Abstract
The Cave and the Butterfly: An Intercultural Theory of Interpretation and Religion in the Public
Sphere
Paul S. Chung
Eugene: Cascade Books, 2011. 297 pp. $35.00
The title of the book comes from famous images in Plato and Zhuangzi. The “cave” and “butterfly” each purport to say something about the human experience and its relationship to reality. Plato pictures a man chained in a cave, who can only see shadow images cast about him, which hint at what is real. Zhuangzi wakes from a dream where he imagined he was a butterfly, but then wonders whether he is really a butterfly dreaming he is Zhuangzi. Unfortunately, neither the title nor the subtitle holds for this work. The suggestive image of the cave and the butterfly yields little deep cross-cultural analysis; the stated focus on the public sphere and intercultural theory produces only a few new insights.
Chung’s great strengths are synthesis and explanation. Associate Professor of Mission and World Christianity at Warburg Theological Seminary, Chung clearly shows a breadth of knowledge, ranging through the history of philosophy, theology, and interpretation. Reading individual chapters, I appreciated Chung’s ability to provide a terse, clear description of several major thinkers and their relationship to a particular issue. The book is essentially a series of lectures on related concepts. Chung proceeds from a discussion of Plato’s understanding of language and truth (chapter 1), to the Augustinian tradition (2), Jürgen Moltmann’s theologia publica (3), a theology of the cross (4), Max Weber in relationship to other social thinkers (5), Michel Foucault on power and knowledge (6), Jürgen Habermas and hermeneutics (7), Emmanuel Levinas and the other (8), Scripture in the public sphere (9), and Christian mission (10). Finally, there is a brief excursus using the Neo-Confucian scholar Wang Yangming and a ten-page conclusion, “Odysseus, Abraham, and Laozi.”
While individual chapters often show great promise, they do not quite add up to a coherent whole. Although Chung protests that he does not seek a “closed systemization,” the result is the opposite: a sampling of interesting descriptions with little cohesion. The word “intercultural” appears only near the end of the book. The first nine chapters never move beyond the West, and the last chapters, which turn towards East Asia, never really return to the public sphere. Thus, we have no insights into Asian public spheres (about which there is real academic debate), while intercultural theory offers no significant contribution to the main thrust of the work on religion in the public sphere.
To treat this in a bit more depth, it is worth briefly noting the last 50 pages, which consist of a chapter on missionaries in East Asia (“Christian Mission and the Interpretation of the Gospel in the Presence of the Other”), an excursus (“Wang Yangming and the Investigation of Things in an Ontological Context”), and the conclusion. These are the most intentionally comparative or intercultural sections of the book. The mission chapter briefly treats two Chinese Christian encounters, corresponding roughly to the Tang (The Church of the East or “Nestorians”) and Ming and Qing (Ricci and Catholic missions) dynasties. The characterization of these episodes is basically accurate. The section on the mission to Tang China treads familiar ground, but overstates some claims (“Alouben’s mission and ministry marked the first Christian mission in co-existence with people of other faiths”). Ricci gets six paragraphs in the book, but Chung cannot seem to decide whether he is creating an idealized version of Confucianism and Chinese antiquity (as some scholars argue) or whether he is an excellent model for intercultural theology. Neither example deals with actual Chinese Christians, instead focusing on two missionaries, one Persian and one European. The chapter on Wang Yangming and Zhu Xi again provides an overview, this time of Neo-Confucian hermeneutics. The conclusion refers to three important figures (Odysseus, Abraham, Lazoi) who are supposed to represent the two major metaphors of the book. The last words of the book maintain that these different “lifeworlds” can shed light on reason, faith, and harmony.
Comparative work is difficult. One of the barriers to intercultural theory is no doubt that of trying to learn widely divergent fields. One area or discipline will almost invariably receive short shrift, as is the case here. The bulk of the book treats more than 50 major Western philosophers and theologians, but the short sections on China include only the half-dozen most famous classical Chinese thinkers, and only nibble at the banquet of scholarship available. Small errors, like mixing two romanization systems (ko wu and gewu) and spelling names in different ways (Aluoben or Alouben, Zu Xi or Zhi Xi or Zhu Xi, Zho Dunyi instead of Zhou Dunyi) add to the sense that Chung is dabbling. The topics identified are important, and Chung hints at the potential for future work.
Jonathan A. Seitz
Taiwan Theological Seminary
Taipei, Taiwan