Religious particularism and universal vision - Pluralist theology of religions in the works of Paul Tillich and Paul Knitter

The postmodern breakdown of totalizing visions is not lamented and regretted as a loss, but recognized as an improvement. That is why those thinkers who view pluralistic developments within a horizon of unity will be compelled to misjudge the pluralism of the contemporary situation, so for example, Paul Knitter and hist concept of solidarity. The constructivist trait of pluralism allows truth and reality to grow discursively out of the dialogical speech act. In so doing, this constructivist tendency emphasizes an open process of correlation that calls to mind Tillich's basic correlation of the question of human being with the answer of the gospel. In Tillich, this correlation is based on the condition of a universal New Being: A New Being "conquering the gap between essence and existence".