Hans Gustafson and Pansacramentalism

Hans Gustafson proposes pansacramentalism as holding potential for finding the divine in all things and all things in the divine, which carries significant inherent interreligious implications—especially for doing theology. Presupposing the challenge of doing theology divorced from spirituality (lived religious experience), he presents pansacramentalism as a bridge between the two.

In so doing, Gustafson offers a history of spirituality and sketches the foundations of a classical approach to sacramentality (through Aquinas) and a contemporary approach to the same (through Rahner and Chauvet).

By presenting three fascinating case studies, this book offers particular instances of sacramentality in lived religious experience (i.e., sacramental spirituality). These case studies draw on Thomas Merton and place, Nicholas Black Elk and multiple religious identity, and Fyodor Dostoevsky and Wendell Berry and literature.

The book culminates by a) constructing a philosophy of sacramental mediation and criteriology of sacrament, b) engaging panentheism and the suffering of God and world, and c) proposing "panentheistic pansacramentalism" as a new model for understanding the divine-world relationship set in the context of a pansacramental theology of religious pluralism.

Finally, a method for doing theology interreligiously is offered based on the overall content of the book and within the context of the interdisciplinary field of interreligious studies.