The Uniqueness of Christ in a Post-Plural Age
David Muthukumar Sivasubramanian2014, ISPCK
The unfortunate event of the historical intersection of European colonialism and the Christian mission has become problematic for Christian identity in India. While the stark reality of Indian religious plurality has to be adequately addressed, the existing theological responses to religious plurality – Exclusivism, Inclusivism, and Pluralism - are found to be lacking on either the parameter of establishing the plurality of religions that accounts for parity among religions or the parameter of preserving the particularity of individual religion. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate and extend the Postliberal/Post-pluralist theological method that employs Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic theory as an alternative approach that will establish interfaith relations between Christianity and other Indian religions sans the imperialistic notion. The first chapter discusses the cultural-linguistic model which understands religions as resembling languages and semiotic systems, that shape and mold human experiences within the matrix of cultural and linguistic factors. Religions are conceived as “communal phenomena,” and attempts are made to understand the concrete expressions of an individual faith community in its liturgy, sacraments, rituals and other forms as decisive for shaping their religious experiences. Thus, Lindbeck successfully identifies religions as multiple instances of linguistic/semiotic systems that are characterized by their internal “forms of life.” Within Lindbeck’s methodology, in his attempt to uphold the particularity of Christianity, his conception of religions as “comprehensive interpretive schemes” that emphasizes the “untranslatability” of Christian higher truths into other religious’ idioms is found to be problematic. The second chapter analyses Hans Frei’s narrative reading of the Scripture as an alternative conception to preserve the particularity of Christianity in the person of Christ, whose identity is established through the narrative, “history-like” depiction of the Gospel stories. This “unsubstitutable” identity of Jesus Christ becomes the “final primacy” criterion for all “particularistic” Christian faith articulations without denying the possibility of other religions’ particular claims. Further, in the third chapter, Lindbeck’s concepts of “incommensurability,” “untranslatability” are reexamined based on Macintyre’s deflated significance of “incommensurability” and also Homi Bhabha’s conception of Hybridity and Third Space categories. Francis Clooney’s “Comparative Dialogue” was reflected upon as a methodical demonstration of initiating interreligious dialogue between the “incomparable” doctrinal/textual traditions, especially between the Uttara Mimamsa Sutras and Summa Theologiae. Such, beyond a post-pluralistic understanding of comparative dialogues that upholds both the plurality and particularity of all religious traditions can be a useful tool in the hands of the Indian Christian community to seek interreligious harmony and in the process regain their Indian identity.
