Doing the Work of Comparative Theology

A Primer for Christians

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781467458559
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Ecumenism & Interfaith

In a world that is more religiously diverse than ever before, our coworkers and neighbors may well be adherents of other faiths. But how many of us really grasp the similarities and differences between the major world religions? Comparative theology is one increasingly important way to bridge this gap, especially for Christian leaders and professors, but also for lay people and students.

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen introduces the nature and work of comparative theology, then delves into a detailed doctrine-by-doctrine comparison of Christian teachings with those of historical and contemporary Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. With every doctrine, he first presents a summary of consensual Christian belief and then orients the reader to the distinctive teachings of other faith traditions, highlighting parallels and differences.

Ideal for students, ministers, instructors, and lay people interested in interfaith dialogue, Doing the Work of Comparative Theology distills the comparative-theological rigor of Kärkkäinen's Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World series into an accessible and user-friendly textbook. Readers will not only learn basic methodology but also begin to undertake the actual work of comparative theology.

1|Revelation and Scripture among Religions

Revelation and Scripture in Christian Tradition

In Christian understanding, God’s revelation comes in many forms, most foundationally in the Word made flesh, the incarnated Son of God, as inscripted in the Bible, the written Word (special revelation). A less full manifestation of revelation can be found in nature and history and in humanity, having been created in God’s image (general revelation). Briefly put: while divine in origin, Christian revelation is historical, embedded in history, and also progressive, as it unfolds slowly amidst the people of God.

To use theological language, revelation is a Trinitarian process: out of his abundant love the Father reaches out to humanity in order to establish a fellowship, by sending his Son to be one of us, to die and be raised to new life, in the power of the Spirit. This same Spirit is also believed to have inspired the Scripture and to continuously make it lively.

All Christian churches consider the Bible, whose first part (in Christian parlance), the Old Testament, is shared with the Jewish mother faith, as authoritative and as a special channel of revelation. Whereas up until the Enlightenment the Bible was universally believed to be an inerrant (at least in substance) divine revelation, in modernity, alongside the rise of historical-critical study, a massive revision emerged among scholars leading to the (in)famous “conservative” (fundamentalist) and “liberal” divide. While the former camp still maintains the Bible’s divine origin and authority, the latter considers Scripture a humanly produced, uniquely inspiring religious text. Between these two extremes lie all kinds of variations.

Notwithstanding all the disputes concerning the nature of Scripture as revelation and the nature of its inspiration, all Christians agree that in some real sense the Bible is God’s word in human words. In other words, it has neither come directly from God, as in dictation, nor is it merely humans talking to each other about human experiences of the sacred.

The great dispute at the time of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century related to the relationship between revelation in written Scripture and its continuing growth in church tradition. It took hundreds of years for the churches on both sides of the divide to come to understand that this is not an either-or matter but rather a both-and. While it is an ecumenical consensus that the Scripture is the highest norm of faith and practice, it is also acknowledged that the formation and final ratification of the Bible as Scripture are a matter of the community of faith seeking to discern the nature and function of the Bible. Hence, the Bible is primarily a book of and for the Christian community and should be read and interpreted there even if—thanks to the Reformation—it has also been put into the hands of the individual Christian.

A vibrant twentieth-century debate concerned the relationship between special and natural revelation. While few would juxtapose them, there are understandably varying ways to relate them and to assess the value and benefits of revelation “outside” the incarnated, living Word and written Word.

The Challenge and Complexity of Interfaith Engagement of Scriptures

Putting Christian Scripture and doctrine of revelation into mutual dialogue with other living faiths is an enormous challenge. To begin with, the reservoir of sacred scriptures is amazingly huge among religions—illustrated by Max Müller’s classic, Sacred Books of the East, in fifty hefty volumes; yet even that “library” misses noteworthy portions of scriptures from various parts of Asia!

Whereas until recent decades religious studies as an academic discipline used to downplay the importance of written scriptures for the study of religions, giving preference to nontextual elements such as ritual, myth, and symbols, more recently a new appreciation of the importance of written scriptures to the study and knowledge of religions has emerged. That is not to undermine the importance of other elements such as folk religiosity, arts, and ritual, but rather to acknowledge that basically all living faiths are either based on or have been shaped in the presence of authoritative scriptures. There are virtually no living religions without sacred scriptures.

While most religions have either canonical or otherwise determined “primary” scripture (Torah, Qur’an, Bible, Vedas, Tipitaka), they also have a huge secondary literature that typically is believed to be based on and to derive its (relative) authority from the primary revelation. Hence the Jews have the extensive Talmud, the “Oral Torah”; the Muslims have the huge collection of Hadiths; the main way to study the Vedas is the growing commentary literature in Vedic Hinduism and the whole smrti tradition for the rest of the Hindus. The Christian church has accumulated a massive secondary literature of creedal and other definitive traditions. An important theological task not only for Christians but also for Jews, Hindus, and Muslims is to discern the relationship between the “canonical” and “extracanonical” texts, to use the Christian parlance.

Having underscored the presence and twofold nature of scriptures among all religions, we also need to add some nuancing. First of all, religions such as Judaism, Islam, and Christianity have a clearly defined and closed canon. In many others, most profoundly in Buddhism, especially in Mahayana traditions, there is hardly any notion of a “closed canon.” Hinduism lies somewhere in between, as it has the twofold structure of primary, most authoritative scriptures, the Vedas (shruti), and the secondary smrti collections of various types of materials, from epics to songs to folklore, and so forth. Even the collection of Vedas, let alone the rest of the Hindu scriptures, is immense. Hence, in a typical household in India, a small part of an important epic in the smrti collection, the Bhagavad Gita, may be the only scripture available.

Scriptures also play different roles in various religions. Whereas Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can be rightly called “religions of the book” because of the necessary and authoritative role played by the written canonical scripture, in Hinduism the spoken word is primary. The Vedas, even though found in written form in Sanskrit, are considered divine speech, and hence the written form is inferior to the oral reciting and hearing. Furthermore, whereas almost all religions of the world regard their scriptures as inspired and of divine origin, that is not the case with all traditions. Buddhism has no concept of divine inspiration. One could also, perhaps somewhat ironically, point to liberal Protestantism in Christianity, according to which the Bible is primarily an invaluable human sharing of responses to religious experiences.

Finally, the nature and function of scripture among various traditions vary greatly. For the typical Muslim, the Qur’anic revelation is truly verbatim and relates to all aspects of life. Typical contemporary Jews and Christians consider Scripture the ultimate authority, even though, apart from fundamentalists, they consider its principles and thoughts to be the inspired guide to faith and practice. For most Buddhists, scripture’s main role and authority lie in its capacity to convey Buddha’s enlightenment and precepts. It is the scripture’s “object” rather than the scripture as such that is highly venerated and authoritative. In Hinduism, Brahmins study Vedas as the divinely originated religious (and in many traditions, philosophical) authority, whereas for most Hindus, scriptural content comes in the form of folklore, rituals, artistic forms, and the general cultural environment in India.

With these diversities in mind, we should be mindful of the danger of generalizations and assumptions. The Christian theologian sees the interfaith exchange between scriptures and notions of revelation among other living faiths through the lens of his or her own tradition. The Muslim scholar would do the same, and so forth. This is not to block dialogue but rather to serve as a reminder to be mindful.

The Christian comparativist should also mind the current one-sided focus on written Scripture and the eclipse of the oral mode. This is ironic in that the First Testament, shared by the Jewish tradition, builds essentially on the role of oral transmission of scriptural content. Even the New Testament is essentially based on oral traditions, epistles read aloud in the congregation, and speeches. In keeping with the times, Jesus and the apostles, as Jews, memorized and recited Scriptures daily. The early church also did that, as the Gospels were not yet written and were circulating in oral form. In the Islamic tradition, oral memorization and recital of scripture took on even greater importance. “Indeed, spiritual merit in Islam is said to be measured by the thoroughness of one’s oral knowledge of the scripture. According to the tradition, on the day of resurrection everyone will be called upon to rise up and recite the Qur’an.” Examples from other living faith traditions could be easily compiled.¹

Yet another bias or liability that the Christian theologian should keep in mind is the post-Enlightenment emphasis on propositional, cognitive, and doctrinal language over the poetic, mystical, and intuitive. The theologian Keith Ward’s observation is right on target: “The language of religion is like the language of poetry; and it is a major heresy of post-Enlightenment rationalism to try to turn poetry into pseudo-science, to turn the images of religion, whose function is to evoke eternity, into mundane descriptions of improbable facts.”²

Some recent approaches in systematic and constructive theology may turn out to be helpful in capturing a more holistic view of scriptures not only in Christian but also in other faith traditions. These include approaches such as discussed in Kevin Vanhoozer’s Drama of Doctrine, which seeks to reenvision the Christian story as drama, and in William A. Dyrness’s Poetic Theology, which builds on the intuition that since religion—and knowledge of God—comes to us in so many forms, the category of the “poetic” in the most inclusive sense, going back to the Aristotelian notion of “making,” is needed along with the more traditional discursive approach.

Having now clarified some conditions and desiderata regarding comparative work focused on Scripture and revelation, we will engage Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and Jewish traditions. As mentioned in the introduction, for the sake of readers who most likely are not well versed in any other tradition’s scriptures and views of revelation, before we begin comparative exercises, basic knowledge and data will be provided.

Hindu Scriptures and Authority in a Christian Perspective

The Matrix of Hindu Scriptures

A Plentiful and Pluriform Scriptural Heritage

The notion of scripture in Hinduism is pluriform and inclusive in nature. “No other living tradition can claim scriptures as numerous or as ancient as Hinduism.”³ Hindu scriptures are commonly divided into two categories. First, there are the Vedas, which are called the shruti (“what is heard”), received directly by the rishis, “seers.” This is the foundational, primary scripture, honored by all Hindu traditions. Then there are the secondary scriptures, the smrti (“what is remembered”), which are considered to be humanly authored and come in the forms of epics, narratives, and folklore. Basically all forms of Hinduism consider the ancient Vedas as the scripture par excellence. Indeed, it can be said that what keeps Hinduism together and allows meaningful discussion of Hinduism as a unified—albeit extremely diversified—tradition is the common belief in the Vedas as foundational, authoritative, divine revelation.

The Vedic literature is by and large unknown to most Hindus apart from the higher castes (especially Brahmins). Instead, most Hindus get their scriptural teaching from various epics, religious folklore called the Puranas (to be introduced below). Furthermore, unlike in contemporary Christianity, religious and religiously inspired art such as music, dance, and paintings is often taken as revelatory in nature. To this list one should add an important caveat related to the most foundational Hindu concept of dharma. Variously translated as “righteousness,” “duty,” and “ethics/morality,” it denotes common human virtues such as generosity, compassion, and abstaining from violence. In...