From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Thu Jul 10 2003 - 16:21:40 EDT
Robert Schneider wrote:
>
> The exchange between Howard and Josh reminds me of what Jacques Dupuis, SJ,
> wrote in his book _Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism_. He
> is commending the value of interreligious dialogue for deepening one's
> understanding of God. Here in part is what he wrote:
>
> "Thus the dialogue does not serve as a means to a further end. Neither
> on one side nor on the other does it tend to the 'conversion' of one partner
> to the religious tradition of the other. Rather it tends to a more profound
> conversion of each to God. The same God speaks in the heart of both
> partners; the same Spirit is at work in all [these words reflect RC views
> arising out of Vatican II]. By way of their reciprocal witness, it is this
> same God who calls and challenges the partners through each other. Thus
> they become, as it were, for each other and reciprocally, a sign leading to
> God" (p. 383).
>
> Where I see this view connecting with the present discussion is that
> while not setting aside the witness to God in the Christian scriptures, a
> Christian may in learning from his/her dialogue partner come to a deeper and
> broader understanding of God. The non-Christian's experience of the Sacred
> may enlighten and enrich that of the Christian. The same is true outside of
> interreligious dialogue: a Christian open to other sources of knowledge and
> experience of the Sacred beyond Scripture can benefit greatly from the work
> of the Spirit. It may well be that insistence that only the Bible presents
> authentic revelation of God, and the confusion between revelation and the
> interpretation of it that often attends such an attitude, cuts some
> believers off from a deeper apprehension (both spiritually and mentally) of
> God.
>
> Those of us who accept an evolutionary understanding of creation have to
> ask ourselves different questions about God and God's relationship to the
> creation than did our theological forbears who lived in a static and
> complete creation. And much of the imagery of God in the Bible rests in the
> matrix of a static world. If we understand that context, we do not betray
> it by concluding that some of the images of God in the Bible are, as it
> were, accommodated to the understanding of the people in the audiences of
> the sacred writers, just as some of us have argued for accommodation as a
> way to put in perspective images of nature in the Bible. Perhaps a good way
> to think about this is captured in the story in the Torah in which God
> answers Moses that the latter may not see God's face, but if he stands where
> he can look through a narrow cleft in the rock, he may catch a glimpse of
> God's back. It would be salutary to think that we are always catching
> glimpses of God's back and have yet to see God's face.
Interestingly, Luther alludes to that passage in Exodus in his argument for the
20th of the Heidelberg Theses: "He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who
comprehends the visible and manifest things [visibilia et posteriora Dei] seen through
suffering and the cross." But he uses God's "back" to mean God's humanity, suffering
and folly (by human standards), especially in the cross, and concludes, "Therefore true
theology and recognition of God are in the crucified Christ." I.e., this is an argument
against the idea that we can first know God from experience or "from things that have
been made" - i.e., independent natural theology.
RC views, OTOH, come not just from Vatican II but Vatican I & its insistence
that a natural knowledge of God is possible independently of revelation.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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