ABSTRACT
Since its beginning, Christianity has encountered and responded to other religions. These encounters throughout its history have been intellectual through theologians writing and speaking to each other, at a more grass roots level through missionary activity, and at a political level through Christian nations’ claims to sovereignty. In the contemporary context of global markets, massive secularization in some countries, instant communication across the world, and processes of political democratization in many continents, Christianity inevitably finds itself encountering and engaging with other religions and of necessity defining itself in the context of pluralism. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, in 2000 tried to clarify the non-negotiable starting point of Christian doctrine in relation to other religions in Dominus Iesus, issued from the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2000; see further Hefling and Pope 2002). In addition, many Christian theologians constructively and critically engage with other traditions (e.g. Barnes 2002; Clooney 1989; Cornille 2002; D’Costa 2000; Dupuis 2002). For the Orthodox churches there is no such comprehensive or definitive statement and, with some exceptions such as the “Judaism and Orthodox Christianity” meetings in Jerusalem, this new kind of dialogue in the global context is uncharted: modern Orthodox theologians have generally not engaged deeply with other religions. In this chapter, I will firstly present a selective overview of traditional, Orthodox attitudes and then develop the possibilities for Orthodox engagement with other religions and the directions this could take towards an Orthodox theology of religions.
