Faith and Cultures: Challenges to a World Church

Abstract

Paul Tillich's well-known dictum sets up tension between two of most dynamic principles of human life, but principle does not of itself illumine their complex relationship. For Christianity, relationship of religion—or better, faith or gospel—to many cultures in which it now finds itself has been subjected to ever-greater scrutiny in last half century. This has been so not only because of multiplication of cultures in which Christianity is now present in some form, but also because modernization process has accelerated process of cultural change to a pace that no one has been able to accommodate. The yawning divide between proclamation of gospel and exigencies of culture was called by Paul VI the drama of our time. John Paul II has been even more dramatic: I have considered Church's dialogue with cultures of our time to be a vital area, one in which destiny of world at end of this twentieth century is at stake.