Hugh Nicholson is Assistant Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago. He has published on a wide range of topics in the study of theology and religion, including method in comparative theology, the relation between theology and the study of religion, and selected topics in classical Indian philosophy.

This book is going to disrupt (I expect) and redirect (I hope) the contemporary, often contorted, discussion on how scholars and/or believers are to deal with religious diversity. In a carefully crafted, broadly informed argument, Nicholson sounds his warning that whether one is a scholar of religious studies or a comparative theologian, to neglect the political element in all religious identities is to imperil not only oneself but the religious other. Nicholson's theoretical case is made all the more convincing when he applies it to a creative and exciting analysis of Rudolf Otto's classic Mysticism East and West. This book will be much talked about. (I'm sure).

• Introduction ; Part I: Theology and the Political ; 1. The Reunification of Theology and Comparison in the New Comparative Theology ; 2. The Modern Quest to Depoliticize Theology ; 3. From Apologetics to Comparison: Towards a Dialectical Model of Comparative Theology ; Part II: Mysticism East and West Revisited ; 4. Mysticism East and West as Christian Apologetic ; 5. God and the God beyond God in Eckhart and IaSkara ; 6. From Acosmism to Dialectic: IaSkara and Eckhart on the Ontological Status of the Phenomenal World ; 7. Liberative Knowledge as "Living without a Why" ; Conclusion

Hugh Nicholson is Assistant Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago. He has published on a wide range of topics in the study of theology and religion, including method in comparative theology, the relation between theology and the study of religion, and selected topics in classical Indian philosophy.

This book is going to disrupt (I expect) and redirect (I hope) the contemporary, often contorted, discussion on how scholars and/or believers are to deal with religious diversity. In a carefully crafted, broadly informed argument, Nicholson sounds his warning that whether one is a scholar of religious studies or a comparative theologian, to neglect the political element in all religious identities is to imperil not only oneself but the religious other. Nicholson's theoretical case is made all the more convincing when he applies it to a creative and exciting analysis of Rudolf Otto's classic Mysticism East and West. This book will be much talked about. (I'm sure).

• Introduction ; Part I: Theology and the Political ; 1. The Reunification of Theology and Comparison in the New Comparative Theology ; 2. The Modern Quest to Depoliticize Theology ; 3. From Apologetics to Comparison: Towards a Dialectical Model of Comparative Theology ; Part II: Mysticism East and West Revisited ; 4. Mysticism East and West as Christian Apologetic ; 5. God and the God beyond God in Eckhart and IaSkara ; 6. From Acosmism to Dialectic: IaSkara and Eckhart on the Ontological Status of the Phenomenal World ; 7. Liberative Knowledge as "Living without a Why" ; Conclusion

Hugh Nicholson is Assistant Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago. He has published on a wide range of topics in the study of theology and religion, including method in comparative theology, the relation between theology and the study of religion, and selected topics in classical Indian philosophy.

This book is going to disrupt (I expect) and redirect (I hope) the contemporary, often contorted, discussion on how scholars and/or believers are to deal with religious diversity. In a carefully crafted, broadly informed argument, Nicholson sounds his warning that whether one is a scholar of religious studies or a comparative theologian, to neglect the political element in all religious identities is to imperil not only oneself but the religious other. Nicholson's theoretical case is made all the more convincing when he applies it to a creative and exciting analysis of Rudolf Otto's classic Mysticism East and West. This book will be much talked about. (I'm sure).

• Introduction ; Part I: Theology and the Political ; 1. The Reunification of Theology and Comparison in the New Comparative Theology ; 2. The Modern Quest to Depoliticize Theology ; 3. From Apologetics to Comparison: Towards a Dialectical Model of Comparative Theology ; Part II: Mysticism East and West Revisited ; 4. Mysticism East and West as Christian Apologetic ; 5. God and the God beyond God in Eckhart and IaSkara ; 6. From Acosmism to Dialectic: IaSkara and Eckhart on the Ontological Status of the Phenomenal World ; 7. Liberative Knowledge as "Living without a Why" ; Conclusion