Gadamer; Ricoeur; comparative theology; Asian religions; interreligious dialogue
摘要
Philosophical approaches to hermeneutics, such as we find in Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, offer insights into how a classic text expands one's horizons, through both a dynamic game of conversation between reader and text and the enlarged sense of self that comes from entering into the proposed world of the text. Comparative theology follows these leads by showing how engaging in the canons of the religious other allows one fresh insights into one's own religious tradition's familiar and revered truths. This article is an exercise in such an approach, examining three Asian traditions and samples from their most classic textual representatives. By engaging the Dhammapada from Theravada Buddhism, classic sayings from Zen, and the Dao-De-Jing and Zhuangzi from the Daoist tradition, we see how we might appropriate the Catholic theological and spiritual traditions with fresh eyes and new insights.
目次
Keywords 178 I. Hermeneutics and Comparative Theology 178 II. Buddhism and the Dhammapada 182 Christian Response 184 III. Zen and Its Classics 186 Christian Response 189 IV. Daoism, the Dao De Jing, and the Zhuangzi 192 Christian Response 195 V. Conclusions 198
