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Embodied Religion Embodied Religion Ars Disputandi Supplement Series Volume 6 edited by MAARTEN WISSE MARCEL SAROT MICHAEL SCOTT Ars Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi.org] (2013) Embodied Religion Proceedings of the 2012 Conference of the European Society for Philosophy of Religion edited by PETER JONKERS & MARCEL SAROT Tilburg University Utrecht: Ars Disputandi, 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Ars Disputandi, version: July 1, 2013 Published by Ars Disputandi: The Online Journal for Philosophy of Religion, [http://www.arsdisputandi.org], hosted by Igitur, Utrecht Publishing & Archiving Services, Utrecht University Library, The Netherlands [http://igitur- archive.library.uu.nl/search/search.php]. Typeset in Constantia 10/12pt. ISBN: 978-90-6701-033-7 ISSN: 1566–5399 NUR: 705 Reproduction of this (or parts of this) publication is permitted for non-commercial use, provided that appropriate reference is made to the author and the origin of the material. Commercial reproduction of (parts of) it is only permitted after prior permission by the publisher. Contents Introduction 1 PETER JONKERS & MARCEL SAROT 1 Religious Embodiment between Medicine and Modernity 7 OLA SIGURDSON Section I: Embodied Religion: A Philosophical Reflection on Mystical Experiences and Religious Disciplining 2 A Body Sensitive for Transcendence: A Mystical Understanding of Sensibility 25 JONNA BORNEMARK 3 The Embodied Character of ‘Acknowledging God’: A Contribution to Understanding the Relationship between Transcendence and Embodiment on the Basis of Hosea 47 PETRUSCHKA SCHAAFSMA Section II: Rituals and sacraments as embodiments of God: Beyond a Purely Symbolic Religion. 4 Sacramental Sensibility and the ‘Embodiment of God’ 73 MARK WYNN 5 Arguments for a Symbol Theory of Embodied Religion: A Response to Mark Wynn 93 RODERICH BARTH Section III: Neuroscience and Free Will: Can We Still Say that We ‘Are Called to Be Free’? 6 Christian Faith, Free Will and Neuroscience 105 MARCEL SAROT 7 Theism, Compatibilism and Neurodeterminism: A Response to Marcel Sarot 121 AKU VISALA Section IV: Religion, Morality and Being Human: What about ‘Thy will be done’? 8 Religion, Morality and Being Human: The Controversial Status of Human Dignity 143 INGOLF DALFERTH 9 Dignity, Autonomy and Embodiment JOHN COTTINGHAM 181 Section V: Selected Short Papers 10 I Think Therefore I Am Not Mystical Desire and the Dispossession of the Cogito 199 ARIANNE CONTY 11 Experience and Empiricism in Testing the Free Will: What Phenomenology Offers a Discussion of Embodied Religion 213 ALEXANDER T. ENGLERT 12 God’s World – God’s Body 229 JULIA ENXING 13 Trinity, Embodiment and Gender 241 SOILI HAVERINEN 14 Celebrating the Neuroscientific Body Sacramentally: Reading the Body as Sacrament – A Radical In-carnational Theo-logos 251 JOHANN-ALBRECHT MEYLAHN 15 ‘Theologies of the Body’ Devotional Fitness in US Evangelicalism 265 MARTIN RADERMACHER 17 Neurocalvinism: Calvinism as a Paradigm for Neuroscience 279 WILLEM VAN VLASTUIN 18 Free Will as a Continuum with Self-Imposing Constraints Are Unconsciousness, Physical Tendency, and Free Will Compatible? 293 CHONG HO YU 305 Contributors Introduction PETER JONKERS & MARCEL SAROT Tilburg University This collection of papers is derived from the nineteenth biannual con- ference of the European Society for Philosophy of Religion, held in the ‘Kon- takt der Kontinenten’ in Soesterberg, the Netherlands, from 30 August to 2 September 2012, which was sponsored by the School of Catholic Theology of Tilburg University and the Department of Religious Studies and Theology of Utrecht University. The conference brought together some eighty philoso- phers of religion and researchers from related disciplines, most of them com- ing from one of the four founding regions of the ESPR, viz. the English speak- ing region, the North-European region, the German speaking and the Dutch speaking region. Because of the excellent reputation of these conferences over the years, scholars from Eastern and Southern Europe, and even from some non-European countries also participated, thereby enlivening and broadening the discussions about the conference theme. As usual at ESPR conferences, the 2012 conference theme was so chosen that it lent itself to both analytical and continental approaches and to the conversation between the two. Moreover, the study of ‘embodied religion’ – for this was the theme – cannot take place in isolation, but needs the input from various other disci- plines. This is reflected in the current volume. The study of religion is often marred by a mentalistic bias. Religion is then interpreted as primarily belonging to the sphere of the spiritual. While it is true that for most religious traditions (Christian as well as non-Christian) God is a spiritual and disembodied being, even the presence of God is always 1 2 PETER JONKERS & MARCEL SAROT a mediated presence, and it may well be argued that this mediation is always material in character.1 It is one-sided to approach religion through the study of convictions, concepts, values and arguments only. Religions are also typi- cally very down to earth, dealing with issues of sexuality, reproduction and family, with practices about food, offering and sacrifice, questions of birth and death etc. Hence the human body is always involved in the concepts and practices of religions. Furthermore religions also express themselves in vari- ous material ways, such as in icons and (other) works of art, in prayers, songs and the liturgy, which all have a strong physical component, in the inscrip- tion of the religious in the human body (e.g. the sacraments, the ritual of cir- cumcision, and stigmata), and last but not least in a religiously inspired dis- ciplining of the human body. Thus, even spirituality is often embodied.2 The idea that religion is something purely spiritual is challenged in a dif- ferent way as well, namely by recent developments in neuroscience. The find- ings of neuroscience challenge philosophy of religion to rethink those charac- teristics of human nature that are vital for religion, such as free will, altruism, morality, and last but not least the human person as a ‘self.’ Some of the more extreme forms of neuroscience go as far as to suggest that a complete material explanation of human nature is in sight, thus annihilating, together with the spiritual dimension of the human person, the spiritual dimension of religion. In order to have a fruitful discussion between philosophy of religion and neu- roscience it is imperative to avoid such a reductionism. But, at the same time, it is clear that neuroscientific research sheds an intriguing light on the ques- tion what it means when people call themselves religious. This gives ample support for the two underlying theses of the contribu- tions to this conference volume. First, that religion is always embodied in var- ious ways: on the level of God’s presence in humans, on that of the multitude of ways in which people express their religiosity, and on that of the neurologi- cal processes that accompany religious feelings and attitudes. Second, that major changes in the basic anthropological concepts regarding the human body inevitably have an impact upon religion, and thus also challenge philos- ophy of religion to rethink how religions are embodied in the human person. 1 See, e.g., Birgit Meyer, Mediation and the Genesis of Presence: Towards a Material Approach to Religion (Utrecht: Utrecht University, 2012), 8–9. 2 See, e.g., Willem Marie Speelman, God aan den lijve ondervinden: Lichamelijke spiritualiteit vol- gens Franciscus en Clara (Leeuwarden: Discovery Books, 2012). INTRODUCTION 3 The papers included in this volume highlight the complexity of the con- ference-theme as well as the variety of philosophical perspectives that are taken in order to understand the phenomenon of embodied religion. They differ in style, method and in their ways to relate to culture and science. To give an example, it was in the wake of the rise of phenomenology and its con- cept of the ‘body as subject’ that theological anthropology and (continental) philosophy of religion started to pay systematic attention to the impact of re- ligion on the human body in general and to various shapes of religious em- bodiment in particular. Similarly, analytic philosophy has always been strong in examining the effects of scientific discoveries on the traditional idea of the human person as a free, morally responsible, spiritual being. One of the goals of the conference was to foster a dialogue between these approaches, resulting in a better view of the promising perspectives, concepts and arguments that philosophy of religion can use in order answer the questions raised by the new developments in our understanding of human nature. This volume starts with the keynote address by Ola Sigurdson, in which he discusses different perspectives on (religious) embodiment, particularly stemming from (the history of) culture and modern medicine. Sigurdson ex- plains that, because of the current hegemony of medicine (including neuro- science), the personal as well as the social dimension of religious embodiment is lost out of sight. Hence, he stresses the need of a non-reductive approach of religious embodiment, which is exactly what the contributions to this volume, taken together, try to achieve. In order to structure the great variety of perspectives on embodied relig- ion somewhat of the conference, we divided the general conference theme into four subthemes and asked the main speakers to comment on it. Their contributions
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