The rise of interest in Indian religions, moreover, paral-
leled both Western colonial expansion and the scholarly de-
velopment of Indo-European studies in the expanding search
for the sources of Western culture. Indeed, in the nineteenth
century that interest in Indian religious traditions arose not
only among scholars in Indo-European studies but also
among philosophers with little strictly scholarly competence,
but with strong comparative theological interests—such as
the American Transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau, et al.)
and the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. With
the emergence of historical consciousness, the transition
from ancient, medieval, and early-modern comparative theo-
logical interests to a more complete modernism may be said
to have begun.
The modern period. The crucial intellectual develop-
ment in the rise of comparative theology in the modern peri-
od was the emergence of historical consciousness and histori-
co-critical method. The recognition of the historically
conditioned character of religious traditions led to a crisis of
cognitive claims for Western Christian and Jewish theolo-
gians. The Enlightenment’s hope that a universal “natural re-
ligion” could be abstracted from all “positive” (i.e., particu-
larist) religions was a hope shared, in different ways, by most
thinkers of the period, including both the Christian philoso-
phers Leibniz and Kant and the Jewish thinker Moses Men-
delssohn.
But the combined force of Romanticism’s fascination
with past cultures as living and unique wholes expressive of
particular peoples and the scholarly development of histori-
co-critical methods and a resultant historical consciousness
led to a widespread awareness of the need to incorporate that
historical sense in all the exercises of reason, including philos-
ophy and theology. Thus Western philosophy and theology,
by becoming historically conscious, became implicitly (and
often explicitly) comparativist as well.
The two major thinkers who initiated this comparative
philosophy and theology—although it is important to recall
that neither ever so named it—were Friedrich Schleierma-
cher and G. W. F. Hegel. Schleiermacher, a Reformed theo-
logian, developed a Christian theology that deeply influ-
enced all later Christian theology, among other reasons
because it incorporated explicitly comparative elements.
Schleiermacher defined religion as “the sense and the taste
for the Infinite” and, later and most influentially, as “a feel-
ing of absolute dependence”; as such, religion is the central
reality for humankind. Moreover, in his Christian theology
he attempted a comparison of religions. He argued for the
superiority of the monotheistic over the polytheistic religions
and for the superiority of the “ethical monotheism” of Chris-
tianity over the “ethical monotheism” of Judaism and the
“aesthetic monotheism” of Islam. The details of Schleierma-
cher’s controversial theological arguments are less important
here than his insistence that Christian theology should in-
clude genuinely comparative elements.
Schleiermacher’s great contemporary and rival, Hegel,
had a similarly controversial influence on the development
of historical and comparative elements in philosophy (and,
to a lesser extent, in Christian theology). Hegel’s complex de-
velopmental-dialectical model for philosophy demanded, on
intrinsic philosophical grounds, a systematic and comparat-
ivist account of the major civilizations and the major reli-
gions. The thrust of his argument was that Spirit itself (at
once divine and human) had a dialectical development that
began in China and moved through India, Egypt, Persia, Is-
rael, Greece, and Rome to the “absolute religion” of Chris-
tianity. This last reached its climax in German Protestantism
and in his new dialectical philosophy. Hegel’s formulation
of the intellectual dilemma for comparative theology and
comparative philosophy is an attempt to show the “absolute-
ness” of one religion (Protestant Christianity) by relating it
explicitly to a developmental and comparative (i.e., dialecti-
cal) schema. This attempt to demonstrate absoluteness
proved influential upon both Western Christian theology
and secular philosophy.Although the comparativist conclusions of both Schlei-
ermacher and Hegel are generally accorded little weight
among contemporary philosophers and theologians, their
joint insistence on the incorporation of comparativist ele-
ments into both Christian theology and secular philosophy
has proved enormously influential. In the twentieth century,
their most notable Christian theological successor has been
Ernst Troeltsch. Troeltsch engaged in several disciplines: he
was a major historian of Christianity, a sociologist of reli-
gion, an interpreter of the new comparative “science of reli-
gion,” an idealist philosopher of religion, and an explicitly
Christian theologian. His ambitious theological program has
proved more important for its methodological complexity
and sophistication than for any particular theological conclu-
sions. Troeltsch insisted throughout his work in these differ-
ent disciplines that Christian theology as an academic disci-
pline must find new ways to relate itself critically not only
to its traditional partner, philosophy, but also to the new dis-
ciplines of sociology of religion and the general science of re-
ligion. Troeltsch became, in sum, the systematic theologian
of the newly emerging “history-of-religions” school of Chris-
tian theology centered at the University of Göttingen.It is also notable that Troeltsch shifted his earlier theo-
logical judgment on the “absolute superiority” of Christiani-
ty among religions to a later position in which he held that
Christianity was only “absolute” for Westerners. This con-
troversial theological conclusion was based, above all, on
Troeltsch’s conviction (as a historian) of the unbreakable re-
lationship of a religion to its culture. This was true, for Tr-
oeltsch, even for such relatively culture-transcending reli-
gions as Christianity and Buddhism. This theological
conclusion of merely relative absoluteness was also warranted
by Troeltsch’s conviction that it is impossible to assess the
relative value of a religion through objective or neutral
criteria that are independent of the diversity of particular cul-THEOLOGY: COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY 9129