Ultimate Entity {the Real) And Religion Pluralism

The theory of Trinity was the tenet core and theological theory that embodied the exclusiveness of Christian faith, and Trinity God was the religious entity of it. Being the characterization and understanding to this religious center, the theory of Trinity developed its logic from De Deo Una of nature theology to De Deo Trino of Revelation theology. Finally, the metaphysical controversies about two concepts ousia and hypostasis in ancient Greek philosophy realized the Christian theological turning from the Greek method of metaphysical entity to the Latin method of Christian exclusive religious symbolized system by means of translating those two terms into one Latin word Substantia and introducing the concept of Persona. However, this logic offered the important theoretical enlightenment to the religion pluralism, which was in the ascendant. Religious entity and metaphysical one were incommeasurable to each other. The former was the second-level response to the Revelation and was established according to faith. While the latter itself took on the characteristic of be-constructed on the more essential basis, which made it difficult to take the place of religious entity to be the center of the religious system structurally. And the confusion of them worked the exclusivism among religions. Otherwise, in the theory postulation, structural superposition of metaphysical entity s apriority and religious Revelation' s priority could be used as the common first-level truth basis among pluralistic religions to form the bi-level structure associated with religious entities in every great faiths in order to serve as the rational start in inter-religious dialogue. In the history of Christian thoughts, deism of nature theology and Schleiermacher1 s liberal theology two theological modes both attempted to induce the essence of religion. The former considered the general rationality as the immanent and self-evidentRevelation and utilized it to establish so-called meta-religion or meta-theology. Moreover, the latter, however, emphasized the relational faith instead of prepositional faith unlike the former one did. Nevertheless, it regarded the anthropological entity the sense and emotion of absolute dependence as the relation basis between believer and religious entity. Both fell into the anthropo-central framework of metaphysical ontology. It was proved that religion pluralism according to both modes was abortive. John Hick postulated the metaphysical entity the Real and constructed the bi-level mode of ultimate entity (the ^?ea/)/religious entity in his religion pluralism postulation. Avoiding the anthropo-central tendency, the postulation insured the priority of religious Revelation and warranted the intra-system truth-claim of every great faith, which realized the linkage of theology and religious philosophy. And also the similar bi-level mode such as Revelation/religion could be found in other modern theological thoughts. But seeing that the Real was a metaphysical postulation, Hick5 s system had no way to provide the truth criterion inter-religiously. So, Hick had to use the salvation structure in religious practice as the common truth criterion, which was that each one of great religions at the post-axis ages was effective salvation/liberation context turning from self-center to entity-center. In the exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism three basic attitudes facing pluralistic religions reality, pluralism showed rather a kind of cultural attitude than a kind of truth-claim. According to the logic of Hick" s pluralism, the ethical common sense became the ultimate safeguard for religious truth in human integral cultural context, which was the very cultural logic and status quo in modern inter-religious dialogue. Furthermore, the reconstruction of religious consciousness after Vatican II and the enactment of the Declaration to Global Ethic both pointed out the start of the religions dialogue practice in modernity context. Meanwhile, the duality tensity of inter-religious truth and peace determined that the eduction an...