Dunn’s presentation seemed to me to focus on concerns that devotion to, and beliefs about, Jesus should not be at the expense of the primacy of God, and that Christian faith ought to be genuinely “monotheistic”. These are entirely understandable theological concerns about Christian faith today (with which I am sympathetic), but I was a bit surprised that they seemed to play such a role in a discussion that was to be focused mainly on the evidence of Jesus-devotion in the first-century Christian circles reflected in the NT writings.
I didn’t hear Dunn’s presentation, but Hurtado’s summary raises a question: to what extent is modern anti-trinitarianism driven by interfaith dialogue?
This figures in the debate between inclusivism and exclusivism, as well as ecumenism and religious pluralism. The exclusive claims of Christ are a hurdle to this agenda. In principle, there are two ways for the inclusivist/ecumenist/pluralist to eliminate the hurdle:
1. He can pursue an epistemological strategy, where he redefines the terms of salvation. This, in turn, can involve one of two different approaches:
i) He can simply deny the necessity of faith in Christ
ii) He can affirm the necessity of faith in Christ, but posit postmortem evangelism.
2. He can pursue an ontological strategy be redefining the nature of the Savior. Deny the Trinity. Deny the deity of Christ. Affirm generic monotheism.
It’s possible that Dunn is motivated by the same concerns as John Hick.
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