Christianity and the World Religions: PATHS OF DIALOGUE WITH ISLAM, HINDUISM AND BUDDHISM by Hans Kueng with Josef van Ess, Heinrich von Stietencron and Heinz Bechert; translated by Peter Heinegg (Doubleday: $19.95; 460 pp.)

It is difficult to be a historian of comparative religion when a deep understanding on any one world religion requires at least a lifetime of study (and, some would say, practice). Still, it is the rare person who has not been struck by some obvious similarities and differences among religions, so the temptation remains to contrast and compare them.

One way to approach responsible comparisons is to call on several scholars to “offer the absolutely necessary knowledge about the great religions of the world” and then to “link the information with discussion . . . to create something like a presentation of Christianity in the light of the world religions.” This is what theologian Hans Kueng has attempted in “Christianity and the World Religions.”

The result is a great deal of information--and work--for the reader, as Kueng responds to each of a series of lectures by Profs. Josef van Ess, speaking on Islam, Heinrich von Stietencron on Hinduism and Heinz Bechert on Buddhism. The historical presentations are straightforward, but Kueng’s “Christian Responses” are quite dense, sometimes to the point of abstruseness, and the “dialogue” is generally one-way (i.e., it consists of Kueng’s responses to the professors, not vice versa).

Still, Kueng poses a number of fascinating questions and counter arguments throughout: Cannot “polytheistic” Hinduism, in its view of the one Absolute, be deemed monotheistic, while certain forms of Christianity, with their many saints, be seen as polytheistic? How is it appropriate to speak of Christian meditation and Buddhist prayer (rather than vice versa)? And what does the Koran’s vision of the human prophet Jesus tell us of early Jewish Christianity, as opposed to the Hellenistic Church’s insistence on the Son of God, Christ?

But just as the other three scholars inevitably oversimplify due to constraints of time and space, so Kueng sometimes picks and chooses just those aspects of the religions in question that allow him to make his point. In the only real dialogue in the book, Bechert calls him on this, and Kueng replies rather defensively.

This book is framed, both by the publisher and by Kueng, as a sort of first step in “taking seriously the fact that religions share in the responsibility for bringing peace to our torn and warring world.” This is true enough, but it misrepresents the contents of the book, which are quite erudite and presuppose an almost graduate-level familiarity with theology and history of religion.

Kueng does see the need to follow what he calls the “bold experiment” of this volume with “lecture-dialogues at universities engaging Christian theologians and believing adherents of the religions in question, not just scholarly experts on foreign cultures and religions.” But he doesn’t mention the fact that such communication tends to take place among those who are already fairly open-minded--or willing to be--rather than among the fundamentalists and extremists on both sides of armed conflicts.

Thus those who dwell outside academia may find it difficult to believe that “discussion” such as that found in “Christianity” could possibly reduce the bloodshed between Muslims and Hindus, Catholics and Protestants, Arabs and Jews. Many minds will have to change radically before any of Kueng’s admirably open, yielding and pluralistic arguments trickle down to the man on the street--with a bomb.