The Age of Global Dialogue

Swidler

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498208680
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Thinking beyond the absolutes Christians and other religious persons increasingly find "deabsolutized" in our modern thought world, Swidler reflects on the ways we humans think about the world and its meaning now that increasingly we notice that there are other ways of understanding the world than the way we grew up in. In this new situation we need to develop a common language we can use together both to appreciate our neighbors and enrich ourselves, what the author calls Ecumenical Esperanto, because it should serve as a common language without replacing any of the living languages of our religious and ideological traditions. Of course, such thinking anew about the world and its meaning must necessarily mean thinking anew about all of our religious beliefs--but this time, in dialogue.

1

Bases of Dialogue

Definition of Religion

Let me begin by giving my understanding of the term “religion” in very brief fashion:

Religion is an explanation of the ultimate meaning of life, based on a notion and experience of the transcendent, and how to live accordingly; and it normally contains the four “C’s”: Creed, Code, Cult, Community-structure.

Creed refers to the cognitive aspect of a religion; it is everything that goes into the “explanation” of the ultimate meaning of life.

Code of behavior or ethics includes all the rules and customs of action that somehow follow from one aspect or another of the Creed.

Cult means all the ritual activities that relate the believer to one aspect or other of the Transcendent, either directly or indirectly, prayer being an example of the former and certain formal behavior toward representatives of the Transcendent, such as priests, of the latter.

Community-structure refers to the relationships among the believers; this can vary widely, from a very egalitarian relationship, as among Quakers, through a “republican” structure as Presbyterians have, to a monarchical one, as with some Hasidic Jews vis-à-vis their Rebbe.

Transcendent, as the roots of the word indicate, means “that which goes beyond” the everyday, the ordinary, the surface experience of reality. It can mean spirits, gods, a Personal God, an Impersonal God, Emptiness, etc.

Especially in modern times there have developed “explanations of the ultimate meaning of life and how to live accordingly” that are not based on a notion of the transcendent, for example, Marxism or Atheistic Humanism. Although in every respect these “explanations” function as religions traditionally have in human life, because the idea of the transcendent, however it is understood, plays such a central role in religion, but not in these “explanations” as was discussed above, for the sake of accuracy it is best to give these “explanations” that are not based on notion of the transcendent a separate name; the name often used is “ideology.” Much, though not all, of the following discussion will, mutatis mutandis (Latin: “changing what needs to be changed”), also apply to ideology even when the term is not used. More about this below.

Meaning of Dialogue

I am here focusing on the current customary meaning of dialogue, namely, the Dialogue of the Head (more about this distinction and others of dialogue below), and especially dialogue in the religious—and ideological—area. It is important to realize that Dialogue of the Head is not simply a series of conversations. It is a whole new way of thinking, a way of seeing and reflecting on the world and its meaning.

If I were writing just for Christians, I would use the term “theology” to name what I am largely talking about here. But, the dialogical way of thinking is not something that is peculiarly Christian, though Christians for a variety of historical reasons are today at the forefront in employing it and promoting its use. Dialogue, however, is a way for all human beings to reflect on the ultimate meaning of life. So, whether one is a theist or not, whether one is given to using Hellenistic thought categories as Christians have been wont to do in their “theologizing” or not, dialogue is ever more clearly the way of the future in religious—and ideological—reflection on the ultimate meaning of life and how to live accordingly.

In this book I try to think beyond the absolutes that I as a Christian—and others in their own ways—have increasingly found deabsolutized in the modern thought world. I try to reflect on the ways all of us humans need to think about the world and its meaning, now that more and more of us, both individually and even at times institutionally, are gaining enough maturity to notice that there are entire other ways of integrating an understanding of the world than the way in which we and our forebears grew up.

In this new situation I sense the need for consciously developing a common language we can use effectively to communicate with each other so that we can learn about these other ways of seeing the world, both to appreciate our neighbors and to enrich ourselves. I call this common language “Ecumenical Esperanto,” because it should serve as a common language without replacing any of the living languages, that is, the languages of our religious and ideological traditions.

Of course, such thinking anew about the world and its meaning must necessarily mean thinking anew about all of our religious beliefs, and for me as a Christian this preeminently includes my central teaching, the meaning of Jesus the Christ, Christology. Hence, I here attempt to begin thinking through again the meaning of Christology—but this time, in dialogue.

My dialogue partners in this new paradigm of understanding the world, of thinking, are all the world’s ways of understanding the world and its meaning—the world’s religions and ideologies. So, I here attempt to engage in dialogue with at least the world’s major religions and ideologies, reflecting on what we—in this case, Christian and non-Christian—can learn about and from each other. But, beyond all these dialogue partners is the often unconscious but always pervasive dialogue partner, for me and an ever increasing number of contemporaries, of modern critical thought, Modernity.1

Precisely those of us who are open to dialogue, that is, those of us who are open to going beyond our prior absolutes to learning from each other, live in a deabsolutized, a relationized, a modern, critical-thinking thought-world, a thought-world wherein we no longer can live on the level of the first naiveté but are at least striving to live on the level of the second naiveté. On this level we see our root symbols and metaphors as symbols and metaphors and, hence, do not mistake them for empirical, ontological realities, but also we do not simply reject them as fantasies and fairy tales. Rather, because we see them as root symbols and metaphors, we correctly appreciate them as indispensable vehicles to communicate profound realities that go beyond the capacity of our everyday language.

Here again it is becoming clear that in the attempt to communicate and receive the understandings and insights gained in reflecting dialogically on our root metaphors, we need a common language—one of course that never will be adequate but will always be growing, one that will never replace the “primary” living languages of our root metaphors growing out of our origins and traditions but that nevertheless will become increasingly indispensable in the future: “Ecumenical Esperanto.” It is in that language that I attempt at the end of this volume to do an exegesis of a key Christian scripture—dialogically after the absolute.

In the past, from the very beginning of humankind, we have always talked with ourselves, that is, we always spoke with persons who thought as we did—or who should! We spoke always in monologue. In the past century-and-a-half, as we have slowly moved in the direction of a deabsolutized understanding of truth, we have slowly begun to realize that no one person or community, culture, religion, or civilization can express all there is to know about any particular reality, especially Ultimate Reality. Hence, we are beginning to realize that we must be in dialogue with those who think differently from us, not to teach them the truth, but to learn more about reality that we cannot know from ourselves alone. We are unavoidably moving into dialogue, into Deep-Dialogue.

In short, humanity is now painfully leaving the Age of Monologue, where we have been since the dawn of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, and are moving, with blinking, blurry vision yet, into the Age of Global Dialogue.

Hence, beyond the absolute way of understanding the world and its meaning for us, beyond the absolute way of thinking, we humans are beginning to find a much richer, “truer,” way of understanding the world—the dialogical way of thinking. It is to this dialogical way of thinking, particularly in the area of religion and ideology, that I turn now in greater detail.

Thomas Kuhn revolutionized our understanding of the development of scientific thinking with his notion of paradigm shifts. He painstakingly showed that fundamental “paradigms” or “exemplary models” are the large thought-frames within which we place and interpret all observed data and that scientific advancement inevitably brings about eventual paradigm shifts—from geocentrism to heliocentrism, for example, or from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics—that are always vigorously resisted at first, as was the thought of Galileo, but that finally prevail.2 This insight, however, not only is valid for the development of thought in the physical sciences but also is applicable to all major disciplines of human thought, including the systematic religious and ideological reflection that Christians, and now some others as well, call “theology.”

A major paradigm shift in systematic religious and ideological reflection, that is, in “theology” then means a major change “in the very idea of what it is to do theology.”3 For example, the major Christian theological revolution that occurred at the first Ecumenical Council (Nicaea, 325 ce) did not so much resolve the battle over whether the Son and Father were of “the same substance,” homoousion, important as that was, but rather that, “by defining ‘homoousion,’ tacitly admitted that here were issues in theology that could not be solved simply on the basis of recourse to the language of the Scriptures.”4 In the next several centuries a flood of new answers poured forth to questions being posed in categories unused by Jesus and his first (Jewish, of course) followers—in this case, in Greek philosophical categories of th...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Bases of Dialogue
• Chapter 2: Religion (Ideology)—Its Meaning
• Chapter 3: The “Inner” Dialogue
• Chapter 4: The “Inter” Dialogue
• Chapter 5: Dialogue in the World
• Chapter 6: Dialogue Attempted
• Chapter 7: Final Conclusion