Inclusive Theology

Theology that emphasises the openness of God towards all creation and values such as hospitality, generosity and acceptance.

A basic issue in Christian theology since the earliest times has been the question of who should be included in (and who should be excluded from) the Church. This issue has come to the fore in recent decades over questions such as the role of women, lesbians and gay men within the Church, and whether non-Christian religions can also lead people to God.

But our current concerns need to be understood in terms of the wider history of inclusive theology. It is not, as its detractors argue, a modern invention, but a crucial strand in Christian thinking since the earliest times.

The issue of inclusion first arises in the pages of the New Testament. Jesus, in conversation with a Syro-Phoenician woman (Mark 7), appears to say that his ministry is only for the Jews, but is persuaded to reach out to a gentile woman and her child. The early Church also faced a fundamental issue of inclusion, which is recorded in Galatians 2. Hitherto the Church had seen itself as an offshoot of Judaism and had retained many Jewish customs, including circumcision. St Paul argued successfully that the essence of Christianity is faith in Jesus, not conformity to traditions and regulations. Thus the Church took an historic step towards greater inclusion, accepting the full membership of non-Jews.

The early Church also had to wrestle with the question of those who had died before the birth of Christ. These people had not heard the teaching of Jesus and were apparently unfairly excluded from salvation. The first letter of Peter imagines that Christ preached to the imprisoned souls of the dead, giving them a chance to accept salvation. This explanation may not sound very believable to modern ears, but it reflects the inclusive instincts of the earliest Christian theologians.

In the second and third centuries the Church faced the question of inclusion again, this time in disputes with the Gnostics about the theology of creation. Whereas the Gnostics saw the world as divided into good and evil, Irenaeus and Augustine argued that everything created by God is necessarily good. This was an extremely difficult case to make when the world clearly appears to contain both good and bad people, suffering and happiness. But the Church Fathers resisted the Gnostics tooth and nail, knowing that a dualistic view of creation could easily be used to demonise whole categories of ‘evil’ people and thereby justify violence against them. The orthodoxy that prevailed insisted on a radically inclusive view of creation and the inherent goodness of every creature.

Augustine was inclusive on another major theological issue. He argued against the Donatists, a hard-line sect who would have no truck with those Christian clergy who had renounced their faith during the persecution of the Church by the Emperor Diocletian (303–305). Augustine pleaded successfully for forgiveness, and argued that the office of errant ministers could not be invalidated by their personal conduct.

His inclusive outlook can be found elsewhere in the writings of the Church Fathers. Justin Martyr argued that human reason can guide non-Christians to God; Irenaeus emphasised the universalism (catholicity) of the Christian Church and its appeal to all people, not just the select few; Origen believed that all people (even the devil) would be saved by God’s mercy in the fullness of time.

In the modern period the most important inclusive theologian was Karl Rahner, who argued that it is possible for anyone to be an ‘anonymous Christian’: ‘Anonymous Christianity means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted Christianity … Let us say, a Buddhist monk … who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian’ (Karl Rahner in Dialogue: Conversations and Interviews 1965–1982, Crossroad, 1986, p. 15).

In the face of contemporary Gnosticism and exclusivism, the task for inclusive theology is to keep articulating the historic teaching of the Church: that all humanity is created in God’s image; that God’s grace and forgiveness are limitless; that human love and reason are both universal and God-given; and that God’s vision for the future is an inclusive community that Jesus called ‘the kingdom’.

THINKERS

James Alison (1959– ): a gay, Roman Catholic theologian powerfully influenced by René Girard. Alison sees the issue of inclusion in the context of a theology of human brokenness and violence. All humanity is included both in the reality of original sin and in the reality of God’s forgiveness, exemplified in the resurrection.

Justin Martyr (100?–165?) argued for the inclusion of Socrates and other ancient thinkers who were able to understand Christ as Logos without knowing Jesus personally.

St Paul (3–65) argued that the ‘unknown god’ intuited by the Athenians was the same as the Christian God (Acts 17:23), thereby providing the theological basis for a faith that includes even those who are not confessing Christians.

Francis Petrarch (1304–74): a Renaissance poet whose poem Africa provoked controversy about Christian inclusiveness. Petrarch was criticised for making the speech of a Carthaginian character called ‘Mago’ too Christian. Petrarch offered a passionate defence: ‘What, I pray, is Christian here, and not simply universally human? … What else but grief and lamentation and remorse of a man at the point of death? … one does not have to be a Christian to recognise one’s errors and sins and feel shame and remorse … A Christian knows whom to confess his faults, and how to confess them; but awareness of them and the pricks of conscience and repentance and self-accusation – all that is within the capacity of any rational being.’

IDEAS

Feminist theology: see separate entry.

Gender-inclusive language: the use of language that does not exclude or demean women: for example, using ‘Godself’ instead of ‘himself’ as the reflexive pronoun for God.

General revelation: a term used to describe the revelation which is accessible to everyone, of every religion and none.

Lesbian and gay theology: theology arising out of the experience of lesbians and gay men.

Liberation theology: see separate entry.

Queer theology: theology that challenges all received norms in gender and sexuality.

BOOKS

Steven Shakespeare and Hugh Rayment-Pickard, The Inclusive God, (SCM/Canterbury Press, 2006)

Elizabeth Stuart, Lesbian and Gay Theologies (Ashgate, 2003)