Theology through the eye of Anthropic Reasoning – Can a Case be made for a Comparative Theology?

Finding comparative material as a scholar of comparative religious studies is a different task from finding comparative material as a theologian. To begin, the theologian is interested in a field that is scarcely viewed as anything more than hypothetical at best with regard to a system of belief or faith, all while working with ideas that because of their lineage are causally disconnected. Verses that crop up in ancient texts expounding the wide reach of some divine being are often subsumed under the  doctrinarian impulses of the tribe that prefer a more insular revelation. Those who study their faith do so under the superintendence of history and anthropology, where any deviation from the well- defined borders of what the tradition has come to regard as part of its heritage is jettisoned as rank supernaturalism, despite the supernaturalist expressions those traditions honor. Supernaturalism does not becomes a dragnet of God’s activity interdicting other religious revelations but a pencil-thin line traceable only through the texts and practices approved by those communities. A God whose dominion spans the world but is only known by those who actively engage this God in their own tradition is the farce of all supernaturalist claims primarily because such claims always lack universal footprints.

Books that are published that compare the statements of Muhammad or the Buddha with that of Jesus are done so tongue-in-cheek, as good-hearted experiments thanks to the pluralism of our day, but rarely with a meaningful goal in mind that might inspire a new approach to faith. Universalists, other than the Unitarian brand, are often looked at with caution, as those taking part in a non-sanctioned experiment, whose companionship is often tolerated.  

But when someone moves from one religion to another, he cannot help but bring with him a store of information and experience that at times appears to intersect with the new information and experience he obtains. These incidents make for curious encounters and oftentimes lend to an experience of the divine that defies well-defined boundaries. Recognizing for example the New Testament in the Tannisho, where certain verses run deeper than the broad overlay of general religious principles is always exciting for someone who takes the claim of a universal God interested in the universal welfare of all beings seriously. The cross-pollination of ideas is acceptable only insofar as the unspoken rule against proselytizing will not be secretly violated.  It is not the hope of the organizers of Vatican II or the Parliament of World Religions that one might walk out seeking a new religious approach, but indeed these opportunities do occur. We see those like Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths, or Paul Knitter looking to the East for guidance, while we see those like D.T. Suzuki, Takeda Kiyoto, and Kitaro Nishida of the Kyoto School looking to the West. One will not find, however, existential communion with scholars who study religion as a cultural phenomenon or through a linguistic approach linked to creating a better understanding of the original textual interpretations in which events arise. In each of these approaches, religion in its most diagnostic form is not a living experience but a series of events that evolve or perish through objective causation.

Those interested in theology as a comparative activity will find it hard to express themselves where no objective causation is testable. At best, we can say human situations are not that different. People tend to experience many of the same problems, and complicated social structures do not entirely condemn those problems to variation. The same questions that stir action in one religion are not unknown to those in others: equal rights, monasticism vs. individualism, faith vs. works, all of these come from the same observable encounter with the world around us. Rather than diminish the supernatural origins of any religion by appealing to a kind of directed human evolution we share in common, could it be that what drives those essential similarities uncovers a core experience in the domain of human existence that could only propagate such questions? One is reminded of the old dilemma posed from the Anthropic Principle: is it because the world is observable that I see it, or do I see it because it is observable?

Could it be that a comparative theology is possible because the similarities experienced across religious borders are possible? Learning how we evolve socially and structurally as religious-minded people may best be learned through a genuine examination of the way religious ideas come into existence across unrelated spectrums rather than in spite of them, in the same world claimed by divine.  This represents a possible philosophical basis for a comparative theology that is not merely glimpsed as another cause for celebrating our shared humanity, but one that captures and equalizes it at a much deeper level.