would say impossibility—of seeing, from within a particular religious horizon, universal history as a single meaningful process. And indeed, as mentioned in the introduction, many of our contemporaries are more conscious of religion as a divisive force, reinforcing ethnic or sectarian intolerance, sometimes to the most horrific and violent extremes. One of the tasks of this book will be to try to see whether the Christianity of the creeds, despite all this plurality, still has the power to foster