Irish Theological Quarterly

http://itq.sagepub.com/ Vatican II and Fundamental Theology

Gerald O'Collins Irish Theological Quarterly 2009 74: 379 DOI: 10.1177/0021140009343363

The online version of this article can be found at: http://itq.sagepub.com/content/74/4/379 Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

Pontifical University, St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland

Additional services and information for Irish Theological Quarterly can be found at: Email Alerts: http://itq.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://itq.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

>> Version of Record - Oct 30, 2009

Downloaded from itq.sagepub.com at National Univ. of Ireland on March 30, 2012

What is This?

Irish Theological Quarterly 74 (2009) 379388 The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0021140009343363

Vatican II and Fundamental Theology

Gerald OCollins, SJ
St Marys University College, Twickenham
This article describes and evaluates what the teaching of Vatican II has contributed to the development of fundamental theology in four areas: (1) the salvific self-revelation or self-communication of the tripersonal God; (2) the conditions that enable human beings to respond to this divine self-communication with faith; (3) the credibility of Gods selfrevelation that makes Christian faith a reasonable option; and (4) the transmission and interpretation (through tradition and the inspired scriptures) of the experience of Gods self-revelation. The article also indicates how the teaching of John Paul II has been significant for developing further fundamental theology: for instance, in what he wrote about revelation being also a present reality communicated through the medium of human experience and about the Holy Spirit operating at the heart of each persons religious questioning (Redemptoris Missio). KEYWORDS: credibility, experience, Fundamental Theology, John Paul II, selfcommunication, Vatican II

ne might describe Fundamental Theology (hereafter FT) as the discipline that, in the light of faith, studies such foundations of theology and basic theological issues as (1) the self-revelation of the tripersonal God that unfolded in the history of Israel and Jesus Christ; (2) the conditions that open human beings up to this self-communication of God; (3) the credibility of revelation that makes Christian faith a reasonable option; and (4) the transmission and interpretation (through the Churchs tradition and inspired scriptures) of the experience of Gods self-communication. Before taking up these four points in the light of Vatican II, let me introduce three preliminary observations. Firstly, FT is to be distinguished from the philosophy of religion, a discipline that studies religious beliefs, conduct, and cult in the light of reason alone. As such, the philosophy of religion claims to examine matters from the outside, without endorsing any particular believing or confessional stance. FT, however, is a genuinely theological discipline that does its work from the inside, as an exercise of Christian faith seeking to understand, to promote justice, and to assist worship. Secondly, its basic interests distinguish (but do not separate) FT from dogmatic or systematic theology. Of course, over some points dogmatic theology raises fundamental questions. Sacramental theology, for instance,
379

Downloaded from itq.sagepub.com at National Univ. of Ireland on March 30, 2012

380

IRISH THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

must examine the nature of signs and symbols before going on to consider the individual sacraments. But in general the various areas of dogmatic theology dedicate most attention to specific issues and particular truths drawn from revelation (such as various models for interpreting the Trinity, the union of the two natures in the one person of Christ, and grace as divine indwelling). FT characteristically takes up very general or basic questions, such as the nature of revelation, without examining in depth particular revealed truths. Thirdly, while recognizing that the roots of FT go back to the Christian apologists of the second and third centuries, I take the teaching of Vatican II (19621965) as the starting point for considering contemporary FT. While never using the term fundamental theology, the Second Vatican Council provided guidelines for FT not only through the teaching on revelation, tradition, scripture and theology provided by the Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) but also through other documents: for instance, in the teaching of the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes) and the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra aetate).1 An adequate reception of Vatican IIs teaching on revelation and other themes for FT entails drawing not only on Dei Verbum but also on further conciliar documents. At times they add new and important points that go beyond Dei Verbum.2 The Divine Self-Revelation In its dense opening chapter Dei Verbum presented revelation as primarily the self-revelation of the tripersonal God, a revelation that is inseparable from salvation and that enjoys a sacramental character, since it takes place through an interplay of words and actions. In the past, this divine revelation reached its fullness and high-point with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, together with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. But revelation remains a living, actual reality (Dei Verbum, 8 and 25), and will be consummated through the glorious manifestation of Christ at the end of world history (Dei Verbum, 4).3 In the aftermath of the Council, John Paul II (pope 19782005) insisted on the present and future dimensions of the divine self-revelation in Christ. Firstly, in his 1979 apostolic exhortation Catechesi tradendae (35, 36) and in his most important piece of teaching on revelation, the 1980 encyclical Dives in misericordia (6, 7, 9, 15), he showed that revelation is
1. See Ren Latourelle, Absence and Presence of Fundamental Theology at Vatican II, in Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives, ed. Ren Latourelle, vol. 3 (New York: Paulist, 1989), 378415. 2. See Gerald OCollins, Retrieving Fundamental Theology (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1993), 6378. 3. On revelation as a past and present reality, see ibid., 8797, 166167.

Downloaded from itq.sagepub.com at National Univ. of Ireland on March 30, 2012

VATICAN II AND FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

381

a present reality that is repeatedly active here and now as it calls forth human faith. Secondly, drawing on the language of 1 Corinthians 13: 12 about believers seeing only dimly in the present life, Catechesi tradendae presented faith as a journey toward things not yet in our possession (60). The same text from Paul turned up in the Popes 1998 encyclical Fides et ratio to support the theme that the fullness of truth will appear only with the final revelation of God (2). In other words, any theology of revelation must respect the fact that the definitively full revelation of God has not yet taken place. The decades after the close of Vatican II saw further progress in the theology of revelation: for instance, the theme developed by Avery Dulles and others that revelation is a symbolic communication of God.4 This theme built on the teaching of Dei Verbum about the sacramental character of revelation. In a largely unnoticed phrase, the Constitution on Divine Revelation observed that by divine revelation God wished to manifest and communicate himself and the eternal decrees of his will for the salvation of humankind (6). This theme of the divine self-communication or symbolic self-communication would emerge more fully in official teaching and in theology. In his 1986 encyclical Dominum et vivificantem, John Paul II twelve times called the Holy Spirit the self-communication of God. In examining the divine offer of revelation and salvation, Karl Rahner dedicated pages to the theme of Gods free and forgiving selfcommunication.5 It certainly helps to interpret Gods revealing and saving activity as the divine self-communication and to add that this self-communication takes place through symbolic events, words, persons, and things. A further development concerned the theme of experience. Dei Verbum introduced the verb or noun experience only sparingly (8, 14). This and other documents of Vatican II still reflected a certain unease about the language of experience. One can ascribe that inhibition to the long shadow cast by the proscription of Modernism in the decree Lamentabili and the encyclical Pascendi of 1907. In condemning modernists, Pius X and his collaborators showed some blindness to historical developments in Christianity but were right on other scores. Some modernists were going astray in overemphasizing human experience. Misuse of this theme should not, however, have led to ruling it out or downplaying its value. Yet for many years that was the case in Catholic circles in many countries. Seminarians, in particular, were trained to be suspicious of experience, as if it were necessarily private, emotional, and dangerously subjective.

4. See ibid., 98107, 167168. 5. See Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Seabury, 1978), 116133.

Downloaded from itq.sagepub.com at National Univ. of Ireland on March 30, 2012

382

IRISH THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

But with his background in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler and other exponents of this philosophical school, which aims at describing the way things, as they actually are, manifest themselves to us, John Paul II had no such aversion to experience and the language of experience. Since his doctoral studies involved the works of St John of the Cross, the future Pope was also able to appropriate the experience of love expounded by the mystics. In Dives in misericordia, John Paul II introduced experience as a noun twelve times and as a verb five times. One can easily justify the Popes terminology in an encyclical devoted to the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love (1). If the divine self-revelation does not enter our experience (to arouse or strengthen our faith), it simply does not happen as far as we are concerned. Nonexperienced revelation makes no sense. John Paul II went beyond Vatican II by using freely the language of experience in Dives in misericordia and other documents and thus helped to show how divine revelation engages human experience. By repeatedly making the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola, Karl Rahner and some other Jesuit theologians (including myself) were also trained to be comfortable about employing the language of experience when expounding the nature of Gods self-revelation that feeds our life of faith.6 The last two paragraphs have introduced the theme of human faith, since our faith and Gods revelation belong together. The initiative comes from the self-revealing God but revelation achieves its goal when human beings respond in faith. But is there a God to be experienced by us? Or are supposed personal encounters between human beings and the self-revealing God merely acts of self-deception? Since they deny the existence of God, atheists would write off as delusion any such alleged encounters with God. Vatican II dedicated several paragraphs both to atheism and its causes and to remedies for atheism (Gaudium et spes, 1921). Since the Council closed in 1965, militant atheism in such forms as European Communism has largely disappeared. It is left to Richard Dawkins and other writers to keep the cause alive.7 If it were to reconvene in these early years of the third millennium, the Council might be inclined to address a movement that was born in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and that has returned today: deism. We deal here with an umbrella term, since deism can take various forms. Yet deists normally agree that God exists but reject in principle all special divine actions. Thus deists logically rule out any revelation of God that is distinct from the normal intentions and power which God manifests in creating and conserving the universe. At most, deism allows for what has
6. See OCollins, Retrieving Fundamental Theology, 108119, 168169. 7. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Bantam, 2006); see also various responses to Dawkins, such as Alister McGrath, Dawkins God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).

Downloaded from itq.sagepub.com at National Univ. of Ireland on March 30, 2012

VATICAN II AND FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

383

been called general or natural revelation: that is to say, the manifestation of God and the divine attributes coming through the created world and its normal workings. Deists exclude any divine revelation mediated through special persons (e.g., the Old Testament prophets and, above all, Jesus himself), special events (e.g., miracles, the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the resurrection), and special words (e.g., the teaching of Jesus and the inspired texts of the Bible). Hence those who disagree with deists and maintain the special history of divine self-revelation that reached its highpoint with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, along with the coming of the Holy Spirit, need to make their case for the possibility of our knowing that God has acted in special ways and communicated some special truth over and above what might be gleaned from Gods normal activity in conserving and guiding the created universe.8 Human Beings Open to Revelation This exercise in mapping the tasks of FT brings us next to the conditions for the possibility of men and women being open to the selfcommunication of God. What makes us potential hearers of the word of revelation and believers in the message of salvation? In response to this question, the Second Vatican Council developed a scheme of question/ answer, a correlation between basic human questioning and the divine answer. Revelation corresponds with the self-questioning and deepest desires of the human heart. Gods self-revelation in Christ illuminates human existence. The basic questions raised by the human condition find their answers provided by Christ the Revealer. It is the revelation of the mystery of Christ that fully interprets and clarifies the mystery of the human person (Gaudium et spes, 10, 2122, 41).9 In this connection it was only to be expected that the Council would quote the opening words of St Augustines Confessions about the self-questioning of the human heart that can find a satisfying answer and peace in the message of Christ: Lord, you have made us for yourself and our hearts will not rest until they rest in you (Gaudium et spes, 21). The Council spoke of an interior call and offer coming to all human beings, when, through the Holy Spirit, they are invited to share in the life of the risen Christ (Gaudium et spes, 22). Both before and after the Council, Karl Rahner developed the notion of the supernatural existential to describe the way human beings are preconditioned to accept this offer of Gods saving self-communication. Even before they
8. For a satisfactory defence of special divine activity, see Paul Gwynne, Special Divine Action: Key Issues in the Contemporary Debate (196595) (Rome: Gregorian University, 1996). 9. For an extended version of this question/answer scheme, see Ren Latourelle, Man and His Problems in the Light of Christ (New York: Alba House, 1981).

Downloaded from itq.sagepub.com at National Univ. of Ireland on March 30, 2012

384

IRISH THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

freely accept this offer, human beings have been positively determined to encounter in faith the holy mystery of God.10 In his first encyclical that was published in 1979, John Paul II took the conciliar teaching further by speaking not merely of an offer or a call, but of a reality: from the first moment of their conception, all human beings actually share in the mystery of Christ (Redemptor hominis, 13). Long before coming to the age of reason, they all participate already in some way in the self-communication of God. What the Pope wrote in a 1990 encyclical, Redemptoris missio, echoed Rahners language of an existential but gave this language a personal ring by introducing the Holy Spirit. John Paul II understood the Holy Spirit to operate at the very source of each persons religious questioning. As the Pope put it, the Spirit is at the very source of mans existential and religious questioning, a questioning which is occasioned not only by contingent situations but by the very structure of his being (28). This teaching also represented a certain development of doctrine. Where Gaudium et spes (10) and Nostra aetate (1) recall the basic questions that arise for human beings, they do so without attributing this profound questioning to the presence and activity of the Spirit. The theme of the Holy Spirit at work in the deepest human questions belongs among the themes which characterize the development of doctrine about the Holy Spirit that is a major element in the legacy of John Paul II.11 The Credibility of Revelation Even if many nowadays speak of accepting the divine revelation in Christ as being a reasonable and credible choice, rather than talking explicitly of Christian apologetics, FT rightly maintains a genuinely apologetical function. From such second-century apologists as St Justin Martyr (d. around 165) down to C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and other twentieth-century writers, very many notable Christians have developed an apology for their personal faith in Christ and membership of the Church. In the context of their world, their culture, and the cultivated reason of their day, they have aimed to justify their faith. From the birth of Christianity, faith and reason have interacted, mutually enriched each other, and at times been embodied in such a brilliant synthesis as that coming from St Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274). In his penultimate encyclical letter, Fides et ratio of 1999, John Paul II set himself to show how faith and reason enjoy their distinct but never separate functions. At the start of the third millennium, cultivated reason pursues not merely philosophical and historical studies but also a wide range of natural sciences and new human sciences like psychology and
10. See Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 126133. 11. See Michael Hayes and Gerald OCollins, eds., The Legacy of John Paul II (London: Continuum, 2008).

Downloaded from itq.sagepub.com at National Univ. of Ireland on March 30, 2012

VATICAN II AND FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

385

sociology. Such disciplines have their own distinct characteristics and procedures, but in all cases their practitioners are people with faith or lack of it. No matter what the discipline they are engaged in, they can never pursue it in isolation from their belief or unbelief about the big picture, or the ultimate nature and destiny of human beings and the holy mystery of God that surrounds us. In developing FT, theologians will find that some disciplines contribute more frequently to their work: for instance, when they wish to establish that we do have reliable access to the history of Jesus and can establish conclusions (e.g., about his claims, his deeds, and his resurrection) which serve to show that faith in Jesus as the incarnate Son of God is a reasonable option. Faith in the crucified and risen Jesus cannot exist without some well-grounded historical knowledge, even if such faith does not depend simply on historical knowledge. Here as elsewhere, faith is not to be reduced to a conclusion from evidence but is led beyond the evidence.12 Karl Rahner and others welcomed the Second Vatican Council as a sign of the coming of a Church that could truly be called a world Church, the first, official self-actualization of the Catholic Church as a world Church.13 Prior to Vatican II, for the most part a European model of the Church was exported to other parts of the world, and it was only in the twentieth century that local priests were ordained bishops in many third world countries. Even though, for example, the majority of Filipinos had been baptized by the end of the eighteenth century, the indigenous clergy remained in inferior positions. It was only in 1905 that the first Filipino bishop was appointed. Pope Pius XI, however, vigorously encouraged local leadership. In 1926, he personally consecrated six Chinese bishops; in 1936, he appointed the first Japanese archbishop of Tokyo. The first two African Catholics to become bishops of dioceses were appointed in 1939. Between the first and second sessions of the Second Vatican Council, a conclave of cardinals elected Paul VI in 1963; 65% of them were Europeans and more than a third Italians. By the time of the 1978 conclave that elected John Paul II, the Italian cardinals were down to a quarter and those from Western Europe down to less than a half. Beyond question, the Italians and the Europeans were still over-represented in 1978. But a clear demographic change had begun in the college of cardinals. Rahner rightly observed how Vatican II signalled a move towards a Church whose members and leaders come from the whole world
12. In his Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI was concerned to show that the Gospels provide us with reliable access to the person of Jesus; in that sense the book converged with FTs task of establishing the historical credibility of Christian faith (Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth [London: Bloomsbury, 2007]). For another such example, but in the area of the resurrection, see Gerald OCollins, Easter Faith: Believing in the Risen Jesus (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2003). 13. Karl Rahner, Basic Theological Interpretation of the Second Vatican Council, Theological Investigations, vol. 20 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1981), 7889.

Downloaded from itq.sagepub.com at National Univ. of Ireland on March 30, 2012

386

IRISH THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

and exercise a deep intercultural influence on one another. In that sense, the Council represented a qualitative leap. For FT it has proved more significant that the discipline is now practised in a world of many cultures and religions. Those engaged in FT may no longer ignore the faith and scriptures of other religions. In that sense, with Nostra aetate, Vatican II also issued a declaration on the relation of FT to Non-Christian religions. When practitioners of FT develop approaches to the credibility of the Christian revelation, they do so in a world of various faiths and many claims about ways of revelation and salvation. It is in the new situation of an interfaith world that FT will establish or fail to establish the credibility of Christianity.14 Before moving to the fourth and final area that belongs to the specialization of FT, let me add something that affects the global credibility of the discipline: what we might call three, complementary tasks or styles. A first style of FT pursues the meaning and truth of the divine self-revelation that climaxed with the whole story of Jesus Christ and his original followers. This way of doing FT characteristically finds its sources in writings from the past: in the Bible; in the works of Greek, Latin, and Syriac writers; in official documents of the Church; in the books of Eastern and Western theologians and philosophers; and in other texts that indicate how Christians, with varying degrees of wisdom and authority, have understood, interpreted, and justified what they believed about Gods self-manifestation. Public prayer and worship form the source and setting for a second way of developing FT and justifying the credibility of Christian faith. How do liturgical celebrations in the Eastern and Western churches bear witness to and prompt human experience of the self-revelation of God in Christ and through the Holy Spirit? How does the glory of Orthodoxys iconographic tradition warrant and nourish faith in the divine self-disclosure? What do we learn if we consult worshippers in matters of the divine beauty experienced in Christian worship of all kinds and rites? Such worship looks forward to the future time of final fulfilment, with an expectation that already receives and perceives something of that ultimate future. A third style of FT typically asks: what does faith in the self-revealing God lead Christs followers to do or leave undone? Does this revelation bring something special, even unique, to the struggle for promoting the common good and relieving the massive injustice of human society? What does faith in the God revealed in Jesus Christ mean for the poor and suffering victims of our world? This third style of FT focuses the question of credibility with an eye on, and for the sake of, the millions of victimized nonpersons who surround us in the present world.
14. Not all practitioners of FT have recognized the sea change in their discipline brought by an interfaith world. For example, Jrgen Werbicks nearly 1000-page-long work simply bypasses questions raised by the contemporary, interfaith situation (Jrgen Werbick, Den Glauben verantworten. Eine Fundamentaltheologie [Freiburg: Herder, 2006]).

Downloaded from itq.sagepub.com at National Univ. of Ireland on March 30, 2012

VATICAN II AND FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

387

When justifying the credibility of Christian faith, the three styles characteristically attend to truth, gleaned from knowing the past with genuine academic rigour (first style); to the beauty of God revealed in worship that anticipates the future glory (second style); and to action here and now on behalf of the suffering victims of our world (third style). We can sum up the distinct (but not separate) emphases of the three styles as truth, beauty, and justice, respectively. More than ever FT needs a broad approach to the task of establishing the credibility of Gods revelation in Christ, an approach that means using our heads (the first style), our hearts (the second style), and our hands (the third style). An integral FT entails searching for the truth, lifting our hearts in worship of the beautiful God, and putting ourselves to work for a transformed world. Knowledge of the divine self-manifestation is or should be inseparably connected with the worship of God and the practice of a life for others motivated by the selfdisclosure of God in Jesus Christ. In presenting and legitimating Christian faith, the Second Vatican Council was concerned to validate its truth, its beauty, and its witness to justice. Let me pick three examples to illustrate how the Council provided a point of departure for a threefold approach to the issue of Christian credibility. First, Dei Verbum insisted that stringent scholarship does provide reliable access to the history of Jesus and its authentic interpretation (1719). Secondly, among its closing messages promulgated on 8 December 1965, the Council praises artists for their work in disclosing the beauty of God and creation. Thirdly, in the face of modern atheism, Vatican II recalled with gratitude the testimony given by Christian martyrs whose mature faith also showed itself through the witness of a love and justice exercised towards those in terrible need (Gaudium et spes, 21; Lumen gentium, 42). Tradition and Scripture The second chapter of Dei Verbum left valuable guidelines for understanding the mutual interplay of tradition and scripture in handing on Christian witness to the revelation in Christ of the tripersonal God. Since 1965 much has been published that enhances ones appreciation of the distinct but inseparable roles of tradition and scripture in actualizing for successive generations the reality of Gods self-manifestation in Christ. A recent work by Richard Bauckham, for instance, illuminates successfully how eye-witness testimony controlled the transmission of the testimony to Jesus that resulted in the four Gospels.15 But a great deal still needs to be done if FT, for instance, is going to live up satisfactorily to the tasks indicated by Dei Verbum.
15. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006).

Downloaded from itq.sagepub.com at National Univ. of Ireland on March 30, 2012

388

IRISH THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

In a notable appeal this Constitution named the study of the scriptures the very soul of theology (24). The decree on the training of priests, Optatam totius, called the scriptures the soul of all theology (16). FT, along with other branches of theology, has yet to realize appropriately this dream of Vatican II. The area, for instance, of interfaith studies shows a widespread failure to study and make use of the full biblical witness to Gods saving designs for all peoples. It was dissatisfaction with this situation that prompted me to examine thoroughly the positive teaching of both the Old Testament and the New Testament and to write Salvation for All Gods Other Peoples.16 In the decades since the Council the Pontifical Biblical Commission through its 1993 document, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, built on Dei Verbum to evaluate a whole range of methods and approaches to biblical interpretation, proposed some central characteristics of Catholic interpretation of the Bible, and encouraged the active appropriation of the scriptures in the life of the whole Church. Although it did not trigger a wide and enthusiastic reception, the 2001 document of the Biblical Commission, The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, was also a valuable and challenging study. Yet a great deal of work is still to be done by practitioners of FT and of other branches of theology when they engage in biblical interpretation. In many places they have not yet faced and worked through fundamental issues about such matters as biblical truth, the nature of symbols, the function of metaphor, and the characteristics of religious language.17 This article has taken up four basic issues and areas which bear on the post-Vatican II progress of FT. Obviously, there is much more to be said. But I hope that this mapping exercise has shown something of the central features of FT as it faces the questions and challenges of the third millennium. After teaching Fundamental and Systematic Theology at the Gregorian University (Rome) for 33 years, Gerald OCollins, SJ, is now a research professor in theology at St Marys University College, Twickenham. He has authored or co-authored 52 books, his latest being Catholicism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2008). In early 2010, Oxford University Press will publish his Jesus Our Priest: A Christian Approach to the Priesthood of Christ. Address: 9 Edge Hill, London SW19 4LR, United Kingdom. ocollins@unigre.it

16. Gerald OCollins, Salvation for All Gods Other Peoples (Oxford: Oxford University, 2008). 17. Here the work of Michael Paul Gallagher provides a shining example for other practitioners of FT: see, for example, Michael Paul Gallagher, Clashing Symbols: An Introduction to Faith and Culture (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2003).

Downloaded from itq.sagepub.com at National Univ. of Ireland on March 30, 2012