DOING THEOLOGY HEURISTICALLY
Methodological Stepping Stones Towards An Intimate Dialogue With The Hindu Religious Other
Keywords:
THEOLOGY, Intimate Dialogue, Hindu Religious OtherAbstract
Up until the recent past, an empiricist scientific approach had the
upper hand in analysing and explaining religious data, and
underlying such an approach was an assumption that reality was
completely transparent to positivistic rationality. But with
developments in hermeneutical studies as well as regional and
cultural studies, this confidence in the total sufficiency of positivistic
rationality began to waver. In the place of one or another kind of
reductionist thinking style, a richer notion of rationality, a rationality
that could turn on its own assumptions and procedures, began to
emerge, and in the place of closed, discipline-bound scientific
practices, many interdisciplinary enterprises emerged that continued
to remain rooted in their respective home disciplines while, still
sharing the rational resources of one or more other disciplines.
References
Lieven Boeve, “Mutual Interruption: Toward a Productive Tension between Theology and Religious Studies,” Louvain Studies 34 (2009-2010).
David Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987).
Axel Michaels, Hinduism: Past and Present (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004).
Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, I, SABCL, vol. 18 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970).
William Desmond, Being and the Between, (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995).
Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, (London: Melboutne and Henley, 1958).
