are distinctions without a difference. Theological studies, thought of as
exploring a religious tradition from within, must also bring critical
questions to the tradition studied. And the study of religion, often described
as taking an ‘objective’ or disengaged perspective, cannot be studied or
taught without understanding the power and beauty, in particular historical
situations, of the tradition or the author we study. Nor can religious studies
avoid theology—the committed worldviews, beliefs, and practices of
believers—by focusing on religious phenomenologies. Both ‘theological
studies’ and the ‘study of religion’ must integrate critical and passionately
engaged scholarship. I use, then, the providentially ambiguous term
‘religious studies’ to integrate the falsely polarized terms, ‘theological
studies’ and ‘the study of religion’.
This statement reflects much actual practice. Little distinction is made at times,
and hardly just in North America, between theology (or equivalents; see note
6) and the study of religions, regardless of whether ‘we all’ are talking about
us or we are still talking only about them. Nevertheless, Miles’ observations
needlessly blur a number of real differences. The most important may be
epistemological. While I generally share Peter Ochs’ (2006: 125) sense of tedium
at interminable ‘discussions about “religious studies vs. theology” ’, experience
on four continents—I have no experience in Australia or South America—has
taught me that there is a distinction that still needs explicit discussion.^6 The
various contributors to this volume will have their own views on the
relationship between religious reflection and the study of religion. The views
that follow are mine.
To start with, I find it misleading to distinguish theology and the study of
religions in terms of insider and outsider perspectives. The aim of the study
of religions is knowledge about religions. The aim of theology is to formulate
religious truth. It is true that at times people who are by profession theologians
also formulate and transmit knowledge. When they do so, they are engaged
in the study of religions. But in the world in which we now live, the most
interesting religious claims, those that would seem to be most central to the
theological enterprise—to take traditional examples, claims about God and
forgiveness or rebirth and release—do not count as knowledge in a strict sense,
even if religious people sometimes make equivocal use of the verb ‘to know’.
Furthermore, in the world in which we now live it seems like a poor use of
time and energy to try to make such claims count as knowledge.^7 We simply
lack the means to demonstrate most religious claims in a manner consistent
with criteria that we ordinarily use for knowledge. It is certainly true, as Peter
Dear (2006: 14) has recently noted for the natural sciences, that what counts
as intelligibility varies with the cultural circumstances of the thinker. (Dear
particularly identifies two versions of intelligibility, mechanistic modeling and
naturalistic representation.) Furthermore, I take it for granted that the
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INTRODUCTION
5
