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World Religions and the Finality of Christ: a Critique of Hans Küng's On Being A Christian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Paul F. Knitter
Paul F. Knitter*
Affiliation:
Xavier University, Cincinnati
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Abstract

Küng's case for the relevance of Christianity and his program for dialogue with other religions include claims for the exclusive uniqueness and normativity of Christ. This article raises the following questions: (1) Are such claims necessary for personal commitment to Christ and for fidelity to the New Testament witness? (2) Do they allow for genuine dialogue with other religions? (3) Are they even possible in the light of prevalent norms for theological and historical-critical methodology?

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Fall 1978 , pp. 151 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1978

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References

1 On Being a Christian, tr. Quinn, Edward (New York: Doubleday, 1976), p. 25.Google Scholar All further page references will be found in the text.

2 “Küng and Kasper on Christ,” The Ecumenist 15 (1977), p. 18.Google Scholar

3 The German word is “massgebend,” better translated as “normative.”

4 Küng's understanding of the uniqueness of Jesus can also be stated in terms of the familiar distinction between “inclusive” and “exclusive” Christologies. (For a succinct statement of this distinction, cf., Tracy, David, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1975), pp. 206–207.Google Scholar To claim that Küng's view of Jesus' uniqueness grounds an inclusive Christology is correct but inadequate. True, such a view allows for and includes the positive, even salvific content of other revelations. However, it clearly excludes the possibility of there being other revelations equal to that of Christ and insists that all other religions and religious figures need to be judged and completed by Christ. It is this a priori exclusivist content of Küng's Christology which I am questioning. Or, as Monika Hellwig put it: “Given… [our] contemporary experience, it would seem that theologians must now ask themselves: can there be a non-exclusivist Christology, i.e., one which does not make unmatchable, unsurpassable claims for Jesus?” “Seminaron Christology: Exclusivist Claims and the Conflict of Faiths,” in Salm, Luke (ed.), CTSA Proceedings 1976, p. 130.Google Scholar Cf., also Niles, D. T., “The Christian Claim for the Finality of Christ,” in Kirkpatrick, Dow (ed.), The Finality of Christ (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1966), pp. 13–31.Google Scholar

5 This does not imply that such traditional claims for uniqueness apply in the same way to Christianity as to Christ. As the neo-orthodox theologians and Paul Tillich remind us, a clear distinction must be maintained between Christ and Christianity. Yet despite Tillich's insistence to the contrary, any claim for the exclusive uniqueness and normativity of Christ leads, willy-nilly, to similar claims for the religion that has originated from him. Cf. Tillich, Paul, Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), pp. 79–97.Google Scholar

6 It was a quite controversial issue at the last two meetings of the Catholic Theological Society of America; cf., Hellwig, Monika, The Christian Claim, pp. 129–132Google Scholar in footnote 4. The following is an excellent summary of clashing viewpoints concerning the finality and normativity of Christ: Schineller, Peter, “Christ and Church: A Spectrum of Views,” Theological Studies 37 (1976), pp. 545–566.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This issue also makes up the substance of Cobb, John B. Jr.'s Christ in a Pluralistic Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975).Google Scholar From the perspective of dialogue with Judaism, it is presented quite radically in McGarry, Michael Brett, Christology After Auschwitz (New York: Paulist, 1977).Google Scholar Finally, it is the eye of the storm raging over the recent publication of The Myth of God Incarnate, ed. Hick, John (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977);Google Scholar cf., also The Truth of God Incarnate, ed. Green, Michael (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977).Google Scholar

7 Principles of Christian Theology (London: SCM, 1966), pp. 155–158.Google Scholar

8 Tracy, , Blessed Rage for Order, pp. 72–79, 131–136.Google Scholar

9 For a more extensive presentation of this argument, cf., Cupitt, Don, “The Finality of Christ,” Theology 78 (1975), pp. 618–622;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, in footnote 7); id., “Christianity and Other Faiths,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 20 (1964), pp. 39-48; Hick, John, God and the Universe of Faiths (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973), pp. 108–119.Google Scholar

10 For interpretations of the myth of incarnation and its implications for the finality of Christ, cf., Hick, , God and the Universe of Faiths, in footnote 9), pp. 148–179;Google ScholarYoung, Frances, “A Cloud of Witnesses” and Two Roots or a Tangled Mess?,” The Myth of God Incarnate, pp. 13–47, 87–121;Google ScholarWiles, Maurice, “Myth in Theology,” The Myth of God Incarnate, pp. 148–166;Google ScholarBeggiani, Seely, “Mythological and Ontological Elements in Early Christology,” in McFadden, Thomas M. (ed.), Does Jesus Make a Difference? (New York: Seabury, 1974), pp. 20–43.Google Scholar

11 “Does Christology Rest on a Mistake?” Christ, Faith, and History, ed. Sykes, and Clayton, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 3–34.Google Scholar This question will be taken up more fully below.

12 “Is There a Missionary Message?” Mission Trends No. 1, eds. Anderson, and Stransky, (New York: Paulist, 1974), p. 84.Google Scholar (Emphasis mine.)

13 Lonergan, Bernard, “Belief Today,” Schema XIII 1 (1970), 9–15;Google Scholarid., “Theology in Its New Context,” Theology of Renewal, vol. I, ed. L. K. Shook (New York, 1968), pp. 34-6; id., “The Transition from a Classicist World View to Historical Mindedness,” in J. Biechler (ed.), The Role of Law in the Church Today (Baltimore, 1967), pp. 126-133; id., Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), pp. 300-302, 326-329. Also Berger, Peter, The Sacred Canopy (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 45–51.Google Scholar

14 Tracy, , Blessed Rage for Order, p. 223.Google Scholar

15 “The World Religions in God's Plan of Salvation,” Christian Revelation and World Religions, ed. Neuner, Joseph (London: Burns & Oates, 1965), pp. 25–66.Google Scholar

16 God and the Universe of Faiths, pp. 122-130.

17 Knitter, Paul, Towards a Protestant Theology of Religions (Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 1974).Google ScholarId., “European Protestant and Catholic Approaches to the World Religions: Complements and Contrasts,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 12 (1975), pp. 13-28. Kraemer, Hendrik, Religion and the Christian Faith (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956).Google ScholarBrunner, Emil, Christusbotschaft im Kampf mit den Religionen (Stuttgart, 1931).Google ScholarAlthaus, Paul, Die Christliche Wahrheit (Gutersloh, Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 1966), pp. 130–147.Google Scholar

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19 “Christianity and Other Faiths” (cf. footnote 9), pp. 43-44.

20 Method in Theology, pp. 267-270, 104-107.

21 Blessed Rage for Order, pp. 43-56.

22 Ibid., p. 234.

23 Ibid., p. 218.

24 “Epilogue,” op. cit. (in footnote 4), pp. 194-195.

25 The Remaking of Christian Doctrine (London: SCM, 1974), pp. 111Google Scholar, cf., also pp. 45-49. This is also one of the primary criticisms which Ogden, Schubert makes of Cobb's, John Christology:Ogden, “Christology Reconsidered: John Cobb's ‘Christ in a Pluralistic Age,’” Process Studies 6 (1976), pp. 116–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Cf. footnote 22.

27 Such a “dialogical Christology” which, while holding to the universal meaning of Jesus, does not approach other religions with a priori claims of exclusivist normativity is followed by a growing number of theologians. Gregory Baum, op. cit., in footnote 12. Id., “Introduction” to Ruether's, RosemaryFaith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (New York, Seabury, 1974).Google ScholarTracy, , Blessed Rage for Order, pp. 204–236.Google ScholarHick, John, “Jesus and the World Religions,” The Myth of God Incarnate, pp. 167–185.Google ScholarId., God and the Universe of Faiths, pp. 108-179. Macquarrie, , Principles of Christian Theology, pp. 246–193.Google ScholarPanikkar, Raymond, “The Category of Growth in Comparative Religion: A Critical Self-Examination,” The Harvard Theological Review 66 (1973), pp. 113–140.Google ScholarId., Salvation in Christ: Concreteness and Universality (Santa Barbara, 1972, privately published). Dunne, Kohn, The Way of All the Earth (New York: Macmillan, 1972).Google Scholar

In view of such understandings of the normativity of Christ, I think that Peter Schineller in his presentation of four “models” for contemporary articulations of the uniqueness of Christ (cf., footnote 6) should have added a fifth model. It would be inserted between models three and four and, following Schineller's terminology, could be called “Theocentric Universe-Dialogically Normative Christology.” It holds to the meaning and therefore normativity of Jesus for all peoples, but does not make this claim in an a priori fashion; it seeks to establish the normativity of Christ through dialogue, and, in dialogue, is open to the possibility of there being “other norms.”

28 Otto Hentz, in a seminar paper read at the American Academy of Religion convention, 1974.

29 We have already considered other arguments in hypothesis II: Jesus' view of God as personal and his proclamation of “world crisis.”

30 This point is also made by Loewe, William P., “Lonergan and the Law of the Cross: A Universalist View of Salvation,” Anglican Theological Review 59 (1977), pp. 162–174.Google Scholar