Amos Yong: The Dialogical Spirit

Amos Yong, The Dialogical Spirit: Christian Reason and Theological Method in the Third Millennium (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 352 ages.

Amos Yong’s The Dialogical Spirit contains a series of essays written within the past two decades that demonstrates not only thoughtful theological engagement with a variety of critical issues and a host of interlocutors, but also the spirit of dialogue at the heart of its message. That is, Yong reflects his own willingness to posture himself as a learner among many voices. Yong’s interactions are funded by a Trinitarian stance with emphasis on pneumatological intuitions, especially that of the trialectic dynamic of the Spirit. That dynamic is the resolution to binary or dualistic impulses and funds a Spirit-oriented hermeneutic while also energizing a dialogical approach to theological inquiry. According to Yong, the benefits of a pneumatological lens do not require the diminishing of Christian commitments but will, on the other hand, promote a deeper understanding of contextual underpinnings of all theologies and a more effective global Christian witness (Ebook loc. 125).

Yong’s conversation partners are positioned in light of the situational and theological challenges that their respective contributions can address. To begin with, Yong asserts that Christian theology today finds itself situated within a postfoundational, post-Christendom, postsecular, postmodern, and pluralistic world (loc. 125, 7096). Following the introduction, his text is divided into four sections. The first discusses a way forward through the demise of foundationalism, and the second features the role of pneumatological intuitions and those voicing them in this post-Christendom era. The issue of plurality is addressed in the third and fourth sections, the first dealing with science in dialogue with spirituality, highlighting specifically the gains in this direction made by Buddhist theologians and the implications for Christian theology. The fourth and last section explores relational and participative methods in interreligious dialogue.

In the first half of the text, Yong offers a turn away from Cartesian influences and toward an experiential epistemology via C.S. Peirce’s semiotic theory, the neo-pragmatism of Richard Rorty that accentuates “the interrelatedness of all things” (loc. 1352), and the foundational pneumatology of Donald J. Gelpi (loc. 1954). To address the viability of Christianity among other voices, Yong introduces the “baptist vision” of James William McClendon, Jr., a vision that resonates with what Yong refers to as “the broad theological anthropology of Wesleyanism and the pneumatological anthropology of pentecostalism” (loc. 2931). McClendon’s approach is ecumenical and eschatological while at the same time sensitive to the need to listen to the story of others (loc. 2920). In conversation with Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen and James K.A. Smith, both writing intentionally from their theological and philosophical journeys in the pentecostal and charismatic movements, Yong encourages bolder strides toward engagement with the world and other religions. In Kärkkäinen’s case, Yong suggests he cultivate even deeper contact with other religions in order to develop himself as a world theologian (loc. 3517). For Smith, Yong offers a “pneumatological assist” toward a “more cohesive Christian theology of cultural and interreligious engagement for our time” (loc. 3960). This assist highlights the Spirit already in the world in accordance with “the Spirit poured out on all flesh” and turns away from “out-narrating other mythoi” and toward an intuitiveness regarding the presence of the church in the world (loc. 3960, 3826, 3999).

Within the last selection of essays, dialogue is taken up with the sciences and Buddhist philosophy. First, Yong presents the work of physicist-theologian John Polkinghorne for the insights that his interdisciplinary perspective brings to thinking about other faith traditions. Polkinghorne’s emphasis on a “bottom-up,” experientially (or empirically) informed approach to theology reiterates the need for evangelical theology to take seriously the practices of the religious other. Also, Yong finds Polkinghorne’s assertion that the Spirit’s claim to creation should influence Christians positively toward other religious faiths important to the discussion (loc. 4395). The subsequent essays discuss the interaction between the Dalai Lama and Western science as documented in the Mind and Life Dialogues, along with the perspective of scholar B. Alan Wallace on the relationship between modern science and Buddhist philosophy. Yong points to the interactions as noteworthy for how they model dialogical bridge building, for example, in terms of recognizing the convergence of quantum mechanical sciences with the practices of the lamas (loc. 5378). One of the last essays describes the fairly recent work of the Jesuit priest Francis X. Clooney on the readings of Hindu texts alongside of Scripture. Clooney is the most interactive of interreligious thinkers since he proposes an approach to understanding Hinduism and other faith traditions that requires involving oneself in their religious practices. Yong presents this as “dual religious belonging” and explores the questions and tensions involved in this stance. The discussion of Clooney’s work is followed with the last essay on the methodological ludism of anthropologist André Droogers. The concept of a “ludic posture” for students of religions employs the natural human capacity to “play” in terms of “living and performing simultaneously” in more than one “world” or “reality,” in essence, developing a “double awareness” (loc. 6478). Yong describes the method as “interreligious crossover and return” and suggests that the lucid posture be considered as a way around the usual “reductionism, religionism, or agnosticism” since “subjunctive engagement across religious lines is imperative for contemporary scholarship in these arenas” (loc. 6596, 6659, 6647).

This review of Yong’s text offers a closing observation. Yong writes that evangelical theology should be concerned with the actualities of religious practice (“to speak in the tongues and languages of others” à la Clooney, loc. 376) when seeking to understand the religious other, albeit, he underscores that “the challenges should not be underestimated” (loc. 365). One such challenge will likely arise for Christians in non-Western contexts and point to differing pneumatological intuitions. That is because, as one of the “multiplicity of starting points” for dialogical encounter between religions (faiths), the pneumatological imagination in many contexts operates from a powers/liberation motif (loc. 148). That motif is at the core of certain pentecostalisms grounded in complex cosmologies, for example, Pentecostalism in certain African contexts. The motif represents an understanding of embodied spirituality as connected to interrelational causality between the visible and invisible realms. The boundaries between the visible and invisible are permeable, and spirit manifestations are both positive (Holy Spirit) and negative (spirits of other types). The strong emphasis on liberation from local deities/powers would therefore likely generate the question: to what extent does engagement with the practices and liturgy of other faiths for the sake of understanding result in engagement with deities, and are the practices innocuous to those of Christian faith? From this standpoint, safety from evil forces registers higher on the valuation scale than perhaps in the West.

Reviewed by Anna Droll

Publisher’s page: https://wipfandstock.com/the-dialogical-spirit.html

Preview The Dialogical Spirit: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Dialogical_Spirit.html?id=Cs_wCAAAQBAJ