Appraisal By Other Scholars
- Israel Selvanayagam, Principal, United Theological College, Bengaluru.
| “ |
.....What is imperative for him (Samartha) is 'dialogue', which he defines as 'a mood, a spirit, an attitude of love and respect towards neighbours of other faiths. It regards partners as persons, not as statistics. Understood and practised as an intentional life-style, it goes far beyond a sterile co-existence or uncritical friendliness'. |
” |
- Andreas Anangguru Yewangoe of Indonesia:
| “ |
..... Samartha was a productive thinker who was interested not only in theological, but also historical and philosophical problems, who paid much attention to Western thinkers as well as to such Indian philosophers as Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi. He was trying to "dialogue" with these ideas, and to come to his own interpretation of Christ within the Indian context. |
” |
- Hans Schwarz, University of Regensburg, Germany.
| “ |
.....For Samartha, there could not be any Christology without theology and no Christian theology apart from Jesus Christ but there can be and are theologies without reference to Jesus Christ namely in other religions. Samartha asserted that to ignore or deny this fact was like being insensitive to the faiths of our neighbours. |
” |
- Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Professor of Systematic Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena.
| “ |
.....Stanley J. Samartha sees in the coming of Jesus Christ part of "God's dialogue with humanity." Our dialogue with people of other faiths is part of our participation in God's dialogue with humanity. And since Jesus Christ came to create a new kind of community "through forgiveness, reconciliation, and a new creation," dialogue is necessary to incorporate others into that community. Participants in the dialogue can trust the Holy Spirit to lead all into truth. |
” |
- Timothy Yates, an Anglican Evangelical Missiologist, Durham.
| “ |
.....Samartha made the proposal that to overcome the personal-impersonal divide between Christianity and Eastern religions, Hindu and Buddhist, the Eastern approach to truth as 'impersonal' be viewed instead as 'trans-personal' or 'supra-personal'. He was no doubt aware that there has been a strand of Orthodox theological tradition which has used the impersonal in relation to God in the interests of stressing the mystery of the Godhead. |
” |
- Kirsteen Kim, Past Lecturer, Union Biblical Seminary, Pune.
| “ |
.....Samartha stressed that dialogue takes place 'in community' because discussion does not centre on 'other faiths' as religious systems but on their adherents, whom Samartha called 'our neighbours of other faiths'. Thus he stressed the experiential nature of dialogue and was concerned not so much with 'systems of thought' as with 'living faiths'. In Samartha's view, though seeking truth is the aim of dialogue, truth can only be an issue when mutual respect of one another's convictions has first been reached; that is, a pluralist approach in which no one tradition can claim a monopoly on truth is a prerequisite for dialogue. However, he was at pains to point out that this does not mean that the partners in dialogue suspend their respective religious commitments since dialogue is a combination of 'commitment with openness'. |
” |