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To return to our example, the truth of Christ's Passion in juxtaposition with the truth of Brahman: the permanent location of theological truths in and then after their texts makes unlikely any direct contradiction between texts about the Passion and theological texts about knowledge of Brahman. As theological truths they are complex literary events, composed against certain written and oral backgrounds, subject to new readings in new contexts, and therefore available as true only in a series of distinct arrangements and upon consequent judgments. While it is possible to formalize such claims in such a way as to make explicit their truth, the full presentation of the truth retains a memory of its textual and communal roots. |
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Since in a comparative context there can be no such complete memoryno perfect readerthe explicit, asserted truths of the other community cannot be received in the same way as they have been communicated and learned in that other community itself, or in the same way that one's home community has appropriated its own remembered doctrines. Only through a long and patient process of reading and rereading does a particular reader approach the point where even one of the contested theological truths is apprehended as superseding its texts and as becoming simply "the truth;" even more rare is the accomplishment of a reader who can intelligently and skillfully apprehend the truth of two juxtaposed truths, so as to make a judgment between them conceivable. |
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A Christian comparativist may begin and end with a belief in the efficacy of the Passion of Christ, with a set of theological arguments in support of that belief, and perhaps with a preference for Aquinas' exposition of that efficacy. She or he will not be likely to proclaim, alongside or instead of the truth of Christ's Passion, that "knowledge of Brahman saves." But she or he will be in this position of maintaining the original Christian commitment only after undergoing an education in the nature of Advaita claims about Brahman, and in that process will lose, I suggest, the capacity to make claims such as "knowledge of Brahman does not save." Though this result may seem minimal in light of the desire for decisions of import, the progress made in this way toward a new and broader context for the Christian claim is significant, and irreversible. |
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