06/30/2021 – John Thatamanil Part 2: Circling the Elephant
Have you ever met an elephant? Have you ever got a group of your buddies to circle around an elephant before? Me neither. I’ve got to start getting some better intros here. Hey, this is TenOnReligion.
Hey peeps, it’s Dr. B. with TenOnReligion. This video is closed-captioned here on YouTube and the transcript is available at TenOnReligion.com. This is the second of a two-part series focused on the curiously debonair Indian-American scholar John Thatamanil, Ta-Thata-manil, Tata-Tata, okay we already did this our last episode. The first one was on his 2006 book, The Immanent Divine. This episode we’re covering his second book from 2020 titled Circling the Elephant. As I also mentioned last time, two of his major influences are Robert Neville, whom we have already covered on this channel, and Frank Clooney which is another important figure which hopefully we’ll eventually get to on this channel as well.
Circling the Elephant with its subtitle of A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity covers a laundry list of subjects in the religious academic subfield of interreligious hermeneutics. There is an introduction followed by six chapters which all point towards, and ultimately culminate in, the seventh chapter on his constructive view on the issue, which, I want to talk about. But first let’s quickly run through what happens before we get to the Thatamanil theory.
The introduction announces to the readers the age-old Asian tale of a king who observes blind men, or blindfolded men, encountering an elephant. They all describe the elephant from the part of the elephant that they experience not realizing that the true elephant is a combination of all of their experiences, which is actually the king’s perspective in the story. The author then lists five problems with this allegory. First, the story is more of a picture than a claim for true knowledge. Second, there are no omniscient knowers such as the king. Third, the elephant is silent. What if the elephant just simply told us what it really was? Fourth, no religion has a single interpretive scheme. And fifth, it’s unclear what the nature is between the men and the elephant.
Now both the author, and the way the larger problem is often characterized, are rooted in Christianity for the most part, so the first chapter is about how religious difference is viewed through the lens of Christian theology. He differentiates between comparative theology in which one does not necessarily have a stake in the game, and constructive theology in which one is advocating for a particular view. This is combined with the theology of religious diversity and that’s what this book is about.
The second and third chapters then cover some rather well-trodden territory of exclusivism, inclusivism – I can’t even say the word right – and pluralism. A lot of authors writing on this subject all seem to do this and so we get this author’s view on these topics. It’s interesting to read, but there’s not a whole lot of novelty here for those who are already familiar with these topics.
Chapter four focuses on comparative theology and then calls into question the very nature of what we define as religion. This flows over into the fifth chapter where he defines religion as comprehensive qualitative orientation. It’s comprehensive because it covers over much of the lives of those who are religious. It’s qualitative because people are knowing and doing what they are interpreting and performing, and such activity provides an entire perspective on how one is to properly function in this world. When the “right” things are not done, the stability of that world is threatened. Or at least that’s the perception. It’s an orientation because one is giving some account of the world and forming oneself to fit into that world. There’s actually a lot going on this chapter and it, along with chapter seven, are easily the best chapters in the book. One quote I really liked from this chapter is:
“…because human life as it is actually lived is a polycentric affair that is funded by multiple data streams and symbols from which we take our bearings, it is important not to build into one’s definition of the religious an exaggerated emphasis on the singular.” (p. 164)
There are many ways to view Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and so forth. Any given perspective of what “Christianity” is, for example, is already like a large river with a bunch of smaller tributaries flowing into it. Only when we compare either intrareligiously or interreligiously can we see the similarities and the differences. Near the end of this chapter, he even goes so far to suggest that capitalism may be construed as a religion. I recently took a social/political philosophy course and don’t really have a lot of good things to say about capitalism right now though, so…it’s best that we move on.
Chapter six compares Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. on the subject of hospitality. This is a well-written chapter, some of which no doubt comes from Thatamanil’s experiences in teaching courses on the subject, but it feels almost a little out of place here. I was trying to understand how this chapter connects chapters five with chapter seven and I struggled to figure it out. The best I can do is that it’s meant to set the stage for interreligious receiving, thus the idea of hospitality.
Chapter seven is where the party really starts, and the author tells us what this book is all about. God is ground, singularity, and relation. To me, this is awfully similar to another South Indian scholar, Raimon Panikkar, where religion is another triad of ideas in cosmotheandrism – a joining of the cosmos (or nature), theos (or God), and anthropos (or human). Why do all Southern Indian scholars think trinitarian-ly? Is there something in the water in Southern India or something?
God as ground comes from his earlier book, The Immanent Divine and is based in the Indian thinker Sankara, who lived around the 700’s. Brahman, as being-itself, is both ground for the world and for the self. This is called nondualism because they are simultaneously neither one, nor two. God as singularity comes from Paul Tillich and a few other Christian figures emphasizing the singularity of the divine life and all that flows from it. God as relation binds it all together. Whenever we talk about and try to understand our “self” as a distinct entity, it is always in relation to something or someone else. With this view of God as ground, singularity, and relation, the best and perhaps only way to appropriately live as a religious person is through interreligious learning, constructing theology comparatively. When one goes into cocoon mode and seals out all other religious views, one is essentially vacuuming out the air of one’s own house. In order to thrive, one must learn. In order to learn, one must be in relation. In order to be in relation, one must love. And in order to love, one must love what our neighbors love, including their deepest religious convictions. That was kind of quick, did you get all that?
The differences of belief and practice in religious traditions are not just cultural variations like food, but are part of the very nature of understanding reality. The more we learn about the religious other, especially in religious participation, the more we learn about ourselves. Thatamanil’s Circling the Elephant puts forth an excellent effort to explain the foundation of why this is the case. I’ve met him a bunch of time at conferences. He’s a cool dude and you can follow him on Twitter if you want. He’s pretty active. I’ll put the info down below in the description.
So that’s it! Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion.