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question is not whether Aquinas' text has spiritual overtones and is written in a context which values the spiritual assimilation of scripture through meditation; the Summa Theologiae is clearly sympathetic with such possibilities. Nor is it whether Amalananda knows the difference between practical spirituality and theology; he clearly does. Rather, the question asks about the difference between Aquinas' effort to present systematically certain conclusions about what can be said about God, and Amalananda's rooted-in-meditation, practical decision-making about what can be transferred or not from meditation to meditation. Do the markedly different contexts differentiate the two texts to such an extent that their similarities are only apparently real, or only marginal?
8 If one is not prepared to link the texts by merely presupposing that they are about "the same thing," how does one go about defending the connection that is put forth as the starting point for the comparative reading? |
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Although both authors deal with the problem of synonymity, Aquinas presupposes that all these "perfection-names" apply properly and first to God, while Amalananda presupposes that no scriptural name can properly apply to Brahman; here we encounter a difference that may indicate larger differences in theories of creation, differences as to how contingent reality is related to the noncontingent. From starting points grounded in different metaphysics, our theologians would then be exploring, in ways increasingly different, the ways in which a multiplicity of names can be used to extend our knowledge beyond what any particular name would point to, and about transcendent realities differently positioned in each tradition. Some of us may decide that an important, initial difference of this sortshould it in fact be the casewould require us to differentiate more severely their apparently similar rejections of synonymity. If both theologians end up claiming that names are inadequate but useful, it may nevertheless be unsettling to say that this claim can be based either on the view that all such names apply to the transcendent, or on the view that no such names apply to it. |
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To resolve these difficulties, and to become able to recognize which differences matter and which do not in the formula- |
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