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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Serie: Blackwell Companions to Religion
- Sprache: Englisch
An incisive and original collection of the most engaging issues in contemporary comparative theology In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Comparative Theology, a team of distinguished scholars delivers a one-of-a-kind collection of essays on comparative theology. Honoring the groundbreaking work of Francis X. Clooney, S.J.--whose contributions to theology and religion will endure for generations--the included works explore seven key subjects in comparative theology, including its theory, method, history, influential contemporary developments, and potentially fruitful avenues for future discussion. The editors provide essays that reflect on the critical, theoretical, and methodological aspects of comparative theology, as well as constructive and critical appraisals of Francis Clooney's scholarship. Over forty original contributions from internationally recognized scholars and insightful newcomers to the field are included within. Readers will also find: * Insightful discussions of the larger implications of comparative theology beyond the discipline itself, especially as it relates to educational programs, institutions, and post-carceral life * Robust promotion of the research methods and critical thinking present in Francis Clooney's work * Practical discussions of the most pressing challenges and opportunities facing theological researchers today * Papers from leading contributors located around the globe, including emerging voices from the global south Perfect for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of theology and religious studies, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Comparative Theology will also benefit scholars with an interest in comparative religion, interreligious studies, and interreligious theology.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
List of Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Francis X. Clooney, SJ, and the Discipline of Comparative Theology
Comparative Theology and Theological Scholarship and Education
Comparative Theology and the Study of Religion
Other Introductory Texts
Content
Conclusion
References
PART I: Theories and Methods in Comparative Theology
CHAPTER 1: Five Insights on Method from Comparative Theology
Academic Rigor
Scholarly Positionality
Learning from Tradition
Grounded in Particulars
The End of Comparison
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 2: Imagining Religion, Intuiting Comparison
Introduction
Inner Sense in the Scholarship of Francis X. Clooney, SJ
Inner Sense in the Scholarship of Jonathan Z. Smith
Inner Sense Compared
Scholarly Value of Inner Sense
Epilogue
References
CHAPTER 3: Resisting Religious Relativism in Comparative Theology
Introduction
The Question of Relativism in Transreligious Theology
Comparative Theology as Resistance to Relativism
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 4: Grounding Theology of Religions in Comparative Theology
Christian Theologies of Religions: Retracing the Steps
Insights from Recent Ventures in Comparative Theology
Reconfiguring Theology of Religions: Toward a “Fulfillment Model in Reverse”
References
Further Reading
CHAPTER 5: Beyond the Text: Comparative Theology and Oral Cultures
Oral Theology
Example:
Gurna Daay
as Possible Source for Theology
Forms of
Gurna
Threats to the
Gurna
and Theological Opportunities
References
CHAPTER 6: Faith Seeking Understanding or Understanding Seeking Faith?
Prologue
The Opening
The Main Event
The Response
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 7: Kinesics, Proxemics, and Haptics
Introduction
Kinesics
Proxemics
Haptics
The Infrastructure of Śākta Rituals
Śākta Method for Comparative Theology
Conclusion
References
PART II: The Spirituality, Vocation, and Formation of the Comparative Theologian
CHAPTER 8: “The One Who Prays Is a (Comparative) Theologian”
Comparative Theology: Acts of Faith Seeking Understanding
The One Who Prays Is a (Comparative) Theologian
A Kind of Conclusion (for now)
References
CHAPTER 9: Settling the Seer
References
CHAPTER 10: Comparative Theology Embodied
Mentorship
Methodology
Ministry
References
CHAPTER 11: Performance and Engagement
Helplessly Ignatian? Francis Clooney on Religious Experience(s)
Annihilating the Mind? Swami Tejomayananda’s
Talks
on Ramana Maharshi
Performance and Engagement: Rethinking Religious Experience in Advaita Vedānta
Conclusion: Performing a Comparative Self
References
CHAPTER 12: A Fowlerian Perspective on the Faith of the Comparativist
Fowlerian Pastoral Psychology as an Alternative to Theology of Religions
An Overview of Fowlerian Stage Theory
Individuative‐Reflective Faith and Religious Rigidity
Conjunctive Faith and Comparative Theology: Clooney’s Conjunctive Mysticism
Conjunctive Faith and Comparative Theology as Public Witness
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 13: Comparative Theology as Process Not Conclusion
References
PART III: Comparative Theology and the Society of Jesus
CHAPTER 14: Comparing Jesuits
Roberto de Nobili, SJ
Reason and Its Uses
Henri de Lubac, SJ
A Comparison of Two Jesuits
Paradoxes of Grace
Shadows and Remembrance
References
CHAPTER 15: Francis X. Clooney, SJ
Jesuit Missionaries in India
Critically Appropriating the Jesuit Missionary Tradition
Examples from Comparative Theology
Concluding Question
Personal Anecdote
References
CHAPTER 16: The Ignatian Tradition and the Intellectual Virtues of a Comparative Theologian
Attentiveness to Text
Discernment of True Religion
Dialogical Openness
Conclusion
Acknowledgment
References
CHAPTER 17: Wonder Grasps Anything
Preface
Introduction
Demons in Parenthesis
The Story of Gregory Wonderworker, the Temple Custodian, and Gregory’s Note to Demons
The Patristic Text
Wonderworking in the Philippines
Conversion by Miracle or by the Mundane?
The
Catolona
as Spiritual Warrior and Wonder Worker
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
References
Further Reading
PART IV: Expanding on Francis X. Clooney's Corpus
CHAPTER 18: The Interpretation of Scripture in the Comparative Theology of Francis X. Clooney
Introduction
The Second Vatican Council
Theology After Vedanta
Seeing Through Texts
Divine Mother, Blessed Mother
The Truth, the Way, the Life and Beyond Compare
His Hiding Place Is Darkness
Reading the Hindu and Christian Classics
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 19: “Good Dark Love Birds, Will You Help?”
References
CHAPTER 20: “Paradoxology”
References
Further Reading
CHAPTER 21: Hymns on Mary in Hindu–Muslim–Christian Dialogue
Critique of Political Theology
Mary as Gate of Salvation?
Cosmic Harmony and Deep Incarnation
References
CHAPTER 22: Mary and Motherhood – A Comparatively Informed Reconsideration
Hymns to the Goddesses
Turn to Mary: A Decisive Feminist Re‐Visioning
Another Pass at Mary
The Luminous Density of Historical, Material Being
References
PART V: Exercises in Comparative Theology
CHAPTER 23: Transformational Liberation in the Age of COVID‐19
Introduction
Biopolitics, Necropolitics, and COVID‐19
The
Cilappatikāram
and the “Good Woman”
Gendered Power in Third‐Gender Religion
Transforming Gender and Liberation in Meena Kandasamy’s
Ms Militancy
Concluding Reflections
References
CHAPTER 24: And the Angels Wept
Introduction
Part I
Part II
Part III
References
CHAPTER 25: Modification, Emanation, and
Pariṇāma
‐
Vāda
in Medieval Theistic
Vedānta
and
Kabbalah
References
Further Reading
CHAPTER 26: Advancing the Ritual‐Liturgical Turn in Comparative Theology
Introduction
The Challenge of the Good Friday Liturgy
Re‐encountering the Good Friday Liturgy
Revising the Good Friday Liturgy
A Difficult Remainder: Baptized Jews in the Liturgy
Conclusion
References
Further Reading
CHAPTER 27: Creative Fidelity in Expanding the Canon
The Book of Deuteronomy
The
Tibetan Book of the Dead
Evaluating These Traditions Together
References
Further Reading
CHAPTER 28: Slow Reading of Beautiful Writing
Sacred Scribing
Readers’ Challenges
Reading Handwritten Scriptures Interreligiously
Close Reading of Calligraphed Display Items
Slow Reading’s Rewards
References
Further Reading
CHAPTER 29: Joy in the Earth
Mentor and Mentee
Divine Interdependence Sustains Cosmic Interdependence
God’s Expansive Love Invites Our Expansive Love
God Mediates All Blessings Through Time
The Trinity’s Loving, Internal Relatedness Expresses Itself in the Natural Universe as
Interdependence
What is Nondualism?
Nondualism Is Not Monism
Nondualism Is Active Correlation
Contrasts Are Not Opposites
The Net of Indra
Holiness Is Relatedness
Nondualism Is Not Nihilism
Nondualism Is Not a Perennial Philosophy
God Embeds Beauty Within the Universe
Cosmic Evolution Fosters the Experience of Beauty
Natural Law Is Unbreakable to Allow Human Agency
Moral Law Is Breakable to Allow Human Freedom
Our Trustworthy God Sustains a Trustworthy Universe
References
Further Reading
CHAPTER 30: Perceiving Divinity, Cultivating Wonder
Prologue
The Beautiful
Balthasar’s Gestalt, the Spiritual Senses, and His Hermeneutics
The Gospel Passage in the Context of Later Christological Debates
Concealing and Restricting Divinity: An Interreligious Reading with the Islamic Tradition
Conclusion: Comparative Insights
Epilogue
References
CHAPTER 31: Paradoxes of Desire in St John of the Cross and Solomon ibn Gabirol
Francis X. Clooney and Sacred Poetry: Prolegomena
Confessions of a Guilty Bystander
John of the Cross and Solomon ibn Gabirol: Brief Introduction
Cántico Espiritual A1/B1
Ibn Gabirol’s
rəšut
: verses 1 and 2
Cántico
A 12/B 13
Ibn Gabirol’s
rəšut
: verses 3–5
Some Reflections
Acknowledgment
References
PART VI: Comparative Theology Beyond the Discipline
CHAPTER 32: Locating the Self in the Study of Religion
Introduction
Why Compare Religions?
Constructing Tradition
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 33: Learning Interreligiously as Public Theology
Learning Interreligiously
The Article
Initial Methodological Learnings
What Happened Next?
Conclusions
References
CHAPTER 34: Comparative Theology and Public Theology
A Mentor and Friend
Comparative Theology and Public Theology
Comparative Rationality
Spirituality: Personal and Public
Affectivity
Concluding Remarks
References
Further Reading
CHAPTER 35: God Meets Us There
References
PART VII: The Past, Present, and Future of Comparative Theology
CHAPTER 36: Comparative Theology Beyond Religionization
Comparative Theology as Rectification
Religionization as an Analytical Concept Enhancing the Critical Potential of Comparative Theology
The Work of Rectification
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 37: Asking an Unusual Question of Kabir and Kazi Nazrul Islam
Nazrul’s Mixed Style
Nazrul the Pioneer of Muslim Regeneration
The Hindu‐Saturated World of Nazrul Islam
“I Have Done It, Aware of the Consequences”
References
CHAPTER 38: Comparative Theology
avant la lettre
?
References
CHAPTER 39: Creativity and Resistance in Comparative Theology
Confucian–Catholic Encounter: A Narrow Window for Comparative Learning (1784–1801)
A Fierce Middle: Dasan’s Confucian–Catholic Comparative Theology
Acknowledgment
References
Further Reading
CHAPTER 40: In Praise of Artisans
References
CHAPTER 41:
Lectio Divina
and Comparative Reading in the History of Christian–Muslim Encounters
Medieval Latin Readers of the Qur’an
Modern
Lectio Divina
of the Bible and the Qur’an
References
CHAPTER 42: Vicarious Voyage
Comparative Theology and Reception
Modes of Reception of Comparative Theology
Comparative Theology as Contemplative Theology
Reception of the Fact of Comparative Theological Practice
References
CHAPTER 43: Is There or Shall We Need a “Home” for Comparative Theologies?
Enthusiasm
Terms
Critique
Construction
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 44: Comparative Theology After Clooney
References
Author Index
Subject Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 20
Figure 20.1 Fresco of the ninth‐century poet Nammāḻvār in the Srirangam tem...
Figure 20.2 Bas‐relief of the churning of the ocean of milk story in Angkor ...
Figure 20.3 Yaśoda’s sense of wonder when she sees the entire universe in Kr...
Figure 20.4 The sage Mārkaṇḍeya has a vision of the baby Krishna lying on a ...
Chapter 28
Figure 28.1 The Basmala (the invocation: “In the name of God, the Compassion...
Figure 28.2
Hu
(God’s shortest name). Blagaj Tekke, near Mostar, Bosnia and ...
Figure 28.3
Ik onkar
(“One Creator”) – the opening statement of Sikhi’s Guru...
Figure 28.4
Hilye‐i S¸erif
(narrative portrait of Prophet Muhamma...
Guide
Cover Page
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
List of Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Author Index
Subject Index
Wiley End User License Agreement
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The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Comparative Theology
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The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Comparative Theology
A Festschrift in Honor of Francis X. Clooney, SJ
Edited by
Axel M. Oaks TakacsJoseph L. Kimmel
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication DataNames: Clooney, Francis X. (Francis Xavier), 1950‐ honouree. | Takacs, Axel M. Oaks, editor. | Kimmel, Joseph L., editor.Title: The Wiley Blackwell companion to comparative theology : a festschrift in honor of Francis X. Clooney, SJ / edited by Axel M. Oaks Takacs, Joseph L. Kimmel.Description: Hoboken, NJ, USA : Wiley‐Blackwell, 2024. | Series: The Wiley Blackwell companions to religion | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2023010337 (print) | LCCN 2023010338 (ebook) | ISBN 9781394160570 (hardback) | ISBN 9781394160594 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781394160587 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Religion–Study and teaching. | Clooney, Francis X. (Francis Xavier), 1950—Knowledge and learning.Classification: LCC BL41 .W57 2024 (print) | LCC BL41 (ebook) | DDC 200.71–dc23/eng/20230510LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023010337LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023010338
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List of Contributors
Martin Badenhorst, OP, STL, St. Augustine College of South Africa. Martin lectures in Scripture, ecumenism, and interreligious dialogue. His special interest is in the development of the canon in the Second Temple Period.
Michelle Bentsman, MDiv, Harvard University. Michelle is a doctoral candidate in comparative religion specializing in song healing rituals. Her primary traditions of study and practice are Judaism, Hinduism, and indigenous Amazonian Shipibo.
Mara Brecht, PhD, Loyola University Chicago. Mara is a Catholic theologian and a feminist. Her primary research interest is in Christian faith formation in various contexts of diversity including religious, racial, and philosophical.
John B. Carman, PhD, served as the director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School from 1973 to 1989 and is the emeritus Parkman Professor of Divinity at HDS. His scholarly focus has included Hindu traditions, comparative theology, and Christianity in South Asia.
Bennett DiDente Comerford recently completed his PhD in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University.
Christopher Conway, PhD, College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University. Chris is a comparative theologian focusing on spirituality and devotion in Hindu and Christian traditions.
Catherine Cornille, PhD. Catherine is a professor of comparative theology at Boston College where she holds the Newton College Alumnae Chair of Western Culture. She is the founding editor of the series Christian Commentaries on Non‐Christian Sacred Texts.
Jonathan Edelmann, PhD, University of Florida. Jonathan is an assistant professor in the Department of Religion. He has published in the areas of Hindu studies, Indology, and science and religion.
Mark J. Edwards, PhD, is a lecturer in religion at Princeton University, an adjunct professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and The College of New Jersey, and on staff at the Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton, New Jersey. He is the author of Christ Is Time: The Gospel According to Karl Barth (and the Red Hot Chili Peppers) (Cascade Books, 2022).
James Fredericks, PhD, Reverend, Loyola Marymount University. Jim is a specialist in Buddhist–Christian dialogue and comparative theology. He and Francis Clooney lived in Gerald Manley Hopkins Hall as graduate students at the University of Chicago.
Rita George‐Tvrtković, PhD, Benedictine University. Rita is a Catholic historical theologian specializing in medieval and contemporary Muslim–Christian relations. She was appointed by Pope Francis to be a consultor for the Vatican’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue.
Luis Manuel Girón‐Negrón, PhD, Harvard University. Luis is a historian of religions and a comparative literature scholar with expertise on the cultural archives of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in medieval and early modern Iberia.
William A. Graham, PhD, is the Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and University Distinguished Service Professor, emeritus, at Harvard University, and he served as the dean of Harvard Divinity School from 2002 to 2012. His scholarly focus has been Islamic and comparative religious studies.
Ruben L.F. Habito, DLittC, STL, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. Ruben teaches interfaith studies, comparative theology, and spirituality, and serves as guiding teacher of the Maria Kannon Zen Center, Dallas, Texas. He previously taught Buddhist philosophy at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan.
S. Mark Heim, PhD, is the Samuel Abbot Professor of Christian Theology at Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School. He has written extensively on theology and religious pluralism. His books include Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion (Orbis Books, 1995), Saved From Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross (Eerdmans, 2006), and Crucified Wisdom: Christ and the Bodhisattva in Theological Reflection (Fordham University Press, 2018).
Maria Cecilia Holt, ThD, Harvard Divinity School. Maria has been active in the preservation and promotion of the works of James Purdy and Anne Blonstein. From 2015 to 2019 she assisted James Purdy’s literary executor, John Uecker, in the fulfillment of Purdy’s desire to have his ashes buried by the grave of Dame Edith Sitwell. As part of Holt’s explorations of kairos and grief, Holt has worked with experimental playwrights, translators, and directors at, among others, the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia (2021), and the Grand National Theatre in Groningen, Netherlands (2023). Holt is currently involved in a collaborative project in comparative literature based at the University of Copenhagen.
Won‐Jae Hur, PhD, is an assistant professor of comparative theology in the Theology Department at Xavier University. His research focuses on Indo‐Tibetan Buddhist–Christian comparative theology, theology of bodies, and theories and practices of contemplation.
Daniel Joslyn‐Siemiatkoski, PhD, Boston College. Dan is an Anglican comparative theologian specializing in Jewish–Christian comparative theology. He is the Kraft Family Professor and director of the Center for Christian‐Jewish Learning at Boston College.
Joseph L. Kimmel, PhD, Harvard University and Boston College. Joseph recently completed his PhD at Harvard University (Study of Religion). His scholarly interests reside at the intersection of early Christianity, Indo‐Tibetan Buddhism, comparative religion/theology, and posthumanism. He is currently a part‐time faculty member at Boston College and serves as an Episcopal priest.
Christian S. Krokus, PhD, University of Scranton. Krokus is a professor in the Department of Theology/Religious Studies, where he teaches and writes about Catholic–Muslim comparative theology and spirituality.
Albertus Bagus Laksana, SJ, PhD, Sanata Dharma University. Laksana is a Jesuit priest and theologian, currently serving as president of Sanata Dharma University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He received his PhD in comparative theology from Boston College (2011) with a focus on Muslim–Christian encounters.
Leo D. Lefebure, PhD, Georgetown University. Lefebure is the inaugural holder of the Matteo Ricci, SJ, Chair of Theology at Georgetown University and the author of the award‐winning Transforming Interreligious Relations: Catholic Responses to Religious Pluralism in the United States (Orbis Books, 2020). He is the past president of the Society for Buddhist‐Christian Studies, a research fellow of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a trustee emeritus of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.
Nougoutna Norbert Litoing, MA, Harvard University. A Jesuit priest from Cameroon, Nougoutna is completing a PhD in the study of religion at Harvard University in the field of comparative theology, researching on Muslim and Catholic pilgrimage practices in Senegal.
Reid B. Locklin, PhD, University of Toronto. Reid is an associate professor of Christianity and culture at St. Michael’s College and the Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto. He publishes on contemporary comparative theology, the nondualist Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Katie Mahowski Mylroie, PhD candidate, Boston College. Katie is a Catholic comparative theologian working with Hindu and Christian liberation theologies, particularly in the intersection of ecological and feminist analyses.
Rachel Fell McDermott, Phd, is a professor of Asian and Middle Eastern cultures at Barnard College. Her research interests focus on Bengal. She has published extensively on the Hindu goddess‐centered religious traditions from that part of the subcontinent and is now involved in a research project on Kazi Nazrul Islam, both the “rebel poet” of India and the national poet of Bangladesh.
Lucinda Mosher, ThD, Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. Lucinda is an Episcopal moral and comparative theologian who has authored or edited some twenty books on multireligious concerns. She is also the senior editor of the Journal of Interreligious Studies and the rapporteur for the Building Bridges Seminar.
Marianne Moyaert, PhD, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven. Marianne is a Catholic comparative theologian and interreligious studies scholar specializing in Christian–Jewish relations. She has a special interest in the material and ritual dimensions of interreligious relations. She is also the editor‐in‐chief of the Brill series, Currents of Encounter.
Shankar Nair, PhD, University of Virginia. Nair’s general field of interest is the religious and intellectual history of South Asia, including broader traditions of Sufism and Islamic philosophy, Qur'anic exegesis, and Hindu philosophy and theology. His research centers on Muslim–Hindu interactions and the encounter between Arabic, Sanskrit, and Persian intellectual cultures in early modern (Mughal) South Asia.
Vasudha Narayanan, PhD, is Distinguished Professor, Department of Religion, at the University of Florida and a past president of the American Academy of Religion. She is the author or editor of several books and numerous articles, chapters in books, and encyclopedia entries. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from many organizations, including the Center for Khmer Studies, the American Council of Learned Societies, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Institute of Indian Studies/Smithsonian, and the Social Science Research Council. She is currently working on the Hindu traditions in the United States and on a book focusing on the importance of the churning of the ocean of milk story in Cambodia. She was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Hugh Nicholson, PhD, is a professor of comparative religion at Loyola University, Chicago. He is the author of Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry (Oxford University Press, 2011), The Spirit of Contradiction in Christianity and Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2016), and Buddhism, Cognitive Science, and the Doctrine of Selflessness: A Revolution in Our Self‐Conception (Routledge, 2023).
Kimberley C. Patton, PhD, is a professor of the comparative and historical study of religion at Harvard Divinity School. Her research focuses on the religions, archaeology, and material cultures of the ancient Mediterranean. Additionally, her work engages the challenges of the comparative study of religious themes across cultures. She and her colleague in comparative theology, Francis X. Clooney, SJ, co‐chair the doctoral program in comparative studies in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. Her book Religion of the Gods: Ritual, Paradox, and Reflexivity (Oxford University Press, 2009) won the 2010 American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the Analytical‐Descriptive Studies category. Her most recent book is the edited volume Gemini and the Sacred: Twins and Twinship in Religion and Mythology (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023).
Erik Ranstrom, PhD, Fairfield University. Erik’s current research interests are moving toward the intersection of contemplative studies and theological reflection in dialogue with psychological and recovery perspectives. He has also published on the thoughts of Raimon Panikkar.
Pravina Rodrigues, PhD, Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University. Pravina is a Hindu–Christian comparative theologian and interreligious studies scholar. She specializes in theology and ethics, Śākta studies, yoga, ecowomanism, and sustainability. She is the associate editor of the Journal of Dharma Studies (Springer) and the assistant editor of a 34‐chapter volume at the intersection of ecology and religion titled Religion and Sustainability: Interreligious Resources, Interdisciplinary Responses (Springer, 2022).
Arvind Sharma, PhD, McGill University. Arvind is the Birks Professor of Comparative Religion in the School of Religious Studies at McGill University, where he has taught for over 35 years. He has published extensively in the fields of comparative religion, Indian religions, and women in religion.
Jason W. Smith, ThD, Mercer University. Smith is an assistant professor of religion at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. His research focuses on the relationship between religion and literature in Tamil‐speaking South India.
Bin Song, PhD, Washington College. Bin works on Asian and comparative philosophy, religion, and philosophy. He is the past president of the North American Paul Tillich Society and the co‐chair of the Confucian Traditions Unit at the American Academy of Religion.
Scott Steinkerchner, PhD, OP. Scott is a comparative theologian and Catholic systematician who works across disparate thought systems. He is particularly interested in metaphysical questions within Tibetan Buddhism and Catholic Christianity.
Jon Paul Sydnor, PhD, Emmanuel College, Boston. Jon Paul is a progressive Christian theologian. He is currently developing a systematic theology based on agapic nondualism, utilizing Hindu and Buddhist thought to inform a liberating social Trinitarianism.
Axel M. Oaks Takacs, ThD, Molloy University. Axel is a Catholic comparative theologian with expertise in Islamic studies and interreligious studies. He specializes in Arabic and Persian classical and postclassical Islamic intellectual, poetic, and commentarial traditions. His research focuses on theological aesthetics, theopoetics, and theologies of the imagination and revelation. In addition, he teaches in the areas of religious pluralism, Islamophobia, race and religion, and historical and contemporary Catholic theologies of Islam. He is also the editor‐in‐chief of the Journal of Interreligious Studies.
John J. Thatamanil, PhD, is a professor of theology and world religions at Union Theological Seminary, New York. He is the author, most recently, of Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity (Fordham University Press, 2020).
Ithamar Theodor, PhD, Zefat Academic College. Theodor is an associate professor of Hindu studies at Zefat Academic College, Safed, Israel. His publications include Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā: Philosophy, Structure and Meaning (Routledge, 2010), Brahman and Dao: Comparative Studies in Indian and Chinese Philosophy and Religion (Lexington Books, 2014), The “Fifth Veda” in Hinduism: Philosophy, Poetry and Devotion in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), Dharma and Halacha: Comparative Studies in Hindu–Jewish Philosophy and Religion (Lexington Books, 2018), and The Bhagavad‐Gītā: A Critical Introduction (Routledge, 2021).
Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier, PhD, Loyola Marymount University. Tracy is a comparative theologian who focuses on gender in Asian and Asian American theology and (inter)religious contexts. She is also the Catholic co‐chair of the Los Angeles Hindu‐Catholic Dialogue.
Wilhelmus Valkenberg, PhD, The Catholic University of America, Washington DC. Pim studied theology and religious studies in the Netherlands. He specializes in Christian–Muslim dialogue and comparative theology.
Klaus von Stosch, ThD, Bonn University. Klaus is Schlegel Professor for Catholic systematic theology and head of the International Center for Comparative Theology and Social Issues. His areas of research include comparative theology, faith and reason, problem of evil, Christian theology responsive to Islam (especially Christology), and theology of the Trinity.
Michelle Voss Roberts, PhD, Emmanuel College, Toronto School of Theology. Michelle is a comparative theologian who works in Christian and Hindu traditions. Her teaching and research explore how the particularities of embodiment – such as gender, racialization, dis/ability, and culture – matter religiously.
Peng Yin, PhD, is an assistant professor of ethics at Boston University School of Theology. He is completing a manuscript tentatively entitled Persisting in the Good: Thomas Aquinas and Classical Chinese Ethics.
Preface
It is a privilege for us to join in this large volume of tributes to our friend and colleague, Francis X. Clooney, SJ. All the contributors are in some sense colleagues in scholarship. The two of us have also been Clooney’s institutional colleagues at Harvard Divinity School (HDS), each in a distinctive way. John Carman was Clooney’s predecessor as Parkman Professor of Divinity and as director of the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR); he also shares Clooney’s interest in Christian exploration of the Srivaishnava tradition. Bill Graham was the HDS dean who initiated the invitation to Clooney to join the Divinity Faculty and later asked him to serve as director of the CSWR; his specialization and interests are different from Clooney’s, but he, like John, shares with him a commitment to comparative studies in the history of religion.
Francis Clooney’s contributions in his time at Harvard Divinity School have been many, not least his resolute devotion to serious interfaith engagement in his scholarship and teaching. As a teacher he has inspired a new generation of HDS graduate students by his own work and its challenge to engage in comparative theological thinking. His deft hand with textual analysis and comparison has been an earmark of his classes every term that he has taught Harvard students. His commitment to dealing honestly and openly with Indian scholars in exploring Srivaishnava texts and thought has kept him returning to India when not teaching so as to remain in direct contact and conversation with these scholars.
As director of the CSWR for seven years, Clooney devoted himself to continuing and building on its first half‐century of comparative programs and training as the sole dedicated research center located primarily at the Divinity School. His organizing of sessions bringing outstanding outside scholars to interact with and inspire Harvard students and faculty was notable, as were special initiatives such as his sponsorship of substantial evening discussions of new publications by his Harvard colleagues with scholars both inside and outside the university. His tenure was further marked by his welcoming of interested HDS colleagues to occupy offices in the CSWR and especially by his attentiveness to involving students in the life and scholarly activity of the center.
It is unusual at HDS to have a professor who continues and expands the scholarly interests of his predecessor in an endowed chair, but as John Carman’s successor in the Parkman chair, Clooney has done just that, notably in his focus on both Tamil and Sanskrit texts, his work on the Srivaishnava tradition, and his comparative theological concerns.
Clooney’s scholarship can be seen to fall into three general areas. In the first, he has contributed to the modern study of Vedic ritual, to the understanding of the most influential interpretation of the Upanishads (Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta), and to the theistic interpretation of both the Vedanta and Vaishnava temple rituals. This work has required the reading of both Sanskrit and Tamil texts as well as works in the mixed language of Manipravalam.
Clooney’s second area of scholarship is smaller, but it is an important link to the third. This is a review of the studies of Indian culture and religion by Jesuit missionaries, especially the pioneer missionary Roberto de Nobili, who adopted the lifestyle of a Hindu ascetic. While Clooney is not a proselytizer, he has honored the scholarly work of those who were, and his own Indological path has included a Jesuit lifestyle and a Catholic pastoral vocation.
Clooney’s third area of scholarship is what has attracted the interest and admiration of most of those contributing to this volume. He has developed and encouraged a new form of comparative theology. It is based on the parallel reading of Hindu and Roman Catholic texts, and it challenges the increasing secularization of cross‐cultural religious studies in Western scholarship. His comparisons began with his own intuitive connections between Christian commentaries on the Song of Songs and Tamil Vaishnava commentaries on the poetry of the Alvars in which the usually male poet takes the female role of lover‐worshiper of Lord Vishnu. For the last decade or more, Clooney has spent much time and effort encouraging many scholars with various religious backgrounds and interests to develop their own comparative theologies. A common feature is the great respect accorded to the other tradition being studied, including its approach to its own history.
We are happy to join our colleagues in recognizing Francis Clooney’s multiple scholarly achievements and their ongoing influence. The many contributions in this large volume are all clear testimonies to those achievements and to their influence.
John B. Carman and William A. Graham
Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank the contributing authors of this Festschrift for their eager participation in this project, along with the staff at Wiley Blackwell for their exemplary efforts over many months to bring this volume to fruition.
Introduction
Axel M. Oaks Takacs and Joseph L. Kimmel
When the sincere disciple enters under obedience of the shaykh, keeping his company and learning his manners, a spiritual state flows from within the shaykh to within the disciple, like one lamp lighting another. The speech of the shaykh inspires the interior of the disciple, so that the shaykh’s words become the treasury of spiritual states. The state is transferred from the shaykh to the disciple by keeping company and by hearing speech.
Shihāb al‐Dīn Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al‐Suhrawardī (d. 1234) (ʿAwārif al‐Maʿārif, Vol. 1, p. 252)
Francis X. Clooney, SJ, and the Discipline of Comparative Theology
Ascribed to a highly influential, thirteenth‐century Persian Sufi, this quote concerns the relationship between the disciple and the teacher (shaykh) in the specific context of Sufism. In this tradition, the inculcation of Islamic spiritual and embodied disciplines and knowledges guides the wayfarer toward greater taqwā, that is, greater consciousness and cognizance of God, along a series of mystical stations (maqām) punctuated by spiritual states (ḥāl). In practice, Suhrawardī is underscoring the consensus opinion among many Sufis in the Islamic classical and postclassical period, namely, that rarely can the wayfarer successfully travel the spiritual path (ṭarīqa) without the guidance of someone who has journeyed along it already.1 More generally, this passage demonstrates how experience and knowledge are passed on from one to another, “like one lamp lighting another.”
Francis X. Clooney, SJ, would likely not consent to being likened to a Sufi shaykh, of course. Indeed, doing so decontextualizes conceptions of Sufi authority. However, the analogy Suhrawardī employs can be extended to the relationship between Clooney, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the discipline of comparative theology along with the various scholars (theologians, scholars of religion, South Asian studies scholars, and more) who have learned from him and his innovative and deeply attentive scholarship. His teaching, scholarship, and mentorship throughout the past 50 years have lit many candles, from St. Xavier’s High School in Kathmandu (where he taught English for his Jesuit regency) to Harvard Divinity School (HDS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (where he remains the Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology). From 1973 to 2023, Clooney has kept the company of students, scholars, and parishioners. After earning his BA from Fordham, his MDiv from Weston School of Theology, and his PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago, Clooney began his university teaching career at Boston College before moving over to HDS; he likewise served as academic director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (Oxford University) and the director of the Center for the Study of World Religions (HDS). At these various institutions, he mentored dozens of doctoral students as either primary dissertation adviser or reader for projects concerning comparative theology, theology of religions, South Asian studies, Indology, Hindu studies, and comparative religion, and advised still more master’s degree students. Moreover, let us not forget that he has also served as a parish priest throughout his career and is currently an associate priest at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Sharon, Massachusetts, where he no doubt offers pastoral guidance shaped by his deep learning in the Catholic faith in conversation with other religious traditions.
However, it is the discipline of comparative theology – and specifically confessional comparative theology (Cornille 2020, p. 18) – where Clooney’s impact and lasting legacy is most strongly felt. When he began teaching at the Theology Department of Boston College in 1984, Clooney recounts how some were still of the position that the disciplines of theology and the study of religion were sharply distinct in their focus and even stood in opposition to one another. Yet, he considered himself “both a theologian and a scholar of Hinduism” (Clooney 2010b, p. 19); he was doing Catholic theology through a “double learning” (p. 19) with the classical Hindu traditions. His work was theological and comparative. While there are many scholars and disciplinary trends related to comparative theology or offering methods and goals differing from Clooney’s style of confessional comparative theology (meta‐confessional comparative theology comes to mind; Cornille 2020, p. 25), nearly all engage his scholarship either constructively or critically. Hence, we can safely say that Clooney’s place in the history of theology, comparative theology, and the study of religion has been securely established for generations to come.
For decades scholars have preceded “the discipline of comparative theology” with the qualifiers, “the burgeoning” or “the emerging” or “the young.” However, we can confidently aver, with S. Mark Heim in his “Comparative Theology at Twenty‐Five: The End of the Beginning,” that comparative theology “has grown to have a distinct status within both theological and religious studies scholarship” and that “the questions and the substance of comparative theology have become a permanent feature of theology itself” (Heim 2019, p. 180). Indeed, many hundreds of articles about comparative theology or doing comparative theology have been published in journals dedicated to the study of religion, such as, inter alia, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, to ones dedicated to theology, such as Modern Theology and Theological Studies, and to those straddling both fields, such as Buddhist–Christian Studies, Journal of Hindu–Christian Studies, Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology, and Journal of Interreligious Studies. The number of books dedicated to comparative theology is likewise impressive, too many to list here. Indeed, we no longer need to precede “comparative theology” with adjectives denoting its infancy; the discipline is thoroughly in its adulthood, or at least in its adolescence (Moreland 2022), as it continues to grow in creative ways.
Within the discipline of theology, be it narrowly Catholic, broadly Christian, or generally of any religious tradition, it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify doing theology while restricting oneself to a single discursive religious tradition, however defined. Within the Christian traditions, the integration of comparative theology into systematics, theological ethics, constructive theology, fundamental theology, and other branches, as well as into the various contextual and liberation theologies, is becoming a disciplinary imperative. This is the case even if it remains a messy task and even if the discipline is at times marginalized from ecclesial or other religious communities and their institutions. Furthermore, we are at a point in the study of religion and interreligious studies where we can unequivocally state that all religious traditions have been interreligious and intercultural; religious communities and indigenous societies, theologians (of the elite), and the subaltern (of lived religion) have always – if only implicitly – been comparative thinkers, if not theologians (Takacs 2022). Whether it is hybridity and syncretism, or the mestiza/nepantla theory of Gloria Anzaldúa, or Homi Bhabha’s Third Space, or Mikhail Bakhtin’s proposal that all sociocultural and linguistic structures are a product of syncretism, or Kathryn Tanner’s Theories of Culture (1997) – we must ask ourselves, “when has theology ever not been interreligious and intercultural, and thus comparative theology?” Today’s comparative theologians are arguably performing explicitly what their predecessors – and human societies generally – have historically done implicitly.
This historical fact does not take away from the originality of Clooney’s comparative theology, a discipline that in the context of late twentieth‐century Euro‐American theology was certainly innovative and challenging. Indeed, arguments placing the discipline within the larger histories of theology and the study of religion – and within “the older comparative theology” – are often in response to the critiques comparative theology faced at its inception. In effect, some theologians argued (and some still do) that the discipline ignores the boundaries of tradition and is therefore outside of tradition. But the retort is simple: tradition has always been in interreligious and intercultural conversation, and boundaries have always been porous. To imagine otherwise is to reject how human societies and religious and cultural traditions mutually shape each other. Nonetheless, the discipline continues to receive other forms of critique and sometimes sharp censure. In a recent volume comprising seven essays from a colloquium that took place at the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the University of Geneva (Chalamet et al. 2021), Clooney (2021, pp. 113–175) responds directly to the perduring critiques of comparative theology, namely, that it is elite (and ignores lived religion), hegemonic in reading non‐Christian religious traditions, apolitical and thus void of practical theological conclusions, not sufficiently theological, too subjective, ineffective in shaping confessional theology, lacking a unifying method and goal, and unclear of its relationship to theology of religions. Indeed, it is one of the few places – perhaps the only – in which one can find nearly all of Clooney’s systematic rebuttals to these critiques in a single publication (of course, he has responded piecemeal in his many articles throughout his career). These critiques inadvertently suggest that comparative theology is an accepted field of academic study precisely because many of the critiques can be applied to academic theology tout court.
Other scholars (many of whom are comparative theologians themselves and included in this volume) have critiqued the discipline generally – sometimes Clooney’s work specifically – from a postcolonial/decolonial and post‐Holocaust perspective. Essays in the 2010 volume edited by Clooney, The New Comparative Theology: Interreligious Insights from the Next Generation, uncover the supersessionist, hegemonic, Orientalist, and colonial residue of comparative theology. In that volume, Nicholson, Joslyn‐Siemiatkoski, Voss Roberts, and Sayuki Tiemeier, inter alia, sharpen the discipline of comparative theology through constructive critique. Elsewhere, Judith Gruber offers a more direct postcolonial critique of comparative theology (Gruber 2016) by noting how exercises in comparative theology often occlude hybridity and syncretism – common features among all religious traditions – by assuming fixed, reified boundaries between religions. Most recently, Sayuki Tiemeier has critically assessed the field in “White Christian Privilege and the Decolonization of Comparative Theology”: “Western academic comparative theology reinforces White Christian supremacy rather than subverting it. A full‐scale decolonization of the field is necessary” (Sayuki Tiemeier 2021, p. 86). Drawing from An Yountae’s decolonial theory of religion and Afro‐Caribbean decolonial thinkers such as Édouard Glissant, Sayuki Tiemeier rightfully critiques Western comparative theology, but does not lose hope entirely. Comparative theology must “confront its colonial history and ongoing coloniality, self‐divest and abandon its colonial self to the abyss, align with the comparative cosmopolitical theology of colonized, creolized peoples, and commit to new ways of being in the world that prioritize relational solidarity and justice” (Sayuki Tiemeier 2021, p. 89). It must be noted that her critiques stand for any theology that privileges elite, White, Western voices over those of the subaltern. While comparative theology is surely past infancy, it still needs to be decolonized like all theological disciplines.
There are too many publications to address in this introduction and Paul Hedges summarizes many of the critiques with a question: “whether comparative theology is a subaltern voice or does it give space for subaltern voices, or is it simply a vehicle for main/malestream discourse and rhetoric?” (Hedges 2017, p. 22). Indeed, comparative theology may be “enmeshed in hegemonic and apologetic identity politics” (Cornille 2020, p. 67; emphasis added), but it is not essentially so. From a Christian perspective, Clooney’s innovative, confessional comparative theology remains promising because it has embedded within it the tools and mechanisms interreligiously and interculturally to redraw the boundaries of Christian identity and tradition through the careful study of non‐Christian knowledges, themselves deposits of challenging truths. Sayuki Tiemeier herself notes the strengths of Clooney’s comparative theology even while she critiques it from a decolonial perspective: it attends to particularity and difference and resists constructive conclusions that merely “consume and instrumentalize others” (Sayuki Tiemeier 2021, p. 91). It does this while being attentive to the ways in which the Christian tradition has always been relational, dynamic, and mutable vis‐à‐vis local and global religious and cultural traditions – historically and presently (Takacs 2022). By incorporating a liberating praxis into exercises in comparative theology, the discipline becomes an ally in the work of liberation with the oppressed and marginalized. This is but one example of how comparative theologians have taken Clooney’s method and critically expanded and adjusted it in ways Clooney may not have anticipated, but surely would not contest (he would likely even be pleased with these new directions).
Institutionally, comparative theology has been integrated into many departments of theology and religious studies, divinity schools, and seminaries, along with their majors, minors, and graduate‐level degrees from masters to doctoral. There is, of course, the original PhD program in comparative theology offered by the Department of Theology at Boston College. Alongside the other four areas of specialization, graduate students there can also minor in comparative theology. They have also integrated comparative theology into their undergraduate programming, from major to minor and the core in theology. Many other North American and European graduate programs in theology/religious studies now offer comparative theology as an area of specialization and/or require multireligious explorations of critical theological questions: Notre Dame, Georgetown, many of the Loyolas, Catholic University of America, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Emmanuel College of Victoria University (Toronto), Harvard Divinity School, Drew Theological School, Claremont School of Theology, Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, Duquesne University, and others, including several programs and faculties in Europe, such as Germany’s University of Bonn (International Center for Comparative Theology and Social Issues) and University of Paderborn (Center for Comparative Theology and Cultural Studies), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Faculty of Religion and Theology (which has a chair in comparative theology and hermeneutics of interreligious dialogue), KU Leuven’s Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies (which now hosts a comparative theology chair), inter alia.2 While it is true that most of these institutions are Catholic or Protestant, there is an increasing number of non‐Christian theologians doing the work of comparative theology. We should continue to work for Christian institutional support of non‐Christian confessional scholars and scholar‐practitioners in their departments and schools. To that end, though, many faculty job listings now include “comparative theology” as a requirement or one area in which the posting is seeking to hire. Once again, the integration of comparative theology into the academy is evident. Clooney and the Boston College program in comparative theology granted PhDs to many comparative theologians in the 1990s and 2000s; they, in turn, joined other institutions across the North American academy, and Clooney’s “deep learning across religious borders” spread, from teacher to disciple, now another teacher to other students, “like one lamp lighting another.”
Comparative Theology and Theological Scholarship and Education
Clooney was the 2022–2023 president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and so had the honor to set the theme for the 2022 Annual Convention: “Thinking Catholic Interreligiously.” Consequently, many – if not most – papers across all program units were generally drawing from multiple religious traditions or were specifically exercises in comparative theology. The fruit of doing theology interreligiously was evident, and so we encourage readers to peruse the CTSA proceedings for that year (Brown 2022
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