CTC 503: Assessment Task 1: Critical commentary on set texts - Candidate number: V42326

CTC503: Mission and Dialogue

Assessment Task 1: Critical commentary on set texts: Christianity and

other religions: from confrontation to encounter1 and Christianity and
Religions: Complementarity and Convergence.2

Fr Jacques Dupuis was born in Belgium in 1923 and taught theology from
1948 to 1984 in India. His many close personal relationships with Indian
Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists combined with his scholarly interest in the
country’s indigenous religions helped to shape his religious thinking and
establish his theological priorities. After leaving India he became Professor of
Christology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and later, after his
retirement, Professor Emeritus of theology. He died in 2004 aged 81. This
paper will present a brief synopsis of the set texts followed by some critical
assessment of Dupuis’ ideas and method combined with positive evaluation of
his contribution to the developing theology of religious pluralism. By way a
brief aside I will refer to some ideas of Raimon Panikkar that seem to be
consistent with the logic of Dupuis’ remarks about the relationship between
Christ and the Word.

The conclusion that Dupuis wants to establish in his Tablet Open Day Lecture
is that religious traditions that are not Christian can offer paths to God that are
salvific and that a theology of religious pluralism is possible provided a
‘qualitative leap’ in thinking is made by believers. Dupuis maintains that the
decisive initiative in this regard was taken at the Second Vatican Council that
used ‘various expressions used by the earliest Christian tradition … and

1
by Jacques Dupuis SJ, published in three instalments in The Tablet, 20/27th October and 3rd
November 2001.
2
Dupuis from Many Mansions? ed. Catherine Cornille (Orbis, 2002).

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 CTC 503: Assessment Task 1: Critical commentary on set texts - Candidate number: V42326

applied them to [non-Christian] … religious traditions.’3 The challenge that

faces Catholic theology is the possibility or otherwise of an affirmation of
religious traditions, not just as interesting de facto phenomena, but as de jure
aspects of one Divine plan. The principal basis for Dupuis’ conclusion is
provided by some theological reflection on the Word and the Spirit that he sets
out in the Tablet instalments 2 and 3. While the Christ-event marks the ‘apex
and summit’ of God’s self-manifestation through Word and Spirit, the same
event does not ‘exhaust the power of the Word of God’. Since the non-
incarnate Logos and the universal presence of the Spirit are both present
before and after the Incarnation, Dupuis advocates a Trinitarian Christology
and a Spirit Christology. This enables him to affirm both that Christ is decisive
for humanity and that the Father as the Potter can continue to work with both
hands, the Word and the Spirit, alongside the Christ-event. Consequently
there are non-Christian ways to God that are both salvific and, since there is
just one economy of salvation, fully compatible with Christian faith.

If there are different but compatible ways to God, could an individual

experience a simultaneous belonging to two distinct religious traditions? In the
second text, Christianity and Religions, Dupuis explores this question but is
unable to provide a firm answer. He begins, as we might expect, with a
positive evaluation of the salvific value of other traditions. After some remarks
about the characteristics of fruitful interreligious dialogue, Dupuis sends out
mixed messages about the nature of complementarity.4 These are reconciled
to some extent by recourse to what has been called a ‘regnocentric
perspective’ 5: because dialogue partners share in the universal reality of the
reign of God this, in turn, gives rise to an anticipated communion in the Spirit
which underwrites the possibility of actual convergence. Dupuis proposes an
inductive (albeit limited to one individual, Henri Le Saux) approach when
3
Dupuis mentions ‘ray of that Truth which enlightens everyone’ (Nostra Aetate, 2). Similar
expressions are found in other Vatican documents. See, fro example, Lumen Gentium, 16;
Gaudium et Spes, 92; Ad Gentes, 9, 11, 15, 18.
4
Discussed below.
5
See, for example, Gerard Hall’s remarks in
www.dlibrary.acu.edu.au/research/theology/ejounal/Issue2/Gerard_Hall.htm

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 CTC 503: Assessment Task 1: Critical commentary on set texts - Candidate number: V42326

considering the possibility of ‘double belonging’ rather than laying down

conditions a priori. Noting that the only way that Le Saux could reconcile the
tension between Hindu Advaita and the Christian experience of God was by
allowing himself to be ‘invaded by the experience’,6 Dupuis turns to other
commentators including Aloysius Pieris, J. A. T. Robinson and Raimon
Panikkar who offer different perspectives and solutions to the question of
convergence. In spite of the implied non resolution of the question, Dupuis
sounds a positive note by reminding us that the Spirit is the ultimate agent of
dialogue who is at work in different religious traditions, suggesting that barriers
are apparent and provisional rather than real.

Having reviewed the texts we will examine some of the inconsistencies and
ambiguities that stand out in Dupuis’ general argument. Some commentators
have labelled Dupuis’ position as ‘inclusive pluralism’ as if the two designations
could be meaningfully combined. What is true is that Dupuis sometimes seems
to oscillate between a (Rahnerian) inclusivism and an implied denial of
inclusivism (without positively affirming religious pluralism). A good example of
this is in Christianity and Religions where, after rejecting the idea of a
complementarity understood as ‘one-way traffic’ Dupuis goes on to advocate a
‘reciprocal (or ‘mutual’) complementarity’ only later to affirm that this same
complementarity has to be ‘asymmetrical’7. ‘Asymmetrical’ is vague and
unhelpful especially since, on one side of the symmetry there is ‘the fullness of
divine revelation’8 and on the other indeterminate (divine) truth.9 A further
difficulty pertains to Dupuis’ remarks about the Incarnation. He states that,
through the Incarnation the Word ‘has inserted himself personally, once and

6
Op. cit. p 71.
7
p. 65
8
p. 66
9
Gerard Hall (Op. cit) considers to what extent, if any, Dupuis has moved beyond the fulfilment
theology of Karl Rahner. He suggests that Dupuis extends Rahner by rejecting explicitly ‘an
approach that sees Christianity bringing other religions to fulfilment in a one-sided process’.
He maintains that, for Dupuis, the process is two-way and that Christianity will find fulfilment
only through encounter withy other traditions, a view that is not easily reconciled with the
implications of Dupuis’ remarks on ‘asymmetry’.

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 CTC 503: Assessment Task 1: Critical commentary on set texts - Candidate number: V42326

for all in the human reality …[this] represents the deepest and most immanent
possible manner of God’s personal involvement with
humankind …’10 Given the totality of the incarnate Word’s involvement with
humankind, does it make sense to imply that there are residual areas of
human experience that the Word (that is distinct from Jesus Christ) can
illuminate? Given the structure of Dupuis’ argument which bases the view that
there are salvific paths to God outside Christianity on the unrestricted
involvement of the Word and Spirit (the two hands of the Potter) in people’s
lives, the difficult implications of this question would seem to be quite
destabilising. A final comment relates to Dupuis’ methodology in connection
with his discussion of the possibility of ‘double belonging’. While his instinct to
avoid an a priori approach to a theology of religions based on ‘abstract
considerations’ and an absence of personal experience is undoubtedly sound,
an inductive theology that cites the experience of just one spiritual ‘pioneer’
cannot be altogether persuasive. Even in the context of a discussion of the
experience of the Hindu advaita (‘an assumption into the knowledge that the
Absolute has of itself’), for every Henri Le Saux who experienced an
impossible ‘irreducible tension’ between the I/Thou duality of Christianity and
the absence of duality in Hinduism, there will be a Bede Griffiths who
experiences a deep complementarity between the ‘one and the many’.11 Le
Saux’s integrity and personal holiness is not in question. The weakness lies in
generalising from a single example that even Dupuis admits is a ‘limit case’.

Towards the end of Christianity and Religions,12 Dupuis refers to the

‘cosmotheandric mystery’ of Raimon Panikkar. Dupuis focuses on Panikkar’s
remarks on the religious beliefs that differ from tradition to tradition and points
out that Panikkar advocates a ‘cross-fertilization … in view of mutual
enrichment.’ It is surprising, however, given the context of the discussion, that
Dupuis fails to develop his reference to the ‘cosmotheandric mystery’ as the
object of faith that is ‘common to all religious traditions’. Given Dupuis’ remarks
10
See the Tablet lectures, second instalment.
11
See, for example, his popular Return to the centre, (Collins 1976) Chapters 4 and 5.
12
P. 73

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 CTC 503: Assessment Task 1: Critical commentary on set texts - Candidate number: V42326

about the non-identity of Jesus Christ and the Word (in its fullness),13 it might
have been more helpful if he had drawn positively on Panikkar’s theocentric
model (designed to accommodate other-than-Christian traditions14) rather than
confining his comments to Panikkar’s notion of ‘syncretism’.

Despite the inconsistencies, Dupuis’ achievements are theologically

significant. He explores ways in which the doctrine of the Trinity can be
opened up in such a way that the self-manifestation of God through the eternal
Word can be experienced by other religious traditions on their own terms. This,
combined with his serious consideration of the possibility of ‘double belonging’
and his (tentative) conclusion that one’s perception and commitment to the
divine mystery can be deepened by a ‘double faith’15 indicate that he has
moved beyond a simplistic inclusivist theology in which Christianity fulfils the
vague longings that are expressed in other traditions. In the words of
Mulqueen, ‘[Dupuis implies that] each religion, including Christianity, has
something to learn from the other and this is a genuinely pluralist position’.16

[1401 words]

13
For more detailed references to the distinction between the ‘universal Saviour’ and the
‘Absolute saviour’, see Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, (Maryknoll
NY: Orbis, 1997), pages 282, 292, 303ff.
14
Panikkar draws a distinction between the universal Christ (Dupuis’ ‘Absolute Saviour’) who
is ‘both symbol and substance of a dynamic non-dualistic unity between God, humanity and
the world’ and the particular and historical Christ-in-the-world (‘universal Saviour, ie Jesus).
See Paul Mulqueen in
www.dlibrary.acu.edu.au/research/theology/ejournal/Issue2/Paul_Mulqueen
15
Christianity and Religions, p. 74
16
Op. cit.