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problems facing the human race are increasingly global. If religion is to contribute to their solutions, it is unconvincing to suppose that only one religion will make this contribution, or that religions best make their contribution in isolation from one another. Identities preserved, people of diverse religious backgrounds still do best to cooperate in the responsible practice of their religions. If theology is to be intelligently composed in the contemporary situation, the advantages of a theological discourse enriched by a series of particular contextualizations in multiple Textual traditions cannot be overlooked. |
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However one explains the beginning of the desire to make comparisons, the practice of comparisons cannot be evaluated merely in terms of predicted results, as if they could be stated in advance of their production. The practice of comparative inquiry will always possess an unpredictable component. When the comparativist begins to appropriate a new tradition and on that basis to make skilled comparisons, she or he is quickly confronted with an array of new questions and new choices, and encounters and assimilates vast amounts of new material. The comparativist may begin by storing it according to the already established categories of thought and locating the ''new" next to apparently similar portions of the "old"while also overlooking, or treating as unimportant, or placing in a file labeled "not understood," various items one has no precise place for. But if she or he perseveres in the reading process and pays attention to what is happening, the awareness of what is new and newly significant becomes an increasingly urgent and effective agent for change; the process of increasing one's comparative knowledge is increasingly accompanied by the rearrangement of one's prior knowledge and by new expectations regarding learning and how learning is to be organized. The new vocabulary, concepts, images, myths, theologies, etc., at some point accumulate to a point at which they can no longer be easily confined in their appropriate places in the theologian's already-established theological discourse. |
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The theologian then begins to draw on a broader and more varied set of theological materialsexpanding the theological library, if not the theological canon. Alongside the Bible and the |
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