The Reunification of Theology and Comparison in the New Comparative Theology

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1 The Reunification of Theology and Comparison in the New Comparative Theology Hugh Nicholson This paper examines the relationship between the new comparative theology and the theology of religions in light of their common genealogy in the comparative theology of the late nineteenth century. Noting that the latter s blindness to its considerable biases was sustained by its oppositional relationship with the exclusionary apologetic theology of the day, the paper argues that the new comparative theology risks repeating the same pattern of self-deception when it dichotomizes its relationship with the theology of religions. At the same time, however, the new comparative theology, by openly acknowledging its theological commitments, strips the comparative method of the aura of science which has often functioned ideologically to mask bias. In this way, the new comparative theology exemplifies the recent shift in the understanding of comparison from a method of discovery to a critical method for the testing and revision of the categories through which scholars interpret their data. ONE OF THE UNFORTUNATE consequences of the disciplinary separation between theology and religious studies is that each of these disciplines has tended to ignore developments in the other that would challenge its core presuppositions and clarify its proper task. Many of those who write on the method and theory in the study of religion, for Hugh Nicholson, Department of Theology, Loyola University Chicago, 6525 N. Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL hnicholson@luc.edu Journal of the American Academy of Religion, September 2009, Vol. 77, No. 3, pp doi: /jaarel/lfp036 The Author Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org Advance Access publication on July 19, 2009

2 610 Journal of the American Academy of Religion example, assume a stereotypical understanding of theology as an essentially supernaturalistic, dogmatic, and parochial discourse, a caricature that ignores countless developments in the tradition of modern theology 1 as it serves as a convenient foil for a discipline eager to reassure itself of its own academic legitimacy. This tendency in the academic study of religion to project a theological other arguably impedes the task, at once critical and constructive, of recognizing and clarifying the defining presuppositions and commitments of the discipline. Many theologians, for their part, even those who deal with interreligious issues, often show a curious lack of interest in the disciplinary history of the comparative study of religion, an indifference which may reflect an unwillingness to acknowledge the continuities linking their work to the discredited interreligious theologies of the past. By ignoring that history, contemporary theologians, particularly those who deal with interreligious issues, risk repeating some of the same mistakes. In this article, I examine a relatively new comparative enterprise whose very nature challenges these isolationist tendencies, namely, the theological subdiscipline of comparative theology. As might be expected, understandings of comparative theology vary, ranging from more confessional approaches that are self-consciously rooted in a particular faith tradition to more academic ones whose primary allegiance derives from the (secular) academy rather than the church or tradition. 2 What all forms of comparative theology share, however, is an interest in integrating some understanding of theology (whether confessional or academic) with the activity of comparing religious traditions. And yet, rather surprisingly in light of this interest in uniting theology and comparison, many contemporary comparative theologians, convinced of the unprecedented nature of their project, evince a curious lack of interest in relating their work to past comparative endeavors. From the relative absence in the current literature on comparative theology of attempts to trace the genealogy of the new discipline, we might infer that its precedents in the history of comparative religion are either assumed to be irrelevant, because putatively non-theological, or else peremptorily disavowed, because embarrassingly prejudiced. Against this tendency, I shall argue that the new comparative theology can be 1 For this line of critique, see Roberts 2004: ; Davaney 2002: ; Davis 1975: On the distinction between confessional theology and academic theology, see Cady and Brown 2002: 8 9; 11, as well as the essays of Hart, Davaney, and Fasching. The distinction, of course, is only a relative one: confessional comparative theologians, despite their loyalty to a particular community or church, also address their work to the academy, and academic comparative theologians to their respective religious communities.

3 Nicholson: Reunification of Theology and Comparison 611 properly understood and evaluated only when it is rooted in the historical trajectory of the comparative study of religion. In particular, I show that the tensions and ambiguities of the new discipline can be illuminated, and its nature and task subsequently clarified, when it is compared to the comparative theology of the late nineteenth century. I Comparative theology was originally among the constellation of terms used to describe the nascent scientific (as opposed to confessional) study of religion. 3 Perhaps the best known work to describe and promote comparative theology is F. Max Müller s Introduction to the Science of Religion, the text Eric Sharpe calls the foundation document of comparative religion (1987: 35). As suggested by Müller s title, theology formed the object of comparison, where comparison was assumed to be a method of scientific discovery. 4 At the same time, however, this pretension to scientific impartiality did not prevent theology from being the subject of comparison as well. 5 Müller betrays his theological convictions when he argues that of all the religions of the world, it is Christianity alone, as the one religion transcending all loyalties to a particular nation or people, that favors the idea of an impartial comparison of the religions of the world (1882: 29). Müller s theological convictions are rather muted, however, when compared with more 3 See, e.g., Jordan 1905: Unlike the preferred terms Comparative Religion or the History of Religions, the designation Comparative Theology implicitly limited comparison to the intellectual or doctrinal dimension of religion (Jordan 1905: 27). C. P. Tiele, for example, writes: [T]o me, comparative theology signifies nothing but a comparative study of religious dogmas, comparative religion nothing but a comparative study of the various religions in all their branches (Tiele 1993: 76). A contemporary example of an understanding of Comparative Theology in which theology forms the object of scientific inquiry is Robert C. Neville s Comparative Religious Ideas Project. See Neville (2001a: 11). 5 For example, Sigurd Hjelde (1998: 109) notes an ambiguity in Tiele s use of the term theology, whereby the term is used in both a wider and a narrower sense: In the first case, Tiele refers to special theologies within the limits of the general, historical study of religion; in the next, the perspective is widened to the effect that the concept of theology actually pertains to the comparative study as well. These two senses of theology, namely, as the subject of comparison and as the object of comparison, can be correlated, respectively, to a distinction between the theologies of Judaism and Christianity, on the one hand, and all other theologies, on the other. Judaism and Christianity, in other words, have tended to be excluded from the history of religions (see Penner and Yonan 1972: 107; Welch 1985: 132). On the tendency, even today, to exclude Protestant Christianity in particular from the scope of the history of religions and thus from being objectified like other traditions, see also Winnifred Fallers Sullivan (2000: 120): Protestant Christianity has been excluded because it has been thought to be part of the method, a source of theory, not part of the data.

4 612 Journal of the American Academy of Religion typical works of comparative theology. 6 For paradigmatic comparative theological works such as James Freeman Clarke s Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative Theology (1871) or F. D. Maurice s Religions of the World and their Relations with Christianity (1847), an impartial study of the religions leads to the conclusion of Christianity s unambiguous superiority over all others. Clarke, for example, writes: For we can make it appear, by a fair survey of the principal religions of the world, that, while they are either ethnic or local, Christianity is catholic or universal; that, while they are defective, possessing some truths and wanting others, Christianity possesses all; and that, while they are stationary, Christianity is progressive, [ ]. (1899: 14) How such works could reconcile a sincere claim of scientific impartiality with unabashed assertions of Christian superiority presents a challenge for today s interpreter. 7 Tomoko Masuzawa, who deserves credit for calling attention to the all but forgotten legacy of comparative theology in her book, The Invention of World Religions, describes the perplexity elicited by these works as follows: It seems to us today rather remarkable that so many nineteenth century authors of varying attitudes towards non-christian religions claimed or, for the most part, assumed that their enterprise of 6 One might object to my decision to include the works of scholars like Müller and Tiele (the widely acknowledged founders of Religionswissenschaft) in the same general category as the more openly confessional works of comparative theologians like Clarke and Maurice (such an objection is implicit in the arguments of Donald Wiebe, 1999, esp. Chap. 2 and 3). Even Tomoko Masuzawa, who, in her book The Invention of World Religions, argues that the latter works have an essential place in the disciplinary history of comparative religion, nevertheless restricts her discussion of the legacy of comparative theology to the more openly theological works of comparative theology (2005: ). I would argue, however, that while one can, of course, distinguish between the two groups of works, a relation of continuity exists between them. As indicated by Müller s acknowledgment, in the preface to his Introduction to the Science of Religion, of the works of figures like James F. Clarke, Samuel Johnson, and F. E. Abbot as examples of the rapidly growing literature of Comparative Theology, both sets of works participate in the same larger discourse of comparative theology, and their differences with respect to Christian commitment are largely a matter of emphasis. Scholars like Müller and Tiele believed that scientific knowledge and the truth of religion which for them achieved its fullest expression in Christianity would ultimately converge. More openly Christian comparative theologians like Clarke, for their part, insisted that their comparative surveys were fair and scientific. 7 An example of such an inability to imagine a perspective in which such a claim could be made in earnest might be Timothy Fitzgerald s comment on a quote from the historian of religion E. O. James. James claimed that the academic study of religion demands both a historical and scientific approach and a philosophical and theological evaluation. Apparently unable to take James position at face value, Fitzgerald describes James statement as a kind of unconsciously formulated satirical truth (Fitzgerald 2000: 42).

5 Nicholson: Reunification of Theology and Comparison 613 comparing religions without bias was not only compatible with but in fact perfectly complementary to their own proudly unshakable conviction in the supremacy of Christianity. Nowadays we generally discredit this claim as naive at best, disingenuous at worst. We behold in disbelief the seriousness with which some of those comparativists with strong dogmatic views pronounced that their surveys of other religions were not just in principle, but in actuality fair, sympathetic, and impartial. (2005: ) The key to solving this interpretive puzzle is to recognize that nineteenth-century works of comparative theology, whether decidedly Christian ones like Clarke s, or arguably post-christian ones like Müller s, defined themselves in opposition to a particular, albeit dominant, kind of Christian apologetics. Like many later works of Religionswissenschaft, as we shall see, their claims of scientific objectivity were artificially maintained by projecting a theological other. But this theological other was not coextensive with Christian theology, only a confessional and dogmatic form of it. As Arie Molendijk has shown in his study of the 1876 Dutch Universities Act which institutionalized the science of religion in the Netherlands, the science of religion for founding figures like C. P. Tiele and Chantepie de la Saussaye was originally an expression of liberal, super-denominational theology. Molendijk argues that these early proponents of Religionswissenschaft did not intend to introduce an independent discipline, much less to abolish theology; rather, they wanted to place theology on a scientific basis (Molendijk 2000: 76 and passim). What this consecration of theology as a science would do is purge theology of those unscientific elements apologetics, polemics, and dogmatics that were assumed to be adventitious to the essence of true religion. 8 Another way of stating this thesis is that the comparative science of religion gave expression to what might be termed, following the controversial political theorist Carl Schmitt, the depoliticization of religion. Schmitt s rather notorious understanding of the political in terms of the friend/enemy relation usefully highlights the two features of traditional confessional theology that the scientific discourse of comparative religion sought to eliminate. 9 The first of these was its inherently divisive, sectarian nature. It was believed that the comparative science 8 Hjelde 2000: 107; Molendijk 2000: 81; See also Müller (1882: 8): But this I will say, that, as far as my humble judgment goes, [the Science of Religion] does not entail the loss of anything that is essential to true religion [ ]. 9 For Schmitt s concept of the political and the understanding of liberalism in terms of depoliticization, see Schmitt (1996: and passim; 1988).

6 614 Journal of the American Academy of Religion of religion, which was grounded on the recognition of a common element in religion underlying differences in creed, would undercut the antagonisms sustained by the competing forms of confessional theology. The second feature of traditional confessional theology that it was hoped the science of religion would neutralize was its dogmatism, its tendency to assert claims without a due regard for empirical evidence. 10 Having recognized the political in its twin aspects of dogmatism and antagonism as the defining characteristic of traditional confessional theology, we are in a position to grasp the essential aim of the comparative theology of the late nineteenth century. The latter sought to rid theology of its sectarianism and its dogmatism by bringing religious commitment in line with the universally valid discourse of empirical science. Thus we see how the liberal theological project of de-politicizing religion could easily take the form of establishing a comparative science of religion. The coincidence of the projects of the scientific study of religion and liberal theology explains why comparative theologians like Clarke were blind to the discrepancy, so obvious to today s reader, between Christian universalism and the scientific ideal of impartial comparison. This blindness is a consequence of the fact that both projects defined themselves over against the same adversary. In other words, they shared the same constitutive other, namely, the political as instantiated in traditional confessional theology with its exclusivity and its dogmatism. The opposition of these two projects to a common adversary effectively effaced the distinction between them. This analysis of the comparative theology of the late nineteenth century challenges the standard history of the discipline of religious studies as a gradual emancipation from theology. As Sigurd Hjelde (2000: 106) puts it, if one can speak of the early development of the discipline in terms of an emancipation, it is an emancipation not from theology as such, but within its own limits. The development of the science of religion, in other words, takes place in the context of a dialectic internal to theology in which theology seeks to purge itself of its unscientific elements by projecting a dogmatic theological other This second characteristic of confessionalism can be understood as flowing logically from the first. Dogmatism is the inevitable consequence of the formal dimension of political antagonism, what Georg Simmel (1955: 29) calls an abstract impulse to opposition that is irreducible to whatever material disagreements are cited as justification for the opposition. 11 Pace Donald Weibe (1999b: 39; 1999a), the expressions of theological commitment that one finds in the works of scholars like Müller and Tiele cannot simply be dismissed as accidental holdovers from their authors cultural-religious backgrounds. Rather, they give expression to the liberal theological commitments that motivate and ground the original project of

7 Nicholson: Reunification of Theology and Comparison 615 One could argue, in fact, that much of the subsequent history of the discipline in the twentieth century, in particular, the classic understanding of the history of religions as a hermeneutical discipline, can be redescribed in terms of a dialectic internal to theological liberalism and thus standing in continuity with the comparative theology of the late nineteenth century. Few scholars exemplify this thesis better than the historian of religion Joachim Wach ( ). Wach s effort to demarcate the discipline of Religionswissenschaft from theology remains firmly ensconced in a liberal theological framework. He argues that the proper task of the history of religions, the understanding of other religions, is distinct from, though complementary to, that of theology, which he defines rather narrowly as identifying its own confessional norms, [ ] of understanding and confirming its own faith (Wach 1968: 125; cf. Davis 1975: 206). And yet Wach s conception of the history of religions as a hermeneutical discipline rests on presuppositions that his critics would immediately recognize as theological in nature. To interpret religious phenomena properly is to understand them as expressions of a reality that transcends them (130, also 127, 131, 136). A hermeneutical understanding of the history of religions demands an intuitive sense of religion, a sensus numinis (136), which can be understood as a kind of faith, but an ecumenical faith that does not blind one to the meaning of other religions. 12 Wach s conception of the history of religions, then, remains, despite its pretensions to the contrary, an expression of liberal, non-sectarian theology, as even his contemporaries could recognize (Werblowsky 1959: 358). The same basic criticism applies to the effort of his disciple, Joseph Kitagawa, to draw a sharp distinction between a humanistic and a theological approach to the history of religions. With his commitment to the idea of a sacred dimension of life and the world as a fundamental presupposition of the history of religions (1983: 560), Kitagawa remains within a basically theological framework in spite of his explicit recognition of a specifically liberal theology (of the kind on display at the 1893 World Parliament of Religions) as theology proper, and thus to be excluded, along with theology of a more Religionswissenschaft. In defending his thesis, Weibe appeals to Müller s insistence that theological belief is the result, not the presupposition, of the scientific study of religion (Weibe 1999a: 22). It seems to me, however, that this reading of Müller uncritically buys into Müller s ideology of science, whereby the presuppositions of an ostensibly scientific study are misrecognized as its results results that just happen to coincide with Müller s personal religious commitments. 12 See (1968: 137): [B]eing rooted in a personal faith a faith which may well blind one to other things but which, in contrast to the opinion of many, need not do so does not necessarily mean a disadvantage for him who seeks to understand.

8 616 Journal of the American Academy of Religion traditional variety, from the method of the history of religions (1983: 554, , see also 1959). 13 Now, of course, it is a commonplace to say that the exposure of various forms of crypto-theology in the classic models of comparative religion has precipitated an identity crisis in the academic study of religion. One response to this crisis has been to repudiate the transcendental approach epitomized by the much maligned phenomenology of Mircea Eliade in favor of a naturalistic approach that concerns itself with explaining (and not merely interpreting) religious phenomena in terms of causal factors (e.g., Preus 1987; Lawson and McCauley, 1990). Whether the comparative study of religion has finally liberated itself of theology by rejecting the transcendental approach, or, alternatively, whether comparative religion, even of the naturalistic variety, remains an exercise in what Timothy Fitzgerald (2000) terms liberal ecumenical theology so long as it presupposes a concept of religion as a valid analytic category, is a complex question that lies outside the scope of the present essay. What seems clear, however, is that from our present vantage point, many previous attempts to demarcate the science of religion from recognized forms of theological discourse, from the comparative theology of the nineteenth century to the phenomenology of religion and comparative religion of the twentieth, now appear as successive moments within the larger liberal theological project of liberating the discourse on religion from dogmatism and exclusion, in short, from the political. II If a major current in the disciplinary history of the study of religion can be understood in terms of the liberal theological project of depoliticizing religion, as I have suggested, then we would naturally expect to recognize a parallel pattern of development in the tradition of theology proper. And nowhere in that tradition is this pattern more clearly visible than in the development leading to what is known as the theology of religions with its threefold typology of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. As I shall argue below, these three categories can be understood as successive moments in a dialectical process in which the tradition of liberal theology has sought to dissociate itself 13 The kinship between Religionswissenschaft and liberal theology is even more evident in the phenomenological tradition of Söderblom, van der Leeuw, Otto, and Heiler, scholars who envisioned a more complementary, rather than exclusionary, relationship between the two disciplines.

9 Nicholson: Reunification of Theology and Comparison 617 from the principle of the political, only to see this principle reappear in ever more subtle forms of theological hegemonism. 14 Like the history of detheologization in the comparative study of religion, the development reflected in the three theology of religions categories has led to an impasse. Unlike the former, something called comparative theology stands at the end of that process rather than at the beginning. The theology of religions attained its present configuration with the emergence of the classic pluralist theologies associated with the triumvirate of John Hick, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and (the early) Paul Knitter. Pluralism is founded upon a critique of the Christian fulfillment theology that had previously served as the standard bearer of Christian liberalism. At the heart of this pluralist critique is the argument that the sharp distinction that the liberal theologies of Christian fulfillment drew between themselves and the generally exclusivist tradition of Christian apologetics was largely specious. The former retains a presumption of Christian superiority that is, in the words of John Hick, no more than a hangover from the old religious imperialisms of the past (Hick 1994: 22). The claim that Christianity includes and fulfills other faiths harbors a barely concealed intention to convert and dominate the latter. Against the Christian absolutism that it sees in both exclusivism and inclusivism, pluralism rejects the notion that any single tradition, Christianity in particular, has a privileged access to divine truth. As captured in Hick s metaphor of the Copernican Revolution in theology, the pluralist shift from a Christocentric to a theocentric model of the religions marks a clean break with the tradition of Christian absolutism. With their abandonment of the presumption of Christian superiority, the previous generation of pluralist theologians thought that they had finally eliminated the two forms of exclusion namely, the open exclusion of theological polemic and the veiled exclusion of theological hegemonism from the sphere of religion. 14 The theology of religions is better understood diachronically rather than systematically. The limits of the systematic conception of the theology of religions become clear when one considers the choice of a representative for the exclusivist position. In standard works in the theology of religions, exclusivism is typically represented by the rather idiosyncratic exclusivism of Karl Barth and Heinrich Kraemer, idiosyncratic because, unlike classic Christian exclusivism of the extra ecclesiam nulla salus variety, it holds that all religion, including the Christian, is unbelief. When the theology of religions discourse is understood in diachronic terms, exclusivism is revealed to be the discourse s other, and therefore not a viable theology of religions position. It is hardly surprising, then, that systematic presentations that suppress the historical dimension of this discourse are forced to represent exclusivism with theological voices that poorly exemplify it.

10 618 Journal of the American Academy of Religion More recent critiques of pluralist theology have shown that this judgment was premature. The classic pluralist theories of religion have found themselves in the ironic position of having to defend themselves against precisely the same charges that they had leveled against inclusivism. Pluralist theologies of religion like those of Hick and Cantwell Smith have been criticized for their failure to acknowledge the particularity and exclusivity of their own perspectives (see, e.g., Heim 1995). Such theologies, in other words, have thus been accused of being inclusivisms in disguise. Thus Hick s well-known theocentric model of the religions, in which the positive religions circle the Real like the planets around the sun, places a Kantian philosophy of religion, a perspective every bit as particular as Christian theology, at the center of the religious universe (see, e.g., Pannenberg 1992: 97). In a similar way, the unitary concept of personal faith that forms the basis of Cantwell Smith s vision of religious pluralism betrays the influence of his own Protestant background (Heim 1995: 57, 65 66). In its unwitting universalization of a distinctly Protestant conception of faith Cantwell Smith s proposal for a world theology reveals an unacknowledged kinship with the Christian fulfillment theology of the previous century. Much as the exposure of crypto-theologism in the classic project of comparative religion has brought the academic study of religion to a state of uncertainty, the critique of pluralism not coincidentally has brought the theology of religions to an impasse. Following James Fredericks (1999: 8), we can describe this impasse as follows: while the pluralists have called into question the inlcusivists claim to have made a radical break with the tradition of Christian exclusivism, their critics have turned around and questioned the pluralists claim to have made a radical break with inclusivism and therewith, given the pluralists own critique of inclusivism, with exclusivism as well. The pluralists and their critics have thus successfully exposed the unacknowledged exclusions of the other. They have each, in other words, exposed the other as a hegemonic form of discourse. Speaking on behalf of a small but growing contingent of theologians, Fredericks proposes what he calls comparative theology as a way out of this impasse. This new theological subdiscipline, which Fredericks defines formally as the attempt to understand the meaning of Christian faith by exploring it in the light of the teachings of other religious traditions (cited in Knitter 2002: 205), avoids the pitfalls of the theology of religions by renouncing the two features that he holds responsible for the latter s inadequacy. The first of these problematic features of the theology of religions is its a priori method, that is, its pretension to work out a stance toward other traditions independently of an empirical study of

11 Nicholson: Reunification of Theology and Comparison 619 those traditions. The a priori method effectively renders its theological judgments unfalsifiable with respect to the traditions it might subsequently encounter (Fredericks 1999: 109, , and passim). The second defect of the theology of religions is its assumption of a global, totalizing perspective on the religions. This global, meta-perspective implies a presumption to know other religions better than their own adherents, whether as the vain products of human presumption, as in Barth s exclusivism, as various expressions of anonymous Christianity, as in Rahner s inclusivism, or as various forms of Reality-centeredness, as in Hick s pluralism (Fredericks 1999: ). This presumption to understand other religions better than their own adherents has the effect of obviating a serious and open engagement with other religious traditions. In the case of inclusivism and pluralism, it allows the Christian theologian to disregard the specific claims of the religious other while at the same time rather disingenuously claiming to affirm them. By thus discouraging a recognition of the specific claims of other religions despite or, perhaps, precisely because of the claim to include them, inclusivism and pluralism promote interreligious relations that can be aptly described as hegemonic. The new comparative theology is defined by two features that inversely correspond, respectively, to the apriorism and the summitry of the theology of religions. The first and most obvious of these is its empirical method. If there is one claim that defines the discipline of comparative theology, it is that a serious engagement with one or more non- Christian faiths is integral to contemporary interreligious theological reflection. Comparative theology s empirical method implies a willingness to revise theological judgments in light of the particular teachings of other traditions. The second characteristic feature of comparative theology is its resistance to generalizations about religion (Clooney 1993: 8 9; Fredericks 1999: ). 15 As a form of theological praxis or reflective practice, comparative theology eschews the kind of abstract theorizing about religious truth characteristic of the theology of religions. Theological reflection emerges only in the context of a 15 In its stress on particularity and its concomitant resistance to generalization, Clooney s comparative theology, somewhat ironically, evinces an affinity with those postmodernist approaches to the study of religion that reject the comparative method on the grounds that it suppresses differences in favor of similarities (for an exposition and critique of the postmodernist rejection of comparison, see, e.g., Segal 2006: ). In a statement that reflects a sympathy with this postmodernist concern, Clooney (1993: 7) distances his conception of comparative theology from the practice of comparison as conventionally understood: One may concede that comparative may not be the right word to suggest what actually goes on in the reading of texts [ ] The distance one might normally associate with comparison is lacking, [ ].

12 620 Journal of the American Academy of Religion practical engagement with specific examples of comparison (Clooney 1991: 488 and passim). These two features establish comparative theology as the antithesis of the theology of religions. And it is as the antithesis to the theology of religions that comparative theology is able to move beyond the impasse in which the former finds itself. Now if that impasse can be described in terms of the problem of unacknowledged exclusion or hegemonism, as I have suggested, then comparative theology, in claiming that it represents a way out of that impasse, effectively advertises itself as a nonhegemonic form of interreligious theological discourse. Prima facie, then, the new comparative theology, like the figure of Nietzsche s Zarathustra, represents the antithesis of its older namesake. For the older comparative theology, as we have seen, epitomizes the kind of theological hegemonism that one finds in the theology of religions. Upon closer examination, however, the new comparative theology exhibits parallels with its older namesake that temper any expectation that the problem of theological hegemonism will magically disappear simply by adopting an empirical method and refraining from excessive generalization. III To bring this parallelism into view, we take a closer look at the way in which the older comparative theology distinguished itself from its dogmatic adversary. Proponents of comparative theology like Clarke and Müller, who prided themselves on their fair and sympathetic attitude toward non-christian faiths, rejected the standard apologetic categories of revealed religion and natural religion to describe Christianity s relations with other religions (Müller 1882: 69; Clarke 1883: 24 25, 1892: 4ff.). They recognized these categories to be inherently tendentious; strictly speaking, these categories excluded a comparison of Christianity, the one revealed religion, with the various forms of invented or natural religion. By discarding these categories, the comparative theologians were able to recognize a positive, providential role of non-christian religions in an economy of salvation (Clarke 1892: 6 7). Generally speaking, comparative theology replaced the categories of revealed religion and natural religion with those of universal (or world) religion and national (or ethnic) religion (Clarke 1883: 26 29; Masuzawa 2005: 77 78, ; but see Müller 1882: 79 80). The latter categories were ostensibly based on empirical observation, not on unwarranted dogmatic assertion; whether or not a religion had been able to transcend its original cultural matrix was a matter of empirical determination. And yet, as even a cursory examination of the works of

13 Nicholson: Reunification of Theology and Comparison 621 comparative theology shows, the categories of universal religion and national religion did not prevent unwarranted dogmatic assumptions from stealing into the comparative analysis and determining its final conclusions. Such assumptions are plainly evident when comparative theological works proceed to argue, as they invariably do, that the ostensibly universal religions of Islam and Buddhism are merely national religions in disguise and that Christianity alone merits the title of universal or world religion. It is apparent that comparative theology s appeal to ostensibly empirical analytical categories did little more than to conceal the dogmatic nature of its conclusions. We immediately recognize a parallel between, on the one hand, the self-understanding of nineteenth-century comparative theology as the antithesis to the older exclusivist apologetic theology and, on the other, the self-understanding of the new comparative theology as a radical alternative to the theology of religions. The distinction between the dogmatic and the empirical methods forming the basis, the former antithesis is functionally equivalent indeed, nearly identical substantively as well to the distinction between the a priori and a posteriori methods that sustains the latter. This parallelism should give contemporary comparative theologians pause. It suggests that the categorical distinction that a comparative theologian like Fredericks posits between comparative theology and the theology of religions might prove to be just as specious as the distinction that the older fulfillment theology drew between itself and exclusivist apologetics, or the later distinction pluralist theology drew between itself and inclusivism. The parallel with the comparative theology of the late nineteenth century suggests that the new comparative theology is merely the latest in a dialectical sequence of binary oppositions by which the tradition of liberal theology has sought to dissociate itself from the principle of the political. Classic fulfillment theology, exemplified by nineteenth-century comparative theology, represents the first of these oppositions. As we have just seen, the old comparative theology defines itself in opposition to an older tradition of exclusivist Christian apologetics. When Christian fulfillment theology comes to be recognized as an expression of cultural imperialism, the liberal wing of Christian theology responds by introducing a hitherto unknown distinction between inclusivism and pluralism. 16 This distinction forms the basis of a new opposition. As we 16 To characterize nineteenth-century comparative theology as a form of Christian inclusivism is, strictly speaking, an anachronism. One can, in fact, discern pluralistic overtones in the expressions

14 622 Journal of the American Academy of Religion have seen, the resultant pluralist theology defines itself by its refusal to recognize a significant distinction between exclusivism and inclusivism, which together comprise liberal theology s newly reconstituted other. The newer comparative theology, which emerges at roughly the same time as the bloom falls off the rose of Hickian style pluralism, can be seen as a third moment in this dialectic. By positioning itself as an alternative discourse to the theology of religions, comparative theology sets itself over against the forms of theology comprehensively enumerated by the three theology of religions categories, exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism that have been reclaimed, as it were, by liberal theology s political other. The new comparative theology, in other words, can be seen as the latest strategy on the part of Christian liberalism to retreat and regroup in the face of the ineluctable advance of the political. Now one might object to the thesis that comparative theology forms a binary opposition with the various forms of exclusionary or political theology represented by the three theology of religions categories on the grounds that it overlooks the fact that many comparative theologians ally themselves with an inclusivist theology of religions position (see, e.g., Clooney 1991: 72 75; Kiblinger, forthcoming). When we view the theology of religions categories as successive moments in a dialectic unfolding in time, however, we see that the inclusivism with which contemporary comparative theologians identify is quite distinct from the classic inclusivism associated with the older theologies of Christian fulfillment. Whereas the latter defined itself over against exclusivism by emphasizing the universal scope of Christian salvation, the former defines itself over against pluralism, specifically, pluralism s pretension to transcend any particular religious perspective. By identifying themselves with an inclusivist position, contemporary comparative of Christian fulfillment found in these works, particularly when they emphasize that Christianity does not destroy, but rather preserves, the religions it fulfills. See, e.g., Matheson (1892: 328): But the religion of Christ is not anxious to put things locally together, nor even to make them similar in appearance. It seeks to reconcile them in their differences, to make them, in the very midst of their diversity, work out one common end. It is not eager for uniformity, not solicitous for the recognition of one mode of government, not desirous that all should think on the same plane; it desires that the air may run through the variations, that the diversity of gifts may enfold a unity of the spirit. Later (1892: 338) Matheson speaks of a Christian dominion, which extends from sea to sea without destroying the sea without obliterating the boundaries that now divide, or annihilating the diversities that now distinguish. Such statements would easily find themselves at home in works of pluralist theology written 100 years later.

15 Nicholson: Reunification of Theology and Comparison 623 theologians acknowledge and affirm the particularity of their own typically Christian theological perspective. 17 A comparative theology that allies itself with the newer acceptance-model (as opposed to fulfillment model ) inclusivism (Knitter 2002), then, remains an expression of oppositional thinking, only with this difference, that its criticism is focused more narrowly on a specifically pluralist theology of religions, that is to say, on its immediate predecessor in the aforementioned dialectic. 18 This reading of the modern history of interreligious theology in terms of a dialectical sequence of binary oppositions through which the latest proposal disavows any connection with its predecessors sheds light on an invariant feature of the literature of interreligious theology in the past 100 years or so: the seemingly obligatory mention of the unprecedented newness of the contemporary theological situation. Compare, for example, J. N. Farquhar s (1913: 11) declaration that, All the parts of the world have at last been brought into communication [ ] The unity of the human race has become effective for the first time in human history, to W. C. Smith s (1959: 32 33) pronouncement of the new world situation in the twentieth century, characterized by a large-scale face-to-face meeting between persons of diverse faith ; and finally, to Paul Knitter s (1985: 2 3, 2005: 5 6) description of religious pluralism as a newly experienced reality. A comparison of such pronouncements suggests that the appeal to the radical newness of the contemporary interreligious situation has a curious capacity to replicate itself in successive generations. To be sure, each of the above statements reflects real and important developments in the world historical situation. The present situation of global capitalism, for example, where mass migration and the dissemination of global culture through electronic media have accelerated, expanded, and intensified the processes of cultural interaction to the point of radically transforming the way individuals and groups understand themselves, is different, even radically so, from that of late nineteenth century colonialism or even the 17 The argument for allying the practice of comparative theology with inclusivism coincides with the justification that is usually given for recognizing a legitimate role for the theology of religions more generally in the contemporary practice of comparative theology. Those who argue for a complementary relationship between the theology of religions and comparative theology justify the former on the grounds that it thematizes the necessary, though provisional, hermeneutical presuppositions of comparative theological study (see Duffy 1999: 107 and passim). 18 One could argue that even Fredericks, who represents those comparative theologians calling for a moratorium on theologies of religion, tends to focus his criticism on pluralist theologies of religions. As Paul Knitter notes in his review of Fredericks Faith among Faiths, Fredericks devotes four chapters to a critique of pluralism as compared to one chapter each for exclusivism and inclusivism (Knitter 2001: 874).

16 624 Journal of the American Academy of Religion postwar period described by W. C. Smith. 19 And yet, one cannot help noticing a certain functional similarity in all these announcements of a radical break with the past; each serves to reinforce the impression of the radical newness of whatever theological proposal is currently being offered. An inevitable consequence of this effort to drive a wedge between the interreligious theology of the present and that of the past, of course, is an amnesia with respect to past comparative endeavors, most notably, the comparative theology of the late nineteenth century. 20 IV What ambiguities might the dichotomy between the new comparative theology and the theology of religions conceal in the former term? To be more specific, if classic inclusivism and pluralism, as hegemonic forms of discourse, embody the logic of cultural imperialism as their critics contend (see, e.g., Surin 1990; Tanner 1993), might the new comparative theology be similarly implicated in hegemonic, neo-colonialist forms of discourse? Our lack of historical distance naturally renders any hegemonic dimension of comparative theology difficult to discern and an attempt to describe it somewhat tentative. Nevertheless, I find that some fairly recent critiques of postmodern discourse open up a perspective from which the continuities between comparative theology and earlier forms of interreligious theology become visible. One of the most thought-provoking of those critiques, particularly in light of the thesis that dichotomization represents a mechanism of ideological blindness, can be found in Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri s book Empire (2000). These authors argue that postmodern and postcolonial critical discourses, in their preoccupation with the specific forms of domination associated with colonialism and the modern nation-state, fail to recognize the structurally different forms of domination recently introduced with the advent of late-stage, multinational capitalism (2000: ). The older forms of modern sovereignty that form postmodernism s object of critique operate through two related mechanisms: on the one hand, the positing of binary oppositions that define Self and Other and, on the other, the subsequent subsumption of those binaries in a conception of social totality (2000: 140, 19 On the present global situation as bringing about a break or rupture with the past, see Appadurai (1996: 2 4 and passim). 20 On the virtual oblivion into which the works of comparative theology have fallen, see Masuzawa (2005: 72 73).

17 Nicholson: Reunification of Theology and Comparison ). Postmodern thought challenges binary division and totalization by highlighting and affirming the cultural differences that both these aspects of essentialism suppress. And yet, as Hardt and Negri observe, postmodernism, in its celebration of cultural difference and its transgression of cultural boundaries, reveals a disconcerting kinship with the ideology of the world market. Consumerism and contemporary marketing thrive on cultural difference, while the world market, with its global flows of media, labor, and capital, works to deconstruct, in postmodern fashion, national and territorial boundaries (2000: 151). To the extent that postmodern discourses coincide with the functions and practices of late capitalism, Hardt and Negri argue, they are ineffective against the particular forms of domination wrought by the latter (2000: 138, 142 and passim). Specifically, postmodern discourses unwittingly support a new social hierarchy being formed by the processes of globalization, namely, between a freely mobile, consumer class of (Western and non- Western) elites, on the one hand, and an emerging global proletariat, on the other. Comparative theology s implicit critique of the theology of religions as a hegemonic form of discourse mirrors postmodernism s critique of modern sovereignty as described by Hardt and Negri. The two dimensions of the postmodern critique, namely the deconstruction of binary oppositions and the disavowal of the universalizing discourses of totalization, find exact parallels, for example, in the comparative theology of Francis Clooney. Against binary division in the religious sphere, Clooney s comparative method, with its relentless focus on particular texts, resists the generalizations used to construct conceptual formations like Hinduism or Christianity that have traditionally supported and legitimated tendentious oppositions between East and West. His emphasis on the local and particular, in other words, challenges the modular conception of the religions presupposed by the theology of religions discourse (1991: ). At the same time that he highlights the internal differences suppressed by reification, Clooney draws attention to theological parallels that cut across religious boundaries. 21 As for the second dimension of postmodern criticism, we have already seen that a renunciation of a totalizing perspective on the religions is one of the defining features of the new comparative theology. 21 As indicated by the subtitle of his Hindu God, Christian God (Oxford, 2001): How Reason Helps Break Down the Boundaries between Religions. See also his remark on p. 164 of this work: While there may be some beliefs, practices, and creedal formulations justly recognized as unique to particular traditions, almost all of what counts as theological thinking is shared across religious boundaries.