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The Spirit and Religious Pluralism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2013
Abstract
“Spirit” is a more universally available religious symbol than “Christ,” found in various forms in most of the religions of the world. It helps to open Christian theology to a genuine religious pluralism, and, in the framework of the doctrine of the Trinity, provides a Christian way of construing this pluralism, relating it to the purposes, activity, and being of God. The pneumatic Trinitarianism proposed in this essay contrasts with the christocentric Trinitarianism recommended by advocates of an inclusivist theology of religions. The concrete incarnation of God in Christ is not lost but placed in a larger context. The Spirit proceeds not just from Christ but from the interaction of God and the world, including a diversity of religious figures and practices. The idea that a theology of the Spirit might serve as the basis of a pluralist theology of religions is tested by looking at the modalities of Spirit that are present in Hinduism and Buddhism, and that enrich a Christian understanding of the Spirit.
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References
1 Tillich, Paul, “The Significance of the History of Religions for the Systematic Theologian,” in The Future of Religions, ed. Brauer, Jerald C. (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 90–91.Google Scholar
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5 For elaboration, see Hodgson, Peter C., Christian Faith: A Brief Introduction (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 60–73Google Scholar; also, Winds of the Spirit: A Constructive Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), chap. 11.
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10 Gavin D'Costa is the most consistent representative of this view. See his essay, “Christ, the Trinity, and Religious Plurality,” in Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered, chap. 2; and his recent book, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000). See also Vanhoozer, Kevin J., ed., The Trinity in a Pluralistic Age (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 1997).Google Scholar Amos Yong attempts to move trinitarian theology toward a more even balance between christological and pneumatological emphases in his richly documented study, Discerning the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal Contribution to Christian Theology of Religions (Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000). But he still allows a certain primacy to Christ in proposing that the Spirit is the power or field of force by means of which the norms of the Logos are realized in the world; and, though he wants to move from a christological to a pneumatological inclusivism, the criteria for testing the Spirit(s) finally depend on christology (see 116–19, 315–16).
11 See Cobb, John B. Jr., Transforming Christianity and the World: A Way Beyond Absolutism and Relativism, ed. Knitter, Paul (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1999), 114, 120–24, 136–37, 184–86.Google Scholar
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13 In the following paragraphs I summarize an analysis that is developed at length in Winds of the Spirit, chap. 17; and more briefly in Christian Faith, 135–45.
14 A graduate student at Vanderbilt University presses me to go further in this direction. He suggests that if the manifestations of Spirit in nature and humanity—as both natural power and rational power–are understood to be truly complementary rather than hierarchical, then the category of Spirit becomes more adequate as a way of naming the thematizations of ultimate reality in other, especially Asian, religions. He suspects that Western theologies of the Spirit, including my own, prioritize the rational and personal aspects of Spirit over its natural and impersonal aspects. He points out that for Daoism just the reverse is the case. The Dao is the impersonal, generative matrix and power that engenders all things and confers upon them the power to be what they each are, momentarily, in a transient manner. Because the Dao is neither personal presence nor rational power but creative energy, prior to any form or name, human rational activities are regarded by Daoists as secondary embellishments that often deviate from the “way” because they are rooted in human desires and reduce nature to raw material. Thus the spontaneous flow and generation of nature are impeded. The question for me then becomes whether a Christian theology of the Spirit can recognize the Dao as a form of Spirit that provides a needed corrective to the rationalizing and instrumentalizing tendencies of Western theology. I believe that it can, and that in so doing it should strive to find a balance between nature and reason, affirming their unification in the Spirit in a way that goes beyond anything that has yet been envisioned. My thanks to Hyo-Dong Lee for these thoughts.
15 Rahner, Karl, “Experience of the Holy Spirit,” in Theological Investigations, 18, trans. Quinn, Edward (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 189–210Google Scholar; see esp. 192–93, 195–99.
16 This is the language of George Eliot. See Hodgson, Peter C., The Mystery Beneath the Real: Theology in the Fiction of George Eliot (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), esp. 23.Google Scholar
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22 See the essays by Williams, Delores, Gupta, Lina, Hassan, Riffat, Gross, Rita, and Plaskow, Judith in After Patriarchy: Feminist Transformations of the World Religions, ed. Cooey, Paula M., Eakin, William R., and McDaniel, Jay B. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991).Google Scholar
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25 In The Future of Religions, 80–94.
26 Yong, , Discerning the Spirit(s), pp. 71–77Google Scholar, citing studies by Joseph Wong and Gary Badcock.
27 Rahner, , “Experience of the Holy Spirit,” Theological Investigations, 18:199–203.Google Scholar In earlier essays Rahner introduces certain qualifications that seem to be missing from this essay. In “The Church as the Subject of the Sending of the Spirit,” he distinguishes between the “hovering” of the Spirit over Israel and its “descent” at Pentecost. In “The Spirit That Is Over All Life,” he asks what distinguishes the Spirit that has “spoken through the prophets, and worked, dwelt and brought to maturity eternal life in all men of all ages” from the Spirit that descends at Pentecost. The answer is that the latter is “the eschatological Spirit, the Spirit as the irrevocable gift” in virtue of being the Spirit of Christ. See Theological Investigations, vol. 7 (trans. Bourke, David; New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 189, 195, 197.Google Scholar One wonders what these distinctions actually amount to. Is it really credible to suggest that the Spirit does not descend into the reality of Israel? The Hebrew Bible certainly attests that it does. Or that the Spirit that is over all life is not already or also the eschatological Spirit? Here vestiges of Rahner's inclusivist theology of religions are evident. I detect hints, as in the present passage and the one quoted at the beginning of this essay (see n. 2), that he was moving beyond this position in his latest writings.
28 I have been guided by the treatment of Hinduism and Buddhism in Esposito, John L., Fasching, Darell J., and Lewis, Todd, World Religions Today (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), chaps. 5–6Google Scholar; by a few books that focus on HinduChristian and Buddhist-Christian dialogue: Clooney, Francis X. S.J., Hindu Wisdom for All God's Children (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998)Google Scholar; Gross, Rita M. and Muck, Terry C., eds., Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about the Buddha (New York: Continuum, 2000)Google Scholar; Cobb, John B. Jr., Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982)Google Scholar; Cobb, John B. Jr., and Ives, Christopher, eds., The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990)Google Scholar; Pieris, Aloysius, Love Meets Wisdom: A Christian Experience of Buddhism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988)Google Scholar; and by Cooey, Eakin, and McDaniel, eds., After Patriarchy: Feminist Transformations of the World Religions.
29 World Religions Today, 282.
30 Ibid., 361–64, 371–73.
31 Cobb, Beyond Dialogue, chaps. 4–5.
32 In Cobb, and Ives, , eds., The Emptying God, 3–65.Google Scholar
33 This is clearly the position of José Ignacio Cabezón and Rita M. Gross in Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about the Buddha. See also the essay by Bonnie Thurston, who is critical of this position from a Christian perspective.
34 Unno, Taitetsu, “Contrasting Images of the Buddha,” in Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about the Buddha, 140–42.Google Scholar I have substituted the Sanskrit for the Pali spelling–dharma rather than dhamma—in this quotation.
35 Ibid., 142.