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Document Details : Title: The Gita's 'Equal Eye' Subtitle: Resourcing a Christian Concept of Neighbor without Limit Author(s): SHEVELAND, John N. Journal: Louvain Studies Volume: 32 Issue: 4 Date: 2007 Pages: 408-421 DOI: 10.2143/LS.32.4.2035333 Abstract : Our current historical moment is replete with examples of human fragmentation, alienation, and violence. In this climate, the second love command – and interreligious cognates – assume an especially prophetic role in and between human communities. Interreligious comparison reveals that Christians stand to benefit from a deep intellectual and spiritual engagement with the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text. This benefit consists in an interreligious attestation of the principle of solidarity which listening Christians will recognize as cognate with their own principle of solidarity. In both Christian and Hindu contexts, solidarity takes shape as an affective human response valuing the other and challenging the very conception of the other as ‘other’. This prophetic critique is grounded in Christian and Hindu conceptions of the ontological participation of all persons in, respectively, Christ and Brahman, and in the power of theological comparison to disclose the truths of one’s home tradition. |
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