In his interesting new book, Pluralism: the Future of Religion, Kenneth Rose,
Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Christopher Newport University
(full disclosure: I am a CNU alum and Ken was one of my instructors) argues
that religious studies is in something of a crisis. The theology of religions—which seeks to
relate different religious traditions to Christianity and determine the
relationships between these traditions, a notion in theory possible for any religious tradition based on revealed wisdom*—is, according to Rose, at an
impasse. Comparative religion, to which
the theology of religions is necessarily prior, is similarly hobbled.
Theology of religions is at an impasse because current
scholarship is based on a default position of inclusivism which, though it
gives provisional value to non-Christian ideas, still has Christianity as its
starting point and its normative model.
Though in form, this inclusiveness rejects the claims of exclusivity
made by Christianity, Rose would have us see this as an illusion. Such “inclusivism,” in his opinion, is simply
a soft form of exclusivism, and no solution at all to the problems raised by
the welter of competing religious claims. Since exclusive claims of truth are
unsupportable in the modern world, this opens the door to pluralism, which has
largely been rejected by the scholarly community as, ironically, exclusivistic.
Pluralism, he suggests, sees “the availability of multiple
bodies of internally plausible but malleable religious teachings as negating
absolute claims for any of them.” (9)
Though he asserts that religions (note the plural) are attempting to
understand something real, what he calls “an immaterial dimension of beatitude
and deathlessness,” (12) the multitude of specific claims made by religious
traditions, and the changes undergone by these traditions over their histories,
provide sufficient reason to doubt that any one of them has the final word on
the matter.
As a counter to the older model of “cataphatic” pluralism,
which simply piles attributes on to the sacred in order to make a more complete
picture, Rose offers “apophatic” pluralism.
This views specific religious teachings as “a logical outcome of the
cultural and historical conditions that necessarily limit every form of
religious language.” (26) It strips away
all the symbols and attributes in favor of a direct encounter “with being, or
the divine, free from the limited constructs generated by language, the mind,
and culture.” (7) Historical religions
and their dogmas, in defining the sacred, necessarily limit it; each additional
predicate attached to the sacred is a step away from experiencing it.
Rose’s understanding of the historicity of religious
traditions is very important to his argument, and is worth exploring here. Though he rejects naturalistic theories of
religions—such as those offered by David Sloan Wilson, Richard Sosis,
and AraNorenzayan among others—which suggest that religion is
an adaptation that aids reproductive success of individuals and helps bind
groups together, his theory of religious change is evolutionary. He further denies that the religious realm is
accessible to the natural sciences at all and rejects compromise positions such
as Stephen Jay Gould’s “non-overlapping magisteria” since Rose sees in reaity
no “mental and physical dimensions that are entirely distinct from one
another.” (153)
Religions change, according to Rose, as they come into
contact with other religions.
Syncretism, which he suggests fosters hybridity and multiple religious
identity, also dismantles old identities and creates new ones in a process he
calls departicularization. Through this
process, apparently unchanging religious traditions are seen to change with
exposure to new religious ideas and religious others. It’s hard not to see them as organisms
swapping genes, or perhaps memes, and becoming new. Thus old religions pass on and new ones are
created. This is a process he sees
intensifying as, through globalization, disparate communities are brought into
closer and closer contact.
Recognition of this is important because, as Rose argues,
“[i]f human societies continue integrating at the current pace, no religious
tradition will be able to maintain nonnegotiable…claims except at the cost of
cutting off solidarity with other human beings and by retreating into ever
narrower and tragically doomed forms of fundamentalism.” (129) It is here and in his writing on syncretism
that Rose’s argument is at its strongest.
And no wonder—the very forces of modernity that are accelerating the
processes of syncretism and departicularization are those that gave rise to the
forces of religious fundamentalism, and its retreat into tribalism.
I am sympathetic to much of Rose’s argument here, as the
processes he describes as effecting religious change are not out of line with
my own naturalistic understanding of religion.
We can disagree on whether there is a divine “real” behind all the
appearances because we agree that, if such a real exists, it is inacessible to
science and, ultimately, makes no claims about the natural world. We can also agree that the religious
traditions that attempt to describe this real, or that attempt to give the
imprimatur of supernatural authority to natural processes, are products of
history. Both apophatic pluralism and
naturalism reveal these as efforts to name something that is unnameable either
because it is ineffable or because it doesn’t exist. Which it is in the end is, ultimately,
important only to individuals and not in some larger, cosmic sense.
But this agreement makes Rose’s rejection of Gould’s NOMA
perplexing. In proposing NOMA Gould
sought to exempt the “moral truths” of religion from scientific enquiry and to
exempt the discoveries of the sciences from religious scrutiny. Science, as Gould said, gets“the age of rocks
and religion retains the rock of ages; we study how the heavens go, and they
determine how to go to heaven.” Gould, like Rose, would also deny any
bifurcation between mental and physical realms, but conclude that both
areapparent phenomena of the natural world amenable investigation by
scientists. But, so long as the claims
of the mystic, or of the practitioner of everyday religion, do not extend to
the physical properties of the universe, a NOMA-embracing
scientist (or atheist) can say little about them.
Another point of concern is that Rose’s apophatic pluralism,
while a powerful model for the academic study of religion, seems unlikely to
have much impact among everyday religious believers. Though undoubtedly correct in his assertion
that “no religious community can preserve its language against change and decay
forever,” (68) he also notes that those relying on authority and tradition will
reject pluralist ideas.
This, it seems, is where a large number of believers, at
least in the Abrahamic traditions, live, in communities whose theologies range
from conservative to fundamentalist. Conservative
theoogians will stress the authority of tradition and scripture, while
fundamentalists will stress scriptures alone, interpreted literally. Though there have always been liberal and
conservative exegetical traditions, the encounter with modernity has given
special impetus to fundamentalism especially in Protestant Christianity and
Islam.
That this fundamentalism is ahistorical in that it does not
represent the normative experience of the majority of believers across time, and
is entirely a product of modernity, is not understood by those embracing it.
Fundamentalist believers live, as it were, in an eternal present, where the
parameters of their religion as they understand it stretch back to the
beginning of time and forward to the eschaton. Historical forms of their faith, the majority
of lived religious life, are viewed as defective forms at best, heterodoxy at
worst. Sectarian educational systems
that turn out fundamentalist theologians seem unlikely to be touched by
pluralist notions.
Indeed, the ongoing creative tension within even
non-fundamentalist religious traditions between orthodoxy and heterodoxy seems
to work against pluralism as well. While
syncretism is a feature of religions and not a bug, so, too, is the retreat
into orthodoxy when confronted with novelty.
Heterodox ideas force proponents of orthodoxy to better refine their
arguments and their dogmas, and build higher walls against outside
encroachment. Though their positions may
represent a compromise with heterodox ideas, the guardians of orthodoxy will,
like fundamentalists, maintain that their position represents a true
transmission of the faith and is catholic in its reach (see, e.g., Henderson, The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy)
More’s the pity. Rose
has presented a view of religious pluralism that seems to cast a wide enough
net to draw in all of those who believe, as he does, in a higher-order reality
that is a source of meaning. That it
makes no demands of its believers, that it offers no insights into physical
creation, that it is inclusive of multiple religious traditions while
privleging none, makes it a true middle ground of faith.
These same characteristics, however, seem to portend, at
least for the non-mystic, an anodyne faith.
The very traits that render a religion unoffensive to non-believers may
rob it of its snap for those who believe.
If we agree with Rose’s assertion that “as long as human experience
remains marked by finitude, loss, and suffering, religions will continue to thrive
in unforeseeable varieties among us, for just so long as it speaks about a
condition of beatitude that escapes the bounds of death,” (149) then we should
also assume that religious believers will be looking for concrete answers to
these problems and concrete promises of the world to come. So once again, the predicates come pouring
out and the cycle continues.
* Thanks, Ken, for the note of clarification.
* Thanks, Ken, for the note of clarification.
