ABSTRACT
Comparative theology has a close relationship to Hindu–Christian studies. Indeed, the author's own study of Hinduism as a Christian and his gradual articulation of comparative theology as a field have advanced hand in hand. He started using the terminology of comparative theology precisely in order to defend the theological nature of his study of Hinduism. That he has always detected an easy and deep resonance between Hindu and Christian truths, virtues, and practices has helped shape his confidence in comparative theology as an artful and creative process that, while it has a history, is not determined by that history to go forward in only one way. The hopeful view he has proposed of theological openness and mutual enrichment might certainly have been confirmed by examples of Jewish– or Muslim– or Buddhist–Christian studies, but the nature of the learning, its possibilities and limits, would also surely have worked out differently in those spaces of study.
