Each year, IARPT’s journal, The American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, hosts a lecture at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. This year, the AJTP will be hosting a panel on a recently published volume celebrating the work of Wesley J. Wildman. The title of the volume is Religion in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Approaches to Wesley J. Wildman (SUNY Press, 2021), edited by F. LeRon Shults and Robert C. Neville.

The panel will begin with a general introduction to the volume itself by F. LeRon Shults, who will also chair the session, and conclude with a response from Wesley J. Wildman. Gary Slater will read selections from a paper written by Robert C. Neville, Wildman’s long-time colleague at Boston University.

The first panelist, Lisa Landoe Hedrick, will engage and respond to the first part of the volume, which focuses on Wildman’s philosophy. This presentation begins with Wildman’s understanding of the dispute between modernity and postmodernity as fundamentally about generality and justice. Where postmodern critique goes wrong, he argues, is in failing to appreciate how a tireless commitment to self-criticism can manage the risks of assertion. We need both consciousness-raising critique and orienting conceptual interpretations of the world—achieving such checks and balances is the promise of a pragmatic theory of inquiry. This panelist’s regard for Wildman’s invitation to build responsibly is unmatched. It is based on that regard that the panelist offers a counter invitation to re-estimate the value of postmodern concerns about the politics of discourse and inquiry—particularly insofar as they might require us to fret a bit more about the conceptual tools with which we conceive comparative programs. While beseeching Wildman to accept this invitation, this presentation will engage those contributors to Religion in Multidisciplinary Perspective who voice concerns about categories of inquiry—with foremost concern directed toward the category of ‘religion’ itself. Like Wildman, this panelist is interested in the constructive steps after genealogical, post-colonial, and feminist critique—but, like some of these contributors, they disagree about what those steps ought to be. Appreciating Wildman’s commitment to multidisciplinarity, the presentation draws upon contemporary theory and method in Anthropology (specifically with respect to the so-called ‘ontological turn’) to model how (and how not) to navigate a disciplinary crisis of conscience. The ultimate aim is to think with Wildman about how philosophers of religion can generalize more responsibly by first registering more deeply the urgency of reflexivity.

The second panelist, Demian Wheeler, will deal with the second part of the book, which focuses on Wildman’s theology. This presentation will focus in particular on the contribution of Michael Raposa who observes in his chapter that Wildman’s ‘rejection of anthropomorphism is deeply motivated by issues of theodicy.’ Wildman, on Raposa’s reading, ‘is convinced that the traditional form of such belief must ultimately be shipwrecked on the rocky shores of the problem of evil.’ In his response chapter at the end of the volume, Wildman retorts that Raposa grossly overstates the case, objecting to even having a theodicy, let alone presuming that the problem of evil somehow ‘defeats’ personal theism. This presentation will argue that Wildman not only has a theodicy, but also has one of the most compelling theodicies on the contemporary scene. To be sure, Wildman’s ground-of-being theology, in one sense, amounts to an anti-theodicy. After all, if there is no theos to defend or exonerate—at least no divine being with purposive agency, conscious awareness, or human-measured goodness—then theodicy is irrelevant. Suffering is a fact to be navigated, not a problem to be solved. And yet, the problem of suffering, even the problem of divine neglect, is among the many criteria at play in Wildman’s ‘reverent competition’ between ultimacy models—and one of the reasons why he is personally drawn to ground-of-being naturalism over anthropomorphic theories of ultimate reality. Claiming that God is not a person, or that creativity and destruction are co-primal in the divine nature, is a kind of theodicy—i.e. a way of speaking about and accounting for suffering and evil theologically. Wildman is encouraged to frame his perspective not as a ‘theology without theodicy’ (á la Raposa), but as an ‘effing theodicy,’ a skillful means of symbolically engaging the morally ambiguous Whence of all axiological possibilities. This plea is more strategic and pastoral than semantical or philosophical, based on a worry that Wildman may end up further isolating himself from spiritual communities and theistic traditions for which theodicy and theodical rituals remain effective vehicles for coping with trauma and peering into the abysmal depths of existence. Indeed, such communities and traditions need mystics like Wildman. The real power of his mystical vision lies in its existential, religious, and ethical fruits. Wildman’s effing theodicy opens up a ‘spirituality of suchness’ and invites us to face the tragedies of life with authenticity, courage, compassion, and humanistic resolve.

The third panelist, Bin Song, engages the third part of the volume, which focuses on Wildman’s scientific approach. As Wildman’s student, colleague and friend, this presenter is committed to conducting the study of comparative theology, philosophy, and religion primarily from a non-Western perspective. The panelist deeply appreciates Wildman’s approach to ‘theology,’ which employs all examinable intellectual means and criteria of truth to comprehensively assess claims on the matters of utmost religious significance, viz., on ultimate reality as Tillichian theologians would like to call them. Wildman’s ‘theology’ revives the very earliest, Aristotelian conception of theology as the crown of metaphysics as a science, while attempting to incorporate the most updated accomplishments of homo sapiens. Under this general framework of theology, the sciences, including neuroscience in particular, are amid the most powerful tools for Wildman to furnish empirical evidences to corroborate his favored theological hypothesis: God as the ground of being, not a personalist supreme being. While responding to scientifically themed chapters (mainly 11, 12, 13 and 15) of Religion in Multidisciplinary Perspective, this paper will aim to, firstly, critically evaluate Wildman’s scientific evidences for such a hypothesis. Secondly, using the example of the continual scholarly controversy of how to define Ruism (Confucianism) as a religion, it will also elaborate the broader value and significance of Wildman’s scientific theology for the cross-cultural comparative study of religions and theologies.

The 2023 annual meeting of the AAR will convene November 18-21 in San Antonio, Texas. The panel will take place on Sunday evening. All are welcome.