The results from a lifetime of study, reflection and experience in both Europe and Asia is this comprehensive examination of Christian theological understandings of world religious pluralism.

The results from a lifetime of study, reflection and experience in both Europe and Asia is this comprehensive examination of Christian theological understandings of world religious pluralism. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

A new model of Christian theology, the 'pluralistic' model, is taking shape, moving beyond the traditional models of exclusivism (Christianity as the only true religion) and inclusivism (Christianity as the best religion) toward a view that recognizes the possibility of many valid religions. In this volume, a widely representative group of eminent Christian theologians - Protestant and Catholic, male and female, from East and West, First and Third Worlds - explores genuinely new attitudes toward other believers and traditions, expanding and refining the discussion and debate over pluralistic theology. Contributors are: Gordon D. Kaufman, John Hick, Langdon Gilkey, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Stanley J. Samartha, Raimundo Panikkar, Seiichi Yagi, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Marjorie Jewitt Suchocki, Aloysius Pieris, Tom F. Driver, and Paul F. Knitter.

Can Christians learn from other religions? This book offers a fascinating account of the nature, role, and purposes of religious diversity within God's providential plan.

Harold Netland traces the emergence of the pluralistic ethos that challenges Christian faith and mission, interacting heavily with philosopher John Hick and providing a framework for developing a comprehensive evangelical theology of religions.

Christian theologians have for some decades affirmed that they have no monopoly on encounters with God or ultimate reality and that other religions also have access to religious truth and transformation. If that is the case, the time has come for Christians not only to learn about but also from their religious neighbors. Circling the Elephant affirms that the best way to be truly open to the mystery of the infinite is to move away from defensive postures of religious isolationism and self-sufficiency and to move, in vulnerability and openness, toward the mystery of the neighbor. Employing the ancient Indian allegory of the elephant and blind(folded) men, John J. Thatamanil argues for the integration of three often-separated theological projects: theologies of religious diversity (the work of accounting for why there are so many different understandings of the elephant), comparative theology (the venture of walking over to a different side of the elephant), and constructive theology (the endeavor of re-describing the elephant in light of the other two tasks). Circling the Elephant also offers an analysis of why we have fallen short in the past. Interreligious learning has been obstructed by problematic ideas about “religion” and “religions,” Thatamanil argues, while also pointing out the troubling resonances between reified notions of “religion” and “race.” He contests these notions and offers a new theory of the religious that makes interreligious learning both possible and desirable. Christians have much to learn from their religious neighbors, even about such central features of Christian theology as Christ and the Trinity. This book envisions religious diversity as a promise, not a problem, and proposes a new theology of religious diversity that opens the door to robust interreligious learning and Christian transformation through encountering the other.

In this incisive and important volume, Jacques Dupuis offers new insights on the most important issue facing Christian theology today -- giving an account of Christian faith as Christians go more deeply along the road of dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religious traditions. His task is to square a dogmatic circle. How does one do justice to the Gospel claim that Jesus the Christ is the final and universal savior of all humankind in every age, while also doing justice to the experience that truth, grace, holiness, and power are experienced in other religious traditions? In the first six chapters Dupuis reviews the history of the Western Christian tradition's teaching on other religious Ways through the breakthrough at Vatican Council II. In chapters 7 and 8 he reviews the critical issues of uniqueness of Christ and Christian proposals to account for the mediation of salvation in other religious Ways. He discusses also the relationship between the Reign of God, the Church, and the Religions. In chapter 9 he explores the nature and role of dialogue in a pluralistic society. In chapter 10 offers sage reflections on interreligious prayer.