Managing Multiple Religious and Scholarly Identities: An Argument for a Theological Study of Hinduism (original) (raw)

RELIGIONISTS AND THEOLOGIANS assume that their respective tasks differ insofar as religionists speak about traditions whereas theologians speak for them. Religionists qua religionists are objective outsiders and theologians subjective insiders. 1 Although individual scholars work both as religionists and theologians, some religionists express concern about whether persons who hold religious commitments can maintain the objectivity necessary for a truly scientific study of either their own tradition or the traditions of others. Under these operative assumptions, theology can be the object of the religionist's studies, but theology must not inform or shape those studies lest scholarly integrity is compromised. This division of labor has been called into question by a number of recent studies. These studies claim that the secular study of religion is shaped thoroughly by theological presuppositions. John Milbank, for example, has argued that secular social theories, including secular theories of religion, are in the end based on arbitrary theological claims that are no more "rational" or "scientific" than the claims of Christian theol-John J. Thatamanil is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Millsaps College, Jackson, MS 39210. I would like to thank David Eckel not only for launching me in my study of Sanskrit and Advaita but also for making possible the fieldwork in India discussed herein. Not surprisingly, there are important points of convergence between the argument advanced here and his own argument in defense of a properly religious study of Buddhism. 1 The term religionist will refer to scholars of religion who seek to advance a secular or "scien-tific" study of religion and who so attempt to characterize their undertakings as explicitly non-theological in character. As will become clear in due course, I believe that this distinction is difficult to sustain. Boundaries between these two families of inquiry are highly permeable.