The Syncretism Solution in a Multi-faith World: In Praise of Mixed Religion

William Harrison (2014), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

Harrison probes two questions:  What is religion?  How do, and how should, different religions relate to each other, and presents a cogent answer to the first question.  A religion needs to have five ‘things’:  form of organization, overarching explanation of reality, an account of human predicaments, faith commitment, identification of values (p 39).  (One of his forms of religion is consumerism! P 68).

Harrison points out that religious boundaries may be soft or hard—or both; eg some forms of Judaism (Orthodox) have firmer boundaries than does the Sikh religion, while some Jewish forms (Reform) have softer boundaries.  When changes in a religion (syncretism) are advocated, Harrison suggests three criteria for what constitutes an improvement:  the new answer must appear to be more accurate, more consistent with information we have. The new answer must be genuinely helpful in the world in which we live. The new answer sustains and even expands upon some important part of the religion as previously held (p 92,93).

Harrison identifies several favourable syncretistic acts in the history of religion:  Christianity and the Celtic tradition, where each shaped the other; Buddhism and Taoism; ancient and medieval Islam and Greek philosophy.  Sometimes syncretism results in negative formulations: violence (the Roman empire and the early church), and today’s prosperity gospel (material self-interest) (p 132).  Two favourable examples of syncretism are Cobb and Whitehead (process theology), and Gandhi (whose syncretism is counter cultural and hence dangerous! p 205).  ‘Soft boundaries allow for the possibility of mutual commitment to a common project….  Working together we can be more creative…The universal mixing of religions is a good thing’ (p 235).

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What Does Revelation Reveal?

Warren Carter (2011), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

Carter identifies reading strategies for John’s Apocalypse, articulates eight sections (revelations) and in the final chapter explores implications for contemporary readers.  Each chapter concludes with study questions.  He lists five assumptions shaping much current thinking of Revelation:  prediction of the end of the world, referring to literal events that will soon take place, focus on our time as key to understanding the future, drawing on other New Testament writers (eg for concepts such as the rapture, G-d’s removal of believers from the earth, and the anti-christ), passive response from the readers (we can’t do anything about things).

Carter has a different list of assumptions:  the historical (the church of John’s time under pressure to accommodate Roman culture), the hermeneutical (how interpret the text, an example of ‘apocalyptic literature’'); the text as prophecy, not prediction, but proclamation of G-d’s word and will; the text as letter, a pointed interaction with the readers.

Carter also emphasizes that the major setting of the book is not in a time of persecution (pp 136,137):  the issue is ‘how Jesus believers are to negotiate their intersections with their society’ (p 137).  He touches well on two problems areas of the book’s content: violence and women.  Women are sexualized in John’s writings, and are presented negatively, although they also figure on the other side of John’s dualism (p 130).  Violence is also a hermeneutical problem; the book constantly envisions violence (p 124), but a counter occurs when John is invited to see the Lion of the tribe of Judah, who turns out to a Lamb (Rev 5:6).  Revelation raises important issues:  the role of empire in G-d’s purposes, violence, role of women and men.  How can we shape our lives to enact G-d’s life-giving inclusive purposes?

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Ethics of Hope.

Jurgen Moltmann (2012), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

This is not a textbook offering an introduction to ethical theories or methods, nor does it offer political advice, but it makes suggestions for actions with hope, hope related to biblical themes having to do with endangered life, the threatened earth and the lack of justice and righteousness (pp 9,10).

Moltmann’s writing ranges widely and evocatively; he does not come with ‘answers’ but with a perspective gained from the nudging given by biblical themes.  He has an insightful section on human life that helps shape our response to medical issues (p 62,62).  Eg the fight for human survival is the fight for time.  He has helpful positions:  justice—not security—creates peace (p 64); we need to turn from domination to community (p 66); we are stardust (we are part of the cosmos) (p 69).

His section on medical ethics does not seek to give the solution to issues of abortion and/or euthanasia, but to ‘identify and understand what makes the issue a concern.'  An important section deals with earth ethics (p 107), gaia theory (p 109), which understands the earth ‘not merely as a living space for many types of life but as being itself ‘living’ and fruitful’ (p 109).  A powerful  theme of his book is that of the repudiation of violence, and the positive evaluations of the anabaptists’ emphasis on discipleship that ‘demands a life lived for peace, with vulnerability’ (p 30).

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Management and the Gospel

Bruno Dyck (2013), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

Dyck, professor in the Dept. of Business Administration, I. H. Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Canada, describes what management theory and practise looked like in the Palestinian first century, examines what Luke’s gospel says about management, and draws out contemporary implications.  Management (oikonomia) and money, reminders of Luke’s special emphasis on these topics.  Dyck examines management in Luke by sketching the theology of the topic:  how does salvation help us to manage the created world in ‘the image of G=d’, engage in meaningful work, live in and nurture community (p 13).  Luke’s management interest had relevance for the first century as well as for the 21st.

Key to Dyck’s approach is his outline of first century Palestinian management perspectives, a close examination of two parables (the shrewd manager, investing ten pounds), implications for 21st management theory and practise, and a close examination of the use of kurios, 'lord,' in Luke to describe both G-d and Jesus.  A powerful exegetical paradigm is offered that uses Luke’s narrative journey motif (Luke 9:51-19:40) with the Kingdom of G-d theme:  identifying the problem, focus on the KOB (kingdom of G-d) solution, develop new ways of perceiving issues, challenge the social elite to change existing institutions.  One of his appendices uses this four-phase process as a suggested paradigm using the Socratic method (p 213) and Paul’s usage, especially with his Areopagus address (p 214ff).

A top-notch reference of Palestinian culture and Lukan theology. 

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Letters of Paul

Bruce Malina & John Pilch (2006), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

This is not a commentary on the Pauline writings. (I Thessalonians; 1,2 Corinthians; Galatians, Romans, Philippians, Philemon are seen as authentically Pauline and treated in this volume.)  This volume draws insights from a range of social perspectives such as anthropology and social psychology, by examining the typical Eastern Mediterranean social behaviours witnessed in Paul’s letters.  Such an exercise is needed; readers need to enter Paul’s world, bringing to their reading mental scenarios proper to Paul’s time, place and culture, instead of imposing our own modern categories; ‘modern Christianity has little to do with ancestral expression in the Jesus groups of Paul’s day’ (p 3).  Eg taking the phrase ‘Judean and Greek’ as meaning Jews and Greeks is erroneous. Judeans were people who practised the customs of Judea; Greeks were people who practised the customs of Hellenists, a broad catch-all for Mediterranean citizens who used the common Greek language.  To have Judean and Greek mean ‘Jews and Greeks’ (or ‘Jews and Gentiles’) is simply wrong; this has obvious implications for reading Paul.

Pp 331-409 contain reading scenarios, short essays on key cultural components underlying the Paulines.  These provide wonderful brief ‘essays’ on topics such as ‘altered states of consciousness’ (visions, dreams), Greeks and Israelites, honour-shame societies, meals, patronage systems and religious/economic/politics.  Eg we can’t read Romans 13 to generate a theory of separation of church and state; that is an imposition of our own culture that separates these.  ‘relationship of subject to official is an interpersonal one in which disobedience personally dishonours the official’ (p 393).

A great book to refocus our reading the Paulines.

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Prophecy Without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square

Cathleen Kaveny (2016), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

This is one of the most significant books of the past decades, treating moral discourse with a live sense of pluralism.  The most pressing current issue, Kaveny points out, is to incorporate a lively sense of humility into the practice of the jeremiad (passionate condemnations of sinful behaviour). Is it possible to condemn without contempt?

She examines two documents that say ‘yes’, that avoid prophetic rhetoric to change condemnation into contempt (p 4); ‘citizens rightly call each to account for violations of our most fundamental commitments.  Contempt, however, is a different matter’ (p x).

Kaveny articulates two instances of jeremiads:  Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and the Jewish prophetic book of Jonah, both characterized by humility, key element in effective treatment of the intersection of religion, morality public policy; Lincoln’s Adddress and Jonah evidence humility and self-criticism in prophetic speech, both qualities that became first victims of the 2016 American presidential campaigns (my aside).

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The Social Sciences and New Testament Interpretation

Richard Rohrbaugh, ed. (1996), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

Many of the contemporary understandings of western christian belief derive from our peculiar cultural interpretations of the bible.  When we immerse ourselves in strange Mediteranian readings of the bible, old interpretations are threatened, and we need to see through the eyes of someone socialized in a culture different from our own.  Eg westerners  know little about ‘the evil eye’, and when we read Mt 6:22,23 we find it difficult to understand Jesus’ words. In the text, an evil eye is bad for the person being looked at; Jesus’ hearers would have recognized that Jesus was talking about light that originates in the heart and could do them either good or evil.

High infant mortality rates (up to 30%) made children vulnerable; when mothers brought their children to Jesus it was not because of a sweet interest in children, but of ‘the vulnerable, the frightened and the terror-stricken who make up the implausible kingdom of G-d’ (p 5).  Jesus’ prayer, that we not be put to the test, is the plaintive cry of a peasant that he not be hauled into a debt court in front of a corrupt judge’ and have his land taken from him (p 6).

The book examines ten Mediterranean cultural strands (eg kinship, honour and shame, patronage, table fellowship) by referencing key social science studies; each chapter has at least one example of using contemporary anthropological studies in working with a biblical text (ie in the honour-shame discussion, ‘grace’ is the theological term that supercedes the ‘honour’ cultural theme), and has a helpful bibliography on the anthropological theme being examined, a good combination of theological and secular.

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Paul and the Popular Philosophers

Abraham Malharbe (1989), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

‘Early Christianity developed out of a culture which was more Greek and Roman than Jewish…. Preaching Christians borrowed their arguments and forms of address from Greek philosophers’ (p 2).  ‘Paul’s followers and interpreters took his familiarity with moral philosophy for granted….  He addressed some of the issues Epicureans, Cynics, Stoics and Platonists raised; not their metaphysical systems but their concerns  aimed at moral reformation….   He remains Paulus christianos without making him less Paulus hellenisticus (p 5, 9).

Malherbe takes key Pauline concepts and shows how they were used by his contemporary moral writers, so phrases such as ‘by no means’, ‘gentle as a nurse’, medical imagery, ‘in season and out of season’, ‘not in a corner,’ are key Pauline concepts that are traced back to their philosophical perspectives.  Eg, me genoito, by no means, has several formulations and is used in the diatribal literature of the philosophers. 

It’s a fascinating study of an early Christian thoroughly familiar with the traditions of his philosophical contemporaries, but using these for pastoral emphases (eg ‘nurse’ and ‘father’ in 1 Thessalonians) (p 53).  Paul’s use of the traditional hortatory philosophical tradition is marked by profound change as he reshapes the material to express his experience of G-d working in him or uses traditional Christian material to address issues of concern to pagan philosophers (p 66).

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Paul, in Other Words: a Cultural Reading of His Letters

Jerome Neyrey (1990), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

Paul, in Other Words attempts to interpret Paul’s letters by describing the symbolic universe of Paul as ‘a  first-century Eastern Mediterranean non-elite, typically viewing his cosmos’ (p 12), using cultural anthropology as a help in adjusting to a culture totally different from ours. Paul’s cosmos is made up of six areas:  purity, rites (rituals and ceremonies), body, sin, cosmology and evil.  Paul’s socialization was as a Jew of Pharisaic stripe, and a cultural context shared by Jews, Greeks and Christians.

Another key to Pauline interpretation is Neyrey’s listing of reading assumptions: occasional letters, inconsistency, conserver, reformer, saint Paul, history.  Insightful comments about the role of body language and metaphor draw heavily from 1 Corinthians (p 102ff).  Neyrey examines sin, pointing out Paul’s concept of sin as a two-fold phenomenon: rule breaking and/or corruption.

Also useful is Neyrey’s reflections on rituals and ceremonies in the church.  Rituals focus on acts that involve border crossings (graduations, sickness); ceremonies confirm the orderly separation (baptism).  Paul often disagrees with the divisions that rituals and ceremonies create, and ‘brings to the centre people usually left on the periphery’ (p 77); specific Pauline ceremonies include meals, the collections, and letters (p 78).

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St. Paul: The Apostle we Love to Hate

Karen Armstrong (2015, reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

Paul the apostle exerted a more significant influence on the spread of Christianity than any other figure in history, establishing the first Christian church in Europe and Asia in the first century, transforming a minor sect into the largest western-produced religion, articulating the conviction that Christ could serve as a model for personal and corporate transcendence. His dramatic vision of G-d on the road to Damascus is one of the most powerful stories in Christianity.  Armstrong focuses on the geographical dimension of Paul’s work:  Damascus, Antioch, Macedonia (the Galatian exchange).  She draws her material from the seven letters generally regarded as Pauline (1 Thessalonians, Galatians; 1,2 Corinthians; Philippians, Philemon, Romans, p 13).

‘Paul was a lifelong opponent of the structural injustice of the Roman Empire…. And struggled to transcend the barriers of ethnicity, class and gender’ (pp 13,14).  (She does not place as much confidence in Acts—Luke’s emphasis there is an apologetic for Roman society, and Luke writes 20 years after Paul’s letters appear.)  (Cf her reason for the Pauline-Barnabas breakup, p 38, with that given in Acts 15:37)  Armstrong works hard at bringing clarity to two issues treated in the Paulines:  struggle against ‘super spiritualists (p 69), and his attempt to show intra-ekklesial support with the collection for the Jerusalem poor (p 46).  There’s a good treatment of the use of terms common in imperial propaganda that Paul then turned upside down (euangelion, soter, Eirene, p 54). 

A good perspective on Pauline contribution to the life of the church.

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