| Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions?: Jesus, Revelation Religious Traditions Contributor(s): McDermott, Gerald R. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0830822747 ISBN-13: 9780830822744 Publisher: IVP Academic OUR PRICE: $27.00 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 2000 Annotation: One thing it does not mean, argues Gerald McDermott, is that God has not revealed himself at all through other religions. But then what is the nature of revelation in other world religions? And what can evangelicals learn from it? In this provocative and thoughtful book McDermott explores these issues. He begins with a look at how evangelicals have responded to world religions and then explores the theological concept of revelation. Biblically and theologically he then makes a case for God's having revealed himself outside of Israel and the church. By way of illustration, he shows that theologians such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Calvin used thinking from outside the church to help in understanding the revelation of Christ. He then explores four case studies of how Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian and Islamic understandings have enriched his own understanding of scriptural concepts. In a concluding chapter he responds to possible objections to his project. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Religion | Christian Theology - General - Religion | Christian Ministry - Evangelism - Religion | Comparative Religion |
| Dewey: 261.2 |
| LCCN: 00040756 |
| Physical Information: 0.72" H x 5.48" W x 8.25" (0.60 lbs) 233 pages |
| Themes: - Theometrics - Evangelical - Religious Orientation - Christian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: "Arguably, the church's greatest challenge in the next century will be the problem of the scandal of particularity. More than ever before, Christians will need to explain why they follow Jesus and not the Buddha or Confucius or Krishna or Muhammed. But if, while relating their faith to the faiths, Christians treat non-Christian religions as netherworlds of unmixed darkness, the church's message will be a scandal not of particularity but of arrogant obscurantism. "Recent evangelical introductions to the problem of other religions have built commendably on foundations laid by J. N. D. Anderson and Stephen Neill. Anderson and Neill opened up the "heathen" worlds to the evangelical West, showing that many non-Christians also seek salvation and have personal relationships with their gods. In the last decade Clark Pinnock and John Sanders have argued for an inclusivist understanding of salvation, and Harold Netland has shed new light on the question of truth in the religions. Yet no evangelicals have focused--as nonevangelicals Keith Ward, Diana Eck and Paul Knitter have done--on the revelatory value of truth in non-Christian religions. Anderson and Neill showed that there are limited convergences between Christian and non-Christian traditions, and Pinnock has argued that there might be truths Christians can learn from religious others. But as far as I know, no evangelicals have yet examined the religions in any sort of substantive way for what Christians can learn without sacrificing, as Knitter and John Hick do, the finality of Christ. "This book is the beginning of an evangelical theology of the religions that addresses not the question of salvation but the problem of truth and revelation, and takes seriously the normative claims of other traditions. It explores the biblical propositions that Jesus is the light that enlightens every person (Jn 1:9) and that God has not left Himself without a witness among non-Christian traditions (Acts 14:17). It argues that if Saint Augustine learned from Neo-Platonism to better understand the gospel, if Thomas Aquinas learned from Aristotle to better understand the Scriptures, and if John Calvin learned from Renaissance humanism, perhaps evangelicals may be able to learn from the Buddha--and other great religious thinkers and traditions--things that can help them more clearly understand God's revelation in Christ. It is an introductory word in a conversation that I hope will go much further among evangelicals." (Gerald McDermott, in the introduction to Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions? |