Abstract
This edited volume emerges from a colloquium that took place at the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the University of Geneva (October 3–4, 2019). The seven essays, however, are more than conference proceedings. They have been edited and expanded to function as stand-alone essays on the aims, methods, and theories underlying confessional comparative theology (the volume largely prescinds from the meta-confessional approach). The purpose of the volume is “to present comparative theology to a francophone readership who are often not yet familiar with it” (8). This is a worthy cause because comparative theology remains largely restricted to anglophone and German theologians. The two main representatives representing—defending—comparative theology are Francis X. Clooney, whom readers know well, and Klaus von Stosch, who is a systematic and comparative theologian at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Bonn, having done impressive work in the field of Islamic–Catholic comparative theology.
The essays are strong contributions to the debates over the place of comparative theology in the larger disciplines of Catholic and Protestant theology (for the latter, the essay by Elio Jaillet is commendable). François Dermange skillfully argues that comparative theology offers society alternative ways to discourse about truth and the meaning of self and community beyond the restrictions of liberal, public reason. Nougoutna Norbert Litoing offers a case study in comparative theology from the context of Catholic and Muslim pilgrimage sites in Senegal. He demonstrates the limits of inter-ritual participation and comparative theology.
However, the essays by von Stosch, Clooney, and Beate Bengard may be of particular interest, in part because the volume includes the discussion—or, rather, the spirited debate—that took place among these participants after the conference. Additionally, Clooney’s essay responds directly to each of Bengard’s criticisms. It is one of the few places—perhaps the only—in which Clooney responds in a systematic fashion to these critiques, namely, that his approach is elite (and ignores lived religion), hegemonic, apolitical, not sufficiently theological, too subjective, ineffective in shaping theology, lacking a unifying method and goal, and unclear of its relationship to theology of religions. Von Stosch adds to Clooney’s response in unique ways. Readers are left to determine if they have done so successfully. It is worth noting that these criticisms, while still pertinent, have been superseded by postcolonial and decolonial critiques in the US context, a topic left largely unaddressed.
This volume demonstrates that many critiques leveled at comparative theology can often be leveled at theology tout court (115–116), and that comparative theology, “despite all the questions and doubts it raises,” is an “indispensable discipline for our time” (175).