Theology Without Walls is the name of an initiative that was started some ten years ago by Jerry L. Martin, who served as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities and of the Philosophy Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The basic idea of Theology Without Walls (TWW) is that it is necessary to develop a form of theology that is not limited by existing boundaries between religions. Hence the subtitle of the volume: The Transreligious Imperative. Since its inception at the mid-Atlantic meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the Theology Without Walls group has brought together scholars in the fields of philosophy of religion, comparative theology, interreligious studies, and comparative mysticism and spirituality. The same is the case in this stimulating and interesting volume that is now also available in open access.
The volume contains twenty-one contributions in five parts: “Why Theology Without Walls”; “Experience and Transformation”; “Challenges and Possibilities”; “Theologizing in a Multireligious World”; “Expanded Confessional Theologies.” The titles of these parts reminded me of the three bridges that John Hick and Paul Knitter sketched in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness to go from exclusivism and inclusivism to pluralism: a historico-cultural bridge, a theologico-mystical bridge, and an ethico-practical bridge. Although the first two bridges are well trodden in the Transreligious Imperative, the focus on justice and liberation is less prominent, as Jeannine Hill Fletcher pointed out in an AAR panel devoted to the book in December 2020.
The fact that I found some of the contributions in this collection highly stimulating and others rather superficial or even boring is of course related to my own interests as a comparative theologian. Working at a Catholic institution on relations with Islamic theology, I am used to traditions that favor clear demarcations between them and that might tolerate a better form of disagreement but certainly not a transreligious imperative. Yet, at the same time, I have always been fascinated by the broadness of Thomas Aquinas’ view of theology as dealing with everything in creation under the viewpoint of its relationship with God as beginning and end rather than dealing with churches and religious traditions. In that sense, I agree with Jerry Martin when he argues in his introduction that the subject matter of theology is ultimate reality, not one's own tradition (1) and that TWW shares “passing over” with comparative theology without necessarily “returning home” (2). The model for such a journey is delineated in the first chapter by Robert Cummings Neville, and similar pathways can be found in the contributions by John Thatamanil and Paul Knitter in the second part of the book. Where these journeys at least show how they are rooted in specific religious traditions, I enjoyed the lessons drawn from experience and spiritual learning; where other authors in the volume seemed to elevate themselves above the specificity of religious pathways, and sometimes showed more interest in construing religious systems than in reflecting on religious and spiritual experiences, I lost track of their musings and started to ponder the lack of humility in such helicopter perspectives. At least, the last section brought me back to earth in its discussion of comparative expansions of confessional theology, in S. Mark Heim's words. The book is a must for libraries, and the open access mode will make it accessible for graduate students as well. It is a useful and sometimes beautifully written testimony to new possibilities not only in theology and religious studies, but also in the conversation with the growing number of our students and colleagues who are spiritual but not religious.
