From Unity to Harmony: The Asian Spirit of Harmony in the Selected Documents of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC)
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Asia and the Middle East are the birthplace and cradle of the world’s major religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, as well as many indigenous religions. The spirit of harmony and dialogue that characterizes the lived reality of religious pluralism in an Asian context is an essential resource for an Asian Christian theology. My thesis is that the Asian understanding of religious pluralism in the FABC documents elucidates the reality of religious pluralism in Asia without implying the problematic form of relativism identified in Dominus Iesus. The Asian approach to religious pluralism is observed in FABC Papers no. 75, “Asian Christian Perspectives on Harmony,” and no. 81, “The Spirit at Work in Asia Today,” providing the basis for understanding harmonious religious pluralism in a world of cultural and religious diversity. I make this argument by employing central aspects of Bernard Lonergan’s approach to pluralism and relativism as well as his distinction between doctrinal affirmations and systematic elucidations, which function to support and clarify the FABC’s approach. I illustrate and locate the FABC's contribution through brief discussions of the work of Jacque Dupuis and Frederick E. Crowe. The exchange between the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF) and Dupuis recalls some of the key elements in the difference between the position of Dominus Iesus and FABC documents. A comparison between the Pneumatology of Crowe and Dupuis presents a significant point of convergence despite their different backgrounds. Based on the works of Thomas Aquinas and Bernard Lonergan and the texts of early Ecumenical Councils, Crowe’s Pneumatology presents a speculative understanding of the Holy Spirit as an entry point for interreligious dialogue. Based on the reality of religious pluralism in an Asian context, Dupuis presents a reflection grounded more immediately in pastoral engagement. Despite their diverse starting points, the two paths converge in an enriching appreciation of Pneumatology and confirm the significance of the FABC's contribution: acknowledging the universal presence of the Holy Spirit helps us to understand religious pluralism with a constructive hopefulness.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it