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This chapter examines the relationship between contemporary comparative theology and the theology of religions in light of their common genealogy in the comparative theology in the nineteenth-century. The latter typically combines sincere claims of scientific objectivity and impartiality with blatantly tendentious and inaccurate characterizations of non-Christian religions. A familiarity with this older comparative theology contains an implicit warning against the facile assumption that the current impasse in the theology of religions can be overcome simply by supplementing a priori theological reflection with an empirical study of other religions. More constructively, this chapter argues that the reunification of theology and comparison in the new comparative theology negates the oppositional contrast between the comparative study of religion and theology by which the former discipline has often legitimated itself as an objective, “scientific” discipline. This tendency of scholars of religion to project a theological other has paradoxically blinded the discipline of comparative religion to its own normative presuppositions.

This chapter examines the thought of Hendrik Kraemer, a Dutch neo-orthodox theologian, well-versed in Islam, who had served as a missionary to Indonesia. Kraemer was commissioned by the International Missionary Council (IMC) to write a definitive Christian theology regarding other world religions, to be discussed at the IMC’s great international missionary conference in Tambaram, near Madras, India, in 1938. Kraemer’s book, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (1938), insisted that there is no salvation to be found outside of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. For the next half-century, Kraemer’s work was the starting point for ongoing debates over a Christian theology of religion and interfaith dialogue. Plantinga argues that a proper Christian view of non-Christian religions must give more recognition of continuity in God’s revelation, but it does well to insist, as Kraemer did, on salvation only through God alone, in Jesus Christ.

This chapter contends that the dialogue between Catholics and Buddhists, more than any of the other interreligious dialogues in which Catholics are involved, “drives us off our theological road map of religions.” That road map, developed most extensively and authoritatively by John Paul II, may be described as an inclusive theology of religions. On the one hand, it avoids exclusivism, in that it rejects the claim that there is no salvation outside the church. On the other hand, it avoids relativism, in that it affirms the centrality of Christ and the universality of his saving grace made available in the church through the work of the Holy Spirit. That said, it is argued that even though the Catholic Church’s inclusive theology of religions is “adequate to the demands of Christian orthodoxy,” it is not that helpful in interreligious dialogue, at least in dialogue with Buddhists. The problem with the church’s current theology of religions is twofold. First, the inclusive approach tends to domesticate differences, making it very difficult to accept differences as differences and the otherness of the other as the other. Second, it is sectarian in that it assumes ultimately that everyone should be converted to the Catholic Church. The pastoral purpose of interreligious dialogue is neither conversion nor the confirmation of our theological presuppositions about other religious believers; its purpose is to establish bonds of solidarity with other religious communities.

This chapter presents comments on the previous chapter’s discussion. This chapter states and opinion that sharply disagrees with the opinion given in the previous chapter based on criticisms of the inclusive theology of religions but also on an understanding of the purpose of interreligious dialogue. The chapter explains that it is incorrect to measure the adequacy of a theology of religions in terms of how adequately it serves the practice of interreligious dialogue. This chapter states that Buddhists are at a distinct disadvantage in dialogue with Catholics because few Buddhists are schooled in Christian doctrine. Moreover, according to the chapter, Catholic Christianity has enjoyed great influence in the West while Buddhism has been challenged even in its own homeland. The great diversity of Buddhist traditions poses additional challenges to a dialogue with Catholicism. The chapter suggests several areas for dialogue, including the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and shared karma.

“Theology of religions” is a relatively new term that has to do with noting the diversity among the religions of the world and developing conceptual tools for relating to and understanding that diversity. Critical to an adequate theology of religions is that it be knowledgeable about and conversant with the great Asian wisdom traditions; merely raising one's gaze to include other monotheisms does not constitute serious encounter with religious diversity. Feminist theology is a movement that cuts across tradition lines, influences all religious traditions, and is relevant to all of them. Discussing feminist theology as theology of religions clearly presents problems. Three intertwined issues are involved: the current lack of religious diversity in most feminist theological forums, the lack of any theology of religious diversity in most feminist theology, and the relative lack of feminist participation in most formats for interreligious exchange.

This chapter provides an overview of feminist contributions to theology of religions, including those of Ruether, Suchocki, Plaskow, McCarthy, King, Gross, Hill Fletcher, Kwok, and McGarvey. It aims to identify various elements of these feminist approaches that are consistent with the conception of human difference drawn from Muslim women interpreters of the Qurʾān. This chapter probes the ways various feminist theologians have attempted to extend their methods, sources, and norms to the topic of religious diversity, and it critically co-opts aspects of their approaches, including their critiques of theology of religions and the typology of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism, and their endeavor to account for and value religious sameness and religious difference without resorting to hierarchical evaluation.

Although it is easy to suppose that everyone knows what is meant by “religion,” closer examination indicates that the concept is more complicated. In some ways, the notion of religion is closely related to that of culture, although the two are not identical. Therefore, developing an adequate theology of religions involves not only responsible treatment of the biblical and theological themes but also adequate understanding of the lived realities of human communities to which the concepts of culture and religion refer. This chapter explores some of the issues involved in understanding the concept of religion.

It is the doctrine of the Trinity that most sharply distinguishes Christian theology from all other views of reality, and it has been misunderstanding and misuse of this doctrine that have produced significant problems in theologies of religions. The chapter provides an outline of the central teaching on the doctrine of the Trinity and then examines ways in which recent scholars such as Amos Yong, Jacques Dupuis, Paul Knitter, Miroslav Volf, and others have misconstrued aspects of the doctrine in their theologies of religions.

James Farwell begins by challenging the now-common classification of Barth’s theology of religions as “exclusivism,” calling his position rather a “kerygmatically generated inverse pluralism.” Arguing that Barth’s project is a rejection of any theology of religions, Farwell goes on to engage Barth as a partner in comparative theology, particularly in conversation with the Zen teacher Dōgen, who founded the Soto Zen school of Japanese Buddhism. Despite Barth’s own quick rejection of Zen Buddhism as a religion that seeks salvation in human striving, Farwell finds in Dōgen a critique of religion very similar to Barth’s own. That surprising convergence is itself a worthwhile fruit of comparative theological study. Coupled with this critique, however, Dōgen offers an illuminating nondualism that makes no ultimate distinction between practice and realization, between the path and the goal of “salvation.” This offers a new insight that may helpfully temper Barth’s own emphasis on God’s revealing Word as over against human effort.

As Edwards's work is becoming better known, more contemporary theologians are beginning to use parts of his theological project to assist their own. Some, such as H. Richard Niebuhr in the mid-twentieth century, are indebted to Edwards for their overall theological vision. The same is true of pastor-scholar John Piper. This chapter highlights a few of the major areas in which Edwards has influenced contemporary theology. While his theocentrism and historical approach to theology have had far-ranging impact, his work continues to inspire ethics and aesthetics—or more specifically, aesthetic theology. As in the past, Edwards's imprint is still on a range of spiritual theologies and spiritualities, and Edwardsean influence is growing in theology of the religions and public theology—two dimensions of Edwards's thinking that have been explored only recently.

This chapter turns to Islam for possible alternative models to the LDS binary logic of apostasy and restoration. Using the theology of religions as a frame, it outlines the conception of covenantal pluralism in the Qur’an and suggests that Mormonism has the potential for an equally charitable treatment of other faiths in the past and present. It traces similarities between the Qur’an and Mormonism’s conception of humanity as the universal community of God’s children who are bound to God by various covenants and will be judged by God based on the contexts of these covenants.

The 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions, which was heralded as a groundbreaking event in the development of modern interreligious understanding, also signaled the dawn of social movements for gender justice, African-American civil rights and emergent post-colonialism. This chapter investigates the interfaith encounter which the Parliament made possible as a rich case study providing opportunities for reflection on those at the margins of the White Christian project of theology of religious pluralism, and the critical questions which arise at the intersection of gender, race, and religious difference. Notwithstanding its achievements, the Parliament must be interrogated for the ways that it participated in the project of White supremacy and Christian hegemony, as well as for the ways in which it resisted such hegemonic supremacy.

This book is an experiment with the conviction that there is a comparative dimension in confessional theology. This chapter briefly reviews the case for using sources from other religions in the work of Christian theology. It then describes the particular aim of this text to reflect on the reconciling work of Christ in light of Buddhist teaching. Another section reviews the history of Buddhist-Christian engagement, with special focus on the geographical area of the Silk Road in Central Asia and on the case of Manichaeanism as a tradition overlapping with both Buddhism and Christianity. It also reviews the author’s previously published constructive proposal in theology of religions, as the framework for this work. A final section outlines the plan of the book.

Chapter 5 evaluates Errors from a contemporary perspective. It begins by outlining the theological messages of Errors, laying out the charges of erroneous beliefs, idolatry, and superstitions against Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. It traces the influence of Errors on later Vietnamese Catholic texts of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—Treatise of the True Religion and Conference of the Four Religions—and appraises its legacy for the understanding of the nature of Vietnamese religions. The theological message of the texts is presented and evaluated for their implications regarding the Christian encounter with the traditional religions of Vietnam in the past and at the present time.

This chapter reflects on the many and varied challenges facing the theology of interreligious dialogue, and provides a structure within which these challenges and the responses proposed by leading theologians are made comprehensible. What is at stake in the contemporary debate about the nature and goals of the theology of interreligious dialogue relates to the ‘triple axis’ that is at the heart of any and all theological reflection, namely, “tradition,” “experience,” and the “encounter with otherness.” This chapter reflects on the fashion in which each contributor to this volume seeks to draw lessons from the past, with a view to addressing the needs arising out of the present, and charting a course for the future of interreligious encounter.

Taking its lead from the biblical account of Jesus’s response to the Canaanite woman (Matt. 15: 21–8), this chapter argues that Jesus’ own concept of God’s relation to humanity shifted as a result of his encounter with someone of another religion, and that this narrative can be invoked to argue that the experience of interreligious dialogue should (and does) inform the development of Christian doctrine. First, the author applies a comparative theological understanding of rasa in Hindu traditions to the forms of dialogue identified named in Dialogue and Proclamation, with a view to analyzing how affective states arise in the presence of religious others. Second, she suggests that, because sensory and affective experiences carry meaning, discernment of doctrine is already happening when Christians encounter other faiths.