"Christ is the Lord, but the Lord is neither only Jesus nor does my understanding exhaust the meaning of the word.Church, as the sociological dimension of religion, is the organism of salvation (by definition), but the Church is not coextensive with the visible christian church.
Christendom is the socioreligious structure of christianity and as such is a religion like any other. It must be judged on its own merits without any special privileges.
God wills that all men should reach salvation. Here salvation is that which is considered to be the end, goal, destination, or destiny of man, however this may be conceived.
There is no salvation without faith, but this is not the privilege of christians nor of any special group.
The means of salvation are to be found in any authentic religion (old or new) because a man follows a particular religion because in it he believes he finds the ultimate fulfillment of his life.
Christ is the only mediator, but he is not the monopoly of christians and, in fact, he is present and effective in any authentic religion, whatever the form or the name. Christ is the symbol, which christians call by this name, of the ever-transcending but equally ever-humanly immanent Mystery. Now these principles should be confronted with parallel humanist, buddhist, and other principles, and then one should be able to detect points of convergence and of discrepancy with all the required qualifications. Further, the christian principles have no a priori paradigmatic value, so it is not a question of just searching for possible equivalents elsewhere. The fair procedure is to start from all possible staring points and witness to the actual encounters taking place along the way."
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