The challenge between interreligious dialogue and religious identity With emphasis on comparative theology

The occasional challenge between interreligious dialogue and religious identity is a new phenomenon which has attracted the attention of scholars who define their research’s field in relation to interreligious dialogue or identity issues. It is a multi-dimensional issue, recently being discussed in various fields of study. This research looks at this issue from the viewpoint of Christian theology. Inter-religious dialogue arises from accepting religious diversity. Religious diversity and the relation between Christianity and other religions are deliberated in theology of religions and its new discipline, comparative theology, which are the focus of this current research. According to this research’s findings we cannot draw a one-dimensional and explicit relation between interreligious dialogue and religious identity, rather in order to explain this relation we should study and analyze various subfields of theology of religions.  It seems that each of the soteriological paradigms of theology of religions, meaning exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism, and the new subfield of comparative theology, proposes a different description of the relation between “self” and “other”, which is important in the relation between interreligious dialogue and religious identity. Therefore, the relation between interreligious dialogue and religious identity is explained differently from different theological point of views.