Abstract
Given that comparative theology is aimed at learning from the insights of other religious traditions, the comparative theologian’s confessional perspective must be engaged and subject to possible transformation through the discovery of truth in those traditions. Despite Francis Clooney’s and James Fredericks’ attempts to distance comparative theology from the theology of religions, its truth-seeking dimension makes participation in the theology of religions unavoidable. Crucial to integrating what is learned, moreover, is a willingness to allow presuppositions about the other to be challenged and to make revisions if necessary. Keith Ward exhibits this willingness but, on this basis, distinguishes comparative theology from confessional theology, thus obscuring the legitimacy of revision from a committed religious standpoint. Where comparative theologians are willing and able to integrate all that is learned through their study of other traditions, comparative theology can be conceived of as both a confessional enterprise and a contribution to what Wilfred Cantwell Smith called ‘World Theology’—that is, the ongoing attempt to give intellectual expression to the faith of us all.
Highlights
From the time I first started to study and appreciate Buddhism, I never felt as if I were embarking on a fundamentally different enterprise when I stepped out of a Christian theology seminar and opened an anthology of Buddhist texts; my interest was always in whether or not the ideas I was encountering were true, and how they might relate to what I already believed, as a Christian
Given an increasing immersion in and identification with the tradition studied, pluralism can surely develop, not as an abstract theory about religions in general, but as an expression of the fact that one‘s own commitments and intuitions pertain to two traditions. This might lead one to embrace the idea that these traditions somehow express the same transcendent Reality, but this will not be the result of having adopted a supposedly meta-religious stance, as Fredericks claims, but may instead emerge out of reflection on one‘s own experience, transformed; for, from one‘s Christian perspective, how could the truth and value one has discovered in Hinduism bear no relation to the truth and value one knows in Christianity and, from one‘s Hindu perspective, how could the truth and value one knows in Christianity be unrelated to the truth and value one has discovered in Hinduism?11 Fredericks suggests that pluralism diffuses the creative tension on which comparative theology thrives
I am not arguing that all comparative theologians must abandon inclusivism in favour of pluralism, but only that inclusivist presuppositions cannot be exempt from the effects of comparative study
Summary
From the time I first started to study and appreciate Buddhism, I never felt as if I were embarking on a fundamentally different enterprise when I stepped out of a Christian theology seminar and opened an anthology of Buddhist texts; my interest was always in whether or not the ideas I was encountering were true, and how they might relate to what I already believed, as a Christian. As a number of thinkers have pointed out, if comparative theology is a genuinely truthseeking enterprise, it cannot be as neatly distinguished from theology of religions as Clooney and Fredericks would like, not least because comparative theology presupposes certain assumptions about the tradition studied If one studies another tradition with a theological interest in truth, it is presumably because one‘s confessional perspective gives one reason to see that tradition as a potential source of truth and value. Theologians such as John Keenan and Joseph O‘Leary have experimented with more radical integrations by applying a Buddhist hermeneutical framework to the tenets of Christian faith.6 Another crucial affect of the discovery of truth in the other, of which proponents of comparative theology do not always take full account, should be reflection on whether the presuppositions about the other which were implicit in their confessional starting points are vindicated or challenged by that discovery. Kristin Kiblinger suggests that the comparative theologian‘s theological biases about the other be heldtentatively, not dogmatically‘ ([9], p. 31)
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