Archbishop Rowan Williams recently gave a brilliant address at Guildford Cathedral titled The Finality of Christ in a Pluralist World. The Archbishop spoke of defending the uniqueness and finality of Christ, and encountering the truth about God and humanity from a moral, political and philosophical perspective.
The address highlighted the importance of approaching inter faith dialogue with confidence, but also of learning something new:
“If our convictions lead us to believe there is no hope for those outside our own faith or with no faith…” there is a danger of “treating others as if they know nothing, and we have nothing to learn”. ”Belief in the uniqueness and finality of Christ allows us a generous desire to share and a humble desire to learn”.
Jumping to the conclusion of the address, the Archbishop states:
“Belief in the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ – for all the assaults made upon it in the modern age – remains for the Christian a way of speaking about hope for the entire human family. And because it’s that, we are bound to say something about it. We are very rightly suspicious of proselytism, of manipulative, bullying, insensitive approaches to people of other faith which treat them as if they knew nothing, as if we had nothing to learn and as if the tradition of their reflection and imagination were of no interest to us or God. God save us from that kind of approach. But God save us also from the nervousness about our own conviction which doesn’t allow us to say that we speak about Jesus because we believe he matters. We believe he matters because we believe that in him human beings find their peace. Their destinies converge and their dignities are fully honored. And all the work that we as Christians want to do for the sake of convergent human destiny and fullness of human dignity has its root in that conviction that there is no boundary around Jesus – that what he is and does and says and suffers is in principle liberatingly relevant to every human being; past, present and future.”
The full transcript of the address can be viewed here: The audio link for the address is here:
