Book Review: Interreligious Relations: Biblical Perspectives

The Interreligious Relations: Biblical Perspectives collection has multiple authors (fifteen, mainly from western Europe and Scandinavia; a few from Britain and North America) and their discussion of interreligious relations, both ancient and contemporary, is through the lenses of various Old and New Testament and relevant Graeco-Roman texts (parts 1 and 2), the history of reception of such texts (part 3) with some concluding hermeneutic reflections (part 4). One contrast with Nicholls’ book becomes quickly apparent. Whereas his theological stance – a fairly generous orthodoxy – is consistently maintained, within this volume, as the editors frankly concede, “there is quite some variation” in the authors’ understanding of the relevance of biblical texts to interreligious encounter and – hermeneutically speaking – “no agreement in the assessment of the biblical material … as far as historical and interpretative questions are concerned” (xvii). This is because of quite widely differing theological (and epistemological) stances among the contributors and the differing lenses (often pluralist) through which the biblical material is viewed and assessed (or imposed upon?). Alongside appreciation and agreement, a reader can also imagine some rather tense or dismissive or silent reactions in the dialogues generated by the papers during and after their presentations at the Norwegian conference in which the papers were read. In other words, a number of rather disparate trajectories are traced from the biblical material to the interreligious relations of the volume’s title.

The opening chapter is by Erhard Gerstenberger, best known for his Theologies in the Old Testament, who concludes that the diversity of theologies in Scripture requires a “Plurality of Theologies in Bible and Church Life” (the title of his short contribution); that diversity necessitates humility, peace-making and dialogue, the abandonment of all (or any) particularist claims, and the embrace of a whole-hearted and prescriptive pluralism. The longer following chapter, “Yahweh and the Other Gods: Acceptance, Rejection, and Cognitive Care,” by Hans Jørgen Lundager Jensen, has space in which to present a more nuanced discussion of the diverse (though mainly hostile) attitudes to Gentile religions in the Hebrew Bible; his tenfold survey and summary of “The Hebrew Bible’s Attitudes towards Alien Religions” (pp 18-24) is splendidly helpful. He effectively deploys the anthropological trope of “enclave-mentality” as well. The pluralist voice becomes somewhat muted in the following chapters (and disappears completely in three of them). For example, chapters titled “Models of Inclusion and Exclusion in Joshua” and “Interreligious Relations in the Future as Described in the Latter Prophets” describe the Hebrew Bible’s attitude to alien religions as ambiguous rather than uniformly hostile. The ideological components of multiculturalism are scrutinised and found seriously wanting in “Inter-Religious Relations and the Challenge of Multiculturalism: Some Biblical Principles.” And it is a biblically-conservative British OT scholar who offers the most positive assessment in “Creation and Covenant: God's Direct Relationship with the Non-Israelite Nations”; he is the author who gives most attention to the somewhat startling claims of Deut 4:19 (62-64) as he points to Yahweh’s ongoing engagement with the nations. In the section on reception history, there is an interesting study of “Jonah and the Foreigners” that examines the ways in which Jewish, Christian and Muslim exegetes have understood the religious tensions in the story.

Four contributors consider New Testament and Graeco-Roman texts. One of them, Christoph Stenschke, provides by far the longest chapter in the collection: “Interreligious Encounters in the Book of Acts.” It contains a vast amount of information about the religio-cultural context and discusses inter-religious encounter along a spectrum of conflict – resolution – co-existence – cooperation – assimilation. He makes clear both his approval of indications of common ground (e.g. in Acts 10:34f and Acts 17) and his distaste for christological particularism which probably explains his near-complete avoidance of Acts 4:12 (quoted only once). Then, dislocating the text from its significant narrative context in Acts 4, he pauses only to dispute any connection with Christian proclamation in Acts (158); even the accommodating editors seem surprised (xii).

The following chapter, “Different Beliefs in the Rhetoric of the New Testament Letter to the Ephesians,” seems more alert to the actual concerns of most early Christians. In it, Tor Vegge undertakes a close exegesis of the Epistle (especially its first two chapters) and concludes that it is far more concerned with Christian identity in Christ than with respect for any alternative Jewish and Gentile worldviews “even if we are careful not to read a later exclusivist and even intolerant monotheism into the text” (196). And, unlike some other contributors, Vegge also concludes that holding to and announcing particularist views “is also a basis for mutual understanding and recognition” (200) and not the invitation to hostility that some fellow contributors assume.

The reception history of part three includes a survey of “Jesus in Islamic and Rabbinic Traditions” by a fairly regular visitor to Australasia, Craig Evans. A final hermeneutical reflection (“The Word in Dialogue and Interreligious Relations”) is utterly Christian (and heavily Rahnerian) in tone and content and, despite its title, makes no mention of interreligious relations at all apart from Catholic-Protestant encounters; having said that, it contains a clear and extended analysis of the place of the “Word of the living God” in Christian self-understanding.

In sum: this is a scholarly compendium that is valuable in a number of ways. It introduces readers to western European and Nordic voices not always heard here in the Deep South. As a recovering exclusivist, this reviewer salutes the volume’s frequent deployment of the adjective “particularist” in discussions of the range of Christian assessments of inter-religious relations – a far less judgmental (and more precise) descriptor than “exclusivist.” At the same time, the volume also provides reminders that prior commitments to dogmatic particularist, inclusivist or pluralist starting-points opens the door not only to diminished exegesis but also to the temptations of prescriptive ideology and its smug ally, reductionism.

Bob Robinsonis a Senior Research Fellow of Laidlaw College’s Christchurch branch.