Beyond a Religion of Charity: Criticism on Gianni Vattimo’s View of Christianity in the Age of Religious Revival

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Contrary to popular belief that religion is in decline, it is evident that there is a revival of some forms of religions. In the age of religious revival, many scholars propose their views to understand such a religious revival.
Gianni Vattimo is one of the scholars. He proposes that Christianity becomes a religion of charity, moving away from a religion of truth. In this paper, I contends that his view of Christianity, a religion of charity, should be reconsidered in such a way that a truth claim can be allowed. In order to critically engage with Vatimo’s view, I compared his view with Casanova’s deprivatization theory and Berger’s desecularization theory. Vattimo’s view of Christianity is compatible with Casanova’s deprivatization theory but is incompatible with Berger’s desecularization theory. Although Vattimo proposes a religion of charity to avoid being violent Christianity, his view ends in protecting only religions of a few secularized elites and their followers while ignoring so‐called conservative religions. I contend that a view of Christian religion in which truth and charity are compatible without negating each other is helpful to understand religiously conservative people and provides ways in which Christianity can claim nonviolent truth to religiously others.

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