Christology is the focal point of dogmatics. This is where the threads of Christian theology converge and from where they spread out. But how should we understand this focal point? The history of theology constitutes a series of attempts to answer the question of how to view the person of Jesus in the light of his relationship with God; of what his mission consisted; and the significance of his suffering, death, and presence beyond death. In so doing, Christology addresses the central content of the Christian faith.
The material basis for this reflection comes from the New Testament and its interpretations in the history of theology. It unfolds in specific historical contexts, along with the things that shape each of these contexts in terms of historical experiences, current intellectual developments, cultural formations, and religious challenges. Christologies are always contextual; they are also always driven by particular interests. In the elaboration of these contexts and interests, certain starting points in the New Testament are singled out and foregrounded as leitmotifs, others are subordinated to this center of integration, and still others are marginalized. The claim to have developed a Christology that does full justice to the New Testament tradition and follows no other interest than to bring the timeless gospel to the fore has been made again and again, but itself comes under suspicion of ideology. It is a claim that absolutizes its own contextual Christology and shields it from questioning. The present proposal of a Christology therefore names right at the beginning both the context in which it unfolds and the motivation that guides it.
The religious-cultural context consists of the threefold challenge that the Christian faith is currently facing, especially in the Western world. These challenges are ever-continuing secularization, the transformation of Christian forms of religion from those guided by church tradition to those emphasizing individual experience, and the plurality of religious (and secular) worldviews. It is this third challenge in particular that constitutes the frame of reference for the Christological reflections developed here.
These reflections are motivated by a theology of religions but are not dependent on it. They can also be detached from it. Even those who do not share, or who reject, the perspectives expressed in this volume, should find in it a proposal of a Christology that strives to make the meaning of the person of Jesus understandable in a way that is anchored in the Bible, justified by the history of theology, and plausible in the present contexts of experiences, interpretations, and forms of thought.
This proposal is positioned within the plausibility structures that can be summarized under the (fuzzy) term ‘postmodernity’. These are characterized by a pervasive historicization, contextualization and pluralization of thought; by a turning away from anthropocentrism, universal concepts of meaning (‘grand narratives’) and absolute claims to truth; by an awareness of the fragmentary—as well as of the fluid—nature of reality; by the insight that reality discloses itself symbolically and that the language that expresses it is highly metaphorical. This also includes a pronounced sensitivity for differences, an appreciation of alterity, and an advocacy for marginalized views. Thought develops in the ever-new circular movement of deconstruction and reconstruction, whereby the normative foundations of the formation of judgements are also always up for discussion in light of a critique of power, hierarchy, and ideology.
The present proposal is particularly aware of the problematic demands that have been imposed on Christology since the separation of dogmatic and historical perspectives in the nineteenth century and on which it has been working ever since. Its task is to make both the dogmatic determinations of the person of Jesus Christ, as well as the meaning of his revelation and salvation, understandable for the present. It seeks to do this in connection with New Testament testimony of Jesus’ speech, action, and deeds, and to relate these to basic contemporary questions of human existence. Fundamentally, it is about Bonhoeffer’s question of “who Christ really is, for us today”.1
If ‘today’ is not only an addendum to Christology, a question of its application, but if Christology actually develops from the beginning as a ‘responsive theology’ (Tillich)—responding to the existential, social, cultural, and religious questions of the present—then it must have in view from the outset, and orient itself towards, questions posed by the diversity of religions. This will be reflected in the study’s methodological approach.
In line with Protestant theology in the wake of Schleiermacher, the starting point is the radiance that the person and work of Jesus have generated, and continue to generate, towards his disciples, the people he encountered, and Christians, but also to non-Christians, throughout history.
I agree with Hermann Deuser’s call for Christology not to dwell in “remote metaphysical museums”, but rather “to read and understand the story of Jesus and the closeness of God represented in it […] in a much more naturalistic way than certain, only ostensibly ‘Christian’ systems of thought would have us believe”.2
This is not a plea for a one-sided Christology ‘from below’ that represses the concerns of Christology ‘from above’. This distinction involves two perspectives, both of which have their rightful place, and which should be held together in unity while also encompassing their contrasts. Christology ‘from below’ starts with the man Jesus, as the Synoptic Gospels above all witness to him, and such Christology interprets his mission as an expression of his intense relationship with God. By contrast, Christology ‘from above’ emphasizes his intrinsic divinity. Whenever one side of Christology is emphasized, the other must also be taken into account. Yet the question arises regarding from which side this dialectic is entered into—from the side of the human person of Jesus or from the side of the God who is revealed in Jesus? I prefer the first of these two possibilities: the starting point and the normative reference point lie in the person of Jesus Christ as described in the New Testament. The path of knowledge leads from Jesus to God and back to Jesus.
Christology is about the central self-understanding of the Christian faith; it is what makes the Christian faith ‘Christian’. Christology is also about its credibility in the tension between biblical tradition and contemporary contexts of understanding. Credibility also includes intellectual plausibility. ‘Fides quaerens intellectum’ (Anselm of Canterbury)! Johannes Fischer states:
For faith that is not knowledge, and neither comes from knowledge nor is based on knowledge is without contact with reality. Faith without contact with reality does not change the reality of the believer. It is without soteriological power.3
Paul Tillich rightly warned against repeating in the present the responses of faith of earlier centuries—and thus also the classical doctrinal decisions of Christology—without relating them to the existential questions and states of consciousness that arise today.4 Instead, it is necessary to transform these responses in order to bring their original meaning to bear anew under the conditions of the present. Biblical and theological traditions offer many approaches to this.
Protestant theology in particular carries in its heritage the impulse to return again and again to the biblical sources. It is not bound to the ways of thinking that have become predominant in theological traditions, but rather can exploit the broad scope of interpretation inherent in biblical traditions. The doctrinal formulations of the early church councils, the great theological systems of the Middle Ages, the confessional writings of the Reformation, and the beacons of what Ernst Troeltsch called neo-Protestantism constitute important guidelines—but are not fixed as the core of theological thought. Every age must develop an understanding of Jesus Christ which it considers appropriate and responsible in relation to the testimony of the Bible and to the theological tradition. The norm of all Christology is not conformity with a classical doctrinal view, but rather the faithfulness of the Christological concepts to the original testimonies about the presence of God in Jesus Christ. Christology must make these testimonies plausible within the framework of contemporary understandings of God, the world, and the self; and it has to show how it transforms the contexts of contemporary life.
The principal points, both of departure and of reference, for Trinitarian and Christological doctrinal formation in the early Church were the Johannine writings of the New Testament. The divinity of Jesus Christ attested to in these texts was emphasized primarily because of soteriological interests; the theologians of that time stressed the uniqueness of God’s revelation and the mediation of salvation in him. While doctrinal formation foregrounded these Johannine themes, it emphasized other strands of the New Testament’s witness far less, notably the fundamentally theocentric feature of Jesus’ proclamation and Spirit-Christology. In the following reflections, I bring such starting points back from the margins to the center. In doing so, I follow the methodological principle formulated by Wolfhart Pannenberg that Christological statements about Jesus Christ must explore the biblical origins of the confessional statements and Christological titles of the early Christian tradition and be oriented towards the testimonies of Jesus.5
The dual criteria of identity and relevance evaluate the various approaches to Christology. These two criteria require further introduction before they can be applied:
(a) The criterion of identity demands the greatest possible correlation with the original impulse of the Christian faith as it is embodied in the person of Jesus and witnessed to in the traditions of the New Testament. It thus demands a ‘reduction’ of Christology in the literal sense of re-ducere: to lead back to the biblical origins. This is certainly not to be understood in the sense of biblicism, nor as disdain for the tradition of interpretation, but rather as a critical questioning of whether and to what extent the later interpretations, as they were elevated to a normative rank in the history of theology (such as the decisions of the early church councils or the confessional writings of the Reformation), narrow the variety of biblical perspectives depending on their own historical contexts. Today, such perspectives are, moreover, only comprehensible with guidelines to aid understanding, with the result that the spiritual power and truth inherent in the message of Christ is sometimes obscured rather than brought to the fore. This leads to the second criterion.
(b) The criterion of relevance asks how Christological statements measure up in contemporary social, cultural, and religious contexts. Various factors shape these contexts, and the contexts can be addressed in different ways. This book primarily foregrounds the situation of religious diversity as a challenge to Christological reflection. It demands a Christology whose axiomatic truths do not lead to a devaluation of non-Christian religions, but rather enable us to imagine that God’s self-communication can also reach people in these religions and through these religions, so that it becomes necessary to encounter not only people but also their religions with theologically grounded appreciation.
The identity of the Christian faith should not be called into question in the pursuit of relevance. Nor should we cling to any particular form of Christology that has been established in the history of theology, thereby losing our ability to communicate with contemporary problems.
Against the first danger it should be noted that the effort to deliberate on Christology in the context of theology of religions is not about elevating interest in interreligious dialogue to the norm of Christian theology. Nor is it about adapting theological doctrines in eager subservience to the supposed requirements of consensus-oriented understanding so that they appear less objectionable to non-Christian dialogue partners. That would be a form of theological heteronomy. Rather, deliberating on Christology must be a matter of sounding out the interpretive scope of theology—especially Christology—to see whether its own foundational axioms suggest that non-Christian sources and streams of tradition can also mediate valid knowledge of God and salvific relationships with God. A responsible form of Christological doctrine cannot draw its criteria of validity from interreligious encounters. As much as encounters with other religions can help to discover and develop theological and Christological insights, they can hardly become a source of their justification. The appropriateness of Christological statements cannot be judged according to their pragmatic value in dialogue. Rather, it must be “measured by internal consistency and agreement with exegetical findings across the history of dogmatics”.6
These opinions, however, have at all times in the history of theology been contentious and open to interpretation. Those possibilities of interpretation can be highlighted that most closely correspond to the standards of intellectual plausibility and the basic soteriological orientations of our cultural context. That applies not only to theology of religions, but to theology in general. It strives for a reasonable and faith-worthy contemporary interpretation of the Christian tradition. This does not make the present zeitgeist the norm for theological statements, but neither is that the case for the zeitgeist of the first, fourth and fifth, or sixteenth centuries. This is of particular note regarding the second of the above-mentioned dangers.
Critics sometimes refer to attempts to exploit the scope for interpretation offered in the biblical tradition and theology in order to unfold Christology in the face of current challenges in a way that is as intellectually convincing as possible (and thus also worthy of belief) as ‘revisions of Christology’. This would not be contested if the term ‘revision’ were used in a non-pejorative way. Every Christological system undertakes such a re-vision. Such critics, however, associate this with the accusation of relativizing classical Christology, which they believe they are obliged to guard. Yet Christology has always been vital where it has resisted such hegemonic theological claims and has left well-trodden paths or made abandoned paths newly accessible.
1.1 The Religions as Context
The special focus of the Christological reflections developed in this volume lies in their relationship to the plurality of religions. It is a Christology in the context of the ‘theology of religions’.7 The theology of religions is not itself the subject so much as the question of the person and work of Jesus Christ—but that question about Jesus is dealt with in the context of the theology of religions. This volume is not about a theological interpretation of other religions, nor about the question of how they see and understand Jesus, nor is it about how they relate to the Christian understanding of Christ. No: It is about the self-understanding of the Christian faith in a religiously plural world.
The starting point is the following problem: If Jesus Christ is the ‘only’, or ‘only-begotten’ (
If God has assumed human personhood once and for all in the fullness of his being in Jesus Christ, so that this revelation is to be regarded as final and ultimately valid (i.e., unsurpassable), exhaustive (i.e., neither in need of nor capable of being supplemented in any way), and universal (i.e., applicable to all human beings), then the being of God in Christ is not only authentically revealed but authentically revealed in an exclusive way. But if Christ is understood in this way as the one and only eye of the needle8 through which God’s way leads to humanity and humanity’s way leads to God,9 then the testimonies to a presence of the ‘Holy’ in other religions are theologically worthless or at least deficient. It follows that those testimonies, and thus these religions as a whole, cannot be held in theological esteem. There is therefore no theological reason to engage seriously with the sources and streams of tradition of other religions, unless for apologetic and/or polemical and/or missionary interests.
To mitigate this consequence, a distinction has often been made between revelatory testimonies articulated before Christ in Israel’s history and those that appeared after Christ and/or outside this stream of tradition. The former could be interpreted as a promise pointing towards Christ and thus granted relative validity, while the latter were usually rejected as erroneous beliefs. Thus Karl Hartenstein, who headed the Basel Mission from 1926 to 1939, interpreted post-Christian religions as anti-Christian: “Every religion after Christ must unfold against Christ, because after the revelation of God in Christ there is no new one”.10 Similarly, Emanuel Kellerhals asserts, “The post Christum can only be a contra Christum, an anti Christum”.11
Such Christocentric exclusivism, which equates extra or post Christum with contra or anti Christum, which interprets post-Christian or all non-Christian religions atheistically—as godless—is still found in many instantiations of worldwide Christianity. In Western academic theology, on the other hand, it is hardly represented at all any more. However, there are also hardly any forms of thought offered which, from the Christological and soteriological center of Christian theology, open up the possibility of also placing the sources and streams of non-Christian traditions in a positive relationship to God’s revelation and salvation, possibilities that would allow us to think that there can also be an authentic communion with God extra Christum. Mostly one retreats into an agnostic form of theology of religions, which holds that this possibility and its realization must be entrusted to God, without this statement being reconciled with Christology; sometimes those who argue in such a way are referencing the hiddenness of God’s action.
Lutheran theologians of the recent past distinguish between God’s (hidden) action in the world and God’s salvific action in Christ; they also see the former at work in religions. However, this only becomes recognizable as such in the light of Christ, and thus remains hidden from the followers of these religions themselves.
This position is questionable not only with regard to the theology of religions, but also because it sets apart the action of the second Trinitarian person from that of the first and thus violates the Trinitarian theological principle ‘opera ad extra indivisa sunt’. Reformed theology, on the other hand, has insisted that all God’s action is subject to an ultimately salvific purpose.
Roman Catholic theologians who are influenced by Karl Rahner also speak of both God’s action in the world and God’s salvific action in the religions, but they see this latter as grounded in Christ, emphasizing the universality of salvation in Jesus. According to Johannes Herzgsell, there may well be non-Christian mediators of salvation: “Moses, Lao-tzu, Confucius, Buddha, Muhammad and others, as genuine mediators of revelation, have also truly communicated God’s salvation to other people”.12 However, these are ‘mere’ human mediators of salvation, whose partial mediation of salvation is only possible through participation in the whole and absolute mediation of salvation through Jesus Christ. For Herzgsell, this results in the distinction between a first-order and a second-order mediation of salvation.13
Another strategy is to distinguish between theological epistemology and soteriology. For those who adopt this strategy, followers of other religions also have access to the general revelation of God and thus the possibility of at least a rudimentary knowledge of God. Salvation, however, lies in faith in Christ alone. This distinction is also problematic. Revelation—understood as God’s self-communication—means not only that God makes Godself known but that God gives Godself, i.e., the establishing of a relationship, the ‘opening’ of God to humankind and thus the acceptance of humankind by God. This is, additionally, always a salvific act and event.14
But if it is to be conceded that God can also reveal Godself extra Christum, and if every revelation of God ultimately aims at a salvific relationship with God, then the question arises as to what this concession means for Christology. Can the person of Jesus, his work, and his impact, be understood in a way that admits the possibility that there is salvific revelation of God that is not mediated by Christ? In relation to Judaism, this concession has been made in various ways.15 But can it be limited to Judaism, or does it push beyond it?
I intend my Christological proposal to offer an interpretation of the person and work of Jesus Christ, which assumes that God’s salvific action is not constituted, realized, and/or mediated absolutely uniquely in and through Christ, but rather that there can also be other mediations which do not have to be declared theologically deficient a priori. This entails working out the contours of a Christology that neither denies the theological value of the sources and traditions of non-Christian religions from the outset nor includes them in a Christocentric approach.
This theological interest is (by no means only, but nonetheless) also motivated by experiences of interreligious encounters. Many (if by no means all) of these experiences teach that deep wisdom, ethical orientation, meaningful ways of living, spiritual powers for overcoming crises, reverent respect for other living beings and for nature, strong motivations for altruistic action, etc., can also flow from the sources of non-Christian religious traditions. Those who draw from these sources understand themselves to be anchored in the divine ground of all being. Impressive analogies to phenomena described by the Christian term ‘sanctification’ can also be found in non-Christian religions (just as, conversely, ‘unholiness’ has been and continues to be found in abundance in Christianity).
Can this insight be rejected as theologically irrelevant? Is it a mere human experience compared to the revelation of God in Christ, one on which theology need not dwell any further? With such an attitude, theology would isolate itself from religious experience and thus lose its connection to people’s lives—both the contexts in which they unfold and the meanings assigned to them. Religious experience cannot be normative for theology, but it is the field in which Christian faith encounters other faiths. In this field admirable (as well as terrible) fruits are produced—by Christians and by non-Christians. According to Jacques Dupuis, the recognition of other religions is “based on the fruits of the spirit that can be perceived in the believers of other religions”.16
It is therefore not only a matter of individual non-Christians’ relationships with God, but also about the sources and streams of non-Christian traditions. Is it possible to think that these are in a positive relationship—however this may be defined—to God’s self-communication? And if so, what does this mean for Christology?
To declare there to be a ‘positive relationship’ is not the outcome of demonstrating similarities between Christianity and other religions. It works the other way round: determining similarities presupposes a positive stance on other religions. The crucial question is what these similarities mean theologically. This question cannot be answered by comparing religions, but only through theological reflection. It is a matter of the theological prerequisite of comparisons between religions and of presuppositions in interreligious encounters.
What we are striving for is a Christology which understand Jesus Christ as a unique but not the only manifestation of God’s saving presence; a Christology which takes into account the universality of God’s saving presence in all creation; a Christology which allows us to make use of other sources and ways of knowing this presence. Can there be knowledge of God and relationships with God that are not centered in Christ that can nonetheless be considered ‘authentic’ and in this sense ‘true’ from the perspective of Christian faith?
1.2 ‘Natural Self-Affirmation’?
The Christian faith, like all religions, is primarily focused on its own center of identity: in this case, on Christ, on faith in Christ, on Christian life, and on the community of believers in Christ. Only secondarily, and not infrequently as a reaction to challenges it faces, does Christianity come to terms with its external relationships, which also include its relationship to other religions. This confrontation, moreover, always serves to define that which is “decisively and distinctively Christian”.17 Insofar as non-Christian religions are competing narratives, doctrines, and orientation systems, there is a somewhat ‘natural’ tendency to set oneself apart from them and to affirm one’s own claim to truth by disputing competing claims to truth.
Looking back on his encounters with Buddhism in Japan, Paul Tillich wrote in 1961:
If a group—or an individual—is convinced that it possesses the truth, it implicitly denies those claims to truth which conflict with that truth. I would call this the natural self-affirmation in the realm of knowledge.18
In this ‘natural self-affirmation’ Tillich recognized a characteristic of personal certainties.
That self-affirmation can be counterbalanced if there are reasons—taken from the core of the Christian faith—that allow us to regard appearances of non-Christian religions as potential manifestations of the Word, the Spirit, and the Wisdom of God. This still does not establish a definitive judgement on the theological value of those religions, for example in the sense that other forms of faith are certified as being of equal value to the Christian ones. Nor is it necessary to deny, or to harmonize, the profound differences, tensions, and even open contradictions between religions. Rather, my approach is about exploring the possibility that there can be other manifestations of God’s presence independent of Christ. The interpretation of the Christian faith offered here seeks to justify christologically the assumption that there can also be (and indeed that there must be, according to the gospel proclaimed and embodied by Jesus Christ) salvific relationships with God outside of this faith.
If this assumption can be made plausible, then other ways of believing and other forms of religion need not be theologically rejected a priori. Nor do they have to be regarded as theologically inferior or irrelevant (which is the milder form of exclusivism within the theology of religions). Rather, a theologically justified motivation arises to enter into a constructively critical dialogue with these other forms of religion, from which theologically relevant insights can ensue.
1.3 Outline of the Argument
The first, introductory part of this study (chapter 2) will offer some basic reflections on situating Christology within the context of theology of religions. Is Christian faith and Christology as its reflection necessarily connected with exclusive claims that make an appreciative attitude towards other religious communities and traditions impossible or at least difficult? Where is the potential to justify such an attitude theologically?
From chapter 3 onwards, the discussion revolves around the concept or motif of ‘representation’. This term, which has not yet been exhausted theologically, I will illuminate from different angles and establish as a central concept of Christology. This is not connected with the claim to tread a completely new path in Christology. Rather, I try to arrange around this concept biblical approaches and interpretations of the history of theology in such a way as to generate a Christology that is both plausible and practical for understanding the Christian faith in the present.
The Christological approaches used for this purpose—from the Prologue of John to Christologies of the present day—are, for the most part, not based on the challenges of theology of religions but appear in other discourses. They therefore do not follow the same particular interest as the focus of this volume. But they should be related to it; the representational Christology developed here gains its contours by debating with them.
In chapter 3, I first consider the term ‘representation’ in general, i.e., independently of its theological application. Against this background, I then highlight the aspects that are relevant for its application to Christology. I further relate it to similar terms, such as ‘symbol’ or ‘substitution’. Here—as in other parts of the book—I refer to Paul Tillich, whose Christological approach and reflection on symbols was and is an important inspiration for the development of a representational Christology.
After that part has outlined the concept of representation, the approach of representational Christology is then unfolded in chapter 4 with a view to the biblical tradition and the history of Christology. The distinction between the person and work of Jesus Christ, which was fundamental to the classical doctrinal form of Christology, largely loses its significance in this approach (4.1). A concept of relationship that focusses on Jesus’ two basic relationships—to God and to humanity—replaces the ontology of the two-natures doctrine. Both I define in terms of a unity in difference. Particularly with regard to the relationship with God, I emphasize the aspect of difference, not least in order to bring Jesus’ humanity fully to bear (4.2). Even in the Prologue of the Gospel of John, which played a central role in the development of early church theology, the relationship between God and the Word (or Logos) of God as well as the relationship between the Word of God and the Word as personified in Jesus is not defined in the sense of an undifferentiated sameness, but as a differentiated, personal, and relational unity. Chapter 4.3 selectively traces the debate about these two relationships from antiquity to the present, exploring what the expressions ‘Incarnation of God’ and ‘divine Sonship’ mean when applied to Jesus.
I answer the question of Jesus’ ‘being God’ not only in terms of a revised Logos-Incarnation Christology as discussed in chapter 4.3. I place Spirit Christology (4.4) and Wisdom Christology (4.5) alongside Logos-Incarnation Christology—not as alternatives to it, but as differently accentuated approaches to the ultimately unfathomable mystery. This inscrutability I address more specifically in 4.7 with regard to the understanding of revelation.
Chapter 4.8 is dedicated to soteriology, i.e., the meaning of salvation through Jesus Christ. How is Jesus’ violent death to be understood in light of that meaning? What does ‘resurrection’ mean? In this context, the concept of representation transforms traditional doctrines of reconciliation and thus gives their concerns fresh expression.
Chapter 4 concludes by addressing the question of how the historical ‘Christ-event’ relates to the ‘Christ-content’ which is significant across time (4.9). The whole project of representational Christology hinges on this distinction.
Chapter 5 consists of two individual studies on approaches to representational Christology from North American theology. These are the approaches of Schubert M. Ogden and Roger Haight.
In the final part of the study (chapter 6), I draw some theological consequences from the representational Christological approach. I offer one implementation by way of example, in addressing the question of whether the Qurʾan can also be regarded as a representation of God.
When I speak of ‘Jesus Christ’, I am not only referring to the ‘historical’ person as he is recognizable in the biblical traditions, but also to his presence as grasped in faith: the Christus praesens. ‘Jesus’ refers rather to the historical person, ‘Christ’ to his presence and significance across time. And ‘Jesus Christ’ refers to the ‘Christ-event’ in which the historical and the kerygmatic perspectives coincide.
Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 279.
Translated from Deuser, Gottesinstinkt, 166.
Translated from Fischer, Vom Geheimnis der Stellvertretung, 166. See also Fischer, Glaube als Erkenntnis, 31–35.
E.g., in Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, 13ff.
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, 282–3.
Translated from Schmidt-Leukel, Theologie der Religionen, 514.
See Bernhardt, Ende des Dialogs?, 167–290; idem., Inter-Religio, 267–457.
With reference to, e.g., Mt. 19:24, and parallels.
Like Calvin, Luther also invoked the locus classicus Jn. 14:6 to justify this claim: “Hear the absolute sentence: no one comes to the Father except through Christ” (“audis absolutam sententiam: Neminem nisi per Christum ad patrem venire”) (Letter to Spalatin dated 12 February 1519: WA, Letters I, 329).
Translated from Hartenstein, Die Kirche, 11.
Translated from Kellerhals, Der Islam, 372. This sentence no longer appears in the shorter third edition of this book from 1981 (reprinted in Moers 2002). Kellerhals was Africa Secretary of the Basel Mission from 1933 to 1948 and Local Secretary of the “Mohammedan Mission” based in Basel from 1937 to 1948. He accuses Islam of “having denied and betrayed its own very essence and decisive message” (ibid.): “it has fought the divinity of Christ as a blasphemy—and has made a god out of its own prophet […]. In this sense, as the one made Antichrist by his congregation, Muhammad is really the ‘false prophet’, as the Church has called him” (ibid.).
Translated from Herzgsell, Das Christentum, 564.
Ibid.
See Chapter 4.7.
See Chapter 2.5.
Translated from Dupuis, “Die Wahrheit wird euch frei machen”, 47.
Following the wording of the title of Jürgen Werbick’s book, Vom entscheidend und unterscheidend Christlichen.
Tillich, Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions, 28.