A Catholic Comparativist's View of Scriptural Reasoning in the Anglican Context

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis X. Clooney
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Common ◽  
Scriptural Reasoning ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractThis article is a response to the essays in this issue of the Journal of Anglican Studies on scriptural reasoning in the Anglican context, from the perspective of a Roman Catholic theologian, and one who is engaged in another kind of interreligious study, comparative theology. It sets out in general terms the distinctive character of comparative theology as an inquiry that crosses the borders between religious traditions. It draws attention to some of the common ground between comparative theology and scriptural reasoning and the character of each as theological disciplines, even while drawing out some of the distinctive marks of comparative theology. In this way it aims to shed light on how scriptural reasoning, even in its general form, is similar to other sustained efforts at interreligious learning, yet possessed of distinctive characteristics that make it interestingly different from the close reading that is comparative theology.

Puripetal force in the charitable field

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Benthall
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
International Committee ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Boundary Maintenance ◽  
Us Government ◽  
The Common ◽  
International Humanitarianism ◽  
Special Case

This Chapter, published by Depends on timing. the journal Asian Ethnology, is a theoretical exercise, inspired by Mary Douglas’s classic anthropological text Purity and Danger, that sets out to clarify the wide range of relationships between religions and humanitarian traditions as ideological movements, taking Islam as an instance. It postulates that the concept of the “sacred” is a special case of boundary maintenance or “purism”. Metaphorically, “puripetal force” (a neologism) is defined as a tendency common to all ideological systems, a resistance to social entropy or anomie. An explanatory model is proposed that accommodates forms of concentrated purism such as (within Islam) Wahhabi-Salafism and (within humanitarianism) the legacy of Henry Dunant, founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Specific Islamic charities and welfare organizations interact differentially with both religious and humanitarian traditions. Meanwhile, US government policy towards charities sometimes seems dominated by an urge to peer into purity of motives. Finally, it is suggested that the model could equally be applied to Christian and other religious traditions, with the concluding thought that the common ground between the institutions of international humanitarianism and religious traditions is currently expanding.

Contextualism, Decontextualism, and Perennialism

1998 ◽  
pp. 142-146
Author(s):  
Timothy A. Mahoney
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
Religious Epistemology ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Perennial Philosophy ◽  
The Common ◽  
Mystical Experiences ◽  
Central Claim

This paper addresses religious epistemology in that it concerns the assessment of the credibility of certain claims arising out of religious experience. Developments this century have made the world’s rich religious heritage accessible to more people than ever. But the conflicting religious claims tend to undermine each religion’s central claim to be a vehicle for opening persons to ultimate reality. One attempt to overcome this problem is provided by "perennial philosophy," which claims that there is a kind of mystical experience common to all religious traditions, an experience which is an immediate contact with an absolute principle. Perennialism has been attacked by "contextualists" such as Steven Katz who argue that particular mystical experiences are so tied to a particular tradition that there are no common mystical experiences across traditions. In turn, Robert Forman and the "decontextualists" have argued that a certain kind of mystical experience and process are found in diverse traditions, thereby supporting one of the key elements of perennialism. I review the contextualist-decontextualist debate and suggest a research project that would pursue the question of whether the common ground of the world’s mystical traditions could be expanded beyond what has been established by the decontextualists. The extension of this common ground would add credibility to the claims arising out of mystical experience.

Abrahamic Scriptural Reading from an Anglican Perspective

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Quash
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Scriptural Reasoning

AbstractThis article offers a distinctively Anglican evaluation of the practice of Scriptural Reasoning. It draws upon personal experience, and frames its discussion with two ‘case studies’ describing SR study in action. It engages closely with Peter Ochs's positive theorization of Anglican postliberalism from a Jewish perspective in his book Another Reformation. With Ochs, the article rejects the premise that a neutral ‘common ground’ of theoretical agreement is a prerequisite for fruitful encounter across religious traditions, and claims that the traditions in question have generated their own tradition-specific resources for dialogue. The central part of the argument looks for correlations between an Anglican trinitarianism that valorizes historical process and analogical reasoning (something that, with Ochs, might be described as a pneumatological emphasis on the ‘found’), and an Anglican legitimation of SR. The value of reading commentary from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions alongside scriptural texts is asserted.

scholarly journals Interreligious Dialogue, Comparative Theology and the Alterity of Hindu Thought

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ankur Barua
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Interreligious Dialogue ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
British India ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Crucial Difference ◽  
The One

A key question at the heart of contemporary debates over interreligious dialogue is whether the Christian partner in such conversations should view her interlocutors through the lens of Christian descriptions or whether any such imaging amounts to a form of Christian imperialism. We look at the responses to this question from certain contemporary forms of ‘particularism’ which regard religious universes as densely knit, and sometimes incommensurable, systems of meanings, so that they usually deny the significance, or even the possibility, of modes of bible preaching such as apologetics. While these concerns over the alterity of other religious traditions are often viewed as specifically postmodern, two Scotsmen in British India, J. N. Farquhar (1861–1929) and A. G. Hogg (1875–1954), struggled exactly a hundred years ago with a version of this question vis-à-vis the religious universe of Vedāntic Hinduism and responded to it in a manner that has striking resemblances to ‘particularism’. We shall argue that Hogg can be seen as an early practitioner of a form of ‘comparative theology’ which emerges in his case, on the one hand, through a textual engagement with specific problems thrown up in interreligious spaces but, on the other hand, also seeks to present a reasoned defence of Christian doctrinal statements. We shall note a crucial difference between his comparative theological encounters and contemporary practitioners of the same – while the latter are usually wary of speaking of any ‘common ground’ in interreligious encounters, Hogg regarded the presuppositions of the Christian faith as the basis of such encounters. The writings of both groups of theologians are structured by certain ‘dilemmas of difference’ that we explore.

Using Hevruta to Do and Teach Comparative Theology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devorah Schoenfeld ◽  
Jeanine Diller
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Method ◽  
Learning Objectives ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Religious Difference ◽  
Scriptural Reasoning ◽  
Methods Of Learning ◽  
Classroom Use

The traditional method of study known as hevruta is the foundation of traditional Jewish methods of learning as practiced in the yeshiva. This method has been articulated as Scriptural Reasoning in a way that emphasizes the practice of engaged reflection on a text. In this chapter, the authors will attempt a different articulation based on the use of this method in their classrooms, an approach that emphasizes disagreement. When disagreement is placed at the center of the process, the hevruta method becomes a tool for encountering and learning from religious difference. The chapter provides an overview of and rationale for using hevruta, a treatment of learning objectives, suggested steps for classroom use, sample questions, and a discussion of hevruta and comparative theology.

Teaching Interreligious Encounters

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Religiously Affiliated ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Multidisciplinary Group ◽  
And Migration

Teaching Interreligious Encounters is a volume of essays that explores various issues related to practical and theoretical facets of teaching across multiple religious traditions, including comparative theology and theologies of religious pluralism. This volume brings together an international, multireligious, and multidisciplinary group of scholars who address teaching interreligious encounters in a variety of teaching contexts: undergraduate and graduate, divinity schools and seminaries, secular and religiously affiliated, and traditional and online settings. This volume will be a unique and useful resource for those who encounter religious pluralism in their courses, a topic of pressing importance in our age of globalization and migration.

Brentano on Awareness and Observation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Textor
Keyword(s):  
Mental Life ◽  
Mental Phenomenon ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
Shed Light

When we are aware of our perceiving, we cannot attend to (observe) our perceiving, only the object which we (seem to) perceive. The perceiving is therefore the secondary, the object perceived the primary object. The chapter develops and evaluates Brentano’s grounds for the distinction between the primary and the secondary object. This project is of independent philosophical interest because Brentano’s view promises to shed light on the distinctive character of awareness. Awareness cannot become observation, because mere awareness of a mental phenomenon cannot contrast it with others. I argue further that Brentano’s account of noticing and observation has room for an ‘anatomy of the soul’ that proceeds by noticing the elements of our mental life.

The Semantics of Evidentials

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Formal Semantics ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
The Common ◽  
Issue Content

This book gives a compositional, truth‐conditional, crosslinguistic semantics for evidentials set in a theory of the semantics for sentential mood. Central to this semantics is a proposal about a distinction between what propositional content is at‐issue, roughly primary or proffered, and what content is not‐at‐issue. Evidentials contribute not‐at‐issue content, more specifically what I will call a not‐at‐issue restriction. In addition, evidentials can affect the level of commitment a sentence makes to the main proposition, contributed by sentential mood. Building on recent work in the formal semantics of evidentials and related phenomena, the proposed semantics does not appeal to separate dimensions of illocutionary meaning. Instead, I argue that all sentences make three contributions: at‐issue content, not‐at‐issue content, and an illocutionary relation. At‐issue content is presented, made available for subsequent anaphora, but is not directly added to the common ground. Not‐at‐issue content directly updates the common ground. The illocutionary relation uses the at‐issue content to impose structure on the common ground, which, depending on the clause type (e.g., declarative, interrogative), can trigger further updates. Empirical support for this proposal comes from Cheyenne (Algonquian, primary data from the author’s fieldwork), English, and a wide variety of languages that have been discussed in the literature on evidentials.

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