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The postmodern situation has culminated in an ideological postmodernism that has declared the end of philosophy, the death of the subject, the impossibility of meaning, and the apotheosis of a culture of absence and excess. This has led to the development of a variety of “postcritical,” or “postliberal,” attempts to sift back through the history of Western philosophy and religion to reevaluate older systems of thought and wisdom, in order to refashion philosophies of ethical agency, identity, philosophical meaning, and truth. Liturgical reasoning follows on the movement of Scriptural Reasoning that attempts to reinvigorate Western philosophy and religion through interaction with classical Western scriptures. Liturgical reasoning parallels Scriptural Reasoning in its attempt to reconstitute an ethics and theology for the twenty‐first century.

This book could be summarized with the following proposition: Truth is liturgical. This means that truth is performative, communal, and temporal. Truth is also multi‐staged and processional; it takes time to develop and unfold. Truth is also a hybrid multi‐shaped thing rather than a pure and univocal essence. Liturgical truth is philosophy, ethics, theology, art, poetry, music, and dance, all working together. Monotheistic liturgies tell us that truth is married to scripture. If truth is liturgical, this chapter suggests that perhaps it can be found in nonreligious liturgical forms such as the form of the dialogue or, as in ancient Greece, the “symposium.” The chapter concludes with a suggestion that group practices of reading scripture also have liturgical aspects. The study sessions of Scriptural Reasoning are then explored for the ways in which they exhibit liturgical truth.

Among scholars of Christian theology and philosophy working in universities in China are card-carrying CCP members, many without any personal faith or denominational allegiance, yet whose thinking and writing on Chinese Christianity and culture have proved significant in and beyond academia. While far from representative of the church, their academic scholarship is valuable for its theological insight as well as for the institutional presence of its practitioners. This chapter considers the writings of Yang Huilin (b. 1954), a key figure in the Sino-Christian theology movement and a professor of comparative literature and religious studies, whose work triangulates between philosophy, literary/critical theory, and theology. The chapter suggests that recurrent questions across Yang’s work condense ultimately into two: the use of language and the pursuit of meaning. These culminate in his promotion of a “Chinese Scriptural Reasoning” and call for a “nonreligious religion.”

In this chapter, I first lay out the most important hermeneutical and anthropological principles that undergird my understanding of interreligious learning. As will become clear, I take my inspiration to a large extent from the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, who has been called “the philosopher of all dialogues.” Then I will make these theoretical considerations more concrete by elaborating on an interreligious dialogical approach that to my mind works transformatively: scriptural reasoning. I will explain what this practice is all about and how I try to guide my students throughout this learning process. As an introduction, I briefly dwell upon the particular context in which I work and from which I speak.

Participants in the differing traditions that come together in receptive ecumenical encounter inhabit different ways of living with Scripture. Those ways involve not just differing interpretations of particular texts, but also differing habits, differing expectations, differing patterns of imagination, and differing distributions of the activities of scriptural reading. If they learn to read with each other, members of these differing traditions can at times find their settlements with Scripture fruitfully disturbed; they can learn to receive Scripture again from each other’s hands in ways that feed the ongoing development of their own traditions. Such encounter is, however, difficult—not just because of the stance of receptivity and the willingness to be perturbed that it demands of participants, but also because of the practical difficulty of discovering shared practices of reading that connect to the deep scriptural habits that animate each tradition. The analogous practice of Scriptural Reasoning—an inter-faith practice of reading—suggests something of the creativity and the patience that receptive scriptural encounter will demand.

This introduction introduces the nested continua model and the philosophical and logical resources that guide its use. The resources stem overwhelmingly from the American pragmatist (and pragmaticist) philosopher C. S. Peirce, and so considerable effort is also devoted to articulating the aspects of Peirce’s life and thought that most inform the work. These include the Existential Graphs, the three categories, and the metaphysics of continuity. The contemporary theological context in the form of Robert C. Neville and Peter Ochs is also introduced. The model is also placed within broader academic and cultural context: (1) the three categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness; (2) the metaphysics of synechism or continuity; and (3) Robert C. Neville’s axiology of thinking and Peter Ochs’s Scriptural Reasoning.

The traditional method of study known as hevruta is the foundation of traditional Jewish methods of learning as practiced in the yeshiva. This method has been articulated as Scriptural Reasoning in a way that emphasizes the practice of engaged reflection on a text. In this chapter, the authors will attempt a different articulation based on the use of this method in their classrooms, an approach that emphasizes disagreement. When disagreement is placed at the center of the process, the hevruta method becomes a tool for encountering and learning from religious difference. The chapter provides an overview of and rationale for using hevruta, a treatment of learning objectives, suggested steps for classroom use, sample questions, and a discussion of hevruta and comparative theology.

At the 2014 Fairfield conference on Receptive Ecumenism, Clooney gave a paper in which he highlighted the striking resemblances between Comparative Theology and Receptive Ecumenism with respect to attentiveness, patience, and the willingness to learn and to be transformed in the learning. This chapter is a recapitulation and development of that paper. If Comparative Theology and Receptive Ecumenism are so strikingly similar, should we not be concerned that we are prescinding from doctrinal and communal issues and simply stressing the common learning process? Receptive Ecumenism presumes the commonalities of Christian belief and practice, whereas Comparative Theology, particularly regarding religions other than Judaism and Islam, should engage differences too in belief and practice. If such differences matter, we can profitably and honestly talk about them, provided we do not lose hold of the disciplines’ remarkable similarities and agility in not getting bogged down over doctrinal differences.