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plex comparative theological structures. One might describe, for example, how imperfect language provides us with salvific knowledge of the transcendent; or, from attention to individual words, one might work toward the examination of more complex similarities, such as those governing the relationships of Brahman or God to the human person who speaks of either.
7 For the sake of such descriptions, one might grant to one or the other text the leading position, but without making the other entirely dispensable. Finally, because generated from attention to both thinkers, the resultant theological position would be genuinely unprecedented, even in its sophisticated and self-consciously "postcomparative" formulation, since it would be composed out of and after the two traditions as they are reread together. |
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However interesting the similarities and the further possible projects might be, attention to these is not enough. To utilize discovered similarities while overlooking obvious differences accomplishes nothing. Whatever the similarities of the two texts, it is also obvious that they are not identical, that they were written in quite different contexts. They have outstandingly different features, and these differences, distances, and tensions must be preservedin part because the resistance of texts to complete assimilation is a major part of what is important and interesting about comparison. |
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Some readers may decide more boldly that the two texts are not at all about "the same thing," whether by "the same thing" one means "God" or "Brahman,'' or simply "the same theological problem;" the possibility that any given comparison will be recognized as mistaken and therefore rejected need not be excluded in advance. But here I point out only several smaller differences. |
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First, one may ask if Aquinas' project of defending the application of different names to God is really the same as Amalananda's project of justifying a procedure by which one transfers some but not all of the attributes of Brahman as the object of meditation from one act of meditation to another. The |
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