ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Catholics are not learning about their own religion through study of Islam, which is a traditional goal of both interreligious dialogue and comparative theology. Rather, they are learning about Christianity when it is explained to them by Muslims. It is not too surprising that Muslims are able to teach Catholics something about the preambles of faith, since most preambles are shared by Christians and Muslims. Ultimately, the example of the Muslim student explaining Julian of Norwich to her Catholic classmates seems to indicate that comparative theology is driven by persons, rather than texts. Even when comparative theology is "one directional" in terms of texts, it can be "two directional" in terms of persons, and thus in the comparative theology classroom of the twenty-first century, persons might be in a privileged position. The dynamics of a dialogue group versus a classroom are important to consider; different pedagogical spaces can encourage different pedagogical aims.
