Dialectical contextualism: Anatomy and application

Miller, Michael St A

Over the last three decades there has been growing appreciation for the significance of context in Christian theological reflection. This has emboldened many to challenge theological systems previously accepted as a kind of objective science of faith, grounded in unquestionable revelation, the systematization and articulation of which had been "mastered" by European thinkers. At the same time, we have been treated to new perspectives in which the particular experiences of communities and regions have been explicitly claimed as vital sources of theology. It is the case, however, that oftentimes these contributions are received as novel departures, but unequal in merit to those developed in the traditional centers.

In this paper, I introduce my theological orientation to the Christian Theological Seminary community by self-identifying as a contextualist. More specifically, I expose the theoretical undergirding for the approach I classify as dialectical contextualism. At the heart of this endeavor is the conviction that contextuality is not simply the characteristic of new and exotic theological orientations. However named and portrayed, all theological systems, as they engage in thought and speech about God and God's relationship to the world, will necessarily be contextual.

Yet the very logic of contextuality demands the admission that the contextual vision is partial. The theologian interested in clarity and coherence must then engage in dynamic interaction within and between contexts that opens the possibility for progressively wholesome visions of reality. This interaction is described as a dialectic, in recognition of the fact that mtercontextual interactions that oftentimes begin with conflicting understandings of reality produce interesting interplays that constitute new contexts, which in turn challenge the very contexts from which they were spawned, even as they become critical-creative components in other interactions. It is the attitudinal and conceptual undergirding provided by this dialectical engagement that will facilitate honorable attempts to fashion a theological agenda that grounds meaningful interaction between diverse orientations and contexts, and, in the end, fuel quests for truth.

Through the engagement of diverse systems of thought that have challenged and inspired me, elements of my own internal dialectic will be exposed. As is the case with all theological and philosophical approaches, my position and the ideas utilized to enable explication are far from non-controversial. Yet the anticipation is that this venture will not only serve the purposes of self-disclosure but will be lure for many creative-constructive explorations.

INSPIRATION

Early exposure to the contextual orientation came through the lectures and writings of Caribbean scholar William Watty. While not self-identifying as a contextualist, Watty argued:

One of the commonest ways in which theology has and still becomes prone to unreality is by the spurious claim to universality and finality. If it is true that we know in part and see through a glass darkly, then every brand of theological formulation is partial and provisional. In other words, there is no theology so far formulated which has not been contextual, parochial and historically conditioned.1

Watty's research on Accommodation in the Religion of Israel2 would have made him sensitive to the ways religious ideas can be modified in and by different circumstances of life. And, given the long history of colonialism and slavery in the Caribbean, he would have been acutely aware of the use of Judeo-Christian scripture by the powerful to make unequivocal and universalistic pronouncements concerning their privileged place and the subordinate place of others. Along with these concerns, the use of Paul's declaration, "we know in part and see through a glass darkly," suggests a general epistemological posture informed by acceptance of human perceptual limitation. The implications for theology would be compounded by an understanding of God as by nature beyond the possibility of exhaustion by the categories of human thought.

Watty apparently took for granted his readers' immediate identification with his pronouncements, so did not provide in-depth elaboration on the foundations of his implicit epistemology. However, this need is dramatized by his later lament: "I do not find in much of modern theology any profound reflection on God Who is God." The conviction seems to have been that this kind of reflection would facilitate a distinction "between theology and popular ideology . . . which alone can rescue theology from ideological superstition."3 Certain questions immediately come to mind. What would be the foundation of the profound reflection Watty hopes for? By what means would one gain the kind of access that would enable the desired reflection on "God who is God"? What is the relationship between this desire and the earlier recognition of human perceptual limitation?

It is quite evident that Watty's theological concerns were not linked to a desire for a return to the assumptions of scholastic metaphysics. He was quite critical of Thomas Aquinas's attempt to develop a conception of God by analogy from human experiences of self and world, suggesting that Aquinas's very methodology determined that it would tell us more about Aquinas than about God. "One might call it Church History, one might call it Thomology, but it is not theology. It is one man's limited intuitions and reflections."4 Actually, Watty's inclinations seem more compatible with ideas from Karl Earth's neo-orthodox scheme. This is suggested by the very employment of the notion of "God who is God" and the strong opposition to any kind if analogy of being. Both are significant to Earth's conviction that attempts to apprehend God by means of normal human perception and analysis are expressions of sinful self-projection that only lead to distortion (recall Watty's notion of theology as ideological superstition). Given the "infinite qualitative distinction between time and eternity," humans are incapable of knowing God by analysis of the universe, history, or the human spirit.

We do resemble what we apprehend, and, in fact, we resemble the world and everything in it because with them we were created. It is a reasonable conclusion, then, that we can form views and concepts of the world and what it is. On the other hand, being created in the image and likeness of God does not mean that we resemble God. It means that God has determined us to bear witness to God's existence in our existence. But this does not mean that we possess and discover an attribute within ourselves on the basis of which we are on a level with God. "Because, therefore, we do not find in ourselves anything that resembles God we cannot apprehend Him by ourselves."5 Any authentic knowledge we have of God comes by means of revelation, which "is not . . . a repeated or general event. It is the simplicity of a definite, temporally limited, unrepeated, and quite unrepeatable event . . ."6 This refers to God's exercise of sovereign freedom in choosing to be present to the world by the Word as expressed in the person of Jesus Christ.

Of crucial importance for Earth's approach to revelation is the view that God necessarily retains essential self-consistency, so is always and only present in otherness and revealed in hiddeness. Yet the human easily arrogates to self some natural capacity by which to discern God; that is, "He no longer stands merely upon the Word of God, but (of course with constant appeal to the Word of God) also upon himself, upon the conjunction or synthesis realized in him and therefore possible to him, upon the esse capax verbi dei imparted to him . . ."7 Barth is clear that God's self-revelation is "not an experience in which the state of human possibilities is enriched by the addition of an organ or capacity not previously possessed."8 There is, therefore, no legitimate ground to claim unique access and insight such as would in any way diminish this distance and mystery. Thus Watty, in true Barthian spirit, sees mystery as fundamental to the very person of Jesus Christ. "We cannot indigenize or domesticate Him." Consequently, to discover the meaning of Christ for a particular context, "we have to make a distinction between His apparent strangeness to us as part of a culture and His strangeness which is a mark of His transcendence of all cultures."9

There is, then, no direct access to "God who is God." And, given the conceptual undergirding as exposed with Earth's help, appropriate theological reflection would have at its center an explication of what is entailed by declaring God to be mysteriously and otherly present in Jesus. In Watty's Caribbean context there is significance at two levels. It would serve as restraint to those who hastily interpret the strangeness of Jesus to or in a particular culture as implying irrelevance or necessarily the result of domestication by another culture. It would challenge the traditional claim by Western colonialists to supreme grasp of and identification with Jesus, such that they could legitimately equate European sensibilities with Christian spirituality (Christendom), and claim the right, by one means or another, to draw others into their orbit. Having said all this, however, one must ask directly of Barth, and by consequence Watty: if in fact human perceptual ability is as limited as suggested, and if what we accept as God's revelation "adds no organ or capacity not previously possessed," on what confident ground can one even claim Jesus to have constituted God's self-revelation to humankind? Biblical writings cannot provide irrefutable justification, since the array of persons and groups responsible for these writings and the preceding traditions out of which they came are subject to the same epistemic predicament as we are. The fact is that whatever might be the source of religious impulses and insights, it is the human who appropriates them as revelatory or determines that one particular revelation is decisive. Clark Williamson puts it well: "Revelation cannot be separated from interpretation. We cannot say, first there is revelation and then, later, the community interprets it. To name an event revelatory is already to interpret it."10 This at least partly explains why the majority of the world's population holds beliefs that in important respects run contrary to events, writings, and pronouncements classified as revelatory by Christians.

If indeed we share a common humanity with all its limitation, all God-talk and claims about revelation ought to be treated with equal skepticism. And those who would speak and evaluate should appreciate the virtue in being moderate. Yet Barth's theological program, conducted with deliberate audacity, "consisted of a sustained effort to reassert the inviolability of Christianity and to insulate Christian belief from the type of scrutiny and interpretation to which all other forms of human thought and action are justifiably subjected." In his rebellion against the dominance of enlightenment thinking in nineteenth-century theology, Barth appears to have been suggesting "a return to pre-critical naivete which no longer seems possible for [most] moderns."11 Watty, on his part, discussed Jesus' strangeness without the benefit of the findings of contemporary scholars who argue quite convincingly that Jesus was far more representative of his complex cultural setting than had been previously appreciated.12 Thus, any evidence of strangeness discoverable in the Bible could derive not from certain transcendence, but simply from socialization in a context that was radically different from Watty's Caribbean. This analysis only underlines the significance of the initial assertion attributed to Watty concerning the limitedness of all theological formulations, with implications going beyond that which he might have anticipated. It also shows why it is vital that one who is supportive of such a position cannot avoid establishing, through exploration of the structures and operations of perception and interpretation, why this is in fact the case.

GROUNDING

My exploration of perception and interpretation begins with an acknowledgement of the revolutionary influence of Immanuel Kant's theory of knowledge, developed as a response to David Hume's skepticism, which questioned a foundational assumption of both formal scientific endeavor and everyday life: that the principle of causation was universal and necessary. In An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume argued quite vigorously that we only learn about causation by experiencing the frequent conjunction of objects, without even being able to comprehend anything like connection between them. The suggestion is that through memory of constant conjunction of one species of event with another "we make no longer any scruple of foretelling one upon the appearance of the other . . . We then call the one object 'cause,' the other, 'effect.'"13

Among the things at stake was the ability to make reasonable assertions about the future on the basis of what had previously been the case - this having serious implications for both scientific generalizations and day-to-day decision making. Kant agreed with Hume that what we perceive comes to us by means of sense impressions. But whereas for Hume there was nothing more, Kant argued that there was something other than mere reception of sense impressions. He proceeded by arguing that by "the concept of 'something which happens,' one thinks an existence which is preceded by a time, etc. . . ." From this concept analytic judgments can be made. Still, "the concept of 'cause' lies entirely outside the other concept, and signifies something different from 'that which happens,' and is not therefore in any way contained in this latter representation." There is then the question, "How come I to predicate of that which happens something quite different, and to apprehend that the concept of cause, though not contained in it, yet belongs, and indeed necessarily belongs, to it?"14 This is the a priori synthetic: a priori because it is not derived from experience, synthetic because it arises with experience. It was to provide theoretical foundation for this position that Kant advanced what is popularly called his Copernican revolution in epistemology. He declares:

Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all our attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have in this assumption ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. This would agree better with what is desired, namely that it should be possible to have knowledge of objects a priori, determining something in regard to them prior to them being given.15

Kant's scheme, worked out in this first critique, is an elaborate one. He identifies a manifold of pure intuition that establishes the framework in which anything at all is able to be experienced, and categories of understanding by which we determine exactly what it is that we experience; that is, how our knowledge will be structured. Significant to this process is the power of imagination, a blind but indispensable function of the soul, which mediates between understanding and sensibility (sense perception), synthesizing experience and setting the stage for the construction of knowledge.16 The point is that "the mind does not merely 'read off what it is given, what is there in the world. The intellect is no passive recording instrument, but an active creator-constructor-of-knowledge."17 This "leads directly to the differentiation between the world as it is, unperceived by anyone and the world as it appears, that is as it is perceived by us."18

Given that the properties of something as experienced depend on the mode of the intuition of the subject, this object as it appears is to be distinguished from itself as object in itself. The terms utilized by Kant to represent this distinction are noumenon and phenomenon, the former not used in its positive sense as that which is knowable by some non-sensible intuition, because we have no such faculty, but in the negative sense "of a thing insofar as it is not the object of sensible intuition."19

Lorraine Cody points out that the a-historicity and blind universality of the Kantian scheme resulted in a standardized knower "undifferentiated from other knowers by any of his particular traits or by any of the contingent circumstances in which he might acquire his knowledge."20 She however reminds us that by conceiving knowledge as a creative synthesis of the imagination, Kant prepared the way for analyses of knowledge as construct and for contextualizing epistemic activity so that the knower, and not just the known, comes under epistemological scrutiny. As she sees it, traditional epistemological analysis had taken place with focus on the "knowing that." "They had proposed methodologies for arriving at truth, and criteria for determining the validity of claims to the effect that'S knows p.'" "The question, 'Who is S' was regarded neither as legitimate nor as relevant in these endeavors." Given the turn to the knower, the way was opened for the contemporary recognition that a "complex structure of conceptual, political, and 'knowledge accumulating' factors produces the conditions that make knowledge possible." Thus the historical, cultural, and linguistic locatedness of every inquirer is of vital importance.21 The work of cultural anthropologist Karl Mannheim further dramatizes the way these considerations have enriched the epistemological perspective generated by Kant. Just over half a century ago this eminent scholar suggested that the older method of intellectual history, which was oriented toward the a priori conception that changes in ideas were to be understood on the level of ideas (immanent intellectual history), blocked recognition of the penetration of the social process into the intellectual sphere. In arguing for the social determination of all knowledge, he makes the case that existential factors are not only relevant to the genesis of ideas, but penetrate into their very form and content.22 These contribute to "perspective," which signifies the manner in which one views an object, what one perceives in it, and how one construes it in his or her thinking.

Perspective, therefore, is something more than a merely formal determination of thinking. It refers also to the qualitative elements in the structure of thought, elements which must necessarily be overlooked by purely formal logic. It is precisely these factors which are responsible for the fact that two persons, even if they apply the same formal-logical rules, e.g., the law of contradiction or the formula of the syllogism, in an identical manner, may judge the same subject differently.23

Some will argue against the relevance of these claims for the endeavors of science. For them, science is thoroughly objective, with theories that are validated by clear-cut criteria and tested by agreement with indisputable theory-free data (both criteria and data being independent of the individual subject and unaffected by cultural-contextual influences). In the mid-twentieth century, the logical positivists were quite successful in utilizing such a stance to establish a contrast with religious endeavor, in order to discredit the latter. With figures such as Werner Heisenberg and Karl Popper as forerunners, a number of contemporary philosophers of science have argued that scientific data are indeed theory-laden, not theory-free. Thomas Kuhn and Ian Barbour make the case for what one might call "scientific contextualism" as they argue that theories and data are dependent on the prevailing paradigms of the scientific community. Here paradigm is understood to be "a cluster of conceptual, metaphysical, and methodological presuppositions embodied in a tradition of scientific work."

This suggests a far more dynamic interplay between the scientist and the particularities of context than is usually acknowledged, such that "with a new paradigm, the old data is reinterpreted and seen in new ways, and new kinds of data are sought." In the choice between paradigms, there are no rules for applying scientific criteria, their evaluation being an act of judgment by the scientific community. Appreciation of the complexity of this scenario is highlighted when one recognizes that at no time is the scientific community a simple monolith but a diverse community of communities, each operating with its own peculiar appropriation of what may be a general paradigm. We therefore have seen not only radical shifts of paradigms, as in the movement from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics, but the coexistence of differing perspectives on common phenomena within the same general framework. The out-workings of the latter range from the outright conflictual, as in the case of creation versus evolutionary cosmologies, to creative appreciation, as in the recognition by quantum physics that the very process and perspective of observation influences the system being observed.24

The significance of "the subject in context" is far more evident when one moves from the scientific to the religious realm. Barbour suggests that religious traditions can be looked on as communities that share a common paradigm, and that the "interpretation of the data (such as religious experience and historical events) is even more paradigm-dependent than in the case of science." Moreover, "there is greater use of ad hoc assumptions to reconcile apparent anomalies . . ."25 This view is informed by the conviction that the putative ground of religious experiences is by very definition not an object of investigation, and thus not accessible for examination in the same way as the objects of science. It is argued by many that "religious claims have significance to our lives because they have something to say about the world in which we live those lives; even revealed theology requires its points of contact with the ordinary, familiar world."26 John Hick suggests, however, that this so-called familiar world is religiously ambiguous. And it is by the exercise of cognitive freedom that some in the midst of diverse interpretations appropriate and build on the perceived natural and ethical meanings and attribute religious meaning or significance to that which is experienced.27 The philosophical theologian would insist that his or her work has exactly to do with rational reflection on religious claims to ensure appropriateness, credibility, coherence, relevance, and moral plausibility.28 However, this in no way undermines the basic case for the complex conditioning of the theological enterprise. If thinkers like Cody, Mannheim, and Barbour are correct, the world of which religion has something to say is itself the result of contextually (paradigm) grounded interpretation. The ideas being applied have been given meaning within particular linguistic frameworks. Finally, even if the criteria used to assess the rationality of theological pronouncements have universal acceptance, they are applied by persons and communities who are products of complex historic and social processes, and who are moved by motives very often not easily discerned.

CHALLENGES

Whereas the argument for contextuality has provided reasonable justification for the turn made by many oppressed and marginalized peoples to particularized theological formulations grounded in their own experience(s), as informed by Kant, it also created significant problems. None seems more challenging than that which arises from Hick's pluralistic hypothesis for inter-religious relations. If religious beliefs and practices are undergirded by layers of creative-imaginative activity, does this not question the foundations of Christian theology? Hick has no doubt that there is a "noumenal Real," but given the disjunction between noumena and phenomena, we not only do not have immediate contact with the world as it is, but our concepts of and claims about the ground of existence (God) can have no "real" application to God qua God.29 Alvin Plantinga argues thus:

If there are noumena, or things in themselves, at all, then, clearly enough, God is among them. God, surely, is as ultimately real as anything could possibly be; if this distinction between noumena and phenomena . . . is a real distinction, then God would surely fall on the noumenal side of the distinction. But then, if Kant is right, none of our concepts apply to God, we cannot so much as think or talk about God.30

The prospects are not strengthened by Kant's assertion that though reason is driven ineluctably to metaphysical reflection, what results is transcendental illusion.31 This being the case, all theological ventures would be susceptible to Ludwig Freuerbach's contention that the notion of God (and related theological ideas) really represents the highest subjectivity of humans abstracted from themselves. Thus, religion represents the disuniting of humans from themselves. In the end, ". . . the true sense of Theology is Anthropology . . . there is no distinction between the predicates of the divine and human nature, and, consequently, no distinction between the divine and the human subject."32

Clearly, then, if the expression God/ultimate is to be legitimately used to refer to that which the religious person experiences as the ground of existence and foundation of the theological enterprise, one must accept that at some level there is a necessary connection between what is claimed to be experienced and this ultimate in itself, even if we might not be able to establish clear correspondence. To claim that we can say nothing that can ever apply to the ultimate itself is effectively to delegitimize positive God-talk. The Christian contextual theologian cannot afford the latter and the Kantian framework cannot sustain the former. We must therefore seek for the means that enable us to walk in the path opened by Kant, but in a way that more clearly supports real connection between the religious and the putative ground of religion.

IN PURSUIT OF A SOLUTION

Some in their anxiety to escape the difficulties associated with Kantian epistemology might be tempted to cast their eyes back to pre-Kantian times, even to the halcyon days when early Christian synthesis had reached its peak in the ideas of Aquinas. Given his fundamental conviction that the world is directly derived from the very mind of God, Aquinas argued that the idea of direct derivation suggested that God exists in everything. At the first level this is in the sense of an agent connected with that upon which it acts. At the deeper level he proceeds from the position that God's nature is to exist, thus as existence God must be the very foundation of all existence. Indeed, "existence is more intimately and profoundly interior to things than everything else, for everything as we said is potentiality when compared to existence . . . Hence the perfection of his nature places God above everything and yet as causing their existence he also exists in everything."33 Clearly there is much religious value in the conviction that God is internally related to the cosmos. In the Thomist scheme, however, it is only the creator God who can have internal relations with the created. It is just not conceivable that finite-contingent creatures could enter into the "constitution" of an infinite-perfect-necessary creator. Further, "it is impossible for our intellect in its state of being joined to a body capable of receiving impressions, actually to understand anything without turning to sense images." Thus, we can only have knowledge of God that derives from our attunement to other finite things. As we pay attention to their metaphysical structure, that is, their "whatness" or quidditas, there is the recognition that they point beyond themselves to the existence (God) that is their causal ground. We know this God "as cause about which we ascribe the utmost perfection and negate any limit."34

It is now quite legitimate to ask, how far can we really go in any attempt to develop positive content to the notion of simple being whose nature it is to exist? And what is the status of related theological ideas? Aquinas seems to address the epistemological problematic associated with these questions by formulating a supporting approach to religious knowledge that effectively closes the door to contextuality. There is the argument that if in choosing between one viable position and another there is doubt, one has an opinion. But if there is certainty with no fear of competing conclusions, one is seen as having exercised faith. It turns out that this faith-based knowledge is determined by adherence to a specific corpus of propositions as determined by the church, which constitutes revealed truth. Thus, in order to guard against agnosticism and multiplicity of belief, Aquinas seems to support an imposed uniformity. As he says, "Anyone, therefore, who does not hold as the infallible and divine rule of faith Church teachings that derive from divine truth as handed down in Scripture, does not have the habit of faith." One ought to assent to these church-determined articles of faith as to God. But since faith is something that humans by nature are not capable of in themselves, "The assent of faith . . . has as its cause God, moving us inwardly through grace."35 Aquinas' argument does support the notion that truth is one, and it preserves a kind of unity of faith. Unfortunately, he also established justification for a situation in which faith as trust is assessed in terms of assent to particular propositions. And, given what we know about the church of Aquinas' time, one also envisions a scenario in which a centralized authority, reflecting the mode of thought of a particular context, would determine what were acceptable propositions. These would be understood as constituting the truth about God and the truth from God, and, as such, having universal application and requiring universal acceptance. This is exactly the approach that those who espouse contextualism have found most oppressive and undermining of the richness of the life of faith. Aquinas will also not enable us to establish an acceptable case for God-world intimacy in its most fulsome expression; that is, mutual and reciprocal. And his attempt to bridge the epistemic divide between God and us would serve instead to reinforce the very problems that contextualists are seeking to address.

PHILOSOPHY OF ORGANISM AS FRAMEWORK

Over time, I have come to appreciate the process-relational orientation, grounded in Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism, as a framework in which to make sense of both God-world intimacy and contextuality. Significantly, Whitehead describes his system as "the inversion of Kant's philosophy . . . For Kant, the world emerges from the subject, for philosophy of organism, the subject emerges from the world - a 'superject' rather than 'subject.'"36 Whitehead's attempt at inversion was fueled by the recognition that Kant was only forced to resort to pure a priori categories and concepts of mind because his understanding of perception was limited by commitment to Hume's brand of empiricism. It is striking that while Hume, in the name of empiricism, argued vigorously against the notion of "substance,"37 by his own admission, his own theory of perception reflected fundamental traits characteristic of this metaphysical category. As he put it, perceptions are "distinct and separable and may be considered as separately existent, and may exist separately, and have no need of any thing else to support their existence."38 It makes sense then that there would be no ground for establishing universality or necessity for causal connection between one entity or presentational experience and another, no matter how often perceived associations led to particular consequences. And it is for exactly these same reasons that Kant, while accepting the notion that causal connection arose with experience, could be certain that this could not be derived from experience. Thus, we end up with a complex a priori scheme, which appears to protect universality and necessity, but radically undermines our capacity to have confidence about anything outside of the mind.

With the benefit of insights from ongoing scientific investigation, Whitehead declared that fundamental to the philosophy of organism is the abandonment of the notion "of an actual entity as the unchanging subject of change . . . An actual entity is at once the subject experiencing and the superject of its experiences."39 Indeed, what we are a part of is not a realm of static finalities, but a dynamic interconnected and complex process. As he put it:

The community of actual things is an organism; but this is not just a static organism. It is an incompletion in process of production. Thus the expansion of the universe in respect of actual things is the first meaning of process; and the universe in any stage of its expansion is the first meaning of organism . . . each actual entity is itself only describable as an organic process. It repeats in microcosm what the universe is in macrocosm. It is a process proceeding from phase to phase, each phase being the real basis from which its successor proceeds toward the completion of the thing in question.40

This organismic paradigm that privileges the notion of process over that of substance41 lays the groundwork for a doctrine of immediate experience that counters Hume's skepticism and Kant's quasi-rationalism. By accepting that fundamental to each process of actualization is the incorporation of previously completed processes, we begin to appreciate that there is indeed authentic communication and causal influence, which connects each entity with other entities in the universe at the deepest possible level. In direct contrast to Kant's understanding of what constitutes the phenomenon, experience as understood in this paradigm does not necessarily involve sensation and is for the most part not conscious. Consciousness is considered to be a very high level of experience, which arises only in high-grade entities (humans being the exemplars), and after a complex multi-layered process. The terms "prehension" and "feeling" capture the way entities from electrons, molecules, and cells to humans give and receive influence as they, through creative syntheses fashion their "lives" and contribute to the "life processes" of others. This is a far cry from Hume's insistence that we only learn by experience the frequent conjunction of objects, without even being able to comprehend any-thing like connection between them.

Whitehead opens the way to greater epistemological confidence by suggesting that the behavior interpretable as implying causation "is [actually] the subjective response to presentational immediacy, that is, our sensuous experience of the world external to us. Also the situation elicited in response is nothing but an immediate presentation, or the memory of one." Among the means employed to help us understand what constitutes this subjective response in an exposition of contemporary scientific explanation of what is involved in reflex action: specifically, a man blinking when a light is turned on in the dark space where he is located. The physiological explanation has to do with "the conjectural record of the travel of a spasm of excitement along nerves to a nodal center, and of the return spasm of contraction back to the eyelids." Hume would never accept the explanation that the compulsion to blink was just what was felt, this based on the dogma that all percepts come by way of sensuous experience of the world. Thus, there was "no percept of the flash making the man blink . . . there are merely the two percepts - the flash and the blink - combining the two latter of the three percepts under the term 'blink' . . . what this man experienced was his habit of blinking after flashes." However, contemporary physiological analysis points to a complex dynamic beneath and beyond activities as perceived through the senses, which involve a series of impacts, each influencing that which followed and contributed to that which flowed from the nodal center and manifested as a compulsion to blink. Whitehead asks a telling question: "How can a 'habit' be felt when a cause cannot be felt? Is there any presentational immediacy in the feeling of a habit?" In Process and Reality, he accuses Hume of slight of hand by which he "confuses a 'habit of feeling blinks after flashes' with a 'feeling of the habit of feeling blinks after flashes.'"42 In Adventures of Ideas, he reflects on Hume's utilization of "a doctrine of force and liveliness as an essential factor in an impression of sensation." Whitehead suggests that the whole doctrine of "custom" is dependent on the assumption that the force and liveliness of one occasion of experience does enter into the character of another.

If the occasions are completely separate, as Hume contends, this transition of character is without any basis in the nature of things. What Hume, in his appeal to memory, is really doing is to appeal to an observed immanence of the past in the future . . .43

Surely it is testimony to the power of a conceptual scheme (paradigm) that Kant, having recognized the devastating implications of Hume's position for the universality and necessity of causality, was not moved to critique the undergirding theory of perception with its substance-like appearance. It instead served as catalyst for his radical shift in epistemological explanation that blinds us to the full nature of our experiences. We end up with a complex a priori scheme, grounded in the presumption that an entity contributes nothing to facilitate knowledge of what it is in reality, nor does any entity possess any faculty by which to discern anything about what another entity external to a mind truly is. In the end no entity can contribute to the becoming of another. However, if we take Whitehead's analysis of reflex action seriously, we begin to factor in a preconscious-non-sensory realm characterized by that other mode of perception called "perception in the mode of causal efficacy."44 Applying this in any discussion about the blinking man, we could with confidence suggest to the supporter of Hume's doctrine that beneath the limited/limiting perceptions allowed by the senses, there was the progressive accumulation and processing of information about an initial stimuli (consciously classified as a sharp light), which led eventually to blinking as a protective response. This in turn opens the way for the appreciation of a complex and fascinating process that can enable the Kantian to escape the conceptual prison that prevented any possibility of confident association of that which was produced by mind with that which was external to it.

A superficial look at Whitehead's explication of pre-conscious-non-sensory perception, which justifies immediate experience, could appear to challenge the argument for contextuality. However, the fact that our perception is never determined solely by impacts inherited from the objective world, and that the address of these impacts does not merely represent already established standpoints but progressively fashions new standpoints, determines that this scheme actually enhances our appreciation of contextuality. There are three phases in the perceptual process. For every kind of entity, the first involves physical prehension, in which data from the past actual world is taken in. Whitehead indicates: "The primitive form of physical experience is emotional - blind emotion - received as felt elsewhere in another occasion and conformally appropriated as a subjecttive passion."45 Yet it is at this very basic stage that contextualization begins with the entertainment of the worth or value inherent in the objective world, determining that to which an entity is immediately inclined to conform. The high level of mentality in humans ensures that our experience will not be characterized by mere conformity and repetition. Thus, by means of conceptual prehension we enter into creative engagement with received data as guided by our subjective purpose. This involves the entertainment of values present in eternal objects; that is, alternatives that represent other possible forms of definiteness or ways of being that do not involve "a necessary reference to any definite actual entities of the temporal world."46 Clearly, this represents the progressive particularization of experience as we fashion novel integrations from the various inputs, setting the stage for a final integration of the product of prior phases, such that there is fulfillment of subjective purpose; that is, the aim for satisfaction.

This explanation enhances the ability to appropriate important elements of Kant's epistemological scheme. Conceptual judgments in terms of quantity, quality, relation, and modality have to be vital elements in a process by which myriad pre-conscious-non-sensory impulses and associations are entertained, evaluated, and appropriated in different ways for the sake of becoming.47 The importance accorded by Kant to the role of imagination in the schematization of our understanding is clear appreciation for experience and self-realization as a dynamic-creative process. Significantly, he was forced to admit that its operation "is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul" and its "real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze."48 I suggest that Kant's vision was obscured by fixation to presentational immediacy. And it is as we take seriously the proposals associated with causal efficacy that significant content can be contributed to his valuable intuition and its full significance appreciated. By this means I can also, in an informed way, support Cody, Mannheim, and others who hold that we do not experience (religious or otherwise) merely in terms of pure a priori concepts and categories that constitute some fixed schematizing grid. I can argue that our experience as humans is constituted by an array of syntheses that fashion dominant patterns of influence from one's internal and external environments (ethos) that have vital ontological significance. Thus, any assessment of novelty in a particular life cannot exclude inputs like the parents of which one is born, the family into which one is born, and the social-economic-cultural grouping by or into which one is socialized, etc. Cobb puts it well when he suggests, "While there is some physiological influence in the process [of establishing decisiveness], much more of the selective organization of experience is determined by the peculiarities of individual biography."49

What we have is a complex network of influences and an intricate process of engagement that serve as vital force for the final integration of conceptual and physical prehensions by which abstract possibilities are related to particular concrete facts, leading to the conscious awareness of one's self as a unique personality with particular feelings and dispositions - this Hosinski calls "ontological knowing."50 As the most primitive form of knowing, "ontological knowing" ensures that even when by means of rational knowing our judgment has shifted emphasis to the truth-value of propositions, the subjectivist principle is never fully transcended.51 Having emerged from the ontological, the rational will continue to be indelibly marked by it. Thus our most careful evaluations will never fully extricate us from the layers of contextualizing influence by means of which we have been and are being fashioned, affecting what and how we evaluate. It is when we fail to appreciate this fundamental constraint on all our reflections and evaluations that we succumb to what Watty calls unreality, whereby we construe that which is particular and provisional as universal and final.

SOME THEOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS

In order to pave as clear a path as possible for specific application to the theological process, more must be said about the God-world relationship. Although by the ontological principle actual entities are the final real things of which the world is made up, actual entities cannot settle for themselves the logical or cosmological relations to which they will conform. If this is not predetermined for them, they can have no basis for entering into those relationships with the past apart from which they cannot occur at all.52 It is eternal objects that constitute the bare structure of logical orders and qualities that can characterize actual entities in the world. But being prior to any particular actualization, they constitute mere possibilities. Mere possibilities cannot be seen as existing on their own or as possessing the power of agency. Neither can they be adequately explained in terms of notions like "substantial activity" or "principle of concretion." Again, the function of providing limitation to ensure order and value can be assigned only to an actual entity. Whitehead calls this entity God.

In general, Whitehead maintains that God "is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse. He is their chief exemplification." And this is certainly maintained in the assertion that God, like other actual entities, is dipolar. We recall that in the description of purely temporal entities, physical and mental poles symbolize the complex dynamic by which the process of becoming involves other-determination, self-determination, and, ultimately, self-realization that superjects as influence for succeeding entities. Yet in order to establish God as that which accounts for non-actualized eternal objects, which in turn contribute to the existence of actual entities in the world, there has to be a reversal of the purely temporal order, such that the mental pole or primordial non-temporal aspect is seen as prior to the physical pole (consequent nature), representing the envisagement of every possible state of the actual world and every possible development from that actual state.

Thus, "Viewed as primordial, he [God] is the unlimited conceptual realization of the absolute wealth of potentiality . . . But, as primordial, so far is he from 'eminent reality' that in this abstraction he is 'deficiently actual' . . ."53 God can only be understood as fully actual when considered in relation to other actualities by means of God's consequent nature, which is subject to the conditions that govern temporal becoming. This means that although within the array of eternal objects God does have ideal aims for each entity in every possible situation, God cannot determine how exactly an entity will act in any situation or how these aims will be appropriated. God necessarily must relate to each entity in its uniqueness. This is especially true for humans who are complex communities of occasions coordinated by regnant occasions called souls, and are therefore open to the greatest diversity of influence, and capable of the highest level of self-determination. Applying ideas from our earlier discussion, I now suggest that while the regnant soul/mind might coordinate the overall experience of a person, as itself partially the product of prior syntheses (experiences), it is influenced in how it receives and processes any and all influences. God must work with this complex context that is each human being, and with the particularities of that orbit of influence in and into which individuals and groups are socialized. Surely this is further evidence of a scenario that involves unique relations, unique entities, and unique aims, which constitute the particularities of a "situation," and results in unique religious impulses that will condition the output from subsequent rational reflection.

It should now be less difficult to appreciate Rudolph Otto's attempt to explicate religious experience within the general framework of the Kantian categorical scheme, doing so in a way that reflects some Whiteheadian values. Otto defends the validity of rational religion with its conceptualizations, even suggesting that the abundance of Christian conceptions is evidence of its superiority. Yet he is convinced that "the essence of deity" cannot be given completely and exhaustively through rational attributions.54

There is a "profounder religion" which is beyond the limitations of the rational framework in which we order and systematize our intuitions. There is indeed a meaningful association with the nonrational numinous realm, and "holy situations" are the best means of encounter. However, as soon as "the wind of the spirit" moves one to apprehension, "schematization starts at once and needs no prompting."55 Immediately - that is, long before conscious experience - one is distanced from pure primordial revelation. In fact, the appreciation of what constitutes revelation is more the outcome of this schematization than anything else. So whereas the numinous is alluring (fascinans) drawing the religious to itself, it remains "wholly other" (mysterium tremendum). This is a tension that is fundamental to theological pursuits. At some level we do have genuine connection with a spiritual realm, and it is by means of the Whiteheadian conceptual scheme that this is most adequately exposed. But it is clear that we in our various contexts never appropriate this experience in such a way as to ensure one-to-one correlation between what is thought, said, and practiced in the religious life and that which is their true ground.

TOWARD THE DIALECTIC

Some might see the scenario constituted by contextually influenced perceptions, interpretations, and articulations as something to be endured until in some eschatological state we "put off that which presently characterizes our humanity. On the other hand, those enthused by the idea of a "profounder religion" may attempt to fashion novel schemes to subdue or subvert the schematizing operations of mind in order to get to the realm of pure prehension. The first posture is usually linked with a very low view of humanity and self. Attempts at the second often end up reducing complex structures into common essences and so disregard specific beliefs and practices by which many identify themselves and act out faith. Yet if we take seriously the foregoing analyses, there is no way to escape the cognitive-discursive (rational knowing). In fact, it is by means of the cognitive-discursive that we make the analyses and distinctions by which we determine what characterizes the pre-conscious-non-sensory. Even if by means of one or another spiritual discipline we were to subdue the influence of the cognitive-discursive, it is by means of this same faculty that we could make an assessment of what was achieved, and reflect on the theological significance.

The most deadly threat, however, would be the adoption of thoroughgoing relativism in which fixation on the uniqueness of contexts blinds the eye to anything beyond this fact, such that there is the claim that all truth is relative to context; that is, we can only speak of your truth, my truth, or their truth, etc. This is obviously self-defeating in two related ways. The very claim for the relativity of truth is itself non-relative, which is, "relativity is the case always and everywhere." Any contrary assertion would constitute an admission that its claim is only relatively true; that is, its truth-value is only assured in a particular context, which effectively defeats the claim. Also, when faced with the opposite claim - that is, "there is non-relative Truth" the thoroughgoing relativist would have to accept this as true, and so by consequence deny her primary case.

While resistant to thoroughgoing relativism, I am of the mind that the most helpful approach to "perspectivity" (as characteristic of the theological arena) is to be very restrained in our employment of the notion of truth when describing the religious pronouncements around and about which we theologize. In its least complicated employment, truth has to do with verification; that is, the establishing of what is actually the case in regard to our religious pronouncements. We can without much debate admit that these pronouncements are not amenable to the approach to verification through experimentation. Tillich mentions the experiential approach in which, over the course of time, the truth or falsity of a claim is made clear; that is, verification occurs within the life process itself. "Verification of this has the advantage that it need not halt and disrupt the life-process in order to distill calculable elements out of it . . ." Yet success in this pursuit is in doubt. Apart from human epistemic limitations, most religious pronouncements, despite their form, are not primarily about facts but about meaning and significance. And how exactly do we verify or falsify meaning and significance? Beyond this, the very factual claims made about the ultimate grounding of religion and the source of the meanings we attribute to experience place these beyond the scope of any of our verification processes. Tillich actually admits that the experiential test "is neither repeatable, precise, nor final at any particular moment . . . Therefore, this test is indefinite and preliminary . . ."56 And, even if one accepts John Hick's notion of eschatological verification,57 it obviously applies to a state or realm in which the epistemic conditions that are fundamental to our humanity would no longer apply. What we now have is a scenario in which truth is used too widely; that is, to signify too many different things and so is diminished in its capacity for particular meaning. A wiser course would be to classify our contextually conditioned pronouncements as statements of belief, and save the notion of truth for that possible state of affairs in which it might be established what does or does not correspond to these statements. Until then, those of us who now engage in second-order rational reflection on beliefs (the Theologian) would still have the obligation to establish what are more-or-less justifiable beliefs. The vital task would be guided by Williamson's critical questions (appropriateness, credibility, coherence, relevance, and moral plausibility).

The address of these critical questions will certainly be benefited by the acquisition of tools for rational analysis, and awareness of the history of reflection around particular issues and ideas. These, however, need to be grounded in a general predisposition to pay attention. Watty put it well, when in reflection on the development of Caribbean theology, he suggested "the necessary step . . . is that all of us must be much more observant, much more sensitive, much more open, much more discerning and much more discriminating."58 This means attention to religious declarations and practices often repeated without much thought (states of the world); the means and processes by which we establish religious meaning or significance of these states; and the relationship between the religious and non-religious evaluations of the states of the world, especially the implications of new and interesting insights in any sphere of analysis or interpretation for the other spheres. Of vital importance as we struggle with these matters is the recognition that interpretations of pronouncements about states of the world, along with their assigned religious significance, have implications for the ongoing welfare of the cosmos and its inhabitants. So while Christian theologians engage in necessary evaluations of coherence and consistence, they must heed ethical challenges such as that represented in Rabbi Irving Greenberg's working principle, "No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children."59 Perhaps some might be more disposed to hear words attributed to Jesus in Matthew 25 and so evaluate in terms of that which enhances the welfare of "the least of these."

The recognition that we operate in the realm of belief should temper inclinations to judgmentalism. However, it would certainly not be unreasonable to hold beliefs assessed as more justifiable to be probably closer to the truth than less justifiable beliefs. If justifiable belief and truth are viewed as important, then one is obliged to be interested in how these are pursued within and across contexts, with a view to enlarge and strengthen understanding and appropriation. One also has the obligation to bring to bear that which is understood to be justifiable belief, with the hope that this will contribute to the pursuit at hand, and with the expectation that this belief can be challenged or even overturned for the sake of truth. For the Christian theologian, the establishing of a framework in which to engage the pursuit of justifiable belief begins with the acceptance that the ultimate ground of authentic religious life is in the all-inclusive reality God. And if the Whitehead-influenced critique of Kantian epistemology is correct, there can be confidence that religious notions around which we theologize have some connection with this all-inclusive ground. These being the case, we could safely assume that through interaction between contextually conditioned theologies, each and all can be enriched through the basic recognition that there are other perspectives, through the challenge posed by contradictory notions, and ultimately through appropriation of new and different, if limited, visions of what might actually be the case. Engagement with those who doubt all claims about God is not precluded, as there is no avoiding the assertion that there is indeed the truth concerning the grounding of the religious life, whatever this is. It is this adventure that constitutes the dialectic.

In describing the conversational approach that characterizes his systematic text, Way of Blessing, Way of Life, Clark Williamson explicitly sets his methodology over against dialectical approaches. He declares: "Associated with polemics, dialectical theology emphasizes difference and disagreement, sharpening contrasts. For it, conversation tends to become debate." In contrast, "conversational theology is more concerned about listening to those to whom the church has never listened . . ."60 Other discussions in this text make it clear, however, that difference, disagreement, and the sharpening of contrasts per se could not have dismayed Williamson. These are in fact the likely consequences of his encouragement to question everything, to think critically, to test for coherence, relevance, and moral plausibility in theological formulations. His fundamental concern is that if there is to be disagreement, it should come after "we can fairly be said to understand those with whom we disagree."61 It seems, then, that Williamson's problem is more with the inclination of some to prejudge, rush to judgment, or to be fixated on the negation of others. And these are exactly what dialectic as understood by the writer is intended to counter. Therefore, by means of critical engagement with dominant expressions of the dialectical orientation, I will expose the means by which my approach can provide guidance to inter-contextual interaction that upholds the value of critical-creative tension without the ultimate negation of the Other.

In the Hegelian system, the dialectic was the means by which the Absolute Idea (World Spirit/Gheist) progresses toward realization of itself. As Being in itself (pure immediacy of being), it is mere abstract universality completely lacking concrete specification. To be a subject there has to be relation to that which is other, so being must negate itself and become other than itself. To become subject in and with itself, it must mediate itself with itself by negating the negation of itself. In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel represents this dynamic as three forms of divine history.62 The first form takes place outside of the world, outside of finitude where there is no space, representing God as He is in His essential being or in-and-for-Himself. Elsewhere, God in-and-for-self is presented as "the life-process, the Trinity, in which the Universal puts itself in antithesis with itself, and in this antithesis identical with itself, the enclosing of Himself with Himself."63 The second form is represented by the divine history in a real shape in the world: God is definite completed existence. The third stage is represented by the inner place, the Spiritual Community, existing at first in the world, but at the same time rising itself up to heaven, and which, as a Church, already has Him in itself here on earth, full of grace, active and present in the world. In the end, all negations and oppositions are necessary stages in service of one inexorable movement toward ultimate reconciliation of Being with self. Yet in important ways this end seems contrary to my appropriation of Williamson's concern for "listening to those to whom the church has never listened." By my understanding, the Other ought to be allowed to speak for their own sake, and my listening to the Other ought to be (at least in part) for the Other's own sake. This is tantamount to celebrating the Other in, because of, and for the sake of their otherness. But Hegel's explication of the various conditions of Being expressed in all forms (in self, for self, in and with self), suggest that the real significance of any and all interpersonal and historical interactions is that they are expressions of Absolute Spirit's preoccupation with and progressive realization of self. Thus, "this vast congeries of volitions, interests and activities, constitute the instruments and means of the World-Spirit for attaining its object . . . And this aim is none other that finding itself - coming to itself - and contemplating itself in concrete reality."64 Indeed whatever might be the glimpses in other settings, it is in the dynamics of the Church informed by a doctrine of the Trinity that we will find the clearest marks by which to have meaningful discernments of God. Why then should the Church listen to those to whom she has not listened when "the Christian world is the world of completion; the grand principle of being is realized, consequently the end of days is fully come"?65

One has to admire the application of the fundamental dialectical principle in Barth's understanding of God as realizing God's self through the opposite of God. He modifies Calvin's doctrine of double predestination, such that it portrays God as choosing the opposite for self and choosing self for the opposite; that is, determining not to be God without the opposite who are claimed as God's own.66 Yet again, the outworking of this dialectic is only expressed in a single framework; that is, the Judeo-Christian framework. This outworking is explicated in such a way that Israel, as reflecting that primary self-negation by which God constitutes self for self, is necessarily negated (elected-rejected) for the sake of the Church (rejected-elected) founded on Jesus who as the God-Man is the means of God's reconciliation and so be in-and-with-self. It follows that those of the Church cannot be content with listening to Israel qua Israel and engage on mutual-reciprocal-critical interaction and conversation, because Israel's fulfillment is in its sublation in the Church of Jesus Christ. Thus, "What is elected in Jesus Christ (his body) is the community which has the twofold form of Israel and the Church."67 Stated in more absolute and universalistic terms: "The truth of Jesus Christ is not one truth among others; it is the truth, the universal truth that creates all truth as surely as it is the truth of God, the prima veritas which is also the ultima veritas,"68 With this pre-established and absolute position, there is really no place for truly listening to any who believe differently. And so despite impressive and complex elaboration, Barth's formulation does not satisfy the approach to dialectical engagement being proposed by this writer.

At first glance, the approach to the dialectic as expressed in the thought of Jurgen Moltmann seems to be closer to that which is demanded by my brand of enlightened contextuality and desired by Williamson. Moltmann makes the telling declaration, "One of the basic difficulties of Christian life in the world today is clearly the inability to identify with what is other, alien and contradictory." We are intolerant of the other's strangeness in regard to ourselves, and our strangeness in regard to others, the result being "withdrawal into the circle of those who think the same as oneself; or else one abandons Christian life and assimilates oneself to those from whom it is hoped to receive recognition and status." As far as Moltmann is concerned, the dialectic is not some painful consequence that we tolerate until it is resolved through the Aristotelian principle, "like seeks after like." Its embrace is fundamental to any Christian theology that "all the deity of God is revealed in the paradox of the cross." For the crucified Christ, "the principle of fellowship is fellowship with those who are different, and solidarity with those who have become alien and have been made different." Epistemologically, this means that we cannot settle with analogical thinking: "the analogical principle of knowledge is one-sided if it is not supplemented by the dialectic principle of knowledge . . . that is, 'every being can be revealed only in its opposite.'" As attractive as Moltmann's application is, it still represents an attempt to interpret the significance of Otherness solely in terms of the cross. Thus the cross represents both contradiction and correspondence, and this is why "all the deity of God is revealed in the paradox of the cross."69 This easily leads to an understanding of the Other only in terms of the ability to reveal my full meaning (as a Christian) to me. Surely this is not the disposition that will prepare one for the kind of engagements intentionally designed to celebrate the Other in their otherness and result in mutual enhancement.

In the dialectical tradition represented by Hegel, Barth, and Moltmann, it is not only that the truth is grounded in God, or that there is the truth about the claims we make about God, but that by one means or another some have found that privileged location from which to map the exact parameters of that truth and describe exactly how it plays out in the dynamic of specific situations and peoples. Whether expressed in analysis of universal history, in the outworkings of covenant, or the paradox of the cross, this is a predetermined process and end, ultimately to be realized within a single particularity. There is recognition of otherness, but to the degree that this otherness is purely in the service of Self (Absolute Being/God, Church, Christian) or must be negated for the sake of this Self, the so-called dialectic results in the nullification of the Other as other. As conceived in this paper, the dialectic demanded by contextuality (that movement toward self-realization and justified belief), is effected by the maintenance of a creative tension between Self and Other. It therefore does not limit the locus of correspondence, nor does it allow for the belief that there will necessarily be full correspondence. Even as there is the relentless quest for clarity and hopefully greater correspondence with truth, there is readiness to identify with Paul Knitter as he finds himself "trembling before the utter, or 'frightening' Mystery of difference." As he put it, "It is a difference that I cannot comprehend, that sometimes threatens me, that chides or even laughs at my theories. I have thus experienced the religious Other as the totaliter aliter - the utterly Other, the incommensurable, the incomprehensible."70 It is an even more profound discovery when we move beyond the recognition of the Other simply as other, and appreciate that for that Other it is we who are other; that is, we share a sameness by our difference.

This recognition of sameness in difference opens the way (with insights gained from the Whiteheadian scheme), to the justifiable assertion that a dialectic of mutuality and reciprocity, which celebrates otherness, is not simply a practical requirement but a meta-physical necessity.71 One recalls that in the Whiteheadian scheme, at the most basic levels of experience, occasions achieve concreteness only to become objective datum for the becoming of another. However, our discussions have concerned the highest cosmic expression of the enduring object; that is, human beings, which are capable of great intensity of experience toward a high degree of order and self-determination. Although there is constant perishing and coming into being by entities and within groupings of entities that comprise this complex community of entities, the human retains uniqueness by the very way it synthesizes inputs from the objective world, eternal objects, and ultimately from an ongoing interaction with God. Although the ongoing process of penshing-superjection, reception, synthesizing, and concrescence fashions ever-new states of being, the regnant center ensures that consistent self-identity is maintained, even as the human entity contributes to others and is contributed to by others. Thus the complex human entity in its own life subsists in that creative tension of sameness and difference. In all its interactions it retains this uniqueness, and so even with the deepest involvement there will always be otherness.

God, being all-inclusive entity, is present to all other entities, but, as the chief exemplification of the metaphysical principle, God must relate to each in its unique otherness. Thus God will exhibit sameness by the fact of all-inclusive communion, and difference by the particularities of each individual interaction. Considered in self, God's own constitution reflects these fundamental qualities of sameness and difference. In primordial nature (abstract essence), God retains sameness in those logical and metaphysical qualities without which God would not be God. However, in the consequent states by which God's relationality is evidenced, these qualities will be expressed in accordance with the requirements of each situation and interaction. Even with this extent and depth of intimacy, God will never not be unique and Other in relation to finite actualities. In the first place, this is so exactly because unlike every other entity, God's relationality is not limited, but extends everywhere and always. And God only prehends, processes, and responds in terms of God's own uniqueness. It is clear then, that the dialectical orientation that comes to terms with otherness is fundamental to living in harmony with entelechy of life, and is a vital means of learning about God.

It is this disposition that enables appropriation of Knitter's very helpful insights as he articulates his method of correlation.72 He suggests that to stand before the beauty and power of another tradition does not necessarily call into question our own religious truth, but does announce the limitations of our truth,73 even demanding that we be willing and ready to have our truth called into question in light of other truth. As he put it, "To be protected from our own truth, we must dialogue with the truth of others."74 Quite helpfully, Knitter spends time reflecting on claims seen by many as fundamental to the integrity of Christianity. He classifies them generally as "love language" and "praxic, performative." He argues against expressions like full, definitive, and unsurpassable when speaking about God's revelation in Jesus, as these suggest that "flesh had been made the total container of the divine" and so "exhausted all truth that God had to reveal," such that "God could not reveal more of God's fullness in other ways and times."75 Then there is this telling declaration: '"No other name,' as performative, action language, is really a positive statement in its negative couching: it tells us that all peoples must listen to this Jesus; it does not tell us that no one else should be listened to or learned from."76 Christians are therefore within their right to proclaim Jesus as "truly" and "uniquely" savior without taking these to mean "solely." In the words of John Cobb: "So am I affirming Christian uniqueness? Certainly and emphatically so! But I am affirming the uniqueness also of Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Jjudaism."77 One must hasten to indicate that openness to the validity of other truth claims does not relieve Christians of the obligation to clarify and justify their own claims about Jesus, and seek the same from others. Speaking about the Christian context, Knitter proposes that it is in the sphere of practical outworking (praxis) that authentic justification takes place. Still, there needs to be criteria that establish why this is so, what expressions serve as authentic justification, and how all these arise from or point to the ultimate ground of the religious life (that is, the all-inclusive reality, God). In the end, the recognition of other sources and framework of salvation requires that there be attempts to see how expressions within Christianity do or do not relate to those in other context, and how all this affects the nature and scope of our theologizing.78

At a practical level, what is being proposed is best portrayed by the basic definition of dialectic in the Platonic tradition; that is, "the technique of philosophical conversation (dialogue) carried on by questions and answer and seeking to render or to receive from a respondent, an 'account' (logos) of some Form . . ."79 One need not subscribe to the notion of Forms as particular substances, but see them as symbolizing the desire for the best possible understanding of or explanation for the experiences of life. This underlies the concept of truth, even if this is only the truth about this quest by means of dialectical engagement of beliefs. There being no anticipation of ascent to some intelligible realm, the quality of dialogue would not be assessed in terms of the ultimate realization of noesis; that is, the clear, unmistakable apprehension of the object/matter in question. As far as theological exchange is concerned, it instead would depend on the following:

* The clarity with which ideas and feelings are expressed. This in turn depends on knowledge and the degree of identification with a framework of belief and thought.

* The capacity to hear what exactly is being articulated - not only propositions but feelings and attitudes.

* The willingness to make and receive respectful but thorough evaluations for the sake of clarity, coherence, and moral plausibility - this is done with the appreciation that the end (telos) of philosophical (philos - sophos) dialogue is not negation, but the attainment and facilitation of wisdom (deep insight).

* The openness to be transformed in light of insight-gained possibilities ranging from modifications within one's theological framework, to radical realignments of orientation.

* The capacity for patience and persistence, which involves the ability to tolerate the pain of resistance and opposition and to celebrate apparently small gains in insight and community.

Limited appropriation of the Platonic approach can push the Christian even beyond Williamson's very valuable criterion of authentic revelation. For him, "the prophetic critique of idolatry" constantly emands the question, "Does the revelatory event point beyond itself to God as ultimate, or does it claim ultimacy for itself?"80 Although there is no expectation to grasp the ultimate principles on which theological premises depend, new levels of dialectical insight should dispose us to inquire whether the principles of general explanation by which we had hitherto determined what constituted revelation and God still continue to address the questions raised because of developed awareness. We can only imagine the challenging and exciting possibilities that are opened up to us for creative-constructive-mutually-enhancing interaction.

CONCLUSION

It is not anticipated that movement toward or the achievement of benefits from wide-scale dialectical thinking would come quickly or easily. It took centuries of Ptolemaic epicycles before that cosmological paradigm was abandoned for the Copernican and four centuries for Newtonian science to give way to Einsteinian physics. The discernments of the process-relational scheme are only slowly affecting the conceptual fabric that has informed western religion and science. Yet, even if with halting steps we venture through the open door and mutual transformation begins there is no longer a comfort zone. The yearning for insight breaks open every apparent settlement into another creative struggle between and within perspectives. Herein lies the special power of the term dialectic. It does not allow us to evade the hard challenges entailed by intercontextual engagement, even as our eyes are kept on the desired end, which is the realization of ever-greater correspondence between our claims and what is truly the case for the questions and issues we seek to address. The capacity for engagement involves far more than the amassing of tools to be employed from time to time; it requires immersion in a deliberately constructed way of life in which vital sensibilities are honed. As far as dialectical contextualism is concerned, it is to favor the deliberate orchestration of a particular kind of framework for intellectual and dispositional socialization. This framework will in some way involve everything from the internal life of the church to engagement with larger societal issues that contribute to the shaping of the religious life and theological acumen. But of decisive importance will be the form of life that characterizes that setting for formal theological preparation - the seminary. It is to this that attention must be turned in future writings.

1William Watty, From Shore to Shore: Soundings in Caribbean Theology (Barbados: Cedar Press, 1981), 3.

2Watty completed this project for his M.A. degree from Birmingham University, England in 1972.

3Watty, 15.

4Watty, 8.

5Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957), 11.1:188.

6Ibid., 1.2:12.

7Barth, Church Dogmatics, 1.1:243.

8Gordon H. Clark, Karl Barth's Theological Method (New York: Trinity Foundation, 1997), 31.

9Watty, 60.

10Clark M. Williamson, Way of Blessing, Way of Life: A Christian Theology (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1999), 63.

11Mark C. Taylor, Deconstructing Theology (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1999), 63.

12For excellent discussion and helpful sources, see Williamson's chapter, "Jesus Christ: Pioneer of Our Faith," in Way of Blessing, Way of Life, 185-226.

13David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Charles W. Hendel (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1955), 85.

14Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965), 50-51.

15Ibid., 20.

16Kant, 112.

17Lorraine Cody, What Can She Know: Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 114.

18Ibid., 241.

19Kant, 268.

20Cody, 113.

21Cody, 56-57.

22Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1985), 268-269.

23Mannheim, 272.

24Ian G. Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues, rev. ed. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 93.

25Ibid., 94.

26Renford Bambrough, Reason, Truth and God (London: Methuen and Company, 1969), 35.

27John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New York: MacMillan Press, 1989), 132-134, 160-161.

28Williamson, Way of Blessing, Way of Life, 29.

29Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, 14.

30See "The Case of Kant: A Contemporary Response," in Philosophy: A Case Study Approach, ed. Jack B. Rogers and Robert Baird (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1981), 118.

31Kant, 297.

32Ludwig Freuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1957), xxx.

33Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968), 7:111-125 for discussion.

34Ibid., 12:41, 43.

35Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 31:159, 167.

36Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New York: The Free Press and Macmillan Publishing Company, 1963), 88.

37David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, rev. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 15-16.

38Ibid., 233.

39Whitehead, Process and Reality, 29.

40Ibid., 214.

41Whitehead resists the understanding of substance that was the primary category of metaphysical analysis up until the modern era. This refers to an existent thing that can exist by itself, is able to be conceived of quite apart from everything else, and requires nothing else to account for itself.

42Whitehead, Process and Reality, 174-175.

43A. N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Free Press, 1967), 184.

44For helpful elucidation, see Thomas E. Hosinski, Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1993), 68-70.

45Whitehead, Process and Reality, 162.

46Whitehead, Process and Reality, 120.

47Here I recognize that the privileging of causal efficacy over presentational immediacy demands a reversal of the order in which we consider forms of intuition and categories of judgment and their influence on experience. It is only some expressions of the perceptual process that will eventually emerge into consciousness and be perceived as this or that actuality or event in space and time.

48Kant, 183.

49John Cobb, "Order Out of Chaos: A Philosophical Model for Interreligious Dialogue," paper delivered at the Claremont Philosophy of Religion Conference, 1994, 3-4.

50Hosinski, Stubborn Fact, Creative Advance, 120-121. There seems to be similarity with Paul Tillich's notion of Ontological Reason that refers to "the structure of mind which enables it to grasp and transform reality." See Tillich's Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 72.

51See Whitehead's comments in Process and Reality, 191-192.

52John Cobb, A Christian Natural Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965), 141.

53Whitehead, Process and Reality, 343.

54Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 2.

55Ibid., 61.

56Tillich, Systematic Theology, 102-103.

57For the full discussion, see John Hick, "Theology and Verification" in The Logic of God: Theology and Verification, ed. Malcolm L. Diamond and Thomas V. Litzenburg, Jr. (Indianapolis: Boobbs-Merill Company, 1975), 188-208.

58Watty, 9.

59Clark Williamson, Guest in the House of Israel: Post-Holocaust Church Theology (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1973), 13; quoted from Irving Greenberg, "Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire," in Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era, ed. Eva Fleischer (New York: KTAV, 1977), 33.

60Williamson, Way of Blessing, Way of Life, 4.

61Ibid., 4ff, 25, 29.

62Georg W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, trans. Rev. E. B. Speirs and J. Burdon Sanderson (London: Routledge). For a synopsis, see pp. 3-4; for elaboration, see pp. 7-151.

63Ibid., 87.

64Georg W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Drover Publications, 1956), 25.

65Ibid., 342.

66Barth, Church Dogmatics, 1.2:77.

67Barth, Church Dogmatics, 1.2:199.

68Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1959), 26.

69Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, ed. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1973), 25-28.

70Paul Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 13.

71The suggestion is that to operate differently is to be inconsistent with the way things are at the very root of existence.

72Generally speaking, what Knitter refers to as truth I classify as belief.

73Knitter, 29.

74Ibid., 32.

75Ibid., 73-75.

76Knitter, 70.

77Ibid., 8.

78I have no reservations in describing these considerations as constituting the dogmatic and apologetic functions of the church. These functions have been discussed by CTS emeritus professor of theology, Joe Jones, in his recently published two-volume work, A Grammar of Christian Faith: Systematic Explorations in Christian Life and Faith (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002). Jones makes it clear that while he values the apologetic task, the dogmatic should have priority so as to avoid the adoption of only those beliefs "that would be persuasive of the world on the world's terms" (43). This position stems from an approach to the Church-World relationship that is governed by the dictum, "the church is in the world but not of the world." Thus, even with his multi-faceted understanding of the term "world" (47), he is clear that there should be no dependence of the world's beliefs "to found and ground the basic truth of Christian belief (46). Dialectical contexrualism, on the other hand, presupposes a necessary interconnection between God, world, and church, such that one can reasonably argue that the church is derived from the world as much as it is derived from God. And even as "skewered by human sin," the world is internally related to the church. This means that at the heart of any dialect between church and world is the church's status of "being and not being of the world." It follows that in none of its functions is the church free from the world. The content of its life and teaching is the result of its peculiar synthesis of influences from both God and world. And even as the church attempts to make a case for its witness "to the world in order to persuade the world" (43), it does so with a necessary openness to the world, such that is also challenged and even influenced - this in turn affects subsequent dogmatic developments. In the end, both dogmatic and apologetic functions of the church "live" by means of a complex of dialectical engagements, even as they themselves are entwined in their own dialectical relationship.

79Plato, The Republic, trans. Francis MacDonald Cornford (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 223.

80Williamson, Way of Blessing, Way of Life, 58.

Michael St. A. Miller

Assistant Professor of Theology

Christian Theological Seminary

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