This is the line of reasoning that Christian missionaries in Asia use to convert the native Buddhists, Daoists, and others to Christianity.This post is an attempt to make the argument that the traditions of China and India, namely, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism are actually great resources of Christian apologetics. Being a Christian, I have come to see the respective systems of thought as preannouncing the message of the gospel in terms of ethical questions about life. — Dermot Griffin
The Jesuits, by the way, were adept at adopting native traditions as part of their conversion efforts. — Ciceronianus
Just remember, if you fail to pick the right sect of Christianity, you will burn in hell, forever and ever.
Between Augustinians, Franciscans, Benedictines, and Dominicans, Christianity was diverse. Conflict creates dynamism. That's a good thing for an ideology.
There is a strand of universalism in Catholicism — Wayfarer
"Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven." (Matthew 7:21) — Dermot Griffin
The whole of Christian existentialism is about you and God alone. The other persons religious beliefs, if any at all, shouldn't matter. — Dermot Griffin
I don't think Christianity has this idea that if you pick the wrong church you'll burn forever. — Dermot Griffin
In terms of my views on soteriology if, for example, a Buddhist, lives in accordance with his tradition I do believe that by Gods grace he is being saved because there is something in Buddhism that promotes living a good life. — Dermot Griffin
"Anonymous Christianity" means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted Christianity. A Protestant Christian is, of course, "no anonymous Christian"; that is perfectly clear. But, let us say, a Buddhist monk (or anyone else I might suppose) who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian; if not, I would have to presuppose that there is a genuine path to salvation that really attains that goal, but that simply has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. But I cannot do that. And so if I hold if everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion nothing else but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity.
The whole of Christian existentialism is about you and God alone. The other persons religious beliefs, if any at all, shouldn't matter. — Dermot Griffin
Personally I tend to shy away from Karl Rahner; — Dermot Griffin
That's odd. Others might find it more sensible to consider "the message of the gospel" as you put it as being merely derivative of these systems, which after all had existed for centuries before the gospels were written, or for that matter as derivative of the Western philosophical systems such as Stoicism, which also preceded the gospels by hundreds of years. Establishing that Christianity borrowed heavily from other religions or philosophical traditions wouldn't seem to indicate there's anything unique about it. — Ciceronianus
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