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identify a series of special questions which may be formalized and undertaken as ongoing projects, in a series of revised theological disciplines ranging from "comparative soteriology" and "comparative ethics" to "comparative exegesis" and "comparative apologetics," to "comparative mysticism'' and "comparative popular devotions," etc. Each of these requires historical and social investigations as well regarding each side of each comparison. Not all of these need to beor could beundertaken by the same person. When differentiated, the comparative disciplines will also develop their own increasingly professional standards and criteria, and fortunately become less dependent on the intuitions or powers of persuasion of any particular theologian. |
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The comparative project and the revision of the curriculum cannot stop at any merely posited endpoint; if we understand what happens in the practice of comparative reading, we find everything to be different. The theologically sensitive juxtaposition of one's scripture and theology with what one recognizes to be another theological version of the world, narrated according to different texts, traditions and practices, makes one aware of the margins of one's theological universe. This awareness may dawn even before one has any inkling of the proper way to talk about these margins and what is beyond them. Whatever one wants to do after the juxtaposition of texts and acts of comparative reading, the theological and religious awareness of the "other" will remain in place, along with an unformalizable measuring of the margins of one's own universe of thought. Because unformalizable, this measure never becomes a proper topic within the system. It remains unwritten, but noticed; unobtrusive, it changes everything.
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3. The Comparativist as Educator |
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The remaining question has to do with how the comparative theologian is to communicate the smaller and larger results of the successive acts of reading and rereading. The comparative theologian's personal learning has been accomplished through a process of reading and rereading over an extended |
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