"Try to love one another right now"

The student part of me says that I should finish a book before I comment on it. The emotional part of me says that I must share my experience now even though it is incomplete.

No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions by Paul Knitter is rocking my world. It's more or less a text book, and it's pretty academic, but it's a wonderful exploration of how Christians have chosen to react to one big problem: Christianity claims to have access to the full and final revelation/incarnation of God on earth, yet after 2000 years of mission work and attempts to convert the world Christianity cannot even claim a majority of human souls, let alone all of them. How then do Christians deal with the fact that so many humans claim a full and satisfying revelation of God without Christ? An amazing question if you ask me, and a clarification of a journey I've been on for awhile but couldn't clearly state.

Knitter explores 7 reactions to this Christian conundrum: all are relative; all are essentially the same; all have a common psychic origin; the conservative evangelical model of one true religion; the mainline Protestant model of salvation only in Christ; the Catholic model of many ways, one norm; the theocentric model of many ways to the center. He then attempts to offer a solution that lets Christians still be specifically and energetically Christian. I'm only through the first two explorations, preparing to dive into the concept of one psychic origin.

Here's the format: the reaction as most clearly stated by a particular theologian or proponent, two other cases for the point of view, questions presented for Christians, and problems with the position. My favorite observation so far comes from "metaphysician-mystic" Frithjof Schuon, commenting on the reaction that all are essentially the same. As explained by Knitter:

"...he sees the dividing lines among religions running not vertically between the different religions but horizontally across them all. It is not that all Christians are different from all Hindus. Rather, there is something that makes for a definite difference between one Christian and the next; this same something makes for the same difference between one Hindu and the next. And what makes for common differences among Christians as among Hindus also constitutes a fundamental unity between certain Christians and certain Hindus."

These commonalities are basically defined as responding to an esoteric or an exoteric God; fundamentally, do persons find more meaning in an introverted relationship (more commonly represented by Eastern religions and societies [Buddhist, Hindus, etc]) or in an extroverted relationship (more commonly represented by Western religions and societies [Judaism, Christianity, Islam]). So far, I've seen nothing to convince me that the many religions are conceptually different from the many paintings of an art class observing the very same subject.

Exciting.