First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. 3 This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. [1 Timothy 2:1-4, NRSV]
1. The Reality of Plurality
Plurality is a cultural reality we see in all areas of human activity. Plurality is a fact of life. This is true as much in the religious as in the secular domains of the contemporary world. More specifically, the phenomenon of religion has been described by David Tracy as “the most pluralistic, ambiguous, and important reality of all.” Plurality is a problem which challenges every Christian who struggles between fidelity to tradition and intellectual honesty, between blind faith and critical openness, between self-justification and other-inclusivity. As cultures become more pluralistic, and as contacts with foreign countries increase, the urgency of this question and the shocking dilemma intensifies.
To compound the picture further, in the field of Christian theology of religions, there is, by now, a plurality of models for approaching this plural setting. Even though ‘models’ never completely describe the positions they stand for, and simple ‘labels’ often unfairly caricature and wrongly group together nuanced positions, theologians by and large have found it convenient to follow a tripartite typology of exlusivism-inclusivism-pluralism as a short-hand description of the various theological positions.
- Exclusivism is the theological position that holds to the finality of the Christian faith in Christ. The finality of Christ means that there is no salvation in non-Christian religions.
- Inclusivism is the belief that God is present in non-Christian religions to save adherents through Christ. The inclusivist view has given rise to the concept of the anonymous Christian by which is understood an adherent of a particular religion whom God saves through Christ, but who personally neither knows the Christ of the Bible nor has converted to Biblical Christianity.
- Pluralism is basically the belief that the world religions are true and equally valid in their communication of the truth about God, the world, and salvation.
For introductory reading on this typology and the arguments behind each type, one of the best books is Alan Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions (London: SCM, 1993). Other well-known books include Paul F. Knitter, No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1985), and Gavin D’Costa, Theology and Religious Pluralism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).
However, to accept plurality as a phenomenological truism is one thing; to espouse “pluralism” as a theological paradigm is quite another. In the field of the theology of religions, the latter position is championed by the so-called pluralists but denounced by others. We need to draw a clear distinction between pluralism as an ideology and pluralism as a fact of life. What the Church vehemently attacks is pluralism as an ideology because of its corrosively relativistic agenda: the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world is at once relativised by those who insist on pluralism as theological truth.
For a good example of the different approaches of the so-called pluralists, see a collection of essays in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, edited by John Hick and Paul F. Knitter (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987). A challenge to the radical relativism manifest in this volume is mounted by a group of authors in Gavin D’Costa, ed., Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990). See also Schubert M. Ogden, Is There Only One True Religion or Are There Many? (Dallas: Southern Methodist University, 1992).
2. Pre-Vatican II Catholic Attitudes towards Non-Christian Religions
For the first few centuries of the history of Christianity, the dominant attitude of the Church towards other religions was encapsulated in an axiom commonly attributed to the Church father, Cyprian [d. 258], which says extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the Church there is no salvation”), understood, of course, in a literal way.
In the Middle Ages, the Fourth Lateran Council [1215] even added “at all” to the Cyprian-formula. To find salvation, Pope Boniface VIII [1302] went further, insisting one must not only belong to the church but one must even accept papal authority to be saved! In 1442, the Council of Florence declared: “no persons, whatever almsgiving they have practiced, even if they have shed their blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless they have remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church”. Protestants have always criticized this superiority complex and intransigence of Roman Catholicism. Fortunately, that attitude is less common now than before.
Changes in Church doctrines usually come very slowly, so that people often fell into the error of thinking that “Rome never changes”. A gradual change in how the Church regards non-Christian religions over the centuries is a case in point.
During the Renaissance, the encounter by Europeans with peoples of other lands where the gospel message has not been preached became a catalyst for Catholicism to be more inclusive in its thinking about the salvation of the multitudes who die without the benefit of baptism. The Council of Trent, for instance, started teaching that even if pagans have not been baptized with water, they could participate in the baptismal grace of salvation through desire. Furthermore, Trent was open to accept that desire as sufficient so long as it was concretely shown in a life lived according to one’s conscience. . By such a life, they (the non-Christians) were thought to be already implicitly living out a desire to join the Church and thus can be saved. This slight softening of the negative attitude towards non-Christians grew in the Catholic Church as it entered the 20th Century. In effect, the Catholic attitude moved from holding “outside the church, no salvation”, to “without the church, no salvation”, and in order to accommodate non-Christians, membership in the Church was extended not only to those baptized in reality, but also to those who were baptized, as it were, through desire.
Still, Catholic attitude did not include a more positive view of other religions, until the spirit of aggiornamento of the Second Vatican Council [1962-65] when the Church flung its doors open to the modern world. Our dialogue with others – people who believe differently from us – begins with a more open and accepting attitude.
Karl Rahner’s concept of Anonymous Christianity has greatly influenced the Second Vatican Council.
3. Can Non-Christians Then Be Saved?
Rahner’s position is representative of the main line Catholic “inclusivist” position. The development of his idea preceded the Second Vatican Council [1962-65], and as the most profound Catholic theologian of the time, has found its way into the official conciliar documents. These represent the official teaching of the Catholic Church on salvation for non-Christians.
In paragraph 16 of Lumen Gentium [The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church] we read:
- But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind. Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things (cf. Acts 17:25-28), and as Saviour wills that all men be saved (cf.1 Tim. 2:4). Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel. She knows that it is given by Him who enlightens all men so that they may finally have life. But often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator (cf. Rom. 1:21 and 25). Or some there are who, living and dying in this world without God, are exposed to final despair. Wherefore to promote the glory of God and procure the salvation of all of these, and mindful of the command of the Lord, “Preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mk. 16:16) the Church fosters the missions with care and attention. [LG, 16; cited in CCC, 839-848]
“God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1257) points out, but adds that God “himself is not bound by his sacraments.” The Catechism for Filipino Catholics (CFC 1619) too, clarifies that while faith and baptism are important, the dictates of conscience are also affirmed in Lumen Gentium 16.
In paragraph 2 of Nostra Aetate (Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions), we read:
- The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself (2 Cor. 5:18-19).
The document exhorts all Catholics, through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, to recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among men and women f other religions and those of non religions.
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, July 2022. All rights reserved.
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