Abstract

Do adherents of different religious traditions communicate and, if so, how? What enables them to do so? What is interreligious “communication”? These issues are ad dressed with reference to Wilfred Cantwell Smith's hermeneutical rule, and to inter alia Paul Knitter, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, David Tracy, and John Dunne. Four responses to the question as to what permits interreligious communication are criticised. According to a fifth response, on which the author elaborates, interreligious communication is not – as the objectivist claims – possible because members of different religious traditions speak the very same language, or – as the relativist claims – impossible because they speak radically different languages. Adherents of different religions communicate, if at all, by means of an analogical language. This language is the product of persistent efforts to understand the religion/faith of the other as he or she understands it. Paradoxically, the language that permits inter religious communication is thus the product of such communication. Without thereby reverting to objectivism or an essentialist view of religion, the author identifies five “less unstable” similarities between religions. These and other “less un stable” similarities might assist believers in their efforts to under stand the religious other.