This is an important book. Jacques Dupuis may be the “leading Catholic theologian of religion” (Peter Phan), and this, his third book on the religions, marks a crucial stage in the struggle for a Catholic consensus on the meaning of non-Christian religions. In this book Dupuis registers a subtle but resounding “No!” to Cardinal Ratzinger and John Paul II on Jesus and the gods.

But first, a little history. On February 27, 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger, with endorsement from John Paul II, released public criticism of Dupuis’ Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Orbis, 1997). Drawing from Dominus Iesus (the oft-maligned but estimable 2000 directive from Ratzinger and the pope on non-Christian religions), Ratzinger noted that Dupuis’ 1997 monograph could suggest the following ideas (among others) that are contrary to Catholic tradition: that there can be separation between the salvific activity of Jesus in his humanity on the one hand, and that of the eternal Word on the other; that the revelation in Jesus Christ was limited or incomplete or imperfect and in need of completion by other religions; that the Holy Spirit can act apart from the incarnate Word; and that other religions could be ways of salvation complementary to the Church.

In Christianity and the Religions Dupuis concedes that his positions “do not coincide in all respects” (262) with those of Ratzinger (and implicitly, the Pope), but insists that his “divergences never imply a difference in the content of the faith” (262). It seems to this non-Catholic reviewer that the divergences may be greater than Dupuis here allows.

Dupuis’ intent is to construct a “Trinitarian and pneumatic theological model of Christology” (256) that avoids the excesses of so-called “exclusivism,” “inclusivism,” and “pluralism.” In other words, Dupuis thinks Christians can learn new aspects of truth and grace from other religions (which he suggests “exclusivists” and “inclusivists” do not allow), but denies the “pluralist” claim that there are other saviors unrelated to Jesus. Therefore the religions have “positive but hidden meaning” (16) and can be “ways or routes of salvation” (253) intended by God and provided by the Word. Hence “the goal of interreligious dialogue is the common conversion of Christians and members of other religious traditions to the same God—the God of Jesus Christ, who challenges them through each other” (234).

So far, so good. There is little in these claims that would conflict with either post-Vatican II Catholic thinking or with many advocates of “inclusivism.” And in parts of this new book Dupuis takes pains to affirm the tradition: he says “the Christ event” is “constitutive” of salvation, which means that it causes and “belongs to the essence of” all salvation (166); quoting John Paul’s “Redemptoris Missio,” Dupuis states that other saving figures “participate in Christ’s mediation” (71) and that Word and Spirit can never be separated; he also testifies that Christian tradition does not need true completion by other traditions as if they were to fill a void.

Yet there is tension between these statements and a host of others. The most telling are those which involve Jesus’ relation to God, the Word, and the Spirit. Dupuis claims the Christian tradition “never places Christ in the place of God” (88), cites approvingly an author who states that Jesus “never puts himself forward” (167), and holds that God not Jesus is at the center of Jesus’ proclamation (22)—all this without serious attention to countervailing texts such as Jesus’ claim to be the “way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). In words that implicitly refute Ratzinger’s warning, Dupuis contends that “the working of the Word goes beyond the limits which mark the working presence of the humanity of Jesus even in his glorified state” (160). This, he explains, is because Jesus’ human consciousness was limited and did not exhaust the divine mystery. So the revelation in Jesus Christ was not exhaustive of the divine mystery (14). Nor is the Spirit always linked to the risen humanity of Jesus: if the Spirit was not “communicated through” the risen humanity of Jesus before the Incarnation, why need it be so now? (181).

Dupuis’ approving citation from Jeremiah S. O’Leary is even more suggestive of a break from the traditional “content of faith”: “The other religious traditions represent particular realizations of a universal process, which has become preeminently concrete in Jesus Christ” (193). Here is evidence of a way of thinking about Jesus that goes back to the Enlightenment’s idealists. For Kant, Hegel and Schleiermacher, Jesus was the prime example of a process that does not logically require Jesus. To make Jesus logically necessary to salvation would violate the fundamental Enlightenment axiom: that ultimate meaning must be expressed in general but not particular terms. As Lessing famously put it, “Accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason.”

The problem for the Enlightenment, and perhaps for Dupuis, is that Jesus was one of the “accidents of history.” Divinely intended of course, but not accessible to humanity universally. This could explain why Dupuis makes a number of moves that separate salvation from the historical events of Jesus of Nazareth: atonement in the Cross is never mentioned let alone explained as necessary to salvation, salvation is defined as wholeness/self-fulfillment/integration but never as redemption from sin, the “reign of God” (aka “Kingdom of God”) is described in terms of social justice but never personal discipleship to Jesus, and Jesus’ uniqueness and universality are said not to be “absolute” (166). This may also explain why Dupuis insists there is an Ultimate Reality common to all the religious traditions but experienced and conceived variously—“a single divine mystery with many faces”—words which ignore the wildly conflicting claims of the religions and provocatively recall Dominus Iesus’ denial that “Jesus is one of many faces which the Lord has assumed to communicate in a salvific way” (9). This may also be reason for Dupuis’ charge that Peter contradicts Jesus when the former proclaims, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Despite the words “under heaven” and “among mortals” Dupuis claims this pronouncement means there is no other savior for Jews (39-41).

That Dupuis often returns to Jesus’ limited human consciousness may suggest assumptions about the human predicament and the nature of salvation different from classical tradition. In other words, if the human predicament is insufficient knowledge of God’s mystery and salvation is therefore by revelation that provides information about God that we can follow, then Jesus’ limited consciousness is a problem. But if the human predicament instead is alienation from God because of sin, and salvation means reconciliation, then Jesus’ limited human consciousness is in fact our guarantee that God has taken to himself our sinful humanity with all its limitations in exchange for giving us his righteousness and Spirit. This reveals not information about God but God’s action to include sinners in his own trinitarian life. Hence Jesus’ limited consciousness demonstrates not partial revelation of the divine mystery but the full picture of what salvation entails.

Dupuis is very concerned not to be “insensitive” or “exclusive” in his approach to other religionists. He is right to show the utmost respect for the truth and grace in other traditions. But it is theologically shortsighted to think one can avoid exclusivism while also saying that Jesus’ salvation was somehow the cause of all salvations. Perhaps, as Gavin D’Costa and S. Mark Heim have argued, there is no escaping exclusivism without resorting to the notion that there are many saviors equally valid, which in fact is its own kind of exclusivism, for it denies the views of all those who disagree.

One can be sensitive to new truths in other religions without also saying the revelation in Jesus Christ is incomplete. After all, the early church taught that “all that the Father has” belongs to Jesus (John 16:15). Yet one can say, as Cardinal Newman did, that the historical development of doctrine demonstrates that the Church has always used other religions to help her understand more of the revelation of Jesus Christ. And even that the other religions are needed to help unfold the meaning of that infinite mystery. But to say without qualification that “the religious experience of the sages is guided and directed by the Spirit” (115) is to beg all sorts of questions: Which sages? All of them? Every part of their messages and experiences? What about St. Paul’s warning that some pagan rituals should be avoided because they participate with demons (1 Cor 10:20)?

Dupuis often returns to the claim that because Jesus’ human consciousness was limited, the Christian revelation cannot exhaust the mystery of God. But why need the first clause lead to the second? According to the classical understanding of the communio idiomatum, the divine person of the Logos in the Incarnation had available to itself both its limited human nature and the divine omniscience of the divine nature—even while choosing at times to restrict itself to the former. That did not prevent the Logos from inspiring apostolic reflection on the meaning of the Incarnation, so that John could say that the Holy Spirit made available to the apostles the “entire truth” (John 16:13), and Colossians could declare that in Jesus Christ are hidden “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (2:3). Dupuis asserts that the Word “is never totally contained in any historical manifestation” (159), yet Colossians pronounces that “in Christ the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Col 2:9).

Jacque Dupuis is a distinguished theologian who has produced some extraordinary work on the religions, which has advanced the understanding of both Catholics and non-Catholics alike. He says this book is “more pastoral than academic” and “synthetic” rather than “systematic.” So the tension which is evident in the work may be due in part to the absence of nuance one finds in books aimed at a more general audience. But at the same time this book is the first major response to weighty ecclesiastical warnings, and better nuancing could have been couched in a manner accessible to nonspecialists.

This is not a debate over the exclusivist claim that there is no truth or salvation available in other religions. Ratzinger and Dupuis agree this is a false claim. Instead the question is whether the fullness of God’s mystery—continually in need of further understanding—could be contained in the particular event of Jesus Christ. Ratzinger and John Paul follow the Catholic tradition in saying it can and was, while liberal Protestantism has always denied the possibility. In this book Dupuis shows signs of following a path taken by Kant, Hegel and Schleiermacher.