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Introduction
The Way God Reveals Himself
Freedom
Forever
a pilgrim
What is
Revealed
Home
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Introduction
Christianity has acquired a deeper understanding
of its faith through interaction, indeed at times, confrontation, with
other religions and with heresies. They have played, it must be said, a
most providential role in the development of Christian doctrine. It is most
often only in dialogue with people of different faiths and opinions, only
when we are challenged to explore, explain and defend, that we understand
our own faith best.
We owe a great deal to the confrontation
between the Christian and the Judaic notion of religion at the Council of
Jerusalem, to Gnosticism, to Marcion, Arius, Nestorius and many others, to
Origen and the differing schools of theology like those of Antioch and
Alexandria, to the Donatists,, the Neo-Platonists, the Manicheans, the
Albigensians and the Cathars, Avicenna and Averroes, to name just those who
spring to mind, for the development of Christological and Trinitarian
doctrine, sacramental theology, ecclesiology, soteriology and so on. Would
we have had Iraneaus of Lyons, Augustine, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa,
Aquinas without them? O necessary fault! The history of the development of
doctrine is in part a history of indispensable reaction and response.
Christianity was the unchallenged
religion and philosophy of this country until, say, the eighteenth century
when it began to be confronted by an alternative world-view in modern
science –a very powerful philosophical and ethical challenge which society
is wrestling with still. In the last forty years however another challenge
of equal importance and profundity is confronting us here in England
and in Europe –that of non-Christian religions which
have put down strong roots: Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism. They offer what they
are based upon, namely philosophies and religious views fundamentally
different from Christianity, challenging it to its core. They are not just
divertissements to keep cultural studies and theology departments in
universities busy. They are alternative ways of life affecting the very
basics of human, political, social, ethical and sexual behaviour and
thinking. This situation is not new to Christianity. Christianity was
founded in just such circumstances and has coped with them throughout its
long existence and growth. The religions I have mentioned may be minority
faiths in Britain
but they are a gift from God. They offer new insights, new depths, new
visions, new angles on the reality and truth of God. They will open up new
levels and new depths of understanding of the Scriptures, indeed of the
total Christian tradition. They will develop our own religious
understanding, help us see things we have not seen before and perceive
meanings and realities previously hidden to us. This is precisely what the
philosophy of the Greeks did for the Early Church Fathers, what Mani and
Plotinus did for Augustine, what Gnosticism did for Iranaeus of Lyon, what
Aristotle did for Aquinas, what Darwin did for Newman, what modern science
has done for exegesis and for every single facet of faith in fact.
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