PROBLEMS AND POSSIBILITIES. On the whole, contemporary
scholars in history of religions or religious studies do not use
the term comparative theology in Müller’s or Clarke’s senses,
and these earlier usages are therefore now of more historical
than current disciplinary interest. In the contemporary
scholarly world, the term can be understood in two distinct
ways. First, it may continue to refer to a comparative enter-
prise within the secular study of history of religions in which
different “theologies” from different traditions are compared
by means of some comparative method developed in the dis-
cipline. Usually, however, comparative theology refers to a
more strictly theological enterprise (sometimes named
“world theology” or “global theology”), which ordinarily
studies not one tradition alone but two or more, compared
on theological grounds. Thus one may find Christian (or
Buddhist or Hindu, etc.) comparative theologies in which
the theologian’s own tradition is critically and theologically
related to other traditions. More rarely, comparative theolo-
gy may be the theological study of two or more religious tra-
ditions without a particular theological commitment to any
one tradition. In either theological model, the fact of reli-
gious pluralism is explicitly addressed, so that every theology
in every tradition becomes, in effect, a comparative theology.
In principle, the two main approaches are complemen-
tary and mutually illuminating: any comparative enterprise
within history of religions (or comparative religion)—that is,
a secular or scientific study—will interpret theologies as ma-
terial to be further analyzed from the perspective of, and by
means of, the comparativist criteria of that discipline. Any
theological attempt at comparative theology—that is, from
within the context of belief—will interpret the results of his-
tory of religion’s comparisons of various theologies by means
of its own strictly theological criteria.
The fact that theology itself is now widely considered
one discipline within the multidisciplinary field of religious
studies impels contemporary theology, in whatever tradition,
to become a comparative theology. More exactly, from a
theological point of view, history of religions, in its compara-
tivism, has helped academic theology to recognize a crucial
insight: that on strictly theological grounds, the fact of reli-
gious pluralism should enter all theological assessment and
self-analysis in any tradition at the very beginning of its task.
Any contemporary theology that accords theological signifi-
cance (positive or negative) to the fact of religious pluralism
in its examination of a particular tradition functions as a
comparative theology, whether it so names itself or not. The
history and nature of this new, emerging discipline of com-
parative theology as theology bears close analysis.
A difficulty with the phrase comparative theology is that
theology may be taken to describe a discipline in Western reli-
gions but not necessarily in other traditions. Indeed, the term
theology has its origins in Greek religious thought. Historical-
ly, theology has functioned as a major factor within the reli-
gious discourse of Christianity that has been influenced by
Hellenistic models—and, to a lesser extent, within that of
Islam and Judaism. Any enterprise that is named “compara-
tive theology,” therefore, must establish that the very enter-
prise of theology is not necessarily a Greco-Christian one.
To assure this, two factors need clarification. First, to
speak of “theology” is a perhaps inadequate but historically
useful way to indicate the more strictly intellectual interpre-
tations of any religious tradition, whether that tradition is
theistic or not. Second, to use theo logia in the literal sense
of “talk or reflection on God or the gods” suggests that even
nontheistic traditions (such as some Hindu, Confucian, Tao-
ist, or archaic traditions) may be described as having theolo-
gies in the broad sense. Most religious traditions do possess
a more strictly intellectual self-understanding.
The term theology as used here does not necessarily
imply a belief in “God.” Indeed, it does not even necessarily
imply a belief in the “high gods” of some archaic traditions,
nor the multiple gods of the Greeks and Romans, nor the
radically monotheistic God of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam. Whatever the appropriate term used to designate ulti-
mate reality may be, that term is subject to explicitly intellec-
tual reflection (e.g., the term sacred, as in the “dialectic of the
sacred and the profane” in the great archaic traditions, as an-
alyzed by Mircea Eliade; the term the holy, suggested as the
more encompassing term, in distinct ways, by Nathan Söder-
blom and Rudolf Otto; the term the eternal, as suggested by
Anders Nygren; the term emptiness, as used in many Bud-
dhist traditions; or the term the One, as in Plotinus; etc.). In-
sofar as such explicitly intellectual reflection occurs within
a religious tradition, one may speak of the presence of a the-
ology in the broad sense (i.e., without necessarily assuming
theistic belief). However useful it may be for the purposes
of intellectual analysis, the term theology should not be al-
lowed to suggest that the tradition in question names ulti-
mate reality as “God”; or that the tradition necessarily con-
siders systematic reflection on ultimate reality important for
its religious way. (Indeed, in the case of many Buddhist ways,
“systematic” reflection of any kind may be suspect.) “Theol-
ogy,” thus construed, will always be intellectual, but need not
be systematic. With these important qualifications, it is
nonetheless helpful to speak of “comparative theology” as
any explicitly intellectual interpretation of a religious tradi-
tion that affords a central place to the fact of religious plural-
ism in the tradition’s self-interpretation.Among the theological questions addressed by a com-
parative theology may be the following. (1) How does this
religion address the human problem (e.g., suffering, igno-
rance, sin), and how does that understanding relate to other
interpretations of the human situation? (2) What is the way
of ultimate transformation (enlightenment, emancipation,
salvation, liberation) that this religion offers, and how is it
related to other ways? (3) What is the understanding of the
nature of ultimate reality (nature, emptiness, the holy, the
sacred, the divine, God, the gods) that this religion possesses,
and how does this understanding relate to that of other
traditions?9126 THEOLOGY: COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY