Table Of ContentTheological and Philosophical Responses to Syncretism
Philosophy of Religion
World Religions
Editor in Chief
Jerome Gellman (Ben Gurion University)
Editorial Board
Richard Hayes (University of New Mexico)
Robert McKim (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Rusmir Mahmutćehajić (Međunarodni forum Bosna/
International Forum Bosnia)
VOLUME 7
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/prwr
Theological and Philosophical
Responses to Syncretism
Beyond the Mirage of Pure Religion
Edited by
Patrik Fridlund
and
Mika Vähäkangas
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: The photo was taken in a bus in Delhi by Paul Linjamaa, one of the contributors of the
present volume.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fridlund, Patrik, editor.
Title: Theological and philosophical responses to syncretism : beyond the
mirage of pure religion / edited by Patrik Fridlund and Mika Vähäkangas.
Description: Boston : Brill, 2017. | Series: Philosophy of religion. World
religions, ISSN 2210-481X ; volume 7 | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017032916 (print) | LCCN 2017037585 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004336599 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004352124 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Syncretism (Religion) | Philosophy and religion.
Classification: LCC BL410 (ebook) | LCC BL410 .T44 2017 (print) | DDC
201/.5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017032916
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Contents
Contributors vii
Introduction 1
1 Syncretism as the Theoretical Foundation of Religious Studies 9
Jerker Karlsson
2 Gnosticism as Inherently Syncretistic? Identity Constructions among
Ancient Christians and Protestant Apologetes 25
Paul Linjamaa
3 Responding to Syncretism 41
Patrik Fridlund
4 Theo-Logical Positions vis-à-vis Syncretism 68
Mika Vähäkangas
5 Fair or Foul? Contextual Theology, Syncretism and the Criteria for
Orthodoxy 88
Stephen Bevans
6 Assessing Catholic – Buddhist ‘Dual-Belonging’ in the Light of the
Catholic Magisterium 104
Gavin D’Costa
7 Khrist Bhaktas and the Reconstruction of Syncretism 163
Jonas Adelin Jørgensen
8 ‘We are In-Between’ – Syncretism and Making Sense of Empirical
Data 178
Lotta Gammelin
9 Is Dual Religious Belonging Syncretistic? An Evangelical and
Missiological Perspective 190
Kang-San Tan
vi Contents
10 Syncretism or Inclusivist Subordination? An Exploration into the
Dynamics of Inter-Religious Cooperation 209
Elizabeth J. Harris
Index of Names and Subjects 227
Contributors
Stephen Bevans
is a Roman Catholic priest in the missionary congregation of the Society of the
Divine Word. He is Louis J. Luzbetak, SVD Professor of Mission and Culture,
Emeritus, at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Educated at the
Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome (STL) and the University of Notre
Dame in the USA (PhD), he has been a missionary to the Philippines and has
written and travelled extensively.
Gavin D’Costa
is Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol, England. He is
an advisor to the Vatican and the Bishops of England and Wales on interfaith
matters. His main research has focused on Catholic theology of religions, with
special attention to Vatican II and the post-conciliar Church. He is also a pub-
lished poet.
Patrik Fridlund
is docent (reader) in Philosophy of Religion at Lund University, Sweden. He was
a member of the research unit Dialogue et conversion at the Catholic University
of Paris 2009–2013. He is deputy director responsible for international relations
of the open access review Logoi.ph. His main research interests are religious
diversity, religion and politics, and philosophical questions about subjectivity,
informed by readings of Derrida and Lévinas.
Lotta Gammelin
has been a PhD candidate in Global Christianity and Inter-Religious Relations
at Lund University since 2012. Her PhD research project is an ethnographic
study of a locally founded, prophetic and charismatic church in Mbeya,
Southern Tanzania, focusing on healing, gender and authority. Her research
interests include questions of gender and religion, African Christianity, and
religious change informed by postcolonial theory.
Elizabeth J. Harris
is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Birmingham University (UK).
Previous to this she was Associate Professor in Religious Studies at Liverpool
Hope University (UK). She is the current President of the European Network
of Buddhist-Christian Studies and an International Adviser to the Society for
Buddhist-Christian Studies. She specializes in Buddhist Studies and inter-faith
studies.
viii Contributors
Jonas Adelin Jørgensen
holds a PhD in systematic theology. His research field lies within World
Christianity and Mission Studies, and he has written about present encounters
between Hinduism, Islam and Christianity on the Indian subcontinent. He has
taught systematic theology at the University of Copenhagen, and is now serv-
ing as secretary general of the Danish Mission Council.
Tan Kang-San
is a Malaysian Chinese missiologist serving as Executive Director for AsiaCMS,
a mission training network among Asian mission movements based in Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia. Previously, Kang San was Head of Mission Studies at
Redcliffe College, United Kingdom.
Jerker Karlsson
is a PhD student in philosophy of religion and ethics at Lund University,
Sweden. He is a member of The Nordic Network for the Philosophy of Science.
His main research interests are ethical naturalism and how normative changes
are driven by human experiences. His PhD project is a case study of some nor-
mative problems associated with the application of refugee law by the Swedish
board of Immigration.
Paul Linjamaa
is a PhD candidate in the History of Religions at Lund University, Sweden.
His main research interests are ancient religions, more particularly early
Christianity with a focus on Patristics, Hellenistic philosophy and Coptic lit-
erature. His PhD project is devoted to early Christian ethics and The Tripartite
Tractate from Nag Hammadi Codex I.
Mika Vähäkangas
is Professor in Mission Studies and Ecumenics at Lund University, Sweden. He
is a former lecturer at Makumira University College (Tanzania) and President
of the International Association for Mission Studies (IAMS) 2012–2016. His
main research interests are encounters between Christianity and other faiths
especially in Africa, contextuality in theology and empirical approaches to
World Christianity.
Introduction
There has always been a strong tendency in the western cultural sphere to
search for the ontologically pure and original in both theology and philoso-
phy. This has often been combined with a marked methodological tendency
to make distinctions in the form of discrete entities with clear borders. It has
to be acknowledged that the clarity that follows is often practical and useful,
as it facilitates reflection and action. Nonetheless, as has been pointed out,
this methodological approach can be seen to presuppose a specific ontology
of stability and clarity. To strive for methodological clarity based on the ontol-
ogy of discrete entities with clear and stable borders is problematic. To find
the ‘true something behind’ is a difficult enterprise, vain or even dangerous.1
This is not the place to enter into the debate on this point. What can be said,
however, is that in history of religion, sociology and anthropology of religion,
there is a common understanding that insistence on pure religious doctrines,
teachings and practices is fruitless. Hence from that perspective, syncretism is
almost a non-topic, if seen as a mélange of elements from two or more distinct
entities. Such mixing would simply be a sine qua non for religion.
On the other hand, in much theological discourse, pure religious traditions
are seen as accurate descriptions of religious life. Many philosophies of reli-
gion accept this position, and religions are approached as if they were clear-cut
entities that do not overlap and mix with each other, unless by mistake, false-
ly or illicitly. A given religion – in its pure and original form – is approached
as an idea and as an ideological system almost hermetically sealed off from
other religions, from ideologies and from cultures. Hence, academic study of
religion, as well as theological and philosophical reflection in the field of reli-
gion, appears to suffer from a sort of schizophrenia. On the one hand, scholars
recognise unhesitatingly the plural and complex character of religious ideas,
doctrines, teachings, interpretations and practices. Yet, simultaneously, much
reflection and research is conducted on the assumption that religions are
clearly separate and distinct entities with clear limits. Of course, one may hold
that a given religion is a complex phenomenon with a mixed history and with
influences from many various sources, on the one hand, and yet concurrently
1 Michel Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, in From Modernism to Postmodernism:
An Anthology, ed. Lawrence Cahoone, 2nd exp. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 242–243. See
also Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie (Paris: Minuit, 1967). See also Patrik Fridlund,
‘Ambivalent Wisdom as the Fruit of Reading’, Logoi.ph 1, no. 2 (2015): 169–184.
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