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Comparative Theology: Thinking Across Traditions
Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity
Christian theologians have for some decades affirmed that they have no monopoly on encounters with God or ultimate reality and that other religions also have access to religious truth and transformation. If that is the case, the time has come for Christians not only to learn about but also from their religious neighbors. Circling the Elephant affirms that the best way to be truly open to the mystery of the infinite is to move away from defensive postures of religious isolationism and self-sufficiency and to move, in vulnerability and openness, toward the mystery of the neighbor.
Employing the ancient Indian allegory of the elephant and blind(folded) men, John J. Thatamanil argues for the integration of three often-separated theological projects: theologies of religious diversity (the work of accounting for why there are so many different understandings of the elephant), comparative theology (the venture of walking over to a different side of the elephant), and constructive theology (the endeavor of re-describing the elephant in light of the other two tasks).
Circling the Elephant also offers an analysis of why we have fallen short in the past. Interreligious learning has been obstructed by problematic ideas about "religion" and "religions," Thatamanil argues, while also pointing out the troubling resonances between reified notions of "religion" and "race." He contests these notions and offers a new theory of the religious that makes interreligious learning both possible and desirable.
Christians have much to learn from their religious neighbors, even about such central features of Christian theology as Christ and the Trinity. This book envisions religious diversity as a promise, not a problem, and proposes a new theology of religious diversity that opens the door to robust interreligious learning and Christian transformation through encountering the other.
Employing the ancient Indian allegory of the elephant and blind(folded) men, John J. Thatamanil argues for the integration of three often-separated theological projects: theologies of religious diversity (the work of accounting for why there are so many different understandings of the elephant), comparative theology (the venture of walking over to a different side of the elephant), and constructive theology (the endeavor of re-describing the elephant in light of the other two tasks).
Circling the Elephant also offers an analysis of why we have fallen short in the past. Interreligious learning has been obstructed by problematic ideas about "religion" and "religions," Thatamanil argues, while also pointing out the troubling resonances between reified notions of "religion" and "race." He contests these notions and offers a new theory of the religious that makes interreligious learning both possible and desirable.
Christians have much to learn from their religious neighbors, even about such central features of Christian theology as Christ and the Trinity. This book envisions religious diversity as a promise, not a problem, and proposes a new theology of religious diversity that opens the door to robust interreligious learning and Christian transformation through encountering the other.
320 pages, Paperback
Published June 2, 2020
24 people are currently reading
124 people want to read
About the author
John J. Thatamanil
3 books3 followersJohn J. Thatamanil teaches a wide variety of courses in the areas of comparative theology, theologies of religious diversity, Hindu-Christian dialogue, the theology of Paul Tillich, theory of religion, and process theology. He is committed to the work of comparative theology—theology that learns from and with a variety of traditions. A central question that drives his work is, “How can Christian communities come to see religious diversity as a promise rather than as a problem?” He is also an passionate but irregular practitioner of vipassana meditation and includes time for meditation in virtually all of his courses at Union.
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May 12, 2021
Who Should Read this Book – Readers interested in religion, theology and especially inter-religious dialogue from a Christian perspective.
What is the big take-away from this book: American Christians are already part of multiple religions, once we recognize the modern definition of world religion needs redefining and we then include consumerism, nationalism, capitalism and other ideologies that shape us as religious in nature.
And a memorable quote: “if capitalism is, at the very least, a quasi-religion, then it seems incontestable that virtually all American Christians are engaged in a complex and arguably idolatrous form of syncretism if not multiple religious belonging. If capitalism can be understood as a complex therapeutic regime that so forms human desires such that human beings come to be embedded within a complex comprehensive qualitative vision with its own theological anthropology and eschatology, then few American Christians are in a position to deny that their customary mode of religious life is other than syncretistic.”
John Thatamanil begins this book with an autobiographical sketch, which is helpful in giving the reader context for where he is coming from. Thatamanil was born in India and came to the United States as a child. He grew up Christian while always having an interest in learning more about the Indian religious traditions. This early interest led to a love of other religious traditions which is one of the primary points at the core of this book. Thatamanil remains a Christian while desiring to learn from other traditions.
You’ve probably heard the old story of blind persons touching different parts of an elephant and being asked what an elephant is . Depending on which part each person is touching, their understanding will be different. This story has been used by religious pluralists to say that each religion is merely touching on a different aspect of the divine. Of course, the obvious criticism of the story is that the person telling it is putting themselves in the position of ultimate understanding. This begs the question, how did this person achieve the universal understanding to see the whole elephant? Thatamanil does not ignore this critique, citing one instance of it from missiologist Leslie Newbigin. Thatamanil’s response is that the criticism is actually valid if the story of the elephant is told with a focus on knowledge. But Thatamanil encourages us to see the allegory as merely emphasizing “how it might be that the traditions are warranted in the claims they advance and still have something to learn from others who propound claims that seem radically incompatible.” In other words, if the person telling the allegory is trying to make the point that all religions are actually the same and they possess special knowledge above all specific religions, be wary. But if the allegory is told simply to encourage people to humility in the face of other claims, its helpful.
The way this plays out for Thatamanil is that he approaches inter-religious dialogue as a Christian rather than claiming some objective, non biased universal knowledge. He walks around the elephant, as a Christian, describing what he is seeing, as a Christian, while being open to learning from others who are not Christians and who possess wisdom that may be beneficial for Christians.
The first few chapters in the book set the stage by examining other works on religion from Christian perspective. He looks at how some Christians are open to dialogue with other religions, yet affirm that everything true is already revealed within Christianity (inclusivism). Thus, anything true in other religions is affirmed because its already found in Christian theology. Contrast this with dialogue that moves forward with openness to learning from other religions, even learning things not already in Christianity (pluralism). Of course, this relates to discussions of whether different religions lead to different ends or we all end up in the same place and other related questions.
These first few chapters are slow going, even bordering on tedious at times. I suspect that’s more my preference than Thatamanil’s work. He goes into great detail to provide a solid entry into theology and comparative religion (for the record, he even discusses the difference between “comparative religion” and “inter religious dialogue”, a difference I am not really adhering to in this review). I appreciated the analysis of the work of other writers, but I mostly just wanted to get to the point of Thatamanil’s own proposal.
That said, the most important takeaway from this book, for me, was not his proposal in chapter seven but the way Thatamanil describes and defines religion, as well as the history (or genealogy) of religion (chapters 4-5). “World religions” are a modern western invention. There was no such thing as “Hinduism” until British colonialists showed up in India and said “you’re all Hindu” (Tom Holland talked about this in his book Dominion, my favorite read in 2019). The idea of world religions as distinct entities leads us to imagine these religions as well defined with sharp lines separating them. Thatamanil shows this is problematic for two reasons. First, the diversity within religions makes it difficult to draw a line that separates who is in and who is out; religions are more groups of people asking the same questions then necessarily providing the same answers. Second, as all religions have existed together and humans have lived together, these religions have always learned from each other. Thatamanil uses the term “relational pluralism” here, seeking to unite the best of pluralist (“taste for multiplicity”) and particular wisdom while avoiding excesses of each (such as “all religions are actually the same” or “everyone’s wrong but me”). In seeking a relational pluralism, we recognize “none of our traditions can be independently efficacious because none exists independently.”
The ideas of what a “religion” is and how the idea of “world religions” was a modern invention could be a book on its own. It was certainly my favorite part of this book. He writes:
“One problem in particular captures my attention: the notion that stark and immutable lines separate “the religions.” Christian reflection has, from its inception, been situated in a world of fluid crosscutting differences. Indeed, it would be possible to craft a history of Christian thought and practice written as a series of interactions with and transmutations of movements and traditions that Christians have come to demarcate as non-Christian. Such a history would demonstrate not only that many of the central categories, practices, and symbols of Christian life are borrowed from Hellenistic philosophical schools, mystery religions, and, of course, most vitally from what we now call “Judaism,” but that for long stretches of history, no clearly defined and rigid boundaries existed between “Christianity” and those traditions we now take to be Christianity’s others.“
And:
“We come to recognize that religion, far from being a universal and timeless feature of human experience, is not only of Western provenance but perhaps one of the West’s most successful exports.”
From recognizing that the idea of world religions is a modern idea, Thatamanil makes the eye-popping yet compelling point that it was this modern invention of world religion which went along with the modern invention of the secular (and again, I feel the need to go reread Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age). When we have assumed that religion is about spiritual things (the afterlife, reincarnation) and thus our place in a religion is about our beliefs in regard to such things (as a Christian, I affirm one life then judgment rather than reincarnation) then we leave the material world to something other than religion. In other words, religion is not about economics or how we organize society.
What if defining religion in this way blinds us to the forces that are religious in nature, making claims on all of us, and guiding our lives: capitalism, consumerism, nationalism and others.
Growing up and learning about what it meant to be a Christian, there was great concern about not believing in the wrong ideas about God. The term for this is syncretism, which simply means to combine ideas from outside the faith with the true teaching of faith. I remember being warned about New Age or Eastern Religions that were infiltrating America and seducing Christians.
Yet the question of syncretism rarely applies to the ways we’ve uncritically accepted individualist, consumerist and capitalist ways of life. Thatamanil writes:
“If everyday immersion in the practices of market capitalism constitutes a form of religiosity, does that mean that most Americans who call themselves Christian but remain engaged in the market are routinely engaged in syncretism if not multiple religious belonging?1 The answer to that question depends on how the religious is defined.”
And:
“If capitalist Christianity is indeed a syncretistic religiosity that has become common for most professing Christians in America, why is such syncretism regarded as harmless and unworthy of interrogation whereas those who engage in Buddhist-Christian life are called out as unfaithful?”
He goes on to argue that, following Paul Tillich, if capitalism is, at least, a quasi-religion, then practically every Christian in America is already living in a form of multiple-religious belonging (syncretism). The easy criticism of pluralism from a Christian perspective of any sort is that it betrays the core tenets of the Christian faith. Thatamanil disarms the criticism that it is wrong to corrupt the pure faith of Christianity with ideas from outside by pointing out that even the Christians making it are already part of multiple religions and has already corrupted the faith.
I think this is the biggest takeaway from the book because I think Thatamanil is right. The last few years have made it crystal clear to me that a large majority of white Christians in America are practicing a faith much more described as Christian Nationalist than anything distinctly historic, orthodox Christian. We’ve accepted the idea that Jesus functions solely to save us from sin so we can go to heaven and once that’s squared away, we can place Jesus aside and move into the world. In doing so, Christians don’t realize we’re always being shaped by other forces (read James KA Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom and You Are What You Love). Along with nationalism, capitalism is certainly a religious force which is unquestionably accepted as an act of faith with heretical beliefs (socialism) that lead to excommunication (for more, see The Enchantment of Mammon by Eugene McCarraher and The Economy of Desire by Daniel Bell).
While this is my biggest takeaway, I have not even gotten to Thatamanil’s proposal for Christian pluralism. Before he gets there, he has a delightful chapter on what he sees as religious learning in practice, talking about what Martin Luther King Jr learned from Gandhi. Then in the final chapter he puts forth a “Trinitarian engagement with religious diversity.” Following his desire to learn from other religions, he does not limit this investigation to Christian resources but brings in Buddhist and Hindu ones. His view is Trinitarian by speculating on God as three: ground, (source of) singularity and relation. First, God is the ground of being and all that is exists because of participation in God. God is not a being among beings, but is being itself. Second is singularity, the focus of which is on the distinctive character of all that is. Every creature participates in being, but every creature is unique and beautiful as a singular. Third is relation, we are unified in community. This reflects God as Trinity – God is a community of three distinct persons which is reflected in creation where we are distinct individuals always tied together in community.
Overall, this is a fantastic book. As is clear above, I find a lot here to learn from even if I am not fully convinced of pluralism as the author is. I would probably still be qualified more as an inclusivist, seeing the fullness of truth in the revelation of God in Jesus. I still see a uniqueness in the incarnation of God in Jesus. All truth can be welcomed where it is found, but I would affirm it is truth as it fits in with my distinctly Christian conception of God. I think Thatamanil’s approach to world religions rooted in the Trinity makes sense, but I think it makes sense because the Christian theology of God as Trinity is closest to who God really is.
This does not mean “Christianity” as an institutional religion is the best religion though, and I think Thatamanil does a lot to illustrate this. Being part of this religion, with clear boundary lines drawn, is not the point (and belonging to a religion over against other religions is a symptom of the modern world). To make it the point as many Christians have done just leads to the sort of spiritual arrogance that Jesus warned against while inoculating us to the ways we’ve already incorporated anti-Christian ideas into our faith.
Rather than taking pride in some imaginary in-group status, we can humbly seek to grow closer to God (ground of being, our creator, our Father who loves us). Some of our fellow travelers on this journey are, like us, Christians who have cluttered their lives with idols similar to ours. Some make no claim to the Christian tradition at all, though they may find Jesus compelling. They have their own idols and blind spots, but they might have insights we’ve missed. They might even have insights about Jesus that we’ve missed due to our nationalism and capitalism!
I guess my biggest criticism of this book would be that while Thatamanil approaches the discussion as a Christian, to formulate religious pluralism still seems to have to devalue Jesus as uniquely God in human form. He chose to speculate on the trinity while listening to Buddhist and Hindu resources. But what about places where religions disagree? It seems too easy to only focus on the agreement.
For example, Christians believe Jesus is unique, perhaps Hindus believe God has become incarnate many times of which Jesus is just one. We can respect and learn from each other. But we both can’t be correct. Either Christians give up our belief in the uniqueness of Jesus or Hindus give up belief in many incarnations. A more tangible example may have been to grapple with Islam more deeply, especially as Christianity and Islam are the two largest world religions. Islam unequivocally rejects God as Trinity. What would Thatamanil’s Trinitarian engagement with religious diversity and relational pluralism look like in conversation with Islam? There are other books that discuss this (Miroslav Volf’s Allah comes to mind) but it seems like a pretty big elephant in the room to ignore.
I find this book much better than some others I’ve read on the subject. I recently gave a negative review to a book by Stephanie Rutt on prayer because I wish she had taken more time to examine differences in religion rather than just ignoring them. I probably should have read this book first as it provides the background I was looking for in that one (though Rutt’s book still needs judged on its own merits). If you’re looking for books on comparative religion from a Christian perspective, read this one!
Two final notes: Since I had this book as a PDF on my kindle, I was unable to find the page numbers which is why the quotes above have no page numbers. Along with that, I wish I had gotten a hard copy. I enjoy reading fiction and history, maybe some spiritual classics, on Kindle but books that are more scholarly with lots of references such as this one are better read in hard copy form. I am sure my “tedious” comment above reflects not liking reading a book like this as an e-book.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.
What is the big take-away from this book: American Christians are already part of multiple religions, once we recognize the modern definition of world religion needs redefining and we then include consumerism, nationalism, capitalism and other ideologies that shape us as religious in nature.
And a memorable quote: “if capitalism is, at the very least, a quasi-religion, then it seems incontestable that virtually all American Christians are engaged in a complex and arguably idolatrous form of syncretism if not multiple religious belonging. If capitalism can be understood as a complex therapeutic regime that so forms human desires such that human beings come to be embedded within a complex comprehensive qualitative vision with its own theological anthropology and eschatology, then few American Christians are in a position to deny that their customary mode of religious life is other than syncretistic.”
John Thatamanil begins this book with an autobiographical sketch, which is helpful in giving the reader context for where he is coming from. Thatamanil was born in India and came to the United States as a child. He grew up Christian while always having an interest in learning more about the Indian religious traditions. This early interest led to a love of other religious traditions which is one of the primary points at the core of this book. Thatamanil remains a Christian while desiring to learn from other traditions.
You’ve probably heard the old story of blind persons touching different parts of an elephant and being asked what an elephant is . Depending on which part each person is touching, their understanding will be different. This story has been used by religious pluralists to say that each religion is merely touching on a different aspect of the divine. Of course, the obvious criticism of the story is that the person telling it is putting themselves in the position of ultimate understanding. This begs the question, how did this person achieve the universal understanding to see the whole elephant? Thatamanil does not ignore this critique, citing one instance of it from missiologist Leslie Newbigin. Thatamanil’s response is that the criticism is actually valid if the story of the elephant is told with a focus on knowledge. But Thatamanil encourages us to see the allegory as merely emphasizing “how it might be that the traditions are warranted in the claims they advance and still have something to learn from others who propound claims that seem radically incompatible.” In other words, if the person telling the allegory is trying to make the point that all religions are actually the same and they possess special knowledge above all specific religions, be wary. But if the allegory is told simply to encourage people to humility in the face of other claims, its helpful.
The way this plays out for Thatamanil is that he approaches inter-religious dialogue as a Christian rather than claiming some objective, non biased universal knowledge. He walks around the elephant, as a Christian, describing what he is seeing, as a Christian, while being open to learning from others who are not Christians and who possess wisdom that may be beneficial for Christians.
The first few chapters in the book set the stage by examining other works on religion from Christian perspective. He looks at how some Christians are open to dialogue with other religions, yet affirm that everything true is already revealed within Christianity (inclusivism). Thus, anything true in other religions is affirmed because its already found in Christian theology. Contrast this with dialogue that moves forward with openness to learning from other religions, even learning things not already in Christianity (pluralism). Of course, this relates to discussions of whether different religions lead to different ends or we all end up in the same place and other related questions.
These first few chapters are slow going, even bordering on tedious at times. I suspect that’s more my preference than Thatamanil’s work. He goes into great detail to provide a solid entry into theology and comparative religion (for the record, he even discusses the difference between “comparative religion” and “inter religious dialogue”, a difference I am not really adhering to in this review). I appreciated the analysis of the work of other writers, but I mostly just wanted to get to the point of Thatamanil’s own proposal.
That said, the most important takeaway from this book, for me, was not his proposal in chapter seven but the way Thatamanil describes and defines religion, as well as the history (or genealogy) of religion (chapters 4-5). “World religions” are a modern western invention. There was no such thing as “Hinduism” until British colonialists showed up in India and said “you’re all Hindu” (Tom Holland talked about this in his book Dominion, my favorite read in 2019). The idea of world religions as distinct entities leads us to imagine these religions as well defined with sharp lines separating them. Thatamanil shows this is problematic for two reasons. First, the diversity within religions makes it difficult to draw a line that separates who is in and who is out; religions are more groups of people asking the same questions then necessarily providing the same answers. Second, as all religions have existed together and humans have lived together, these religions have always learned from each other. Thatamanil uses the term “relational pluralism” here, seeking to unite the best of pluralist (“taste for multiplicity”) and particular wisdom while avoiding excesses of each (such as “all religions are actually the same” or “everyone’s wrong but me”). In seeking a relational pluralism, we recognize “none of our traditions can be independently efficacious because none exists independently.”
The ideas of what a “religion” is and how the idea of “world religions” was a modern invention could be a book on its own. It was certainly my favorite part of this book. He writes:
“One problem in particular captures my attention: the notion that stark and immutable lines separate “the religions.” Christian reflection has, from its inception, been situated in a world of fluid crosscutting differences. Indeed, it would be possible to craft a history of Christian thought and practice written as a series of interactions with and transmutations of movements and traditions that Christians have come to demarcate as non-Christian. Such a history would demonstrate not only that many of the central categories, practices, and symbols of Christian life are borrowed from Hellenistic philosophical schools, mystery religions, and, of course, most vitally from what we now call “Judaism,” but that for long stretches of history, no clearly defined and rigid boundaries existed between “Christianity” and those traditions we now take to be Christianity’s others.“
And:
“We come to recognize that religion, far from being a universal and timeless feature of human experience, is not only of Western provenance but perhaps one of the West’s most successful exports.”
From recognizing that the idea of world religions is a modern idea, Thatamanil makes the eye-popping yet compelling point that it was this modern invention of world religion which went along with the modern invention of the secular (and again, I feel the need to go reread Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age). When we have assumed that religion is about spiritual things (the afterlife, reincarnation) and thus our place in a religion is about our beliefs in regard to such things (as a Christian, I affirm one life then judgment rather than reincarnation) then we leave the material world to something other than religion. In other words, religion is not about economics or how we organize society.
What if defining religion in this way blinds us to the forces that are religious in nature, making claims on all of us, and guiding our lives: capitalism, consumerism, nationalism and others.
Growing up and learning about what it meant to be a Christian, there was great concern about not believing in the wrong ideas about God. The term for this is syncretism, which simply means to combine ideas from outside the faith with the true teaching of faith. I remember being warned about New Age or Eastern Religions that were infiltrating America and seducing Christians.
Yet the question of syncretism rarely applies to the ways we’ve uncritically accepted individualist, consumerist and capitalist ways of life. Thatamanil writes:
“If everyday immersion in the practices of market capitalism constitutes a form of religiosity, does that mean that most Americans who call themselves Christian but remain engaged in the market are routinely engaged in syncretism if not multiple religious belonging?1 The answer to that question depends on how the religious is defined.”
And:
“If capitalist Christianity is indeed a syncretistic religiosity that has become common for most professing Christians in America, why is such syncretism regarded as harmless and unworthy of interrogation whereas those who engage in Buddhist-Christian life are called out as unfaithful?”
He goes on to argue that, following Paul Tillich, if capitalism is, at least, a quasi-religion, then practically every Christian in America is already living in a form of multiple-religious belonging (syncretism). The easy criticism of pluralism from a Christian perspective of any sort is that it betrays the core tenets of the Christian faith. Thatamanil disarms the criticism that it is wrong to corrupt the pure faith of Christianity with ideas from outside by pointing out that even the Christians making it are already part of multiple religions and has already corrupted the faith.
I think this is the biggest takeaway from the book because I think Thatamanil is right. The last few years have made it crystal clear to me that a large majority of white Christians in America are practicing a faith much more described as Christian Nationalist than anything distinctly historic, orthodox Christian. We’ve accepted the idea that Jesus functions solely to save us from sin so we can go to heaven and once that’s squared away, we can place Jesus aside and move into the world. In doing so, Christians don’t realize we’re always being shaped by other forces (read James KA Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom and You Are What You Love). Along with nationalism, capitalism is certainly a religious force which is unquestionably accepted as an act of faith with heretical beliefs (socialism) that lead to excommunication (for more, see The Enchantment of Mammon by Eugene McCarraher and The Economy of Desire by Daniel Bell).
While this is my biggest takeaway, I have not even gotten to Thatamanil’s proposal for Christian pluralism. Before he gets there, he has a delightful chapter on what he sees as religious learning in practice, talking about what Martin Luther King Jr learned from Gandhi. Then in the final chapter he puts forth a “Trinitarian engagement with religious diversity.” Following his desire to learn from other religions, he does not limit this investigation to Christian resources but brings in Buddhist and Hindu ones. His view is Trinitarian by speculating on God as three: ground, (source of) singularity and relation. First, God is the ground of being and all that is exists because of participation in God. God is not a being among beings, but is being itself. Second is singularity, the focus of which is on the distinctive character of all that is. Every creature participates in being, but every creature is unique and beautiful as a singular. Third is relation, we are unified in community. This reflects God as Trinity – God is a community of three distinct persons which is reflected in creation where we are distinct individuals always tied together in community.
Overall, this is a fantastic book. As is clear above, I find a lot here to learn from even if I am not fully convinced of pluralism as the author is. I would probably still be qualified more as an inclusivist, seeing the fullness of truth in the revelation of God in Jesus. I still see a uniqueness in the incarnation of God in Jesus. All truth can be welcomed where it is found, but I would affirm it is truth as it fits in with my distinctly Christian conception of God. I think Thatamanil’s approach to world religions rooted in the Trinity makes sense, but I think it makes sense because the Christian theology of God as Trinity is closest to who God really is.
This does not mean “Christianity” as an institutional religion is the best religion though, and I think Thatamanil does a lot to illustrate this. Being part of this religion, with clear boundary lines drawn, is not the point (and belonging to a religion over against other religions is a symptom of the modern world). To make it the point as many Christians have done just leads to the sort of spiritual arrogance that Jesus warned against while inoculating us to the ways we’ve already incorporated anti-Christian ideas into our faith.
Rather than taking pride in some imaginary in-group status, we can humbly seek to grow closer to God (ground of being, our creator, our Father who loves us). Some of our fellow travelers on this journey are, like us, Christians who have cluttered their lives with idols similar to ours. Some make no claim to the Christian tradition at all, though they may find Jesus compelling. They have their own idols and blind spots, but they might have insights we’ve missed. They might even have insights about Jesus that we’ve missed due to our nationalism and capitalism!
I guess my biggest criticism of this book would be that while Thatamanil approaches the discussion as a Christian, to formulate religious pluralism still seems to have to devalue Jesus as uniquely God in human form. He chose to speculate on the trinity while listening to Buddhist and Hindu resources. But what about places where religions disagree? It seems too easy to only focus on the agreement.
For example, Christians believe Jesus is unique, perhaps Hindus believe God has become incarnate many times of which Jesus is just one. We can respect and learn from each other. But we both can’t be correct. Either Christians give up our belief in the uniqueness of Jesus or Hindus give up belief in many incarnations. A more tangible example may have been to grapple with Islam more deeply, especially as Christianity and Islam are the two largest world religions. Islam unequivocally rejects God as Trinity. What would Thatamanil’s Trinitarian engagement with religious diversity and relational pluralism look like in conversation with Islam? There are other books that discuss this (Miroslav Volf’s Allah comes to mind) but it seems like a pretty big elephant in the room to ignore.
I find this book much better than some others I’ve read on the subject. I recently gave a negative review to a book by Stephanie Rutt on prayer because I wish she had taken more time to examine differences in religion rather than just ignoring them. I probably should have read this book first as it provides the background I was looking for in that one (though Rutt’s book still needs judged on its own merits). If you’re looking for books on comparative religion from a Christian perspective, read this one!
Two final notes: Since I had this book as a PDF on my kindle, I was unable to find the page numbers which is why the quotes above have no page numbers. Along with that, I wish I had gotten a hard copy. I enjoy reading fiction and history, maybe some spiritual classics, on Kindle but books that are more scholarly with lots of references such as this one are better read in hard copy form. I am sure my “tedious” comment above reflects not liking reading a book like this as an e-book.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.
May 28, 2021
[“Pondering Pachyderm Perambulation, " my May 25, 2021 regular blog post was about the book that I am summarizing much more fully here. ]
This is a very scholarly book that, after the Preface, begins with “Introduction: Revisiting an Old Tale.” That “old tale,” is “The Elephant and the Blind(folded) Men.” Although Thatamanil doesn’t mention it, perhaps that tale is best known in the U.S. because of what the American poet John Godfrey Saxe called “a Hindoo fable” in his 1872 poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant.”
After that important 19-page introduction, the first numbered chapter is “Religious Difference and Christian Theology: Thinking About, Thinking With, and Thinking Through.” A careful reading and understanding of the author’s points there helps the reader to understand the scholarly discussion of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism in the next two chapters. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the complexity and misunderstanding of the concepts of religion and the religious, which according to the author have often been problematic.
After dealing in chapter 6, “The Hospitality of Receiving,” with the thought and practice of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., the following chapter is the author’s contribution to constructive theology as he writes about “God as Ground, Singularity, and Relation: Trinity and Religious Diversity.” The book concludes, then, with the ten-page chapter titled “This Is Not a Conclusion.”
Author Thatamanil
John J. Thatamanil was born in Gerala, India, and migrated to Brooklyn with his parents when he was eight years old. In India and then in the U.S. he was affiliated with the Mar Thoma Church, which, it is claimed, can be traced back to Thomas, one of Jesus’ twelve apostles, who went to India to evangelize. In addition to his personal knowledge of Hinduism, the indigenous religion of India, the author also has deep, first-hand knowledge of Buddhism, and in the Preface he informs his readers that he continues both “Buddhist practice and Christian worship” (p. xvii).
He earned the Ph.D. degree at Boston University in 2000 and is noted for his scholarly study of Christian theologian Paul Tillich. The influence of Tillich is evident at various places in the book. After several years as a professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, in 2011 Thatamanil became an Associate Professor of Theology and World Religions at Union Theological Seminary.
The Central Issue
Thatamanil’s first sentence in the Introduction identifies the central issue of the book: “Is religious diversity fundamentally a problem?”—and he particularly seeks to deal with the question of whether it is, or should be, a problem for Christians. He tips his hand, though, when in the epigraph at the beginning of the Introduction he cites Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s words spoken at Union Seminary in 1965: “In this aeon diversity of religions is the will of God.”
The author wants to see religious diversity as promise rather than as problem. “That,” he states, “is the question Circling the Elephant sets out to explore” (p. 1). A strong advocate of harmony and mutual acceptance, Thatamanil says, “To imagine religious diversity as promise instead of problem is to refuse those who seek to turn diversity into divisiveness” (p. 2). Positively, he emphasizes that the world needs “religious diversity in order to register and receive the rich multiplicity of the divine life” (p. 5).
It is in this setting that the old fable is considered, and the author states that if the tale is suitably reformulated, it is “appealing because it gives theologians a way to imagine real diversity as a positive good” (p. 6). So, after discussing five problems with the old allegory, Thatamanil states, “This book is a Christian exercise in pachyderm perambulation” (p. 11).
The foundational first chapter is “Religious Difference and Christian Theology: Thinking About, Thinking With, and Thinking Through,” and he begins with discussing “Should Religious Diversity Be a ‘Problem’ for Christians? (pp. 21~29). He concludes this important topic by saying that there are “robust reasons for believing that we need not only our neighbors but also their [religious] traditions if we are to move more fully into the life of God.” Thus, “Only a ‘relational pluralism’ in which the salvific power of our various traditions [is] mobilized and animated through relationship and mutual transformation can serve as an adequate foundation for a theology of religious diversity.”
So, focusing on this central issue, Thatamanil declares: “This book articulates the hope for a comparative theology of religious diversity” (p. 34). And at the end of chapter 1 he explains that he seeks “to formulate a theology of religious diversity that makes interreligious learning and mutual transformation possible (p. 40).
Exclusivism, Inclusivism, and Pluralism
For many years now, Christian theologians of religion have identified and written about three positions that are widely known as exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Thatamanil discusses these three positions in his second and third chapters, negatively evaluating all three except for what he proposes as “relational pluralism” in the third chapter. Before presenting his specific assessments/criticisms, though, he reiterates his central position near the beginning of the second chapter: “A theology of religious diversity that celebrates attentive learning might move away from regarding religious diversity as a problem to be solved and recognize religious diversity as a promise to be received” (p. 42). Thus, he is positive about relational pluralism as he notes that it is marked by a “taste for multiplicity” and shows its “delight in the gifts of other wisdoms” (p. 103).
The last part of the third chapter is “A Concluding Warning: The Trouble with Religion,” and this is his springboard into the next two chapters.
Analyzing “Religion” and “the Religious”
Near the end of chapter one, Thatamanil states: “We need theological projects that remind us that the invention of ‘religions’ and the invention of races were historically coterminous and part of a single, albeit multifaceted, imperial project” (p. 39). Thus, the third chapter is his criticism of the use of the word/concept “religion” and the next chapter explains how he prefers to use the adjective “religious” rather than the reified noun. He thinks that there is “little empirical resonance between the way Western scholars imagine religion and the way religious identities are actually lived out on the ground” (p. 127).
At the end of the fourth chapter, the author writes, “To be religious is not to belong to a timeless cultural-linguistic framework with a deep and stable transhistorical grammar but to seek comprehensive qualitative orientation by the creative use of contested and porous traditions that are always composed of what they are and what they are not” (p. 151). That is his lead into the fifth chapter: “Defining the Religious: Comprehensive Qualitative Orientation.” The subtitle expresses his attempt to explain what being religious is all about.
Thatamanil writes, all in italics,
Any qualitative interpretation of the felt character of the universe . . . I take to be religious when such an interpretation is accompanied by a commitment to practices that shape communal and personal comportment in the universe as so interpreted. Conversely, commitment to practices that so shape communal and personal comportment, such that they imply and generate a qualitative interpretation of the felt character of the universe . . . is also religious (p. 164).
It needs to be noted that the author recognizes that “secular institutions and activities continue to perform religious work.” He thinks that the religious “refuses to be confined to the sphere of religion or the religious even though moderns have come to think of comprehensive qualitative orientation as the special prerogative of what we now call religions” (p. 172). Thus, he has brief sections on “Economics as Religion” (pp. 183~7) and “Capitalism as Religion” (pp. 187~190).
Learning from Other Religions
Chapter 6 is “The Hospitality of Receiving: Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Interreligious Learning.” In some ways, since it deals with well-known people and events, this is one of the easiest chapters in the book to read and understand—but perhaps it is also the most problematic.
Thatamanil highly evaluates Gandhi’s learning and internalizing Tolstoy and his teaching about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and then in turn praises MLK, Jr., for using what he learned from Gandhi. He concludes, “Even traditionalist Christians can confess that God has disclosed God’s self most fully in the Christ and yet also believe that one’s Hindu neighbor may see dimensions of that fullness that Christians have not yet appreciated” (p. 211). While that may well be so, that is quite different from what he wrote, with reference to MLK, Jr., on the previous page: “. . . no tradition affords more complete or efficacious access to ultimate reality than any other.”
A New Formulation of the Trinity
One of the author’s major purposes in this book is presenting a new formulation of what Christians have traditionally called the doctrine of the Trinity, and this is what he sets forth in the seventh chapter, “God as Ground, Singularity, and Relation: Trinity and Religious Diversity.”
It is difficult to summarize his argument succinctly, so suffice it to say that he expresses the traditional Christian concept of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by forwarding the concept of “God as ground, singularity, and relation” (p. 217)—and he says that this formulation “is just one Christian theologian’s venture at redescribing the elephant after a series of forays into Buddhist and Hindu traditions” (p. 220). However, the idea of God as the ground of being is based on German philosopher Martin Heidegger and Christian theologian Paul Tillich as well as on the Hindu emphasis on the nonduality of Brahman and atman.
Thatamanil’s discussion of singularity is mostly based on the ideas of Christian mystics and the theologian John Duns Scotus (1266~1308). Also, in formulating the third part of the Trinity, the author uses the word Spirit some, but never refers to Holy Spirit. He does emphasize this as his central point: “Relation names the truth that nothing whatsoever is what it is apart from its relation. To be is to be in relation” (p. 240). (He might have introduced the Bantu/South African concept of ubuntu here, but he didn’t. Thich Nhat Hanh’s emphasis on “we inter-are” could also have been included here, but it is not mentioned until the last chapter, on p. 251—and Nhat is misspelled there and in the index.)
Near the end of this chapter, Thatamanil emphasizes his main point that we need to be engaged in “the work of learning about our neighbors, the work of learning from our neighbors so that we might ourselves learn more about God” (p. 247).
The Conclusion which is Not a Conclusion
The eighth and last chapter of Thatamanil’s book is titled “This is Not a Conclusion.” That is partly because “interreligious learning is an endless process because there is always more to be known” (p. 249). In summarizing the thrust of his book, though, the author writes, “Circling the Elephant repudiates religious isolationism and calls for thoroughgoing vulnerability” (p. 251), and he asserts that “we can no longer think of religious traditions as isolated blindfolded persons, each focused on one aspect of the elephant because each tradition, in its spiraling around ultimate reality, begins to interpenetrate each other” (p. 253). Further, “We must circle the elephant together if we are to understand each other, let alone the elephant.”
This is a very scholarly book that, after the Preface, begins with “Introduction: Revisiting an Old Tale.” That “old tale,” is “The Elephant and the Blind(folded) Men.” Although Thatamanil doesn’t mention it, perhaps that tale is best known in the U.S. because of what the American poet John Godfrey Saxe called “a Hindoo fable” in his 1872 poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant.”
After that important 19-page introduction, the first numbered chapter is “Religious Difference and Christian Theology: Thinking About, Thinking With, and Thinking Through.” A careful reading and understanding of the author’s points there helps the reader to understand the scholarly discussion of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism in the next two chapters. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the complexity and misunderstanding of the concepts of religion and the religious, which according to the author have often been problematic.
After dealing in chapter 6, “The Hospitality of Receiving,” with the thought and practice of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., the following chapter is the author’s contribution to constructive theology as he writes about “God as Ground, Singularity, and Relation: Trinity and Religious Diversity.” The book concludes, then, with the ten-page chapter titled “This Is Not a Conclusion.”
Author Thatamanil
John J. Thatamanil was born in Gerala, India, and migrated to Brooklyn with his parents when he was eight years old. In India and then in the U.S. he was affiliated with the Mar Thoma Church, which, it is claimed, can be traced back to Thomas, one of Jesus’ twelve apostles, who went to India to evangelize. In addition to his personal knowledge of Hinduism, the indigenous religion of India, the author also has deep, first-hand knowledge of Buddhism, and in the Preface he informs his readers that he continues both “Buddhist practice and Christian worship” (p. xvii).
He earned the Ph.D. degree at Boston University in 2000 and is noted for his scholarly study of Christian theologian Paul Tillich. The influence of Tillich is evident at various places in the book. After several years as a professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, in 2011 Thatamanil became an Associate Professor of Theology and World Religions at Union Theological Seminary.
The Central Issue
Thatamanil’s first sentence in the Introduction identifies the central issue of the book: “Is religious diversity fundamentally a problem?”—and he particularly seeks to deal with the question of whether it is, or should be, a problem for Christians. He tips his hand, though, when in the epigraph at the beginning of the Introduction he cites Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s words spoken at Union Seminary in 1965: “In this aeon diversity of religions is the will of God.”
The author wants to see religious diversity as promise rather than as problem. “That,” he states, “is the question Circling the Elephant sets out to explore” (p. 1). A strong advocate of harmony and mutual acceptance, Thatamanil says, “To imagine religious diversity as promise instead of problem is to refuse those who seek to turn diversity into divisiveness” (p. 2). Positively, he emphasizes that the world needs “religious diversity in order to register and receive the rich multiplicity of the divine life” (p. 5).
It is in this setting that the old fable is considered, and the author states that if the tale is suitably reformulated, it is “appealing because it gives theologians a way to imagine real diversity as a positive good” (p. 6). So, after discussing five problems with the old allegory, Thatamanil states, “This book is a Christian exercise in pachyderm perambulation” (p. 11).
The foundational first chapter is “Religious Difference and Christian Theology: Thinking About, Thinking With, and Thinking Through,” and he begins with discussing “Should Religious Diversity Be a ‘Problem’ for Christians? (pp. 21~29). He concludes this important topic by saying that there are “robust reasons for believing that we need not only our neighbors but also their [religious] traditions if we are to move more fully into the life of God.” Thus, “Only a ‘relational pluralism’ in which the salvific power of our various traditions [is] mobilized and animated through relationship and mutual transformation can serve as an adequate foundation for a theology of religious diversity.”
So, focusing on this central issue, Thatamanil declares: “This book articulates the hope for a comparative theology of religious diversity” (p. 34). And at the end of chapter 1 he explains that he seeks “to formulate a theology of religious diversity that makes interreligious learning and mutual transformation possible (p. 40).
Exclusivism, Inclusivism, and Pluralism
For many years now, Christian theologians of religion have identified and written about three positions that are widely known as exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Thatamanil discusses these three positions in his second and third chapters, negatively evaluating all three except for what he proposes as “relational pluralism” in the third chapter. Before presenting his specific assessments/criticisms, though, he reiterates his central position near the beginning of the second chapter: “A theology of religious diversity that celebrates attentive learning might move away from regarding religious diversity as a problem to be solved and recognize religious diversity as a promise to be received” (p. 42). Thus, he is positive about relational pluralism as he notes that it is marked by a “taste for multiplicity” and shows its “delight in the gifts of other wisdoms” (p. 103).
The last part of the third chapter is “A Concluding Warning: The Trouble with Religion,” and this is his springboard into the next two chapters.
Analyzing “Religion” and “the Religious”
Near the end of chapter one, Thatamanil states: “We need theological projects that remind us that the invention of ‘religions’ and the invention of races were historically coterminous and part of a single, albeit multifaceted, imperial project” (p. 39). Thus, the third chapter is his criticism of the use of the word/concept “religion” and the next chapter explains how he prefers to use the adjective “religious” rather than the reified noun. He thinks that there is “little empirical resonance between the way Western scholars imagine religion and the way religious identities are actually lived out on the ground” (p. 127).
At the end of the fourth chapter, the author writes, “To be religious is not to belong to a timeless cultural-linguistic framework with a deep and stable transhistorical grammar but to seek comprehensive qualitative orientation by the creative use of contested and porous traditions that are always composed of what they are and what they are not” (p. 151). That is his lead into the fifth chapter: “Defining the Religious: Comprehensive Qualitative Orientation.” The subtitle expresses his attempt to explain what being religious is all about.
Thatamanil writes, all in italics,
Any qualitative interpretation of the felt character of the universe . . . I take to be religious when such an interpretation is accompanied by a commitment to practices that shape communal and personal comportment in the universe as so interpreted. Conversely, commitment to practices that so shape communal and personal comportment, such that they imply and generate a qualitative interpretation of the felt character of the universe . . . is also religious (p. 164).
It needs to be noted that the author recognizes that “secular institutions and activities continue to perform religious work.” He thinks that the religious “refuses to be confined to the sphere of religion or the religious even though moderns have come to think of comprehensive qualitative orientation as the special prerogative of what we now call religions” (p. 172). Thus, he has brief sections on “Economics as Religion” (pp. 183~7) and “Capitalism as Religion” (pp. 187~190).
Learning from Other Religions
Chapter 6 is “The Hospitality of Receiving: Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Interreligious Learning.” In some ways, since it deals with well-known people and events, this is one of the easiest chapters in the book to read and understand—but perhaps it is also the most problematic.
Thatamanil highly evaluates Gandhi’s learning and internalizing Tolstoy and his teaching about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and then in turn praises MLK, Jr., for using what he learned from Gandhi. He concludes, “Even traditionalist Christians can confess that God has disclosed God’s self most fully in the Christ and yet also believe that one’s Hindu neighbor may see dimensions of that fullness that Christians have not yet appreciated” (p. 211). While that may well be so, that is quite different from what he wrote, with reference to MLK, Jr., on the previous page: “. . . no tradition affords more complete or efficacious access to ultimate reality than any other.”
A New Formulation of the Trinity
One of the author’s major purposes in this book is presenting a new formulation of what Christians have traditionally called the doctrine of the Trinity, and this is what he sets forth in the seventh chapter, “God as Ground, Singularity, and Relation: Trinity and Religious Diversity.”
It is difficult to summarize his argument succinctly, so suffice it to say that he expresses the traditional Christian concept of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by forwarding the concept of “God as ground, singularity, and relation” (p. 217)—and he says that this formulation “is just one Christian theologian’s venture at redescribing the elephant after a series of forays into Buddhist and Hindu traditions” (p. 220). However, the idea of God as the ground of being is based on German philosopher Martin Heidegger and Christian theologian Paul Tillich as well as on the Hindu emphasis on the nonduality of Brahman and atman.
Thatamanil’s discussion of singularity is mostly based on the ideas of Christian mystics and the theologian John Duns Scotus (1266~1308). Also, in formulating the third part of the Trinity, the author uses the word Spirit some, but never refers to Holy Spirit. He does emphasize this as his central point: “Relation names the truth that nothing whatsoever is what it is apart from its relation. To be is to be in relation” (p. 240). (He might have introduced the Bantu/South African concept of ubuntu here, but he didn’t. Thich Nhat Hanh’s emphasis on “we inter-are” could also have been included here, but it is not mentioned until the last chapter, on p. 251—and Nhat is misspelled there and in the index.)
Near the end of this chapter, Thatamanil emphasizes his main point that we need to be engaged in “the work of learning about our neighbors, the work of learning from our neighbors so that we might ourselves learn more about God” (p. 247).
The Conclusion which is Not a Conclusion
The eighth and last chapter of Thatamanil’s book is titled “This is Not a Conclusion.” That is partly because “interreligious learning is an endless process because there is always more to be known” (p. 249). In summarizing the thrust of his book, though, the author writes, “Circling the Elephant repudiates religious isolationism and calls for thoroughgoing vulnerability” (p. 251), and he asserts that “we can no longer think of religious traditions as isolated blindfolded persons, each focused on one aspect of the elephant because each tradition, in its spiraling around ultimate reality, begins to interpenetrate each other” (p. 253). Further, “We must circle the elephant together if we are to understand each other, let alone the elephant.”
June 9, 2021
Circling the Elephant
A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity
By
John Thatamanil
Anantanand Rambachan, of St. Olaf University writes:
Circling the Elephant is a compelling case for Interreligous learning in our times, grounded in a convincing critique of religious traditions as impermeable historical fortresses. Theological openness to the wisdom of our neighbors’ traditions richly illustrated by stories of the creativity and transformation that flow from such deep human encounters. Thatamanil’s work is a new and valuable resource for comparative theology of all religious diversity, and constructive theology across traditions.”
Religion has been used as a weapon through the centuries, and in the twentieth and twenty first centuries we have seen it used in the most destructive of ways.
This book presents “religion” as a search for the Divine, and that all faith persuasion are ways of the expressions of that search.
The criticism of this book is that it is written for professionals in the field of theology. Faith is found in the lives of people, and in their struggles, and this book simply is very academic, and frankly boring.
A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity
By
John Thatamanil
Anantanand Rambachan, of St. Olaf University writes:
Circling the Elephant is a compelling case for Interreligous learning in our times, grounded in a convincing critique of religious traditions as impermeable historical fortresses. Theological openness to the wisdom of our neighbors’ traditions richly illustrated by stories of the creativity and transformation that flow from such deep human encounters. Thatamanil’s work is a new and valuable resource for comparative theology of all religious diversity, and constructive theology across traditions.”
Religion has been used as a weapon through the centuries, and in the twentieth and twenty first centuries we have seen it used in the most destructive of ways.
This book presents “religion” as a search for the Divine, and that all faith persuasion are ways of the expressions of that search.
The criticism of this book is that it is written for professionals in the field of theology. Faith is found in the lives of people, and in their struggles, and this book simply is very academic, and frankly boring.
April 20, 2022
John Thatamanil, Associate Professor of Theology and World Religions at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, provides an extraordinarily written and sympathetic explanation of comparative theology and a theory of religion for a globalized world. The author moved from India as a child with his parents and grew up as member of the Mar Thoma church. In this volume, he combines Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism in a Trinitarian exploration of religion that defines God as ultimate reality of ground, of singularity, and of relationality.
Thatamanil begins his theology by examining the the older theology of religious diversity (TRD), which sought to explain why other religions existed, and saw this as a problem. His discipline is rather comparative theology (CT), which looks from within a particular tradition to other traditions, and constructive theology, which looks at the traditional loci of systematic theology from a particular viewpoint. Thatamanil continues to look sympathetically yet critically at other TRDs, including exclusivism and inclusivism, and endorses a fourth option other than pluralism, which he calls the “acceptance” or “particularities” model. That is, religions are all unique and different, rather than many expressions of one reality, and no one is better than any other.
The constructive portion of the book provides a useful definition of religion as “comprehensive qualitative orientation” that expresses itself in “interpretive schemes and therapeutic regimes.” This allows such phenomena as economics, politics, and even baseball to have their own religious expressions. Thus we all combine multiple religiosities in our everyday lives – particularly North American Christians who are also capitalists! So multiple religious belonging need not be a bugaboo to Christians, for we all participate in them already. Even Christianity itself is a multiple of traditions and practices, some of which we exclude and some of which we incorporate into our schemes for living.
Thatamanil finishes his volume with a look at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a practitioner of relational open inclusivism in his relationship with Mahatma Gandhi and his practice of nonviolence. King even suggested in a public sermon that Gandhi taught Christians something new about Jesus’ nonviolence that had not been there before – a witness to oppressive power structures beyond individual piety. The author then finishes with his constructive theology of God as ultimate ground of being (looking to Christian theologian Paul Tillich and Hinduism and Buddhism), as singularity (as in Christ), and relationality (as in process theology).
This is a lovely, sharp, and witty work. Thatamanil is forthright with his social location yet sympathetic to others, even those with whom he sincerely disagrees. His definition of religion provides a useful concept to examine contemporary interreligiosity, both traditional institutions and those we don’t think of as religious. Finally, his concrete examples provide a model for constructive and contemporary theologians like myself, who are inhabiting multiple religious worlds and seeking to understand and grow closer to God as we love and practice in justice, love, and peace.
Thatamanil begins his theology by examining the the older theology of religious diversity (TRD), which sought to explain why other religions existed, and saw this as a problem. His discipline is rather comparative theology (CT), which looks from within a particular tradition to other traditions, and constructive theology, which looks at the traditional loci of systematic theology from a particular viewpoint. Thatamanil continues to look sympathetically yet critically at other TRDs, including exclusivism and inclusivism, and endorses a fourth option other than pluralism, which he calls the “acceptance” or “particularities” model. That is, religions are all unique and different, rather than many expressions of one reality, and no one is better than any other.
The constructive portion of the book provides a useful definition of religion as “comprehensive qualitative orientation” that expresses itself in “interpretive schemes and therapeutic regimes.” This allows such phenomena as economics, politics, and even baseball to have their own religious expressions. Thus we all combine multiple religiosities in our everyday lives – particularly North American Christians who are also capitalists! So multiple religious belonging need not be a bugaboo to Christians, for we all participate in them already. Even Christianity itself is a multiple of traditions and practices, some of which we exclude and some of which we incorporate into our schemes for living.
Thatamanil finishes his volume with a look at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a practitioner of relational open inclusivism in his relationship with Mahatma Gandhi and his practice of nonviolence. King even suggested in a public sermon that Gandhi taught Christians something new about Jesus’ nonviolence that had not been there before – a witness to oppressive power structures beyond individual piety. The author then finishes with his constructive theology of God as ultimate ground of being (looking to Christian theologian Paul Tillich and Hinduism and Buddhism), as singularity (as in Christ), and relationality (as in process theology).
This is a lovely, sharp, and witty work. Thatamanil is forthright with his social location yet sympathetic to others, even those with whom he sincerely disagrees. His definition of religion provides a useful concept to examine contemporary interreligiosity, both traditional institutions and those we don’t think of as religious. Finally, his concrete examples provide a model for constructive and contemporary theologians like myself, who are inhabiting multiple religious worlds and seeking to understand and grow closer to God as we love and practice in justice, love, and peace.
November 2, 2022
Every reader will ask one question about this book: “what?” But you’ll probably ask it a hundred times.
Once you’ve reread every sentence and gone back to the original arguments laid out in the introduction, only then can you get a true sense of what the author is laying out. But due to the sheer complexity and increasingly difficult terminology, a theology of religious diversity which is so crucial to spreading to religious communities around the world is confined to academically advanced circles. This book loses a rating because it simply cannot be accessible for “those in the pews.”
But despite that, I’m in love with the method, I admire the construction of a new Trinitarian understanding, and I am made wise by this particular approach to religious plurality. The discussions on exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism are intriguing and worthy of discussion. The deconstruction of modern notions of “religion” and “religious” should give more credit to the Fields sisters and the likes of James Cone, but nevertheless provide a critical theory to religious studies. And the formulation of a theology of comparative religious diversity that supplements a constructive theology is beautifully woven into a Hindu/Buddhist perspective on the Trinity which just rocked my understanding of learning from religious plurality.
Besides also questioning the origin of his own criterium for such a theology, this book is a must read for advanced readers and students wishing to engage in interreligious dialogue.
Once you’ve reread every sentence and gone back to the original arguments laid out in the introduction, only then can you get a true sense of what the author is laying out. But due to the sheer complexity and increasingly difficult terminology, a theology of religious diversity which is so crucial to spreading to religious communities around the world is confined to academically advanced circles. This book loses a rating because it simply cannot be accessible for “those in the pews.”
But despite that, I’m in love with the method, I admire the construction of a new Trinitarian understanding, and I am made wise by this particular approach to religious plurality. The discussions on exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism are intriguing and worthy of discussion. The deconstruction of modern notions of “religion” and “religious” should give more credit to the Fields sisters and the likes of James Cone, but nevertheless provide a critical theory to religious studies. And the formulation of a theology of comparative religious diversity that supplements a constructive theology is beautifully woven into a Hindu/Buddhist perspective on the Trinity which just rocked my understanding of learning from religious plurality.
Besides also questioning the origin of his own criterium for such a theology, this book is a must read for advanced readers and students wishing to engage in interreligious dialogue.
July 6, 2024
This was a challenging book but I really liked it. Thatamanil believes that all religions (including capitalism and neoliberalism) are mixtures. Here he mostly examines Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism and proposes that each has something to offer the others if the others practice the hospitality of receiving the gifts that are offered. He also expands the Christian Trinity to ground, singularity, and relationality - all of which are reflected in Buddhism and Hinduism. Thatamanil hopes that theologians will compare religions by immersing themselves in them and then constructing a theology of religious diversity. Actually, this book was a bit beyond me, so my synopsis is quite inadequate.
December 13, 2020
Not only is this one of the best theology books I have read in recent times, but it is the most important theology book I have read since Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Thatamanil constructs a brilliant argument that builds chapter-by-chapter examining the importance of interreligious dialogue for theology and for present our situation. I look forward to Thatamanil’s future work on comparative theology of religious diversity.
June 2, 2021
Very thought-provoking read.
February 17, 2021
This is a most intriguing exploration of Comparative Theology, inviting the reader to explore theology in a way that is enriched by encounters with other faith traditions. The author writes as a Christian theologian whose primary conversation partners are Hindu and Buddhist. This proves very interesting when the author begins to look at the conversation through a trinitarian lens.
Most intriguing!
Most intriguing!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews