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simple and original, uncaused desire to know the truth, to know God, but also as a commitment to learn comparatively by the complex practice of reading comparatively. |
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Much could be said on the former, but one would have to trace the faith and desires of the theologian as these began in the period preceding the undertaking of comparisons. Since important aspects would be shared with theologians engaged in other disciplines within theology, and some aspects would simply be personal, perhaps inexplicable, we will not dwell here on these common and rare elements. |
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But why does someone take up comparative work as a task, an inquiry, promising to engage in multiple Texts over a long period of time? Perhaps the comparativist takes pleasure, intellectual and spiritual, in the composition of a larger Text, composed from her or his own tradition as newly contextualized by one or more other traditions. For this new, larger Text promises rich possibilities of text and context, layers of commentary on top of one another, a series of ongoing incidents of resignificationand all of this as provocative of new connections and renovative of old ones. This promise of virtually limitless new meanings is an important justification for engagement in the comparative enterprise, and for some it may suffice. |
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One might also appeal to the traditional universalizing and in some cases evangelizing thrusts of religions. For the Christian, this pertains to the missionary task of the churches, the literal and figurative inscription of the world into the community founded in the Word of God. The effort to account for the world in terms of the Word of God, and to perform that Word by the work of evangelization, need not be considered separately from the practices of recontextualization stressed in this volume. The traditional translation of the Word into many human words is mirrored in the rewriting of theology in the context of the new words of new Texts. |
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The general situation in which any theologian does theology today may also provide some warrants as to why one would take up comparative work. Though richer, the world of religion is now smaller; the encounter with other religions is not the special experience only of those who travel to far-off places; the |
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