Theologians and their Homes (or the Lack Thereof): The Quest for Truth and the Question of Belonging

Abstract

Much depends on questions of belonging and home. If one must, by definition, belong to a single home community to do theology, then the use of the term “theology” in both comparative theology and Theology Without Walls is equivocal. Transreligious theologians refuse to stipulate that theology must be done for a theologian's home community. But the term “theology” might be understood in another sense—the existentially invested quest for religious truth that does not require a primary religious home. With this understanding, theology is existentially serious and committed reflection, whereas truth-seeking that entails no existential commitment (with or without a home) might go by another label, such as “philosophy of religion.” After all, the philosopher of religion may well be agnostic or atheist. But two further sets of distinctions must follow: 1) the distinction between a) transformative truth accessed through the specific therapeutic regimes of a particular home tradition and b) public truth that requires no transformation but only publicly defensible epistemological warrants; and 2) the means of arriving at a) transformative truth on the one side and b) publicly available truth claims on the other. What I know by way of experience ( anubhava) or a scriptural revelation ( śruti) is particular to how my tradition accesses transformative truth. When I seek to publicly defend the content of that experience or scripture, I must engage all comers by means of knowing and disputation that are acceptable to all and do not depend on belonging to or accepting the internal norms of a home tradition. Avoiding muddled debates between comparative theology and TWW requires keeping these distinctions in view.