Description: This book analyzes the writings of Karl Rahner, Karl Barth and Vedanta Desika to disclose how each construes "piety" and "responsibility" as integral to each other. Each theologian expresses a fundamental unity of love of God and love of neighbour. Sheveland explores this unity in ecumenical and interreligious frameworks, showing how these authors privilege theology as practice, enactment, or simply as ethical. He uses the Renaissance genre of musical polyphony as a methodological tool to investigate the aesthetic quality and the similarity-in-difference of the theological voices being compared.
Review Quotes: 'This probing study examines the centrality of love and service within the work of three significant theologians, Protestant, Catholic, and Hindu. Sheveland's work advances the project of comparative theology, demonstrating differences and commonalities among faiths.' Christopher Key Chapple, Loyola Marymount University, USA 'To bring Karl Rahner and Karl Barth into fruitful dialogue with one another, as this beautiful book does, is already a remarkable achievement: more remarkably still, however, in relating the two of them to the work of Vedanta Desika, John Sheveland shows how much more illuminating and challenging the conversation becomes when it is conducted interreligiously as well as ecumenically'. The Revd Fergus Kerr OP, University of Edinburgh, UK 'This work of John Sheveland sets a new standard of careful analysis and sheer excellence for comparative theology. He explores the essential structure of religious anthropology and spirituality constituted in the double relationships to God and fellow humans. He interweaves the voices of Catholic (Rahner), Protestant (Barth), and Hindu (Desika) with magisterial authority and polyphonic finesse. He moves forward from statement, to dialogue, to reverently critical conversation. In the comparative crescendo these independent voices blend to reveal remarkable analogies across boundaries. This book can supply the underpinnings for a course and even a program in theology for our pluralistic age. Bravo.' Roger Haight, S. J. Union Theological Seminary, USA 'This book [...] develops fully an example of polyphony and makes a valuable contribution to the emerging 'school' of 'Comparative Theology.' Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection 'Sheveland carries out this tour de force with a masterful hand and enviable elegance... Sheveland's contributions are enormous not only in his theological comparison among three different theological visions but also in his theological method for carrying out this comparison. Us