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Time is of the essence, and the significance of time cannot be replicated, nor its fruits identified, in the abstract; though the progress one accomplishes over time can be talked about and its contours sketched, it must be enacted in order to be properly understood. This chapter therefore preserves a studiously practical tone; it is primarily concerned about how one might read theology and articulate theological truth after one has become at least initially familiar with Advaita. |
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By design, this chapter fails to draw firm conclusions based on the comparison of Advaita and Christian theology, for the goal is rather to uncover the important activities and changes which necessarily precede any such conclusions. Later, on the basis of this delineation, and as it is amplified in further experiments in reading, it will become possible to draw more specific conclusions on what a theologian is to read, or write, in a comparative context, and how one might best identify that theologian. Moreover, as stated in Chapter 1, it is only one particular form of Christian theology that is really at issue heremy own particular appropriation of late 20th century American Roman Catholicismand this as (re)articulated after the study of Advaita, which is only one particular form of Vedanta. Any larger insights into comparative method must be carefully derived from a comparison which, though in a certain way ambitious, is studiously narrow in content and concerns; and, as indicated in Chapter 4, such insights are likely to be the achievement of skilled readers, those who apply this (mere) example properly. |
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The particular exercise in comparison which comprises this chapter selects the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas as the Text
1inscribed in its tradition, adorned with its commentarieswhich is to be reread after Advaita Vedanta. There is no single compelling reason why this choice is the best or the most productive, or necessary. Comparison is a creative procedure, in which the comparativist's construction of new meanings begins with her or his partly arbitrary choice of texts to compare. Comparison forges a link which was not previously there, a link which (usually) cannot be justified on the basis of historical connections or of similarities so striking that they compel comparison. |
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