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The gospel and interfaith understanding: how do we hold them together?
How do we Lutherans hold the gospel and interfaith understanding together? In my literalistic mind, this question conjures up the image of a mime wrestling to carry two enormous, invisible burdens, each one by itself almost too large to grip securely. When one burden begins to fall, he turns his efforts frantically to that one, but invariably while his attention is distracted the other package starts to slip as well. And so the struggle continues, humorous in its earnest and immobilizing effort.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Perhaps it is no wonder that some Christians try to simplify things by refusing to carry more than one of the two. There are those who suspect that our commitment to the gospel will be compromised if we give a sympathetic hearing to different faith traditions, or who reject the idea that others' encounters with the sacred have anything significant to offer us, since the gospel of Jesus Christ is God's definitive revelation to humanity. On the other extreme, there are those who place Christianity within the pluralism of world religions, each one an autonomous and equally viable path. All value judgments and attempts to share the "good news" that we experience are in bad form, because these recall a...See the full content of this document
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