The Far Side of Nothingness: Reading Mitchell's Spirituality and Emptiness

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Abstract

A TRADITIONAL TASK for Christian theology has been the need to understand the place of Christianity among the multitude of religions and the meaning of those religions for Christians. Endeavors of this sort can ordinarily be found under the classification "theology of religions/' Often these theologies are based on a theory of religion in general in which specific religions are interpreted from a privileged standpoint within which all religions appear as examples. Today, a small but growing number of theologians are expressing dissatisfaction with such top-down approaches to religious pluralism. They point out the tendency of such theologies to interpret religions either as irreducibly different (witness Karl Barth's rejection of religion in favor of revelation) or as simply more of the same (as with Karl Rahner's "anonymous Christian"). Instead of an all-encompassing theology of religions, they are engaging in detailed studies of the texts and symbols of specific religious traditions in the hope of eventually correlating their findings critically with Christian texts. In place of a theology of religions, these theologians are turning to what may be called a "comparative theology".
Original languageAmerican English
Pages (from-to)130-139
JournalThe Eastern Buddhist
Volume27
Issue number2
StatePublished - 1994

Disciplines

  • Religion

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