Modern Christian Theology and World Religions An Interview with Professor Gavin D’Costa
World religions often make divergent claims about God, ultimate reality, ethics, scripture and salvation, among other core issues. How should one think about these differences? Modern secular perspectives propose that religions are mainly human constructs and that we shouldn’t be surprised when they conflict, but for religious believers it can be a challenge to make sense of how or why other formidable religious traditions exist alongside their own.
Gavin D’Costa is emeritus professor of Catholic theology at the University of Bristol (UK) and currently teaches at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. A leading Catholic scholar in interreligious relations and the theology of religions, his many books include The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (2000), Christianity and World Religions: Disputed Questions in the Theology of Religions (2009), Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims (2014), and Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II (2019). Our recent interview touches on modern Catholic views of other religions and the question of salvation outside the church, the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Jewish-Christian relations, antisemitism in Catholic history, Catholic engagement with the Israel-Palestine crisis, Muslim-Christian relations, and interreligious prayer. Additional information and two extended excerpts from the interview can be found here.
(CAWU interns at the famed “cave church” on the outskirts of Cairo.)
A week later than the Western calendar, this is Holy Week for the Christians of Egypt and the rest of the Orthodox world. Our staff and interns took the opportunity to visit the famous cave church of St. Simon in the Muqaṭṭam district of Cairo. Graham Tomlin’s 2024 essay, “God in the Garbage: Egypt’s Unlikely Megachurch,” is one of the best brief accounts of this community that I’ve read.
For our readers who celebrated Easter last week, we hope that it was a restorative and hopeful time. Likewise, we wish the Orthodox world a blessed Easter week.
Matthew Anderson
Director - Center for Arab-West Understanding
Executive Editor - Dialogue Across Borders (De Gruyter Brill)
April 8, 2026
Emerging Perspectives on Intercultural and Interreligious Relations
Dialogue Across Borders is a database of summary translations of Arabic newspaper articles with references to their sources about intercultural and interreligious relations, focusing primarily but not exclusively on Muslim-Christian relations. The database also contains articles with editorial analysis and interviews on the subject.