Christian and Islamic Theology of Religions

A Critical Appraisal

Esra Akay Dag

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351785730
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

Theologians have had to increasingly engage with beliefs and practises outside of their own traditions. The resultant "theology of religions" is, however, often formulated in isolation from the religions they are describing. This book provides a comparison of the development of theology of religions in Western Christianity and its application in anIslamic context. It also shows the parallels between some specific forms of theology of religions, i.e. exclusivism, inclusivism or pluralism, in both Islamic and Christian traditions.

The arguments of Christian and Muslim theologians, including the specific contributions of Rowan Williams and Jerusha Lamptey, are examined in order to reveal the interconnections and contradictions of their pluralist, exclusivist and inclusivist approaches. This provides a rounded picture of Christian-Muslim understanding of religious others and prepares the ground for a stronger and more sophisticated Islamic theology of religions.

This is vital reading for those studying theology of religions, comparative theology and interfaith relations.

1 Christian theology of religions

Introduction

Religious pluralism has been a crucial case in the modern world. As a result of their experiences of religious pluralism, Western Christians have begun to ask fundamental questions to believers of non-Christian religions that they did not ask so frequently and with such urgency as in the past. Locating Christianity among world religions and determining whether members of non-Christian religions would be saved or not through these religions and concerns such as these have urged Christians to respond to other religions. The responses to religious pluralism have been varied in the Christian world. From the late nineteenth century, Christian scholars have questioned the status of non-Christian religions within both academic and institutional circles. On the one hand, Christians continued missionary work; on the other hand, scholars of history of religions and comparative religion and theology have engaged in deep discussion of the Christian tradition.¹ Significantly, the discussion in the Christian tradition has given rise to a smaller, more specific subtopic, namely theology of religions within Christian theology.

In 1983, with the publication of Christians and Religious Pluralism, Alan Race offered a threefold typology, exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism, concerning the Christian approach to non-Christian religions. Since then Race’s typology has produced widespread discussion and debate. In this chapter I take Race’s typology as a starting point and will present different theologies of religions in each section. Race’s classification does not address post-liberal theology of religions;² however, I will present post-liberal theology after discussing Race’s typology since I think post-liberal theology of religions occupies an important place in the current discussion in the area of Christian theology of religions. After presenting each section of the typology and considering post-liberal theology, I will evaluate Race’s classification. While evaluating Race’s typology I will present comparative theology’s challenge to theology of religions with special attention to Francis Clooney and argue that if theology of religions works in conjunction with comparative theology, it could provide a better understanding of other religions. The chapter then offers a conclusion.

In current discussion on Christian theology of religions, there has been a movement from an exclusivist position toward a particularist position. In fact, pluralist and particularist positions occupy the central place in current discussion. For example Paul Hedges in Controversies in Interreligious Dialogue and the Theology of Religions takes pluralist and particularist positions as the primary stances to be addressed.³ Although the exclusivist position introduced mainly by Karl Barth and early twentieth-century theologians is still stronger in some Christian churches, such as Evangelical and Fundamentalist ones,⁴ post-liberal theology of religions has carried early exclusivist theology of religions into another dimension. Despite its popularity in some Churches, the early-formed exclusivist position does not fully take up a significant intellectual place in Christian responses to religious pluralism. For this reason, in this chapter I will give less attention to the exclusivist position than other positions. I will present major influential theologians for each type of theology of religions, that is, Karl Barth for exclusivism, Karl Rahner for inclusivism, John Hick for pluralism and George Lindbeck for post-liberal theology of religions. However, I will also give special attention to Paul Knitter’s pluralist theology of religions as his theology of religions takes it roots from ‘liberation theology’, which in some ways challenges a standard pluralistic position. The next section explores exclusivist theology of religions.

1 Exclusivism

The exclusivist position has been the main theological option for the Christian world for many centuries. In Christians and Religious Pluralism, Race opens the section on exclusivism with two biblical texts, which are the sources of the exclusivist paradigm.⁵ These texts are Act 4.12: ‘And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved’ and John 14.6: ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.’ As can be understood from these two texts, the main argument of exclusivism is that salvation is only possible in Jesus Christ. To emphasise the point, exclusivist theology is shaped by two doctrines for Protestantism and three doctrines for Catholicism. The first doctrine is that salvation comes from Christ alone (solus Christus). According to this argument, Christ came into the world to bring salvation. The second doctrine is that salvation is only available through explicit faith in Christ that comes from the hearing the Gospel preached (fides ex auditu), from repentance, baptism and embracing of new life in Christ. The third doctrine, which is used primarily by Catholic theologians, is that the Church must be the means of salvation since Christ is the only cause to salvation (extra ecclesiam nulla salus).⁶

Indeed, exclusivist theologians develop their own theology according to these doctrines, though their emphasis may differ. Race summarises exclusivism as ‘it counts the revelation in Jesus as the sole criterion by which all religions, including Christianity, can be understood and evaluated.’⁷ It is necessary to offer an explanation of some exclusivist theologians’ theories to see how they develop these doctrines. In this respect, I will focus on Barth’s theology in detail and will also touch on some other theologians’ theories.

1.1 Barth’s theology of religions

Karl Barth has been considered one of the prominent exclusivist theologians of the twentieth century. As a Protestant (Swiss Reformed) theologian, Barth develops his own theology of religions in the light of the first two doctrines previously mentioned; salvation is only possible by explicit faith (second doctrine) in Christ (first doctrine).

Barth develops exclusivist theology by taking revelation as the starting point. For him revelation of God in Jesus Christ, as contained in the Holy Scripture, is where theology starts and finishes. Barth’s theology of religions consists of two steps; firstly religion(s) is unbelief, and secondly Christianity is the only true religion. He comes to this conclusion through his understanding of revelation. For Barth, we can only know God by revelation, and any attempt to know God other than via God’s revelation is an activity of unbelief. He says that ‘religion is unbelief, it is a concern, indeed, we must say that it is the one great concern, of godless man.’⁸ From this viewpoint, religion is an attempt by humans to know about God. In other words, religion is an attempt to replace God’s revelation with a human manufacture, thus religion is a human creation, not God’s divine creation.⁹

When Barth developed the idea of religion as unbelief, he set out two elements in which the necessity of revelation unmistakably became clear. The first element according to Barth is that only God can make God known; in essence, human beings can only know God if God tells them.

Revelation is God’s self-offering and self-manifestation. Revelation encounters man on the presupposition and in conformation of the fact that man’s attempt to know God from his own standpoint are wholly and entirely futile; not because of any necessity in principle, but because of a practical necessity of fact. In revelation God tells man that he is God, and that such he is his Lord. In telling him this, revelation tells him something utterly new, something which apart from revelation he does not know and cannot tell either himself or others.¹⁰

The second element is related to the first element: that God gives revelation by His grace. Barth states that ‘as self-manifestation and self-offering of God, revelation is the act by which in grace He reconciles man to Himself by grace.’¹¹ Thus according to Barth’s theology of religions, there are two foundations of salvation. The first is that salvation is only through revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The second foundation is that salvation is only possible by the grace of God.

Turning to Barth’s formulation that religion is unbelief, he is not only speaking about Christianity but about all religions of the world. Then the question should be asked, what makes Christianity special to other world religions? For Barth, Christianity is not special because of its own inward worthiness; however, the distinct feature of Christianity comes from the revelation of God and salvation offered only in Christ. Thanks to Jesus Christ, on the one hand, Christianity knows that it is a false and idolatry religion; on the other hand, it knows that it is saved through Jesus Christ. Thus, Barth separates revelation from religion. Despite this separation between revelation and religion, he still argues for the superiority of Christianity over non-Christian religions. He states that

[a]t the end of road we have to tread there is, of course, the promise to those who accept God’s judgment, who let themselves be led beyond their belief. There is faith in this promise, and, in this faith, the presence and the reality of grace of God, which, of course, differentiates our religion, the Christian, from all others as true religion.¹²

As a result Barth’s perception of revelation leads him to confirm the superiority of Protestant Reformed Christianity over non-Christian religions. The reason Christianity is superior to other religions is because it has the only authentic revelation through which people would be saved. The question of whether non-Christian religions contain true elements is irrelevant since the only criteria for Barth is revelation. For example, when he compares Eastern religions’ teaching, such as Yodoism of Japan (Yodo Shin-shu Buddhism) and the Bhakti form of Hinduism, with Christianity he contends that

[i]ndeed, why should we not say it of a whole range of other religions, for which grace in different names and contexts is not a wholly foreign entity. Only one thing is really decisive for the distinction of truth and error. And we call the existence of Yodoism a providential disposition because with what is relatively the greatest possible force it makes it so clear that only one thing is decisive. That one thing is the name of Jesus Christ…. The truth of the Christian religion is in fact enclosed in the one name of Jesus Christ and nothing else.¹³

To summarise, Barth’s position towards non-Christian religions is an example of exclusivism. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Christian theology of religions
• 2 Rowan Williams’s theology of religions
• 3 Islamic theology of religions
• 4 Jerusha Lamptey’s theology of religions
• 5 Theology of religions reassessed
• Conclusion
• Index