Abstract
Perry Schmidt-Leukel, professor of religious studies and intercultural theology at the Westfälische Wilhelms-University in Münster, Germany, and a long-time veteran of interreligious discussions, offers a well-informed, wide-ranging survey that seeks resources for a pluralistic theology of religions in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese religions, proposing that all these religious traditions in principle offer equally valid paths to ultimate reality and salvation. His pluralist theology of religions develops the lineage of Rudolf Otto, John Hick, and Wilfred Cantwell-Smith; and he links this project to a call for interreligious theology from every religious tradition, because “it is only in and through interreligious theology that the pluralist assumptions might find their own confirmation” (114). His audience includes followers of all religious traditions as well as those who do not follow any religious path. Schmidt-Leukel invokes fractal theory to develop his model of interpreting religious difference; he hopes to include seeming contradictions between religions in a harmony of complementary contrasts, as part of an open-ended process seeking ever-new syncretistic syntheses. He is aware of postmodern concerns regarding the incommensurability of different religions and cultures and the dangers of wide-ranging comparative judgments, but he dismisses these as not persuasive (243–44).
Even though he claims that in principle all religious traditions possess equal validity, Schmidt-Leukel grants this recognition in practice only to those religious traditions that surrender their traditional self-understandings and accept his criteria for religious pluralism. He sharply criticizes traditional religions because each “understands itself as either uniquely true or uniquely superior in relation to all the other faiths” (31). He rejects exclusivist and inclusivist views for treating “religious difference as a sign of inferiority” (135), and so he judges the large majority of traditional religious perspectives to be inferior to his own pluralistic theology precisely because of their truth claims. Nonetheless, in a manner not unlike the inclusivists whom he criticizes, Schmidt-Leukel does grant a guarded acknowledgement that exclusivist and inclusivist religions may offer some limited benefit toward salvation: “Lacking in such openness [to other religions] may not completely prevent but also may not foster a salvific transformation” (127). While Schmidt-Leukel allows religious thinkers to retain what he calls “some continuity” with their traditions, he sternly insists that they need to reject any traditional claims of unique or superior truth for their respective religions (7).
Insisting that ultimate reality is one (133–36), Schmidt-Leukel does not discuss polytheistic or dualistic traditions in detail, but his insistence on the oneness of ultimate reality establishes an inclusivist framework for viewing polytheistic and dualistic traditions as less adequate articulations of the one ultimate reality that manifests itself in all religions. Schmidt-Leukel asserts that all “major” religions affirm the transcendence of ultimate reality (25), which means pantheistic or non-dualist perspectives that affirm immanence alone can be included only as inferior or “minor” forms of religion.
Schmidt-Leukel rejects any Christian trinitarian theology that claims there are eternal, internal distinctions in God because he believes the apophatic tradition of the early Christian church contradicted its conciliar dogmatic affirmations concerning God (25); according to him, the divine Persons are simply appearances of ultimate reality to a particular tradition. From at least the seventeenth century to the present, the leaders of the Church of the East have asked representatives of other communities not to call them “Nestorians” because they view this term as inaccurate and insulting. They point out that Nestorius was not a member of the Church of the East, and they insist that the traditional accusations against Nestorius and “Nestorians” do not accurately describe the teachings of the Church of the East past or present. Given Schmidt-Leukel’s stated respect for religious differences, it is puzzling and troubling that he continues to use the term “Nestorian” for the Church of the East (18, 161).
In his invocation of fractal theory, Schmidt-Leukel stresses the importance of religious openness to accepting outside influences, but he has less to say of the role of negative feedback in rejecting outside influences in order to maintain the continuity and identity of religious traditions. The danger of his search for a harmonizing, syncretistic synthesis is that it threatens to rob each tradition of its distinctive identity and power. The irony of Schmidt-Leukel’s project is that he seeks openness to some forms of religious difference while remaining strongly critical of most traditional forms of religious faith and practice.