Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry

Hugh Nicholson argues that the political goes "all the way down" in theological discourse. One never reaches a bedrock level of politically neutral religious facts, because theological discourse - even the most sublime, edifying, and "spiritual" - is shot through with polemical elements. This hypothesis directly challenges a core assumption of the tradition of liberal universalism: that mystical writings attain spiritual truth and sublimity despite any polemical elements they might contain. Nicholson's analysis and comparison of the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart and his Hindu counterpart Sankara lead to a very different conclusion. Polemical elements may in fact be the creative source of the expressive power of mystical discourses. Wayne Proudfoot has argued that mystical discourses form a set of rules that prescriptively repel any determinate understanding of the ineffable object or experience they purport to describe. Nicholson suggests that this principle of negation is connected, perhaps through a process of abstraction and sublimation, with the need to distinguish oneself from one's adversary.

Hugh Nicholson is Assistant Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago. He has published on a wide range of topics in the study of theology and religion, including method in comparative theology, the relation between theology and the study of religion, and selected topics in classical Indian philosophy.