RELIGIOUS PLURALISM: ORTHODOX APPROACHES
RELIGIOUS PLURALISM: ORTHODOX APPROACHES
In this section an attempt is
made to evaluate the developments of Christian attitudes toward people of the
other faith-traditions. To start with, a
bird’s eye view of the official positions of both Catholic and Protestant churches
are evaluated. Then an examination of the orthodox views expressed under three
different labels namely exclusivist, inclusivist and relativist, are done.
10.1 Earlier
Attitude
Christianity,
from its inception, had to face diverse religions and philosophies as it
penetrated varied forms of cultural boundaries.1 The same situation continued until the second
and third centuries A.D.2 Subsequently, the issue was at the background
for 1500 years, emerging only occasionally and “in the nineteenth century it
began to appear again as an issue of major importance for the church and in our
day it is perhaps more vital than ever before.”3
The nineteenth century missionary attitude toward other faith-traditions
was negative. Marcus Bray Brooke maintains,
“with a few exceptions, the predominant attitude of nineteenth century
missionaries was one of stark hostility to Hinduism.”4 But by the end of the century and the
beginning of the twentieth century the missionary attitude towards other
faith-traditions witnessed a marked change.
This change was obvious in the official declarations of both the
Catholic and the Protestant churches.
10.2 The
Catholic Church
The traditional Catholic attitude towards other faith-traditions was
wholly negative. This negative attitude
was made vivid in the declaration of the Council of Florence (1438-45) i.e.,
“there is no salvation outside the Church”.5 But this negative attitude took a complete
new turn in the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). The official declaration of the Council on
the relation of the Church with other faith-traditions reveals the Church’s
openness to people of other faiths:
She therefore
urges her sons, using prudence and charity, to join members of other religions
in discussions and collaboration. While
bearing witness to their own Christian faith and life, they must acknowledge
those good spiritual and moral elements and social and cultural values found in
other religions, and preserve and encourage them.6
This
declaration marks the beginning of a new era of inter-religious understanding
between the Catholics and the people of other faith-traditions. For Marcus Braybrooke, “it is since the
Second Vatican Council that Roman Catholic writers have started to take full place
in the on-going discussions.”7 In the words of Eeuwout Klootwijk “a
watershed in the relations of the Church with followers of other religions was
the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).”8
As
the Church in India India India Vatican
declaration was a great boost for such attempts. In other words, “by making a positive
attitude towards other religions normative for the whole church and calling for
dialogue, the council approved the efforts that were being made in India in
this regard and obliged the Indian church to commit herself more earnestly and
fully to the cause of dialogue.”10
Although some call the Vatican
10.3 The
Protestant Church
Parallel to the stand of the Catholic Christians, the Protestants too maintained
that there was no salvation outside Christianity. In consonance with the changing world
scenario, for the first time the missionaries of the world met together at Edinburgh
The Second World Missionary Conference took place at Jerusalem
The next missionary conference was held at Tambaram in 1938. the Tambaram conference was dominated by
Hendric Kraemer’s The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World. Kraemer following Karl Barth maintained a
radically negative attitude towards people of other faith-traditions. His stand was vehemently criticized by Indian
thinkers and theologians who had their early nurturing in the rich Hindu
soil. However, the subsequent missionary
conference followed a more positive outlook about other faith-traditions.
The World Council of Churches too adopted a positive approach to other
faith-traditions, from its early days. It
formed a subunit called “Dialogue with people of living faiths and ideologies,”
in 1977. After two years of serious
consultations and discussions, WCC issued a set of guidelines for dialogue with
the people of living faiths and ideologies.
The gist of the guidelines, according to, Sreenivasa Rao is “while calling on the Christians
to keep themselves open rather than closed, towards the faiths of our
neighbours, the ‘Guidelines’ insist upon the Christians to witness fully to
their deepest convictions.”18 In the later WCC gatherings, more positive
approach to people of other faith-traditions concerned the attention of
all. Yet it is clear that, the Church
always used inclusive language in this regard.
10.4 Individual
Thinkers
Apart from the openness shown by these two church-bodies, there were many
profound thinkers who were and are committed to the issue of religious
pluralism. Some of them held exclusivist
views, others inclusivist view and still others relativist view. These views are not the result of a process
of evolutionary development. Rather,
they exist side by side at all times.
Similarly each of them influences different sets of people. In fact Alan
Race was the first scholar to use the terms exclusivism, inclusivism and
relativism to categorize scholars who were representing certain specific view
points.
10.5 Exclusivist
View
Those who subscribe to this
view hold that, ‘only one’s own religion is true and good; others are
erroneous, false or evil’. A few such
representatives are Karl Barth, Hendrik Kraemer, David Lochhead, A.C. Bouquet, Ajith
Fernando etc.
10.5.1
Karl Barth
Barth
distinguished between revelation and religion.
For him, Christianity was revelation and all other faith-traditions were
religions. In revelation God reveals
himself to people whereas in religion man/woman is attempting to play the role
of God. So, for Barth “religion is
unbelief,”19 and Church is the locus
of true religion because it is founded on the basis of revelation. In his words “we have to give particular
emphasis to the fact that through grace the Church lives by grace, and to that
extent it is the locus of true religion.”20
10.5.2
Hendrik Kraemer
Following
Barth, Kraemer maintained what is called “Biblical realism”. For him what is revealed in the Bible is
absolutely true. Christianity is derived
from the revelation given in the Bible. Therefore, it is true. All other faith-traditions are human attempts
and therefore, they are false. He
claimed ethical superiority for Christianity.
He says, “this radically religious revolutionary ethic upsets all human
thinking, and just as the Christian faith is the crisis of all religions, so
the Christian ethic is the crisis of all ethic and ethics.”21
He claimed a unique place for the church, too. In his own words, “just as the prophetic
religion of Biblical realism is a religion Sui generis, so the Christian
Church according to the conception of the New Testament is a community Sui
generic.”22 Kraemer conceived other religion to be in error
and wrote, “the other religions describe themselves as “paths to salvation”,
and indeed they are in the end paths which man has discovered and has made for
himself. That is their radical and
fundamental error in which, however, from time to time, the truth or something
pretty close to it can begin to dawn.”23
About
The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, it is remarked that
“this was aimed at attacking the “Laymen’s Report and the liberal writings of
W.E. Hocking.”24 Because, prior to Kraemer, Hocking had
proposed what is called the theory of re-conception. According to Marcus Braybrooke, the theory of
discontinuity25 was the outcome of Kraemer’s faithful
adherence to Karl Barth.
Another
writer who reflects Barth’s idea is David Lochhead. He says, “a theology of isolation might seem
to be required by any Christian doctrine of special revelation.”26
For him God’s activity in Jesus Christ cannot be equivalent to any other
act. And he says, “the theology of
hostility, it should be noted, has substantial biblical support.”27
A.C.
Bouquet also claims superiority to Christianity. He writes, “let no one suppose that I wish to
promote Christianity simply because it is my own religion. I only do so because to the end of a long and
full lifetime I still believe more than ever that it is the true and best of
all faith, rich in marvelous recuperative powers and in the capacity for
objective self-criticism.”28
According
to Ajith Fernando “the Christian approaches the unbelievers with a sense of
authority, an authority not intrinsic to himself, but wholly derived from God
whose word he proclaims.”29 The Christian revelation judges other
revelations, “so the Christian approaches any discussion on religion from the
perspective of conversion.”30
About
the result of exclusivist Christian claims Owen C. Thomas remarks that the
resulting practical attitude toward other religions is what Hocking calls
“radical displacement”; they are to be conquered and replaced by
Christianity. The general outlook of the
scholars who represented exclusivist claims was that all religions should be
replaced by Christianity.
10.6 Inclusivist
View
According
to this view ‘all religions are inspired and empowered by God but find their
fulfillment only in one religion or saviour’.
Eeuwout Klootwijk maintains that, “a strong exclusivist conviction is
that, ultimately, God will sum up all things in Jesus Christ, therefore, by
whatever way people come to know God, it is ultimately Jesus Christ who is
himself the final cause of salvation.”[31]
The
earliest form of inclusivist view was found in the theories of
fulfillment. Jose Kuttianimattathil
underlines the implications of fulfillment theory as “according to the
fulfillment theory, Jesus Christ is unique, because in him also is to be found
the fulfillment of the most profound aspirations of human beings and salvation
is made possibly only because of his life, death and resurrection. He is universal because, anyone who is saved,
is saved through him.”[32] The re-conception theory of W.E. Hocking also
alludes to the fulfillment pattern. He
envisaged a world faith through the process of re-conception. T. Slater, who laid the foundation for the
implementation of fulfillment theology, said that ‘all those noble and true in
the non-Christian religions would be taken over into Christianity for their
complete fulfillment’.[33]
One
of the popular figures associated with the fulfillment theology was J. N.
Farquhar. The title of his book The Crown of Hinduism, is evident of his
commitment to that conviction. He “took
this fulfillment theology to its extremity by demanding the death of Hinduism
in order to give place to Christianity.”[34] William Miller, the principal of Madras Christian
College
Another
pattern of inclusivist view is that Christ is already present in other
religions. Kenneth Cragg maintains that,
“authors may write to the ‘unknown Christ’ or the ‘anonymous Christ’ of other
faiths. But the paradox, rather, is not
that he is unknown or anonymous. It is
that they know him by their own naming.”[36] A similar idea is found in the works of M.M.
Thomas, Marcus Braybrooke, Panikkar and S.J. Samartha. Of course, Panikkar and S.J. Samartha had changed
their stand in their later writings.
Scholars
who viewed other faith-traditions as requiring fulfillment had their own
interpretations of other faith-traditions.
For example, Karl Rahner said “Christianity understands itself as the
absolute religion, intended for all men, which cannot recognize any other
religion beside itself as of equal right.”[37] Whatever good is found in other
faith-traditions belongs to Christ.
Therefore, the religious people who are outside the visible Christianity
are called “anonymous Christians”. He
says, “it would be wrong to regard the pagan as someone who has not yet been
touched in any way by God’s grace and truth.”[38] Hence the missionary always has a duty to
bring this fact explicitly. Summarizing
the view of Rahner, Sreenivasa Rao says, “all non-Christians belonging to
various religions, he said, are anonymous Christians, and are within the sphere
of divine grace.”[39]
A
similar but more orthodox view was that of Hans Kung. According to Sreenivasa Rao ,“though the
religions of the world are recognized by Kung as ways of salvation for their
followers, their salvation will have to be confirmed finally by the saviour of
the world, Jesus Christ through communion with him.”[40]
Paul
Tillich proposed a new pattern to find out the presence of God in other
faith-traditions. He “acknowledged the
existence and validity of revelation and salvation in all the non-Christian
religions, but at the same time, he affirmed that the crucified Jesus is the
most valuable criterion for discerning God’s activity within the non-Christian
religions.”[41]
Heinz
Robert Schlette recognized the significance of other faith-traditions for a
meaningful Christian theology. Yet he
concluded that there are ordinary and extraordinary ways of salvation. In his words “the ordinary ways of salvation
represented by the religions lead to the one living God, it is true, but,
relatively speaking they are paths through the darkness while the extraordinary
way of special sacred history, that is to say now, the Church, is one which
leads through clear light.”[42]
Jacques
Dupuis represents the general perception of Catholics about other faiths. Along with other leading Catholic thinkers
who proposed Jesus to be the norm to evaluate other faith-traditions, Dupuis
says, “the mystery of Jesus Christ, the center of Christian faith, could only
be the principle of understanding, the yardstick by which the data of other
religious traditions would be measured.”[43] He was also of the opinion that all religions
do not have equal stand in the salvation history. Hence he proposed that “far from fostering
exclusivism, Christian Christocentrism is capable of integrating, in their
difference, all religious experiences into a truly Catholic – inclusive and
universal theology.”[44]
10.6.1 General
Analysis
Most
of the inclusivists held either uniqueness of Jesus Christ or
Christocentrism. Some of them are, Jacques
Dupuis,[45] Michael
Amaladoss,[46] Bede Griffiths[47] and
Ajith Fernando.[48] A more dynamic and constructive
Christocentric perspective is found in the theology of M.M. Thomas. For him all the positive changes that are
taking place in other faith-traditions are the work of Christ. He writes, “today we recognize universally
the possibility and even the necessity of Jesus Christ taking form in different
cultures and re-forming them from within.”[49] In a nut-shell “the Christocentric models
affirm the universal salvific will of God as well as the centrality of the
person and work of Jesus Christ for the salvation of all, while accepting
participatory forms of mediation by other saviour figures and the salvific
value of other religions.”[50]
Earlier
Panikkar had maintained that Christ is present in Hinduism and that Christians
should find the presence of Christ in Hinduism.
He was also of the opinion that anything good in Hinduism is as a result
of the presence of Christ. In his Unknown
Christ of Hinduism Panikkar went to the extent of saying that, Hinduism is
a form of Christianity in potency. It has
to die and rise again in Christ.
Eeuwout
Klootwijk raises two serious questions about the credibility of the inclusivist
perspective for inter-religious dialogue.
One was, ‘does not the inclusivist attitude assume a one way road?’[51] and the second is “when we start from
inclusivist premises, can any dialogue between people of different faiths be a
real dialogue.”[52]
10.7 Relativist
View
Those
who hold that all religions are equal and that lead to the same goal are called
relativists. Arnold Toynbee, the famous
historian advocated the relativist view.
In his earlier days he had maintained the superiority of Christianity
and in his later writings he proposed the relativist character of all
faith-traditions. His view was that all
religions come from God and they represent some fact of God’s truth. So he writes, “I think that it is possible
for us, while holding that our own convictions are true and right, to recognize
that, in some measure, all the higher religions are also revelations of what is
true and right.”[53] Even after recognizing the existing
differences between faith-traditions he says: “… we should recognize that they
too are light radiating from the same source from which our own religion
derives its spiritual light.”[54] He also points to the fact that Christians
also should strive ‘to win the attention and good will of the followers of
those other faiths’.
Ernst
Troeltsch was another scholar who held the relativist perspective in his
refined scholarly works. To him history
is not concerned with abstract and the Universal but with the concrete and
relative.[55] He firmly maintained that as Christianity is
superior in certain cultural backgrounds, other religions can claim superiority
in different cultural settings.
A.
Pushparajan also maintained that “the different religions, despite their
differences are fundamentally one, because saints of parallel heights are found
in all of them.”[56] He insisted that ‘Christianity should accept
equality of all religions’.[57] Kuncheria Pathil writes that “all religions
are in fact activated by the saving spirit of God and have a salvific role to
play in God’s plan of salvation, though all religions may equally become
distorted due to human sinfulness.”[58] He is right in indicating the human elements
involved in the faith-traditions.
Relativist
perspective has been criticized by many scholars. Arvind Nirmal writes, “any talk of a radical
relativization of all religions’ trends to undermine religions.”[59] In the words of Panikkar “such liberals,
whether Christian or Hindu, who claim that we are the same and that
‘ultimately’ the two religions are ‘transcendentally’ one, overlook the
concrete and historical religious situation of real people.”[60] P.D. Devanandan, in Preparation for Dialogue maintained that the practice of relativism
by Hindus is to cover up all the sects of Hinduism and to continue
secularism. A genuine criticism is
raised by S.J. Samartha, that, “the affirmation that all religions are the same
makes little room for critical interaction between them.”[61]
The
exclusivist maintained separatist attitude, the inclusivists propounded
continuity between Christianity and other religions and the relativists
entertain equality of religions.
1
A.C. Bouquet, The Christian Faith and Non-Christian Religions (New York
Brothers,
1958), p. 335.
2
E. C. Dewick, The Gospel and Other Faiths (London: The Canterbury Press,
1948), p. 11.
3
E. C. Dewick, The Gospel and Other Faiths (London: The Canterbury Press,
1948), p. 11.
4
Marcus Braybrooke, The Undiscovered Christ, A Review of Recent Developments
in the
Christian
Approach to the Hindu (Madras: CLS, 1973), p. 1.
5
Valson Thampu, “Christian Spirituality in a Religiously Plural Context”, NCC
Review, Vol.
CIX. No. 1
(January 1989), p. 4.
6
John Hick and Brain Hebblethwaite, ed., Christianity and Other Religions,
Selected
7
Marcus Braybrooke, The Undiscovered Christ (Madras: CLS, 1973), p. 31.
8
Eeuwout Klootwijk, Commitment and Openness: The Inter-Religious Dialogues
and
Theology
of Religions in the Work of Stanley
9
Jose Kuttianimattathil, Practice and Theology of Inter-religious Dialogue
(Bangalore
Jyothi
Publications, 1995), pp.75-76.
10 Ibid.,
p. 77.
11 CH. Sreenivasa Rao, ed., Inter-Faith
Dialogue and World Community (Madras: CLS, 1991),
p. 29.
Review,
Vol. CX, No.2 (February 1990), p. 76.
13 Eeuwout Klootwijk, op. cit., p. 103.
14 Wesley Ariarajah, Hindus and
Christians: A Century of Protestant Ecumenical Thought
(Michigan:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991), p. 18.
15 Ibid.,
p. 27.
16 Ibid.,
p. 32.
17 CH. Sreenivasa Rao, ed., op. cit., p. 21.
18 Ibid,
p. 31.
19 Karl Barth, “The Revelation of God as
the Abolition of Religion”, Christianity and Other
Religions,
ed., by John Hick and Brain Hebblethwaite, op.
cit., p. 35.
20 Ibid.,
p. 33.
House
Press, 1938), p. 88.
22 Ibid.,
p. 415.
23 Hendrik Kraemer, Why Christianity
of all Religions?, Trans. By Hubert
Hoskins
(Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press, 1962), pp. 118-119.
24 CH. Sreenivasa Roa, ed., op. cit., p. 23.
25 Marcus Braybrooke, The Undiscovered
Christ, op. cit., p. 3.
26 David Lochhead, The Dialogical
Imperative, A Christian Reflection on Inter-faith Encounter
(New York:
ORBIS Books, 1988), p. 11.
27 Ibid.,
p. 17.
28 A.C. Bouquet, The Christian Faith
and Non-Christian Religions, op. cit.,
p. 15.
29 Ajith Fernando, The Christian’s Attitude Towards World Religions (Mumbai: Gospel
Literature
Services, 1980), p. 158.
30 Ibid.,
p. 182.
[31]
Eeuwout Klootwijk, op. cit., p. 238.
[32]
Jose Kuttianimattathil, op. cit., p.
238.
[33]
CH. Sreenivasa Rao, ed., op. cit., p.
19.
[34]
Ibid.
[35]
Ibid.
[36]
Kenneth Cragg, The Christ of Other Faiths
(Great Britain: ISPCK, 1986), p. 4.
[37]
Karl Rahner, “Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions”, Christianity and Other
Religions, ed., by John Hick & Paul
F. Knitter, op. cit., p. 56.
[38] Ibid., p. 75.
[39]
CH. Sreenivasa Rao, ed., op. cit., p.
30.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Ibid., p. 31.
[42]
Heinz Robert Schlette, Towards a Theology
of Religions (London: Burns & Oates, 1966),
P. 104.
[43]
Jacques Dupuis, Jesus Christ at the
Encounter of World Religions, Op. cit.,
p. 242.
[44] Ibid., p. 247.
[45]
Jose Kuttianimattathil, op. cit., p.
248.
[46] Ibid., p. 253.
[47] Ibid., 263.
[48] Ajith Fernando, op. cit., p. 43.
[49]
M.M. Thomas, Man and the Universe of
Faiths (Madras: CLS, 1975), p. 151.
[50]
Jose Kuttianimattathil, op. cit., p.
242.
[51]
Eeuwout Klootwijk, op. cit., p. 9.
[52] Ibid., p. 10.
Press,
1958)), pp.99-100.
[54] Ibid., p. 100.
[55]
CH. Sreenivasa Rao, ed., op. cit. p.
21.
Gandhian Perspective (Allahabad: St. Paul Publications, 1990), p.
166.
[57]
Pushparajan, “Prospects of Christian Dialogue with other Religions”, Journal of Dharma,
Vol. VIII,
No.3. (July – September 1983), p. 330.
[58]
Kuncheria Pathil, “The New Encounter with other Faiths,”Jeevadhara, Vol. XXIII, No. 136
(July
1993), p. 276.
[59]
Arvind P. Nirmal, Heuristic Explorations,
(Madras: CLS, 1990), p. 75.
Corporation,
1982), p. 75.
[61]
S.J. Samartha, “Commitment and Tolerance in a Pluralistic Society,” NCC Review, Vol.
CVI, No.2
(February 1986), p. 75.
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