A Study On Paul Knitter's Thoughts Of Pluralism And Religious Dialogue

This dissertation introduces and interprets a contemporary Christian theologian, Paul Knitter's thoughts of pluralism and religious dialogue with our human being's contemporary predicament on faith and existence as the academic background.Since the last century, more and more conflicts have been occurring with the increasing contacts between the East and West and we came to find that we are put in a social context of religious pluralism. The encounter of world religions has become a new problem of "One"and "Many". Perhaps we all have asked ourselves that what kind of age we are living now? What problems have world religions met? Have world religions been thrown into an unprecedented predicament? Do world religions have to experience a great transformation?Paul Knitter is a Christian theologian who is very sensitive to the challenges today. He realized that no matter how Christian thinkers have explained the contemporary predicament and no matter what schemes of response has been provided, we should first clearly realize that the basic problem is that we have only one earth and now the earth and human being are both suffering! For Paul Knitter, if we could response the contemporary challenge, we need to set up a relationship of cooperation and perform it into ethic practice. To approach this, Knitter says the Christianity should first experience a complete transformation. Hence, Knitter reconstructed his Christian thoughts as a response to the contemporary challenge.From Chapter 2. The author firstly states the contemporay challenges of the world religions met today and introduced Knitter's deep understanding of them. From it, we could know the main important background of Knitter's thoughts of pluralism and religious dialogue.Just as all theology, we are told, is rooted in biography, chapter 3 will describe Paul Knitter's dialogical odyssey, which is Knitter's faith and intereligious dialogue growing history. In this chapter, the author recovers Paul Knitter's interreligious dialogical experinces and his struggles on Christian faith during the past more than fourty years to set up a foundation for later discussions.In the main part of this dissertation (From chapter 4 to 8), the author reconstruct Paul Knitter's response to the time's challenge in a systematic theory structure with three themes of interreligious relationship mode, Christian theological construction and Knitter's personal experince of passing over and passing back.The corealtional and globaly responsible mode for dialogue is the main approach of Knitter to deal with the interreligious relationships. In chapter 4, the author states the becoming process of Knitter's corelational and global responsible mode for dialogue, in which we could find its contents, other theologian's criticisms and author's reflects. In chapter 5, the author furtherly discusses Knitter's ethic practice and analysizes the problems in this mode.Paul Knitter's construction of Christian theology is consisted of a serious of Christian reforming suggestions to response the time's challenge. Chapter 6 of the dissertaion describes Knitter's theology of religions based on the corelational and global responsible mode of dialogue, which mainly discusses his Christology. The author points out that since Paul Knitter mentioned to wholy modify the tranditional Chritstology and propose to renounce the claim of superiority and reunderstand the uniqueness of Jesus Christ , he has caused a hot discuss in the acedemic cirles. Chapter 7 is a recurring story of the hot discuss on the topic of Jesus Christ's uniqueness. The author chooses a few of theologians to discuss Knitter's topic of Uniqueness.Chapter 8 is the climax of the thesis. Surrounding Paul Knitter's many struggles on faith and his dialogical experince of passing over and passing back, the author discusses Knitter's self-surpassing on religious dialogue and faith. In this chapter, the author clearly introduced Knitter's dialogical thoughts of Christianity and Buddhism as well as the ethic practice. In a sense, Knitter's self-transcendence is a response to the challenge of the Age, however it brings a serious of new questions: Is the core doctrine of trditional Christianity out of time? What's the future of interreligious dialogue for Christianity? How to balance well the tension between the commitment and openness?In chapter 9, the final part of this thesis, the author firstly summerize the main contents and opinions discussed in the thesis and then get a conclusion. Furtherly the author continue to put herself into the time's predicament and challenge to reflect what Paul Knitter's thoughts has reavealed to us and try to provide her expectations to Christianity response the time's challenge.