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Chapter 5
Theology after Advaita Vedanta:
The Text, The Truth, and The Theologian |
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I. The Practice Of Comparative Theology |
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The previous chapters have taught us the importance of careful reading, and the necessity of discovering Advaita's truth after and through that Text which reaches from the upanisads to the latest of the commentaries, and not despite it. Even if one desires a simpler truth beyond the complexities of texts and commentaries, and a rupture with the elitist strictures of the tradition, in Advaita these are deferred to a posttextual moment of insight, in which the practiced and accomplished reader resolves the tension between Advaita's texts and its single referent, Brahman. |
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Comparative theology as theology after Vedanta proceeds in the same fashion. I therefore begin by reemphasizing the practical and temporal nature of comparative theology, as a rereading and subsequent retrieval of one's prior theology after an appropriation of Vedanta. Theology after Advaita Vedanta is not a theology that chooses from among the ideas of the Advaita and Christian traditions, but is one in which a Christian theologian begins to think again the entire range of problems and possibilities in the (Christian) theological tradition, after a serious engagement in the Advaita Text: after, posterior, in imitation of, according to Vedanta. |
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