Exclusive religious claims

Some religious groups fear dialogue with other traditions because they suppose it endangers faith, others oppose it because it seems to reject from the start the radical claims of their tradition to unique and exclusive insights. Any apparent surrender of such bold claims causes deep uneasiness. Such claims tend to invalidate the wisdom and understanding of other traditions and are a prime catalyst for religious conflict.

Many Christians hold that: only in Christ is there any salvation and there is no salvation in any other name; the cross is the universal means of salvation; and that Jesus is a unique incarnation of the divine. In Jesus Christ they hold that they have been given a revelation that is superior to, normative for, unsurpassable by, and definitive to all other truth. Similarly Muslims make strong and unique claims for the decisive importance of Mohammed. During the 1980s, many Christian theologians recognized the inadequacies of even "liberal" attitudes toward other faiths which, having abandoned the exclusivist claims of Christianity as the only true religion, still held to Christianity as the inclusive fulfilment of all other religions. Only few accept the possible parity and validity of other religions alongside Christianity.