Gavin D'Costa

In 'Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People After Vatican II' (2019) D'Costa continues his study of 2014 to trace the doctrinal trajectories related to three central questions regarding the status of Judaism. He establishes the Catholic Church's formal move away from 'supersessionism' to a position that holds the covenant made by God with his people, Israel, is now viewed as valid and effective. First, he examines the tensions between this new teaching and the previous implicit teachings at the Council of Florence that views Jewish rituals as dead and deadening. He argues that these previous teachings assumed the free and knowing rejection of the truth of Christ by the Jewish people. Since this is no longer assumed, the new teachings can now draw on the significance of quasi-sacramentality attributed to Jewish religious practices. Second, he examines the land promise in the light of the creation of Israel in 1948. He argues for a tentative minimalist Catholic Zionism, while upholding the rights of the Palestinian people and their legitimate claim to a nation and state. This part of the book deals with the biblical teachings and the magisterial teachings regarding the topic. Finally, he attends to the controversial question as to whether mission is legitimate to the Jewish people. His answer is that this is only viable if the Catholic Church allows for Hebrew Catholics who retain their Jewish religious culture while being Roman Catholics. In a post-supersessionist world view, any form of mission or witness that called into question Jewish religious legitimacy would be illegitimate.

In 'Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims' (2014) D'Costa turns to the authoritative Conciliar documents of the Catholic Church to establish what doctrines of God and God's activity are to be found that relate specifically to the Jewish and Muslim religions. He discusses the hermeneutics of the Council documents and defends the view that the documents are either novel, continuous, and reforming – but not discontinuous with previous doctrinal teachings. He critically examines different approaches, both historical and theological, to the Council documents. D'Costa then establishes general doctrines related to other religions within which the doctrines on Jews and Muslims must be located. He argues that invincible ignorance was crucial in moving to a positive attitude to other religions, for they were no longer seen to explicitly and knowingly reject Catholic truth. He examines the drafts of Lumen Gentium 14–16 and Nostra Aetate 3–4 to show the positive doctrinal foundations for dialogue. In relation to the Jews, there is a rebuttal of the deicide charge and the alleged guilt of the Jewish people and an acknowledgement of the Jewish foundations of Christianity. Nothing else is established at this time even though after the Council, the Jewish covenant becomes the main focus of attention. In relation to Islam, there is a clear distance from the views of Massignon, while at the same time a clear affirmation of a creator God who is the final judge. This theistic commonality is the crown of the Council's teaching, but gained at the cost of not mentioning the Qur'an and Muhammad. From this doctrinal basis, D'Costa indicates some of the post-conciliar theological developments that have followed from the Council, although that is not the main concern of the work.

D'Costa has published his poetry in a joint collection, 'Making Nothing Happen' (2013) and has had his poetry set to music by the composer John Pickard and performed and recorded: Daughters of Zion (2017) -score is for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble, premiered by the Kokoro Ensemble (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra) with mezzo-soprano Angharad Lyddon (CD forthcoming); Mass for the Uncertain (2019), premiered by BBC Singers conducted by Andrew Griffiths.

In Christianity and the World Religions: Disputed Questions in the Theology of Religions (2009) D'Costa addresses four disputed questions in the field of theology of religions. First, he survey the entire field and looks at the various options offered in the last half of the twentieth century and takes us into the modern debate. He argues for a form of 'exclusivism' although he criticises the categories of pluralism, inclusivism, and exclusivism. Second, he calls into question the prevailing definition of 'religion' and argues that it is part of modernity's narrative and serves a certain rhetorical strategy (related to the privatising of religion, and its reduction to cultic ritual acts robbed of their social and political significance). Third, he develops this point to show how Islam and Catholic Christianity might better contribute to the religious public voice and strengthen real debate in the public square. He claims that they might better preserve religious plurality than secular liberalism. Finally, he explores the doctrine of hell (and the circles within it: the hell of damnation and von Balthasar, limbo of the just, limbo of infants, and purgatory.

He develops this position in his Theology in the Public Square (2005) in relation to the importance of Christian theology taking a decisive public stance and developing a public voice, the latter mainly through the idea of a Christian university. This is so that theology returns to an appropriate ecclesial accountability, and begins to engage in all the intellectual disciplines to develop a Catholic culture. In so doing, D’Costa examines the way the discipline of religious studies is called into question. There is a study of the relationship between Hindu sati and the self-sacrifice of the Catholic saint, Edith Stein. D’Costa tries to show how there are analogies between religions and moves away from the question of whether there is salvation in other religions.

In his next work, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (2000), D'Costa seems to have shifted more towards exclusivism. He argues in this book, that there is no such position as pluralism as pluralism is technically a disguised form of exclusivism, either religious (as in the case of the Dalai Lama, in his study of modern Tibetan Buddhism; or in the case of Sarvapelli Radhakrishnan, the modern proponent of Advaita neo-Hinduism), or a form of modernity (in the case of Hick and the Roman Catholic theologian Paul F. Knitter, and the Jewish theologian, Dan Cohen Sherbok). Hence, these positions advocate that all religions are equal, but actually have an explicitly religious exclusivism (hence, for the Dalai Lama, there is no liberation until one has become a De Lug Buddhist monk, but one has endless lifetimes to achieve this; likewise for Radhakrishnan, but in this case a non-dual Advaitin experience of moksha is required for final release from the cycle of birth and death), or a secular modern exclusivism (an ethical rule, that derives from Kant and stands in judgment upon all religions). D’Costa defends a trinitarian approach to other religions, that refuses to see them as equal or provisional/imperfect forms of revelation or salvific means, but nevertheless acknowledges the grace of God operative within these traditions in a fragmentary and inchoate manner. D’Costa offers a close analysis of modern Roman Catholic magisterial documents to support his view. He argues that this position, best serves the goals of toleration, equality and respect, not pluralism or indeed, inclusivism. He relies heavily on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and John Milbank.

D’Costa looks at the question of the relationship to non-Christian cultural artefacts in a wider sense in his Sexing the Trinity (2000). Here he engages with the thought of Luce Irigaray, the French feminist philosopher to show how she both illuminates questions regarding the nature of the trinity while at the same time being called into question by Christian theology. D’Costa is critical of aspects of patriarchal theology and its social consequences, while also being critical of elements of feminist theology. He offers a close reading of Islam, at least as presented through Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and finally turns to artistic representations of the trinity in Hindu and Christian culture. This work anticipates D’Costa's wider cultural interests developed in Theology in the Public Square.

In 1998 he was visiting professor at Rome's Gregorian University of the Jesuit Order. In 2020–21 he will be visiting Professor at Rome's Angelicum, Pontifical University of the Dominican Order. He has also worked on the Church of England and Roman Catholic Committee's on Other Faiths, advising these communities on theological issues. He also advises the Pontifical Council for Other Faiths, Vatican City.

D’Costa has been a persistent critic of the approach of John Hick’s pluralism. In his second book, his doctoral work, John Hick’s Theology of Religions (1987), he tried to show that Hick’s claim that all religions lead to the same divine reality was problematic on three counts. First, it went against the orthodox claims of Christian theology, and in that sense could not be acceptable to Christian faith. Second, Hick’s claim could only be sustained if all religions were re-interpreted, so that his claim amounted to requiring that all religions conform to his demand that they abandon ultimate ontological convictions. Third, D’Costa tried to show that pluralism was internally incoherent, in so much as it made a privileged claim for its own position as the greatest truth, indeed, more true than any of the religions. In 1990, in response to a collection of essays by pluralist scholars edited by John Hick and Paul Knitter (The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions), D'Costa edited an alternative collection, Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: the Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions.

D’Costa’s first book, Theology and Religious Pluralism (1986) followed Alan Race and developed the threefold typology of pluralism, inclusivism, and exclusivism in regard to the Christian theological approach to other religions. He critically examined the work of key representatives of each of these positions: John Hick as a pluralist, Karl Rahner, as an inclusivist, and Hendrik Kraemer as an exclusivist. D’Costa defended Rahner's inclusivism that held to the universal love of God for all people as well as the necessity of Christ's grace for salvation. The combination of these two axioms allowed that other religions could be, in principle, mediations of the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Their fulfilment would be found in Christianity, even if historically this did not happen. This fulfilment was a result of the causality of grace: all grace comes from and ends in Jesus Christ, and the Church is the sacramental form of Christ in the world today. Pluralism, D’Costa argued only emphasised the universal love of God and exclusivism, only the necessity of belief in Christ for salvation. Rahner’s position combined the two and provided the best model for inter-religious dialogue.

He was born in Kenya but came to Great Britain in 1968 and educated at Goldington Junior School in Bedford and afterwards at Bedford Modern School. He went on to read English & Theology at the University of Birmingham under the theologian, John Hick. After graduating, he studied at the University of Cambridge before teaching at West London Institute and then at Bristol University. His research interests include systematic Theology; Theology of inter-religious dialogue & Roman Catholic modern Theology, gender and psychoanalysis.

Gavin D'Costa (born 1958) is the Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol, Great Britain. He is Head of the Theology & Religious studies Department (2002 – 2006, 2018–20), and has lectured at Bristol since 1993.