Complicated Religious Pasts and Presents: the Place of 'Religion' In
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VOLUME 5 0 NUM B E R 1 C RITERION A Publication of the University of Chicago Divinity School SPRI N G/ summe R 2 0 1 3 Dear Alumni and Friends — C RITERION The Spring 2013 issue of Criterion opens with a paper by Paul Mendes-Flohr, the Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor of Modern Jewish History and Thought. Dis- V olume 5 0 | numbe R 1 cussing “The Promises and Limitations of Interfaith Dia- logue,” Professor Mendes-Flohr points out the tensions in different conceptions of tolerance, and claims that tolerance need not be seen as a threat to religious integrity. 1 Contents & List of Contributors Next is a lecture by Stephen Chan (AM 1990, PhD 1998), who spoke at Swift Hall last year as part of a conference 2 The Promises and on “Sino-Christian Theology in Today’s China.” At the conference, scholars reflected critically on the religious, Limitations of Interfaith cultural, political, economic, and sociological factors that Dialogue are giving rise to the growth of Christianity in China, and asked how theology, as an academic discipline, could Paul Mendes-Flohr engage, interrogate, and complicate this novel phenom- Stephen Chan is Andrew Packman is enon. Professor Chan’s talk, reproduced here, addresses Associate Professor 10 Theology asT ranslation a PhD student in how issues of translation inform the enterprise of Sino- of Theology and Theology, a Disciples Christian theology. Religious Studies at A Glimpse of Sino-Christian House scholar, and The opening Wednesday Community Luncheon talk Seattle University Theology in China a minister of the of 2012, by Dean Margaret M. Mitchell, then challenges Christian Church us to consider the academic study of religion, and the place Stephen Chan (Disciples of Christ) of religion within that enterprise. Reminding us of how complicated religious identity is, she cautions against theories that see a great divide between religious and 17 Complicated Religious Pasts non-religious scholars. and Presents A sermon by current Theology PhD student Andrew The Place of ‘Religion’ in the Packman (MDiv 2012) follows. He takes the occasion of the temporary relocation of Wednesday worship to Swift Academic Study of Religion Hall during renovations to Bond Chapel to remark on the Margaret M. Mitchell relation between the spiritual and the reasonable, between prayer and study, and to consider the sort of community that engages these “supposedly competing claims.” 21 Between Angels and Reasons The issue concludes with news from our alumni.P lease A Wednesday Worship Sermon continue to keep us up to date on your accomplishments. Paul Mendes-Flohr Margaret M. Mitchell As always, my thanks to Susan Zakin, editorial assistant, is the Dorothy Grant Andrew Packman is Dean and Shailer and Robin Winge, designer. Maclear Professor Mathews Professor of Modern Jewish of New Testament I hope you enjoy this issue, History and Thought 23 Alumni News and Early Christian Literature Terren Ilana Wein, Editor CRIT E RI on 1 Paul M endes - floh R TheP romise and Limitations of Interfaith Dialogue To tolerate is to insult. Tolerance must only be preparatory to open the way to mutual acceptance. ... True liberalism is acknowledgment and understanding. — Wolfgang Goethe 1 n what might be regarded to be a commentary on Their religious patrimony, grounded in the witness they Goethe’s sapient maxim, cited as the epigraph to this bear to their respective faith communities, is accordingly Tessay, the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig ex- treated as an encumbrance, or an ultimately trivial acci- Iclaimed, “the main thing is that we still must prove our- dent of birth. Hence, as Rosenzweig laconically observes, selves — the test is still before us: The overcoming of mere Lessing’s Jew, Christian, and Muslim “have no children.”5 thoughts of tolerance, above all the overcoming of [mutu- As pure human beings, they have no progeny, certainly no al] indifference.”2 In the best of liberal circles, marching Jewish, Christian or Muslim descendents. under the banner of tolerance, “the Christian ignored the But surely believing Jews — as Christians, Muslims, and Jew in order to tolerate him, and the Jew ignored he for that matter believing Buddhists, Hindus, or Navajo Snake Christian in order to allow himself to be tolerated.”3 This Dancers — would protest that their humanity is refracted strategy of studious indifference attained its most pristine through the particularity of their community of faith. Yet expression in the German poet and philosopher Gotthold one must acknowledge that religious faith, especially of Ephraim Lessing’s didactic play Nathan the Wise. A para- biblical or theistic inspiration, may engender intolerance.6 ble of tolerance, this play, first performed in 1779, projects The claim to privileged knowledge often instills hubris, the difference between the bearers of the three monotheis- and contempt for other faiths. Indeed, historically the tic faiths to be irrelevant, of no consequence because they liberal ethic of tolerance was born of a resolve to contain are — despite their religious particularities — first and the fury and wrath aroused by conflicting religious claims. foremost human beings. As Nathan, Lessing’s wise Jew, If tolerance courts indifference, let it be. For surely it is rhetorically asks, “Are Christian and Jew sooner Christian preferable to the scourge of religious intolerance. and Jew than human beings?”4 Indeed, as Rosenzweig Hence, the liberal creed of tolerance poses an irrefra- observed, Nathan is abstracted from his Judaism, as is gable challenge to men and women of faith: Can an abid- Lessing’s Muslim from Islam, and his Christian from ing fidelity to the theological positions and values of one’s Christianity. They meet solely as fellow human beings. religious community allow one to acknowledge the cogni- 2 SPRI N G / summe R 2 0 1 3 CRIT E RI on 3 If one takes one’s own faith seriously, one must perforce demand that others In some contemporary interfaith circles, there is a beguiling twist take one’s faith seriously, even if but to protest. to the humanistic leveling of differences... tive and spiritual integrity of other faith commitments? to be understood as how one may extend tolerance beyond and religious conviction, one ethical system and set of The challenge is perhaps more poignant when formulated the pragmatic bounds of tactical indifference towards other beliefs are to be regarded as good as the next. from the perspective of religious educators: How is one to religious and axiological traditions, and to forge a path to As in the case of the well-meaning Lessing, this form of instruct youth in the religious beliefs and values of their mutual “acknowledgment and understanding”— and to do relativism is prompted not merely by pragmatic objectives community, while encouraging them to be tolerant of so without compromising or vitiating one’s own commitments. of civic and inter-communal tranquility, but also by a beliefs and values deemed to be incompatible with their genuine humanism. At the core of every culture and faith, own? How is one to educate youth to have firm moral he lexicological history of the term tolerance high- the humanist holds, is a common humanity and even and faith convictions, while encouraging them to honor lights the issue. Prior to the eighteenth century shared spiritual sensibilities. Focusing on the essential human- opposing positions? Surely, this challenge would be banal and the dawn of liberal politics, the word “toler- ity of the other allows one to dismiss that which is particu- were tolerance interpreted merely as a code of “live and Tance” had, in French, a pejorative connotation, namely, a lar as unessential. Indeed, extending tolerance to the Jew let live,” or construed as a demand to dismiss differences permissive or complacent attitude towards evil. As late as in the person of Nathan the Wise, Lessing “abstracted” him between religions, to cite once again Nathan the Wise, 1691, in his famous admonition to Protestants, Jacques F. from his Judaism. He became what later Isaac Deutscher as but a question of “color, dress, and shape.”7 The dif- Bossuet unabashedly extolled Catholicism as the least tol- would call a “non-Jewish Jew.”12 And to a lesser degree, ferences are not always so superficial, however. There are erant of all religions. As a “careless indulgence,” tolerance was Lessing did this with the Christian and Muslim protago- often some very real and far-reaching theological and axi- deemed a heresy. It is only with the emergence of the modern nists of his play. What is tolerated is the human being ological differences that divide various faith communities. state as a fundamentally secular institution, concerned pre- hidden beneath the façade of a particular faith community. It is from this perspective that T. S. Eliot exclaimed, “The eminently with public tranquility as a condition necessary A species of this type of tolerance is what might be called Christian does not wish to be tolerated.”8 If one takes one’s for collective prosperity, that tolerance lost its pejorative “ad hominem tolerance,” in which a pious individual — be own faith seriously, one must perforce demand that others sting and became a civic and moral virtue. Whether it can he or she a devout Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or take one’s faith seriously, even if but to protest. Thus, Franz also be a theological virtue is of course yet another issue. what have you — is portrayed as being fundamentally a Rosenzweig voiced his preference for the medieval disputa- Philosophically, tolerance is an elusive concept, fraught decent person, for he or she is perceived to possess such 10 tions — in which Jewish savants were obliged to defend with logical paradoxes, if not downright antinomies. Are Nathan the Wise engaging human qualities as sincerity, integrity, and hon- rabbinic teachings before an inquisitorial forum of Catholic we to tolerate the intolerable? Liberal law, crafted to ensure orability.