Difficult Remainders

Francis X. Clooney, S.J., aims to break new ground in his ongoing series of instances of a Christian comparative theology engaging Hinduism, by showing how comparative theology, done in the particular and by way of example, can be fruitful even when difference trumps similarity and a common ground is hard to find. To accentuate these valuable difficulties, he undertakes to engage Hinduism’s Mīmāṃsā school of ritual analysis, a distinctive mode of ritual thinking that is clear and rational, but that also resistant to any easy borrowing by Christian comparativists. A particular set of Mīmāṃsā cases pertaining to the seemingly abstruse matter of ritual remainders exposes the possibilities and problems arising when we engage a religious other that is clear and logical, but at every step unfamiliar, its tenets articulated by a vocabulary novel (to us) even if quite rational, and its integral coherence nonetheless obscure to Christian theologians. Failure is a possible characteristic of difficult comparison. Yet we are still doing our theology well and constructively, even when the comparative project, grounded in reading rather than concern for doctrines, reaches its limits and remains incomplete, thwarted, on edge.