Modern society today has more characteristics than any other period. The most noticeable characteristic is ‘globalization’. The wave of globalization is in flux as the development of the internet and telecommunications. In addition, the developmen...
Modern society today has more characteristics than any other period. The most noticeable characteristic is ‘globalization’. The wave of globalization is in flux as the development of the internet and telecommunications. In addition, the development of digital technology brought the sharing of information that crumbled the walls specifically to restricted categories of politics and economy as well as the wall of ideas and principles. Thus, globalization weaves the characteristics of modern society into one piece. Yet it also shows a phenomenon of digitalization and segmentation of the world values.
In actual life, we easily gain a lot of information in this modern world. We also distribute and apply information freely. This social atmosphere prefers to have freedom rather than regulation and this atmosphere of freedom emphasizes being open-minded and prioritizing relative values before universal values. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the age of standardized and closed society has come to exist in difficulty.
The complexion of the society’s characteristics such as globalization, personal freedom and the priority in relative values is ‘pluralization’. Pluralization is an un-resistible phenomenon that variously influences in politics, culture, society and religion.
But the biggest oppression people embrace from the wave of pluralization is “change”. Especially after the development of internet, the speed of variation has been progressing rapidly, and many people have despaired not being able to adjust to society or being confused in itself-identity in the flood of various ideas. And perhaps this is why many religions exist in the modern society, even though some asserted that the development of science and technology would abolish religion.
So to speak, humans are looking for values that do not change. Of course religion does change. But the intrinsic value of religion does not change and this includes ‘salvation’. And people today want to be saved. Yet salvation does not only mean going to heaven because salvation is connected to this moment as well.
The thesis is about a religious self-examination of religious dialogues toward salvation mentioned above. The wave of pluralization brought change to religion as well. Particularly, religious people have had self-identity conflictions as the appearance of pluralization emphasized giving up universal values. And as globalization inevitably brought the encounter of different religions, problems that hadn’t existed before came in attention as believers of different religions exchanged their beliefs. In the case of the Catholic Church, from the point of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, they gave out their official position understanding the characteristics of modern society and other religions.
Though the dialogues between religions speak of world peace and coexistence in a positive direction, the new framework of the religion of pluralization became to threaten the ideologies, necessities, and identities between religions and opened a new phase. Of course the religion of pluralization was first made with good intention to smoothen interreligious dialogues. However, the characteristics of pluralization emphasize to overlook or surrender the distinctiveness of each individual religion, and therefore naturally bring a result of conflict with religions.
Before discussing about interreligious dialogues, this thesis debates of ‘humans’, the main attention of religious ideas, because interreligious dialogues are in the category of humans conversing. Many of today’s modern people grasp the contrast of humans and religiosity, yet religion of a transcendent had always been in place wherever humans existed. That is to say, the origin of religion conforms to the origin of humans and could appertain to the nature of human beings. So the true nature of the human conversation would appear in the same manner in interreligious dialogues, and the human study of conversations could be seen as setting the foundation for interreligious dialogues.
The characteristic that is continually presented in dialogues of anthropological contemplation is above all, 'self-understanding.' The basic elements of another person, language, motivation are only possible with the existence of the ego. The ego we speak of here does not mean about the existence itself. It is about the subject of 'awareness' in the ego. 'An ego without the basic introspection of 'Who am I?' is impossible to communicate with another. The question of 'Who am I?' is about one's identity and an identity is not a fixed constant but a response to endless inquiries. Maintaining an isolated ego as the world changes and new people appear is not preserving the identity, but is the same as destroying the identity of the ego. Moreover, when one converses in a status of ambiguous identity, there is a high chance of sinking into imprudent syncretism and relativism.
Such anthropological contemplation is clearly reflected in actual interreligious dialogues and history. Many religious scholars categorize the religious dialogues in the era of religious pluralism as exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. It is determined that exclusivism does not acknowledge other religions, inclusivism reveals liberal qualities but is conclusively exclusive, and pluralism is liberal. But these judgments are is very superficial. When the assertions and backgrounds of representative theologians of each types are observed, it is revealed that they all embarked with the basic contemplation of identity.
When identity is debated, there are cases when it is restricted to the peculiarities of each religion, but in identities, universal values exist in addition to the peculiar values since peculiarities form on the foundation of universal values. Hence this dissertation debates the universality and uniqueness of Jesus Christ which marks the distinguishi