theology of religions

theology of religions. The interpretation of how God (or ultimate Divine reality) may be operative for salvation through religions other than Christianity. Belief in Jesus Christ as God's final agent of salvation fostered the view that He either fulfilled or was destined to replace the religious aspirations within other traditions. This attitude was qualified by puzzlement about the availability of salvation before the coming of Christ and in places where the Gospel had not penetrated.

The 2nd- and 3rd-cent. Apologists held a positive view of other religions based on the doctrine of the universal presence of the Divine Logos, manifest in Greek religions, ancient Judaism, and even in Buddhists and Brahmins. After Constantine, the maxim ‘no salvation outside the Church’, hitherto applied to Christian heretics and schismatics, was extended to pagans and Jews, because it was assumed that in the Roman Empire all would be able to hear the Christian message. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the Council of Florence (1442) endorsed the belief that salvation was confined to the Church. The encounter with peoples beyond the known world in the late-15th and 16th cents. rekindled debate about the culpability of such people in respect of salvation; some Dominicans and some Jesuits argued that salvation outside the Church was possible by virtue of a ‘baptism of desire’ or ‘implicit faith’. In the 18th and 19th cents. some missionaries (both Protestant and RC), though believing in the superiority of Christianity, came to doubt that exclusivist views were an adequate response to the ethical aspirations and depth of spirituality in other religions. The beginnings of the inter-faith movement are sometimes traced to the first conference of the World's Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. In the second half of the 20th cent. Christians met other faiths with increased respect. The Second Vatican Council encouraged RCs to value what is holy, good, and true in other religions, and in 1979 the World Council of Churches established a Sub-Unit on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies. Dialogues have stressed elements common to different religions as well as the symbolic nature of theological concepts, and have utilized such notions as the ‘cosmic Christ’ or ‘normative Christ’, which is thought to be somehow effective for other believers within their own traditions.