the:shiverian

FULFILLEMENT MODEL - PART TWO - JAQUES DUPUIS

Another representative of the fulfillment model is Jacques Dupuis, a Belgian Jesuit who spent much of his life writing in India. Dupuis wants to take the fulfillment model to its limits as he tries to keep the balance between the universality and particularity of Christ. There must be a way to -overcome the dilemma between Christocentric inclusivism and theocentric pluralism, understood as contradictory paradigms (Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, 204).- Dupuis offers what he refers to as a -Trinitarian Christology- that will -put in full relief the interpersonal relationships between Jesus and the God whom he calls Father, on the one side, and the Spirit whom he will send, on the other (205).-

What does this mean for the particularity of Jesus? Dupuis wants to maintain the -constitutive uniqueness and universality of Jesus Christ (387).- This uniqueness means that Christ and the Christ-event are -constitutive of salvation for the whole of humankind; in particular, the event of his death-resurrection opens access to God for all human beings (Ibid).- Here is where the balancing act becomes tricky for Dupuis does not want to call this uniqueness absolute because the only absolute is -God-s saving will.-

Instead of absolute, the revelation found in Jesus Christ is -relational.- The Christ-event is singular and unique but at the same time inherently related to all other manifestations of God in the world throughout time. It is in relating Jesus to these workings of the Spirit throughout history Christians find out what God is really up too in the world. Dupuis claims that this relational paradigm allows Christians to move beyond both the exclusivist and inclusivist claims. Truth and grace are found in other religions and these manifestations of truth and grace must not be -reduced to seeds or stepping-stones simply to be nurtured or used and then superseded in Christian revelation (388).-

In order for this model to engage in true dialogue, Dupuis asserts that Christians must take other religions seriously. They can no longer just be regarded as means to an end or stepping-stones to the one and true faith. Instead, as we have heard before, dialogue should be a place where mutual conversion takes place. Dupuis writes,
Thus, the dialogue does not serve as a means to a further end. Neither on one side nor on the other does it tend to the conversion of one partner to the religious tradition of the other. Rather it tends to a more profound conversion of each to God. The same God works in the heart of both parties; the same Spirit is at work in all (383). This dialogue assumes that the Spirit is at work in the world, doing something new and different than that of the particular work of the historical Jesus. Thus, when Christians meet the other religion in dialogue, the Spirit of God is at work in the other religion and using the other religion to lead Christians to a fuller and more holistic sense of the God they both worship. Dupuis makes this idea of mutual conversion explicit in what he terms complementarity. This is not -intended unilaterally, as though values found outside were one-sidedly fulfilled by Christian values and destined to be merely integrated into Christianity (389).- Instead, interaction or convergence between two traditions means that both will find -mutual enrichment.-

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Posted by mark at 1:50 PM | | perm