The person of Jesus Christ not only plays a key role in Christian dialogue with non-Christians, but is also the central issue in the current debate within the Christian theology of religions. As has been observed in previous chapters, both the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC in their official pronouncements, and individual scholars in their views on the status of the Prophet Muhammad and the Qur’an have implied that this question should be reconsidered within the context of Christianity’s relationship with other faiths. This is necessary in order to answer the following questions: How is the status of Jesus to be understood by Christians in their relationship with people of other faiths? Can Christians continue to affirm that Jesus is normative not only for themselves but also for those who belong to other faiths? Can Christians acknowledge that there are other saviours besides Jesus Christ?759 

In 1977 John Hick, whose views will be elaborated below, edited The Myth of God Incarnate760  in order to illustrate that "Jesus was (as he is presented in Acts 2.21) ‘a man approved by God’ for a special role within the divine purpose, and that the later conception of him as God incarnate, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity living a human life, was a mythological or poetic way of expressing his significance for us. This recognition is called for in the interests of truth; but it also has increasingly practical implications for our relationship to other great world religions".761  In 1986, a number of Catholic and Protestant theologians gathered at Claremont University in the United States to discuss the issue of understanding Jesus Christ within the context of world religions. The major papers of this gathering were edited by Paul Knitter and John Hick under the title: The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions.762  The contributors to this work agreed that the myth of Christian uniqueness must be reconsidered, since it implies "the uniqueness, definitiveness, absoluteness, normativeness, superiority of Christianity in comparison with other religions of the world".763  They all rejected this dogmatism and argued for crossing over the shores of exclusivism and inclusivism to pluralism.

In 1991 the first director of the WCC’s Sub-unit for Dialogue with People of Other Faiths, Stanley J. Samartha, published his One Christ-Many Religions in order to urge Christians to develop a revised Christology within the context of their relationship with people of other faiths. For according to him, such a Christology "is biblically sound, spiritually satisfying, theologically credible, and pastorally helpful and both necessary and possible—without making exclusive claims for Christianity or passing negative judgements on the faiths of our neighbours".764  In 1993 Hick published another work The Metaphor of God Incarnate,765  in order to show that

- a non-traditional Christianity based upon this understanding of Jesus can see itself as one among a number of different human responses to the ultimate Reality that we call God.766 

In addition to these works, Paul Knitter, whose views will also be considered below, developed five theses concerning the uniqueness of Jesus in order to argue that the Christian affirmation of the uniqueness of Jesus need not be abandoned, but can be reinterpreted in such a way that it has greater relevance to the contemporary world while deepening Christian devotion to Christ and strengthening the followers of Jesus in discipleship. In doing so, he concentrates mainly on the uniqueness and the significance of Christ without underestimating the uniqueness and significance of other religious figures in the process of interreligious dialogue.767  Recently too, J.S. O’Leary in his Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth Claims768  [1996] stresses that the more Christians listen to people of other faiths on their own terms, "the more the claim that God is fully and definitively revealed only in Christ seems in need of revision".769 

As a critical response to these bold attempts, other theologians have produced works, which argue for the universality of Jesus, contending that Jesus Christ is the unique, normative and definitive revelation of God for all people.770  In this respect, the Catholic theologian, J. Dupuis, insists on the necessity of defending Christ in the process of interreligious dialogue by stressing that

the uniqueness and universality of Jesus Christ in the order of salvation represents the cardinal, key question of every Christian theology of religions. As old as Christology itself, and reappearing in recent times, it is becoming more urgent and more radical in the current context of religious pluralism and the blending of the various traditions. The current literature testifies to the renewed importance of this question.771 

 

although the language, concepts, liturgical actions, and cultural ethos differ widely from one another, yet from a religious point of view basically the same thing is going on in all of them, namely, human beings coming together within the framework of an ancient and highly developed tradition to open their hearts and minds to God, whom they believe makes a total claim on their lives.772 

 

This realisation and his further face-to-face relations with people of other faiths forced him to deal with a range of theological problems, which emerged during that process. Within this context, he called first for a "Copernican Revolution" in the Christian theology of religions. Then he reinterpreted the doctrine of Incarnation in the light of this "Copernican Revolution" and the doctrines of the Trinity and the Atonement. In so doing, he published the following significant books and essays: God and the Universe of Faiths [1973]; "Jesus and the World Religions" [1977]; God Has Many Names [1982]773 ; "The Non-Absoluteness of Christianity"[1987];774  Problems of Religious Pluralism [1989];775  An Interpretation of Religion [1989]776 ; The Metaphor of God Incarnate [1993]; and The Rainbow of Faiths [995].

We turn now to explore Hick’s understanding of the status of Jesus with special reference to Christianity’s relationship with other religions. While doing this, we will not reflect all his views on Christology, since others have already done so.777  Nor do we need to follow his writings according to their chronological order, since, as Chester Gillis has shown in his A Question of Final Belief 778  [1989], there has been no essential change in Hick’s views on the question of the status of Jesus after his move to Birmingham and the beginning of his interest in dialogue with people of other faiths.

In his God and the Universe of Faiths [1973], Hick stressed that it is time to take a shift from a "Ptolemaic [i.e. one’s own religion-centred] to a Copernican [ i.e. a God-centred] view of the religious life of mankind".779  He maintains that just as the Copernican revolution represented a shift from the ancient, long standing Ptolemaic dogma that the earth is the centre of the revolving universe to the realisation that the sun is the centre, with all the planets, including the earth, revolving around it, modern Christian theology of religions needs a Copernican revolution which "involves a shift from the dogma that Christianity is at the centre to the realisation that it is God who is at the centre, and that all the religions of mankind, including our own, serve and revolve around him".780  He states that the Christian version of Ptolemaic theology puts Christianity at the centre of the universe of faiths, and regards all other religions as epicycles, revolving, to one degree or another, around it. Hick argues that this kind of centrality of Christianity is due to the claimed uniqueness of Jesus which depends on the doctrine of divine incarnation. He says

If God has revealed himself in the person of Jesus, all other revelations are thereby marginalised as inferior and secondary. Indeed, their effect can only be to draw people in a different direction, away from God’s direct self-disclosure in Christ. For if the Creator has personally come down to earth and founded his own religion, embodied in the Christian Church, he must surely want all human beings to become part of that Church. Indeed it would seem to follow that sooner or later they must become part of it if they are to participate in the eternal life of the redeemed. Thus the doctrine that Jesus was none other than God himself – or, more precisely, that he was the Second Person of the divine Trinity living a human life – leads, by an inevitable logic, to Christian absolutism, a logic that was manifested historically in the development of the dogma Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.781 

 

As can be seen from this passage, Hick asserts that the results of a "Ptolemaic theology of religions" are unacceptable for our present day circumstances, since it entails that Christianity was founded by God in person. Also, he says that the belief that the second Person of the Trinity has revealed himself as a human inevitably leads to Christian exclusivism and absolutism.782  For that reason, Hick argues for the necessity of a reconsideration and reinterpretation of the traditional Christian doctrine of Incarnation to determine the status of Jesus anew.

As has been observed so far, Hick’s call for a "Copernican Revolution" in the Christian theology of religions challenges the uniqueness and normativeness of Jesus, since it requires a readjustment in the Christian’s appropriation of his own tradition, forcing him to reconsider the Christological doctrine regarding the identity of Jesus. This is, Hick states, "the most difficult of all issues for a Christian theology of religions". He adds, "but before adopting the new picture [God centred model] a Christian must be satisfied that his devotion to Jesus as his personal Lord and Saviour is not thereby brought into question or its validity denied".783 

Hick takes the consciousness of Jesus as a starting point and interprets the doctrine of Incarnation and the Trinity according to this consciousness. In his essay "Jesus and the World Religions" [1977], Hick deals with the issue of the status of Jesus by considering him as a human being who was open to God’s presence and upheld by an extraordinary intense God-consciousness that made God real to others and revolutionised the lives of those who followed in his footsteps. So, what makes Jesus significant for Hick is his consciousness of God. It is this heightened consciousness of God that accounts for Jesus’s use of the word abba for God; his openness of spirit and response to God; his power to heal and bring new life; and the impact he had on those who met him. He further maintains that to come into Jesus’s presence was in some sense to come into God’s presence. Just as Jesus encountered the totality of God’s claim, so too, those who encountered Jesus experienced "the absolute claim of God". Hick clarifies the issue of how one encounters God when one comes into Jesus’s presence as follows: " . . . in Jesus’s presence, we should have felt that we are in the presence of God – not in the sense that the man Jesus literally is God, but in the sense that he was so totally conscious of God that we could catch something of that consciousness by spiritual contagion".784 

After all these points, Hick concludes that Jesus was "a Spirit-filled prophet and healer" who considered "his own role as that of the final prophet, proclaiming the imminent coming of the kingdom on earth".785  In short, the foundation of Hick’s Christology totally depends on the consciousness of the historical Jesus. What made Jesus significant, what constituted him as mediator, and what accounted for his impact was his heightened consciousness of God’s presence.

This understanding of Jesus led Hick to rethink the Christian doctrine of Incarnation and the Divinity of Jesus. In his recent work The Rainbow of Faiths [1995], Hick mentions three main problems with the traditional doctrine of Incarnation: (1) Jesus himself did not teach that "he was God, or God the Son, the second person of a Holy Trinity, incarnate"; (2) Christian authorities and theologians have never explained the meaning of the traditional dogma that Jesus was truly God and truly man in an intelligible way, since the following questions are still awaiting their answers from Christian authorities: "How could Jesus be at the same time divinely omnipotent and humanly weak and vulnerable; divinely omniscient and humanly ignorant; the eternal, infinite, self-existent creator of the universe and a temporal, finite and dependent creature?" (3) The literal meaning of the doctrine of incarnation does irreparable damage to Christians’ relations with people of other faiths.786 

After pointing out the problems of the traditional understanding of the doctrine of Incarnation in this way, he moves to examine the historical development of this doctrine. He argues that it was the early community that attributed deity to Jesus, not Jesus himself or his immediate disciples. The deification of Jesus occurred when the language of divine sonship was transferred from a Jewish context to a Roman culture. He states that before Jesus, the Jews already were familiar with "Son of God" language from the Old Testament’s psalms.787  When this language was used referring to someone, it was understood metaphorically that that person "was close to God, served God, and acted in the spirit of God". In this sense, Hick maintains that "Jesus as a great charismatic preacher and healer, should be thought of as a son of God".788  When this sort of understanding of Jesus moved to the Gentile world, its metaphorical meaning started to change, and thus Jesus gradually was deified in the minds of Christians. Finally, Jesus became "the literal God the Son, the Second Person of a divine Trinity".789  Thus, says Hick, the eschatological human prophet was gradually elevated to a divine status.

As has been observed so far, according to Hick the traditional Christian doctrine of Incarnation neither was thought of by Jesus himself nor developed by his first disciples, but emerged in the mind of the early Church in the course of time. By arguing thus, Hick makes a distinction between the self-understanding of the historical Jesus and "the understanding of Jesus which eventually became orthodox Christian dogma acknowledging him as God the Son incarnate, the Second Person of the Trinity living a human life".790  Thus, he means that if the historical Jesus did not consider himself to be God Incarnate, then he cannot be regarded as such, and statements of this kind are to be understood metaphorically not literally.

To uphold this argument, Hick points out that there is some agreement among both conservative and liberal New Testament scholars that the exclusive statements of the Gospels which are used to support the traditional doctrine did not belong to the historical Jesus but, on the contrary, were "put into his mouth some sixty or seventy years later by a Christian writer expressing the theology that had developed in his part of the expanding church".791 

In the light of these explanations, it can be concluded that the incarnation of Jesus should be understood not as a theological hypothesis, but as a myth.792  For it represents the "application to Jesus of a mythical concept whose function is analogous to that of the notion of divine sonship ascribed in the ancient world to a king".793  It is also myth, because it has no literal meaning; it is a mystery with no explanatory power. Hick also adds that the mythological character of the doctrine of incarnation can also be found in non-theological language. He explains that the very concept of a "divine incarnation" is itself "metaphorical". Even in secular usage, he writes, the notion of "incarnation" functions as a "basic metaphor". In this secular sense, "incarnation" is understood to be "the embodiment of ideas, values, insights in human living".794  Briefly, he concludes that the Christian doctrine of Incarnation should not be regarded as a divinely formulated and guaranteed proposition, but rather as human attempts to grasp the religious meaning of the Christ event.

Hick stresses that this kind of understanding of the traditional doctrine of Incarnation can lead to a fruitful dialogue between Christians and people of other faiths, since it eliminates one of the major obstacles in the dialogue between Christianity and other religions which is the assumption that Christianity has a unique position among religions because of its foundational claim about the uniqueness of Jesus. This doctrine of a unique divine incarnation in Jesus "has long poisoned the relationship both between Christians and Jews and between Christians and Muslims, as well as affecting the history of Christian imperialism in the far East, India, Africa, and elsewhere".795  Hick also points out that the metaphysical deification of Jesus is not only self-contradictory, but is also dangerous from the point of view of the theology of religions. A metaphysically understood doctrine of the Incarnation "implies that God can be adequately known and responded to only through Jesus" and that "the whole religious life of mankind, beyond the stream of Judaic-Christian faith is thus by implication excluded as lying outside the sphere of salvation".796 

see the incarnation as a mythological idea applied to Jesus to express the experienced fact that he is our sufficient, effective, and saving point of contact with God, we no longer have to draw the negative conclusion that he is man’s one and only one effective point of contact with God. We can revere Christ as the one through whom we have found salvation, without having to deny other points of reported saving contact between God and man. We can recommend the way of Christian faith without having to discommend other ways of faith. We can say that there is salvation in Christ without having to say that there is no salvation other than in Christ.797 

This new interpretation of the doctrine of Incarnation and the status of Jesus naturally leads Hick to advocate that there are other saviours and tools for salvation apart from Jesus and the Christian faith. This means that people of other faiths can attain salvation by following their own religious traditions. Hick clarifies this point by maintaining that there is a contradiction in the traditional Christian understanding of salvation, since, according to him, Christians, on the one hand, believe that God’s love and God’s plan of salvation are universal, but, on the other hand, they argue that there is only one way to salvation and it is the Christian way.798  Hick stresses that there is a loving Creator who ultimately wants all of humankind to share in the fullness of their created nature, and that salvation itself is universal. 799 

Hick argues that Christians cannot claim that Christianity or Jesus Christ is the tool for salvation because there are other faiths and religious figures through whom their followers gain salvation. By moving away from self-centeredness to reality-centeredness he makes the following three points concerning this transformation. Firstly, each religious tradition achieves this human transformation in its own way.800  Secondly, this transformation is essentially the same in all traditions.801  Thirdly, this human transformation occurs to the same extent within each of the religious traditions, since the religious life and thought of none "constitutes a manifestly more efficacious context of salvation than the others". In other words "none of them, taken as a totality, has been markedly more successful or markedly less successful than the others in bringing about the redemption of human life in self-giving to God".802  Thus, Hick shifts from a theology based on a special revelation to a theology based on plurality of revelations in the sense that "there is a plurality of divine revelations, making possible a plurality of forms of saving human response" to the Transcendent Reality. 803

In the light of this pluralistic understanding, Hick concludes that the Christian doctrine of Jesus being God incarnate has no literal meaning, but is metaphorical in the sense that He "was so open to divine inspiration, so responsive to the divine spirit, so obedient to God’s will, that God was able to act on earth in and through Him". Within this context, he suggests that Christians consider Jesus as a man who has made God real to them, who has shown them how to live as citizens of God’s kingdom, who is their revered spiritual leader, inspiration and model without denying that the spiritual and religious figures of other religious traditions act in the same way and to the same extent for their followers.804 

Evaluation: As has been observed, Hick is a philosopher of religion whose critical standpoint takes into account the plurality of religions. He has seen the traditional Christian perception of the status of Jesus as problematic for a fruitful dialogue between Christians and people of other faiths and has attempted to redetermine the status of Jesus by reinterpreting the doctrine of Incarnation in the light of modern scholarship and current interreligious dialogue. The majority of Christians today have not shared his views on this issue. On the contrary, they have been criticised and objected to by a number of Christian theologians.805  He has been accused of underestimating the New Testament accounts and the Christian tradition, since, according to those theologians, Hick urges Christians to abandon the uniqueness of Christ for the sake of dialogue. We will not go into detail about this intra-Christian debate here because of our specific purpose. We will rather discuss Hick’s interpretations from the perspective of Christian-Muslim dialogue in order to see whether they contribute to its development.

Secondly, Hick reinterpreted the traditional Christian belief about Jesus as God the Son incarnate, the Second Person of the Trinity, living a human life. He concluded that Jesus was a human being who made God real to those who follow Him through His God consciousness, His openness to God’s presence and divine inspiration. With this interpretation of the incarnation, it seems that Hick puts Christian claims on the status of Jesus on the same level with claims of people of other faiths about their own religious figures such as Buddha and the Prophet Muhammad. He emphasises that it is possible to see "God’s activity in Jesus as being of the same kind as God’s activity in other great human mediators of the divine".806  It would seem that Hick wants to replace Christocentric Christian understanding of other religions with God-centred or reality-centred understanding without giving up the central significance of Christ for Christians. He emphasises that what he has in his mind is a clarification of Christian language about the status of Jesus, rather than a change of actual Christian belief in Jesus.

From the Muslim point of view this conclusion seems to remove one of the greatest obstacles of Christian-Muslim dialogue, since the Qur’an rejects the divinity of Jesus which is upheld by the central Christian doctrines of Incarnation, Trinity and Atonement, not Christians and their faith.807  So, this conclusion implies that there is an affinity between Hick’s metaphorical understanding of the doctrine of Incarnation and the Qur’anic understanding of Jesus, since both of them consider Jesus to be no more than a human prophet. However, there is also a difference between them. For while Hick rejects the virgin birth of Jesus by claiming that it is contradictory to the natural way of birth, the Qur’an strongly defends it. The logic of the Qur’an here is that Jesus was the Word of God, a divine message like the Qur’an, and for that reason the human vehicle of this divine message must be pure and untainted.808 

Although this affinity seems to contribute to the development of Christian-Muslim dialogue, it raises some problems. For, when we consider how Hick arrived at some of his conclusions, it becomes obvious that he expects followers of other faiths to do the same thing for their own ontological claims. We may suggest that he wants Muslims to understand metaphorically the uncreatedness of the Qur’an and the finality of the Prophet Muhammad. In this sense, as D’Costa rightly observes, by mythologising the traditional Christian perception of the status of Jesus, Hick "equally mythologizes all other ontological claims about the nature of ultimate reality, rendering them disfigured and often portraying them in a fashion contrary to their own truth".809  Because of this implication, Hick’s and other like-minded theologians’ views have been considered by some other theologians as a "new kind of Western imperialism".810

Further, this demand of Hick could increase the anxieties of the dialogue partners. Committed and sincere Christians and Muslims may think that if they enter into dialogue with each other, they may lose their own beliefs. By taking this point into account, we may conclude that we need not abandon or even question our own traditional beliefs for the sake of better relations with people of other faiths. Or as D’Costa correctly states, we cannot abandon our own traditional beliefs to please those who disagree with them.811  Because of this danger of Hick’s views for dialogue, it would be better to consider him not a practising dialogue partner, but an academic theologian.

However, Hick’s understanding of the status of Jesus seems to go a long way in contributing to the development of interreligious dialogue in general and dialogue with Muslims in particular. With a very good intention, he has boldly tried to solve some significant theological problems which Christians face both because of modern scientific developments and interreligious dialogue.812 

He states that during his service in this Society the religious other affected his theology. When he came across Rahner’s theory of "anonymous Christians" and the positive statements of the Second Vatican Council about non-Christians during his study at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, the question of the religious other became a very important issue for his theology. 813  Rahner’s theory especially influenced him to move from exclusivism to inclusivism. During his doctoral studies in Germany, his meeting with a devout Muslim student led him to think about the theological and ethical meaning of Rahner’s theory and in the end brought him to regard it not "as a new paradigm, but a bridge" for his later development. While he was teaching at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, he continued his interest in studying other religions and entering into dialogue with their followers. As a result, the focus of his theological journey shifted from inclusivism to pluralism with the publication of his No Other Name? [1985]814  in which he made a critical survey of Christian attitudes towards those who belong to other religions.

His theological odyssey continued. During his work with refugee families in Cincinnati, the suffering other affected his theology as well. Liberation theology now became for him a new interest area and brought him to connect his pluralistic theology of religions with a theology of liberation, and he published his essay "Towards a Liberation Theology of Religions" [1987]815 . Thus, he moved from theocentrism to soteriocentrism, and by continuing to progress in his theology of religions within this perspective, Knitter developed his Correlational Globally Responsible Model in One Earth Many Religions [1995]. He explained the theological meaning of this new model in his Jesus and the other Names [1996] in order to show Christians how "to live out traditional beliefs in the uniqueness of Jesus and the mission of his church and at the same time affirm the validity of other religious paths".816 

Theocentric Model: Knitter’s starting point in his theology of religions is that the new consciousness of religious pluralism is an ongoing fact of life, since there never has been, and probably never will be a time when there will be just one religion in the world. There will always be many religions because reality itself is pluriform. Knitter maintains that followers of different religions must come together "not in order to obliterate or absorb each other but to learn from and help each other"817 , and then suggested a new concept called "unitive pluralism"818  to facilitate this coming together and to encompass the ongoing situation of religious pluralism. However, he stresses that many Christians still have a serious hesitation and an unwillingness to enter into dialogue with others because of "the central Christian belief in the uniqueness of Christ" which holds Jesus as a normative and constitutive of any true encounter with God, not only for Christians but also for all people.819 

Knitter considers this sort of understanding of Jesus as an obstacle and unnecessary barrier that stands in the way of authentic dialogue. Thus he proposes to abandon traditional conceptions about the uniqueness of Christ and develops a theology of religions which puts not Christ or the Church, but God at the centre, as Hick did in his "Copernican Revolution".820  Then, he proposes a relational uniqueness for Jesus which

affirms that Jesus is unique, but with a uniqueness defined by its ability to relate – that is, to include and be included by – other unique religious figures. Such an understanding of Jesus views him not as exclusive or even as normative, but as theocentric, as a universally relevant manifestation (sacrament, incarnation) of divine revelation and salvation.821 

Knitter continues to maintain that what is basic to the Christian experience and understanding of Jesus is not the culturally conditioned doctrine that affirms his finality and his uniqueness, but what he terms the fact that through Jesus men and women have encountered God. It does not necessarily follow from this, however, that a total personal commitment of a Christian to Jesus depends on the assertion that God can only be encountered through Jesus. Of course, he says, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is unique, but also there are the revelations of God through Krishna and through the Buddha or through the Prophet Muhammad.822  In this sense, what Knitter indicates is that in terms of transforming people to God not only Jesus, but also all other religious figures are unique.

Knitter concludes that Jesus most likely experienced himself as the eschatological prophet who was anointed specially by God’s Spirit, who was to complete the mission of the earlier prophets by announcing and enacting the good news of God’s final rule. Knitter stresses that whenever Christians forget this role of Jesus and open their consciousness to a "myopic christocentrism", to a "jesusology", to a reductionism that absorbs God into Jesus, their understanding of Jesus easily becomes an idolatry that violates not only Christian but the revelation found in other faiths. 823  By arguing this, it seems that Knitter puts Jesus on an equal level with other prophets and religious figures.

Finally, in the light of this conclusion Knitter proposes the following guidelines to understand the status of Jesus anew within the context of interreligious dialogue: (1) The titles of Jesus are not absolute expressions, but only interpretations of who he was for his early followers. For that reason they should be understood by taking into account their "historical context and concerns, each makes use of mythic or symbolic images drawn from the Jewish and Hellenistic environment".824  (2) All the different New Testament descriptions of Jesus should be preserved without absolutising one or rejecting the other, since there would be a time for every description in the course of time.825  (3) The plurality of the New Testament depiction of Jesus does not allow today’s Christians to argue that everything about the person of Jesus – who he was and what he means for Christians and for the world – was said and set up by the first community. For that reason, Christians continue to develop new images "in continuity with what went before, preserving the past without embalming it, faithful to the past without being limited by it".826  (4) This continuous and evolutionary character of the description of Jesus in the Christian tradition can lead today’s theologians to develop "new images of Jesus that will make him more meaningful to them, as well as to persons of other faiths" in the process of dialogue.827 

The primary concern of a soteriocentric liberation theology of religions is not "right belief" about the uniqueness of Christ, but the "right practice", with other religions, of furthering the Kingdom and its Soteria. Clarity about whether and how Christ is one lord and savior, as well as clarity about any other doctrine, may be important, but it is subordinate to carrying out the preferential option for the poor and nonpersons.828 

 

the Christian conviction and proclamation that Jesus is God’s final and normative word for all religions cannot rest only on traditional doctrine or on personal, individual experience. We cannot know that Jesus is God’s last or normative statement only on the basis of being told so or on the basis of having experienced him to be such in our own lives. Rather, the uniqueness of Jesus can be known and then affirmed only ‘in its concrete embodiment’, only in the praxis of historical, social involvement.829 

 

Secondly, he offers the preferential option for the poor and oppressed as a criterion through which one can evaluate and revise the traditional understanding of the uniqueness of Christ, as well as to "grade" other salvific figures in the world’s religions. In this approach, all religious paths and their saviours are judged on the basis of how much or how little they contribute to promoting global justice. Within the context of this criterion, Knitter concludes "Jesus would . . . be unique – together with other unique liberators. He would be a universal savior – with other universal saviors. His universality and uniqueness would be not exclusive nor inclusive, but complementary".830  By developing this argument, Knitter indicates that the claim to uniqueness of any religious figure or religious tradition can be settled only by asking how much they bring liberation to the poor and how much they contribute to God’s kingdom of justice.

Thirdly, Knitter maintains, "right practice" in furthering the salvific message and deeds of Jesus takes precedence over "right belief" in light of the urgent needs of the world’s poor and oppressed. He insists that by challenging the faithful to affirm the primacy of orthopraxis, this new view of Jesus’ "complementary uniqueness" can enable Christians to deepen their Christian commitment. This is possible, he argues, because most Christians recognise that the essence of being a Christian is doing God’s will, rather than simply believing in Jesus as the definitive revelation of God.831  He further argues that recognising the primacy of orthopraxis over orthodoxy will also enable Christians to better comprehend the language of titles of Jesus such as "the only-begotten Son of God" and "one Mediator" as "action language". For they call Christians to embrace Jesus’s message and vision of the kingdom, rather than merely to adhere to a set of doctrinal beliefs about him. According to Knitter, these titles were not given to Jesus to announce his ontological status by which he could rule out all other religious figures. Knitter proposes that "if recognising the possibility of other saviors or mediators does not impede this praxis, then it is compatible with Christian identity and tradition".832 

The Correlational Globally Responsible Model: As has been pointed out above, in his One Earth Many Religions [1995] and Jesus and the Other Names [1996], Knitter proposes this model to explain the meaning of Jesus and his message for today’s world, not just for Christians but for everyone. He indicates that the main purpose of this model is to avoid the "absolute" language and absolute claims that put Christians in a superior position over others, by rejecting adjectives such as "one and only", "definitive", "superior", "final", "unsurpassable", and "total" to describe the truth they have found in the New Testament.833  Knitter argues that this new model gives a chance to Christians to affirm and announce Jesus as really divine and savior to the world, without insisting that he is the only divine savior: "Verily, but not only". He explains that this sort of understanding

Theologically, means that while Christians can and must continue to announce Jesus of Nazareth as one in whom the reality and saving power of God is incarnate and available, they will also be open to the possibility that there are others whom Christians can recognize as sons and daughters of God. Personally, such a pluralistic christology allows and requires Christians to be committed fully to Christ, but at the same time genuinely open to others who may be carrying out similar and equally important roles. Ecclesially, this means that the churches will go forth into the whole world with a message that is universally relevant and urgent, but at the same time will be ready to hear other messages from very different sources that may be also be universally meaningful and important.834 

After explaining the nature of the Correlational Globally Responsible model in this way, Knitter attempts to explain how Christians should understand the exclusive statements of the New Testament concerning the status of Jesus . Firstly, he maintains the titles, "Son of God", "Savior", "Word of God," were not used by Jesus himself, but were given to him by the early Christian community and used to make him superior to all other religious founders and leaders. Secondly, he argues that the language which is used in the following exclusive statements of the New Testament: Mt. 11:27; 1Cor. 8:6; Jn. 1:14, 18; 1Tim. 2:5; Heb. 9:12; Acts. 4:12,835  can be described as "love language". By using this language, he maintains, the followers of Jesus wanted to share the message of Jesus with others. For that reason it must be understood metaphorically not literally.

He stresses that if these expressions are transformed by Christians into purely doctrinal or theological assertions, and if they are used to exclude others rather than to proclaim the saving power of Jesus, then they will be definitely abused. For, "When the early Christians gave Jesus such lofty titles . . . they were not out primarily to present the world with a philosophical or dogmatic definition; rather they were declaring themselves, and inviting all others, to be disciples of this Jesus, to follow him in loving God and neighbour and working for what Jesus called the Reign of God".836 

Thirdly, he applies the above guidelines to a specific text, Acts.4:12, which is used by conservative Christians to support their argument that there is no salvation apart from Jesus Christ. Knitter argues that in this verse the question was "‘not one of comparative religions but of faith-healing’; that is, in whose power had Peter and John just healed the crippled man". It expresses a clear answer to this question by saying that Peter and John healed that man not by their own power, but the power contained in the name and reality of Jesus. Therefore, the intent of this title is not philosophically or theologically to define Jesus in relation to other religious figures, but to call others to recognise and acknowledge the power that is available to them in Jesus. It is performative and action language which expresses the belief that all people must listen to this Jesus without indicating that no one else should be listened to. So, Knitter stresses that in this verse "the stress is on the saving power mediated by the name of Jesus, not on the exclusivity of the name" 837 

Secondly, Christians cannot consider Jesus as the "definitive Word of God as if there could not be other norms for divine truth outside of him". This means that Jesus is a Word of God, not the Word of God in the sense that there are no other Words of God which hold essentially new and different things. On this point, in a response to objections that this kind of explanation of the definitiveness of Jesus can be a threat to the central Christian belief in the Trinity,838  Knitter points out that on the contrary, it expands it by continuing to affirm the authenticity and reliability of the Divine Word’s powerful presence in Jesus.

Thirdly, Christians cannot consider God’s saving word in Jesus as unsurpassable in the sense that God could not reveal more of his fullness in other ways apart from Jesus at other times. On this point Knitter stresses that if Christians believe that God’s revelation to them in Jesus contains the whole truth of God without allowing other revelations, this would contradict the Christian belief that God is an unsurpassable Mystery, "one which can never totally be comprehended or contained in human thought." It would dismiss the role of the Holy Spirit which is testified to by Jesus himself in Jn. 16:12-13.839 

Secondly, Christians should regard the revelation granted in Jesus as decisive because when people follow this revelation, it makes a difference in their lives by transforming them from self-centredness to God-centredness or Kingdom-centredness. Knitter further holds that if Jesus’s message is universal and decisive, it should also be normative not only for Christians but also others. On this point, in order not to contradict his pluralistic view, Knitter clarifies that "if the norm I have embraced is decisive and calls me . . . to a clear decision and way of acting, it does not at all rule out the possibility that I can also come to other insights and other decisions which, although they do not contradict my original decision, are very different from it. A decisive norm, in other words, may rule out some other norms, but it need not exclude all other norms. It is decisive, but not final or unsurpassable".840 

Thirdly, Christians need to continue to announce the revelation in Jesus as indispensable, in the sense that just as the truth represented by Jesus has enriched and transformed the lives of Christians, it should also do the same for others. It seems that by arguing this last point, Knitter appears to tend towards the inclusivism which holds Jesus Christ as a necessary element not only for Christians, but also people of other faiths. For, he claims that "to know Jesus Christ is to feel that Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims need to know him too; this means they need to recognize and accept the truth he reveals (even through this does not necessarily mean that they will become members of the Christian community)".841 

Hick objected to this argument by asking in what way is Jesus indispensable? Is it the way pencillin is necessary for the dying person or the way vitamins are necessary for better health?842  Knitter answers this question by stressing that the indispensability of Jesus lies somewhere in between. "Maybe it is something like the illiterate person who is living a happy, satisfying life; when he learns to read, something is added to his life that was not there."843  Further, he adds that this is also the same for other religious figures. By making this point, it seems that Knitter points to a very significant principle, that in the process of dialogue participants can benefit from each other’s faith in order to enrich their own spirituality.

As has been observed so far, in his reinterpretation of the status of Jesus Knitter encourages Christians to see Jesus as a universally relevant, decisive and indispensable revelation of God, not only for themselves but for all people. This is without insisting that it is full, definitive and unsurpassable, for there are also other universally relevant, decisive and indispensable revelations of God. Parallel to his views on the status of Jesus, Knitter, like Hick, adopts a pluralistic view of salvation. In this respect, he points out that God’s plan of salvation is available in all religions through the particularities of those religions. For instance, in Christianity God saves people not through general principles, but through Jesus Christ.844  This argument implies that, according to Knitter, people of other faiths attain salvation through their own religious traditions. For example, Muslims can be saved through the Qur’an or Buddhists can be saved through Buddha. Knitter develops this argument by arguing that the particularity of Christianity [Jesus Christ] teaches Christians the universality of God’s love and presence. But he says this does not mean that God’s love and presence are limited to Jesus, since other particularities, too, can teach the same thing. He states this as follows: "While Christians must insist that God has acted in Jesus and that this action is universally meaningful for all people, they must do this in such a way that the universality of God’s saving power for all people is not jeopardised".845  It seems that in this way Knitter implies that in the dialogue process Christians should accept the possibility that there may be other saviours apart from Christ, and that these are as important as Christ or the Christian faith in God’s plan of salvation.

In short, according to Knitter Jesus is a unique revelation of God, but not in a sense that it is absolute and final but in a sense that God’s Word in Jesus is universal and indispensable for all peoples. This means that "the Christian Word is vitally meaningful for all peoples of all times, and not to have heard this Word is to have missed a ‘saving’ vision of truth; but it does not mean that this Word is the normative fulfilment of all other Words".846 

Evaluation: As has been observed, as a result of his dialogue with people of other faiths, Knitter, like Hick, saw the traditional Christian beliefs which hold Jesus as uniquely divine, the absolute and final Word of God in history as roadblocks to genuine dialogue. For that reason, he attempted to remove these roadblocks by reconstructing the status of Jesus in the light of current developments in Christian theology and his own interreligious dialogue. In the end, he concluded that in our religiously pluralistic age Christians cannot consider the status of Jesus as the "full, definitive and unsurpassable" revelation of God but as a universal, decisive and indispensable message of God. We will discuss whether Knitter’s reconstruction of the status of Jesus can contribute to the development of Christian-Muslim understanding. While doing this, we need to take into account the fact that although Knitter as a theologian who seems to observe the New Testament accounts concerning the status of Jesus even more closely than Hick, his views too are not accepted by the majority of Christians today. A number of theologians have objected to Knitter’s views by saying they are not Christian and have criticised him for selling out the Christian faith.847 

Secondly, Knitter urges Christian participants of dialogue not to enter into dialogue by holding Jesus as "the final word", "definitive revelation", "absolute truth" and "absolute savior", arguing that there is no place at the dialogue table for these sort of beliefs. He further generalises this demand by saying that "It would seem . . . that the revision of traditional understandings of ‘the uniqueness of Christ and Christianity’ (together with similar understandings of the uniqueness of the Qur’an or of Krishna or of Buddha) is a condition for the possibility of fruitful dialogue".848  Although this demand would contribute to the development of Christian-Muslim dialogue, it seems that it is rather problematic, since Knitter considers it as a necessary condition, not a possible outcome of a genuine dialogue. When we take this demand as a necessary condition of dialogue, we mean that we do not want to enter into dialogue with those who believe the uniqueness of the Qur’an or the uniqueness of Jesus. In today’s world in which the majority of Muslims and Christians are holding the Qur’an and Jesus as the unique revelation of God this means that dialogue is confined to those who have already abandoned these beliefs. For that reason, it would seem to be better to consider this demand not as a necessary condition but a possible outcome of dialogue.849  Because of this demand, Knitter can not escape being accused of being, in D’Costa’s word, ‘imperialistic’.850 

Thirdly, Knitter like Hick also emphasises that the significant point of the Christ event is not his finality or uniqueness, but his consciousness of God. For, according to him, those who follow his message encounter God through not his finality or uniqueness, but his consciousness of God. It seems that the application of this point to religious figures can contribute to the understanding of those religious figures by others much more positively than before. For example in this case, if Christians witness to their dialogue partners how they encountered God through Jesus, rather than emphasising his finality and uniqueness, their partners will understand the significance of Jesus more readily, since they may have had the same encounter with God through the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad.851 

Fourthly, Knitter emphasises that whether Jesus is unique and absolute, the normative revelation of God cannot be known without living his message while engaging in dialogue with other believers. By following this argument, Knitter concluded that the uniqueness of Jesus depends on how much or how little his message contributes to promoting global justice. This argument could seem to contribute to the development of Christian-Muslim understanding. This conclusion of Knitter has correctly been criticised by Küng who states that "practice should not be made the norm of theory undialectically and social questions be expounded as the basis and centre of the theology of religions".852  However, positively it means that both Christians and Muslims need to put aside the claim that Jesus or the Qur’an is the unique revelation of God as an a priori principle. Instead, according to Knitter, they need to show the uniqueness of Jesus and the Qur’an by applying their message to their lives and then sharing them with people of other faiths in the dialogue process. This further means that what is important is not Jesus as a person or the Qur’an as a text, but their message. Briefly, what this argument of Knitter stresses is that in the dialogue process we need to practise what our religious figures have brought us, rather than to absolutise that religious figure.

Küng dealt with the issue of the status of Jesus with regard to the world religions for the first time in his On Being Christian [1977], under the title of "The Challenge of World Religions". Here, he emphasised the uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth as the "distinctive" component of the Christian faith. He maintained that the question of the distinctiveness of Christianity, when viewed in the horizon of the world religions, can be answered only by reference to Jesus Christ, since he is the specific element of the Christian faith. He further stated that "the special feature, the most fundamental characteristic of Christianity is that it considers this Jesus as ultimately decisive, definitive, archetypal, for man’s relations with God, with his fellow man, with society . . . "853  Küng stressed that Jesus is unique in the sense that his uniqueness surpasses all other religious figures by being absolutely and universally normative for others as well.854 

In his essay "Belief in the Son of God" [1981]855 , Küng continued to defend the absoluteness and normativeness of Jesus against the religious figures of other faiths. He examined the meaning of Jesus of Nazareth as the "Son of God" in the light of the biblical infancy narratives and argued that the virgin birth, angelic visitations, and temptations from the devil were not exclusive to Jesus. What Küng found unique and distinctively Christian with regard to Jesus was the cross. Hence, Küng highlighted the crucifixion event as the decisive aspect differentiating Jesus from Buddha, Confucius, Zarathustra, and Muhammad, and claimed that the cross event was required in order to understand the infancy narratives and how Jesus came to be designated with the title "the Son of God". He stressed the fact that this and other similar titles only served to express the unique relationship that Jesus had with God and God with Jesus and not his divinity. He claimed that no other religious figure or teacher had this unique relationship, before or after Jesus.856 

In almost his every work, Küng ventured to compare Jesus with the other religious figures such as Moses, Buddha, Confucius, and Muhammad in order to show his uniqueness. In this comparison, he argued that Jesus was unique with regard to his Jewish social context, his message, his personality, his relationship to God, and his death.857 

After starting his dialogical journey towards the world religions, he published his Christianity and World Religions [1984] which is regarded as his magnum opus in his dialogue with world religions.858  Here, he exposes his position in his relation with people of other faiths between the extremes of absolutism and relativism and prefers a model which depends on mutual understanding, respect, objective study and genuine conversation with the other.859 

Küng criticises those who reject the finality and normativity of Christ in their theology of religions by arguing that those theologians have lost the Christian criterion by saying that "a religion is true and good when and to the extent that it allows traces of Christ to be detached in its teaching and practice" by putting him on an equal level with other religious figures such as Muhammad, Buddha and the others. In order to support his objection, he further stresses that a "theologian who is not prepared to give up the normativity and finality of Christ does so not because it is only through Christ as a critical catalyst that the other religions can ‘adapt themselves to our modern technology’, but because otherwise he or she would be abandoning the central declaration of the Scriptures that go to make up the New Testament". Moreover, he upholds this view by arguing that it is in no way "identical with some theological ‘imperialism’ and ‘neo-colonialism’, which denies other religions their truth and rejects other prophets and seers". From these two arguments, Küng draws the conclusion that "there are different ways of salvation . . . to the one goal, and these in part overlap and can in any case enrich each other. Yet dialogue between these religions by no means demands the giving up of the standpoint of faith".860 

After clarifying his position in this way, Küng attempts to do two things in his theology of religions. The first is to apply "Christian self-criticism in the light of other religions". The second is to apply "Christian criticism of the other religions in the light of the Gospel". Since we studied this second one previously with regard to the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad,861  we will turn to observe the first one with regard to the person of Jesus. We will consider his views on the traditional Christian beliefs which were considered by Hick and Knitter as obstacles and barriers for better relations and genuine dialogue with people of other faiths. In doing so, we will consider Küng’s observation of those beliefs in the light of Islam and Judaism.

Küng first of all applies the self-criticism of the doctrine of the Trinity in the light of Qur’anic accounts. He states that this doctrine has been a great obstacle for Christian-Muslim understanding from the advent of Islam. In order to rescue it from being a barrier, Küng concedes that Jesus never proclaimed that God is one nature in three persons, or one person in two natures. He did not put his own person, role, and dignity at the centre of his teaching, but rather God’s Kingdom, God’s name, and God’s will which man is to fulfil through service to his fellow men and women. On this point, Küng asks how Christians look upon Jesus’s relationship to God. In answer to this question, he refers to the origin of Jesus. He notes that Jesus himself was a Jew and much closer to present day Palestinian Arabs than to all Western images of Jesus, and he tried to establish the belief in one God during his life time, just as Muslims do in our present day.862  Küng, also, admits that modern historico-critical studies on the New Testament have shown that Jesus did not use the title, " Son of God," for himself, but after his death his followers began to use this title, basing it on their Easter experience. However, he puts forwards the idea that Jesus was more than a prophet, since he assumed God’s authority especially with respect to the Law and the forgiveness of sins.

In the light of these points, Küng concludes that the title, "Son," was given to Jesus not in a sense of "a physical divine sonship, as Islam always assumed and rightly rejected (because it awakened associations of intercourse between a god and a mortal woman), but God’s choosing Jesus and granting him full authority".863  To support this conclusion, he points out that from the perspective of Jewish monotheism there would not be a problem in this kind of belief concerning the status of Jesus, and "the primitive Christian community, made up entirely of Jews, would have no difficulty holding this view. Nor would Islam".864 

Küng suggests three ways of understanding the doctrine of the Trinity from the perspective of Christian-Muslim dialogue. Firstly, he notes that believing in God the Father in the New Testament means believing in the one God whom Judaism, Christianity and Islam all share. Küng indicates that the "Father" in this expression should be understood not literally, but symbolically. Secondly, the term, "Son of God," should be understood in the revelation of the one God in the man Jesus of Nazareth. And, also, Jesus Christ should be recognised not as an eternal and intrusive hypostasis, but as a human and historical person concretely related to God. Thirdly, believing in the Holy Spirit should be understood as God’s power and might which is working among human beings in this world. Further, Küng points out that the doctrine of the Trinity is not the criterion for being a Christian, but belief in One God, the practical imitation of Christ and trust in the power of God’s Spirit all work together in the life of a Christian. 865 

Küng maintains that this redefining of the doctrine of the Trinity will really help in promoting dialogue between Muslims and Christians. He believes that if Christians try to understand the doctrine of the Trinity by going back to the New Testament, they may understand Muslims better. He advises both Muslims and Christians if they want to understand each other better, to go back to their Holy Books and try to understand their doctrines in the light of these holy books. For instance, according to Küng, if Christians go back to the New Testament, they will discover what great differences there are between original expressions concerning the Father, Son, and Spirit, and the subsequent dogmatic teachings of the Church on the doctrine of the Trinity.866 

In one of his recent essays, "Christian Self-Criticism in the Light of Judaism" [1993]867 , Küng criticises the title "Son of God", and the doctrine of the Incarnation in order to make them intelligible for better dialogue with people of other faiths. He states that in the dialogue process Christians do not any longer underestimate the objection of Jews and Muslims to the doctrine of the Trinity which is unintelligible to them because, according to them, that doctrine destroys the belief in one God. Also, Küng notes that after the Enlightenment period more and more Christian intellectuals have raised similar objections to the doctrine as a consequence of historical-critical exegesis and the subsequent development of critical analysis of Christian dogma.868  In the light of these objections, Küng tries to make "central Christian dogmas" intelligible to avoid false confrontations in the process of interreligious dialogue. To fulfil this objective he scrutinises the meaning of being a "Son of God" for Jesus.

After pointing out the fact that before Jesus, the term "Son of God" had been used in the Old Testament for human beings in general and for the people of Israel specifically,869  Küng underlines that Jesus himself did not use the term "Son of God" for himself, since his message was not to present his own person, his role, or status, but was to proclaim God and His Kingdom to people in a simple way by using short stories and parables from daily life.870  Then, he moves on to explain the relation of Jesus to God within the context of the New Testament as follows: Firstly, according the Küng, it is a well known fact that "Jesus himself spoke, prayed, and struggled out of an ultimately inexplicable experience of God, a sense of God’s presence, yes, even a sense of unity with God as his father". Secondly, he maintains that the historical-critical scholarship has proved/shown that Jesus himself did not describe himself as "Son of God". Thirdly, he draws a conclusion from Jesus’s authority against the teaching and practice of the religious establishment of his time that he was "more than Moses", and "more than the prophets".

Thus, it is obvious that only after the event of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus, was the title of "Son of God" used to describe him. Küng argues that this attempt to designate Jesus as "Son of God" did not cause any problem among Jews until the Council of Nicea and Chalcedon in which Jesus was described as "the same nature as the father," and the classical Trinitarian doctrine was developed as "one God in three persons". Up to that time this title was not formulated or understood as a dogmatic doctrine but as an exaltation of his status.871  In his Credo [1993], Küng maintains that if the sonship of Jesus is not understood as a physical divine Sonship but as an expression of election and empowerment of Jesus, "there would be few objections to it . . . from Jewish and Islamic monotheism".872 

Küng further points out that after the dogmatic formulation of the classical Trinitarian dogma in the Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon, the more theologians have attempted to explain the relation between God, Son and the Holy Spirit by using Hellenistic arguments, the more problems have come out in "harmonising faith in the one God with belief in the divine sonship, and the more problems they have had in distinguishing the Son of God from God, while at the same time affirming the oneness of God". Therefore, argues Küng, it is very difficult for Christians to explain the relation between God and Jesus to the Jews and Muslims who believe in the same God. For that reason, Küng maintains that in the process of interreligious dialogue for Christians the question should be to explain "the unity of God and Jesus, of Father and Son (and then also of the Spirit) . . . in such a way that the unity and uniqueness of God are preserved, as well as the identity of the person Jesus Christ," instead of elucidating the question of "How are three persons in the Godhead related in the one divine nature? Or, how do the two natures in Christ function in one person?".873 

After this explanation, Küng urges Christians to understand the meaning of the incarnation by taking into account the life of Jesus, since he argues that if this is done correctly, then the concept of incarnation "refers to the total earthly life and death and new life of Jesus," not to the dogmatic statements of the Councils, such as that he has the same hypostasis or the same nature with the Father. Further, the above explanation of the meaning of the title "Son of God" and the doctrine of incarnation led Küng to re-articulate the Christian faith in Father, Son, and Spirit by taking into account other prophetic religions, such as Judaism and Islam in the process of interreligious dialogue.874 

As has been observed so far, although Küng’s views on the status of Jesus have slightly changed in the process of his dialogical approach towards other religions, he has not moved in the direction of a non-absolutist Christology by leaving aside the uniqueness and normativeness of Jesus. For, according to him, the move from the uniqueness and normativeness of Jesus to the non-uniqueness and non-normativeness of Jesus "would alienate him from his faith community and it would tend to diminish the depth and firmness of his personal commitment to Jesus Christ".875 

However, in doing so, he limits the uniqueness and normativeness of Jesus to Christians by stressing that Jesus "is for us [Christians] the way, the truth, and the life! . . . Jesus Christ is for Christians the decisive and regulative norm" as the Torah is for Jews and the Qur’an is for Muslims. 876  He repeats his firm and steadfast conviction about the uniqueness and normativity of Jesus in his "Foreword" to Knitter’s work One Earth Many Religions [1995] as follows:

a Christian theologian, even in dialogue with followers of other religions, must defend the normativity and finality of Jesus Christ as God’s revelatory event for Christians – without, however, making any arrogant claims of superiority over other religions. Christians can accept the truth claims of other religions only ‘conditionally’ (that is, conditioned by the norm of Jesus Christ), just as followers of other religions can accept the truth claims of Christianity only conditionally.877 

 

Here, although Küng still considers Jesus as the unique and normative revelation of God, he limits it to Christians by asking them not to use it as a tool to announce his superiority over other religious figures. In this sense, he gives the impression that he moves away from his previous view that Jesus is superior to other religious figures in terms of his birth, life, message and death. Also, Küng’s employment of three different criteria to evaluate truth in religions seems to support this conclusion. For he considers Jesus Christ as the specifically Christian criterion directly for Christians, not for people of other faiths to determine "whether and to what extent the Christian religion is Christian at all".878 

Confusingly different though all the religions are, they all respond to similar basic human questions. Where does the world and its order come from? Why are we born and why must we die? What determines the destiny of individual and humankind? What is the foundation for moral awareness and the presence of ethical form? And they all offer similar ways of salvation over and above their interpretation of the world: ways out of the distress, suffering and guilt of existence—through meaningful and responsible action in this life to a permanent, abiding, eternal salvation.879 

 

Here, Küng seems to take a further step towards acknowledging the world religions as independent ways of salvation apart from Jesus Christ. He explicitly states that all religions including Christianity offer their followers similar ways of salvation. He also acknowledges Islam as a way of salvation for Muslims in the same way that Christianity is for Christians by stressing that "Muslims need no longer ‘be subject to the everlasting fire which has been prepared for the Devil and his angels’; they ‘can win eternal salvation". This means that Islam, too, can be a way of salvation; perhaps not the normal, the ‘ordinary’ way, so to speak, but perhaps a historically ‘extraordinary’ one".880 

Küng reconsiders the traditional doctrines such as the Trinity and Incarnation in the light of current Christian-Muslim dialogue and new scientific developments in order to make those doctrines acceptable to Muslims and comprehensible for Christians in our present day. This attempt of Küng seems to be helpful for the development of Christian-Muslim dialogue, since it urges dialogue partners to consider critically their own beliefs and doctrines which imply the superiority of one religious figure to another. As has been observed above, by following this approach Küng himself moved from holding Jesus as the normative and final Word of God not only for Christians but also others, to recognising him as God’s normative and final revelation only for Christians.881  By this shift, Küng seems to do justice to his own faith while recognising the normativeness of other religious figures for their followers. This approach of Küng certainly contributes more to promoting Christian-Muslim dialogue than either Hick’s or Knitter’s approach.

As has been shown so far, although Küng’s understanding of the status of Jesus seems to contribute to the development of Christian-Muslim dialogue by doing justice to both the Christian and the Islamic faith, he could not rescue himself from the criticism of some theologians. For example, while some of them are charging him not to cross the theological Rubicon882 , others criticise him for not taking the traditional Christian perception of Jesus seriously enough.883  It seems that Küng does not deserve these criticisms. As a committed Christian who wants to create a suitable environment for better dialogue between people of different faiths in general and Christians and Muslims in particular, he has tried very sincerely to be faithful to his own faith and open to the faiths of others.

We may conclude that Küng cannot be put in the same category as Hick and Knitter, since he does not ask Christians to give up the normativeness and uniqueness of Jesus Christ. Also, he cannot be regarded on the same level as those who acknowledge Jesus as the normative and unique revelation of God not only for Christians but for those who belong to other religions. But he can be considered "mid-way between the full pluralist theology and the inclusivism of the post-Vatican II Catholic approach exemplified by Rahner," as Alan Race correctly located him.884 

As we pointed out, Hick and Knitter encourage Christians to revise and reinterpret their traditional beliefs and doctrines concerning the status of Jesus. In doing so, they attempted to understand Jesus as an eschatological and spirit-filled prophet with a unique God-consciousness through whom Christians could experience God. They felt that this idea of Jesus might facilitate dialogue between Christians and non-Christians. It seems that by doing this they underestimate the faith of those who observe their prayers and worship of God through the uniqueness and normativity of the Christ-event for them. In the same way, they also influence Muslims to underestimate their own distinctive beliefs, such as the finality of the Prophet Muhammad and the uniqueness of the Qur’an for a genuine dialogue with non-Muslims. As D’Costa rightly remarks, Hick and Knitter’s position logically is a form of exclusivism885  in the sense that for the sake of better dialogue both Christian and Muslim partner should put aside the particularities of their faiths. This sort of demand can rule out one of the most important rules of interreligious dialogue, that no one partner can or should step outside of his or her religion and suspend his or her own religious experience and beliefs.886 

Küng’s self-criticism of the Christian faith in the light of other faiths by holding Jesus as the unique and normative revelation of God seems to represent the mediating position. It neither absolutises nor abandons the uniqueness of the Christ event, but it relativises it by restricting it to Christians. It seems that this position would help dialogue more than others, since it urges Christians to consider Jesus as God’s normative revelation and saviour for them, and also to be open to acknowledge other religions and their religious figures as real mediations of God’s grace. By doing this, it stimulates Christians to approach non-Christian religions with "openness and eagerness to learn more of God’s ways in the world".887

From the Christian-Muslim dialogue point of view, this approach can be regarded as a very significant development, since it provides a great opportunity for a theological dialogue. As has been observed in Chapters Four and Five, a more positive Christian theological evaluation of the status of the Qur’an and the prophethood of Muhammad is closely related to the status of Jesus and the question of salvation. In this respect, in the process of dialogue as long as Christians consider Jesus as decisive and normative for those who have chosen to follow him, and not in any universal sense for others, Christians can acknowledge that Muslims can obtain salvation by following the Qur’an and their own prophet. It seems that such an understanding does not underestimate the centrality of Jesus for Christians, but it relativises it in relation to religious figures of other religions. This means that Christians can still retain the absoluteness of Christ for themselves, but they do not assert it in relation to people of other faiths.888  Or, as A. Race remarks, "Jesus is ‘decisive’ not because he is the focus for the light everywhere in the world, but for the vision he has brought in one cultural setting . . . Jesus would still remain central for the Christian faith".889  Also, as Swidler emphasises if this line of thought continues to develop "then many of the disagreements between Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others in this area will disappear. Jews and Muslims, and others religious persons will not thereby become Christians, of course, for Yeshua [Jesus] for them is not the door to the divine that he is for Christians, but perhaps their charges of blasphemy and idolatry against Christians will thereby be dissipated. But most important, the Christian tradition will thereby much more likely make sense to many contemporary Christians".890 

In the light of the findings of this chapter, we may conclude that in the dialogue process what we need is a full commitment to our own faith and its mediator, and yet at the same time an openness toward other faiths and their mediators, in the sense of acknowledging that God has made himself known and has made salvation available through those mediators also.891  In this sense, we may conclude that openness to dialogue cannot be used as a reason for abandoning the normativity of Jesus for Christians, since to demand this is against the nature of dialogue.