The Syncretism of Tradition: Reappraising Cultural Mixture in Christianity

The Syncretism of Tradition: Reappraising Cultural Mixture in Christianity E. Ross Kane Alexandria, Virginia Bachelor of Arts, University of Virginia, 2002 Masters of Divinity, Duke University, 2009 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Religious Studies University of Virginia May 2017 © E. Ross Kane ii For Liz iii Jesus said to the disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” —John 16:12-15 iv Table of Contents Abstract v Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Syncretism in Christian Thought 13 I. From Irenics to Polemics 16 II. Syncretism and Historicism: the Responses of Harnack and Kraemer 35 Chapter 2: Syncretism in the History of Religions and Anthropology 60 I. The Universality of Syncretism: Recognizing Ubiquity 62 II. Delineating a Universal Phenomenon: Elucidating Syncretism 75 III. The Resilience and Power of Syncretism: Celebrating Mixture 87 IV. The Mechanics of Syncretism: Incorporating Cognition 100 V. Mutual Learning between Theology and Religious Studies: A Pluralist Approach 109 Chapter 3: Contemporary Theological Approaches to Cultural Mixture 127 I. Inculturation, Indigenization, and Contextualization 128 II. Syncretism and the Incarnation: Leonardo Boff and Liberation Theology 140 III. Theologizing Syncretism: Tanner’s Constructive Proposal 147 IV. Assessing Tanner 166 Chapter 4: The Perils and Promise of Tradition 175 I. The Perils of Tradition 179 II. An Amalgamating Tradition 199 Chapter 5: The Syncretizing Spirit: Rowan Williams’ Refusal of Doctrinal Closure 217 I. Williams in Context: Anglican Responses to Historicism 219 II. Creedal Syncretism 226 III. History throughout Doctrine, Not Doctrine throughout History 240 IV. The Syncretizing Spirit 256 Chapter 6: Ancestors, Sacrifice, and the Bible 272 I. Reverencing Ancestors: A Christian Account 276 II. Renewing Sacrifice 287 III. Christianity without the Bible? 302 Conclusion 313 Bibliography 321 v Abstract This dissertation probes use of the term syncretism in Christian theology, with an eye toward constructing a pneumatology for an increasingly global and plural church. First, I show that present-day usage of syncretism demonstrates latent colonial legacies in the academy that continue to inhibit appreciation of new theological insights emerging beyond the West. Engaging history of religions and anthropological literature on syncretism as well as Kathryn Tanner’s work on culture, I reframe syncretism to highlight ways in which Christianity constantly mixes with its surrounding culture in contested ways, such that syncretism becomes an aspect of Western Christianity as much as anywhere else. To say that syncretism is ubiquitous in Christianity is not to say that it lacks normative self-understanding, however. Thus I offer a defense of the term “tradition”, understood not as a static edifice of doctrine but as a moving continuity. In order to provide a theological account of the pervasiveness of such contested Christian mixture with culture, as well as tools for discerning when to incorporate such syncretism and when to challenge it, I employ Rowan Williams’ account of the Holy Spirit incorporating newness and strangeness into the Logos across the vicissitudes of history. Whether in 4th century debates between Arius and Athanasius or in contemporary Africa, contested mixture of religion and culture has continually shaped the identity of Christianity. My concluding theological claim is that the Holy Spirit often builds knowledge of Christ by way of Christianity’s contested transmission, a claim that I display through accounts of new theological insights emerging from places like South Sudan and Zimbabwe. 1 Introduction Imagine if the first written language of the Christian scriptures had not been koine Greek. Imagine, for example, Christianity without the notion of the Logos. Before Christians took hold of it, Logos was a Stoic and Neoplatonic idea used to express how a God free from time and chance relates to the material cosmos. Greek-speaking theologians adapted it to become a means of comprehending Jesus’ relation to God the Father. In the process of this reflection, the idea of Logos transformed and Greek conceptions of God transformed. Greek Christians came to understand God as more purposive than standard Greek accounts like Plato’s and Aristotle’s, for example. But understandings of Jesus transformed too. Without the notion of Logos, Christians would have surely struggled even more than they did to express mature Christologies like those of the 4th century Cappadocians. Imagining Christianity without koine Greek acknowledges at least two things. First, Christianity’s first written language was not that of Jesus’ own teachings in Aramaic. Early disciples seemed quite untroubled by the fact that their foundational documents were expressed in a language different from Jesus’ own. This point is no small matter. Muslims in their own first century chose to retain Arabic as the language of their own sacred scriptures, for quite appropriate reasons. Moving between languages is not simply a matter of neutrally translating ideas from one language to another. As philosopher Kwasi Wiredu writes, “a language, most assuredly, is not conceptually neutral; syntax and vocabulary are apt to suggest definite modes of conceptualization.”1 Early disciples assumed that Christianity could mix with another thought- world and thrive there. They did not seek an original, unadulterated purity when spreading the 1 Kwasi Wiredu, “Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion,” African Studies Quarterly 1, no. 2 (1998): 17. 2 message of Jesus. Christians mixed the gospel with various cultures from the very start. Second, to imagine Christianity without koine Greek is to feel a quite noticeable gap. Many Christians rightly feel that a great deal would be lost had Christianity not been expressed in Greek. This is not to lift up Greek philosophy and language unduly; it is simply to recognize that Christianity gained something from its translation into another culture. The Greek language and the notion of Logos showed Christians aspects of Jesus that they might otherwise not see. Christianity’s syncretism with Logos theology improved what Christians know of Jesus. To imagine Christianity without the Greek language and Logos is not to suggest that doctrines of the Trinity and the dual nature of Christ would not play the role they do in Christianity, had Christianity moved primarily eastward rather than westward in its early centuries.2 Monotheistic pressures from its Jewish origin alongside Christians’ experience and worship of Jesus would have required careful working out regardless of Christianity’s cultural and philosophical environments. Nonetheless, Christian missionaries of the 7th century moving into East Asia and writing in Mandarin, for example, found themselves at great pains trying to express Christology and the Trinity without the resources of the Greek language.3 The difficulty of this effort does not suggest any “lack” in Mandarin, for familiar Greek Christological vocabulary only became familiar after centuries of Christian usage and refinement. Rather, it to say that Mandarin, like Greek, carries resources for seeing something of Jesus that Christians have not noticed before. 2 For arguments along this line, see John Hick, “Jesus in the World Religions” in The Myth of God Incarnate, ed. John Hick (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 167-185. I return to Hick in Chapter 5. 3 See Christoph Baumer, The Church of the East: An illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006); Trent Pomplun, Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri's Mission to Tibet (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) and Jonathan D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (New York: Viking Penguin, 1984). 3 Such an approach, however, has proven all too rare through much of Christian history, particularly in more recent centuries as Christianity has become a truly global religion. 19th century British missionary Robert Moffat, for example, when encountering the Sechuana language of southern Africa, wrote, “the language was deficient in theological terms.”4 Leaving aside the cultural presumption that surrounded this statement, what Moffat overlooked is that one can say this about any human language. Since there are no words appropriate for God, since humans are always only approximating God with our language, humans are always borrowing words from temporal and profane life and applying them to God. The translatability of Christianity is one of its core features, a point rightly noted by Lamin Sanneh and Andrew Walls.5 This dissertation’s primary claim builds upon theirs: I am arguing that translation and transmission stand to enhance the gospel and that these processes inherently involve syncretism. The more Christians share our borrowed words, the more we will see of Jesus. The early centuries of Christianity again provide an initial example. As Christianity moved westward in the ancient world to Greek-speaking regions of the Roman Empire,

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