Martin Ganeri
From the very beginning Christianity has been engaged in different interreligious encounters, not only with the cultic beliefs and practices of other religious cultures, but also with the wider traditions of reflective thought, ethical systems and artistic achievement found within them. One important outcome of such encounter has been the development of what we should call Christian theologies of other religions, namely, reflection on the meaning and value of other religions, especially the salvific status of non-Christians and their religious traditions. Such theologies have tended to emphasize one or both of two fundamental doctrinal axioms, which might seem to be in some tension with each other: that salvation is through Christ alone, through faith in Christ, baptism and through membership of the church (Mk. 16:16, John 14:6; Acts 4:12); and that God desires the salvation of all humanity (1 Tim. 2:4). Likewise, different understandings of the relationship between nature and grace has played a major role in shaping such theologies: whether human beings, especially after the Fall, have a natural capacity to reach genuine knowledge of God and live morally good lives or whether fallen nature is too corrupt: and whether other religious cultures are manifestations the exercise of natural reason and aspiration or whether divine grace can also be said to be present and active in them.
Yet a further and very remarkable dimension of the encounter is the way in which the theological expression of Christian faith itself has been affected, challenged, and enriched as a result. Indeed it would be impossible to separate the historical expressions of Christian faith from such encounters. The church emerged in the context of the Greco-Roman world, with the writers of the New Testament, as well as Church Fathers engaging with the language and concepts of classical culture. The medieval church was in constant contact with Jews and Muslims and engaged in a sustained engagement with Jewish and Islamic thought, one fruit of which is Western scholastic theology, which has played such an important role in the Catholic tradition. From the late fifteenth century the expansion of European colonialism and missionary activity likewise brought both Catholic and Protestant Christians into new forms of contact with non-Christian peoples and their cultures, including the great religions of the East, such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism, which encouraged further reflection both on the status of these religions themselves and on how Christian faith might be expressed through their concepts or otherwise enriched through the encounter with them. To what extent has the exercise of natural reason, or the presence of divine grace, in other religious cultures produced elements of truth, value and holiness, such that Christian theology can confirm, dialogue with, adopt or transform them?
Contemporary secondary literature evidences a wealth of surveys of the developing history of Christian theology of other religions as well as more constructive proposals about what an adequate theology of religions might be (e.g. Richards 1989; Sullivan 1992; Dupuis 1997; 2002; Kärkkäinen 2003). Less attention has been given to the sharping of theological expression over the centuries and what significance this has for appraising the nature and value of inter-religious encounter, though the literature from the emergent discipline of comparative theology represents an explicit endeavor on the part of both Catholic and Protestant scholars to explore a creative contemporary theological engagement with the thought of other religions, one which also looks back to earlier phases of the encounter as models for the present (e.g. Clooney 2010; Ward 1994).
This chapter will pick out some of the important moments in the history of Christian encounter with other religions. The first part considers the New Testament and the Church Fathers, while the second moves on to later developments in the Catholic and Protestant traditions. For more comprehensive surveys and detailed constructive accounts of Christian theologies of religions and theological expression the reader is referred to the works cited along the way. In this chapter the focus is necessarily more selective, picking out some representative figures, considering what theologies they developed and in what ways they felt the expression of Christian theology might be affected by other religious cultures.
The gospels record a number of encounters between Jesus and non-Jews, as the recipients of his healing and teaching and as exemplars of faith in him (e.g. the Roman centurion, Mt. 8:5–11; the Syro-phoenician woman, Mk. 7: 24–30; the Samaritan woman, John 4:5–42). As the early church’s mission and presence expanded beyond the confines of Palestine into the Greco-Roman world and as non-Jewish converts began to enter the church in numbers, we find the beginnings both of theological reflection about non-Christians and of theological engagement with Greco-Roman culture in order to communicate the Christian message. Increasingly, contemporary scholarship has come to explore and identify the ways in which the writings of the New Testament as a whole do engage and use this Greco-Roman culture (e.g. Aune and Brenk 2012; Stambaugh and Balch 1986; Malherbe 1989; 2000). Not surprisingly it is in the life and writings of Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles and the first theologian of the church, that we find such theological reflection and engagement present most fully present.
The New Testament portrayal of Paul’s attitude towards non-Christians is complex, since there is some difference in the tone and emphasis of the approach found in his letters and that given in Acts (O’Collins 2008: 121–161), though the teaching found within these different texts is not necessarily incompatible (Fitzmyer 1998: 611). In Romans Paul depicts non-Christians as capable of coming to knowledge of God through the contemplation of the natural world by the exercise of their natural reason and through doing what is right by the exercise of their conscience:
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen though the things he has made. (Rom. 1:19–20 NSRV).
When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written in their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness. (Rom. 2:14–15a NSRV).
However, for Paul, human history is in reality one of failure to do this and he sees non-Christian cultures and their religions as the sinful manifestation of this failure, characterized by idolatry and immorality (Rom. 1:22–32). Because of the sinful state all humanity, both Jew and Gentile, all are liable to the just condemnation of God, from which they can only be saved through the redemptive grace of Christ and by the corresponding manifestation of faith by men and women in him (Rom. 5:1–18).
In his meeting with the Athenians at the Areopagus in Acts, Paul’s approach is more irenic as he seeks to communicate the Christian message to the Athenians in a form comprehensible and acceptable to them. Paul emphasizes the ways in which the Greeks are genuinely aware of and ordered to God and the reality of the divine forbearance (Acts 17:16–34). Many elements of Paul’s speech before the Greeks at the Areopagus echo a range of Greek philosophical ideas, especially Stoic, while others echo the Old Testament and Jewish traditions, as well as ideas found in Paul’s letters (Fitzmyer 1998: 592–613). Here, then, we find a positive and constructive encounter with Greek thought and culture in order to communicate the Christian message as well as the affirmation of the fundamental orientation of all people to God (O’Collins 2008: 154–160). For the later Christian tradition, Paul’s approach to non-Christian thought and culture was summed up in his words to the Corinthians: “We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4b–5 NRSV).
When it comes to Paul’s other letters there is also plausible evidence to show that Paul himself uses Greek philosophical and rhetorical elements in them. Thus Abraham Malherbe (1987; 1989; 2000) has argued for the presence of Greek moral philosophical forms in Paul’s letters, especially in the first letter to the Thessalonians, where Paul seems to be addressing a newly converted Greek congregation. Malherbe argues that a comparison with Greek moral philosophy, especially that of the Cynic tradition, suggests that Paul is using the concepts and images of these traditions of exhortation and consolation, such as in the interplay of boldness and gentleness in the preacher. Malherbe points to striking parallels between the terms in which the Cynic Dio Chrysostom (ad 40–ca. 120) portrays the ideal Cynic preacher in contrast to charlatans and Paul’s self-description in 1 Thessalonians 2, with the suggestion that we find here Paul deliberately adopting this persona to bolster his own credentials with the Thessalonian converts (1989: 35–48; 2000: 133–164). At the same time, Malherbe draws attention to the ways that Paul transforms the reasons and motivation given for moral exhortation and consolation, integrating them into a distinctive Christian framework in 1 Thessalonians 4–5 (1989: 49–66; 2000: 81–86, 216–346).
Read in this way the letter to the Thessalonians manifests a striking early instance of how Christianity has engaged constructively with non-Christian culture. Malherbe’s arguments for such direct and substantial use of Greek culture remain subject to considerable debate, not least over the extent to which Paul was directly familiar with and used Greek philosophy rather than received its concepts and images via earlier Jewish engagement with Greek culture. However, to the extent that and by whatever means such an encounter with Greco-Roman culture is present we do see both the use and transformation of non-Christian culture by Paul, as well as the process whereby the expression of Christian teaching itself ends up being shaped by this culture.
The early Fathers of the church likewise developed theologies of the religions of the Greco-Roman world, as well as forms of theological expression influenced by its thought and wider culture. Whereas the Fathers all condemned non-Christian cultic traditions, they showed different responses to non-Christian philosophy. The more oppositional line associated with Tertullian’s declaration, “What has Jerusalem to do with Athens? What the Academy with the Church?” (De Praescriptione Haereticorum, VII, 9) was balanced by a measured openness on the part of Fathers such as Justin Martyr (c. ad 100–165). For his part Justin engages with the Greek philosophical concept of the Word or Logos, as the principle of intelligibility or reason universally immanent as “seeds of the Word” (logos spermatikos). Non-Christians living before Christ have been able to share thereby in the Word made incarnate in Christ (John 1: 1-14) and to live according to the Word and thus be saved (Dupuis 1997: 53–83; Sullivan 1992: 14–27).
The most influential Latin Father is undoubtedly Augustine (ad 354–430). Augustine’s theology of religions further articulates the negative stance found in Paul, as then found in the thought of other Fathers. Non-Christian religions are marked by polytheism, idolatry, superstitions and immorality, the products of humanity marred by original sin. The religious institutions and practices of non-Christian cultures are thus to be rejected (De Doctrina Christiana (1996) (D.D.C.) 2.18, 28; 19, 29–24, 37). In terms of whether non-Christians can be saved, Augustine, like the other Church Fathers, distinguishes between those living before the coming of Christ and those after: those living justly before, whether Jews or Gentiles, could receive salvation through Christ and belong to the “church from Abel” (Dupuis 1997: 80–3; Sullivan 1992: 23–31), but afterwards it is required for salvation that they have explicit faith in Christ and enter the church through baptism (Dupuis 1997: 90–2; Sullivan 1992: 31–39). Augustine’s position thus manifests a common understanding of the influential doctrine of “no salvation outside the church” (extra ecclesiam nulla salus) (Dupuis 1997: 84–96; Sullivan 1992: 39–43). It would be further affirmed in uncompromising terms by his disciple Fulgentius of Ruspe (ad 468–533), whose teaching was to become part of the official teaching of the church in the Council of Florence in 1442.
Moreover, a highly influential element of Augustine’s theology of religions is his doctrine of predestination. Only those to whom God gives the grace of Christ can be saved and God has predestined to give this grace to some and not to others. Thus, for Augustine God wishes the salvation of the many to whom he does offer saving grace and who respond to it. He has not given grace to those whom he foreknew would not respond well. All these are justly condemned by God because guilty either of their own personal sins or of the original sin which affects all of humanity and which makes humanity a massa damnata. While the assumption was that the Gospel had been proclaimed throughout the world and so people living after Christ could be justly condemned for the personal sin of disbelief, Augustine accepts that there may be tribes who have never heard the Gospel, but maintains that nonetheless they remain justly condemned because guilty of original sin (Dupuis 1997: 90–91; Sullivan 1992: 28–39).
In terms of the way non-Christian thought shapes the expression of his theology, however, Augustine is somewhat more open. That Augustine was very much influenced by Platonism is evident both in his biography and in his theological writings (e.g. Rist 1994), even if the degree to which he knew Plato and neo-Platonic thinkers directly or their thought through other classical authors, such as Cicero, or earlier Christian thinkers, is unclear, and the exact degree and manner in which Platonism affects his work remains a matter of debate and in need of further enquiry (Crouse 2002: 37–50). In his understanding of the situation of non-Christians in general with regard to knowledge of God Augustine’s attitude towards non-Christian philosophy is marked by considerable ambiguity and a certain pessimism: on the one hand, non-Christians are able to reach a true knowledge of God, on the other hand, this ability is hampered by original sin, which means in practice that the degree of success in coming to know the truth about God has been limited (Rist 1994: 28–31). Augustine thus affirms that Platonism has come nearest to Christianity in its concept of God (De Civitate Dei (2003) VII 9–11), but nonetheless still gave way to polytheism (D.C.D. VIII 12).
Nonetheless, Augustine explicitly promotes and explores the value of non-Christian thought in the understanding and teaching of Christian faith. In the De Doctrina Christiana, which van Fleteren characterizes as “the charter of the Christian intellectual” (van Fleteren 1995: 14), Augustine is concerned with the proper method of scriptural exegesis, the primary source and context for Patristic doctrinal reflection. Augustine becomes here the first in the Christian tradition to set out a systematic programme for how Christianity might use the non-Christian liberal arts, i.e. the natural sciences, humanist disciplines and philosophy (van Fleteren 1995: 14). Distinguishing between non-Christian religious and human institutes, he argues that the liberal arts found in the latter can play a positive role in the exegesis of the Bible (D.D.C. 19, 29; 2.25, 38–38, 56).
Augustine’s model for this is a Biblical one common among the Fathers: the “ransack of Egypt”:
If those, however, who are called philosophers happen to have said anything that is true, and agreeable to our faith, the Platonists above all, not only should we not be afraid of them, but we should even claim back for our own use what they have said, as from its unjust possessors. It is like the Egyptians, who not only had idols and heavy burdens, which the people of Israel abominated and fled from, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and fine raiment, which they secretly appropriated not on their own initiative, but on God’s instructions. (D.D.C. 2.40, 60).
Thus, the presence of incompatible religious traditions should not prevent an openness to non-Christian learning, since it also contains “liberal disciplines which are more suited to the service of the truth, as well as a number of most useful ethical principles, and some true things are to be found among them about worshipping only one God” (D.D.C. 40, 60). Christians should welcome truth found anywhere, since all truth “belongs to their Lord.” (D.D.C. 2.8, 28).
Thus, in the De Doctrina Christiana Augustine develops a positive, if qualified, account of how and why Christian theology should benefit from using non-Christian thought in order to understand and teach the meaning of the Bible better. Given both the negative character of his theology of religions and his emphasis on the effects of the Fall on the capacity of human nature and the human intellect this is all the more remarkable. Augustine’s own use of Platonic thought involves a transformation of that thought as it comes to serve the expression of Christian faith. It is, as Rist puts it, “ancient thought baptized” (Rist 1994). Both Augustine’s theology of religions and the model of Christian engagement with non-Christian thought he develops were of very considerable influence on later Western Christian theology, both Catholic and Protestant. Augustine’s work itself provides an important example of the double transformation that characterizes such Christian engagement with the thought of other religions: in Augustine’s account Christian faith does transform the non-Christian thought and culture it takes up, but at the same time the expression of Christian faith is itself transformed through this encounter.
Medieval Europe was fringed by Muslim dominated territories, with Jewish communities also present within the countries of Western Christendom. Christian attitudes towards Judaism and Islam at that time were routinely very negative and condemnatory. Yet the encounter with non-Christian thought continued to enrich the expression of Christian theology. During this period the West became aware of new resources of Greek thought, especially the works of Aristotle. Western Christian scholastic theologians also knew and used Muslim and Jewish commentaries on and adaptations of the works of Greek philosophy, as well as independently composed Jewish and Muslim philosophical and theological treatises. Christian scholastic theologians were able to regard Jewish and Muslim thinkers as having something intelligible and useful to say about the fundamental themes of God, creation and human nature.
The most influential of the Scholastic theologians was the Dominican friar, Thomas Aquinas (AD1224/5–1274). Aquinas’ theology of other religions continues the fundamental perspective developed by the Fathers, though articulated in distinctive ways (Sullivan 1992: 44–62; Dupuis 1997: 114–117). On the authority of Hebrews 11:6, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him (NRSV),” Aquinas argues that when non-Christians have belief in God and in God’s providence this constitutes an implicit faith in Christ and hence that this is sufficient for salvation (Summa Theologiae (S.T.) 2–2.1.7). As for the ancients, this means that non-Christians before Christ could thus be saved, as well as those at the beginning of Christianity who had not yet heard the Gospel (S.T. 2–2.2.7 ad 3; 2–2.10.4.3). Likewise, Aquinas affirms the necessity of baptism for salvation, yet also affirms the possibility of baptism by desire, even implicitly held, for those who were properly disposed with faith and charity (S.T. 3.68.2; 69.4). However, Aquinas, like the Fathers, argues that those coming after Christ must have explicit faith to be saved (S.T. 2–2.2.7). The Jews and Muslims of his time are deemed to be guilty of the sin of disbelief (S.T. 2–2.10). Aquinas acknowledges the possibility that there might be individual non-Christians to whom the Gospel cannot be said to have been preached (e.g. the child brought up in the wilderness or among brutes) and who are thus not culpably ignorant. For them all that is required is that they follow their natural reason and the dictates of their conscience. In such cases the need for explicit faith would be met either by the sending of a preacher or by divine revelation (De Veritate 14.11.1).
However, Aquinas’ theological engagement with non-Christian thought also shows considerable openness not only to earlier Greek thought, but also to contemporary Muslim and Jewish writing. His work is remarkable for the extent to which he uses Jewish and Islamic philosophy and for the respect and courtesy he shows his sources. Aquinas engages with Muslim thinkers such as Avicenna (Ibn Sina, d. 1037) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, d. 1198), Jewish thinkers such as Moses Maimonides (1138–1204), as well as the Liber de Causes, a Latin work of considerable importance in the Christian West based on an Arabic reworking of Proclus (Kitab al Khair [The Book of Pure Goodness]), on which Thomas wrote a commentary at the end of his life. Their philosophy exercises a considerable and positive influence on the development of his theology throughout the whole course of his work (for more detailed discussions of these engagements see Burrell 1986; 1993; 2004).
At various points in his works Aquinas justifies the use by theology of the philosophy found in Greek, Jewish and Islamic works. In Aquinas’ most influential work, the Summa Theologiae, Christian theology is depicted as a scientia, a “science” in the sense of a systematic body of knowledge, developed by reasoning from a set of first principles to further conclusions (S.T. 1.1.8). Within this theological science, the first principles are the articles of faith taken from divine revelation, which are then explored and explained through the resources of philosophical works and the exercise of human reasoning. Philosophical works are accepted as “authorities” which in different ways further the exploration of revelation. Aquinas argues that such authorities serve, “not indeed to prove faith . . . but to make manifest certain things which are handed down in revelation (hac doctrina)” (S.T. 1.1.8 ad 2). For Aquinas non-Christian philosophy thus has a legitimate and indeed very important role to play in the construction of Christian theology.
Like Augustine, Aquinas uses a number of scriptural images to characterize what happens when Christian theology engages with philosophy. In the Summa Theologiae he refers to the Pauline image of taking “every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5), also noting the use of Greek poetry in Paul’s speech in Athens (S.T. 1.8. ad 2). In another work, his commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate, he uses the more Johannine image of changing water into wine. Rather than diluting Christian teaching, engagement with philosophy is something that appropriates and transforms the thought it encounters. Referring back to Augustine’s own use of Greek thought, Aquinas argues that non-Christian philosophy can provide “likenesses” (similitudines) for revealed Christian doctrines, which can then be used in Christian theology to aid and deepen our understanding of revelation. For Aquinas such encounter manifests his wider understanding of the relationship of nature and grace: just as in general grace perfects rather than does away with nature, so revelation and Christian theology perfects non-Christian philosophy, rather than simply opposes or rejects it (De Trinitate 1.2.3.). Again, the encounter with non-Christian philosophy brings about a kind of double transformation. The water of Aristotle or of Avicenna may well become the wine of Christian theology, but the water of their thought still remains the material out of which Aquinas’ theology is formed.
From the end of the fifteenth century European trade and colonial expansion brought increased and wider forms of contact between Christians and other religions, especially sustained encounter with those of the East. While the negative appraisals of the salvific status of non-Christians of earlier periods continued to be strongly held, there also developed attempts to develop more positive accounts of the salvific status of non-Christians (Sullivan 1992: 63–140). Moreover, although very often Christian mission took the form of the transplantation of a European Christianity into other lands, there were also attempts at engagement with the thought and cultural traditions of other religion in order to develop inculturated or indigenized expressions of Christianity.
The Council of Florence (1442), adopting the language of Augustine’s disciple, Fulgentius of Ruspe, insisted on the need for explicit faith in Christ, on baptism and on membership of the church in this life for salvation:
[The Holy Roman Church] . . . firmly believes, professes and preaches that “no one remaining outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans,” but also Jews, heretics and schismatics, can become partakers of eternal life, but they will go to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and its angels, unless before the end of their life they are joined to it. (Denzinger-Schönmetzer 1351, trans. in Sullivan 1992: 66).
However, fifty years later the discovery of the Americas and the many millions of its inhabitants who could not be held to have heard the preaching of the Gospel challenged the implicit assumption underlying the degree of Florence that the peoples of the world had all heard the Gospel and had accepted or rejected it. In response, Dominican and then Jesuit scholars took up the account worked out by Thomas Aquinas about those who lived before the coming of Christ and re-applied it to cover those who had lived in later generations as well. Those who are inculpably ignorant of the Gospel and who live according to the natural reason and the dictates of their conscience should receive the grace necessary to bring them to that faith in God which is necessary for salvation (Heb. 11:6). Such can be deemed to have implicit faith in Christ and to have a desire (even if only implicit) for baptism and membership of the church. This is sufficient without the further expectation that by some means they come to explicit faith in Christ or membership of the church in this life. Some theologians such as the Jesuit scholar, Juan de Lugo (1583–1660), also extended this principle to heretics, Jews, and Muslims, who could not reasonably be said to have committed a personal act of sin of disbelief in the Gospel. Such adaptations were later to be fully accepted as part of the official teaching of the Catholic Church in the Second Vatican Council (Sullivan 1992: 44–102).
This period also witnessed encounters leading to new forms of theological expression. Aquinas again provided the framework for later engagement, with the Thomist account providing both the content of Christian doctrine and the methodological model for encounter with non-Christian thought or philosophy. Jesuit missionaries especially working in the East made pioneering attempts to engage with Eastern religious cultures, of which the work of Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), first with Buddhism and then Confucianism in China, and Robert de Nobili (1577–1656), with Hinduism in India, are outstanding examples. Positive engagement with the thought of these religions was justified as just an extension of the way Aquinas engaged with Greek, Muslim and Jewish philosophy. Thus, in China Ricci pursued a policy of accommodation to Chinese religious culture, an important, if also very controversial, element of which was acceptance of ancestor rites as permissible for Christian converts (Cronin 1955; Spence 1984). Such efforts were to be curtailed, however, with both papal condemnation of ancestor rites and the banning of Christianity itself in China in the eighteenth century, though accommodation to Chinese culture continued on a more ad hoc basis in rural areas (Bays 2012: 17–40). Likewise, in India, Roberto de Nobili encouraged inculturation into Brahmanical Hindu social and religious traditions (Sauliere 1995). An important later proponent of the same approach in the early twentieth century was the Bengali Brahmin convert, Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (1861–1907) (Lipner 1999) and shortly after Upadhyay’s death there began a sustained intellectual encounter with Hinduism undertaken by the “Calcutta School” of Jesuits, including Pierre Johanns (1885–1955) (Doyle 2006) and Richard de Smet (1916–1998) (Malkovsky 2000), for a survey of the whole period see Halbfass 1988: 36–53). This encounter between Thomism and Hinduism is also evident in the work of Raimundo Panikkar (1918–2010). In his book, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism (1964; 1981) Panikkar explicitly depicts his work as a constructive reading of Hindu texts in a way that parallels Thomas’s use of his Greek sources (Panikkar 1964: 126–131).
The twentieth and then early twenty-first centuries has been a period of considerable development in terms of attitudes towards and engagement with other religions in the Catholic Church. On the level of official teaching, the Second Vatican Council (1963–1965) promoted a positive, if nuanced, approach to other religions which has served as the reference point for later official teaching within the church as well as for theological speculation. Thus, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, while affirming the necessity of the church for salvation, also affirms the universal principle of inculpable ignorance and states that non-Christians in any age and place may attain salvation and that they can be “ordered” (ordinantur) to the church (Lumen Gentium 16). Missionaries are encouraged to be open to the riches placed by God in other religious cultures, to recognize them as “seeds of the Word,” (Ad Gentes 11) and to see them as a “preparation for the Gospel” (praeparatio evangelica) (Ad Gentes 3). The Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate: N.A.) promotes dialogue and collaboration with members of other religions, stating that the Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions. She has a high regard for the manner of life and conduct, the precepts and doctrines which, although differing in many ways from her own teaching, nevertheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men (N.A. 2) (for a sophisticated analysis of the documents and teaching of the Council on other religions see D’Costa 2014). Subsequent official teaching has further articulated the approach taken in the Second Vatican Council (Sullivan 1982: 182–98). Thus, for example, Pope John Paul II (1978–2004) re-iterated the Council’s teaching, further applying it in support of interreligious dialogue, not least the World Day of Prayer for Peace held at Assisi in 1986, where leaders from different religious traditions were gathered together to pray. A major theme in the teaching of Pope John Paul II has also been the universal presence and activity of the Spirit in all the religious cultures of the world and behind all authentic prayer (e.g. John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio 1990, 28–29).
The period has also witnessed a considerable number of Catholic theologians developing theologies of other religions in the time leading up to and since the Council. The Jesuit theologians, Jean Daniélou (1905–1974) and Karl Rahner (1904–1984) have, in particular, become representative of two trends in such theology (Dupuis 1997: 130–157)). For his part, Daniélou emphasizes the fundamental difference between other religions and Christianity as being that of nature and revelation, of preparation and reality. He sees in the covenant with Noah a “cosmic covenant” established in the order of nature, which differs from the revealed and supernatural covenant with Abraham and Christ. He distinguishes between the “cosmic” religions based on natural aspirations (though individual members of these religions may receive grace in addition) and the revealed religion, which contains these supernatural covenants (e.g. Daniélou 1964). Rahner, on the other hand, argues that all human beings are by nature always open to the transcendent and have the corresponding offer of supernatural grace at all times, which allows them to come to supernatural faith and charity. He argues further that the social and historical nature of human beings implies that the outworking of this grace should itself take a social and historical form in the religious traditions of humanity, which then should be deemed as the lawful paths by which saving grace is mediated until the Gospel is promulgated effectively and which have a status similar to that of the religion of Israel before the coming of Christ. Rahner insists, however, that all grace is referred to Christ. Those who receive grace should, thus, be said to be “anonymous Christians” and their traditions “anonymous Christianity” (Rahner 1966; 1969; 1978). Thus, whereas Daniélou is representative of a theology in which the other religions are not said to be ways of salvation in themselves, Rahner’s theology is taken as the basis for theological accounts which give the other religions a positive salvific status.
Other Catholic theologians have continued to advance and further develop versions of these two approaches. Most controversial has been the issue of whether other religions can be said to be ways of salvation in themselves. Thus, the work of another Jesuit theologian, Jacques Dupuis (1923–2004), became subject to official censure when he sought to extend Rahner’s position and argue that other religions should be regarded as ways of salvation distinct from the saving economy found in Christ and the church, a position he has described as “inclusive pluralism” (Dupuis 1997). While the exact meaning of Dupuis’ position remains unclear, some other Catholic theologians, such as Raimundo Panikkar (1981) and Paul Knitter (1995; 1996) and many Asian theologians have advanced more radically pluralist accounts, where the different religions are affirmed as equal and separate paths to the divine mystery. In response the Catholic Church has felt obliged to make clear that such radical pluralist theologies go beyond the scope of official Catholic teaching (as in Dominus Iesus, issued in the year 2000 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith). As another major Catholic theologian of religions, Gavin D’Costa, has argued, official Catholic teaching is best represented as silent about the salvific status of other traditions in themselves, while open to the presence of divine grace within the lives and traditions of other religions (e.g. D’Costa 2000; 2014).
Contemporary Catholic theologians have also been leading figures in the development of the modern discipline of “comparative theology,” the term that has (not entirely happily) come to characterize sustained Christian theological engagement with the thought of other religions, especially as carried out in the Western academy. A leading figure in this, the American Jesuit Francis Clooney (1950–) (e.g. Clooney 1993; 2001; 2010), has described comparative theology as:
acts of faith seeking understanding which are rooted in a particular faith tradition but which, from that foundation, venture into learning from one or more other faith traditions. This learning is sought for the sake of fresh theological insights that are indebted to the newly encountered tradition/s as well as the home tradition. (Clooney 2010: 10).
As Francis Clooney himself emphasizes, the exercise of comparative theology as such is not to be confused with theology of religions and does not presuppose any particular theological stance about the revealed or salvific status of other religions (Clooney 2010: 9–16). Clooney’s own approach is characterized by close reading of particular religious texts from the different Hindu traditions and then reflection on what it means to read Christian texts alongside them.
The variety of traditions which might be grouped together within the general category of Protestant Christianity makes any account highly selective. In comparison to the Catholic tradition the relative lack of prominence given to official teaching authorities and the greater freedom for theological speculation and expression further complicates the picture. For a more comprehensive treatment the reader is referred to a number of surveys of Protestant approaches to other religions (e.g. Richards 1989; Kärkkäinen 2003). Here we can only identify certain important moments and figures within the evolution of Protestant encounter with other religions and the way these respond to each other over time. A pivotal point in modern developments in this was the Enlightenment and the rise of Liberal Protestantism (Kärkkäinen 2003: 90–102).
Martin Luther (1483–1546) and John Calvin (1509–1564) both affirmed the Augustinian position in its uncompromising form and hence in effect the position of the Council of Florence, albeit without the stricture on non-Catholic Christians and with a corresponding condemnation of Catholic Christians. Thus, Luther affirmed that explicit faith in Christ and membership in the church were necessary for someone to be saved:
For where Christ is not preached, there is no Holy Spirit to create, call and gather the Christian Church, and outside it no one can come to the Lord Christ . . . But outside the Christian Church (that is, where the Gospel is not) there is no forgiveness, and hence no holiness. (Luther (1959) Large Catechism 2.45, 56).
He accepted that there could be natural knowledge of God and was willing to give a limited value to non-Christian philosophy, but drew a distinction between such knowledge and saving knowledge of God, which meant knowing the God revealed in the Cross and having explicit faith in Christ. Even the knowledge other religions could have of God has in fact been perverted by them into idolatry. At the same time, Luther was open to the possibility that Jews and non-righteous Christians before Christ might be saved, through the gift of God’s grace.
For his part, Calvin fully affirmed both Augustine’s more pessimistic account of the corruption of the human ability to know God and live morally good lives after the Fall and his doctrine of predestination. Because of sin other religions were useless and marred by idolatry and immorality and only served to justify the condemnation of non-Christians. All non-Christians both before and after Christ were therefore reprobate sinners and justly condemned to hell. At the same time he, likewise, allowed that people of the religion of Israel could be saved through Christ. However, Calvin emphatically rejected his colleague Zwingli’s suggestion that other non-Christians who lived before Christ might also be saved (Kärkkäinen 2003: 71–77).
The expansion of Protestant missionary and colonial activity from the eighteenth to the twentieth century brought its own increased contact and pioneering engagements with other religious cultures, with further attempts to develop indigenized forms of Christian teaching. Thus, in India, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg (1682–1719) at the beginning of the eighteenth century worked in the Danish missionary colony at Tranquebar in South India and undertook serious study of Hindu beliefs as a precondition for engaging in successful missionary work, translating the Bible into Tamil and engaging in debate with Malabarian Brahmins. Later, in the Baptist mission at Serampore founded in 1800, William Carey (1761–1834) became proficient in Bengali, translating the Bible and other Christian texts into that language (for these figures and their wider context see Frykenberg 2008: 142–168, 301–343). Likewise, Protestant missionaries made use of Sanskrit, developed both in pursuit of an Indian Christian liturgy and for the propagation of Christian treatises, imitating the genres of Hindu works, and which become a focus for debate between Brahmins and Christians over the claims of the two religions in the nineteenth century (for a full account of this see Young 1981).
In China, Protestant missionary scholars and then Chinese converts from the nineteenth century also sought to engage with Chinese culture. Thus, working for the London Missionary Society (LMS) Robert Morrison (1782–1834) learned Chinese and produced the first Protestant Bible in the language. A little later James Legge (1815–1897) began to translate the Chinese classics into English, carrying on this monumental work subsequently with the Chinese convert and scholar Way Tao (1828–1897) (Bays 2012: 41–65). Such efforts flourished more fully in the twentieth century and with the establishment of the Sino-Foreign Protestant Establishment (SEPE), whose members both promoted Christianity and carried out scholarly engagement with Chinese religious culture, such as in the work of scholar Wu Leichman (1870–1944), who sought to reconcile Confucianism and Christianity (Bays 2012: 92–120).
Sustained contact with other religions also contributed to a change towards a more positive attitude towards other religions themselves. By the beginning of the twentieth century a widespread account of other religions, known as “fulfilment theory,” acknowledged the presence of truth and value in other religious cultures, viewed as fulfilled or completed by, rather than in opposition to or abolished by, Christianity. In the case of Hinduism a major voice for this was the Scottish Presbyterian, J.N. Farquhar (1861–1929), in his book, The Crown of Hinduism (1913). In the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries this account of other religions was either rejected in favor of more straightforward restatement of traditional doctrine or further developed into accounts affirming the presence of the Trinity and of divine revelation and grace in other religions, or even superseded by more radically pluralist accounts.
The Enlightenment and its aftermath had an immense impact on Protestant approaches to other religions. The Enlightenment stressed the priority of reason unconstrained by religious authority and empirical observation in constructing religious accounts and appraising beliefs. In its wake, and in opposition to Enlightenment rationalism, Romanticism emphasized the role of human experience and imagination. A further product of Romanticism was an emphasis on the historically conditioned nature of human cultures. All these led to radical re-appraisals of what Christianity was and should be, what its relation to other religions was, and by extension what the nature and value of any religion might be (Richards 1989: 25–52; Kärkkäinen 2003: 90–102).
An important product of this was Liberal Protestantism, which embodied an openness to radical revision of Christian beliefs according to the principles of the Enlightenment and its aftermath. Thus, one of the founding fathers of Liberalism, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), developed the experiential category of “feeling” or “intuition” (Gefühl) and the “feeing of absolute dependence” or of “God-consciousness” as the central characteristics of religion in general. A continuity of the human and the divine is thus affirmed, in that the experience of the divine is as a reality immanent within each human subject. Christ represents the one who had this God-consciousness to the highest degree and hence Christianity can be said to be the absolute religion. Yet all religions can be regarded as valid expressions of this same feeling or consciousness.
Likewise, Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) played a leading role in the emergence of the “History of Religions School,” which dominated the study of approach to religion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This school located Christianity within the historical evolution of religions in general as determined by their social and political contexts. For Troeltsch all religions are the expression of the encounter or union between the human spirit and the Supreme Spirit, experienced as both immanent within the individual person, while also transcendent. Such an experience is open to everyone. Christianity is thus to be regarded as one expression of the experience of this relation within the particular historical context in which it developed, no different from any other religion in this regard, except in the extent of its spread. The religions just represent different historically conditioned manifestations of a common experience.
In seeking to respond to the challenges of the Enlightenment and its aftermath such Liberal Protestant accounts radically revised what counts as Christianity as they developed and endorsed more general accounts of authentic religion. Christianity and the other religions became members of a common genus that is religion. Such an approach naturally leads to a radically pluralist account of religions and the search for a common essence or set of characteristics and values that can be found in all religions. Much of later Protestant theology and theology of religions can be viewed as a reaction to or an adaption in different ways of the Liberal Protestant approach.
One response was the total rejection of the radical forms of Liberalism represented by Schleiermacher and Troeltsch by Karl Barth (1886–1968) and the other leading figures (Henrick Kraemer (1888–1965) and Emile Brunner (1889–1966)) of what came to be known as neo-orthodoxy or dialectical theology. Here we find a retrieval and re-appli cation of one of the core doctrines of the Reformation leaders: the contrast of grace (and hence revelation and salvation) and fallen human nature (and hence its capacity for knowledge of God and moral rectitude).
Karl Barth is arguably the single most influential Protestant theologian of the twentieth century. In opposition to the accounts of religion developed by Schleiermacher and Troeltsch, Barth affirms revelation as the “abolition” (Aufhebung) of religion (Barth 1956 Church Dogmatics I.2: 280–361). Religion is labeled as “unbelief,” as the self-assertion of sinful man of a substitute for revelation. Revelation, on the other hand, is the Word of God, a transcendent reality and event entering into human history, contained in the person of Christ, the Bible and expressed through preaching of the Word. Revelation and saving grace are thus wholly transcendent gifts of God. Yet Aufhebung is also the “elevation” of religion in that revelation transforms religion from being the sinful self-assertion of man alone to being the vehicle through which God communicates the Word and saving grace. As uniquely transformed in this way Christianity is the “true religion,” the one religion for humanity, the means by which human beings can come to be “justified sinners” (I.2: 344–345).
Taken by itself, then, no religion can be salvific. Barth is consistent, therefore, in rejecting the salvific value of other religions, even though acknowledging often remarkable phenomenological similarities with Christianity. In his later writings Barth is more open to affirming the truths and values to be found in other religions, without giving up on the logic of his earlier position. At the same time, Barth in the eyes of at least some of his interpreters appeared to affirm the final salvation of all human beings because of the sovereignty of divine grace, whether they belong to Christianity or non-Christian religions (Barth 1961, Church Dogmatics IV. 3.1: 355–356).
Barth’s theology has remained very influential, though most Protestant theologians have sought to explore less oppositional relationships between revelation and human cultures. The Evangelical and Pentecostal traditions within Protestantism in general are the ones which continue to embody the kind of stance taken by Barth, though with various qualifications (for outlines of the leading figures of neo-orthodoxy and these wider traditions see Richards 1989: 14–24, Kärkkäinen 2003: 139–142, 144–150, 174–189, 261–281).
Most modern Protestant theologies of other religions would represent forms of mediation between traditional Protestant doctrine and the kind of openness to other religions fostered in classical Liberalism and developed as a result of missionary encounter with the religions themselves. The mainstream Protestant churches rooted in the traditions of Luther and Calvin, as well as the Anglican or Episcopalian traditions, generally embody the type of mediation found in these theologies, in which the uniqueness of Christ continues to be affirmed along with an openness to the salvation of members of other traditions, the activity of the Trinity in other religions, and the presence of elements of truth, value and holiness within them (Kärkkäinen 2003: 123–134, 151–164, 224–260).
A sophisticated and influential theology which does explicitly mediate between traditional Protestant doctrine and Liberalism is that found in the highly regarded work of Wolfgang Pannenberg (1928–2014). A student of Barth, nonetheless Pannenberg sought to retrieve religion as a positive category and reality having a less oppositional relationship with revelation. A central feature of his account of religions is that they represent rival truth claims. Religions are the historical contexts where there arise different claims about the divine and it is within these contexts that such claims are further experienced and tested out (Pannenberg 1990: 119–188). Nonetheless, Pannenberg rejects the reduction of Christianity to just one form of historical experience as found in classical Liberal theology (and which he finds reflected in contemporary Christian pluralist theologies). Rather, in Christianity we find a unique revelation of God in Christ in which the universal saving revelation for all human kind is made present proleptically. The idea of the proleptic is central to Pannenberg’s theology of revelation, whereby the future reality of the eschaton breaks into earlier reality. At the same time, Pannenberg, like very many other twentieth- and twenty-first-century theologians, affirms that the Spirit makes the revelation and saving grace found in Christ, and hence in Christianity, also present and active in other religions (Pannenberg 1990: 96–106).
Pannenberg argues that the meeting of religions has always been an important part of the process by which rival truth claims are encountered, subjected to rational inquiry, and thereby the truth itself more fully grasped. Christianity is by its nature syncretistic in character, accepting and adapting the elements of truth and value it finds in other religions as it seeks to understand and express revelation better. The inherent provisionality of any Christian grasp of revelation until fully revealed in the eschaton justifies this process and hence the value of further interreligious encounter. In Pannenberg’s theology we find, then, a further example of, as well as a sophisticated theological argument for, the kind of positive engagement with other religions in the search for better theological expression which we have identified in earlier phases of Christian encounter. As Pannenberg puts it:
It is the encounter of conflicting truth claims that challenges each religious tradition to reaffirm itself in facing these challenges. But it can never mean to give up on the specific truth claims of one’s own tradition . . . In order to engage in genuine interreligious dialogue, Christianity should deal with the situation of religious pluralism in a different way. It must be open and ready to accept whatever truth the Christian can accept and learn from other religious traditions in order to incorporate those elements of truth into our own understanding of God and his revelation. (Panenberg 1990: 103).
The modern Anglican tradition has sought to engage both with traditional Christian doctrine and with the Enlightenment emphasis on reason and experience in a way that represents a measured and creative appropriation of the Liberal tradition. Modern Anglicanism has also sought to respond theologically and dialogically in positive ways to the concrete encounter with other religions in Britain and the world as whole. One of the most significant contemporary Anglican theologians to have done so is Keith Ward (1938–), a leading philosophical theologian, who has combined interest in the interaction of religion and science with an interest in the theological encounter of religions. The result is a major representative of the comparative theology exemplified in the Catholic tradition by Francis Clooney.
Ward takes major theological themes and considers them in the light of a number of different religious traditions, as well as more recent developments in Western scientific, philosophical and historical perspectives. His major and mature work is found in a four-volume series (Ward 1994; 1996; 1998; 2000) which he describes as a “systematic Christian theology, undertaken in a comparative context” (2000: 339). Ward argues that the comparative approach in theology is the proper theological response to the contemporary world. Theology is faced by an awareness of the diversity of religious traditions and hence of convergent and divergent accounts of the major themes with which theology is concerned. In this context theology should consider and engage with other religions just as in the past it has engaged with the ideas and cultures current at the time:
I think the time has come when it is positively misleading to consider religious traditions in isolation. Theologians have in fact always taken their interpretative clues from philosophical and cultural factors not confined to Christianity. Aquinas, for example, took Aristotelian philosophy, well seasoned with Platonism, and used it to rethink Christian doctrine in the thirteenth century. For a short time, his works were even banned from the University of Paris; but it was not long before they became definitive for the Roman Catholic Church. Does it make sense to treat the content of a religion as a self-contained corpus, as though it at least was immune from external influence, and as though light could not be thrown upon it by a consideration of claims made by other faiths? (Ward 1994: 37).
Ward argues that to meet the different contemporary challenges there is need for a modification of Aquinas’ concept of theology as sacra doctrina. While accepting a definition of theology as the “rational elucidation of revelation” (1994:1) he argues that since contemporary theology is faced by a variety of claims for divine revelation, as well as by critical objections to any claim for revelation by developments in modern historical and scientific knowledge, theology cannot be content just to assume the self-evident truth of a given revelation, as Aquinas does, but has to go further back and consider the origins and status of revelation itself and only then to offer a reasoned account justifying a particular revelation (1994: 7, 36). In regards to other major themes, theology likewise should be open to rethinking beliefs in the contemporary context. For Ward, theology is, thus, a “self-critical discipline, aware of the historical roots of its own beliefs, a pluralistic discipline, prepared to engage in conversation with a number of living traditions; and an open-ended discipline, being prepared to revise beliefs if and when it comes to seem necessary” (1994: 48).
Radically pluralist theologies are more prominent in contemporary Protestant accounts of other religions than in the Catholic tradition and have considerable resonances with the classical Liberal theologies found in Schleiermacher and Troeltsch (e.g. John Hick 1973; 1989; Wilfred Cantwell Smith 1981; Alan Race 1982). The most prominent Western pluralist, John Hick (1922–2012) moved gradually from a theocentric (Hick 1973) to a Reality-centric account using Kantian epistemological categories (Hick 1989). All religions represent different experiences and conceptions of the Real, which remains in itself beyond any such experience and conception. The different religions are complementary insights into the Real and all the great religions have a common soteriological pattern concerned with the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness and with affirmation of the ethical Golden Rule (Hick: 1989). Pluralist accounts of this sort are common both in the Western academy and in Asian theologies, though not adopted officially by any Protestant tradition and subject in both contexts to much criticism both concerning their theological adequacy and conceptual coherence (see Richards 1989: 76–102; D’Costa 2000; Kärkkäinen 2003: 282–352).