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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326

CTC503: Mission and Dialogue

Assessment Task 3: Essay: How is it possible to speak of the


uniqueness of Christ without ignoring the truths and values which may
be present amongst other religious traditions?

It is allowed to think differently, while keeping the right of communion. – St Augustine.


In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas.

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.

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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326

of contemporary theology. Without embracing theological pluralism as such,


the conciliar Church has put down a marker that signals an emphatic rejection
of the old exclusionary position claiming that there is no salvation outside the
Church. While this would seem to be a necessary minimal condition for any
kind of meaningful engagement with the religious other, it is germane to look
for clarification of the Church’s (conciliar and post-conciliar) position regarding
the uniqueness of Christ in the overall economy of salvation. Jacques Dupuis
is of the opinion that there is no single theological viewpoint on the religions in
the recent magisterium.2 He emphasises that the relevant conciliar texts
‘display a certain openness toward the other religious traditions.’3 He also feels
that the Council ‘inclines in [the] direction’ of recognising the other religions as
channels of salvation for their members. As for the post-conciliar magisterium,
‘it is marked by a certain ambiguity.’4

In what follows I intend to assess briefly the response of several Catholic


theologians to these ‘ambiguities’ in the Church’s views on religious pluralism
and to the question of the uniqueness of Christ. I begin with J. A. Di Noia and
his implied thesis of multiple religious fulfilments. Taking an (unlikely) cue from
Thomas Aquinas, I consider a more radical response to the problem of the
uniqueness of Christ from Raimon Panikkar. Combining insights from Jacques
Dupuis and Paul Knitter I then examine the view that mission may be fruitfully
re-envisioned within a pneumatological (rather than an exclusively
Christological) framework. Finally I look at the suggestion that the question of
the uniqueness of Christ is the product of a Western outlook and that the
‘solution’ to this problem lies beyond the so-called paradigms of salvation. As a
coda I will outline a (Trinitarian) dialogical model that requires both
proclamation (of uniqueness) and radical listening to ‘other Words’.

Multiple religious fulfilments

See Jaques Dupuis, Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue, Orbis
2002, pp 73ff
3
p. 73
4
p. 73

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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326

J. A. Di Noia5 appears to take issue with religious pluralism whereas it is the


relativist paradigm for understanding pluralism that comes under criticism.
According to him, only a relativist-pluralist could believe that belief in the
uniqueness of Christ would rule out the truths and values of other religions.
The relativist paradigm maintains that all religions aim at salvation. Because
this is so, claims by particular religions to have a monopoly on salvation or to
have a unique saviour figure that is definitive and normative for the others,
have to be resisted. If salvation is something like John Hick’s movement from
self-centredness to Reality-centredness, then exclusive rights to the means of
salvation would be ruled out both ex hypothesi by the relativist paradigm itself
and by the intuitive truth that Reality is incomprehensible and ineffable and
therefore beyond all religious descriptions. Di Noia’s robust response to this is
to affirm, against relativism, that there is a real pluralism of ends among the
world religions or, to rephrase this negatively, not all the religions (perhaps
only one of them) are concerned with salvation. Indeed Di Noia believes that
salvation is a distinctively Christian concern. Consequently to affirm Christ’s
unique role in salvation is not to exclude others or to ignore the ‘salvific’ truths
and ways of other traditions.

To substantiate his argument Di Noia carries out a thought experiment. Instead


of asking the question ‘Is Christ the unique mediator of salvation?’ one could
pose the alternative question ‘Is the Buddha the unique revealer of the
Dharma?’ If a Buddhist were to answer this affirmatively should this be a cause
of concern to the Christian? Christians are not primarily concerned with
Nirvana (which is not to say that Nirvana is unimportant to Christians) and
would not feel excluded or offended by the Buddhist’s belief. World religions
differ in their descriptions of what is ultimate and in their provision for the
cultivation of patterns of life to achieve these ends (the gospel and the
Dharma). The mistake of the relativist is to substitute (Christian) salvation for
the final end that is (merely) the formal requirement of any belief system that
relates in some way to human flourishing and fulfilment.
5

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

It might be assumed that a (modern) general awareness of religious pluralism


and the (rival) truth claims of religious traditions would be the required
backdrop for the development of speculative Christology that allowed for the
possibility of other incarnations of the Christ (that is, apart from Jesus of
Nazareth). The fact that the thirteenth century Aquinas was engaged in this
kind of theological exploration should be sufficient to answer the charge that
speculative Christology is an abaxial feature of radical contemporary theology.
6
See To what ultimate end? Interreligious dialogue and the future, Conference organised by
the Department of Theology, the University of Birmingham, June 24-25 2003, on
www.intercultural.dk/content.php?mainid=5&subid=205

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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326

Aquinas’ approach is to consider a ‘divine person’s’ potential for multiple


incarnations: ‘The power of a divine person is infinite and cannot be contained
by anything created. Therefore we cannot say that the divine person, in
assuming one human nature, could not assume another … for the uncreated
cannot be limited by the created. It is therefore evident that … the divine
person can assume another human nature besides the one that it did
assume.’7

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

person may formulate or conceptualize this reality.’11 Panikkar’s ‘universal


Christology’ can be seen as a version of the Logos Christology developed by
early Christian writers. The Christ of this universal Christology ‘presents the
fundamental characteristics of the mediator between divine and cosmic,
eternal and temporal …which other religions call Isvara, Tathagata or even
Jahweh, Allah, and so on.’12 It is to this Christ that the term ‘uniqueness’
applies though, obviously, the manifestation of the Christ in the lives of
particular historical saviour figures (including Jesus of Nazareth) may have the
character of a sui generis epiphany. As Panikkar remarks, ‘This universal
Christ is the fulfilment of the aspiration of India as much as Israel. Therefore,
no one should be asked to renounce his or her own religion for the sake of
accepting Christ.’13

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

has been reduced to a rather neutral relationship to an impersonal


transcendence. Another criticism – similar to that applied by Hans Urs von
Balthasar to the Christological implications of Rahner’s anthropology – is that
the universal human orientation to the cosmotheandric Mystery seems to
negate the necessity of a theologica crucis.14 A further price paid for
dismantling a Christology that aims to accommodate not only the cosmic but
also the God-Man – the being in whose human journey through life, death and
resurrection God incarnated God’s self – is the failure to bring into the dialogue
between the religions one of Christianity’s strongest features. Indeed while
Panikkar’s preference for the Mystical seems to be satisfied with the presence
of the ultimately Real in all religions, one has to ask if the different religions
have no more to offer each other than a separate coexistence and also
whether Panikkar’s concept of different incommensurable religions resists the
dynamism of dialogue that he seems to require.

Mission within a Pneumatological framework

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

See McDade, p.426.


15
David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in the Theology of Mission, Orbis,
1991, p.390.

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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326

characterised by ‘missions’. Insofar as these express themselves outside the


Godhead (ad extra), they could be expressed as God’s creative movement
(Father), God’s self-communication (Son) and God’s sanctifying-animating
mission (Spirit). It is the contention of Paul Knitter that our understanding of
the Church and its mission has been based ‘almost exclusively on the mission
of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word.’16 What is required, according to
Knitter, is that this understanding should be expanded by taking into account
the mission on the Spirit. In other words, missiology has been developed too
much within the framework of Christology and not sufficiently within the
framework of Pneumatology. The implications of a Pneumatological missiology
for interreligious dialogue have, perhaps, been more apparent to theologians
of the Orthodox tradition than to those in the West. George Khodr writes ‘The
Spirit fills everything in an economy distinct from the Son. The Word and the
Spirit are called the “two hands of the Father.” We must here affirm their
hypostatic independence and visualize in the religions an all-comprehensive
phenomenon of grace … Between these two economies [ie the Word and the
Spirit] there is reciprocity and mutual service.’17 The Spirit cannot be reduced
to the Word and must not be understood as just another mode of the Word.
Indeed it lives out its own hypostasis or identity. The reality of the Spirit,
however, is always relational. Knitter believes that such an ‘adjusted’
Trinitarian theology has startling implications for the theology of religions: ‘[a
Pneumatological missiology requires us to admit that] what the Spirit may be
doing beyond the church, within other religions, can be different from what the
incarnate Word has revealed in the church…’18

Knitter’s revised missiology enables him to demonstrate that the uniqueness of


Christ (particularly with reference to the way that the Word incarnate manifests
and bodies forth the Kingdom of God) can be brought into a dynamic
conversation with how the Spirit is realising the Kingdom through the religions.

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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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326

Interestingly Jacques Dupuis has also commented on the ‘inadequacy of


[Western theology’s] doctrine of the Spirit.’19 Observing that the Second
Vatican Council affirmed (Ad gentes, 4) that the Spirit was already operative
before the Christ event, from creation onwards, Dupuis asks ‘why after the
Christ event should the action of the Spirit be so bound to the risen humanity
of Christ as to be limited by it?’20 The main ‘problem’ (certainly for Catholics)
with these views, and particularly with some of the implications of Knitter’s
revised missiology, is that they are not obviously consonant with certain recent
pronouncements on Jesus as saviour and on other religions by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The declaration Dominus Iesus
(August 2000, signed by the future Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger)
emphatically rejects any theory of the revelation of Jesus Christ ‘which would
be complementary to that found in other religions’ (6). Concerning Jesus as
saviour, Dominus Iesus affirms that Jesus Christ ‘has a significance and value
for the human race and its history which are unique and singular, proper to him
alone, exclusive, universal and absolute’ (15). As to the relationship between
Christianity and other religions the declaration condemns the view that the
church is ‘one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other
religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantially equivalent to
her, even if these are said to be converting with the Church toward the
eschatological kingdom of God’ (21). Dupuis has pointed out21 that Dominus
Iesus fails to make any distinction between the many different shades of
meaning that ‘religious pluralism’ can bear and presumes that such pluralism
wants to place all religions on the same level. He feels that Dominus Iesus’s a
priori condemnation of pluralism is prejudicial to the Catholic theologians who
want to argue that pluralism can and should be reconciled with Christian faith.
Clearly, further dialogue on this matter is required, if only to allay the anxieties
of those who believe that the faith is being diluted by those engaged in
interreligious dialogue.

19
see J. Dupuis,The storm of the Spirit, published in The Tablet 20th October 2001.
20
Op. cit.
21

See J Dupuis: Inclusive Pluralism as a Paradigm for the Theology of Religions, on


www.theo.kuleuven.ac.be/ ogtpc/lest4/ppseniors/dupuis.pdf

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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326

Moving beyond the paradigms

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

the post-conciliar magisterium can be complemented by a suitably nuanced


version of pluralism, has proposed a Trinitarian and Pneumatic Christology as
a model for a Christian theology of religions. This model aims to dissolve the
apparent tension of the Christocentric and theocentric paradigms by insisting
that Christian theology is Christocentric by being theocentric and vice versa.
Exclusivism and (Hickian) pluralism result when all the theological emphasis is
placed on one at the expense of the other. Only an ‘inclusive pluralism’ that is
elaborated on the foundation of a Trinitarian economy will be able to balance
the decisive (definitive?) nature of the uniqueness of Christ’s mediation with
the universal action of the Spirit. It is easy to suggest that this model
represents a backward step given what has already been said about the
constraining effect of the paradigms of salvation and the need to ‘think outside
the box’. Dupuis believes that the model takes to heart what has been said
about ‘theology of dialogue’ and that he is in complete agreement with the
‘propounders of a way out of the current impasse.’25 However his own remarks
about the role of Christology (namely is a ‘high’ or ‘low’ Christology to be
endorsed when formulating the Christocentric paradigm?) suggest that the
reception of his ‘solution’ may not be as straightforward as he would hope.

A dialogical model

As a short coda to this discussion I would like to adumbrate a further model


that sees proclamation (of uniqueness of Christ) and listening by all
participants in interreligious dialogue as equally fundamental and requisite.
The point of departure for this model is the observation, already alluded to
(page 7), that the mission of the Church is an extension of the mission Dei.
God’s mission is essentially one of self-communication. According to Christian
Trinitarian belief, God’s (the Father’s) self-communication (involving a
complete self-emptying or kenosis) is received by the divine Other (the Son).
This communication ad intra is not a monologue: it takes place as a dialogical
activity and the nature of the Other and its capacity to receive the Father’s
self-revelation is fully accepted and acknowledged. Because this is so, God’s
communication with the world – God’s mission ad extra – is similarly dialogical
25
cf www.theo.kuleuven.ac.be/ ogtpc/lest4/ppseniors/dupuis.pdf

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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

quoted in J Dupuis, Christianity and Religions: Complementarity and Convergence, from


Many Mansions, ed. Catherine Cornille, Orbis, 2002, p. 64.

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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326

the right understanding and appreciation of dialogue, a dialogue between


believers of the utmost integrity and openness. The future of Christianity in a
world of faiths depends on it.

[4036 words]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jacques Dupuis, Christianity and the religions, DLT, 2001

Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and the other names: Christian mission and global
responsibility, Orbis, 1996

M. Barnes Theology and the dialogue of religions, CUP, 2002

Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism, Harper Collins, 1994

The New Dictionary of Theology, ed. J. Komonchak, Mary Collins, Dermot


Lane, Gill and Macmillan, 1987

Papers and articles

J. Dupuis, Religious plurality and the Christological debate,


www.sedos.org/english/dupuis

R. von Sinner, Ecumenical hermeneutics for a plural Christianity: Reflections


on contextuality and Catholicity,
www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2455

Relating Christ’s universality to interreligious dialogue, [Author ?],


www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=3225

J. A. Di Noia, Jesus and the world religions,


www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9506/articles/dinoia

To what ultimate end? Interreligious dialogue and the future, Conference


organised by the Department of Theology, Graduate Institute of Theology and
Religion, the University of Birmingham, Selly Oak Campus,
www.intercultural.dk/content.php?mainid=5&subid=205

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CTC 503: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326

D.Keyes, The uniqueness of Christ in an age of relativism,


www.covenantseminary.edu/resource

P. Knitter, Theocentric Christolgy,


www.theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jul1983/v40-2-article2

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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