to mark off theology as the exclusive preserve of theologians – it must remain
intellectual, arguable, etc., and surely others can have negative as well as posi-
tive opinions – but rather to stress that judgments in this regard cannot be
entirely bereft of theological sensitivity.
Of course, since theology has communal roots, it must be the theologians of
the Hindu tradition who must take the lead in maintaining and fostering Hindu
theology. Theologians from other traditions (such as this author) must make
only tentative judgments about what seems to be theological and where Hindu
theologizing might lead. In any case, it is opportune to admit here that if much
of this chapter is dedicated to identifying “Hindu theology” in the great classi-
cal traditions, it will be up to intellectuals writing today, who are willing to be
called “Hindu theologians,” to chart the course of the future of Hindu theology.
Theology as complex discourse
Even if we decide that there is such a thing as Hindu theology and are willing to
draw upon the preceding suggestions to build a case for identifying specific
Hindu theological texts, the decision about what is theological will never be a
matter of determining a text “theological,” or not, in a simple, straightforward
manner, as if theology can be only a simple discourse produced simply. A work
that is justly called “theological” need not be uniformly theological in all its
parts; theology can be divided into parts and subdisciplines, some of which are
not theological. In the Catholic theological context, for example, in schools
and seminaries where theology is taught, one finds it standard to differentiate
theology into disciplines such as Biblical Studies, Church History, Dogmatic and
Systematic Theology, Moral Theology (and/or Theological Ethics), Pastoral
Theology, etc. In his Method in Theology, the twentieth-century Christian the-
ologian Bernard Lonergan argued that theology is a necessarily complex activ-
ity which operates in harmony with the different levels of human cognition and
includes eight disciplines which complement and confirm one another.^31 “The-
ology” is the umbrella term for all these disciplines in the Roman Catholic
tradition, since they are all intended to contribute to an overall theological
education which necessarily includes such subareas, and since all together con-
tribute to the still larger task of understanding the faith, accomplishing know-
ledge of God insofar as this is humanly possible. Moreover, a line of reasoning
or argument that at one point meets the criteria for theology may later on cease
to be theological. Theology is complex and complicated, and it has a history.
There is no reason to assume that Hindu theology should be any more simple
or uniform than Christian theology. It is necessary to differentiate Hindu theol-
ogy according to its subsidiary disciplines, some of which may be particularly
philological or philosophical, others more exegetical, and still others more prac-
tical. For instance, a very old model for the distinction among disciplines con-
tributing to a single whole is found in the Vedic ritual field, where the Veda, as
(oral) text and practice, is supported by six ancillary disciplines: recitation
restoring “hindu theology” as a category 463