No Other Name?: A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions

As a practicing Christian and Bible teacher and writer, I add my review to note how the "one star" reviews below indicate how needed Knitter's book is. The other reviewers' "answer" to the question is a flat: "no dialogue: Christianity must win!" There is no place for this kind of triumphalism in a world rife with inter-religious violence. Knitter is an excellent writer and deeply believing Christian. If his book is flawed (and it is, with the benefit of 20 years of hindsight), it is partly because the conversation had been repressed for so long. His proposal is modest and one which Jesus would surely have admired as an attempt to find the common quest for God in many different people. The one thing I agree with the other reviewers on is Knitter's attempt to relativize the Resurrection. As Paul says so clearly (and witnessed to so strongly in his life), if Jesus isn't truly risen, there is no reason to risk one's life as a Christian. But that truth certainly doesn't exclude the possibility of the one God being revealed by other means in other times and places.