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In the experimental and largely uncharted milieu of comparative work, the comparativist has no alternative but to become the kind of person in whom the connection of the new (Con)Text of theology with the community's truth is realized. The enduring public expression of that realization, however, requires a community which maintains its basic commitments while allowing new formulations of its traditions, its educational structures, and its claims about itself and others, in a world in which the possibilities of comparison have been irreversibly inscribed. The true event by which the truth of comparison is accomplished, therefore, is like the event of Advaita realization: it is a moment of simple insight, personal and communal, which is nevertheless prepared and practiced in an entire range of specific activities of reading and writing, initiated by individuals but carried on and perfected over generations. |
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V Finishing The Experiment |
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These concluding reflections on the possibilities of comparative theology must be put forward modestly, without a sense of finality and without the added claim that no other way of thinking through the problems of comparison is possible. Numerous reasons come to mind for this required modesty, but the following is the most pertinent. The example that has entirely occupied this volume is but one example: the Advaita, that Advaita in its primary identity as the Uttara Mimamsa, and a rereading and rewriting of a certain form of Catholic Christian theology after that Advaita. Advaita hearkens back to Mimamsa, itself a thoroughly ritual discourse attuned to the temporal, practical, textually structured nature of ritual events. An experiment in comparative theology which is committed to the Advaita as Uttara Mimamsa is a limited one, which constructs the patterns and dynamics of comparative theology according to the same commitments to practice, text, time and event. |
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Were the preceding reflections rooted in other materials, this book and its final chapter's statements about the practice of comparison would surely have had other emphases. For example, attention to Advaita has brought consistently to the fore the tension between the complexity of language and the simple |
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