A Missional Spirituality: Moravian Brethren and eighteenth-century English evangelicalism

it says and for the clarity and sensitivity of its presentation. Here both dialogue and proclamation are upheld and promoted, with priority being accorded to proclamation, in the service of truth. 3 See Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions (Ignatius, 2004), 106-9. 4 Dominus Iesus is mainly concerned with “salvation”. But other religions use this term to mean rather different things. To put it somewhat crudely, Christianity is about rescuing the human person from sin and from the second death that is consequent to sin, through union with God in Christ and participation in the divine nature. Hinayana Buddhist salvation, on the other hand, is about release from suffering through detachment and entrance into the state of Nirvana, Islam about “submission” to the will of God and return to Paradise, and so on. In a sense, it may turn out that the various religions are not different answers to the same question, but various answers to different questions. See J. A. DiNoia, The Diversity of Religions: A Christian Perspective (Catholic University of America Press, 1992); Gavin D’Costa, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity ( Orbis and T&T Clark, 2000). The Christian doctrine of salvation also presupposes a whole set of assumptions about the nature of the self and of God. These are the kinds of differences that need to be explored further in today’s interfaith dialogue. 5 J. Ratzinger, Many Religions – One Covenant (Ignatius Press, 1998), 110-12. 6 Ibid. 7 Fall 2002. See also his article on the Word of God in dialogue with Judaism and Islam in the Fall 2001 issue of the same journal, and the fifth chapter of his remarkable Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology (Alba House, 2002). 8 For an example of shallow ecumenism, one might look at the “United Religions Initiative”. For an example of deep ecumenism, see Massimo Serretti (ed.), The Uniqueness and Universality of Jesus Christ: In Dialogue with the Religions (Eerdmans, 2001). 9 Adrienne von Speyr, John, Vol. 1 (Ignatius, 1994), 36. 10 A longer and somewhat different version of this article is published in the Spring 2006 issue of the international review Communio.