Participation: A Religious Worldview

Abstract

This essay is an experimental project. It proposes that the theme of participation issues in an insightful, distinctive, comprehensive, and coherent interpretation of human experience. My personal history is a test case.

A Response to “Participation: A Religious Worldview” by James M. Gustafson

“…First, his “ontology” is developed with respect to our existence and thereby an anthropological outlook. He has insisted throughout his corpus that “a descriptive account of the human” is basic to theological and ethical reflection (Gustafson , 167). So, despite JMG's criticisms of existentialist accounts of freedom as a matter of brute “will,” he unfolds his thought existentially: it is an account of what it means for us to be existing, acting, and undergoing beings—participants.…”

“…Each of these interpenetrating perspectives on the self is infused by senses and affections, as well as capacities and commitments on a scale from the “me” to the “I.” That is, the affections and senses disclose how the “me” is acted on and thus signal the interdependence that characterizes participation even as the capacities and commitments of the “I” reveal that human beings (at least) are actively interdependent. The moral “me,” he writes “affects how I ‘see,’ perceive, describe, interpret and understand relationships and events without engaging in self‐conscious rational deliberations and choices” (Gustafson , 166). But we are also agents with “capacities for self‐determination.” People rationally consider motives, loves, and desires as well as consequences of action.…”

Something New Under the Sun

“…In this recent essay, however, Gustafson uses, in some sense, new language. “Bearing down” becomes God's “setting of limits” to our activities and lives, and “stepping aside” from what seem to be our tragedies (Gustafson , 172). Without at all forsaking or modifying the theocentric perspective so important to Gustafson, new elements appear (or are highlighted) in Gustafson's descriptions of the relation between humans and God.…”

“…Without at all forsaking or modifying the theocentric perspective so important to Gustafson, new elements appear (or are highlighted) in Gustafson's descriptions of the relation between humans and God. “Awe” remains central to his “piety,” but participation in relation to God also incorporates “themes of God's seeking the well‐being of humans”; “the rightness of including love within the powers of God”; “responding to God … not only in the awe of natural piety, but also in gratitude and devotion, indeed, love for God”; and “the Christian experience of God's ‘goodness’” (Gustafson , 169–70). It would be inaccurate to say that these elements were not in earlier writings, but they are more prominent in this descriptive experiential analysis of participation in relation to God.…”

Theologian, Teacher, and Friend: Tributes to James M. Gustafson

“…Gustafson's greatest and most enduring impact on my work has come through the way he modeled processes of participation, encounter, and interaction at vital intersections (for more on “participation,” see Gustafson 2016). At the crossroads of ethical reflection—for instance, first‐order reflection about what to do in medical ethics or in public policy or second‐order reflection on how to understand the human—it is again crucial for the traffic of ideas, involving theology/philosophy and relevant sciences, to move in both or several ways.…”