Description

From T.S. Eliot to Bede Griffiths, many a Christian thinker has found in the Bhagavad Gita a source of genuine spiritual insight and inspiration. As Christians continue to explore the text in a spirit of dialogue, new points of theological interest are discovered and new insights gained into the meaning and importance of the text for Christian thought and practice. In this collection of Christian commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, Christian theologians and scholars of Hinduism offer a variety of different perspectives on the text using a diversity of commentarial approaches and styles, from close textual analysis and exegetical comparison to a more general theological reflection on the text, from comparison of the Gita with a particular Christian classic to a focus on specific religious categories such as detachment, incarnation and eschatology. While some contributions focus mainly on the similarities between Christian thought and the Gita, others also engage differences in a mutually critical and constructive way. Each of these commentaries thus offers a distinctive lens through which Christians may read the Bhagavad Gita, and points to the endless possibility and promise of inter-religious hermeneutics, or the religious reading of a sacred text from another religious tradition.