Mariasusai Dhavamony, Christian Theology of Religions - review ed by KENNETH CRACKNELL

Christian Theology of Religions:

A Systematic Reflection on the Christian

Understanding of World Religions

By Mariasusai Dhavamony

Bern, Peter Lang, 2001. 252 pp. $37.95.

Theology Today, Jul 2002


With this book, a second, revised edition, the eminent Indian theologian Mariasusai Dhavamony makes a worthy contribution to Lang's Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity series. Fr. Dhavamony is perhaps best known outside Roman Catholic circles as chief editor of Studia Missionalia and for his lengthy service to the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Though I suspect that any assertion that "theology is autobiography" would cause a pained expression to cross the face of the one who says, "We understand theology as a scientific discipline," this volume does represent a lifetime's reflection on its subject matter. This reflection ranges from Dhavamony's earliest formation as a priest in India, through his doctoral studies in Rome and Oxford, his living through the Second Vatican Council, followed by his more than thirty years of work in assessing the implications of Nostra agitate (Vatican II's Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions) and the other documents for Roman Catholic relations with people of different faith traditions. Something of the intellectual biography involved can be traced through the footnotes of this elaborate statement of a Christian theology of religions. He appears to have read all the major writers in this field, with his earliest citations coming from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and the very latest from just a year or so ago.

Dhavamony's theology is conservative, reflecting both his earliest formation as a priest working in the context of Asian syncretism and religious relativism and, later, as a professor in the Gregorian University, very close to the Vatican. So he quotes with approval the words of Pope John Paul II in 1980 that, when it is a question of Christian faith, it is necessary to confine oneself to the "identical, essential, constitutional patrimony of the very doctrine of Christ, professed by the authentic and authorized tradition of the Unique and True Church." Within this framework, he sees theology as "a normative science" that judges, in the light of faith, the salvific value of other religions. But, within this understanding, he can find room for interreligious dialogue. He makes no claim that "other religions bear no relation to truth at all, or that the Christian himself has apprehended all the truth that is to be found in Jesus Christ." His central chapters are, therefore, christological: about the cosmic Christ and the world's religions, the salvific presence of Jesus Christ in other religions, and the mystery of the cross in other religions. For Dhavamony, the whole of humanity partakes in the Logos through creation; the cosmic Christ informs all persons. God is at work in their religions, bringing them to perfection through the Logos who is Christ. Chapter 5 is, in fact, a restatement of the fulfillment theology that was in vogue in the mid-twentieth century under the influence of, among others, J. N. Farquhar (a Scottish Congregationalist, not an Anglican as Dhavamony suggests) and R. C. Zaehner, himself influenced by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In his exposition of the cosmic Christ, Dhavamony acknowledges indebtedness to Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine, as well as to Henri de Lubac and Karl Rahner, and to Protestant thinkers such as Joseph Sittler, Allan D. Galloway, and the Anglican bishop John V. Taylor. Many passages in this book are lyrical statements of what has come to be characterized as "inclusive christology." Such theological writing can be exhilarating, even when we are quite sure that we do not share the author's rather old-fashioned presuppositions.

There are some faults with the book's production. Nowhere is there a key to the abbreviations that the author uses for Vatican II documents. More regrettably, in a work that abounds with Dhavamony's own incidental remarks alongside his acute thumbnail sketches and critiques of other writers, we are not offered an index. There is, however, a very full bibliography. We leave the book grateful that we have been able to share one scholar's theological pilgrimage. We may be excited, too, by the ongoing challenge presented by this book to find a Christian theology of religions truly adequate to the needs of the twenty-first century.

KENNETH CRACKNELL

Brite Divinity School

Fort Worth, TX

Copyright Theology Today Jul 2002
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