Comparative Theology, Religious Diversity, and the Question of Ultimate Truth

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Ultimate Truth

God as Ground, Singularity, and Relation

2020 ◽  
pp. 213-248
Author(s):  
John J. Thatamanil
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Constructive Theology ◽  
Divine Life ◽  
The Trinity

This chapter is the culmination of the book. What previous chapters called for—the integration of theology of religious diversity, comparative theology, and constructive theology—this chapter performs. It offers a new constructive theology of the trinity, a theology of the trinity that is worked out with the help of Hindus and Buddhists. Such a theology is simultaneously a way to think about religious neighbors, a way of learning from those neighbors, and a way to reimagine the divine life. Specifically, this chapter advocates an account of God/ultimate reality as ground, singularity, and relation. Although these features of the divine life can be discerned across traditions, this chapter argues that certain strands of particular traditions focus on one account of ultimacy at the relative expense of others. But this degree of focus is precisely what makes interreligious learning possible, necessary, and rewarding.

Engaging Radical Alterity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Komjathy
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Interreligious Dialogue ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Pedagogical Approach ◽  
Essential Characteristic ◽  
Theology Of Religions ◽  
Radical Alterity ◽  
Approach To Teaching ◽  
Theological Training

As someone located in Daoist Studies and Religious Studies without formal theological training, I have developed my own pedagogical approach to teaching Comparative Theology and the theologies of religious diversity. I begin with a discussion of the relative appropriateness and problematic nature of the terms “Theology” and “Comparative Theology” for studying non-Christian and even nontheistic traditions. I then move on to present a quasi-normative polytheistic or pluralistic theology of religions and discuss Religious Studies classrooms as dialogic spaces and interreligious encounters. I emphasize that the postcolonial and postmodern study of religion assumes theology is an essential characteristic, which also reveals mutually exclusive, equally convincing accounts of “reality.” Comparative Theology and interreligious dialogue provide helpful methodologies for addressing the challenges of radical alterity. We may endeavor to “think through” alternative perspectives and, in the process, defamiliarize the familiar and familiarize the unfamiliar.

Circling the Elephant

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Thatamanil
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Constructive Theology ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
The Past ◽  
Religion And Race

Christian theologians have, for some decades, affirmed that they have no monopoly on encounter with God or ultimate reality; other religions also have access to religious truth and transformation. If so, the time has come for Christians not just to learn about but also from their religious neighbors. Circling the Elephant affirms that the best way to move toward the mystery of divinity is to move toward the mystery of the neighbor. In this book, Thatamanil employs the ancient Indian allegory of the elephant and blindfolded men to argue for the integration of three, often-separated theological projects: theologies of religious diversity, comparative theology, and constructive theology. Circling the Elephant also offers an analysis of why we have fallen short in the past. Interreligious learning has been obstructed by problematic ideas about “religion” and “religions.” Thatamanil also notes troubling resonances between reified notions of “religion” and “race.” He contests these notions and offers a new theory of the religious that makes interreligious learning both possible and desirable. Christians have much to learn from their religious neighbors, even about such central features of Christian theology as Christ and Trinity. This book proposes a new theology of religious diversity, one that opens the door to true interreligious learning.

Buddhism and Beyond

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-48
Author(s):  
Douglas S. Duckworth
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Logical Form ◽  
Ultimate Truth ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Difference ◽  
One And Many

This article discusses Buddhist responses to religious diversity. I use the logical form of the tetralemma made famous by N?g?rjuna to clarify the ways that Buddhists can be seen to relate to other religions. With four alternatives, I discuss Buddhist claims to truth in terms of their being singularly absolute, one among many, both, and neither. As is evident in the presence of the third and fourth alternatives of the tetralemma, rigid dichotomies (like one and many, exclusivism and pluralism) are often false, for both (and neither) are live options. A key difference rests on the interpretation of ultimate truth, and in particular, whether the ultimate truth of emptiness is interpreted as a claim to the indeterminate nature of reality or its undetermined nature. The undetermined involves a participatory attitude of openness, and a healthy suspicion of preconceptions that determine and delimit the ultimate truth. Thus, the undetermined refers not so much to a descriptive truth, but rather to how one comports oneself in the world – with humility and openness. In parallel with this distinction between openness and certainty, I also spell out differences between claims and attitudes in an example from Tibetan traditions, with reference to the so-called “nonsectarian” (ris med) movement in particular. I argue that the difference between claims and attitudes can help clarify what it means to be “nonsectarian,” and thereby bridge the difference between maintaining an exclusively Buddhist claim and having an attitude that reaches beyond Buddhism.

Comparative Theology After Religion?

2020 ◽  
pp. 108-151
Author(s):  
John J. Thatamanil
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Theories Of Religion ◽  
The Way

This chapter employs genealogy of religion, critical race theory, and Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka Buddhism to call into question the way in which uninterrogated notions about “religion” and “religions” compromise theologies of religious diversity. At the heart of the argument is the claim that both the categories “religions” and “races” were invented to reify traditions and peoples over against each other and to develop hierarchies of valuation. Reification is the precondition for ranking, and where there is reification there can be no learning. These reifications persist and complicate and compromise theologies of religious diversity and comparative theology. If Christian theology is to take up the project of interreligious learning, then a variety of extant theories of religion must be called into question. Nevertheless, the chapter concludes that there is no way to simply jettison “religion” and “religions.” These categories must be given new meaning.

Divine Freedom and Human Religions

2018 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-296
Author(s):  
Martha Moore-Keish
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Theological Seminary ◽  
Print Version ◽  
The Past ◽  
Divine Freedom ◽  
Christian Family

This print version of an address given in February 2018 at Columbia Theological Seminary pursues the question, How do we follow Jesus the Christ in this religiously plural world? Martha Moore-Keish tells the story of how Presbyterians, as one particular Christian family, have wrestled with this question for the past 500 years. After reviewing five historical interpretations of religious diversity, the essay introduces the emerging field of comparative theology, as a promising next step in engaging a world of many religions. Finally, it offers a trinitarian Reformed theological rationale for engaging in comparative theology.

Religious Difference and Christian Theology

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-40
Author(s):  
John J. Thatamanil
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Constructive Theology ◽  
Religious Difference ◽  
Religious Others

This chapter introduces and frames the argument for the entire book: Christian theology must understand religious diversity as promise rather than as problem. The chapter then proceeds to lay out conceptually what was articulated allegorically in the introduction, namely that theology of religious diversity, comparative theology, and constructive theology must be integrated. The chapter defines the scope and tasks of each of these three subfields within theology and puts them into conversation. The chapter argues that it is not enough to merely think about others; we must instead think with religious others and think through what is so learned. In sum, we ought not give an account of the other without being transformed by the other through interreligious learning.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document