Christian Identity and Genuine Openness to the Religious Beliefs of Others

Abstract

Not the least important thing I have learned from my participation in the International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter is that interreligious dialogue is possible only under certain conditions. Specifically, I am now confirmed in the assumption I made in beginning my participation that one can enter into such dialogue only if one can somehow claim truth for one's own religious beliefs without thereby denying, explicitly or implicitly, that others' religious beliefs also may possibly be true. But how is it possible to claim that one's own beliefs as a Christian are while allowing for at least the possible truth of others' beliefs as well? This is how I, as a Christian, formulate the question-or, at any rate, one of the questions-that I took to be raised by the topic discussed at the most recent meeting of our group: Religious Identity and Openness in a Pluralistic World. One implication of this formulation, obviously, is that, in my view, a necessary aspect of Christian identity, as of religious identity generally, is the confession, or profession, of certain religious beliefs, together with the claim that these beliefs are true. Moreover, by true in this context I understand not merely true, in the sense of agreeing in substance with any other religious or existential beliefs, but also true, in the sense of providing the norm with which any other religious or existential beliefs must agree in order to be beliefs. With this understanding, then, the question I propose to pursue really asks, How is it possible to be a Christian and to claim formal truth for one's own religious beliefs while allowing that others' beliefs also can be formally true? This explains, in turn, why the other operative term in the title of my paper is not simply openness, but genuine openness. One might possibly think-or be thought-to be open to the religious beliefs of others simply because one allowed that their beliefs could indeed be provided only that they substantially agreed with Christian beliefs taken as the norm for judging their truth. But on my analysis of the claim that others themselves make for the truth of their beliefs, one would