Theological Positions In
Christian Approach to Religious Pluralism – The Fourth Way
(thoughts from the legend, Prof. Dr. Israel Selvanayagam)
Continuing Struggle
The right theological approach to religious pluralism is very
significant as long as Christians believe in one God, encounter people of other
faiths with different God-experiences and think with conviction that they have
a unique message to share with all. The
Bible, the various texts of which emerged in a different context of religious
pluralism, does not give clear guidelines to assess other religious traditions
and approach their adherents, although it may give some insights for a proper
approach today. Two thousand years of
Christian attempts to find a theological solution for the problem of religious
pluralism have not come to a definite conclusion acceptable for all. Repetitions abound as one browses through the
considerable amount of materials produced so far.
The purpose of this article is to give an outline and summary of
major positions taken and to point to a way which seems to be promising for new
grounds and fresh approaches. It
does not deal with different
perspectives of inter-faith dialogue in general, but only the theological
aspect of it. We have place to mention
only the well-known representatives of each position. For example, although I am fully aware of the
significant contributions made by some women around the world to building up
and reflecting on relationships and dialogue between people of different
faiths, in my view, none of them can be taken as representing the distinctive
theological position outlined in this article.
And also, the three popular models of exclusivism, inclusivism and
pluralism need to be unpacked to expose different strands within each. Therefore
we will state those models and strands before we explain the fourth way.
Strands of Exclusivism
Exclusivism, often with militant triumphalism, is based on the claim
that Jesus is the only way to God or heaven, and the only name for
salvation. Some biblical verses are
quoted to this effect, though these give room for different
interpretations. Some have put the
emphasis on the Church which is seen as analogous to the ark of salvation that
contains a few who are protected while others perish, as in the case of Noah’s
ark. For example, the Council of
Florence (1442) in appealing to the early Church Fathers Cyprian and Origen
(who flourished in the 3rd century) stated: The Holy Roman Catholic
Church…firmly believes, acknowledges and proclaims that “no one outside the
Catholic Church, neither heathen nor Jew nor unbeliever, nor anyone separated
from the unity, will partake of the eternal life, but that he will rather fall
victim to the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels, if he
does not adhere to it before he dies”.
Though the Second Vatican Council (1962 – 65) moved away from this
position, there may be a few Catholics who hold on to the above orthodox
position having no charity even for the Protestants who separated from them,
leave alone people of other faiths.
Conversely, there are Protestants who think that their mission includes
converting the Catholics also!
Those who have felt deeply committed to proclaiming the gospel could
not rest without some answer for the question about the destiny of the vast
number of people who have passed away either without having a chance to hear
the gospel or having no inclination to join the church even after hearing
it. So crude is the position many of
them have taken. For example, an
anonymous author in the Biblical Expository for 1860 wrote that the
heathen are under condemnation and their destiny is a ‘dark and hopeless one;
they know of no escape…The wrath of God is abiding on them’. One hundred years later, the Chicago Congress
on World Mission (1960) proclaimed: “In the years since the war, more than one
billion souls have passed into eternity and more than half of those went to the
torment of hell fire without even hearing of Jesus Christ and what he
did”. Even if many hesitated to use such
terms as above, perhaps in their mind was this firm position whether they
simply preached the Christian message or did social service with a view to
attracting people in the name of mission and evangelism.
There is another type of exclusivism which has no share in the above
crude forms. This is based in evaluating
the effect of different kind of religion in a particular context. Karl Barth (1886 – 1968), a German-speaking
Swiss theologian, reacted strongly to a liberal position which gave
disproportionate weight to human reason and the merit of religiosity in general
and different religious traditions in particular. When many around the world tried to make
points of contact between the Christian message and other religions,
recognizing various kinds of divine revelation, Barth argued for a radical
discontinuity. For him any form of human
religion contradicts revelation in Christ.
Humans cannot come to the truth and rather the truth comes to them. Before the truth of God’s revelation in
Christ, religion is not only unbelief but also a rebellion against God. Instead
of trying in vain to reach out to the reality through self-made traditions and
gods, humans need to receive the undeserved grace with outstretched hands. Christianity can also drift into being a
religion of this nature although it is the locus of the true religion.
Barth’s missionary counterpart was Hendric Kraemer (1988 – 1965), a
Dutch missionary who worked mainly among Muslims in Indonesia. He supported and propagated the merciless
war-cry of Barth against ‘persuasive and omnipresent relativism’. For him the distinction between general
revelation and special revelation is a contradiction in terms. By nature revelation is and must be special
and challenges all human attempts to comprehend God. “It has pleased God to reveal Himself fully
and decisively in Christ; repent, believe and adore”. Kraemer introduced the idea of ‘Biblical
Realism’ in the sense that the Bible is the only book, which contains the real
revelation of God. Inspired by this
realism, a missionary should approach non-Christian religions with a remarkable
combination of ‘downright intrepidity and radical humility’ reflecting the fact
that the church is simply an instrument for conveying a divine gift without
claiming any merit of its own. Kraemer
and Barth have influenced a host of missionaries and theologians who either
repeat their position or slightly modify it.
However, those who have the experience of living with people of other
faiths as neighbours and colleagues and who have read their scriptures and listened
to their stories, have great difficulty in accepting a Barthian or Kraemerian
position.
Strands of Inclusivism
Inclusivism
denotes positions and attempts to include the noble values and genuine God-experiences
found in people of others faiths. This
is done within frameworks of one God as the creator of all people, of cosmic
Christ, or of the ever present and ever active Holy Spirit or the kingdom of
God. It is not easy to pinpoint the
particular nature of inclusivism and our examples will illustrate its breadth. The
Fourth Gospel writer’s use of the term logos, the Word which was
with God and which was God-like or divine, is taken as a guidance. It was ‘the true light which gives light to
everyone’. Justin Martyr (2nd century), one of the earliest
apologists, focused on Christ as the logos, and proposed that as the energetic
Word (logike dunamis) he was the creator and organizer of the cosmos;
and as the seminal reason or Word ( logos spermatikos) inspired the
Greek philosophers and is present in all humans. Irenaeus, around the same time, explained
that all divine manifestations take place through the Logos. ‘The knowledge of God which humans can reach
through the cosmos is already on their part a response to a revelation of the
Logos, for creation itself is a divine manifestation…and all divine
manifestations are Logos manifestations’.
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 - 215), while condemning the mystery
cults, used the concept of logos spermatikos and talked in terms of its operation in the
Greek philosophies. He regarded Greek
philosophy as parallel to the Jewish Law as ‘a covenant made by God with
people, a stepping stone to the philosophy of Christ’.
A distinction
between implicit faith and explicit faith was made by Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274),
the greatest of the medieval scholastic theologians. He
declared that ‘to any one who does what lies in his power, God does not
deny grace’. Yet for him there was a
fuller grace if one received baptism using free will as in the case of Cornelius.
He used the theories to prove the existence of God propounded by
Aristotle.
While the
majority of Protestant missionaries operated on the mandate of carrying the
light of the gospel to a heathenish darkness, some showed remarkable openness.
Bartholomaus
Ziegenbalg (1682-1719), the first Protestant missionary to India perceived the
sense of a Supreme Being and ‘broken lights’ among the Hindus. G.U. Pope (1820 -1907) was fascinated by the
devotional fervour of the Saiva community in southern India. Kenneth Cracknell
in his outstanding study of five theologians and eight missionaries
encountering world religions between 1846 – 1914 demonstrates their inclusive
outlook. The title of his book (Justice,
Courtesy and Love) comes from one of those missionaries studied,
which reflects the new attitude that should govern Christian approach to
people of other faiths. They
acknowledged the work of God outside the Judeo-Christian fold. For example, Robert Hume (1847-1929), went to
the extent of observing that ‘More Protestant Reformers have appeared in the
religious history of India than in the religious history of Israel; perhaps
more than in the Christian Church’. J.N.
Farquhar (1861 – 1929) wrote the famous book The Crown of Hinduism the
thesis of which is that Christ and Christianity fulfills all the aspirations of
Hindus and brings to the highest point all the noble values of Hinduism. He highlighted Jesus’ words ‘not to destroy
but to fulfill’ and this position has been held and expounded by several
Christian theologians of religious pluralism.
Among
the theologians, F.D. Maurice (1805-1872) affirmed that the reign of God is a
present reality and Christ is redeemer of humanity in all ages. He observed deep truths in Hinduism and
regarded Mohammed as a witness for God. This observation, for him, provides a
basis for further dialogue with Hindus and Muslims. B.F. Westcott (1825-1901)
emphasized the gospel of life, a biblical theology of religions, mission as a
revelation of the mystery of God, the gospel as a new thing in the earth and
the unity of love. C.C. Hall
(1852-1908) was open to the gains of biblical criticism; perceived a light
greater than the sun in revelation; and observed the ‘progressive, evolutionary
and cumulative nature of religion’ as informed by the comparative study of
religion.
More
recently, Raimundo Panikkar brought out his seminal work with the title The
Unknown Christ of Hinduism (1964; revised and enlarged edition, 1981) in
which he claimed that Christianity and Hinduism meet only in Christ. This is because, taking the Vedantic concept
of impersonal reality as ultimate (Brahman), and the penultimate reality
of the personal Lord (Isvara), he identified Christ with the personal
Lord. For him ‘Jesus is Christ, but
Christ is not only Jesus’. Further, he
found in the Vedic thought the creative nexus of world-God-human with a
sacrificial center which is not alien to the Christian vision. Speaking for genuine tolerance and creative
interpenetration, he states: “The more we come to know the religion of the
world, the more we are sensitive to the religiousness of our neighbour, all the
more we begin to surmise that in every one of us there is somehow implied, and
vice-versa, that the other is not so independent from us and is somehow touched
by our beliefs. We begin to realize that
our neighbour’s religion does not only challenge and may even enrich our own,
but that ultimately, the very differences which separate us are somewhat
potentially within the own world of my religious convictions. We begin to accept that the other religion
may complement mine and we may even entertain the idea that in some particular
cases it may well supplement it because they are polyvalent. They open the dialogue, do not close it”.
The
European counter-part of the Indo-European Panikkar was Karl Rahner (1904 –
1984), probably the most important and influential Roman Catholic thinker in
the twentieth century. Human experience
is the key to his theology. “The message
of Christianity is that the infinite Mystery, towards which human existence is
intrinsically oriented, while always remaining a mystery, gives himself in
absolute self-communication to human experience. This grace of divine self-communication is
present in the transcendental experience of all human beings as an offer which
can be accepted or rejected, … freedom determines human existence even when it
is rejected”. Jesus is the absolute
fulfillment of human destiny in acceptance of God’s self-communication and,
unlike any other religion, Christianity claims to be the absolute
religion. Christians should consider
non-Christians as ‘anonymous Christians’ because of the ever present divine
grace touching each individual. At
different stages many are on the way to salvation, yet preaching makes them realize
the victory of grace and join the Church, the social form of salvation.
P.D.
Devanandan (1901 – 1962), the founder-director of the Christian Institute for
the Study of Religion and Society, Bangalore, and his successor M.M. Thomas
(1916 – 1996) reflected in the context of ‘Indian renaissance’ and ‘Asian
revolution’. They bridged between not
only Euro-American thinkers and Indian thinkers, but also between those of the
early Indian Christian theologians who suggested points of contact and
interpretive tools in certain Hindu religious categories such as avatar and
the radical stand concerning the universal presence and action of God taken by
those belonging to the ‘Rethinking Christianity’ group of southern India. Devanandan saw the work of the Spirit in the
modern religious and secular movements of India, particularly the reform and
renaissance movements. He found history
to be God’s platform of interaction and pointed out a new understanding of
history emerging among the modern thinkers of Hinduism. He presented Christ as the beginning of a new
creation for which the church is called to witness through words and
service. Thomas responded to Panikkar’s The
Unknown Christ of Hinduism by titling his extensive study The
Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance (1969). Interpreting salvation as humanization, he
was open to inspiring thoughts and alternative models of community coming from
other religions and secular ideologies.
He centred them around Christ, the testing stone of divine-humanity. He has no fear of syncretism if it is
Christ-centred and even if there is a risk, it is, as the title of one of his
books mentions, Risking Christ for Christ’s Sake (1987).
The
above theologians influenced ecumenical thinking on theology of religious pluralism,
particularly through the World Council of Churches and the Vatican. The WCC continued the discussion which
started in 1910 at the World Missionary Conference. Without diluting its commitment to mission
and evangelism, its documents on people of other faiths repeat the biblical
references to God’s creation of the whole humanity, God’s universal witness,
Jesus’ ground-breaking approach to Samaritans, a Roman centurion and a
Canaanite woman. At one point the major emphasis was on seeking a world community
as a community of communities and that the church needs to be a witnessing and
serving community. Vatican II
appreciated genuine search for God and noble values in every religious
tradition and made a distinction between ordinary ways and extraordinary ways
of salvation. Since then there have been
efforts to interpret and clarify its theology and definite conclusions are yet
to be made.
There are several theologians around the world, both men and women,
who in one way or another would fall in the inclusivist category. Standing in the middle, an inclusivist
position can always drift to exclusivism or pluralism. Those who have seen Christ as the cosmic or
basic source, those who have placed him as the crown of all other experiences
and those who have presented him as normative may be in a sense termed as
exclusivists. On the other hand those
who have been open to the complementary and supplementary roles of all
religions come close to a pluralist position.
What is significant to note in relation to either case is that there are
Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists who advocate their respective core visions as
inclusive in accommodating other religious experiences including the Christian.
Pluralist Views
Pluralists view different religious traditions as different
manifestations of the same reality or different pathways to the same goal. Relativism is its ally which sees every
religious experience as incomplete until different such experiences are
absorbed to make a whole as exemplified by the popular story of six blind men
sensing an elephant. Differences are explained either as diversity, the outcome
of the variety of human faculties, or due to present ignorance which will
disappear when one achieves proper perception, growth and maturity. Historically, pluralist/relativist views have
been proposed as a reaction to forceful claims of exclusivism. The Hindu slogan of ‘one truth, many
religions’ is the most popular example.
John Hick is the best European representative of a pluralist stand
and lives in Birmingham, UK. His book God
and the Universe of Faiths (1973) has been seminal for his thought. His other later titles like The Myth of
God Incarnate, The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, God has many
Names, Three Faiths – One God, and The Rainbow of Faiths represent
elaboration and clarification of his basic position. Hick holds that the language of faith
is to a great deal variously ‘emotive, poetic and mythic fact asserting’. He also holds that being an adherent of a
religious tradition is to do with the particular geographical and cultural
context one is born in. God or Reality
is one and different religions have different names or different aspects of the
same Reality. Although this is an old
position popular among Hindus, Hick claims it to be a ‘Copernican revolution in
theology of religions’. Now, no more the
earth, but the sun is the center of the universe and all the planets including
the earth rotate around it and this model applies to religions including Christianity. What finally matters is appreciation for
other traditions and experiences and the criterion of validity is a self-less
sacrificial attitude towards fellow human beings.
Hick’s American colleague was Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916 –
2000). He started as a missionary among
Muslims and developed later as a scholar of modern Islam. Smith’s serious
reflection on religions and religious experience became clear when he published
his book The Meaning and End of Religion in 1963. He observes that religion plays an integral
role in human history. He distinguishes faith from beliefs, part of a
cumulative tradition along with the external and societal dimensions of
religious life, which is ever changing.
‘Faith differs in form, but not in kind’. His other important book Towards a World
Theology (1981) explains the unity of humankind, God and of humankind’s
religious history. The process of each
religious tradition and each religious experience is different depending on the
environment and capacity of the individual.
However, faith is the core.
However, “Faith is an orientation of the personality, to oneself, to
one’s neighbour, to the universe; a total response; a way of seeing the world
and of handling it; a capacity to live at a more than mundane level; to see, to
feel, to act in terms of, a transcendent dimension.” The way faith is sustained and nurtured may
be different. This is true of different
individuals of the same tradition.
Ultimately what is true depends on the criteria with which we measure
it. In that respect Christianity may not
be true absolutely, impersonally and statically; “rather it can become true,
if and as you or I appropriate it to ourselves and interiorize it, insofar as
we live it as we take it off the shelf and personalize it, in dynamic actual
existence”. By implication no individual
or community can claim that they have perceived something or responded to
something which is absolutely true.
Mutual understanding,
peaceful co-existence now and co-operation for
common welfare among people of different faiths are not new ideas. However, they have been reinforced with new
slogans and novel frameworks. The Global
Ethic of Hans Kung(a Swiss Roman Catholic theologian) is one such slogan. Kung’s earlier works like On Being a Christian (1978) and Christianity and the World Religions (1986)
represent a serious theological exploration in dialogue with partners from
other religious traditions. They could
be pursued further if there were more partners with equal openness and
intellectual acumen. And Kung’s attack
on the conservative trends within the Catholic Church and concern about world
wide fundamentalism show promise for the recovery of the evangelical faith of
Christianity. Moreover, he has chosen to
promote an idea which is appealing and more respected in the world scene today.
When Kung launched his new
project on global responsibility and a world ethic in 1990, his concern was
very clear. It has found succinct
expression:
No survival without a world ethic.
No world peace without peace between the religions. No peace between the religions without
dialogue between the religions.
The magnitude of suffering experienced
by people all over the world and the continuing threat of total annihilation of
the world by sophisticated weaponry is recognised and recorded by Kung in a
moving way. His proposal for recognising
a morality without religions is provokative and his suggestion for serious and
soul- searching exploration and dialogue within the ecumenical movement and
between the religious traditions is convincing.
Kung made use of the occasion of the centenary celebration of the first
World Parliament of Religions in 1993 to promote his programme at international
level. ‘The Declaration of the
Parliament of the World Religions’, which reflected in letter and spirit his
own vision, however, reinforces his vision for realising an inter-dependent
world, for the treatment of every human being in a humane way and for the
responsibility of every human being in relation to fellow humans. For not taking into account the multi-dimensional
character of religious life, regional variations of ethical potential and
behaviour, controlling powers in the form of nations and lack of clarity about
the structures that safeguard and realize a world ethic, Kung’s programme is
criticized as another scheme to be added to the plethora of statements such as
the UN Charter of Human Rights.
Paul Knitter, a lay
Catholic theologian of North America, would share the basic concern of
Kung. He became popular in interfaith
circles by putting a question mark to No
Other Name which formed the title of his influential book (1985). In this book he makes a critical survey of
Christian attitudes to world religions.
After analysing the merit and weakness of the models of exclusivism,
inclusivism and pluralism, he proposes a new model, namely, unitive pluralism
in which all religions evolve and grow through the principles of growth like
mutation and revolution; and Christianity, while continuing to grow towards
maturity and oneness, has a unique place because of the unique revelation of
God in Jesus; and this means there can be criteria to determine the truth-value
of any religion. His postulate that the
world’s religions are ‘more complementary than contradictory’, as Bosch
observes ‘is an ahistorical one and, in the final analysis, not really
different from the views expressed by the enlightenment philosophers’. Later, Knitter has moved on to develop
liberation-praxis as the basis of dialogue, as is evident in his One Earth, Many Religions: Multifaith Dialogue
and Global Responsibility (1995).
The ‘younger brother’ of this book is Jesus and Other Names - Christian Mission and Global Responsibility (1996). One can hear an echo of Kung in the word
‘global responsibility’ and the added term ‘Christian mission’ draws our
special attention. Knitter’s premise
and agenda are open when he says that,
“For me, the suffering Other has provided help and guidance in coming to feel
that the frightening otherness in my dialogue partner is an inviting
other. When religious persons together listen to the voices of the
suffering and oppressed, when they attempt together
to respond to those needs, I have found that they are able to trust each
other and feel the truth and the power in each other’s strangeness....And so my
image of the religious Other as a frightening and fascinating Mystery has been
complemented by an image of religious others as fellow travelers”. It is yet to be seen how different
understandings of God or Reality across the religious traditions, of the nature
of suffering and of visions of ultimate goals come together to address the
common human problem of suffering. As M.M. Thomas pointed out, the
question about the ultimate meaning and end of human life in the light of
Christ does not discourage but rather enhances our concern for redeeming the
present.
Recently, a new paradigm
has been suggested. Mark Heim, an
American Baptist theologian, through his books Salvations: Truth and
Difference in Religion (1995) and The Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian
Theology of Religious Ends (2001) and several articles has introduced and
explain the hypothesis of ‘multiple religious ends’. For him distinctive testimonies of different
religious traditions undergirded by a concrete texture of myths, rituals and
experiences as well as conditioned by different cultural-linguistic components,
reveal the distinctive ends which are most desirable and ultimate for
communities concerned. One should not
devalue the other and impose one’s vision of ultimate goal but recognize the
overlapping nature of religious life including interior experiences and
exterior behaviour.
“The thesis of an identical religious end for
all can be proposed with rather more impunity for the world to come than the
current one, but in neither case is it persuasive if we are serious about the
cultural-linguistic component of all experience”. The ‘one and only’ claim is applicable to
every religious tradition and we need to discover by personal contact ‘a unique
complex of elements, interlocking patterns of life, which cannot be
descriptively equated to anything else’.
Some religious fulfillments and visions of ultimate life may collapse in
due course, but we cannot presume that all will in the end reduce to only
one. At the same time, ‘it remains an
open question whether these ends are actualized within a universe that is as
confirmed in the Buddhist realization or the Christian or the Advaitan or some
other’. The varied accounts of religious
ends, in fact, ‘are all conditioned and incoherent anticipations of a final
human condition that is beyond description by any such account’. For those Christians whose faith is molded to
think of one God, one world and one ultimate goal, however inclusive, such a
hypothesis would be upsetting. However,
they have to recognize that the non-Christian traditions too can have such
inclusive visions, progressive and unitive, with normative ethical behaviour
such as unselfishness. Heim finally
suggests that “religions need to compete to demonstrate their capacities to
recognize the concrete truth in other traditions. Any faith tradition that proves unable to
affirm and explain the distinctive value of others, in its own terms, will
seriously compromise its universal claims”.
The pluralists greatly
contribute to the saving of Christianity from trends toward arrogance,
intolerance and sectarian outlook. But
they are criticized as being ‘exclusive’ if they are too definitive of what is
happening in serious religious lives and what will or should happen in the
end. And those who pursue the history of
religions would expect the pluralists to be more comprehensive about their view
and interpretation of religion taking into account all dimensions of religious
life and all changes that have taken place within each tradition. Moreover, it is not irrelevant to mention the
phenomenon of religious conversion which is consequent upon the flashing of a
new vision or perception of a greater level of truth which is more convincing,
fulfilling and life-transforming. And
from a pastoral viewpoint, the pluralists will be more relevant to Christian
theology and community only when they help to find the connection between
Christian commitment and openness to other commitments.
Concrete Commitment and Critical
Openness – The Fourth Way
In today’s pluralist
context, if it arises from serious commitment to the Christian vision or at
least is sympathetic to it, it is not unrealistic to expect that a theology of
religions should be true to biblical witness, cognizant of more than two thousand
years of discussion and helpful to proper understanding of mission. Any condescending view from an Olympian
height can miss the complexity of religious life and dialogue of life and work,
although it may be intellectually convincing.
Failure to recognize ambiguous beliefs and behaviours as well as
decisive moments of change within each religious tradition will perpetuate
interreligious ignorance and superficial respect. In this final section we will
point out three theologians whose approach and insights are found to be more
helpful for the ongoing discussion.
Paul Tillich (1986 –
1965), one of the foremost Christian theologians of the twentieth century, was
a German who lived in the United States.
His major work of 3 volumes, Systematic Theology, continues to draw the serious attention of
theologians. Tillich visited Japan in
1960 and had discussion with some Buddhist scholars and leaders. After this visit ‘he felt he should start his
theological work again, though the third and final volume of his Systematic Theology was then in its last
phases’. The Bampton Lectures he
delivered in 1961 reflected the change of direction in his thinking. He was now ready to think and work together
with historians of religion like Mircea Eliade.
Tillich’s premise in this
lecture is that religions represent the ultimate concern of human life and
revelations and salvations are available in all genuine religions; so also are
human limits of adaptation, as well as
distortion. Yet for him there may
be ‘a central event in the history of religions which unites the positive
results of those critical developments in the history of religion in and under
which revelatory experiences are going on - an event which, therefore, makes
possible a concrete theology that has universalistic significance’. He does not find the history of religions
existing alongside the history of culture.
‘The sacred does not lie beside the secular, but it is its depths. The sacred is the creative ground and at the
same time critical judgment of the secular.
But the religious can be this only if it is at the same time a judgment
on itself, a judgment which must use the secular as a tool of its own religious
self-criticism’. The sacred is both inside and outside the secular and
therefore God-language is necessary lest secular language absorb the language
of religion, which is more enduring in
history. Theologians have to break
through the two barriers of ‘the orthodox-exclusive one and the
secular-rejective one’. Any
reductionistic tendency needs to be avoided and this is applicable to the
understanding of Jesus also, as he is a divine figure or a social figure. ‘Therefore, in order to have a valued,
evaluated and significant understanding of the history of religions, one has to
break through the Jesus-centred alliance of the opposite poles, the orthodox as
well as the secular’. What we need ‘is a
theology of the history of religions in which the positive valuation of
universal revelation balances the critical valuation’. The long and revelatory history of religions
in many ways positively or adversely affected the biblical religion supplied
for the understanding of Jesus Christ who appeared at a decisive moment. Further, within the history of the church,
the movement of enlightenment and reformation became decisive and similar
movements can be seen in other religions also, particularly in their
sacraments, mystical experiences and ethical-prophetic element. Tillich calls these elements ‘the religion of
the concrete spirit’ which is also the inner telos. ‘But’, he says, ‘we
cannot identify this religion of the concrete spirit with any actual religion,
not even Christianity as a religion’.
However, as a Protestant
theologian, Tillich believes that the above elements have found the highest expression
in Paul’s doctrine of the Spirit in which the ecstatic and rational elements,
love and knowledge, have become united.
In this light he provides a key to understand religions: “The positive
and negative relation of these elements or motives now gives the history of
religions its dynamic character. The
inner telos appears everywhere in the
struggle against the demonic resistance of the sacramental basis and the
demonic and secularistic distortion of the critics of the sacramental
basis. It appears in a fragmentary way
in many moments in the history of religions.
Therefore, we have to absorb the past history of religions and
annihilate the demonic elements in this way; but we have a genuine living
tradition that consists in the moments in which this great synthesis became, in
a fragmentary way, reality. We can see
the whole history of religions in this sense as a fight for the religion of the
concrete spirit, a fight of God against religion within religion. And this phrase, ‘a fight of God against
religion within religion’, could become the key for understanding the otherwise
extremely chaotic, or at least seemingly chaotic, history of religions”.
The criterion for
Christians to recognise the religion of the concrete spirit is the event of the
cross. The church has a critical role to
maintain its own affairs according to the demands of this criterion and to
welcome goodness, justice, truth and beauty wherever and whatever form they are
found. And it should be critical of the
secular ‘quasi-religions’ because although they originally appeared liberative,
‘they are worse, as we have seen in our century, because they are without the
depths and the richness of the genuine religious traditions’.
Admittedly Tillich’s own
position has the danger of drifting to a kind of ‘all-embracing abstraction’
and the only way to resist it is to take concrete cases of religious traditions
with a special focus on the decisive moments in which ‘the religion of the
concrete spirit’ is clearly evident, as well as the subsequent deviation and
distortion. It is the responsibility of
the theologians and scholars in religions
to develop clear guidelines for creative reflection and guidance which
will be useful for the church’s understanding of mission, particularly directing
people towards the cross, God’s omega point.
Stanley Samartha (1920 –
2001), the most creative theologian of southern India and pioneer of
inter-faith dialogue work at ecumenical level through WCC, was for sometime a
student of Tillich. He once surprised
his teacher by presenting a paper on the Hindu philosopher Radhakrishnan’s idea
of the ‘concrete Spirit’ which resonated Tillich’s own position. Parallel to M.M.Thomas’ The Acknowledged
Christ of the Indian Renaissance, Samartha brought out his study entitled
The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ (1974) in which, like the
former, he pointed out how Hindu thinkers tried to absorb Christ within their
all inclusive framework without taking any pains to understand his
uniqueness. His further reflection and
actual encounters with representatives of other religious traditions resulted
in the production of several books, poems and autobiographical reflections
including One Christ – Many Religions (1991), Pilgrim Christ (1994)
and Between Two Cultures (1996). It is not surprising that one of the
doctoral dissertations on the thought of Samartha by an European scholar is
published with the title Commitment and Openness.
Samartha placed himself in
between uncritical friendliness and fanaticism.
He repeated in different terms the view that ‘Commitment without
tolerance becomes fanaticism. Tolerance without commitment slips into
indifference’. He defined dialogue as ‘a
mood, a spirit, an attitude of love and respect towards neighbours of other
faiths’ and he applied this to his theological approach also. Not siding with particular camps he called
both Christians and others to developing
‘courage for dialogue’. He was
clear about the Christian faith as fundamentally kerygmatic, but warned
Christians against ‘rehearsing old militant marches using spent bullets’ and
called them to reinterpret the gospel categories like ‘kingdom’ as
servanthood. On the other hand, when
Muslim friends could not move away from their view of Jesus as a human prophet,
Samartha did not hesitate to declare ‘the Christ we adore’.
Theologically, Samartha
was unsettled with regard to the positions of exclusivism, inclusivism and
exclusivism, and in some sense one can relate him to each alternatively. For example, he held on the one hand that
‘Religions are different responses to Mystery’, but on the other warned against
positions that represent ‘rudderless boats in the waters of relativism’. He voiced the need for ‘theological
backbones’ to face the question of truth squarely and boldly.
For Samartha, issues of religious pluralism cannot be discussed as a
concept ‘detached from the throbbings of
surrounding life and held up for intellectual examination as hardened crystals
under the microscope. They are part of
the texture of human life, touching the conscience and emotions of people
deeply’. He argues that secularism
cannot replace religion and the religious quest and struggle for justice are
not alternatives. “The basic question
is, how our understanding of and obedience to Truth critically illumines and
directs our struggle for justice in order that human beings might become free”
in a holistic sense. The sensitive
question of the place of Christ in the midst of religious plurality, he says,
should be regarded both as ‘a theological responsibility and a pastoral
concern’. He calls Christians to move
away from a ‘Jesus-cult’ and ‘Christomonism’ and to hold the ultimacy of God
being true to the insights of texts like 1 Cor. 15:28.
As we have already mentioned, Samartha warns against a kind of
relativism which can make persons non-committal, passive and indifferent and
argues that there can be a positive act of relativising if the starting point
is a deep commitment to a particular faith and community however imperfect it
is. “A relativism which makes no room
for commitment undermines the very basis of authentic religious life. It leads to theological confusion and
spiritual poverty. It even makes dialogue
unnecessary. If all religions are
equally true what is the necessity for dialogue? While absolute claims cannot be made for
relative apprehensions of truth, particular religious responses can be true
only in so far as they reflect or partake in something of the truth and lead
people towards it. What is important
here is not whether one or the other is false, but the distinctiveness of each
of the responses”. In actual encounters
‘participation in truth is enhanced, openings to further dimensions of truth
are increased, and the obligation to be committed and loyal to what has been
received becomes more compelling’.
Recognising that human distortion of the truth received is always
possible we need to be open to the lead of the Spirit. “The Spirit of God cannot be regarded as the
monopolistic possession of the Judeo-Christian tradition imprisoned within the
steel and concrete structure of Western dogma and a permanent Atlantic
Charter”.
Samartha is fond of the images of travel and pilgrimage, but not
without commitment and openness. ‘We are
always on the way. Every arrival
is a point of departure, and every journey looks for a new destination’. In the case of different scriptures, for
instance, they ‘should not be regarded as passport documents that divide
different nationalities but as signposts that point to a more promising
future’. And we need a theology today
“that is not less but more true to God by being generous and open, a theology
not less but more loving toward the neighbour by being friendly and willing to
listen, a theology that does not separate us from our fellow human beings but
supports us in our common struggles and hopes…a theology that refuses to be
impregnable, but which, in the spirit of Christ, is both ready and willing to
be vulnerable”. The future remains
unpredictable, but for Christians the ultimacy of God who revealed himself in
Jesus Christ stands out as fundamental.
Although there is no blue print about the future there is a vision
and hope in Christ that includes the whole humanity. The biblical phrases in this connection are
the coming of Christ in his glory, a new creation, unifying everything in
Christ, perfect understanding, being filled with the fullness of God and so
on. How do these relate to a theology of
religious pluralism? Jurgen Moltmann, a
living German theologian, known for his Theology of Hope, helps
Christians to tackle this question, particularly in his book The Church in
the Power of the Spirit (1975). His
starting point is the origin of the Christian hope. “The church’s abiding origin in Israel, its
permanent orientation to Israel’s hope, Christianity’s resulting special
vocation to prepare the way for the coming kingdom of history – all this will
also give its stamp to the dialogue with the world religions. The dialogue cannot be determined by
arbitrary and predetermined attitudes, but only by attitudes and judgments
which are based on Christianity’s special promise and directed towards the
universal future of mankind in the kingdom of God”. This is particularly important in the changed
world situation marked by interdependence and fast communications which nurture
the idea of one world. “The only
religions that will be able to present themselves and maintain their ground as
‘world religions’ in the future will be the ones that accept the ‘single world’
that is coming into being and the common world history which can be created
today for the first time”. This is the
new situation for all the religions including Christianity.
In real encounter religions change.
“The dialogue of world religions is a process into which we can only
enter if we make ourselves vulnerable in openness, and if we come away from the
dialogue changed…The world religions will emerge from the dialogues with a new
profile. It may be said that Christians
hope that these profiles will be turned towards suffering men and women and
their future, towards life and towards peace”.
But the church has no need to compromise on its position that it
represents a community reconciled to God in Christ and to all humans from any
religion. Although the Enlightenment and
all that accrued from it challenged the absolute claims of Christianity, there
has been a new kind of absolutism in the form of relativism with ‘skeptical
tolerance’ which is contrary to ‘productive tolerance’. “Absolutism and relativism are really twins,
because both view ‘everything’ from a higher, non-historical watch-tower. In the open history of potentiality one only
moves specifically from one relationship to other relationships in the hope
that living relations will enable us to gain ‘everything’ and to combat the
threat of ‘nothingness’”. And if the
Christian church is syncretistically open to all the good aspects of other
religions it might prove itself ‘the absolute religion’. Being qualitative in mission, Christians need
to be critical catalysts, influencing positively the other faith communities,
testifying to the suffering love of God, responding with partners in dialogue
to the common human problem of suffering, unfailing in talking about the hope
set by Christ and giving direction towards God’s kingdom.
Further
Directions for the Fourth Way
It should have become clear that the popular models of exclusivism,
inclusivism and pluralism cannot be generalized as each has different
strands. The fourth way illustrated with
the positions of three theologians seems true to the biblical insights, to the
call of the Christian community for witness and to the primary requirements of
inter-faith dialogue, viz. respect and love towards neighbours of other
faiths, with commitment and openness.
However, if similar attitudes are not developed by our potential
partners of dialogue, theologies of religious pluralism will remain Christian
monologues or word games played in academic enclosures.
For Christians, it is important to realize that their faith is not
based on unalterable doctrines revealed in ancient times, or an idea of Truth
in abstract (it would be interesting to study of its use in different senses in
relation to theology of religious pluralism) but on a story which reflects a
long process. It is not enough to start
with Jesus Christ, singling him out from his own religious orientation, but as
Moltmann points out, with the story of Israel which is very unique and
distinctive. No other religious tradition
has centered their faith around a story of liberation from social slavery and
economic exploitation. No other
community seems to feel as Jews and Christians that they have been called for
the purpose of proclaiming the glory of God, establishing a community based on
justice, love and peace, and looking to an inclusive future with a hope. In their covenanted relationship with God,
who is portrayed as their fellow traveler, as clearly mentioned in the Bible,
they have repeatedly failed and perhaps they will never become perfect. Nor can they claim that their experience and
understanding of God has no element of mystery.
The dialogical process contained in the Bible starts with the name of
God as Yahweh and ends with Trinity, both of which are enigmatic yet
fascinating and promise a liberating and integrating presence. As long as Christians are aware of the fact
that they are ‘on the way’ having to know and grow further, they stand on a
sure foundation in the midst of people of many faiths. They continue to witness to a long dialogue
of God with a vulnerable community, in spite of many uncertainties, but not
without hope. What is most unique in the
Judeo-Christian tradition then is a community struggling to fulfill a divine
call by taking new initiatives and being open.
When Christians rediscover the dialogical nature of their
faith-tradition and share their story with humility and joy, people of other
religious traditions may be stimulated to probe into their own tradition and
see decisive moments of God’s dialogue.
The Christian story of divine initiatives and human deviations provides
a tool to understand the origin and development of other religious traditions
particularly with reference to such decisive moments that reflect ‘the struggle
of the concrete Spirit within and against religion’. The realism of the Bible hangs not on an
‘unmoved mover’ but on the one who guides a process and journey, willing to go
forward and backward as well as the side ways, depending on the turns taken by
the humankind. The Christ-event was most decisive because it was the story of
God’s Son or the visible image of the divine humanity who ‘humbled himself, and
was obedient, even to the point of death, death on a cross’. Though God raised him to the heights, he
still stands in solidarity with those suffering for his name’s sake asking the
persecutors, ‘why do you persecute me’. Those who see him as the one having the
perfect authority but perpetually being slain, ‘slain from the foundation of
the world’, witness to a unique picture of God. They can affirm with confidence
that God is unchanging in his love yet ever changing in his contingent
plan. It may look odd in the midst of
conflicting images of God or perceptions of Reality. However, it may well be expected that such a
self-understanding and friendly approach to people of other faiths will further
clarify the fourth way in the theology of religions we have outlined above.
Reference Works (apart from those
mentioned in the body)
J.Hick and B. Hebblethwaite (ed.), Christianity and Other
Religions, Glasgow: Fount Paperbacks, 1980
A. Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the
Christian Theology of Religions, London: SCM Press, 1983
J.A. DiNoia, The Diversity of Religions – A Christian Perspective,
Washingdon, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992
J. Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism,
Maryknoll: Orbis, 2000
I Selvanayagam, A Second Call: Ministry and Mission in a
Muti-faith Milieu, Chennai: CLS Press, 2000
Published
in Arasaradi Journal of Theological Reflection,
XVII/1, Jan-June, 2004, pp. 1-23
