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The world is the theatre in which the post-conciliar Church must find its identity
and fulfil its vocation. John McDade has suggested that, after Gaudium et
Spes, the Church can no longer be ‘set apart from the world within an
institutional Christendom’; rather it must ‘[enter] into profound solidarity with
the experiences of human society, and [take] humanity seriously in the
unfolding of history.’1 A Church that is rethinking its identity will also want to re-
evaluate its theology. Clearly if there are features of the post-conciliar world
that are salient and defining, then these will provide important foci and points
of departure for contemporary theological engagement. There is a wide
consensus that there are two opposing characteristics that distinguish today’s
world: globalisation and pluralism. Globalisation refers to the increasing
economic integration and interdependence of countries. While the process has
encouraged people to think more globally and to consider the impact of local
decisions and needs upon the planet as a whole, it has also created new
dependencies and injustices and has established new forms of domination. If
globalisation emphasises integration, pluralism affirms the essential diversity
of what is brought together. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of
people’s religious beliefs. As a result there is a growing tendency among
theologians to accept (some form of) pluralism, not just as an inalienable
characteristic of contemporary society and thought, but as an ineradicable trait
1
John McDade, Catholic Theology in the Post-Conciliar Period, from Modern Catholicism:
Vatican II and After, ed. Adrian Hastings, SPCK 1991, p. 422.
1
CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326
See Jaques Dupuis, Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue, Orbis
2002, pp 73ff
3
p. 73
4
p. 73
2
CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326
See J. A. Di Noia, Jesus and the World Religions from First Things 54 (June/July 1995), pp
24-28. Available on www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9506/articles/dinoia
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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326
This position shares more than a family resemblance with Mark Heim’s
hypothesis of multiple religious ends. Heim has distanced himself from the
established paradigms (exclusivist, inclusivist and pluralist) mainly on account
of their presumption of a single religious fulfilment. He argues that his
hypothesis of multiple real different religious fulfilments corresponds with the
findings of empirical studies and gives greater acknowledgement to the
distinctive and precious qualities of the religions. Interestingly the hypothesis is
able to legitimise exclusive religious claims since these are claims to be
unique paths to distinct ends. The main problem with Heim’s hypothesis and
with Di Noia’s defence of (qualified) exclusivism is the metaphysical
implications of the existence of so many ends and possible fulfilments. Is the
kind of eschatological scenario that Heim envisages (an open set of varied
religious states available for realisation in this life and beyond) actually
compatible with the nature of God as understood in the orthodox tradition?
Jacques Dupuis has also observed that this hypothesis undermines the belief
in a single human nature and a single ultimate fulfilment for that nature.6 A
further criticism would be that, if there is indeed a hierarchy of fulfilments – and
this seems to be implied by Heim’s observations about the data of the study of
religions – and if, among these ends, salvation seems to enjoy the status of a
‘master fulfilment’, then this approach represents a new form of exclusivism,
kinder than the extra ecclesiam nulla salus variety, but less kind than
inclusivism since many do not have the opportunity or option to be included.
A universal Christology
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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326
This notion of the possibility of several incarnations of the Christ has been
developed by the European-Asian Catholic theologian, Raimon Panikkar
(b.1918), into a fully fledged ‘universal Christology’ that is able to
accommodate the various salvific ‘incarnations’ to be found in other religions.
Panikkar is clearly motivated by the desire to take seriously the claims to
universality that are necessarily made by other religions. He would also like to
move beyond the established paradigms of salvation (exclusivism, inclusivism
and pluralism) to a relationship of the religions in ‘radical relativity’. In the first
edition of his first book on the theology of religions, The Unknown Christ of
Hinduism,8 Panikkar moved beyond the received wisdom of the fulfilment
theory by suggesting that the ‘the living presence of Christ in Hinduism’ was
more than an implicit subjective experience but an ‘objective and social
religious phenomenon.’9 Furthermore he was insistent that the Christ should
not be regarded as only the end point or ontological goal of the religions but
also as their source and beginning. Christ ‘does not belong to Christianity, he
only belongs to God, though in two different levels.’10 In the second, 1981,
edition of the same book, Panikkar unpacks further his intuition regarding the
Christic principle shared among the religions and speaks of an ‘unknown
reality’, discovered in the heart of Hinduism, that Christians refer to as ‘Christ.’
He elaborates this by stating that ‘the Christ of whom this book speaks is the
living and loving reality of the truly believing Christian in whatever form the
7
ST 3, q.3. a.7
8
R. Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hunduism, DLT, 1964)
9
Dupuis, Op. cit. p. 56
10
Panikkar, pp 20-21
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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326
Parallel with his distinction between the universal Christ and the particular
manifestations or incarnations of the Christ in saviour figures is Panikkar’s
distinction between faith and belief. Faith is a constitutive feature of the human
person; faith is oriented to the ‘cosmotheandric reality’ than can be
experienced by all religious believers. Beliefs, on the other hand, refer to the
historically conditioned myths and revelations that may be vehicles for the
expression of faith. Divergence (or even incompatibility) of beliefs should not
be allowed to undermine interreligious dialogue.
While Panikkar needs be commended for his irenic attitude of openness to the
religions and for what may be termed his inspiring ‘cosmic confidence’ in the
universally available ultimate tri-unity of Reality, his theology of the religions
raises a number of questions. One difficulty, voiced by Dupuis, concerns
Panikkar’s reduction of the Jesus-myth to an object of (Panikkarian) belief. It
would be a misrepresentation of Christian belief to say that Jesus Christ is not
an object of (Panikkarian) faith. Furthermore it appears that the content of faith
11
R. Panniker, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Towards and Ecumenical Christophany, DLT
1981, pp 19-20
12
R Panikkar, The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, Maryknoll, NY Orbis, 1973,
p.54
13
Panikkar, 1981, p. 54
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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326
So far the concepts of multiple ends and the cosmotheandric principle have
enabled two Catholic theologians to affirm both the uniqueness of Christ and
the importance of religious truths and values present in other faith traditions. A
different approach to this issue has been developed by means of some
refocusing in recent missiology. The task of the Church should be situated
within the broader missio Dei. David Bosch writes ‘In the new image mission is
not primarily an activity of the Church, but an attribute of God … Mission is
thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the Church is viewed as
an instrument for that mission … To participate in mission is to participate in
the movement of God’s love towards people, since God is a fountain of
sending love …’15 This instrumental role of the Church can only be understood
against the background of the traditional Trinitarian understanding of God.
According to this understanding, the triune God experienced through Jesus is
14
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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326
16
Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and the other names: Christian mission and global responsibility, Orbis
1996, p.112.
17
George Khodr, An Orthodox perspective on interreligious dialogue, Current Dialogue 19: 25-
27.
18
Knitter, p. 113
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19
see J. Dupuis,The storm of the Spirit, published in The Tablet 20th October 2001.
20
Op. cit.
21
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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326
Up till now the question of the uniqueness of Christ has been observed though
the lens of mainly Western philosophical and theological presuppositions
(Panikkar himself draws his conclusions about reality with the aid of existential
and personalistic Western European philosophy and Catholic (neo-)Thomist
theology). Several theologians have remarked, however, that the whole issue
of the ‘problem of religious pluralism for Christians’ betrays a very Western
problematic. Felix Wilfred has commented that ‘The debate about [religious
pluralism] is mainly a debate of Western factions – the dogmatics, and the
reactionary liberals who try to relativize the claim of uniqueness … Seen from
an Indian perspective … the need to use language of uniqueness does not
arise.’22 The established (Western) paradigms of salvation are not universally
appreciated by Eastern (Asian) Christians. Michael Amaladoss has recently
written that ‘[for the Asian Christian] religions are mutually interconnected. That
interconnection is not given, it can only be realized in history and through
dialogue …at the basis of pluralism is a community permitted by God, but
which human beings must actualize through history.’23 The need to move
beyond paradigms has been voiced by several (Western) theologians24 and
David Tracy has expressed the need for a ‘theology of dialogue’ (as opposed
to a ‘theology for dialogue’) that can move from the mutual acceptance of
otherness and asymmetry to the establishment of communality. Jacques
Dupuis, believing that a theology of religions must be a theology of religious
pluralism and also anxious to show that the implied inclusivism endorsed by
22
Felix Wilfred, Some tentative reflections on the language of Christian uniqueness, Pro
Dialogo Bulletin 85-86 (1994/1), 40-57.
23
Michael Amaladoss, Théologie et vie chrétienne en Asie. Une recherché d’ientité in J. –M.
Sevrin – A Haquin (eds), La théologie entre deux siècles. Publications de la Faculté de
Théologie, Louvain-la-Neuve, 2002, 163-179.
24
Michael Barnes is concerned that the ‘paradigm approach’ tends mainly to serve the
interests of the John Hick school of pluralism. While there are clearly family resemblances
between the religions, Barnes believes that the Hickian pluralist’s attempt to ‘[force] awkwardly
unstable religious realities into a Procrustean bed of untrammelled homogeneity’ is
problematic. See Michael Barnes, Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, Cambridge
University Press 2002.
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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326
A dialogical model
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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326
in the sense that the fullness of God is shared with human beings in
accordance with their (natural, historically and culturally conditioned) capacity
to receive it. Christians will want to claim that Jesus’ reception of revelation is
decisive for them and others because his (divine) capacity for kenosis was
such as to make the fullness of God utterly transparent even when refracted
through human nature. But the essential point is that, if Christians believe that
God has entered into dialogue with people, they too must enter into a God-like
dialogue with others, ‘God-like’ in the sense that it will involve, simultaneously,
a complete giving away of what they are and know (kenosis) and an
extraordinary receptiveness to what the other has been given to offer. This
Christian giving away will include an honest but nuanced proclamation of the
uniqueness of Christ – this is, after all, the distinctive Christian truth that a
genuine openness would not seek to suppress. However Christian respect for
the other (another hearer of the Word) should imply that proclamations should
not be regarded as definitive in the sense of being beyond revision.
Commenting on the importance of in-depth dialogue for fruitful interreligious
exchange, the mystic Hindu-Christian Henri Le Saux observed that ‘… each
partner in dialogue must try to make his own … the intuition and experience of
the other, to personalize it in his own depth, beyond his own ideas … For a
fruitful dialogue it is necessary that I reach … in the very depth of myself to the
experience of my brother … so that my brother can recognize in me his own
experience of his own depth.’26 As a possible solution to the ambiguities (page
2) and tensions in the conciliar and post-conciliar statements about religious
pluralism and the role of dialogue and proclamation, this model proposes that
mission can best be understood as dialogue. Seeking the Kingdom in today’s
religiously plural and globally threatened world can no longer be regarded as a
mono-religious activity.
While this brief survey indicates that it is possible for theologians to speak of
the uniqueness of Christ and affirm the values of other traditions as long as the
meanings of ‘unique’ and ‘Christ’ are regarded as equivocal, the non-
negotiable element in the Church’s response to religious pluralism should be
26
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[4036 words]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and the other names: Christian mission and global
responsibility, Orbis, 1996
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P. Phan, If Jews are saved by their eternal covenant, how are Christians to
understand Jesus as universal Saviour?
www.bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-elements/sites/partners/ccjr/phan03
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