Читать книгу The Craft of Innovative Theology. Argument and Process онлайн

48 страница из 123

1 ssss1 Due to space I cannot here justify this claim fully, though even a cursory reading of most of the world religions’ founding texts shows regular references to a religiously plural context. Ancient theologians are also well aware of their pluralistic context. For instance Clement attributes to Xenophanes the view that the Thracians “gods are red haired and blue eyed, the Ethiopians’ black as apes” in the process of his argument that the “heathens made Gods like themselves, whence springs all superstition” Stromata VII, chapter 4.

2 ssss1 I take this as a central thesis of J.Z. Smith’s famous characterization of religion in his Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), xi.

3 ssss1 I realize the irony of proposing a somewhat radical program to transform theology into something I point out it already exhibits. My argument is not that theology must become pluralistic in a way it never was, but rather that it should fully and thoroughly recover the vigor and creative potential of the pluralism out of which it was born.