PREFACE

As one who writes the history of philosophy, leading this work of Mahmut Aydin, Modern Western Christian Theological Understanding of Muslims since the Second Vatican Council, has been a most exciting experience. For it is a veritable case study of a most dramatic transformation of human vision in the compass of my own experience, both as a Christian and as a philosopher. Moreover, in the light of the dramatic ways in which the human community — specifically the Islamic and Christian world — has fallen apart at the very prelude of the new millennium, it provides dramatic insight into future threats and possibilities.

The background is, of course, the perduing and mutual negative understanding which has at least accompanied and intentionally stimulated the long history of competition and conflict between peoples in extensive parts of the world. If the future of increasingly global interchange is to be peaceful rather than conflictual, this negative mutual interpretation must be overcome. This work describes the truly amazing progress in this regard which has been made in but the last half century.

The key, I believe, is the shift noted by Gabriel Marcel, namely that while he never ceased to hold to the one Absolute, he began to think rather in terms of those who think or respond to that one. In other words, beginning from a shared confusion among the religions that because there could be but one path thereto, attention to the amazingly disparate and dispersed condition of humanity has come to suggest that religions as paths to God must be diverse in order to converge rather than diverge.

The work rightly focuses upon the developments since the Second Vatican Council for that was the religious watermark which opened the general post was cultural shift from a top-down ideological outlook to a bottom-up understanding of all in terms of the exercise of human freedom by persons and peoples. Ultimately this consists in the response of the human heart to the love by which all has been created, philosophically this is termed a phenomenological approach, namely bringing the hidden values of human consciousness into the light. This took place in Vatican II in the early 60s, decisively before their general affirmation by the Paris riots of ‘68.

This shift in perspective can be reflected upon at a number of levels and because the shift takes place in time it is possible that they are not mutually exclusive but that a number o these could have been true at different times and to different degrees. Hence it can be understood that the efforts to state this could be a bit inept and allow for misinterpretation an suspicion that they were really covert attempts to continue the earlier efforts at conversion from rather than promotion of and in these multiple convergent pathways.

But if it is wrong to consider these steps as deceptive tactics in the service of the old strategy, it is equally wrong to consider them in humanistic terms is simply a secularizing affirmation of a common humanity. For what is ultimately true here is not the human in and of itself but the shared origin and goal of all humans. This is what entails dialogue. Perhaps indeed the emphasis upon duality and difference in the term "dialogue", would be better to convert this into the unitive and convergent emphasis had by the term "cooperation" and the mutual assistance this implies. It retains the plurality of all finite beings and endeavors but sets these rightly in their essential, indeed radical, relation to the one. This indeed charts out the proper terrain. For to understand the multiple ways of experiencing and interpreting relations to God a hermeneutic method is needed, that is, we need to begin from the multiplicity of human experience of God and their response thereto in term, e.g., of contemplation in Buddhism, of prophecy in Islam, of love in Christianity, of messianic expectation in Judaism, and of union in Hinduism. It is essential to recognize these differences of horizon, the gifts to religious understanding and life which each makes possible, and that each religion share, that is, proclaim, its proper insight and commitment. Lack of this hermeneutic consciousness leaves one in the outmoded suspicion that any such proclamation is an attempt to convert or supposes some primacy. This demeans the proceed to being an excoerce of political power where parity between peoples was the goal, rather than the Truth which makes one free and is the fulfillment of all.

This hermeneutic turn can help in turn with the issues of shifting focus from the multiple key religious figures of a Buddha, Christ or Muhammad to the One God. This abstractive process is presented as a step toward neutrality, but as characteristically Western it is rightly noted as a Western rationalistic imperialism at the impoverishing expense of the religious histories and heritage, of the religious experiences and commitments of all peoples. Its effect would be to reject the religious history of all peoples as characteristic personal responses of each people to God in terms of its archetypal religious figure. It is difficult to see how John Hick can at the same time describe so beautifully the mode in which the figure of Christ is the key to the religious response of Christians and yet wish to relativise this response to God. The task would seem to be rather to understand how this, and the response of others in terms of their religious figures is truly decisive and ultimate.

Another ploy would appear to be the effort to shift the discussions from the theoretical to the practical, from attention to the religious figures themselves to the quality of the activity by people which they inspire, from orthodoxy to orthopraxis. But carried out in its own terms the result is to shift from religion to ethics, from response to God to action between humans and in terms of human alone. The religious concern is not only with poverty ad the distribution of riches but with what poverty does to closing off and hope and response to God or to inspiring self-transcendence and hence concern for others.

This can be properly understood if one follows the existential turn so that being is not an ultimate abstraction but divine life erupting into time. Read in these terms one is concerned with divine life in man and human life in God. But requires precisely not merely action but understanding, not merely praxis but speculative grasp of what is going on. This challenges one to deepen and enrich in its heart and its deeds. Again the attempt to promote dialogue by deadening or rejecting this effort at understanding, but forgetting or renouncing rather than by discovering and enriching has been rightly repeated by the major Churches charged pastorally with this task of mutual understanding.

The work then rightly focuses upon the development in the Christian theological understanding of Moslem in the last 50 years. It has been dramatic; all depends upon its continuation and formation in practices. Perhaps no where is it more sensitive than the understanding of Christ as savior in relation to non-Christian religions and then key figures. Since the Second Vatican Council of Churches has consistently opened toward a sense of inter-religious cooperation, beginning from the recognition of other religious traditions as authentic ways to God and the practical guidelines to implement this recognition. In a first step these have concentrated on cooperation between religious peoples in action programs for human progress. This in turn has given new importance to the theological questions of the status of the key figures of Muhammad and of Jesus. In part these understanding have tended to complement and enrich one another and theologians have been quick to suggest how Muhammad can be understood in the tradition of the Jewish prophets, especially if seen in terms not only of recalling the peoples from idolatry but of leading them to a new religious commitment to the one God and life in his image. For Christ this prophetic figure of Muhammad has in turn enable Christian theologians to refresh their understanding of Jesus as not only a God incarnate but as leading his people to the Father.

But is it possible to set a special role for those two religious figures in a manner that enriches both communities without subordinating one to the other.

This work might be continued with a suggestion first, that these discussions, even those Christian theologians most anxious to reach out to Muslims, may be too focused upon the issue of salvation and specifically of saviors. The religious path has multiple dimensions and it is not suppressing that disparate and diverse peoples have focused upon different submission. These are neither contradictory nor dispensible facets of the religious pilgrimage of a people All aspects are required and all can contribute. What may be disruptive, however, is that each religious tradition focuses upon a terms of one only particular dimension of the religious relations to God to speak in dimension of others. This may well be taken as implying a supremacy of one or if Christians more than others are focused upon salvation, this could be need as implying a negative reading of other key religious figures who have never wanted to connect themselves primarily in these terms. There are two responses to this. One is to insist on reading all in terms of salvation, but then to water down the reality of salvation so that any religious leader qualifies as savior. This has been a factor in the approach of some theologians and entails a reductivism that the Churches themselves cannot accept and must.

The other response is to appreciate the legitimate diversity of many paths to God and to recognize that each has its implications for theology. Thus the Christian focus on salvation entails special attention to the real difference between sin and salvation and to the difference this makes. Hence, the Christian history has naturally evolved an ontic theological exploration of the holiness of the savor, of his mediation nature as son of God and man of the nature of the cross and of the resurrection. This is echoed, but never equaled in the Muslim sense of Mary and Jesus as alone untouched by evil, and the sense of personnel resurrection and judgement. In a parallel the sense of Jesus as prophet pointing out the way to God echoes but never equals the Muslim sense of the role of the Prophet. This has ontic implications for all humans as well, not only for how they act, but for who and what they are. Dognas are blind affirmations but the deep discovery of a community regarding its essential nature and identity.

These progress in dialogue there searches not for a least common denominator between the multiple religious commitments but for the proper contribution of each to religious self-understanding and to the point of their convergence as imaged by Isaias, Holy mountain where all peoples will converge to sing their praise and thanksgiving to God who is truly Father, to Son who is the fullness of divine truth and to the Spirit of Love who works in all hearts, Savior and Prophet or in Hindu term, the One who is the Existence (sat), Consciousness (cit) and Bliss (ananda) from which, in which and into which we all converge.