A Conversation with Dr. Hans Harmakaputra What Matters Most

We are deep into season 2 now with the nineteenth episode of What Matters Most. I spoke with Dr. Hans A. Harmakaputra, an Assistant Professor of Religion in the Department of Philosophy, Religion, and Classics at Augustana University, Sioux Falls, South Dakota about Christian and Muslim saints and views of sainthood. Hans Harmakaputra is the author of A Christian-Muslim Comparative Theology of Saints: The Community of God's Friends, which was at the heart of much of our discussion on today’s podcast.
Hans is from Indonesia, a country whose religious environment shaped much of the research for this book. Indonesia is a majority Muslim country, with a substantial Christian minority, Protestant and Catholic. It’s Indonesia that led to questions about what makes a person a saint because both Muslims and Christians share this conception and Hans will talk about an Indonesian Muslim, Abdurrahman Wahid, who is widely considered a saint among Christians and Muslims in Indonesia. Some of this emerges from popular conceptions of sainthood, but as Hans says in the podcast, “some people make a difference between popular religion and this is the official theology.  And for me, there is no such thing. People always try their best to connect with the tradition, but also have a hybrid forms of religiosity.”
As a scholar, Harmakaputra writes, “I employ a comparative theology method to draw insights from a Muslim understanding of saints and sainthood in order to enrich the Christian theological discourse on saints.” He examines in his book and we discuss scholars such as the Jesuit priest Frans Van der Lugt and  the Muslim poet and Philosopher Ibn Arabi, as well as catholic scholars Karl Rahner, Jean-Luc Marion, and Elizabeth Johnson, and Protestant scholars Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul Tillich. Below you will find links to his book and the major thinkers we discussed:
A Christian-Muslim Comparative Theology of Saints: The Community of God's Friends;
Abdurrahman Wahid;
The Jesuit priest and martyr Frans Van der Lugt;
The Muslim poet and Philosopher Ibn Arabi;
Karl Rahner;
Jean-Luc Marion;
Elizabeth Johnson;
Dietrich Bonhoeffer;
and Paul Tillich.
What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.
Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series. 
Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me or Ms. Fang Fang Chandra at cceconferences@stmarkscollege.ca. Let us know what you think.
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