No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes toward the World Religions is
a case for religious pluralism. I will give a brief survey of Paul F. Knitter's argument and then give my own evaluation of his logic (if theological mumbo-jumbo bores you, just skip down to the critical evaluation section).
The basic premise of his book is that “a nonnormative,
theocentric Christology does not contradict the New Testament proclamation of
Jesus and therefore is a valid interpretation of that proclamation” (172). Knitter’s argument is structured around popular attitudes that exist on the
spectrum of pluralistic dialogue as well as varying degrees of acceptance of
pluralism by Christians. His ultimate statement requires a redefinition of
Jesus’ particularity, so his final chapters are devoted to how pluralists of
different backgrounds have devoted themselves to engaging an interreligious
dialogue. Flowing from his thesis, Knitter’s most stinging proposal is that
Christianity should be redefined in order to enter the pluralistic dialogue to
which the religious world is evolving.
Knitter
cites Ernst Troeltsch as the father of historical relativism. According to
Troeltsch, no religion has any advantage over another. In fact, all religions
are cultural expositions and expressions of utility. Christianity may be the
best for the West, Troeltsch would argue, but the evolution of religious
understanding moved the world religions from a classicist to a historical
culture. This, therefore, creates a problem with concepts like incarnation and
superiority.
He references Arnold
Toynbee's belief “that all religions are basically the same”(49). He
sees a common essence in all religions, so he encourages a discarding of
anything considered nonessential. This being a subjective call, he prefers an
“esoteric faith” (49) to the uniqueness of traditional
Christianity.
Knitter calls upon Carl Jung to support his
religious common source theory. By laying the foundation of religion in the
psyche, Knitter promotes a view of God that is part of the unconscious and can
be decoded as symbol or myth. Jesus becomes a symbol of the Christ concept that
can exist in many religions. Thus the clarifying moment for religion is a
utilitarian call of whether that religion actually helps people
psychologically.
In order
to show how far religion has evolved, Knitter moves from modern psychology to a
contrasting conservative evangelical model. Karl Barth, representing
neo-Orthodoxy, is cited to show how the evangelical movement has evolved from
early fundamentalists to conservative evangelicals to more ecumenical
evangelicals. Even so, Knitter claims that holding to the Bible as authority or
Christ as the sole source of salvation is arrogant irrelevance for today’s
dialogue.
Protestants
are painted in the same light as conservative evangelicals, but Knitter does
allow a minute amount of grace for their kinder spirit and “a more open
attitude toward other religions” (97). As
Barth was a champion for conservative evangelicalism, Wolfhart Pannenberg is
the poster child for mainline Protestantism. Barth saw Christ alone as the
source of revelation and salvation, but Pannenberg would allow for revelation
within all religions. Paul Tillich also holds to salvific revelation in other
religions, but this revelation is somehow only partial. Knitter affirms
mainline Protestants for their openness to dialogue, but he still thinks their
position is inadequate to properly address a science of religions or a theology
of religions.
Insisting
that concepts like salvation and sin would have to be redefined before they can
be found relevant in the contemporary dialogue, Knitter turns to Karl Rahner
for what he considers real progress. He posits that the early church did not
believe in salvation through Jesus alone, that this was a development of
biblical writers and the church in the third century. Instead, the Catholic Church
became more institutionalized and grew more particular in its teachings of
“outside the church, no salvation” (123). Rahner’s contribution, based on God’s desire to save, was to promote a move
from Christocentrism or even ecclesiocentrism to a theocentrism void of any
major emphasis on Jesus. This development seeks to explain the shift from the
protestant view of religions “as a negative preparation for the gospel” to a
Catholic perspective as “a positive preparation” (135).
Knitter argues
that we must recognize revelation and salvation in other religions if we are to
have a true dialogue. He cites John Hick, Raimunda Punikkar and Stanley
Samartha as the vanguards for theocentricism. Hick’s understanding of Jesus’ incarnation
as just an embodiment of love places interreligious salvation within view.
Punikkar’s “cosmotheandric” (154) unity principle requires that any representation of salvation is “not be
restricted to the merely historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth” (156). Ironically,
Samartha says that only relativists might truly be saved (158).
In
order to deal then with the uniqueness of Jesus, Knitter spends the last two
chapters denouncing the Christian faith models and proposing new definitions
for Christian terminology that make a dialogue more palatable to other
religions. Knitter believes traditional Christians are “insufficiently
sensitive to the way they contradict contemporary awareness of historical
relativity” (171). So in order to not
“impede authentic dialogue with believers of other faiths” (171), Knitter proposes a redefinition of Jesus’ incarnation as a myth with personal
value, a redefinition of Jesus’ message as a minor prophet, a redefinition of
Jesus’ resurrection as figurative “survival language” (184) employed by a minority group who were seeking their way to God. If done so,
religion can evolve to a new world order, and world peace can be achieved.
Critical Evaluation
There are several elements that
stood out as barriers to Knitter’s success in proving his thesis.
His method for razing the basic
particularity of traditional Christianity is not applied universally for all
religions. His quest for some common denominator among religious adherents
forms a reductionism that borders on pseudo-anthropology. Knitter makes himself
a prisoner of his own bias as he scratches at the walls of twentieth century
classicist culture. These inadequacies lessen the force of his argument and
serve to misdirect any call for mutual understanding.
Limited
Method
Although Paul Knitter paints a picturesque fantasy of all
world religions somehow able to speak in relativity as per their own identities
and live in peaceful harmony, his demands for interreligious dialogue are in
reality a brutal militant approach to hack out the heart of Christianity.
At best, he presents a case for a Christ-less Christianity, a comical but vampiric approach to studying a religion. At worst, he
redefines the particulars of Christianity in such a way that they have
absolutely no real meaning. Knitter feels that his theocentric model “holds the
greatest promise of the future of interreligious dialogue and for the continued
evolution of the meaning of Jesus Christ for the world” (166-67). The ultimate end of this evolutionary process is an outer religious shell void
of even the remembrance of the filling.
Knitter does not shy away from the fact that Jesus
Christ made some particular claims as to his own uniqueness, but he claims that
Christ's statements have been misunderstood or misrepresented. Knitter makes a case against Jesus Christ as the one and only savior, thus opening the door for all world religions to have the same salvific footing. He claims that this constricted Christian view of personal salvation is in fact standing
in the way of religion’s salvation. Read my lips: Knitter thinks that it is religion that needs to be saved.
It is interesting
that he performs no acts of theological surgery upon any other religions, only
Christianity. Perhaps such a broader application is beyond the scope of his
book, but his narrow assault on Christ’s particular claims make his method
suspect. It could be concluded from this approach that it is only Christianity
that is standing in the way of world peace. Knitter stands as the proverbial Elmer Fudd holding a gun over that wascally wabbit called Christianity.
Knitter’s
reductionism
Knitter’s approach
can be classified as oversimplification, as if digesting the tenets of any
major world religion were an easy thing. He attempts to throw the ingredients of all religions into one soup and then write the recipe. His reductionist perspective simply does not advance the dialogue he proposes.
On the contrary, his attempts to reduce religious dialogue to a common
denominator of relativism removes anything of value that any religion would
attempt to offer during a roundtable discussion. If all revelation is reduced
to salvation, then it is questionable as to the need for salvation at all. If
any religion’s tenets for salvation are reduced to its own personal
applications of any form of revelation, then there is no such thing as a sin
problem or suffering or mistakes. Therefore, there is no need for the religion
beyond an expression of conflated egoism.
Knitter’s
Prison
Knitter defeats himself with his own standard of judgment.
Clearly, Knitter is a product of the very culture he seeks to address. He is the prisoner attempting to imprison the rest. In fact,
he even maintains that a religion can only truly be judged by an insider. He is ever the Cincinnati theology professor dressed in eastern garb. He is the man spouting feminist theology. He is the symbol of upper middle class advocating liberation. To those whom he addresses, he will never be an insider.
Knitter seeks to deflate any exclusivist concept
related to Christianity either by redefinition or by a creative form of
religious relativism. He
redefines the resurrection of Christ as a myth having only personal
significance, but in doing so he still utilizes western linearity both in
linguistic expression and conceptual explanation. As such, he builds a cultural
prison from which his own book cannot escape, doomed to be placed on the shelves with other works of science fiction and fantasy.
Knitter seeks to
promote a Christology that can enter into conversation with pluralism and
ecumenism, but the very exclusive claims of Christ that establish Christianity
must first be negated or so watered down that anything can be salvific. Knitter
claims we can have both exclusivity and inclusivity if we only redefine the
terms. In doing so, he unwittingly makes the same error in logic that has
consistently plagued western philosophy. In an attempt to create a both/and, Knitter argues it is EITHER both/and OR nothing, thereby locking the
door to any openness that might have been achieved through a respect for
exclusivity.
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