Beyond Dualism: The Structure of Faith from Augustine to Endo, Kolbe, Jeanne d’Arc, and the Tenson Theory

This paper reexamines the overcoming of dualism in the history of Christian thought, tracing the transition from Augustine’s theological monism to the reap- pearance of dualistic salvation within popular faith. Starting from the afterlife- oriented Christianity depicted in Endo Shusaku’s Silence, this study also considers the martyrdoms of Maximilian Kolbe and Jeanne d’Arc as paradigms of “faith ful- filled in the present world” rather than as escapes into the afterlife. Finally, based on the Tenson Theory, the paper proposes an “interferential monism” that inte- grates good and evil, light and darkness, the visible and the beyond into a unified continuum governed by interaction, conservation, and resonance.