Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry

by Nicholson, Hugh

• ISBN13: 9780199772865
• ISBN10: 019977286X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-04-08
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Hugh Nicholson argues that the political goes "all the way down" in theological discourse. One never reaches a bedrock level of politically neutral religious facts, because theological discourse - even the most sublime, edifying, and "spiritual" - is shot through with polemical elements. This hypothesis directly challenges a core assumption of the tradition of liberal universalism: that mystical writings attain spiritual truth and sublimity despite any polemical elements they might contain. Nicholson's analysis and comparison of the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart and his Hindu counterpart Sankara lead to a very different conclusion. Polemical elements may in fact be the creative source of the expressive power of mystical discourses. Wayne Proudfoot has argued that mystical discourses form a set of rules that prescriptively repel any determinate understanding of the ineffable object or experience they purport to describe. Nicholson suggests that this principle of negation is connected, perhaps through a process of abstraction and sublimation, with the need to distinguish oneself from one's adversary.

Author Biography

Hugh Nicholson is Assistant Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago. He has published on a wide range of topics in the study of theology and religion, including method in comparative theology, the relation between theology and the study of religion, and selected topics in classical Indian philosophy.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	p. xxiii
Introduction	p. 1
A Utopian Quest for Unmarked Faith	p. 1
The Inescapability of the Political	p. 6
The Political Goes ôAll the Way Down,ö	p. 10
A Shift in Strategy	p. 11
Demarginalizing Comparative Theology	p. 12
The Argument of This Book	p. 13
Theology and the Political
The Reunification of Theology and Comparison in the New Comparative Theology	p. 21
The Comparative Theology of the Nineteenth-Century	p. 22
The New Comparative Theology as a Fresh Alternative to the Theology of Religions	p. 26
A Comparison of Comparative Theologies	p. 30
Comparative Theology as an Expression of Global Hegemonism?	p. 34
Comparative Theology as the Paradigm for the New Comparativism	p. 38
Two Kinds of Acknowledgment	p. 43
The Modern Quest to Depoliticize Theology	p. 49
Enlightenment Natural Religion	p. 52
Schleiermacher's True Church	p. 55
Drey's Concept of World Religion	p. 59
Clarke's Comparative Theology	p. 62
The Transition from Christian Universalism to Religious Pluralism	p. 66
George Lindbeck and the Postliberal Turn	p. 70
Kathryn Tanner's Relational Theory of Christian Identity	p. 75
Concluding Remarks	p. 78
From Apologetics to Comparison: Toward a Dialectical Model of Comparative Theology	p. 79
The Political Moment in Tanner's Relational Theory of Christian Identity	p. 84
The Political Moment of Christian Identity: Two Christian Apologetic Constructions of Self and Other	p. 88
Comparison as a Technique for Deconstructing Dichotomous Typifications	p. 94
Metonymical Comparison in Traditional Apologetics	p. 99
Metaphorical Comparison	p. 101
The Inscription of Comparative Theology in an Apologetic Tradition	p. 103
Mysticism East and West Revisited
Mysticism East and West as Christian Apologetic	p. 109
Otto's Apologetic in Mysticism East and West	p. 110
The Retrieval of Meister Eckhart and the Question of Pantheism	p. 111
The Emergence of Sankara's Vedanta as the Epitome of Hinduism	p. 114
Otto's Use of Both the Perennialist and Apologetic Traditions	p. 119
The Parallels between the Two Masters	p. 121
The Essential Difference between Sankara and Eckhart	p. 122
God and the God beyond God in Eckhart and Sankara	p. 129
Two Theological Paradigms in Eckhart's Mystical Theology	p. 131
Sankara's Concept of Brahman as a Double Paradigm	p. 140
The Proto-Commentator and the Isvara Paradigm	p. 145
Sankara and the Apophatic Paradigm	p. 147
From Acosmism to Dialectic: Sankara and Eckhart on the Ontological Status of the Phenomenal World	p. 153
The Problem of Acosmism in Sankara and Eckhart	p. 153
A Transformative Commentary on Realist Vedanta: Sankara's Reinterpretation of BS 2.1.14	p. 155
From Analogy to Dialectic: Eckhart's Reinterpretation of the Analogia Entis	p. 161
Dialectic in the BSBh: The ôDouble Beingö of Sankara's ôName and Form,ö	p. 167
Liberative Knowledge as ôLiving without a Why,ö	p. 175
Eckhart's ôLiving without a Whyö: Spontaneous Activity from Detachment	p. 177
Sankara's Antithesis of Action and Knowledge	p. 181
Enlightened Action in Sankara?	p. 188
The Polemical Dimension of ôLiving without a Why,ö	p. 193
Conclusion	p. 197
Two Purposes, Two Comparisons	p. 197
Two Paradigms of Critical Thought and the Question of the Comparative Method	p. 199
Notes	p. 205
Bibliography	p. 287
Index	p. 305
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