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The Vocation of an Interreligious Theologian: My Retrospective on Forty Years in Dialogue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

Paul F. Knitter
Affiliation:
Xavier University

Extract

On the occasion of my retirement from Xavier University, and at the request of some long-time friends I have the opportunity to reflect on what has happened to me during these forty years of trying to combine my vocation as a Catholic theologian with what I felt was a “call” (therefore, also a vocatio) to take persons of other religions seriously and to dialogue with them. The “vocation of an interreligious theologian” is really the meeting and, as it were, mating of two vocations, two calls that make very real and definite and often contrasting claims on the same person. What follows is a “retrospective” on how I have attempted to walk one path in response to two calls—to be a Catholic theologian and to be an interreligious dialoguer.

Type
College Theology Society Fiftieth Anniversary Essays
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2004

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References

1 These reflections were offered, at the request of Frank Clooney, S.J., to the Comparative Theology group at the Catholic Theological Society of America's annual meeting, Cincinnati, June 2003.

2 Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972.

3 New York: Paulist, 1978. Paulist Press published a revised edition in 1999.

4 Ibid., p. ix.

5 Fredericks, James L., Faith among Faiths: Christian Theology and Non-Christian Religions, (New York: Paulist, 1999), 173–77.Google Scholar

6 For more on Rahim, see Knitter, Paul F., Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996) 78.Google Scholar

7 Lonergan, Bernard J.F., Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), xi–xii.Google Scholar

8 Tracy, David, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1975), 4356.Google Scholar

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11 Hanh, Thich Nhat, Living Buddha, Living Christ (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995), 7981.Google Scholar

12 Pieris, Aloysius, “The Buddha and the Christ: Mediators of Liberation,” in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, ed. Hick, John and Knitter, Paul F. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987), 162–64.Google Scholar

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15 For more information: http://www.peacecouncil.org/

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17 Tellingly, of two recent books of mine that came out almost simultaneously (because they were originally intended to be one book!), the Christological Jesus and the Other Names has clearly outsold the ethical-methodological One Earth Many Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995). No Other Name? was published by Orbis Books in 1985.

18 Cobb, John B. Jr., “Beyond Pluralism,” in Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, D'Costa, Gavin, ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990), 91.Google Scholar

19 Die kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/3: 40–187.

20 Pieris, Aloysius, God's Reign for God's Poor: A Return to the Jesus Formula (Sri Lanka: Tulana Research Centre, 1998), Chap. 4.Google Scholar