Abstracts of papers for CTS 2008

Abstracts of the papers accepted
for the Annual Meeting
of the Canadian Theological Society

University of British Columbia, Vancouver
June 2nd to 4th, 2008

These abstracts are taken from the proposals submitted in response to the Call for Papers. The actual titles and topics may vary slightly from that advertised.

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

8:45-8:55 (VST 300) — Welcome & Announcements

9:00-10:30 (VST 300) — Panel: Thinking “Beyond Borders”: Teaching Religious Studies and Theology

Since the advent of Religious Studies, the border that exists between it and theology has often been a hostile one. This panel considers this vexed relationship from the perspective of those engaged “on the front” as educators in both disciplines. The scholars, teachers and chaplains assembled on this panel will speak of the particular challenges and potentialities of working in both worlds, and will consider possibilities for rapprochements of various kinds in the post-foundational and global-oriented intellectual climate of contemporary Canadian universities.

Panelists: Peter Slater (Trinity College), Erin Phillips (University of Lethbridge), Stan Porter (McMaster Divinity College), Robert Kennedy (St. Francis Xavier University).
Chair: Jane Barter Moulaison (University of Winnipeg)

9:00-9:55 (VST 309) — The Influence of William James on the Historical Theology of Ernst Troeltsch

Michael Sohn (University of Chicago Divinity School)

Ernst Troeltsch, the great German liberal theologian of the early 20th century, is usually read by scholars against the background of German intellectual history. While this dominant view certainly holds true as Troeltsch himself explicitly professes to be indebted to this tradition, he also expressed, in two lesser known essays the profound influence that the American pragmatist, William James, had on his thought. Troeltsch refers to James first in an address delivered at the Congress of Arts and Science in St. Louis in 1904, only three years after James came out with his published Gifford Lectures assembled under the title The Varieties of Religious Experience, and again in 1912 in an article written in memory of James’ life and work.

This paper will explore the less well-known influence of James and American pragmatism on Troeltsch, which I shall argue is central to understanding his thought. After all, the central problem with which Troeltsch wrestled throughout his career, namely how one can reconcile religious values and convictions given the facts of historical relativity, presupposes some account of the emergence or genesis of values. And to this prior question, Troeltsch’s formulation of religious experience as a creative and free act of value innovation is thoroughly Jamesian. While this paper aims to illuminate a much ignored aspect of Troeltsch’s thought, I believe it also speaks to pressing problems in our contemporary situation with respect to a concern for values amidst increasing global interactions and consciousness of diversity and plurality.

10:05-11:00 (VST 309) — Truth-Telling and Justice in the Contact Zone: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools

Denise Nadeau (Interfaith Summer Institute for Justice, Peace and Social Movements)

The upcoming Truth and Residential Commission (TRC) on Residential Schools in Canada allows the opportunity to shine a light on the ” contact zone “– the space where settlers and Aboriginal people meet and interact, both in the past and present, as colonizers and colonized. The residential schools were one of the main vehicles through which European gender relationships were imposed on Native communities and they played a significant role in introducing gender violence as a means of implementing colonialism and white supremacy. With ideologies of gender, race and religion intersecting and informing the racist images of Indigenous and tribal women in European Christianity, the present challenge will be how to forestall the domination in the TRC process of patriarchal Christian religious symbols of forgiveness and healing and to hold up Indigenous Knowledge forms of moral community that include Native women’s sovereignty.

This paper offers a feminist post-colonial reading of the TRC’s contact zone with a focus on the transformative possibilities of truth-telling that address the ongoing asymmetrical relations of power and, in particular, sexism and white supremacy, that permeate continuing Indigenous-settler relations. Drawing from Indigenous cosmologies and the work of Laura Donaldson, Wonhee Anne Joh, Andrea Smith, Jennifer Harvey and Musa Dube, this paper considers how white settlers can use this opportunity to redefine their own religious and cultural identity and explore a moral agency and justice practice that neither abolishes or assimilates the difference of the Indigenous “other.”

10:40-12:15 (VST 300) — Book Panel: Frank Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology (Zondervan, 2006)

The globalization of Pentecostalism has led classical Pentecostals to rethink and reconstruct their doctrine of baptism in the Holy Spirit. Such theological reflection has challenged a key classical Pentecostal distinctive which understood Spirit Baptism to be an experience distinct from (and usually subsequent to) conversion which is identified by the initial sign of speaking in tongues. Frank Macchia has long been considered a prominent figure in Pentecostal Theology. In 2006 he published a monumental work, Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology (Zondervan). Recognizing that global Pentecostalism cannot be identified by the classical understanding of Pentecostal doctrine, Macchia has proposed that Pentecostals expand the metaphor of Spirit Baptism to include the whole of the Christian life, and even the whole of the economy of salvation. Macchia himself recognizes the ecumenical potential for his proposal. This panel will provide a forum for ecumenical reflection on Macchia’s proposal. The panel will begin with a summary of Macchia’s book and the Pentecostal context in which it has arisen. This will be followed by three short response papers, and 20-30 minutes of discussion among the panel and those in attendance. Papers will be presented by Pentecostal, United Church, Anglican and Roman Catholic theologians.

Panelists: Don Schweitzer (St. Andrew’s College), Jane Barter Moulaison (University of Winnipeg), Constance Price (Catholic Office of Religious Education and Liturgy, ON), Andrew Gabriel (McMaster Divinity College)

11:10-12:00 (VST 309) — The Indivisible Whole of God’s Reality: Divine and Human Agency in Bonhoeffer’s Ethics

Christopher Holmes (Providence Theological Seminary)

The Christological realism of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics has not always been adequately appreciated, especially as concerns the extent to which it evokes and creates the space for the exercise of genuine human agency. In Bonhoeffer’s account, Jesus Christ is never to be abstracted from his command, a command that humanizes, for it is by Christ’s command to love others without distinction that one learns to be human before God and thus to live in accordance with him who is the true human being. A careful reading of the Ethics that is sensitive to the dogmatic foundations of Bonhoeffer’s work is therefore necessary, if one is to appreciate Bonhoeffer’s mapping of the kind of agency that the centre of Christian faith—the living Lord Jesus Christ—exercises as he takes form in historical and social reality. The task of this paper will be to expound and illuminate Bonhoeffer’s account of the character of agency exercised by the Centre in relation to the principal task of theological ethics, namely, the engendering of the most humane form of existence possible. Moreover, by demonstrating the manner in which Bonhoeffer preserves his basic insights about the Christological determination of reality, Bonhoeffer’s account of the mandates of work, family, government, and church cannot be understood in such a way as to denote the diminution of the primacy of Jesus Christ’s agency, but rather as the way in which Bonhoeffer ensures that ethics remain concrete in relation to him who is determinative of every sphere of creaturely existence.

1:30-3:00 (VST 300) — The Many Dimensions of Jesus’ Resurrection

Don Schweitzer (St. Andrew’s College), Respondent: Néstor Medina (Emmanuel College)

The resurrection of Jesus has been much discussed in twentieth century Western Christian theology. Drawing on several of these discussions, this paper will argue that Jesus’ resurrection has many dimensions, such that its meaning cannot be summed up under any one heading. It will begin with a look at what can be ascertained about Jesus’ resurrection as a historical event. It will then examine how Jesus’ resurrection gives and receives meaning from its relation to his person and others. It will then briefly examine its meaning for theological understandings of Jesus’ person, the cross, humanity, creation, the church, the Holy Spirit, and God. Jesus’ resurrection is only properly understood when it is recognized to have meaning across a broad range of theological topics. The significance of each of these meanings will vary from one historical context to another.

1:30-3:00 (VST 309) — Paul and the Violence of the Modern State: A Critique of the Liberal Democratic Notion of the ‘People’ through Recent Re-readings of Paul

Kornel Zathureczky (Université de Montréal)

The founding documents of modern Western democracies were predicated on belonging to a people. The very operations of the modern democratic State, however, depend on elected governments and on the divisions brought about by elections, which lead to the formation of minorities within the life of the State. The State is thus based on a contest between presumably equal contestants, ‘the people,’ who then end up being divided into those in power and those outside of power. The paradoxical understanding of this modern democratic understanding of the people is clearly exhibited by the post-election fate of ‘the people’ who while ‘exercising’ their freedoms ultimately have no impact on the operations of the State. This feature of Western democracies has become especially prominent in what is called the age of global Empire. In the following paper, drawing on recent reading of the writings of the apostle Paul (Taubes, Badiou, Žižek, Agamben) the Pauline idea of the ‘people’ will be explored as a theo-political critique of the incipient violence that undergirds modern conceptions of the State. In these re-readings of Paul, the Jew, one may perceive a concept of the people that overcomes the essential violence of modern theories and practices of the State.

3:10-4:05 (VST 300) — Expanding Human Agency / Shifting Ethical Landscapes

Lee Cormie (St. Michael’s College)

“The ‘changed nature of human action’ has turned modern ethics inside out”
(Ceruti and Pievani).

Accompanying the diverse, uneven and often contradictory processes of cultural and religious, political and economic globalization are cascading waves of change transforming the contours, scope and dynamics of social and personal life, emerging global civilization, and its relationships with the Earth. Indeed, these developments are “epochal” in civilizational terms, as well as geological, biological, climatological, and evolutionary terms–analogous to those associated with the impact of a large asteroid 65 million years ago, triggering mass extinctions, and opening a new era in the history of life on earth. At the heart of these developments lie new modes and scales of human agency–to know, to communicate, and to act from nanoscale to society-wide and planetary scales, and beyond, perhaps even cosmic scales–and new centers of human agency–transnational corporations, global markets, global institutions, international treaties, social movements and networks. And these expanding capacities are disrupting established religious, cultural, ethical and political frameworks and institutions, and re-opening the classic religious and philosophical questions concerning human nature and “nature,” the course of history, the future of life on earth. This paper will explore the implications of these developments, still mostly overlooked, for our theologies and ethics.

3:10-4:05 (VST 309) — Sharing Space Beyond Secular and Sacred Borders

Tom Reynolds (Emmanuel College)

In global and inter-religious 21st century Canada, lines demarcating sacred and secular are becoming increasingly unstable and problematic. In this, however, lies great potential. Drawing upon the work of Charles Taylor, Talal Asad, and Jeffrey Stout, this paper argues that the sacred/secular dilemma is a false dilemma, an unhelpful way of framing current debates about religion and public policy. Contrary to what older theories suggest, the secular is indeed a social space hospitable to sacred traditions. For the productive and peaceful co-existence of multiple traditions both depends upon and qualifies such a space, defined not so much by anti- or a-religious ideologies (e.g., “secularism” or “neutrality”) as by public and democratic processes of non-violent interaction. Secularity need not require transferring the authority of sacred claims to non-sacred mediums; but it does mean opening such claims to ongoing public conversations in which contestation and potential redefinition can occur. Lines blur, borders cross, and a “third discourse” emerges, a liminal discourse “in-between” parties that is dialogical and inter-religious in character, wherein continuities are forged amidst differences and the best of what sacred traditions have to offer become salient as means to sharing space beyond the boundaries of their own habitations. Specifically, resources from various traditions on the practice of hospitality can provide theological insights for envisioning the “secular” as a space of sharing charged with religious value. The paper, thus, concludes by highlighting possibilities that might emerge toward this end from a Christian theology of interfaith hospitality.

4:15-5:10 (VST 300) — Dans les frontières, au delà des frontières : une théologie en solidarité entre autochtones et allochtones au Québec

NB: room changed

Denise Couture et  Jean-François Roussel (Université de Montréal)

Comment articuler la solidarité mondiale et la solidarité locale? Penser au-delà des frontières, dans une perspective globale, et penser dans les frontières, dans une perspective locale, voilà la base d’un parcours de solidarité entre autochtones et allochtones. Parcours aux enjeux planétaires, mais pratique localisée, située dans un territoire.

Nous présenterons l’émergence et les premières étapes d’un projet qui s’est mis en place à l’automne 2007 ainsi que son lien avec le Forum mondial théologie et libération tenu à Nairobi au Kenya, en janvier 2007. Nous situerons son contexte sociopolitique et religieux, dans le milieu social québécois. Nous rendrons compte des présupposés théoriques et théologiques. Nous expliquerons aussi en quoi cette expérience déplace les frontières d’identités religieuses et nationales; ainsi que celles du domaine recevable au regard des épistémologies admises et pratiquées en théologie chrétienne contemporaine. Nous porterons particulièrement attention aux dimensions territoriales et postcoloniales de cette pratique, en explorant ses implications pour une théologie chrétienne… ‘au-delà’ de l’universalisme.

[How might one articulate a global solidarity with a local solidarity at once? To think beyond borders in a global perspective, and to think within borders, in a local persepective is to find a basis for such an intersection of solidarity between aboriginals and non—an intersection with planetary concerns, but a localised practice, situated in a particular place.

We will present on the emergence and the first steps of a project that was begun in the autumn of 2007, and also its link with the World Forum on Theology and Liberation held in Nairobi, Kenya in January, 2007. We will situate its sociopolitical and religious context within the social milieu of Quebec and examine its theological and theoretical presuppositions. We will also describe the manner in which such experience displaces the borders of religious and national identities, as well as those of a domain recognized by epistemologies that are accepted and practiced in contemporary Christian theology. We will attend especially to territorial and postcolonial dimensions of this practice, by exploring its implications for a Christian theology beyond universalism.]

4:15-5:10 (VST 309) — Crip/tography: Of Karma and Cosmopolis

NB: room changed

Sharon Betcher (Vancouver School of Theology)

“Picture the world in motion,” theologian Ray Bakke invites us: “the southern hemisphere is coming north, east is coming west, and on all 6 continents migrations are to the city.” Indeed, “globalization as urbanization seems,” postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak blithely adds, “one of the least speculative strands in the thinking of globalization.” Such massive urban in-migration implies, however, that formerly colonial territories, held apart by the buffers of ocean, are today humanly enfolded–like origami–into any of the planet’s “global” or “world cities.” “In contemporary cities people connected by imperial histories,” postcolonial theorist Jane M. Jacobs observes, “are thrust together in assemblages barely predicted, and often guarded against, during the inaugural phases of colonialism. Often enough this is a meeting not simply augmented by imperialism but still regulated by its constructs of difference and privilege.” If urbanization provides humanity with its ultimate test case–namely, “to create living patterns harmonized with nature’s rhythms,” to create cities of refuge and solidarity amid difference (including those of religions and their degrees of resort to absolutes), to work out our hopes for “planetarity” (Spivak) and “conviviality” (Gilroy), colonialism lingers on in the choreography of bodies within our urban geography, where “that racism which is not so much ethnic as biological” sorts bodies along the razor edge of the performance of “civility.” Starting with two divergent experiences of living the global city as crip (that is, as a person with disabilities), this paper considers what religious practice might address the need, as postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak puts it, to suture ritual responsibility into the human rights agenda (“Righting Wrongs,” 559), given the world-wide apartheid opening out between human bodies aggravated by globalization–namely, between “the dispensers of bounty” as distinct from “the victims of oppression” (536). At present, the streets of the global city are managed via “the aestheticization of fear” (Sharon Zukin) so as–like capitalism itself–to tolerate no impediments to mobility. Freedom in the West, as Richard Sennett puts it, has been correlated to unfettered mobility–”the ability to move anywhere, to move without obstruction, to circulate freely…” (Flesh & Stone, 310).

7:30- (Woodward/IRC, reception to follow in lobby)

Apartheid Comparative Religion: The Ideological Construction of Religious Difference in Antiquity

Daniel Boyarin (University of California at Berkeley)

Dr. Daniel Boyarin holds the Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Chair, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley. Daniel Boyarin is one of the foremost cultural and feminist critics and historians of Judaism and Christianity in late antiquity. His whole life’s work has been devoted to questioning and unsettling boundaries, in particular in his latest work, Border Lines (2004), in which he argues that the separation between Judaism and Christianity was extremely late – fourth or fifth century – and largely the result of imperial fiat. Moreover, it was never complete and always negotiated. He is also noteworthy for his works on gender, Carnal Israel (1993) and Unheroic Conduct (1997), in which he argues that the Judaism throughout most of its history projected a masculine ideal opposed to that of the dominant culture, and contributed to the development of the heterosexual norm. Professor Boyarin combines brilliant literary skills – for instance in his early Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (1990) – with psychoanalysis, historical acumen, and theoretical sophistication. His intellectual and interdisciplinary range vastly extends beyond the bounds of his particular area of specialization.

In his talk, he will elucidate on the theoretical claim that the distinction of religions (much like the distinction of languages) is always a political act. While using Judaeo-Christianity in antiquity as his primary case study, he will also refer to the politics of the study of religion in southern Africa by western comparativists.

This talk is jointly sponsored by the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, the Canadian Society for Biblical Studies, the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies, and the Canadian Theological Society, with funding from the Federation.

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

9:00-12-15 (Irving K. Barber Learning Centre 261)

CSSR, CETA, CSCH, CCHS, CTS joint panel: Christianity and Ethnicity in Canada?

Chairs: Paul Bramadat (University of Winnipeg) and David Seljak (St. Jerome’s University)

In Christianity and Ethnicity in Canada, eleven scholars explore the complex relationships between religious and ethnic identity within the nine major Christian traditions in Canada. The contributors discuss the ways in which changes in the ethnic composition of these traditions influence religious practice and identity, as well as how the nine religious traditions influence communal and individual ethnic identities.

Participants:
• Wendy Fletcher (Vancouver School of Theology)
• Bruce Guenther (Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary / Trinity Western University)
• Bryan Hillis (Luther College, University of Regina)
• Solange Lefebvre (Université de Montréal)
• Royden Loewen (Chair in Mennonite Studies, University of Winnipeg)
• Stuart Macdonald (Knox College)
• Mark McGowan (University of St. Michael’s College)
• Myroslaw Tataryn (St. Jerome’s University)
• Greer Anne Wenh-In Ng (Emmanuel College)

1:40-2:35 (VST 300) — Feminist Christologies at the Crossroads: An Analysis of Different Feminist Approaches to the Doctrine of the Atonement

Student Essay Contest Winner — Cuban Student Ary Fernández Albán (Emmanuel College, Toronto School of Theology)

Most feminist theologians acknowledge the tremendously negative implications the traditional atonement imagery has had for women and other people oppressed by kyriarchal systems. Moreover, not all of them agree on the theological meaning of Jesus’ death. As a crossroads, the cross constitutes a particularly interesting point of discussion both as a point of encounter and separation. As such, the cross is a central point of debate engaged by both feminist theologies and Christian theology in general. In this paper I try to summarize some of these views by grouping them in three main positions: radical critique, ambivalent critique, and constructive critique. Whereas the two first trends are characterized by their total refusal and certain ambivalent relation to the cross, the third position attempts to reinterpret it through a more constructive lens. I analyse these critiques trying to highlight their principal strengths and weaknesses.

2:45-3:40 (VST 300) — Presidential Address: Shifting Identities and the Church: A Postcolonial Challenge to Missiology and Ministry Preparation

Loraine MacKenzie Shepherd (Augustine United Church, Winnipeg)

3:50-4:50 (VST 300) — CTS Annual General Meeting

All members are encouraged to attend

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

CANCELLED — Work in Progress: Crossing Borders for Global Peace — Musical Performance as Non-Violent Resistance against War

CANCELLED due to circumstances beyond the control of the presenter

Lauren Michelle Levesque (Saint Paul University)

This paper discusses how the conceptualization of musical performance as non-violent resistance crosses disciplinary borders in the pursuit of global peace. Drawing on theological reflections of hope, creative disobedience and non-violence, I argue that musical performance is a site of non-violent resistance against war. Three constituent features of musical performance are pinpointed in this analysis: dynamism, relationality and transformation. The interaction of these features in musical performance suggests it is a powerful forum for building global community and bridging deep religio-political divides. Understanding musical performance as non-violent resistance provides an innovative lens through which to pursue conversations on theology, music and peace in a post-9/11 world. Neil Young’s 2006 album “Living with War,” written in response to the current war in Iraq, is the centerpiece of this discussion.

9:00-9:40 (VST 300) — Work in Progress: The Problem of “Perspicuity”: Luther’s (Unspoken) Reliance on Regula Fidei for Biblical Understanding

Rob Fennell (Atlantic School of Theology)

The hermeneutical principle that the Bible is “essentially clear” is a widely held view, especially among Western Protestants. This claim about Scriptural perspicuity (“claritas”) was emphatically championed by Martin Luther nearly 500 years ago in The Bondage of the Will. However, Luther’s claims about perspicuity do not function in quite the same way as similar claims by some commentators of the present day. Luther did not assume that Scripture’s meaningfulness arose spontaneously, leaping off the page toward any (interested or disinterested) reader. This paper argues that, on the contrary, Luther’s sense of the perspicuity of Scripture was made possible by a number of interlocking factors, including prior catechetical instruction, the work of the Holy Spirit, the faith of the reader, and a loosely defined constellation of doctrines that we understand here as regula fidei. This paper seeks to establish that an idiosyncratic regula fidei — a “rule of faith” — is always operative in Luther’s claims about the Bible’s perspicuity. The paper concludes with a view of the continuing usefulness of regula fidei today.

9:00-9:55 (VST 309) — The Divine Essence Revealed: The Christology of Reinhold Niebuhr

NB: moved from afternoon time period

Mark Gingerich (Providence Theological Seminary)

In the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr the centrality of Christ for understanding the true nature of life and history is often overlooked, yet it remains integral to all his ethical exhortations. In this paper, I unwrap and expound upon the Christology of Niebuhr, paying particular attention to the way in which he understands the Incarnation, the Nature of Christ, and the Work of Christ. Niebuhr’s dialectical approach to the nature of Christ will in particular play a significant role in his understanding of realistic appraisal of Christian ethics, yet a t the same time will severely limit the work the Christ has accomplished over and for humankind.

9:55-10:50 (VST 300) — Catholic Approaches to Just Peacemaking

Scott Kline (St. Jerome’s University) and Megan Shore (King’s University College)

Historically, Christian moral theories of war and peace have fallen into two broad camps: the just war and pacifist traditions. While there were a number of modern theologians, such as Reinhold Niebuhr who largely rejected both just-war and pacifist arguments, it was not until the publication of Glen Stassen’s Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace, in 1992, that a constructive, mediating alternative emerged with enough broad-based support to challenge the just war-pacifist impasse. That publication was followed by Just Peacemaking: 10 Practices for Abolishing War, in 1998. Edited by Stassen, this book is a collection of essays by twenty-three Christian ethicists outlining just peacemaking initiatives that include a proposal to expand the authority of the United Nations, the support for non-violence direct action, a call for arms reduction, the advancement of human rights and other such activities. In this paper, we argue that, while just peacemaking theory has made headway into challenging the just war-pacifist dichotomy, there remains little critical examination of what just-peacemaking practices look like when rooted in a particular tradition’s moral reasoning, its institutional structure, and its relationship to the state. The objective of this paper, then, is to identify and examine approaches to just peacemaking that are rooted in the Catholic tradition, including its missionary outreaches, its work in international development, its role in civil society, its diplomatic corps, and its new role in post-conflict rebuilding.

10:05-11:00 (VST 309) — The Mind of Christ in Balthasar and Rahner

NB: time shifted to accommodate Gingerich session

Mark Yenson (University of St. Michael’s College)

Recent notifications by the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (notably on the work of Roger Haight and Jon Sobrino) suggest that old debates, even those of classical Christology, continue to rear their heads. Karl Rahner once declared that he would rather be an orthodox Nestorian than an orthodox monophysite. He characterized his own Christology as “pure Chalcedonian” in contrast to the “Neo-Chalcedonian” position of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Taking this distinction as its starting point, this paper will contrast the approaches of Rahner and Balthasar to the consciousness of Christ. While both are both committed to maintaining the infinite difference between created and uncreated reality, expressed Christologically in Chalcedon’s adverb asunchut?s, their approaches reveal deep differences in Trinitarian discourse, approach to biblical exegesis and theology, and hermeneutic of retrieval. The critical appropriation of post-Chalcedonian Christology and particularly the Christology of Maximus the Confessor are central to Rahner’s and Balthasar’s differences, calling for a rethinking of the frequently invoked categories of Alexandria and Antioch, implied also in Rahner’s terminology. The interplay between Balthasar and Rahner is thus suggestive for “thinking beyond the borders” of binary opposites in Christological thinking and beyond the borders of modern, western theological biases.

11:00-12:30 (VST 300) — Panel: ‘A Common Word’: Reflections on Muslim, Christian and Jewish approaches to an understanding and practice of the ‘double commandment’

Chair: Kornel Zathureczky (Université de Montréal)

The most significant religious document in recent memory has been A Common Word, signed by an impressively comprehensive group of Islamic clerics and religious leaders, and addressed to an equally comprehensive list of Christian leaders. The document suggested that the twin religious duties of love for God and love for neighbour beckon both Muslim and Christian traditions to take on the responsibility of active peacebuilding vis-à-vis one another. The panel, which brings together Muslim and Christian scholars, proposes to contribute to this challenge by exploring the theological concept of love as elaborated within the two scriptural traditions. The Muslim document is approached, perhaps as intended, as a response to Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est. The presentations of the panel will therefore be framed by these two documents while drawing on classical, medieval and modern sources of diverse currents within both these traditions. Moving within the above framework, each presenter will explore particular conceptualizations of love within either of these monotheistic traditions and the particular ethical imperatives elicited. As A Common Word, proposes, the monotheistic impulse to pay full devotion to one God and the corresponding duty to treat one’s neighbour with justice and equity are inseparable from one another and offer a sufficiently strong link between two traditions that have experienced much discord and enmity. Although the panel does not propose immediate and facile solutions to overcome centuries of hostility, ill-will, and theological calumny between Christianity and Islam, it nevertheless begins the necessary, constructive, and unavoidably theological work to contribute to building the basis of peaceful co-existence, predicated on Christian and Muslim visions and practices of love.

Panel Participants: Patrice Brodeur (Université de Montréal), Thomas Reynolds (Emmanuel College), Karin Ben Driss (Université de Montréal and the Montreal Center of Sufi Spirituality)

11:10-12:00 (VST 309) — Civic Sacrament and Social Imaginaries in Transition: The Case of the South African Churches and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

NB: time shifted to accommodate Gingerich session

Stephen Martin (King’s University College)

South Africa’s transition to democracy was widely hailed as a beacon of hope for the world when it took place in the 1990s. At the centre of that transition was its Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Chaired by a cleric dressed in a purple cassock, openly using religious language in a public and political context, and bearing within its discourse a sacred narrative of fall and redemption, the TRC was a polymorphous instrument marking out transitional space and time.

It did this not only for South African society but for the churches in South Africa. It was at the TRC that the New South Africa received its first performance. However, unlike other democratic societies, there was little effort to mark transition to a human rights culture in secularist terms. Religious language was front-and-centre, and part of the cut and thrust of debate about building a new society.

This paper redescribes the TRC as a religio-liturgical marking of the time and space of the new South Africa (a civic sacrament). In doing so, it identifies the way the language of concrete religious communities was borrowed, as well as the contestation of that borrowing by especially African Independent Churches. The paper demonstrates how communal religious bodies are capable of nurturing a distinctive social imaginary even while they “loan out” their discourses for the benefit of a wider public. It is argued that the South African example points out a way for religious communities to negotiate their publicness without losing concreteness as “soul of society”.

This paper, located within the nexus of political theology and ecclesiology, explores the reinforcement, redefinition, and transcendence of civil/political and religious boundaries in South Africa’s transition. As such, I believe it fits the Congress theme, “Thinking Beyond Borders: Global Ideas; Global Values.”

1:25-2:20 (VST 300) — Being thought from beyond our borders: Towards ethical global citizenship

Johann-Albrecht Meylahn (University of Pretoria, South Africa)

A response to the challenge of global citizenship in an age of global crisis. Citizenship has to do with where one feels “at home”, i.e. the space that becomes a place that gifts identity and life. What kind of narrative is necessary to transform global space into a home from where we can go beyond our borders to embrace the other in multidisciplinary research or interfaith praxis? The different models for multidisciplinary research are made possible by the idea that research seeks that which is beyond its borders. This search could be a common space where the different traditions can accommodate one another, but it is not a home. The dominant discourse of this common space is to seek commonality and identities across borders while being aware of, but ignoring differences – identity at the expense of differences. A home founded on identity at the expense of difference will always exclude. Theology can either be interpreted as thinking beyond the borders toward the Divine, or the Divine thinking us. The Exodus, the Incarnation, the Cross are all narratives of the Other crossing borders, liberating from boundaries, deconstructing the laws and norms that exclude. The religious traditions of these sacred narratives have something to offer, namely: to be thought by the Other, to receive life and identity (alien identity) from the Other, the gift of a home which is continuously deconstructed by the home still to come, therefore always open for the other

1:25-2:20 (VST 309) — Mortality and Morality: Different Senses of ‘Death’ in Levinas’ Thought and Its Implications for Conceiving the Limits and Possibilities of the Human

Michael Sohn (University of Chicago Divinity School)

Global dynamics and the increasing interactions between people of different cultures, religious beliefs, and world-views is a fact of our contemporary situation. These world trends towards a situation of global diversity and interrelatedness has, on the one hand, the positive potential for respect and openness to difference, and on the other hand, it has the negative possibility of igniting mutual fear and mistrust of one another, exploding into exclusivism and tribalism.

My paper addresses these two radically different possibilities by looking at the moral anthropology of Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas. I argue that there are two radically different senses or meanings of ‘death’ in his thought, and these two alternative understandings are the lens through which his view of the human can be comprehended. Death, on the one hand, can signify the ‘summum malum’ and object of fear such that one seeks to flee from it by either satiating material need or metaphysical need. Death, narrowly conceived, grips us in self-enclosed subjectivity, and while self-interestedness may be harmless in civil society, it constantly threatens to regress into a Hobbesian war of all against all. On the other hand, death can signify the mortality of the other which releases us from narrow self-interest in calling us towards a responsibility for the other. By focusing on these two different senses of death, I try to illuminate Levinas’ philosophical and theological anthropology which constantly navigates between self-interested being and the possibility of an other-regarding humanism.

2:20-2:30 — Close of Annual Meeting

Posted: April 1, 2008 in category: