even after determining that no one term adequately translates “philosophy.” See
Halbfass, India and Europe, “Dars ́ana, Anviks.ikı ̄, Philosophy,” pp. 263–86.
6 Here and throughout this chapter I draw examples from those several areas of
Hindu thought which are most familiar to me. I do not attempt a broad survey of
positions, but neither do I wish to suggest that theology is limited to the schools of
thought highlighted in my examples.
7 Naming something “theological” will be no more insulting or problematic than
other labels which one might apply to the intellectual systems found in cultures
other than their own. Rather, it is useful to use the term “theology” and not just
“religion,” “philosophy,” or “indology,” when attempting to understand Hindu
thought by correlating it with Western counterparts.
8 Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Cabezon highlights several
important features which distinguish scholasticism, distinctions which can just as
well apply to theology: a strong sense oftradition, which includes the handing down
of the texts which define the community; proliferativity, “the tendency to textual
and analytic inclusivity rather than exclusivity”; rationalism, “the commitment to
reasoned argument and noncontradiction”; completenessalong with compactness
(nothing missing, nothing extraneous); systematicity(the endeavor to reproduce in
writing “the basic orderliness found in the world”); and self-reflexivity(“the ten-
dency to objectify and to critically analyze first order practices”). Since “scholasti-
cism” has been closely aligned with “theology” in the West, the same features can
apply in a theological context as well. Cabezon’s comment on the comparative
inquiry underlying Scholasticismcould just as well be adapted to our inquiry into
“Hindu theology” in this chapter: “Though I see no value in – or need for – an
a prioridefinition of scholasticism preceding comparative work on the subject, I do
recognize that as a result of such work there may emerge a series of traits that will
be considered more characteristic of scholasticism than others. They will become
so not by virtue of being part of the innate character of scholasticism – its essence- but because the traditions that have most benefited from being considered under
the rubric of this category have these as theirtraits...a texture is given to the cat-
egory by the fact that certain traits will be more prominent than others, and this as
a result of the fact that certain traditions will be considered more prototypically
scholastic than others. If scholasticism is a useful category...then, like other such
categories (religion, myth, symbol, scripture, ritual), it will survive and evolve in this
way over time” (p. 8).
9 Transzendenzerfahrung, Vollzugshorizont des Heils(Vienna: Publications of the De
Nobili Research Library, vol. 5, 1978), Epiphanie des Heils: zur Heilsgegenwart in
Indischer und Christlicher Religion(Vienna: Publications of the De Nobili Research
Library, vol. 9, 1982), Versuch einer transzendentalen Hermeneutik religiöser Traditio-
nen(Vienna: Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, Occasional Papers 3,
1987), and “Begegnung” als Kategorie der Religionshermeneutik(Vienna: Publications
of the De Nobili Research Library, Occasional Papers 4, 1989), Raum-zeitliche
Vermittlung der Transzendenz: Zur “sakramentalen” Dimension religiöser Tradition
(Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1999).
10 See also my Hindu God, Christian God: How Reason Helps Break Down the Boundaries
among Religions(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) in which I show the
common theological ground of mainstream Christian and Hindu theologies on the
themes of God’s existence, the true religion, divine embodiment, and the judgment
of revelation upon religion.
472 francis clooney, sj