Reading other religious texts: Intratextuality and the logic of scripture

Journal of Ecumenical Studies

Volumn 46, Issue 3, 2011, Pages 389-410

  Barnes, Michael ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84877116613     PISSN: 00220558     EISSN: 21623937     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Paul J. Griffiths, Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion (Oxford, U. K., and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
2. See Peter Ochs, Peirce, Pragmatism, and the Logic of Scripture (Cambridge, U. K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 246 ff.
3. For an introduction to CT and a brief overview, see Francis X Clooney, Comparative Theology: Deep Learning across Religious Borders (Chichester, U. K., and Maiden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell; 2010).
4. See also the entry by Clooney in John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology (Oxford, U. K., and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp 653-668.
5. For an earlier review article, see Francis X. Clooney, "Comparative Theology: A Review of Recent Books, 1989-1995", Theological Studies 56(September, 1995):521-550.
6. For lucid theological discussion, see James L. Fredericks, "A Universal Religious Experience? Comparative Theology as an Alternative to a Theology of Religions", Horizons 22(Spring, 1995):67-87;
7. and some critical commentary in Gavin D'Costa, Christianity and World Religions: Disputed Questions in the Theology of Religions (Chichester, U. K., and Maiden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 37-45.
8. Among Clooney's most important exercises in comparative theology are Theology after Vedānta: An Experiment in Comparative Theology (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993);
9. Seeing through Texts: Doing Theology among the Śrivaisnavas of South India (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996);
10. Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford, U. K., and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005);
11. and Beyond Compare: St. Francis de Sales and Śrī Vedānta Deśika on Loving Surrender (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008).
12. For a recent collection of critical material on the CT project by various writers, see Francis X. Clooney, The New Comparative Theology: Interreligious Insights from the Next Generation (London: T and T Clark, 2010).
13. Clooney, Comparative Theology, p. 10.
14. Roger R. Jackson and John J. Makransky, eds., Buddhist Theology: Critical Reflections by Contemporary Buddhist Scholars, Curzon Critical Studies in Buddhism (Richmond, Surrey, U. K.: Curzon Press, 2000), p. 19.
15. David Tracy, "Theology: Comparative Theology", in Mircea Eliade, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan; London: Collier Macmillan, 1986), vol. 14, p. 446.
16. Robert Cummings Neville, Behind the Masks of God: An Essay toward Comparative Theology (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press; 1991), p. 30.
17. Keith Ward, Religion and Revelation: A Theology of Revelation in the World's Religions (Oxford, U. K.: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994);
18. idem, Religion and Creation (Oxford, U. K.: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1996);
19. idem, Religion and Human Nature (Oxford, U. K.: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998);
20. and idem, Religion and Community (Oxford, U. K.: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
21. Ward, Religion and Revelation, p. 37.
22. l6 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 1. 9. 3.
23. David Burrell, "Thomas Aquinas and Islam", Modern Theology 20(January, 2004):73.
24. Roberto de Nobili, Dialogue 1.1, reproduced in Francis X. Clooney and Anand Amaladass, tr. and intra., Preaching Wisdom to the Wise (St. Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources. 2000).
25. For a recent study gathering much of the recent material produced in India, see Peniel Rajkumar, Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation: Problems, Paradigms, and Possibilities (Farnham, U. K., and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010).
26. Francis X. Clooney, Hindu God, Christian God: How Reason Helps to Break Down the Boundaries between Religions (Oxford, U. K., and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 7-12.
27. A vast amount of commentary on SR is appearing. See especially "Scriptural Difference and Scriptural Reasoning", a chapter in Nicholas Adams, Habermas and Theology (Cambridge, U. K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
28. For a theological overview, see a special issue of Modern Theology, vol. 22, no. 3 (July, 2006);
29. also published as David F. Ford and C. C. Pecknold, eds., The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning (Oxford, U. K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).
30. On theological background, see C. C. Pecknold, Transforming Postliberal Theology: George Lindbeck, Pragmatism, and Scripture (London and New York: T and T Clark, 2005).
31. There is a comment on practice in Peter Ochs and Nancy Levene, eds., Textual Reasonings: Jewish Philosophy and Text Study at the End of the Twentieth Century (London: SCM Press; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002).
32. A Muslim commentary appears in Basit Bilal Koshul, "Affirming the Self through Accepting the Other", in Michael Ipgrave, ed., Scriptures in Dialogue: Christians and Muslims Studying the Bible and Qur'an Together (London: Church House Publishing, 2004), pp. 111-118.
33. See also the website of the Journal of Scriptural Reasoning at http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/ssr/.
34. David F. Ford, "An Interfaith Wisdom: Scriptural Reasoning between Jews, Christians, and Muslims", Modern Theology 22(July, 2006):362.
35. Ben Quash, "Heavenly Semantics: Some Literary-Critical Approaches to Scriptural Reasoning", Modem Theology 22(July, 2006):412. Quash highlights four marks of SR: particularity, provisionality, sociality, "and its readiness for surprise" (p. 403, emphasis in original). All four, and most especially the last, argue "against finality" (p. 413) by opening up the unexpected and surprising.
36. Steven Kepnes, "A Handbook for Scriptural Reasoning", Modern Theology 22(July. 2006):367-383.
37. Ford, "Interfaith Wisdom", p. 349;
38. Kepnes, "Handbook", p. 373;
39. Nicholas Adams, "Making Deep Reasonings Public", Modern Theology 22(July, 2006):385-401.
40. Ochs, Peirce, Pragmatism, p. 5;
41. For Ochs's own account of some of the major strands that went to make SR, see Peter Ochs, ed., The Return to Scripture in Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Post-Critical Interpretation (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1993), especially his introductory essay, pp. 3-51.
42. For an excellent series of critical essays on Ochs's work and his response, see Modern Theology 24(July, 2008):439-503.
43. Often, but not necessarily, formal. One of Clooney's most accessible and revealing works is Hindu Wisdom for All God's Children (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998). The aim of Clooney's Comparative Theology is to lay out the parameters of a new approach to theology of religions-but also to encourage its practice at whatever level his readers feel comfortable with.
44. George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), p. 32.
45. See Michael Barnes, Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine (Cambridge, U. K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), especially chap. 2, "Remembering the Covenant", pp. 29-64.
46. See Barnes, Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, which engages with the thought of Levinas to offer an alternative approach to theology of religions based on the experience of dialogue with the Other; and idem, Interreligious Learning: Dialogue, Spirituality, and the Christian Imagination (Cambridge, U. K., and New York: Cambridge University Press; forthcoming), which reflects on particular examples of interreligious learning to develop further the terms of a spirituality of dialogue.
47. Taking the term "intratextuality" in the sense associated with Lindbeck's "cultural-linguistic" account of religion. The scriptural narrative creates its own universe of meaning. Thus, "canonical texts are a condition, not only for the survival of a religion but for the very possibility of normative theological description" (Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine, p. 116).
48. Daniel W. Hardy, "The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning", Modern Theology 22(July, 2006):532.
49. Griffiths, Religious Reading, pp. 3
50. "Religion", pp. 3-21.
51. Paul Ricoeur, "Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation", Harvard Theological Review 70(January-April, 1977):30.
52. See Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), p. 218.
53. Ricoeur, "Toward a Hermeneutic", p. 29.
54. See especially Clooney, Seeing through Texts, pp. 295 ff.
55. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Towards a World Theology: Faith and the Comparative History of Religion (London: Macmillan; Philadelphia: Westminster Press. 1981), pp. 59 ff.
56. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, "A Human View of Truth", in John Hick, ed., Truth and Dialogue in World Religions: Conflicting Truth-Claims (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), pp. 20-44.