11AR16-42

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Apologia Report 16:42 (1,092)

December 21, 2011

Subject: Evangelical specialist in Buddhism on interfaith dialog

In this issue:

MUCK, TERRY C. - "interreligious dialogue," differences in understanding

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Please note: This is the last issue of Apologia Report for 2011. We are scheduled to resume publication the week beginning January 8.

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MUCK, TERRY C.

What prominent evangelicals specialize in the field of world religions? They are very few. Terry Muck (Dean of the E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism, Asbury Theological Seminary) continues to be one with whom we should be familiar. The October issue of The International Bulletin of Missionary Research features his "Interreligious Dialogue: Conversations That Enable Christian Witness"(pp187-192).

Muck begins: "For over thirty years now I have participated in a dialogue group in the United States called the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies (SBCS). ...

"I have been an active participant. In addition to attending every year, I have presented papers, I served for a number of years as the chair of the nominating committee, I rewrote, revised, and edited the society's by-laws, and for ten years I was the editor of Buddhist-Christian Studies, the society's annual journal, published by the University of Hawai'i Press. I have just begun a four-year term that will include serving successively as program chair, vice president, and president.

"I have participated as an evangelical Christian, a position shared by only a handful of the Christians in SBCS. Most of my fellow Christians are convinced that one must be a liberal Christian in order to properly dialogue. ... Many of the Buddhist participants are Western converts from Christianity.

"My experience in this group has taught me many things about interreligious dialogue and Christian mission, in particular: (1) how interreligious dialogue is defined and the place it has vis-à-vis other modes of Christian interaction with Buddhists; (2) a realistic definition of dialogue; and (3) an outline of what I will call a missional theology of dialogue. Throughout this article I use Buddhist-Christian dialogue as my primary case, but I think the lessons I relate can be generalized to relationships with Hindus and Muslims as well.

"When people speak of 'interreligious dialogue,' it is difficult to know with any precision what they are referring to. As Harold Netland [philosophy of religion and intercultural studies, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School] has noted, 'There is no general agreement today on just what is meant by dialogue'; everyone seems to come to the dialogue table with a different set of theological or buddhalogical or vedic assumptions. ... In attempting to address this problem of defining interreligious dialogue satisfactorily, we can go in one of two directions."

One approach "is meant to accommodate as many participants as possible." However, a consequence Muck has observed is that this maximum inclusion results in a decrease in theological precision.

The second approach is "to set as few preconditions as possible (as few theological assumptions as possible) and restrict the scope of dialogue." This results in an encounter where "Almost all theological assumptions are allowed" and where dialogue becomes "the actual process that takes place among dialoguers."

Muck discusses the contrasting view of dialogue given by Paul O. Ingram [Pacific Lutheran University] which lists "four conditions as the minimum necessary for a person to be involved in proper dialogue"

- namely:

• lack of any ulterior motives

• openness to change

• religious expertise

• truth, understood as relational and seen as the goal of dialogue

Muck observes that "very few religious people, Christian or otherwise, can satisfy these four conditions, so the pool of possible participants in interreligious dialogue following these guidelines becomes small indeed." In one example of dialogue, Muck describes an encounter where "the Christians were far more charitable and admiring of the Buddha than the Buddhists were of the Christ." Muck responds: "I agreed there was a double standard, but I did not agree that the double standard should be done away with. In fact, many more standards should be introduced from both Christians and Buddhists, and everyone should feel free to express all views about both their own religion and the 'other' religion. ...

"Dialogue, then, is only one of many possible ways of relating to people of other religious traditions. Here I identify five other ways." These are: pronouncement, discussion, argumentation, apologetics, and debate. He then considers the choosing of these "modes of interaction."

One inevitably encounters barriers to interaction. "[S]ometimes, perhaps more often than we recognize, conditions are not right for a meaningful conversation. Some level of incommensurability is present, and dialogue is necessary to overcome this basic inability to understand one another. The proper ground has not been laid for having a discussion, much less a debate." Examples and discussion follow.

Muck presents a helpful Missional Theology of Dialogue, explaining: "Christians should be involved in interreligious dialogue, for which a missional theology of dialogue is needed. Four characteristics are critical." These are:

1. A missional theology of dialogue is based on an orthodox recognition of God's revelation to all.

2. A missional theology of dialogue must fully embrace Christian humility.

3. A missional theology of dialogue must be grounded in a love of neighbor.

4. A missional theology of dialogue makes known to all involved our commitment to Christian witness.

In describing the first characteristic, Muck finds that "much of what passes for interreligious dialogue seriously misuses the doctrine of common grace. On the conservative side of the theological aisle, it is often minimized to the point that one might well wonder why we have dialogue at all. On the liberal side, it can quickly lead to a pluralism that claims salvific efficacy for every person's every religious whim. And one can see how this might easily lead to the position that dialogue is all there is. Properly understood, however - somewhere between those two theological extremes - common grace is the theological basis for doing dialogue.

Muck concludes: "Meaningful dialogue takes place among people who are crystal clear about their strongly held convictions, whatever they are, not among people who claim some sort of preternatural openness to everything.

"It is not the case that this sort of openness inhibits conversation, offends sensibilities, or stifles interaction. On the contrary, when done among people of good will, committed to a love ethic, personal candor creates an honest atmosphere, refreshed by winds of confidence. Participants may not agree with their fellow confreres, but they can feel free to be who they really are, resting in the confidence that the others in the conversation, to the best of their abilities, are also showing who they really are."

Further insights on Muck's perspective come from his review of Catholic Engagement with World Religions: A Comprehensive Study, Karl J. Becker and Ilaria Morali, eds. [1] After describing it, Muck reports: "I like this book a lot. I like the implicit lesson it teaches that all theologies of religions must be rooted in a religious tradition of some sort. None of us can float above the fray and claim some sort of ethereal theological objectivity. I like the idea that theology, especially constructive theology, is a slow business. ... And, Protestant as I am, I like the idea of the cumulative nature of theology - the idea that our histories, and all of our histories together, are there to be mined for insights and to be built on with respect. We must not lose the wisdom of our fathers and mothers.

"But having said that, I find myself a bit impatient, and I wonder if Roman Catholic theologians, the ones who wrote these essays, could not speed up the constructive theological enterprise just a little. The clash of religions is at a crisis point, and we need all the theological wisdom we can get! ...

"The book describes the theological framework within which Roman Catholics live, but it prescribes very little beyond offering endless cautions about the importance of staying within that framework." International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 35:3 - 2011, pp175-176.

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Catholic Engagement With World Religions: A Comprehensive Study, Karl Joseph Becker, Ilaria Morali, Gavin D'Costa and Maurice Borrmans, eds. (Orbis, 2010, paperback, 656 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/d8smreo>

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