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Abstract
The nomenclature of comparative theology has a checkered history and continues to cause some confusion as different comparative theologians use the term to apply to various approaches to the field. This article seeks to distinguish these various approaches based on their starting points, goals, and intended audience. While comparative theology is grounded in the comparative study of religion, using many of its methodological principles and safeguards, its ultimate goal is not merely a deeper understanding of religion or particular religious phenomena, but the pursuit of theological truth. Based on how this truth is discerned, and for what purpose, it distinguishes confessional, post-colonial, metaconfessional and interreligious approaches, attentive to the fact that these approaches at times intersect.
Abstract
Even though empathy plays a central role in inter-religious imagination, the notion of empathy has become all but anathema in the study of religions, associated as it is with Romantic hermeneutics and with the early phenomenology of religion. This article revisits some of the early phenomenological approaches to the problem of empathy in order to explore their continuing import for the question of the possibility of entering imaginatively into the religious worldview and experience of another tradition and understanding it from within. Even though the religious experience of the other always remains beyond the purview of someone not belonging to that tradition, the notion of empathy continues to emphasize the epistemic priority of that experience in the process of inter-religious dialogue, thus stretching the imagination to resonate with new and possibly enriching forms of religious life.
Um diese Ziele zu erreichen, kommen in den Beiträgen zur Komparativen Theologie Theologen und Theologinnen bzw. Gelehrte verschiedener religiöser Traditionen miteinander und mit Vertreterinnen und Vertretern der Religions- und Kulturwissenschaften ins Gespräch, um so im interdisziplinären Gespräch die religionsbezogene Forschung zu vertiefen und im Methodenspektrum zu erweitern. Dabei werden gesellschaftlich brisante und für das interreligiöse Gespräch zentrale Fragestellungen ausgewählt und theologisch bearbeitet. Der Vergleich über Religionsgrenzen hinweg soll auf diese Weise Orientierungsleistungen für Menschen heute erbringen und das dialogische Profil der Theologien schärfen.
The book series, Contributions to Comparative Theology, stimulates the conversation of theologies of different religions and provides a forum for the newly developing research field of Comparative Theology. It advances ways to fathom and understand other religions, in which the diversity of another’s religious view of the world is adequately acknowledged without impermissibly relativizing the truth claims of one's own religion. At the same time, the series portrays real debates between Christian theologies and non-Christian worldviews, showing the ways in which a friendly pursuit of the one truth can be charted without compromising the integrity of one’s own religious commitments. Finally, by working hermeneutically, this series contributes to a better understanding of the differences that lie across religious boundaries. These efforts are underlined by the awareness that getting to know each other better is also helpful to arrive at a better understanding of one’s self and to deepen one's thinking about God – or ultimate reality.
To achieve these goals, theologians of various religious traditions come together in conversation with each other and also with representatives of religious and cultural studies. In the ensuing interdisciplinary dialogue, understandings of religion are deepened and expanded as socially and religiously challenging issues and topics, particularly those that feature prominently in interreligious conversation, are investigated theologically to reveal the unique contribution that Comparative Theology can make to advancing a civil dialogue and a civic culture. Theological investigations across disciplinary and religious boundaries thus provide resources for sharpening the dialogical profile of different theologies through the medium of Comparative Theology.
Angesichts einer fluiden, fragilen und fragmentarischen Identitätskonstruktion der modernen, selbstermächtigten Subjekte verlieren klassische Containerbegriffe (Theismus versus Deismus, Pantheismus) allein und für sich ge-nommen ihre analytische Kraft. Es bedarf einer veränderten Typologie der spirituellen Strukturmuster, religiösen Formenkreise und der Bezugnahmen auf religiöse Transzendenz. Kann die anthropologische Unterscheidung von Selbstbezug, Sozialbezug und Weltbezug bzw. die Unterscheidung von kosmischen, sozial-relationalen und be-wusstseinsbestimmten Zugängen auch für eine Komparative Theologie fruchtbar sein?
Angesichts einer fluiden, fragilen und fragmentarischen Identitätskonstruktion der modernen, selbstermächtigten Subjekte verlieren klassische Containerbegriffe (Theismus versus Deismus, Pantheismus) allein und für sich ge-nommen ihre analytische Kraft. Es bedarf einer veränderten Typologie der spirituellen Strukturmuster, religiösen Formenkreise und der Bezugnahmen auf religiöse Transzendenz. Kann die anthropologische Unterscheidung von Selbstbezug, Sozialbezug und Weltbezug bzw. die Unterscheidung von kosmischen, sozial-relationalen und be-wusstseinsbestimmten Zugängen auch für eine Komparative Theologie fruchtbar sein?