Dialogical Transformation: Exploring the Creative

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Dialogical Transformation: Exploring the Creative DIALOGICAL TRANSFORMATION: EXPLORING THE CREATIVE POSSIBILITIES OF INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE AS A PRACTICE PROMOTING SOTERIOLOGICAL GROWTH A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Department of Religious Studies University of the West In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy by Jesse F. Tanner Spring 2012 APPROVAL PAGE FOR GRADUATE Approved and recommended for acceptance as a dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies. Jesse F. Tanner Date “Dialogical Transformation: Exploring the Creative Possibilities of Interreligious Dialogue as a Practice Promoting Soteriological Growth” APPROVED: Signature (J. Bruce Long, Committee Chair) Date Signature (William Howe, Committee Member) Date Signature (Joshua Capitanio, Committee Date Member) © 2012 Jesse F. Tanner ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to recognize all of those individuals who have been sources of support and inspiration for me during the course of this project. I extend my utmost appreciation to my advisor, Dr. J. Bruce Long, for his intellectual and scholarly mentorship, as well as my other doctoral committee members, Dr. William Howe and Dr. Joshua Capitanio, for their academic assistance. I also thank my parents, Mark and Dianna Tanner, and my entire family for their moral support. Most of all, I am grateful for my wife, Khoa Ngo, who has been a steadfast companion continually inspiring me through her encouragement, insight, and strength. iii ABSTRACT In the midst of growing religious plurality and diversity, interreligious dialogue has been an increasingly prominent response to this situation. The present project analyzes the history and significance of interreligious encounter, particularly in the U.S. American context but with implications that go beyond this setting. The special focus centers on the hermeneutical character of dialogue and the transformative element present therein, examining what transformation means primarily through the framework of David Tracy’s philosophical work, as well as that of others. After elucidating the background and elemental conditions for productive interreligious dialogue, it is argued that the transformation that may and often does come from interfaith encounter involves a realized experience of truth disclosure. This even of growth that occurs in dialogue is explicated as transformation by integration – incorporating religious elements of the encountered other into one’s own religious identity. This involves a renewal, expansion, enhancement, deepening, of understanding. For further illustration of this transformative element, this project looks at the Buddhist and Christian traditions and the soteriological frameworks for transformation they express. It is forwarded that interreligious dialogue, as a religious practice, engenders and supports the liberating transformation present in each religious worldview. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………. ii Abstract…………………………………………………………………………...... iii Chapter One: Present Religious Context, Thesis, and Methodological Perspective………………………………………………………………….. 1 1.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………. 1 1.2 Approach and Perspective……………………………………………… 6 1.3 Thesis: Main Questions and Prospective Answers……………………... 23 1.4 Place of Present Project in Wider Scholarship………………………… 27 Chapter Two: David Tracy’s Hermeneutics of Analogical Imagination Through Conversation as an Interpretive Framework for Dialogue…………………. 37 2.1 Introduction to Tracy’s Perspective and Work…………………………. 37 2.2 Tracy’s Background for Understanding as Human Category of Interpretation and Growth………………………………………… 39 2.3 Otherness, Religious Pluralism, and Response………………………… 46 2.4 The Classic……………………………………………………………… 51 2.5 The Religious Classic…………………………………………………… 55 2.6 Interpretation of the (Religious) Classic as Conversation with Other… 59 2.7 The Transformative Character of Conversation with the Classic as Other……………………………………………………………….... 69 2.8 An Analogical Imagination…………………………………………….. 73 2.9 Analogical Imagination, Conversation, and the Plurality of Traditions 77 Chapter Three: Interreligious Dialogue: Its Background, Principles, Conditions, and Transformational Possibilities…………………………………………. 81 3.1 Development of the Interfaith Movement……………………………… 81 v 3.2 Types of Encounter within the Interfaith Movement…………………… 90 3.3 Defining Interreligious Dialogue……………………………………….. 100 3.4 Purpose of Dialogue……………………………………………………. 104 3.5 Conditions of Productive Interreligious Encounter…………………….. 107 3.6 The Transformational Power of Interreligious Dialogue……………….. 121 Chapter Four: The Transformative Power of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue………... 129 4.1 Expressions of Transformation in Particular Buddhist-Christian Encounters…………………………………………………………... 130 4.2 Categorical Framework for Soteriological Transformation……………. 152 4.3 Soteriological Transformation in Buddhism……………………………. 155 4.4 Soteriological Transformation in Christianity………………………….. 167 4.5 Interreligious Dialogue as Sacramental Practice Contributing to Soteriological Transformation……………………………………… 178 Chapter Five: Conclusion…………………………………………………………… 186 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………… 192 Appendix A – Categories of Transformation……………………………………….. 215 Appendix B – Soteriological Transformation in Religions and in Buddhist- Christian Dialogue………………………………………………………….. 216 1 CHAPTER ONE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONTEXT, THESIS, AND PERSPECTIVE 1.1 Introduction Currently, the world in which we live is getting smaller. That is, the present context is one in which many people are experiencing rapid globalization. For the present purposes, globalization can be understood as the phenomenon of growing and intensifying interconnection between societies, such that what happens in one part of the world increasingly impacts other parts of the world. Baylis and Smith characterize it well: “A globalized world is one in which political, economic, cultural, and social events become more and more interconnected … societies are affected more and more extensively and more and more deeply by events of other societies.” 1 In line with this, sociologist Peter Berger states, “The basic fact about cultural globalization is that everyone can talk to almost everyone else…whether you talk about crime or about politics or about religion…globalization is an enormous increase in international communication.”2 In various respects, people are becoming increasingly interrelated and are interacting with more immediacy now than ever before, largely due to burgeoning 3 technological innovation. 1 John Baylis and Steve Smith, eds., Globalization and World Politics (Oxford University Press, 1998), 7. For theoretical analyses and various definitions of globalization, see Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture: Global Melange (Plymouth, UK: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2009), Ch. 1; and Axel Dreher, Noel Gaston, and Pim Martins, Measuring Globalization: Gauging Its Consequences (New York: Springer Science+Business Media, 2008), Ch. 1. 2 Peter L. Berger, interview transcript on radio program, Speaking of Faith , “Globalization and the Rise of Religion,” 10/12/06, http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/globalization/transcript.shtml, (accessed 7/8/10). 3 It can be argued that globalization is not an entirely novel phenomenon in history, but is simply a new name for an old activity in the world. See Baylis and Smith, Globalization , 9. For example, the extensive political, economic, social, and cultural interchanges that occurred on the Silk Trade Route could be said to qualify as an ancient version of what we call globalization today. See Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Learner, Monks and merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China Gansu and Ningxia 2 Throughout the majority of history people lived in communities that were largely separated (socially or geographically) from other outside communities and which maintained a strong and unified consensus about fundamental cultural norms. Thus, by and large, one’s worldview had a given, self-evident character. The cultural and religious situation of most people in pre-modern times had what Berger calls a “taken-for-granted” status; there was little to no choice involved in terms of values, beliefs, and practices. 4 However, eventually following the challenges to conventional norms and consensus that occurred with the Enlightenment and scientific revolution, modernization developed throughout Western society and beyond with an emphasis on reason, science, and progress. 5 The main movements of modernity – globalization, migration, urbanization, mass education, and mass communication – have generated a situation presently where differing worldviews and lifestyles encounter one another. 6 This development may be called “pluralism,” which is taken within this framework here to refer to, as Berger states, “a situation in which different ethnic or religious groups co-exist…and interact with each other socially.” 7 When pluralism advances, people are thus presented with the condition Provinces, Fourth-Seventh Century. (New York: Asia Society, Incorporated, 2001); Richard Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); and Vladimir Liscak, “Eastern Turkestan and Its Role in the Early Contacts along the Silk Road,” Studia Asiatica: International Journal for Asian Studies 1 (2001): 115-131. Nonetheless, the interaction in the current modern world due to
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