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reading and on my enduring though partially overcome exteriority to Advaita; this reflection is highlighted in order to bring to prominence the issues that need to be faced in a rereading and rewriting of my own Christian tradition. Even Chapters 2, 3 and 4, which focus on Advaita and strive for a fair reading of certain Advaita texts, are composed consciously within the margins of my comparative theological interestseven if these are only implicit in those chaptersfor the sake of the composition of a better account of how one rereads one's home theological traditionin my case, the Roman Catholicafter a serious engagement in the reading of another tradition, in this case, the Advaita. In those middle chapters, the issues of the text that is read (Chapter 2), the truth of that text (Chapter 3), and its reader (Chapter 4), are respectively taken up; each issue recurs in the three major sections of Chapter 5, where the earlier chapters' theological and comparative concerns come explicitly to the fore. Even in those middle chapters, therefore, a privileged objective position outside traditions, from which he or she might compare and contrast them objectively, has neither been sought nor attained; this is so, even if at the same time the inevitable subjective factors have been submitted to the discipline of attentive reading. This book intends neither the acquisition nor defense of a privileged objective stance, especially if the acquisition of such would entail the expectation that the Advaita and/or Christian traditions could be located within a broader field of intelligibility, which they would be thought to exemplify. The reader is therefore requested to keep in mind the Indological, theological and literary concerns which appear at least implicitly on every page of this book, and is invited to share with the author the task of keeping distinct though productively cooperative these inseparably and mutually determinative concerns. |
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Though Theology after Vedanta addresses a wide range of issues, these issues are focused through one particular example, a selective reading of certain Advaita texts and a reconsideration of certain Catholic theological texts thereafter. As a practical exercise and limited experiment this book does not begin with general issues, and does not conclude to a general theory of religion or comparison; generalizations will be made only |
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