Towards a World Theology...

Towards a World Theology: Faith and the Comparative History of Religion (Maryknowll: Orbis Press, 1981): [^61]: [^19] Ibid., [^61]: [^20] Ibid., [^66]: [^21] Mircea Eliade ( 1907-1986 ) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher. He was a professor at the University of Chicago . As a scholar of religion, he traced the primordial myths and symbols common to different cultures and pointed out the importance of hierophanies (manifestations of the sacred in everyday life).

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade ) [^22] Tracy, David. Dialogue with the Other: The Inter-religious Dialogue. (Louvain: Peeters Press, 1990): 52-[^57]: [^23] Ibid., [^53]: [^24] Ibid., 52-[^57]: [^25] Ibid., 56-[^58]: [^26] Ninian Smart (1927-2001) was classically trained at Oxford University in languages, history, and philosophy.

But as a scholar of religion that he made his lasting international mark, notably at (among the many other universities at which he taught) the University of Lancaster, in the UK, and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

He played a pivotal role in helping to establish thriving programs in the academic study of religion--a role that had much to do with his many writings on the proper method for conducting the public study of religion, as well as his well-known cross-cultural research on many of the world's religions. Major works: Worldviews: Cross-cultural Explorations of Human Beliefs (1982) and Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World's Beliefs (1996).

(Source: http://www.as.ua.edu/rel/aboutrelbiosmart.html ) [^27] Smart, Ninian. “The Philosophy of Worldviews, or the Philosophy of Religion Transferred,” in Religious Pluralism and Truth: Essays on Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion. Thomas Dean, editor. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995): 17-[^31]: [^28] Ibid., [^30]: [^29] Stephen Kaplan is a professor of Indian and s at Manhattan College in Bronx.

Kaplan has published articles in a number of edited volumes and journals such as Philosophy East and West, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Journal of Asian Philosophy, Zygon, Journal of Religious Pluralism, and Eastern Buddhist and another book on Indian and comparative philosophy. (Source: http://www.manhattan.edu/academics/arts/rels/faculty/stephen.kaplan.shtml ) [^30] Kaplan, Stephen.