by a web of reference to both their horizons of language and to their corresponding aspects of lived experience, what metaphor brings together are not individual elements of language – semantic sound bites so to speak – but connected aspects of life. Pluralistic theology thus brings into creative tension interrelated webs of belief and practice in the same way as when holding together two corners of a seamless fabric what is connected to the corners is also brought together. This is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, for a metaphor to be fertile, its terms’ associated commonplaces must be readily summoned. Only then can metaphor engage the imagination so that the statement evinces a “semantic twist” (in Monroe Beardsley’s words) such that novel interpretations are created. Secondly, this aspect of metaphor also guards against the decontextualization which naïve comparisons often effect. Pluralistic theology doesn’t simply substitute an emic term or idea for its etic counterpart, but rather seeks to knit together the webs of reference contextualizing those terms. By leveraging the action and structure of metaphor in the ways which I shall shortly describe, pluralistic theology seeks to bring into conversation fuller and more detailed areas of lived religious experience to create a more robust hybrid theology.
As just mentioned, metaphor works by redescribing each pole or element of the metaphor in terms of the other.16 The dialectic of metaphor must begin with and maintain difference,17 for only with this alterity is the necessary logical or semantic incoherence, which is the spur to the metaphorical imagination, present. In meeting a metaphorical statement there is a disjunction which the interpreter sees as logically incoherent. This is illustrated by “Man is wolf” to take Freud’s famous example. The pressure of this disjunction imaginatively calls forth a term’s associated commonplaces – what Gadamer calls a horizon of meaning and Voloshinov18the apperceptive context – and from this horizon new descriptions are associated with the other term in the metaphor; humans are seen to be more lupine, in our example. The process is bidirectional or multidirectional so that each term in the metaphor is redescribed in terms of the others; wolves are thus seen to be more human. In this way the semantic field of a metaphor is effectively stretched to include these new connections. Ricoeur calls metaphors “semantic generators” as these new connotations, this new metaphorical interpretation, exists between the parent terms of the metaphor, owing allegiance, as it were, to its sources while differing from each. Metaphor is a semantic hybrid which loses not its foundation in its sources but neither can it be contained by them. It is the result of an imaginative, mutual redescription of its constituent terms and succeeds through its dialectical both/and in maintaining the alterity of its terms while creating new shared references between them. It creates new meaning from bringing together, in the mind, established terms and contexts in new and unforeseen ways.
This model of metaphorical dialectics explains how novel, hybrid significations are formed de novo. Theology, as alluded to at the beginning of this chapter, is inherently hybrid – a nexus of multiple narratives and sources continually reacting to changes in the environment, as well as its inherited tradition of interpretation. A thoroughly pluralistic theology, like metaphor, is also a tense nexus of intrinsic and extrinsic sources redescribing each other according to the inner dialectic of metaphorical predication, but also guided by the frame in which theologizing takes place. Importantly, the dialectics of metaphor succeed in revealing the frame since metaphor begins in semantic rupture. This disruption allows us to see the otherwise hidden frame, making a hybrid, pluralistic theology potentially a corrective for negative pressures underlying the frame. What I am suggesting is that the dynamics of consciously hybrid, pluralistic theology can be leveraged for revelatory and liberative ends. Not only can this happen; I argue that it should happen. Pluralistic theology here makes possible a prophetic voice, illuminating injustice and revealing the scars and cracks long hidden under the carapace of doctrine and accepted religious tradition.
Pluralistic theology never loses sight of the fact that it is a human response to the needs of the day, relying on human creativity, energy, and improvisation. Given the wide and varied needs of communities across the world, a genuinely pluralistic theology must make use of every source of insight available in order to “humbly follow truth wherever we find it.”19 In order to take advantage of the sheer wealth of creative thinking about God, pluralistic theology must remain open to all sources at hand, eschewing comfortable closure. The metaphorical dynamic at the heart of pluralistic theology allows it thus to be characterized as a form of bricolage, that is, a construction out of many, ready-to-hand, diverse sources – continuously being built, torn apart, and rebuilt toward a more useful form.
As I stated at the outset, I contend that all theology is inherently hybrid. Pluralistic theology reveals this feature more clearly in order to better use this creative source. As bricolage, pluralistic theology draws attention to the contingent, diverse nature of its components and contexts, while at the same time celebrating the metaphorical, expansive, and revelatory power of its compilation. Married to this centrifugal force, however, is the centripetal, particularizing, and poetic force which gives shape to pluralistic theology’s eventual results. The workings of this force can be seen through the issues of criteria and poesis, that is, if metaphorical predication gives rise to a plethora of possible forms of bricolage, how is one to choose which possibility is excellent and worth pursuing? Are all such instances of hybrid bricolage equally valid, valuable or effective? By what criteria is the centripetal force guided? Moreover, what is the role and responsibility of the theologian in creating a thoroughly pluralistic theology?
To illustrate these questions, imagine an example of pluralistic theology along the lines I have drawn so far. Liberated from both the worries that theology must be done according to the given, proper, and correct forms and traditions, as well as the illusion of objective certainty and conservative fetishes for precedent, a theologian sets out to consciously bring together significant aspects of, for instance, particular Christian and Hindu religious beliefs and practices. The object might be to develop a novel theological model for understanding the nature of prayer, for instance.20 After painstakingly studying the constituent traditions’ notions of prayer, their histories, varieties, and critiques, as well as partaking in both forms of prayer with great sincerity, the theologian brings into metaphorical “conversation” aspects of these concepts and practices from both traditions in a pluralistic theology. The question to be asked is: Given the necessarily limited scope of religious knowledge and practice available to the theologian-bricoleur, the particularities of their religious, social, theological, and cultural background, as well as the explicit and inchoate agenda(s) driving their project, how can anyone know whether the hybrid pluralistic theology they create has any cogency, legitimacy, or usefulness for themself or the communities they are bringing together? Just as an instance of bricolage can be relatively valuable, surely pluralistic theologies can be relatively good or bad, useful or irrelevant, beautiful or crass, delightful or tawdry. If pluralistic theology, in its expansive phase, celebrates the plethora of possible hybrids, by what measure, in its contrary precipitative phase, can one identify and determine the felicity of its results?
I suggest the criterion to be used should be aesthetic, in the sense not merely of inherent beauty, but also the comprehension, elegance, and simplicity through which it both delivers the goods desired by the relevant community and expands the senses in which these goods suffice.21 A pluralistic theology should be guided by the aesthetic qualities inherent in the hybrid: those fearful symmetries which reveal harmonious form, figure, unity in variety, fitness, utility, adaptability, goodness, and truth. Here I rely on the ancient Greek equivalence of the good, true, and beautiful when, in Philebus, we find Socrates stating “the good has retired into the region of the beautiful,”22 and again, in Gorgias we see him explicitly arguing that what counts as beautiful is to be judged so not only by the pleasure it gives, but, importantly, its utility also.23 However, harmonious expression of qualities is not in itself a sufficient marker. The beauty of a pluralistic, hybrid theology will lie also in its ability to bring to light some new, perhaps hitherto hidden, aspect of religious experience, knowledge, understanding, and/or feeling. The revelatory nature of pluralistic theology will be an aesthetic measure of its value. This revelation is not merely to shine light on inchoate wisdom brought to the surface through the action of metaphorical recombination