364 - Religious Pluralism & On Nature

Religious Pluralism
Edited by Leroy S. Rouner
Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1984. 230 pp. $22.95.

On Nature
Edited by Leroy S. Rouner
Notre Dame, University, of Notre Dame Press, 1984. 188 pp. $22.95.

Another stellar cast of contributors is featured in these "Two most recent volumes of the Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion, edited by Leroy S. Rouner, Professor of Philosophical Theology at Boston University and Director of Boston University's Institute for Philosophy and Religion. Readers of both works may expect the best in commentary on the broad themes that dominate conversations between philosophy and religion.

The Religious Pluralism volume clusters its authors contributions around three major dimensions of the problem of religious pluralism. Contributors treat pluralism, first, as a diversity of religious thought and practice in Western culture itself (E. Borowitz, F. Sontag, M. Capek, and J. Prabhu). Second, the very notion of "religion" is diverse, and so, in the second part of this book, authors redefine religion in light of its pluralistic and ambiguous meanings (R. Panikkar, D. Tracy E. Deutsch, and N. Smart). The problematic of religious plurality involves a so-called "quest for common ground." In this third dimension. therefore, the focus is on pluralism as a Christian theological problem (J. Cobb, J. Hick, and G. Rupp).

On Nature groups its essays in a different threefold manner. It begins with a group of essays focusing on "natural science and philosophy of nature." Here writers address the problem of understanding nature as a scientific, philosophical, and religious problem (W. V. Quine, S. Toulmin, H. Smith, D. Sagan, and L. Margulis). In its second part, this volume takes its own pluralist turn, the most valuable part of the book, I think, by viewing nature from the cross-cultural perspectives of the Greek classics, Buddhism, and Chinese thought (C. Ruck, R. A. F. Thurman, and Tu Wei-Ming). The book's third part sets emergent views of nature into the light of traditional religious values. Here J. Moltmann, C. Hartshorne, J. Findlay, and J. Bennett focus mainly on the place of human nature in the natural world.

Let me suggest that what makes these two homogeneous book's capable of being reviewed together here is their tendency to manifest so well a commitment of the books sponsoring Institute: "Religious an

366 - Religious Pluralism & On Nature

cultural pluralism is now the inescapable context for all work in the philosophy of religion" (p. viii, in both volumes). The volume's contributions can be appreciated and assessed from the perspective of this commitment.

The very title of Religious Pluralism, as well as its contents, displays the commitment. Read this book to encounter religious pluralism in its many forms: Jewish and Christian approaches to history, the tensions between the Unification Church and mainline religions in North America, different readings among Christians of the Johannine Gospel, conflicting interpretations of religion, various views of what the experience of plurality means for Christian theology. The book powerfully sows in its readers a healthy respect for religious pluralism.

While I share this book's respect for plurality, let me nevertheless register three concerns. First, I miss in this conversation about religious pluralism the voices of thinkers or theologians from other religions. The dialogue constitutive of inter-religious thought needs to focus not only on the Christian experience of plurality and the meaning of this for Christian thought, but also on other religion's experience of plurality (to the extent that there is such experience) and the meanings they attribute to plurality. Though the editor appropriately observes that plurality has been a special concern for the Christian, study of other religion's interpretations of otherness would only enrich this volumes contribution.

Second, I am not sure the volume does full justice to the challenge of cultural pluralism, which is mentioned in the Institute's own commitment. True as it is that religious pluralism has its own distinctive problematics, and hence should not be reduced to cultural pluralism, it is equally true that cultural pluralism constitutes a distinctive, irreducible challenge. Religious Pluralism's failure to labor over the meaning of "culture," in a way comparable to its several attempts to redefine "religion," suggests that the cultural challenge is not felt as keenly. With a few exceptions, there is missing here the often more staggering force of cultural relativity that meets the religious thinker when cultural and social anthropologists like Geertz, Turner, Douglas, Levi-Strauss, or Marshall Sahlins present "religion as a cultural system, to use Geertz's familiar essay title. Ninian Smart's call for "worldview analysis" through "moccasin walking" (fieldwork?) may be a call to use of anthropology's culture concept for making sense of diverse field encounters among others. But such calls are infrequently found in this volume.

My final concern grows out of the preceding one. To the extent that the full force of cultural relativity is not felt, temptations may persist to reinstate some undifferentiated unity, some transcendent Same that may once again undermine respect for otherness. John Cobb nicely articulates this concern when he suspects that the old imperialism can be surreptitiously reintroduced even amid our acknowledgments of plurality. Waving the flag of otherness, our visions of an undifferentiated union may still reign. Hicks approach may be an example. In spite of his clear

367 - Religious Pluralism & On Nature

and helpful insistence on the particularity of religions distinctive "ethnicity," his statement that "Reality-centeredness is manifestly taking place" within each major variant way of being human seems too easy a move. Perhaps, it is the heading for Part Three, "The Quest for Common Ground," that is most misleading. Is the metaphor, "common ground," still an adequate one as we learn more about the recalcitrant nature of plurality? The better way toward unity amidst plurality for which many of these contributors aspire is not so much through the securing of common ground as it is through the celebration of otherness or the orchestration of differences.

In turning to the second volume, we may note that On Nature also displays this serie's commitment to setting philosophy of religion in a pluralist context. It is the second part of the book that does this most strikingly, especially the chapters on Buddhist and Chinese views of nature. Here nature emerges not as an empirical domain of lawful regularities, as we so often see it in the West, but as "malleable matiere, the raw material of the supreme artistry, the artistry of liberated life" (Thurman). Here, "mountains now like rivers."

This more malleable view of nature is also stressed by some of the other contributors in the book. Even Quine, who here succinctly states his "robust realism," cautions that the real has its solidity and objectivity within our own and related languages. Toulmin notes that the natural scheme of things requires supple religious insight as well as scientist's exacting analyses. Biologist Margulis, when commenting on the Gaia hypothesis (holding, in short, that the entire earth functions as a massive machine or response mechanism), urges that the Earth Goddess, Gaia, has something to say to scientists. Other contributors comment on the malleability of nature, seeking ways to relate this often objectified realm of nature to the inter-subjective ones of human vision and value.

This book impressively conveys to readers the malleability of nature when studied in pluralist perspective. But here we may register a first concern with On Nature. On the basis of this book it is difficult to discern what role the natural science tradition of the West may still have in this new pluralist age. What becomes of scientific explanation, with its rigorous physical and operational values? The book seems better at questioning Western sciences stances, which often separate natural fact and human value, than in suggesting what nature as "malleable matiere" means for explanatory procedures practiced in the community of natural scientists. There is only one natural scientist here (biologist Margulis). The conversation of this book would not only be more representative, but also qualitatively enhanced if natural scientists could have articulated here the meaning of plural visions of nature for their own self-understanding and practice.

A second concern may be registered. While On Nature helpfully depicts the plurality of visions of nature, it seems that again, as with Religious Pluralism this is done mainly by reference to religious plurality rather than to cultural plurality. The section on "Nature in

368 - Religious Pluralism & On Nature

Cross-Cultural Perspective" does not really introduce into philosophy of religion the problem, for example, of culturally specific views of natural phenomena. One recalls Franz Boas' classic claims that discerning the color of sea-water is a culturally specific perception, or Marshall Sahlin's and Mary Douglas' more recent accounts of how perceptions of color, space, and time are culturally mediated. When nature is "malleable matiere" in these senses, then the contributions of religious visions may be assessed in their more complex contexts. It may be that in future volumes of this series, which deserves its highly acclaimed reception, we will see a work "On Culture," or, at least, a work that gives explicit treatment to the culture concept and the ways cultural plurality calls for response from philosophers of religion.

These two volumes prompt criticisms such as those aired here, and no doubt others. But even the criticisms that these books invite are testimony to the significance of the conversation within them. Every university, college, and seminary library will want these two volumes, as well as the previous ones of the series. There is reading in the philosophy of religion here that will interest scholars of almost every discipline.

Mark Kline Taylor
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey