ABSTRACT
There is a clear difficulty in the way of holding both that the traditional doctrines of one’s own faith community contain the uniquely fundamental truth as to the nature and commands of the “Supreme Deity” and that the beliefs and practices of morally admirable adherents of other faiths are to be treated with as much respect as is due to members of one’s own. One well-known attempt at resolving this conflict was that of the distinguished theologian Karl Rahner with his theory of “the anonymous Christian,” who, it was to be supposed, must hold to a belief in Jesus Christ without knowing that he or she did so. But this raises difficult philosophical problems as to what exactly should count as holding such a belief and as to where the boundaries might lie between “genuine” belief and “merely” faithfully observant verbal practice. A continuing observance of the rituals of doctrinal affirmation can, of course, play a major part in binding different faith communities together across the generations. It may well be, however, that the best hope for such communities to be able to live and to work together rather than to compete (sometimes even murderously) with each other will lie in a common acceptance that the language and practices of traditional doctrine are to be understood not so much in cognitively propositional terms, but rather as so many differing forms of acknowledgement of the ultimately incomprehensible source and “purpose” of life.
