By Hugh Nicholson
In theological discourse, argues Hugh Nicholson, the political is going "all the best way down." One by no means reaches a bedrock point of politically impartial spiritual proof, simply because all theological discourse - even the main elegant, edifying, and "spiritual"--is shot via with polemical parts.
Liberal theologies, from the Christian achievement theology of the 19th century to the pluralist theology of the 20 th, have assumed that non secular writings reach religious fact and sublimity regardless of any polemical parts they may include. via his research and comparability of the Christian mystical theologian Meister Eckhart and his Hindu counterpart ÍaSkara, Nicholson arrives at a truly diverse end. Polemical parts might actually represent the artistic resource of the expressive energy of non secular discourses. Wayne Proudfoot has argued that mystical discourses embrace a suite of principles that repel any determinate knowing of the ineffable item or event they purport to explain. In Comparative Theology and the matter of non secular Rivalry, Nicholson means that this precept of negation is attached, maybe via a means of abstraction and sublimation, with the necessity to distinguish oneself from one's intra- and/or inter-religious adversaries.
Nicholson proposes a brand new version of comparative theology that acknowledges and confronts essentially the most pressing cultural and political problems with our time: specifically, the "return of the political" within the type of anti-secular and fundamentalist activities world wide. This version recognizes the ineradicable nature of an oppositional measurement of spiritual discourse, whereas honoring or even advancing the liberal venture of curbing intolerance and prejudice within the sphere of religion.
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