective effervescence, 24, 258 Collective representations, 24 Commentarial comparative theology, 2, 9, 10, 192 Communicatio gratiae , 93 Communicatio gratiorum , 98 Communicatio idiomatum , 93, 98 Communicatio naturum , 98 Communicatio operationum , 93, 98, 121 Communicative rationality, 208

Concursus , 152 Condign merit, 48, 49 Confucian humanism, 271 Congruous merit, 49 Critical comparative theology, 12, 15, 21, 177, 224, 293 D Dabar , 30, 108 Dei loquentis persona , 71, 108 Dependent origination, 16, 43, 54, 212, 229, 294 Deus absconditus , 92, 137, 138 Deus dixit , 83 Deus ex machina , 300 Deus revelatus , 137, 138 Dietrich Bonhoeffer , 303 Différance , 116 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 186 Disenchantment of the world, 6, 22, 202, 253 Divine concursus , 152 Durkheim, Emile, 7, 21, 23, 24, 38, 40, 258, 274 E Edward Said’s Orientalism , 283, 302 Eisenstadt, Shmuel N., 5, 17, 18, 23 Elective affinity, 15, 16, 22, 24, 35, 73, 202, 204, 205, 208, 216, 230, 233, 290, 294 Enhypostasis , 92, 93 Epoche , 26, 33, 34, 191, 232, 233 Esse sequitur operari , 86, 151 Ethics of rectification, 16, 254, 259 Ethicus , 13, 234, 248, 262, 285, 293 Extra calvinisticum , 92 Extra muros ecclesiae , 73, 147, 163

Index

F Feuerbach, Ludwig, 15, 38, 135, 141, 143, 144, 146, 154, 155, 168 Foucault, Michel, 13, 21, 34, 40, 81, 225, 230, 248, 289, 290, 302 Foucault’s, 289 Foucault’s archeology, 286 G Gadamer, Hans G., 15, 35, 36, 39, 40, 71, 118, 132, 177, 182, 193, 198, 249, 265 Geertz, Clifford, 3, 7, 13, 17, 21, 24, 28, 29, 32, 39, 75, 80, 232, 301 Genku Honen, 43–45, 47, 51, 60, 160 Genus majestaticum , 93 Genus tapeinoticum , 93 Gollwitzer, Helmut, 14, 40, 86, 101, 198 Governmentality, 16, 290–293 H Habermas, Jürgen, 198, 200, 208, 224, 225, 227 Hanh, Thich Nhat, 213, 226, 246, 294, 296, 302 Heidegger, Martin, 14, 25, 38, 39, 105, 106, 109–113, 117–119, 128, 130, 132 Hick, John, 146, 155 Hidden Christ, 171 Homo ethicus , 13, 16, 114, 234, 282 Homo lector , 9, 10, 13, 16, 114, 193, 230, 231, 233, 234, 248, 285, 291 Homo socius , 13, 37, 234, 248, 262, 285, 293 Horkheimer, Max, 134, 224, 298, 303

  327

Hunsinger, 101–103, 155, 176 Husserl, Edmund, 25, 26, 28, 33, 34, 39, 105, 106, 223, 267, 275 I Illeity, 13, 114, 115, 124, 125, 128, 129 Immanent critique, 12, 13, 15, 22, 24, 30, 32–35, 37, 40, 59, 201, 215–217, 217, 219, 223, 224, 230, 233, 278, 281, 282, 290, 293, 294, 300 Inculturation, 2 Indirect Carthecianism, 115 Indra’s net, 295, 296 In ipsa fide Christus adest , 141 Instrumental rationality, 203 Instrumental reason, 202 Iron cage, 6, 22, 202, 206, 208, 221, 224, 278 J Jewel Net of Indra, 294 Jodoshinsu Buddhism, 159 Jüngel, Eberhard, 14, 86–88, 101, 102, 119, 121, 132, 150, 156, 172, 175, 176 K Klappert, Bertold, 169, 175 Knitter, Paul F., 15, 38, 159, 165, 166, 175, 194, 200, 282 L Larva Dei , 29, 59 Lichten lehre , 71, 159, 165, 169, 170, 172

328  Index Lindbeck, George, 149, 156, 167, 175 Li yifen shu, 264 Logos asarkos , 91, 92 Logos ensarkos , 92 Logos incarnandus , 92 Logos incarnatus , 92 Logos spermatikos , 152 Luther, Martin, 13–15, 29, 37, 43, 47–53, 57–63, 123, 141, 149, 161, 189, 202, 204, 205, 215–219, 227, 242, 277, 279 M Marquardt, F.W., 43, 131, 227, 303 Massa perditionis , 77, 100, 301 Mencius, 16, 254, 255, 257, 259– 265, 274, 280 Method of correlation, the, 181 Mimicry, 16, 290–293, 302 Ministerium verbi divini, 163 Missio Dei , 66, 79 Moltmann, Jürgen, 86, 101, 103 Mysterium tremendum et fascinans , 25, 116

Opeari sequitur esse , 151 Orientalism, 2, 107, 286, 302 Otto, Rudolf, 7, 25, 39, 116, 132 P Pangritz, Andreas, 133, 156 Pannenberg, 103 Paramitas, 53 Parrhesia , 65, 78, 141, 142, 173, 290, 293, 299, 300 Perichoresis , 84, 89–91, 96, 120 Phenomenology of intertextuality, 16, 159 Postcolonial Archeology, 286 Praedestinatio dialectica , 123 Praedestinatio gemina , 123 Prophetic mission, 1, 3 Pure Land Buddhism, 13, 15, 37, 38, 44, 56, 159, 219 Purpose rationality, 202, 203, 205, 210, 220, 278

N Nagarjuna, 54, 202, 210, 212, 213, 226, 234, 235, 239, 240, 243, 245, 246, 250 Nembutsu , 45–47, 52, 56, 57 Noema–noesis, 267 Noema–noesis paradigm, 27, 33 Noesis–noema structure, 223 Noetic–noematic relation, 26

R Rahner, Karl, 169, 170, 175 Ratio veritas , 136 Ratio veritatis , 138 Real Dialektik , 136 Rectification, 260, 262, 282 Rectification of names, 261 Religious a priori, 185, 190 Rendtorff, Trutz, 127, 134, 172, 196, 198 Ricoeur, Paul, 13, 21, 27, 39, 40, 74, 80

O Ontological hermeneutics, 13 Onto-theo-logy, 112, 113, 115, 116, 122, 151, 289

S Salvation aristocracy, 23 Santideva, 212, 235–242, 246, 248, 249

Index

Satanic mill, 206 Schellong, Dieter, 134, 176 Schleiermacher, 7, 134, 144, 185 Schutz, Alfred, 222, 223 Shinran, 13, 37, 43–47, 51–60, 159–162 Simul justus et peccator , 49, 52, 57 Solidarity effect, 23, 35 St Augustine of Hippo, 103 Sunyata, 54, 245, 246, 295 T Tabula rasa , 2 Tat tvamasi , 146, 155 Taylor, Charles, 5, 6, 18, 176 Theatrum gloriae Dei , 29, 75, 122, 147, 148 Theologia archetypos , 163 Theologia crucis , 16, 120, 242, 296, 298–300 Theologia ektypos , 163 Theologia gloriae , 120 Theologia naturalis , 72, 152 Theologia naturalis vulgaris , 152 Theologia revelatus , 72 Theological phenomenology, 13, 29, 71, 164 Theonomy, 31 Tillich, Paul, 7, 13, 21, 31–33, 37, 40, 41 Tracy, David, 2, 7–9, 12, 17, 18, 166, 194, 198, 200, 269, 275, 278, 281, 301

  329

Trans-modernity, 6, 12, 14, 173, 190, 217, 224, 230, 290 V Value freedom, 203 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, 77, 81 Veritas revelata , 164 Via moderna , 49 Viva vox Evangelii , 63, 123, 149 Vox Dei , 16, 254, 261, 262, 265–267, 269, 285 Vox Populi , 16, 254, 261, 262, 265–267, 269, 285 Vox Dei as vox Populi , 281 W Wang Yangming, 16, 253, 254, 256, 263, 265, 268, 275 Western modernity, 4, 173, 221 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 28 World Christianity, 2, 14, 67, 75, 76 Z Zhang Zai, 264 Zhu Xi, 16, 253, 254, 256, 263–265, 268 Zhu Zi, 264