Richard Oxenberg

Theology Without Walls - or 'trans-religious theology' - is a theological approach dedicated to reflecting upon the nature of divine reality as it may be revealed in any of the world’s religious traditions, without confining itself to any one in particular. In this paper I discuss some of the basic assumptions and implications of the Theology Without Walls project and suggest that this approach to theology, and to religion in general, promises to help resolve antagonisms and divisions that have long plagued human religiosity.

Where does suffering come from? If divine reality, ultimate reality, is a reality of bliss (as religion posits), how can suffering arise? What is the relationship of suffering to bliss? This is the question I explore in this essay. I suggest that, to make sense of this, we must think of bliss as subject to fragmentation and of suffering as fragmented modes of bliss. As we advance beyond fragmentation through our spiritual lives, our suffering is transmuted more and more into the love and bliss of the divine.

William Alston has written that religious belief is justifiable because it is based upon epistemic practices similar to those justifying belief in sensory facts. In this paper I argue for a different understanding of religious belief. What is called for in religious belief is not affirmation of factual truth-claims but devotion to God. The significance and validity of creedal formulae lie in their capacity to elicit and express such devotion, not in their factual and/or informational character. My paper considers four fundamental questions with respect to religious belief: 1. What is a religious belief? 2. What is the basis upon which one should adopt a religious belief? 3. What is the relation between belief and salvation/sanctification? 4. What attitude should one adopt toward alternate belief systems? I argue that these questions are best answered when we recognize the radical dissimilarity of creedal formulae to empirical truth-claims.

"Crooked people deceive themselves in order to deceive others; in this way the world comes to ruin." This quote from a medieval Confucianist expresses the ethical danger of self-deception. My paper examines the psychological proclivity for self-deception and argues that it lies behind much social and interpersonal injustice. I review Hitler's Mein Kampf, as a premiere example of such cognitive duplicity, and Socratic dialectic, as an example of the cognitive hygiene necessary to combat it. I conclude that a robust educational program of Socratic-style critical thinking is crucial to the furtherance of a just society.

Question: How do you turn a democracy into a tyranny? Answer (as those familiar with Plato's Republic will know): Do nothing. It will become a tyranny all by itself. My essay argues that for democracy to function it must inculcate in its citizens something of the moral and intellectual virtues of Plato’s Philosopher-Kings, who identify their own personal good with the good of society as a whole. Only thereby can Kant’s ideal of the ‘Kingdom of Ends’ - a society in which each citizen willingly affirms a duty to respect the freedom and dignity of every other - be realized. The alternative to this, as Plato understood, is a society of appetitively driven individuals competing each with the other for dominance, in which those most skilled at the arts of grasping and manipulation will eventually seize power. In this way, as Plato foresaw, democracy will degenerate into tyranny.

This work explores questions of God and faith in the context of Martin Heidegger's phenomenological ontology, as developed in Being and Time . One problem with traditional philosophical approaches to the question of God is their tendency to regard God's existence as an objective datum, which might be proven or disproven through logical argumentation. Since Kant, such arguments have largely been dismissed as predicated on a priori assumptions whose legitimacy cannot be substantiated. This dismissal has led to a widening divorce between 'faith' and 'reason,' as the rational grounds for faith have come under increasing, and radical, attack. ;Heidegger provides a new reason to question the legitimacy of traditional philosophical approaches to the question of God. His phenomenological ontology reveals that concernful relations lie at the foundation of our apprehension of Being, hence any attempt to 'prove' the existence of God as a purely 'objective' datum must miss the significance of the very phenomenon it seeks to apprehend. Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, is primordially related to and concerned with the world revealed to it. Any attempt to understand the meaning of Being, then, must take its stance from an examination of the concernfulness of Dasein. This, however, affords us a new possibility for approaching the question of God; one which pursues this question, not in terms of metaphysical categories, but in terms of its significance for the concernful human being. ;At the same time that Heidegger's thought allows us this new approach, however, his existential analyses seem to deny any legitimacy to religious faith at all. For Heidegger, the human being is 'Being-towards-death,' i.e., essentially enclosed in finitude, whereas for religion the human being has an essential relation to the infinity of God. Our work, then, has a twofold purpose. We seek, first, to explore the meaning of God and faith as these may be understood in terms provided by Heidegger's phenomenological ontology. We seek, second, to examine the way in which that ontology is itself challenged by a religious conception of human Being

I write as a Jew who has come to see the Jewish and Christian religious movements as complementary, at least as each may be ideally envisioned. This complementarity does not entail the ‘supersession’ of Judaism or the negation of Judaism. It does not in any way imply that Jews should abandon Judaism. On the contrary, rightly seen it can lead to a greater affirmation of Judaism and of the teachings at Judaism's heart. In this article I discuss the nature of this complementarity and argue that its recognition can help further and deepen the spiritual missions of both traditions.

The paradox of 'the One and the Many' might, more generally, be understood as the paradox of relationship. In order for there to be relationship there must be at least two parties in relation. The relation must, at once, hold the parties apart (otherwise they would collapse into unity) while holding them together (otherwise relationship itself would cease). It must do so, further, without itself becoming a third party which would then, itself, need to be related. This paper considers this paradox as we find it manifest in the theories of quantum physics, the Socratic pursuit of universals, and, finally, at the very heart of human personhood - where we discover it at the core of interpersonal relationships, existential anxiety, and social distress. It is suggested, in the end, that though reason cannot resolve the terms of this paradox, there is a potential solution to the existential problems that spring from it, a solution lying in what Jesus calls, simply, 'faith.'

The Book of Job is often read as the Bible's response to theodicy's 'problem of evil.' As a resolution to the logical difficulties of this problem, however, it is singularly unsatisfying. Job's ethical protest against God is never addressed at the level of the ethical. But suggested in Job's final encounter with God is the possibility of a spiritual resolution beyond the ethical. In this paper I examine the Book of Job as a response to the spiritual problem of despair; despair engendered by the ethical problem of evil. My reading is informed by Kierkegaard's analysis of despair in The Sickness unto Death, and Stephen Mitchell's extraordinary translation of the Book of Job, as well as his insightful commentary.

Both Christianity and Judaism have their basis in the Torah, the five central books of the Hebrew Bible that culminate in the revelation at Sinai. This very commonality, potentiality a source of mutual respect and concord, has played itself out, in the two thousand years since the advent of Christianity, in a disastrous rivalry of interpretation. Christians have interpreted their own religion in such a manner as to disallow the separate legitimacy of Judaism. Jews, in response, have often adopted an insularity of focus at odds with the universality of God as Judaism itself understands it. I believe this rivalry has had a distorting effect upon both religions. The purpose of my essay is to search out some theological positions that both traditions might be able to accept, and that might permit each to adopt an affirmative, and informed, acceptance of the other.

We can attend to the logic of Anselm's ontological argument, and amuse ourselves for a few hours unraveling its convoluted word-play, or we can seek to look beyond the flawed logic, to the search for God it expresses. From the perspective of this second approach the Ontological Argument might be seen as more than a mere argument - indeed, as something of a contemplative exercise. One can see in the argument a tantalizing attempt to capture in logical form the devotee’s experience of the presence of God in the contemplation of God. It is a peculiarity of the argument that it can seem hopelessly silly or richly evocative depending upon which of these approaches one takes. In this essay I examine the flawed logic of the Ontological Argument, but then attempt to reflect upon the contemplative experience that may underlie it.