NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 50, Issue 1, 1996

After proposing a minimal description of spirituality: operationalization of commitment to transcendence, the author indicates the hermeneutical branches in psychology as most appropriate for dealing with spirituality. Having asked attention for the cultural constitution of subjectivity, he deals with the historicity of the human being. Three variants of a diachronic cultural psychology are briefly presented. The author makes a plea for a (psycho)historical psychology of religion as enriching the different branches of religious studies and theology.

The author argues for a distinction in four hermeneutical types in the struggle over right interpretation of the Bible. These approaches are dubbed respectively critical, fundamentalist, pluralist, and relativist. The first two options are typically modern and foundationalist whereas the latter approaches are postmodern and antifoundationalist. To avoid relativism, we need a normative interpretation but not an authoritarian one. Reading the Bible as scripture is to interpret the world and oneself. Because the meaning of a text is always open-ended, the meaning of scripture is always the fruit of an interpretative act which implies the hermeneutical imperative.

This contribution is a survey of studies on interreligious dialogue by Dutch authors between 1985 and 1994. Special attention has been given, firstly, to studies dealing with the pluralism of modern culture, and secondly to studies in the field of the theologia religionum; some differences and convergences between the catholic and reformed approach are indicated. The final section discusses the various fields of theological studies in which the issue of pluralism has been studied. One conclusion is that plural-ism is not a specialism any more, but the context of all theological disciplines. The question is asked whether the division of theological disciplines under the modern pluralistic condition should not be reconsidered.