Theology of Religions as a Process of Discernment: A Critical Appraisal of the Dialectical Tension between Jacques Dupuis' Theology of Religions and the Theology of Dominus Iesus.

The current theological scholarship on Jacques Dupuis' paradigm and Dominus Iesus concentrate either on a positive appraisal of their positions on the one hand, or on a critical assessment of certain aspects in them on the other hand. While acknowledging the contributions made by the existing corpus, my project seeks to go beyond the appreciators, faultfinders and one-sided approaches to both Dupuis’ paradigm and the Declaration. The critical analysis of the dialectics between the two is undertaken in view of retrieving insights and attitudes for reorienting the discourse on the mystery of God, the Church’s self-understanding and the practice of interreligious dialogue.    

The dissertation begins by presenting the historical-theological background and exploring the methodological approaches adopted by Dupuis and Dominus Iesus in approaching the question of religious pluralism. In this regard, Dupuis adopts a hermeneutical interreligious approach in which the first act is a serious praxis of interreligious dialogue, from which one turns to Christian revelation for direction and, then, back to praxis. On its part, Dominus Iesus espouses a deductive, syllogistic and neo-scholastic approach – a method which enters into a tensile encounter with theologies which take experiential realities as the point of departure.

The author contends that the theological themes in the Dupuis and Dominus Iesus debate can adequately be addressed through the category of theological dialectics. These themes include the dialectics between (1) God’s universal love and evangelization; (2) universality and particularity of divine revelation; (3) universality and particularity of salvation in Jesus Christ; and (4) universality of the Church’s mediation and her setting within boundaries. The above themes which oscillate between the universal and the particular, call for dialectical reasoning owing to their paradoxical nature. Essentially, theological dialectics maintains the two poles of the paradox in a creative tension. It defies thinking which proceeds with precision and exactitude in favour of pendulation between the universal and particular poles of the dialectic. Dialectical reasoning is characterized by attributes of deliberation, conversation, relation, mediation, discernment and openness. It does not deal with static formulations.

In the final analysis, after critically appraising Dupuis’ paradigm and Dominus Iesus’ teaching, I make a plea for a discerning Christian theology of religions. More precisely, he argues that contrary to one-sided emphases on either an apologetic Christian identity or uncriticalopenness to other religious and cultural traditions, a discerning hermeneutic in the theology of religions admits of a certain amenability to both approaches. In other words, he makes a case for a theological via media. In his view, to draw a bold line of distinction between doctrine and discernment, faith and life, Christian identity and relevance, truth and love, theory and praxis constitutes a false dilemma. It is not a question of either or but of both and. Moreover, he concludes that adequate analysis of the dialectics between Dupuis’ paradigm of inclusive pluralism and Dominus Iesus’ inclusivist view can serve as a creative locus theologicus. This is especially in providing theological insights and resources like paradox, analogy and dialectics. These resources are important in inspiring theological modesty in speaking about God, in ecclesiological discourse and in the practice of interreligious dialogue. By mediating the polarities of the paradox, theological dialectics helps to shutter the classical fortified distinctions, for example, between so-called liberal and conservative age-old tags. In its place, it fosters a hermeneutically nuanced dialectical way of theologizing.