Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen has shared his helpful thoughts on theology of religions as one of the pressing issues for Christians in the West in the twenty-first century. In addition to the reasons he cites for the necessity of this topic, we might also consider that our post-9/11 environment, fueled many times by religious contributions to tension and violence, adds additional urgency to this venture. In this article I will provide supplemental reflections on Dr. Kärkkäinen’s overall thesis. Protestant evangelicalism has given recent evidence of promise in developing theologies of religions through the work of several scholars—only a few of which can be sampled as especially significant in this article. Space limitations preclude an extensive response on this topic, so what follows should be considered a summary introduction to additional points for consideration.
Before venturing into discussion of rational considerations related to theologies of religions it is important to consider the significance of emotional aspects. Writing on the subject of interreligious dialogue and evangelism, Terry Muck has stated that “[t]he affective dimension has been shortchanged”1 in this context, and the same is true by extension to the development of theologies of religions. Further defining his topic, Muck suggests an interesting alternative to interreligious dialogue “as an emotion or attitude toward people of other religious traditions.”2 He later quotes Stanley Samartha in this regard, who states that “Dialogue is a mood, a spirit, an attitude of love and respect towards neighbors of other faiths. It regards partners as persons, not statistics.”3 Emotional considerations surely play a part in the development of theologies of religions, but a more conscious awareness of this phenomenon is needed. Theologies and apologetic responses to new religions, for example, have tended to be formed with negative and defensive attitudes as evangelicals have sought to define and defend theological boundaries against concerns over heresy and its possible intrusion into the church. While the influence of negative emotions in this context is perhaps understandable, the adoption of more positive emotional attitudes toward those in the new religions, indeed a dialogical attitude of love and respect, might provide for the development and implementation of more promising theologies of religions and engagement.
Moving from emotional considerations to the cognitive, Kärkkäinen includes a discussion of Christian responses to the religions with the familiar typology of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. But continued focus on these issues may limit consideration of other important aspects of theologies of religions that could help move the discussion forward. Amos Yong suggests that these categories “may have outworn their usefulness and are no longer viable.”4 Instead, he has set forth a pneumatological theology of religions with a focus on the Spirit.5 Yong defines this as a theology in three ways, as one that “completes and fills out the Christian doctrine of the Trinity,”6 and as one that may be uniquely suited to address areas “where previous approaches have fallen short.”7 To this end Yong writes:
I will argue that precisely because the Spirit is both universal and particular, both the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Jesus the Christ, that pneumatology provides the kind of relational framework wherein the radical alterity—otherness— of the religions can be taken seriously even within the task of Christian theology. The result, perhaps, is the emergence of a new set of categories that may chart a new way forward.
The third aspect of Yong’s definition of a pneumatological theology of religions touches on soteriological issues, which he believes provide a “different, and perhaps broader framework”8 for consideration, particularly in connection with ecclesiology. Yong’s thesis provides us with an important and largely neglected facet in the development of a theology of religions, and one that can open up new research trajectories through a robust trinitarianism that not only involves Christological considerations, but also focuses on the work of the Spirit in creation and among human cultures and their religions.
This leads to my final consideration that supplements Kärkkäinen’s discussion of theologies of religions, and that is a theology of hospitality in relation to those in other religions. Here Yong is again helpful9 as he builds on his pneumatological perspective, drawing upon the interconnections and important practices of exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist theologies of religions to create a theology of hospitality. An important aspect of this is consideration of “theology as dramatic performance,”10 wherein Christians participate in the divine drama in the unfolding scriptural narrative. Other scholars such as N. T. Wright and Nicholas Lash have argued similarly, and have suggested that Christians should enter into the process of interpreting and living out the Scriptures just as actors work out parts in a play and musicians interpret music. God has written the story that continues to unfold in history, and we are privileged to play a part. In this way theology, including theology of religions, is not merely a cognitive function, but is also a dynamic way of living the faith as part of God’s unfolding narrative of the missio Dei. This divine dramatic process is also one in which Christians perform their faith while engaged with other “actors” from other religious traditions. This process is then connected to a “performative pneumatological theology of religions”11 that involves neighborliness and hospitality. In this context, Christians engage those of other religions as aliens and strangers, and in so doing follow the example of Jesus, who both represented and offered the eschatological hospitality of God. The incorporation of hospitality in theologies of religions will provide important aspects of engagement and humility to the theologizing process.
Kärkkäinen has provided a helpful overview of various considerations related to the development of theologies of religions, considerations that need to be related to interreligious dialogue. While these considerations are helpful, additional supplemental reflections that take into account emotional attitudes toward those of other religions, the work of the Spirit in cultures and the religions, and the importance of hospitality toward neighbors will benefit the church’s doctrine and praxis in this area.
Endnotes
1Terry Muck, “Interreligious Dialogue and Evangelism,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 17 (1997): 139-51. Electronic version cited from http://apologiagospelcom.net/mainpages/WhatsNews/Muck/MuckArt.html, downloaded 4/19/2005 and no longer available at this URL.
2Ibid.
3Ibid.
4Amos Yong, Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003).
5In addition to Beyond the Impasse, see Yong’s discussion of this thesis in “The Spirit bears witness: pneumatology, truth, and the religions,” Scottish Journal of Theology 57:1 (2004): 14-38.
6Beyond the Impasse, 20.
7Ibid., 21.
8Ibid.
9Amos Yong, Hospitality & the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008).
10Hospitality & the Other, 54.
11Ibid., 57.
