Abstract / DOI
The Logos in the Heart of the Cultures. Joseph Ratzinger’s «Dogmatic» Theology of Religion and the Interreligious Dialogue. The article offers a systematically condensed sketch of Joseph Ratzinger’s complex theology of religion and in doing so particularly explores his ambivalent understanding of the relationship between Christianity on the one hand, which – although understood as the ultimate end of religions due to its privileged access to verum and bonum – needs the contact to other religious cultures for purification, and non-Christian religions on the other hand, which are granted a certain instrumental causal effectiveness with regard to both the knowledge of truth and the access to salvation without being considered part of the efficient cause of either of them. Based on these considerations, the question of the implications of Ratzinger’s theology of religion for interreligious dialogue is posed and the potential of his axiomatical Christian conceptualisation as a starting point in interreligious dialogue is discussed.