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Document Details : Title: A Divine Weaving Subtitle: Perry Schmidt-Leukel's Fractal Comparative Theology Author(s): ROSE, Kenneth Journal: Studies in Interreligious Dialogue Volume: 32 Issue: 2 Date: 2022 Pages: 221-227 DOI: 10.2143/SID.32.2.3291409 Abstract : Perry Schmidt-Leukel’s 'fractal interpretation of religious diversity' (FIRD) innovatively claims that differences between religions also arise fractally within each religion. To support his thesis, Schmidt-Leukel argues that stereotypical differences between Buddhism and Christianity also arise within each religion. Instead of contrasting supposedly atheistic Buddhism with theistic Christianity, Schmidt-Leukel shows that both religions contain theistic and nontheistic elements. Taking fractality as an axiom for a new comparative methodology, Schmidt-Leukel applies this approach to the topics of cosmology, metaphysics, evil or error, savior figures, and salvation in Christianity and Buddhism. Schmidt-Leukel points beyond comparative religion toward metaphysics when he raises the question of why fractal patterns arise in the different religions and suggests that there is an impulse toward completeness ('eine Entelechie zu größerer Ganzheit') in the world’s religions along with an inner dynamic for the synthesis of opposing tendencies ('eine innere Dynamik zur Synthese gegenläufiger Tendenzen'). These suggestions provide a possible theoretical basis for a global interreligious theology partnering in a multidisciplinary search for a unified metaphysical, theological, and scientific understanding of the physical world and the realms of mind and spirit fractally displayed in the world’s religions. |
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