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cal discoursewhich they are, even if they may also be more than thatthe claims of Advaita
22 and the Christian claims related to the Passion are both mediated in a complex fashion through the Texts in which they are inscribed. Before ST III.46.3 is either marginalized or allowed to preclude further comparison, some point of consonant or dissonant interconnection with Advaita must first be identified or constructed. |
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In other words, one must determine where one is in the process of reading the larger Texts together, so as to assess the significance of the (at least) momentarily disturbing incomparability one has discovered; and this determination can be achieved only through the very same process of careful reading that is at work in easier cases of intriguing similarity and interesting difference. In other words, comparative reading is not halted by this ostensibly incomparable passage; rather, it is intensified. |
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The comparativist who remains steadfastly faithful to the practicality of the comparative enterprise can notice and take into account the evident uniqueness of Aquinas' faith position regarding the Passion, and likewise the lack of any comparable belief or theological expression in the Advaitaand can do this without rushing to a judgment about the truth of the one, on the basis of the other. One might allow a text such as ST III.46.3 to stand noticeably and carefully uncompared, in order to specify and highlight that incomparability, while not overlooking other possibilities for rereading which continue to exist even in the face of this large incomparability. |
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More ambitiously, one might trace the processes by which the truth of the Passion had been theologically composed and recomposed throughout the tradition before Aquinas, and then in later systems, in order to become able to explore these (re)compositions, and the function of Aquinas' text in regard to them, in light of comparable Advaita recompositions of the truth of Brahman, thereby inaugurating a comparative soteriology. Or, one might go farther and ask which text's viewpoint corresponds most closely to the way the world really is: is it true that we are saved by the Passion of Christ, or is it knowledge of Brahman that liberates? There is no prima facie reason to dis- |
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