This sixth installment in Peeters' impressive series, Christian Commentaries on Non-Christian Sacred Texts (a category inclusive of classic texts), does not disappoint. While two previous volumes explore Christian readings of Buddhist texts, Locklin's is the fourth to explore Christian readings of Hindu texts. In it he brings considerable interreligious learning, creativity, and prudence to bear on his exegesis of Shankara's eighth-century AD A Thousand Teachings (Sanksrit: Upadeśasāhasrī), which is best understood as a dynamic compendium of conversations or dialogues (samvada) on Vedanta that, precisely as dialogues, justify and support Locklin's contemporary Christian-Hindu iteration of samvada through the introduction of a range of Christian authors and especially the apostle Paul. Indeed, from Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad and Laurie Patton, Locklin helpfully draws a further definition of samvada as “interlogue,” which deemphasizes conversation between opposites (dia-logos) in favor of the complexity and multiplicity implied in historically constituted and dynamic hearing audiences.
The depth and reliability of scholarship on Shankara available in this book place Locklin in the rather distinguished company of Christians who have studied Advaita Vedanta in India and found their theological range of motion greatly enhanced. Arguably, what twentieth-century contemplatives like Bede Griffiths and Henri Le Saux (Swami Abhishiktananda) gained through their immersion in India, study of Advaita, and ashram lifestyle did not produce what Locklin has achieved here with respect to stand-alone scholarship on both Shankara and Paul: attention to comparative theological method that renders the work stable, modest, and therefore plausible in its conclusions, and reliance on multiple voices within Christian theology with whom Shankara's conversations are then drawn into yet further samvada, or conversation. For these and other reasons the volume earns its place among the great examples of Christian-Hindu dialogue since the mid-twentieth century.
The volume consists of three parts. The first functions as a two-chapter introduction to Shankara's text and theological worldview and contains Locklin's argument for why and how the Upadeśasāhasrī as a conversation can be opened profitably into new conversation with Christian interlocutors. The second part is the volume's core. It consists of six chapters of experiments in dialogue, all of which feature rich description of both Shankara's verses and an array of verses from Paul and Paul's school. The comparisons are etched out in a manner that is commentarial, suggestive, and open to what Raimon Panikkar termed the sensus semper plenior, or ever greater meaning, rather than systematically defined or conclusive, due in part to Locklin's commitment to both poles of comparison as “teaching scripts” intended by their authors and experienced by their audiences as pedagogical, pastoral, and therapeutic in orientation. Here Locklin alternates competently among biblical, historical, systematic, comparative, political, and pastoral theologies, bearing witness to the fecundity of the root texts chosen for commentary and comparison. The third part is a single-chapter conclusion exploring the ethics of reconciliation entailed in Advaita and Pauline Christian theology taken individually and in shared spaces of meaning.
True to form with all quality comparative theological endeavors, this book invites a patient reader, one who is willing to participate in the expanding interlogue established through commentary and comparison, into conversations ancient and new. In a graduate student setting, individual chapters can be read profitably in isolation but may benefit from having the root text available as well as a supplemental introductory text for those unfamiliar with Vedanta. The omission of a subject index is inconvenient. The volume should be welcomed in all university libraries and particularly by students and scholars of comparative theology and religion, Shankara, and Paul.
