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Finding All Things in God: Pansacramentalism and Doing Theology Interreligiously
Hans Gustafson proposes pansacramentalism as holding potential for finding the divine in all things and all things in the divine, which carries significant inherent interreligious implications – especially for the doing of theology. Presupposing the challenge of doing theology divorced from spirituality (lived religious experience), he presents pansacramentalism as a bridge between the two. In so doing, Gustafson offers a history of spirituality and sketches the foundations of a classical approach to sacramentality (through Aquinas) and a contemporary approach to the same (through Rahner and Chauvet).
By presenting three fascinating case studies, this books offers particular instances of sacramentality in lived religious experience (i.e., sacramental spirituality). These case studies draw on Thomas Merton and place, Nicholas Black Elk and multiple religious identity, and Fyodor Dostoevsky and Wendell Berry and literature.
The book culminates by a) constructing a philosophy of sacramental mediation and criteriology of sacrament, b) engaging panentheism and the suffering of God and world, and c) proposing “panentheistic pansacramentalism” as a new model for understanding the divine-world relationship set in the context of a pansacramental theology of religious pluralism.
Finally, a method for doing theology interreligiously is offered based on the overall content of the book and placed within the context of the interdisciplinary field of interreligious studies.
By presenting three fascinating case studies, this books offers particular instances of sacramentality in lived religious experience (i.e., sacramental spirituality). These case studies draw on Thomas Merton and place, Nicholas Black Elk and multiple religious identity, and Fyodor Dostoevsky and Wendell Berry and literature.
The book culminates by a) constructing a philosophy of sacramental mediation and criteriology of sacrament, b) engaging panentheism and the suffering of God and world, and c) proposing “panentheistic pansacramentalism” as a new model for understanding the divine-world relationship set in the context of a pansacramental theology of religious pluralism.
Finally, a method for doing theology interreligiously is offered based on the overall content of the book and placed within the context of the interdisciplinary field of interreligious studies.
339 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2016
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January 20, 2024
Towards the end of my 2017 essay 'The Sacrament of Breathing', just before the poetic benediction or epilogue, I said, "If there can be a sacrament of breathing, then there can also be a sacrament of eating, a sacrament of sleeping, a sacrament of resting, a sacrament of swimming, a sacrament of playing, a sacrament of working; a sacrament of being…"
I had become fascinated by the idea of sacramentality. I had probably absorbed the possibility of its wider application via what I was reading, but the concept appeared to me as utterly fresh and revelatory.
I still really like that essay of six years ago, and went on to play further with the idea in my 2022 essay 'Water Stories (or The Sacrament of Swimming, and of Water)' and as an important theopoetic thread in my five Safe Little World books/projects to date - most explicitly in my 2023 book, 'Rain Walk'. It has a lot of spark, I've found, for thinking about creative acts and in the doing of those acts themselves.
Then, about a month ago, I was watching Homebrewed Christianity's course, 'The Cosmic Christ: Advent and the Coming of God' when the endlessly fascinating Philip Clayton dropped the term 'pansacramentalism', and it transpires that the idea hinted at in my essay six years ago had a theological name. I knew sacramentality was a key area of theology, but here was the concept specifically. The idea that the whole world (cosmos) has sacramental potentiality - as an immersive participatory symbolic encounter point with the divine. That idea might seem obvious, or not.
So onto Amazon I went, searching the newly revealed term 'pansacramentalism' and thereby discovering this 2016 book by Hans Gustafson (carrying, as it happens, an endorsement by Philip Clayton).
It was great - a bit cobbled together from previously published articles and papers, and loose in form - but full of wonderful ideas, some of which I'd already been playing with in my own work. Lots of intersections. Gustafson is well read and references a very wide scope of authors, but it was exciting to encounter thinkers I'd already read and loved myself, and some whose books are on my shelves waiting to be read.
I guess this 'review' is a bit egocentric, but I wanted to tell you about the personal excitement I've felt in discovering that things I thought I was thinking about more or less alone (as a creative and outside the academy), are in fact being thought of by others as well.
Good times. It's such an interesting and inspiring field - not only an intellectual or theoretical pursuit but a way of being in the world. Right in my wheelhouse. Grateful.
I had become fascinated by the idea of sacramentality. I had probably absorbed the possibility of its wider application via what I was reading, but the concept appeared to me as utterly fresh and revelatory.
I still really like that essay of six years ago, and went on to play further with the idea in my 2022 essay 'Water Stories (or The Sacrament of Swimming, and of Water)' and as an important theopoetic thread in my five Safe Little World books/projects to date - most explicitly in my 2023 book, 'Rain Walk'. It has a lot of spark, I've found, for thinking about creative acts and in the doing of those acts themselves.
Then, about a month ago, I was watching Homebrewed Christianity's course, 'The Cosmic Christ: Advent and the Coming of God' when the endlessly fascinating Philip Clayton dropped the term 'pansacramentalism', and it transpires that the idea hinted at in my essay six years ago had a theological name. I knew sacramentality was a key area of theology, but here was the concept specifically. The idea that the whole world (cosmos) has sacramental potentiality - as an immersive participatory symbolic encounter point with the divine. That idea might seem obvious, or not.
So onto Amazon I went, searching the newly revealed term 'pansacramentalism' and thereby discovering this 2016 book by Hans Gustafson (carrying, as it happens, an endorsement by Philip Clayton).
It was great - a bit cobbled together from previously published articles and papers, and loose in form - but full of wonderful ideas, some of which I'd already been playing with in my own work. Lots of intersections. Gustafson is well read and references a very wide scope of authors, but it was exciting to encounter thinkers I'd already read and loved myself, and some whose books are on my shelves waiting to be read.
I guess this 'review' is a bit egocentric, but I wanted to tell you about the personal excitement I've felt in discovering that things I thought I was thinking about more or less alone (as a creative and outside the academy), are in fact being thought of by others as well.
Good times. It's such an interesting and inspiring field - not only an intellectual or theoretical pursuit but a way of being in the world. Right in my wheelhouse. Grateful.
Displaying 1 of 1 review