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Christianity and World Religions
Christianity and World Religions: Disputed Questions in the Theology of Religions Gavin D’Costa
© 2009 Gavin D’Costa ISBN: 978-1-405-17674-3
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Christianity and
World Religions
Disputed Questions in the
Theology of Religions
Gavin D’Costa
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
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This edition first published 2009
© 2009 by Gavin D’Costa
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
D’Costa, Gavin, 1958–
Christianity and world religions : disputed questions in the theology of religions / Gavin
D’Costa.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978–1–4051–7674–3 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978–1–4051–7673-6 (pbk. : alk.
paper) 1. Theology of religions (Christian theology) I. Title.
BT83.85.D36 2009
261.2—dc22
2008049751
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in 10.5/13pt Minion by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
Printed in Singapore
1 2009
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For Kitty
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Contents
Preface ix
Part I Charting the Territory: Theology of Religions 1
1 Early Map Making 3
Introduction 3
Pluralism 9
Inclusivism 19
Exclusivism 25
2 Changing the Angle: Recent Maps 34
Some Criticisms of the Threefold Typology 34
Comparative Theology 37
Postmodern Postliberalism 45
Part II The Making and Meaning of Religions 55
3 Modernity’s Story 57
Introduction 57
Modernity’s Story about Religions 58
4 An Alternative: The Secular Construction of the Sacred 74
Modernity as the Establishment of a New Ruling
Religion 74
Conclusion 102
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viii Contents
Part III Religions in the Public Square 103
5 Whose Religion and Which Public Square? 105
The Public Square 105
A Taxonomy of Secular Modernity and Postmodernity 107
6 Christian and Muslim Public Squares 128
Roman Catholicism, Modernity, and Religious Plurality 128
Islam, Reasoned Debate, and Religious Plurality 136
Part IV Christ’s Descent into Hell 159
7 Old Doctrines for New Jobs 161
Introduction 161
“The Descent”: Introduction to the “Circles of Hell” 165
The Limbo of the Just and the Unevangelized 167
8 Further into the Inferno 188
Purgatory and the Non-Christian 188
The Children’s Limbo 194
The Descent into Hell 201
Bibliography 212
Subject Index 225
Index of Works 233
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Preface
After twenty years in the field of “theology of religions,” Christian engage-
ment with the great religions of the world and newer religious movements,
I am struck at how fast the field is developing in response to the cultural
situation in the West. Christianity is a minority religion in Europe and
possibly becoming even more marginalized. However, Christianity is grow-
ing fast in Africa, South America, and the United States, and constitutes
a stable small minority in Asia and an unstable, diminishing, and often
persecuted minority in the Middle East and Arab countries. This means
that, in 50 years’ time, huge changes might have transformed the face of
Christianity, especially in Europe. According to some theorists, Europe will
be “Eurabia,” a collection of states with a Muslim majority population; the
West might witness a clash of two great civilizations, the Christian and
Muslim. Further, given the demographic shifts, the Latin European cast of
theologizing might give way to local theologies of great diversity. This is a
challenging picture. Just over 50 years ago, looking back rather than forward,
European Christians were recovering from the shock of two bloody wars,
the near destruction of the Jews, and a very uncomfortable history of imperi-
alism where, some argue, the torch and sword worked rather too closely
together. Mission and imperialism allegedly destroyed indigenous cultures
while seeking to change heathen souls. Capitalism changed ancient cultures
overnight so that Coca-Cola and Microsoft now constitute the new uni-
versal culture. These two contentious snapshots work together to give a
picture that means there is hardly an audience for this book in Europe. So
why write it? One obvious answer would be: it is my job. I am a professional
university theologian. There are three other more interesting answers.
First, I think that Christianity witnesses to the truth that changes the
world in the most profound way possible: that God has become man in
Jesus Christ for the redemption of the entire earth. Numbers do not finally
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x Preface
matter, but the importance of explicating this good news in an intellectu-
ally rigorous and robust manner does. This can only be done in the contexts
in which we find ourselves. My context is as a lay Roman Catholic working
in a secular university in Bristol, England, as a professor of Roman Catholic
theology. Bristol, like the United Kingdom, is religiously diverse, and many
theological and social questions arise out of this situation. Further, my
context as an Indian whose parents lived in India – but whose ancestors
were originally converted by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century – born
in East Africa, migrating to England in 1968, means that religious and cul-
tural pluralism has been part of my story. I write this book as it reflects the
personal, social, and intellectual struggles and joys that constitute me.
Second, to understand our contemporary situation requires an enormous
amount of patience and hard work because, as I shall be arguing, our very
understanding of what “theology” is, what “religions” are, what constitutes
“public debate,” what “truth” is, is deeply problematic. Thus, part of this
book is devoted to untangling this conceptual thicket to offer a particular
way of looking at these issues and to conceptualize the problems that arise.
In arriving at a view on these matters, I try to remain aware of the situated-
ness of all narrations (which makes me a postmodern), the relatedness
of all contexts (which makes me a modern), and the universal claim made
arising out of the particular Christian narration (which makes me a
pre-modern Christian). To write on any topic that relates to disputed ques-
tions also requires a telling of how these disputes came about (looking at
genealogy), before being able to move forward in suggesting solutions and
new questions. If a reader interested in the questions “What is the theo-
logy of religions and what are the big issues in this field?” finishes this book
with a sense of the complexity of issues as well as hearing a distinctive answer,
then all is well. I hope to draw maps and suggest routes through them.
Readers clearly have to find their own way.
Third, it is difficult to think of a more important question facing
Christianity in the twenty-first century. Christianity’s very existence in part
depends on how it relates to the world religions. This is a matter of sur-
vival and more importantly a matter of plausibility: how do Christians relate
to their tradition, which so many think has related so negatively to the world
religions? The questions are not simply theological and pastoral (Can a non-
Christian be saved?), but also very practical and political (How should
Christians relate to the religiously pluralist public square? Should they join
with Muslims, for example, to campaign for religious schools?). These are
my questions in my context, but I think many will be shared by readers in
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differing contexts. This book seeks to build an approach toward answering
these and other questions, while showing readers the many alternatives and
contested ways of formulating the problems and giving different solutions.
That accounts for why I wrote the book, but now to the “what” of the
book. Let me briefly tell you what the plot line is so you can use this book
usefully. The book is divided into four parts, with each part containing two
related chapters. Part I, “Charting the Territory: Theology of Religions,”
looks at the theological debate that has taken place among Christian theo-
logians. In chapter 1 I cover the period from soon after the Second World
War until the 1980s. I inspect the way maps were drawn in response to
the questions raised by other religions. The key dogmatic issues are the
doctrines of God as trinity, the nature of the incarnation as unique, the
character of the church, the meaning of mission, and the ethical/social
challenges that Christians face in encountering religious pluralism. I try to
show how some of these questions are deeply interrelated so that if you
answer one question in a particular fashion, that might determine your
response to a whole range of further questions. We will also see that certain
tradition-specific ways of approaching issues and problems come to the fore
almost as much as the actual questions being discussed. In chapter 2 I draw
the map further into the present day, which shows a revolt against the
earlier mapping, new maps being produced, and significant areas of con-
tinuity in terms of questions and concerns from the earlier period. Most
significantly, the social and political dimensions of religion in the public
square become far more central, without eclipsing a range of doctrinal issues
that continue from the previous era. Further, an interest emerges in religions
for their own sake, rather than as fodder for theological evaluations. These
two chapters should act as a reasonably comprehensive map to the field of
theology of religions in the twentieth century. They also serve to show where
I locate myself on the map and readers should try and do the same. It will
help their journey through the book.
Part II, “The Making and Meaning of Religions,” touches on a very
important question about how “we” view “religion,” for if “religions” are
what Christian theology is to engage with, we need to clarify what they are.
The drawing up of the terrain is so controversial that I decided to tell two
stories, one in chapter 3 and another entirely contrary story in chapter 4.
Chapter 3 takes up the narration of religion as modernity has told it
through some of its chief architects. It is a story that most Europeans will
know like the air they breathe. It tells of the wars of religion, the internal
strife in Europe among Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists, and
