Total Replacement

Partial Replacement

“Replacement Model”

Fulfillment Model: • Christianity is the “true” religion but it does not reject,

but rather “confirms” good elements in others

Mutuality Model: • a “rough parity” between all religions; all ways lead to the

same end goal

• Three bridges: • 1) PHILOSOPHICAL (Hick)

• 2) MYSTICAL (Panikkar)

• 3) ETHICAL (Knitter)

Acceptance Model: • there are real differences among religions and they are

legitimate (different ends in different religions!)

Replacement Model:

• Christianity, the “only way,” replaces other faiths (either totally or partially)

C) Knitter: TYPOLOGY

Knitter, p. 19

“In the final analysis, Christianity is meant to replace all other religions…It’s the dominant attitude, the one that generally has held sway throughout most of Christian history. Although views differed about the way this replacement was to be carried out and why it was necessary, Christian missionaries throughout the centuries have cast forth into the world with the conviction that it is God’s will to make all peoples Christians.”

Overview

Knitter’s typology: two forms of replacement model: total and partial replacement

a) Total= older Protestantism with Barth as key figure and Evangelicalism/ Fundamentalism;

b) Partial: mainline Protestantism (Pannenberg, Tillich; WCC, etc.)

Overview

Motto: • “Total Replacement: No Value in Other

Religions”

Protestant ‘Only’s: •Grace alone

•Faith alone

•Christ alone

•Scripture alone

Main Features of Total Replacement

(Knitter, ch.1)

Christianity as the True Religion

Taking the New Testament and Jesus Seriously • Acts 4:12; 1 Cor 3:11; 1 Tim 2:5; John 14:6; 1 John 5:12

Jesus only Savior

• Rom 1:21; 3:9 All are lost

• John 3:36; Rom 10:14,17 Faith needed

“One Way” Makes Sense

Main Features of Total Replacement

(Knitter, ch.1)

Majority of Christians prior to the Enlightenment – and a large number even afterwards – has held this view in one way or another

In contemporary scene, Fundamentalists and more conservative Christians subscribe to this view

Representatives of Total Replacement Model

Karl Barth represented many key

convictions of this view

• He did not call “revelation” any knowledge of God

outside of self-revelation of God in Christ

• He did not see any contact point between religions

(religiosity) and faith in God

• He didn’t see any connection between the God of

the Bible and God of the Philosophers

• Universalist?

• Christ as Electing and the Elected

Representatives of Total Replacement Model

This model helps defend the uncompromising monotheism of the Bible and uniqueness of self-revelation of God

Its weaknesses include

• A dismissal of general revelation and the innate (partial) knowledge of God – in a person having been created in the image of God

• A radical discontinuity between nature and grace

• Lack of emphasis on the saving Love of God with regard to all people(s)

• The tendency to be pejorative of other religions and people in other faiths, even though they have been created in the image of God

Reflections of Total Replacement Model

A difference between total and partial models • Partial replacement closer to “Fulfillment” model

Most of the views in ch. 2 (WCC and theologians such as Pannenberg, Newbigin, Tillich, Samartha, etc.) are not supportive of replacement model but rather either inclusivist or Fulfillment model or “soft” pluralism (Samartha)

Total and Partial: Same or different models?

It appears that it is only Fundamentalism and conservative Evangelicalism that fall neatly under Knitter’s Replacement Model (mostly total replacement)

Evangelical theologies of religions fall in to two camps • Evangelicals can be found both in (exclusivistic) total replacement and

(inclusivistic) partial replacement

Evangelical theologies and Replacement Model?

God Present in Other Religions?

• Yes

• And No!

Revelation: Yes!

Salvation: No!

Value of Dialogue

Limits of Dialogue!

Main Features of Partial Replacement

(KNITTER)

While there are some revelatory elements in other religions, religions are not salvific

There are some contact points between the God of the Bible and the deities of religions

Some good features in other religions can be affirmed

The value of interfaith dialogue is affirmed

Main Features of Partial Replacement

(Knitter, ch.2)

World Council of Churches

• “Religious plurality and Christian self-understanding”

• www.oikoumene.org (Inter-religious dialogue and cooperation)

Mainline Protestant Churches

•Presbyterian Principles for Interfaith Dialogue (www.pcusa.org/interfaith/study/principles.htm)

Wolfhart Pannenberg

Lesslie Newbigin

Examples of Partial Replacement Model

Partial Replacement Model

or

Protestant Fulfillment Model

Pursuit of Truth as the Main Goal of Doing Theology

Theology as Public Discipline

Rational Truth and Coherence with Universal

Orientation

• “For a ‘truth’ that would be simply my truth and would not at least claim to be universal

and valid for every human being could not

remain true even for me. This consideration

explains why Christians cannot but try to

defend the claim of their faith to be true.”

Important Distinctives

Quest for Universal Truth

• Eschatology as the Final Verdict of Truth

• Christ’s Resurrection as the “Prolepsis”

The Trinitarian God as the All-determining Reality

Trinitarian pneumatology

The History of Religions is the Arena for competition

between gods

Only at eschaton the God of the Bible shows himself to

the only True God

Important Distinctives

History as the Means and Arena of Revelation

Appeal to “universal” or “secular” history rather than

Salvation History

Important Distinctives

� Criticism of Pluralistic Approaches

� Dismissal of history, pursuit of truth, centrality of Christ/Triune God, etc.

� Dialogue entails honoring of convictions and differences

� Participants come to the dialogue table to argue for the supremacy

of their own view with an intention to convince the other party

� Dialogue can become a “testing” place of various claims in

the common search for the truth

Interfaith Dialogue

Similarly to Roman Catholic Fulfillment Model, strong Christocentrism and Trinitarian faith

Salvation to Christians is available only through faith in Christ

Those who have never heard of Christ will be judged according to their relation – orientation – to Christ and his teaching

• Christ’s descent to hell

Salvation

Seeking to Claim Religious Truth as Rational and Public Truth

Value of Religions and History of Religions

Trying to Take the Claims of the Religions at Face Value

Openness to Mutual Modification and Enrichment in Dialogue:

Uniqueness of Christian Faith, yet openness to the value of religions and possibility of salvation

Ecumenism and theology of religions

Contributions

Biblical Considerations

Universalist Tendencies?

• [Since] the Christian claim aims at the finality of revelation as well as of salvation, . . . it also includes a tendency towards “universal salvation.”

Naïve about the nature of dialogue?

• Excessive focus on quest for truth as the theme of interfaith dialogue could prove an obstacle

• Faith not just about intellectual conviction

Overemphasis on rationality?

• What about the mystical?

Are all religions committed to the same kind of concept of truth?

• For example, not all religions value historicity as a criterion of truth

Quest for unified truth called into question by many today, including postmoderns

Questions and Challenges

Missional Response to Religious Pluralism in the West and Beyond

Lesslie Newbigin

1909-1998

40 years in India as Bishop of the Church of South India

Secretary of International Missionary Council of WCC (1959-1965)

A Leading Critique of Modernity and theologian of missionary church

Lesslie Newbigin: Introduction

Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989)

The Open Secret (1978; rev. ed.1995)

Foolishness to the Greeks (1986)

Proper Confidence (1995)

Truth to Tell (1996)

Lesslie Newbigin: Main Works

Newbigin believes that the main problem of Christian Church and its lack of missional response is the overwhelming effects of the Enlightenment

I

St. Augustine’s Heritage: Faith and Knowledge were joined together

After Augustine: Faith and Knowledge got separated

At the Enlightenment: Faith and Knowledge became exclusive of each

other

• Knowledge became independent of faith

Faith and Knowledge Relationship

Enlightenment’s basic ideas, detrimental to theology are:

• Doubt as the beginning of “knowledge” and certainty (Descartes)

• The Idea of “neutral,” non-committed knowledge

Enlightenment’s Skepticism

When Faith and Reason were Separated, human reason was made the foundation of sure knowledge

The ideal of an “objective” knowledge without any “subjective” element

is the key feature of modernist epistemology

Separation between

• public knowledge (science)

• personal opinion (religion, ethics)

“The Fatal Dualism of Enlightenment”

Newbigin’s key criticism is that the Church has utterly failed in its relationship with Modernity’s Culture

II

Christian Church has retreated to a private sphere and left public sphere to secular science, politics, philosophy, etc.

Church tries to influence choices in private area

• Gospel is not presented as a claim to public area

• Values are private choices, not facts

Marginalization of Faith

Ironically, Pietism reflects the same kind of privatization of religion

• The value of pietism as a call to personal commitment is affirmed by Newbigin

• Yet, it reflects a “Hindu-type a-historicism”

Marginalization of Faith: PIETISM

From Accomodation to a Genuinely

Missionary Encounter

III

DE-CONSTRUCTIVE TASK

•To question the beliefs of modern culture

and call for the repentance of MIND

CONSTRUCTIVE TASK

•To offer a new fiduciary framework, a

new “Christian” worldview

Missionary Encounter: Two Tasks

The Gospel is presented as a challenger not only to spiritual needs but to the worldview as a whole

The “conversion of the mind” relates to the Gospel as THE PUBLIC TRUTH

A Missionary Encounter: DECONSTRUCTION

“Personal Knowledge” • From philosopher-scientist: M. Polanyi

• Knowing means COMMITMENT, “personal” involvement

• There is no “neutral”, non-committed knowledge even in science

“Personal Knowledge” and “Universal Intention”

“Universal intention”

•While personal, all true knowledge is to be published and thus subjected to dialogue and critique • It is not only my opinion but claims to

point to the truth that is “universal”

“Personal Knowledge” and “Universal Intention”

Importance of Community • community passes on the tradition

• cf. Islam and Asian religions: communal faiths whereas Western modernism is individualistic

Newbigin compares theology to scientific work: even science works within and from a tradition • “apprenticeship” into the tradition

Indwelling the tradition, in this case Christian biblical narrative and worldview • cf. Islam and Asian religions

The Importance of Community and Tradition

Acknowledging the authority appropriate to the tradition

• yet in a critical way

• cf. Islam and Asian religions: uncritical way

What makes Christian tradition unique is the authority of Revelation

• God’s self-revelation as the Gospel NARRATIVE

• As received by the church/community who seeks to understand and interpret it

Importance of Tradition cont.

The Church is called to present the Gospel as Public Truth

In humble, yet confident spirit

Church is not the “possessor” but rather carrier of the Truth of the Gospel

• constantly testifying to and seeking for a fuller understanding of truth

• in confidence and humility (Proper Confidence)

• cf. Crusade-mentality (either Christian or Muslim)

“The Gospel as Public Truth” The Heart of Newbigin’s program

The Church expresses the universal intention of the Gospel by proclaiming the Gospel with claim to all people and all reality

• By doing so, the Church publishes its “personal knowledge” and commitment to the truth in Christ

This makes the church missionary church

An implication from the idea of the Gospel as Public Truth

The universal intention of the truth claim in Jesus by its own power makes Christian faith a missionary faith

Commitment to mission is the test of the commitment of Christian Church to its own truth claims

“Logic of Mission”

The Church that does not engage in mission – publishing the truth claims of the Gospel – does not indeed believe in the Gospel

• And this is, of course, the basic dilemma of so much of Western Christianity, as well as theology in general and ecclesiology in particular

• Church and mission have been divorced from each other

Church and Mission Belong Together: The Church as Mission

In my understanding, this model may come closest to negotiating the most foundational biblical dynamic

between, on the one hand, the uniqueness of Christ (Acts

4:12) and the universal saving love of God (1 Tim 4:2)

It helps preserve the uniqueness of Christian faith while

trying to find ways of appreciating other religions and their search for the truth

Reflections on the Partial Replacement Model