CHRISTIAN MISSION AND
INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE
Edited By
Paul Mojzes and Leonard Swidler
Religions in Dialogue
Volume 4
The Edwin Mellen Press
Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter
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This volume has been registered with The Library of Congress.
This is volume 4 in the continuing series
Religions in Dialogue
Volume 4 ISBN 0-88946-520-7
RD Series ISBN 0-88946-379-4
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Copyright © 1990 Paul Mojzes and Leonard Swidler
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Journal of Ecumenical Studies
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
“The Problem: Mission and/or Dialogue?” Paul Mojzes
INITIATING ESSAY
“Missionary Challenges to the Theology of Salvation” Cardinal Jozef Tomko
ROMAN CATHOLIC RESPONSES
“The Holy Spirit as Possibility of Universal Dialogue and Mission” Maria Clara Bingemer
“No, Yes, and No” Denise Carmody
“The Reign of God and a Trinitarian Ecclesiology:
An Analysis of Soteriocentrism” Gavin D’Costa
“Christian Uniqueness and Interreligious Dialogue” Claude Geffré
“Missionary Activity Revised and Reaffirmed” Paul F. Knitter
“A Letter from the Mission Field” Robert McCahill
Interreligious Dialogue, Mission, and the Case of the Jews” Michael McGarry
‘The Christian Challenge to the Third Millennium” Raimundo Panikkar
Religions, Salvation, Mission” Samuel Rayan
Mission and Interreligious Dialogue: What Is at Stake?” Hans WaIdenfels
PROTESTANT RESPONSES
Speaking the Truth in Love: An Evangelical Response” Gerald H. Anderson
Holding Faith and Conceding Pluralism” Kenneth Cragg
“A Larger Room for Conversation” Robert W. Huston
‘The Importance of the Second Article for Lutheran Theology” Thomas Livernois
What’s There to Worry About?” Paul Varo Martinson
“A Free Church Response to ‘Missionary Challenges
to the Theology of Salvation”’ Melanie A. May
‘The Witness-Dialogue Dialectic” Norman Thomas
A REPLY TO THE RESPONSES
“Christian Mission Today” Cardinal Jozef Tomko
AFTERWORD
“Epistemology and Christology: The Underlying Issues” Leonard Swidler
AUTHORS
FOREWORD
THE PROBLEM: MISSION AND/OR DIALOGUE?
Paul Mojzes
A qualitative change took place in the relationship between churches and religions, mostly during this century. While exceptions may be found in previous centuries, as evidenced by book titles such as Twenty Centuries of Ecumenism or studies of some instances of irenic Jewish-Christian or Christian- Muslim relations, most readers will be aware that some genuinely new attitudes and approaches manifested themselves in our own age.
Previously the prevalent Christian concept of mission was that it was Jesus Christ’s own command to go out and preach the Gospel to the world. This was interpreted to mean that the sacred task of Christians is spread the good news to non-Christians and turn them into followers of Christ. The consequence of this understanding was that a tiny Jewish sect became the world’s largest and most universal religion. Huge masses of people were converted to Christianity, sometimes by witness and occasionally by coercion (note, for instance, Charlemagne’s repeated baptism of the Saxons).
As Christianity divided into rival churches, often it was believed that the church’s mission consists also of the evangelizing or re-evangelizing of those who had drifted away. Satisfaction was felt when individuals or entire groups were brought into the “right” fold. It was believed that the appropriate targets of mission were the Jews, the “Mohammedans” (as Christians labeled them incorrectly), the “heathens” of various sorts (a corporate name for all the others), as well as the heretics and schismatics.
There was joy during the Protestant and Catholic reformations when segments of population were wrested away from each other. There was a sense of accomplishment of one’s mission when Jews were converted to any branch of Christianity, or when lapsed or active members of any church were converted to one’s own faith. In the heyday of the missionary enterprise in the nineteenth century when Christian missionaries reached nearly all lands there was high hope, even among the liberals, that the world will be saved in the next generation. On the mission field intense rivalry for converts developed between Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, Congregationalists, Baptists, Seventh-Day Adventists, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and so forth. There was even rivalry of sorts between various Catholic orders and between missionaries of different nationalities belonging to the same church. The targeted population was not infrequently puzzled by these rivalries, and not being keen on the details of Christian doctrine or polity often called the missionaries not by their denominational affiliation but by their nationalities (German, British, American, Italian, etc.). The results were often scandalous as the denominational missionary competitiveness reaped the contempt and ultimate rejection of some of the pecuniary manipulation of what was being “offered” by others as people followed the highest bidder. The case is perhaps slightly over- stated here and certainly these were not universal experiences. There were also salutary examples of cooperation. Essentially, however, the picture drawn here is true enough. Were this not a true picture, the modern ecumenical movement among Protestants may have had a different inception. The fact is that one of the most significant impulses for the eventual creation of the World Council of Churches was the 1910 International Missionary Conference in Edinburgh where missionaries of various Protestant denominations faced up to the scandal of rivalry and pledged a change in approach which affected not all denominations, but certainly those that we now call “main line” in the U.S.A.
This is not the place to trace the history of ecumenism of the twentieth century nor how that intra-Christian ecumenism affected and gave spur to the “wider” ecumenism. One thing is certain. By the last decade of the twentieth century it is evident at nearly every occasion where people of different churches and religions meet that the former zeal for conversion and the attendant lack of respect for the authentic religious experience of others is gone. The notion of dialogue, ecumenical and interreligious (the former more than the latter) has domesticated itself in our consciousness and in our practice.
Volumes have been written since then on the purpose, scope, and method of dialogue, as practice and theory intermingled. Astonishingly great leaps were made in dialogue. If the nineteenth century was the Century of Mission, then the twentieth century is certainly the Century of Dialogue. Likewise, volumes have been written on mission, its changing nature, scope, and method and here also much creativity, dedication, and success is in evidence. However, a certain ambiguity and even tension arose as to the relationship of Christian mission and interreligious dialogue. Was interreligious dialogue to replace mission? Was it either mission or dialogue? Or could they go together? Some even wondered whether interreligious dialogue may not be a more sophisticated approach to mission. Or could the content of the good news be disseminated by dialogue? For many there was a clear switch from mission to interreligious dialogue. For instance, religious orders or agencies that once saw their purpose in the conversion of Jews to Christianity became among the proponents of Jewish-Christian dialogue strongly emphatic that its ultimate purpose is not the of making Jews into Christians. The same has often become true of attitudes toward other religions.
During the last decade this problem, which has been in the making for many years, reached a confrontational stage. Within many churches as well as across denominational lines two positions seem to have solidified. One promotes the missionary activity of the Christian church, giving priority to the task of evangelizing all those not yet reached by the Gospel. Some spell it out as the unabashed call for the conversion of non-Christians to Christ and Christianity. On the opposite end of the spectrum are protagonists of a view that advocates interreligious dialogue as the proper way of relating to others, urging that conversion be renounced as an explicit goal of the Christian mission and declaring that dialogue is the mission of Christians today.
As noted, up to the end of the nineteenth century most Christian missioners went to ‘save’ the non-Christians or “the heathens” or “pagans”; some harbored hopes that by the twentieth century the world would have accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. However, practically from the outset it became evident that souls cannot be saved without attention given to the body and mind, and thus the missionary enterprise both at home and abroad soon included schools, hospitals, orphanages, old people’s homes, and many other forms of charity-in fact, this had been characteristic of Catholic “foreign missions” since the sixteenth century. Increased attention was paid to development. Thus agriculture, crafts, health, education, social services were included in the notion of mission. Mission meant not only sending clergy to lead people in the salvific experience of the true God but also sending educational, medical, agricultural, and technical experts.
Many Christian missioners took a serious interest in the native religions and became increasingly appreciative of the authenticity and sincerity of the search for God or for salvation and liberation among those whom they had come to convert. Serious tensions occurred as it became evident that missionary outreach was often accompanied by colonization and exploitation of the various population by Westerners variously linked to the missions, if in no other manner than by a shared religious affiliation. Further, it became apparent that somehow the mission-sending people saw themselves as the subjects of mission and the people to whom the missionaries went as the objects of mission. This too created resentment as well as a realization that the message of Christ is needed just as much in the mission-sending countries as in those to whom the message was originally targeted. Many are now praying for a reverse mission whereby Christians from Africa and Asia, and perhaps Buddhists, Hindus, and Confucians, would come to the former mission-sending countries to save, to inspire, to heal, and to teach-in other words, to light a fire among jaded “believers.”
When in the twentieth century the ecumenical movement produced dialogue first among various Christian missionaries and churches and then increasingly across religious divides, the movement for interreligious dialogue emerged. A new appreciation developed for the values found in other religious approaches as well as an awareness of the failures and hurts produced by the Christian missionary endeavors. Interreligious dialogue produced in a relatively quick time some very satisfactory results and gained an enthusiastic following even among many missionary personnel and leaders. Many predicted an end to the proselytizing and the beginning of the cherishing and valuing of truth, goodness, justice, and peace wherever it was found. Conversion was de-emphasized to a mere by-product, which might be avoided whenever possible.
The conflict has now reached critical proportions in some churches where a battle is waged for what seems to be the very soul of the Christian Church. Different churches wrestle with the issue in different ways. In some churches where the mission board or agency has emphasized dialogue with people of other faiths rather than conversion, some disaffected church members and leaders created rival mission agencies for the purpose of sending out missionaries who would more aggressively pursue the evangelization of non-Christians. This provokes impulses to oust such proponents of the traditional missionary enterprise, while they in turn charge that the church loses its identity when it stops its assertive spreading of the Gospel. They point to the numerical and institutional growth of those churches that continue their missionary activity at home and abroad unabatedly. In other churches where the sending of missionaries espousing only a certain theological mold, members of more a dialogical orientation are creating their own missionary agencies with a different thrust. In both instances the confrontation is so sharp that it threatens schism. Still other churches battle it out without the threat of overt breakup; nevertheless the differences of opinion are palpable. Nearly all major denominations face this crisis regarding mission over against interreligious dialogue.
While this is not an altogether new concern expressed in writing, no collection of such explorations has been published as yet. We felt the need for adding more light rather than heat to this perplexing and difficult problem. The idea for this volume came when the editors read an address of Jozef Cardinal Tomko, “Missionary Challenges to the Theology of Salvation,” that was delivered as the opening address at a missionary congress in Rome in November, 1988. We wrote to him asking for permission to use the article as a springboard for a broader discussion and invited a number of scholars, ecumenical leaders, and missioners to respond to the article and the issues which Cardinal Tomko raised so pointedly. He not only graciously consented but offered to read the responses and write a concluding essay reacting to some of the issues raised by the respondents.
In our selection of respondents we did not try to be comprehensive, but did attempt to provide the balance of a variety of respondents representing different denominations, nationalities, church positions, and viewpoints. Actually when the essays reached us we saw that none of the respondents lined themselves up on an extreme end of the either/or spectrum alluded to above, because Cardinal Tomko’s nuanced address elicited nuanced and thoughtful responses. For most respondents it is rather a matter of both/and, but with leanings in either direction, since no one tried an impossibly perfectly centrist position.
Most Christians agree that the Church has a task to communicate the source, the inspiration, the life upon which it lives-God’s revelation in Jesus the Christ. The Church cannot change into a society for interreligious dialogue or into a general soteriological enterprise. The Church must proclaim its specific kerygma, but as distinct from earlier ages it can do so dialogically. If the Church holds no distinct, worthwhile message and cause, it need not bother enter into dialogue, because it will have nothing to give in the give-and-take of dialogue. The great Czech Marxist philosopher, Milan Machovec, once wrote that he does not want to dialogue with a Christian who does not want to convert him, namely, with one who holds that the Christian truths have only subjective and thus limited validity, a mere personal preference. Machovec wanted to dialogue with a Christian who is persuaded that the Christian truth has a general validity. He was saying that he would rather meet in dialogue a Christian who was hot than one who is lukewarm. Sharing this valid truth or experience need not be done triumphalistically, intolerantly, and exclusivistically. One may embrace the reality of pluralism with a genuine warmth and enthusiasm and yet not become lukewarm in regard to what one stands for.
Interreligious encounters, study, and living has lifted dialogue as the superior manner to relate to each other. A sort of Copernican turn took place in the traditional understanding of how to deal with the truth claims of other religions. When other religions are taken seriously, appreciatively, and are allowed to impress upon us the significance of their experiences, aims, and truth claims, such new insights affect nearly all our previous perceptions not only of the other religions but also of our own. A shift takes place from, “I used to view and accept unhesitatingly and uncritically that we are completely correct in all things,” and “I could not even think of viewing appreciatively and with understanding another religion,” to a far more unitive view of all religious experiences and expressions. Naturally this new unitive approach threatens to break the former unitive perception of truth apart.
In this struggle to interpret and reinterpret the fundamental truth claim and message of the Christian religion great cleavages in understanding occur as to how to communicate our mission to those who do not already share it. So with the changed times and procedure it is being questioned as to whether at the end of the twentieth century it is still proper and important to speak of the “mission” of the Church. To this question even the most enthusiastic practitioners of dialogue can answer emphatically, “yes!” though the interpretation and packaging of the mission is likely to diverge from the previous.
Jozef Cardinal Tomko and the fifteen respondents in this volume have gone a long way in reflecting on these fundamental issues, shedding useful insights on the relationship of Christian mission and interreligious dialogue. It is our hope that these insights will contribute to the larger sphere of the mind, heart and life of the Church as it relates to other religions-where the tension between mission and dialogue is being played out-with the hope that they will help make that tension creative rather than disruptive.
INITIATING ESSAY
MISSIONARY CHALLENGES TO THE THEOLOGY OF SALVATION
Cardinal Jozef Tomko
1. Introduction: Importance of the Theme
Salvation, redemption, liberation ... various terms, perhaps with a different coloring, but a single reality that constitutes a central problem for humanity in search of the meaning of its own existence. A problem often submerged by the course of life, but one which emerges with pressing urgency at crucial moments.
So it is a complex reality that immediately presents two fundamental aspects: one negative, which answers the question: salvation or liberation from whom or from what? The other aspect concerns the positive contents: salvation or liberation for what or in view of what?
Salvation is a vital question for humanity and can bring doubt if not crisis to the woman or man who aspires to clarity, to certainty, indeed to security both on the level of physical existence, and on the spiritual and religious levels.
Salvation involves the fundamental vision of humanity: who are humans? do they need salvation? and which salvation?
And the answers vary: There are those who speak of a purely human salvation: humanity finds self-sufficiency and self-redemption in itself; the aspiration to salvation, so deeply rooted in the human heart, can have a satisfactory psychological and sociological explanation; and there are no lack of ideologies or systems that promise this secularized salvation.
Other replies are religious in nature: In one form or another salvation is considered a central theme in all the great religions of the world. Then for the Christian it is one of the fundamental pillars of faith in God “who wishes to save every human being,” “qui vult onmes homines salvos facere” (1 Tim 2:3) and in Jesus Christ, who “who because of us humans and for our salvation descended from heaven,” “propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis” (Creed).
To bring and mediate salvation is also the mission of the Church and so her reason for existence.
So we are at the heart of Christian missiology and of the very missionary activity of the Church. Today more than ever it is necessary to make a thorough study of the problems of salvation, to present the reply the Christian faith gives to the problem of salvation, to clarify the Christian specific remedy in relation to the context of today’s world, of the great religions and cultures and also of the world of secularity.
The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Urban University wanted this Congress on the theme of salvation, because today there are precise reasons for urgency:
a) The first reason is the need for clarity in the missionary motivation of the Church and of the missionaries themselves, who dedicate their life and at least some years of their existence to evangelization. In the past missionaries felt the pressing need to bring salvation to non-Christians with an almost dramatic anxiety. If their reading of the sacred texts was perhaps too fundamentalist, it is still vitally important to establish what is still valid in this motive.
b) Then, salvation is a complex reality. Perhaps also for this reason in the last two decades it has become an ambiguous concept that needs to be explained in the light of the faith.
c) The Second Vatican Council assumed a positive, respectful attitude towards the great non-Christian religions and so encouraged the new reflection on the theology of religions and on the salvation of non-Christians. In view of the dialogue with these religions, Christians must have a clear awareness of their own identity and of the role of the Christian faith in the divine plan of salvation. There are many new ideas in this field, but they need a close examination and a serious critical maturation.
In opening this Congress, I do not intend to rob experts and scholars of theological and humanistic subjects involved in the problems of salvation of their job. Instead I want to present some questions and some challenges that missionary life itself poses to them, in expectation of a reply. They come from direct experience, gathered in various mission lands, behind which are ideas that circulate in the various books and articles on the subject. These experiences above all invite theologians to have the greatest precision in formulating their own theses; a precision that is measured in the light of faith, but also in the light of the practical disruptive consequences that these theses produce in the field of the missions.
2. Salvation and Non-Christian Religions
The first concrete experience comes from the Far East, where the great majority profess one of the ancient classical religions, rich in culture and wisdom.
In a meeting of pastoral operators one orator speaks of the respect the Second Vatican Council invites us to have for these religions; he presents them as a great human effort in the search for the Absolute. Then, following the activity of God in history, who spoke through the prophets and, recently, “in these days” “has spoken to us by a Son” (Heb 1:1f.). The Christian cannot lack in respect and gratitude to the Father who was willing to send his own Son so that he might reveal the true face of God to humanity: Jesus Christ as the Incarnate Word is the best Revealer of God and so also the “way” (Jn 14:6), as he himself indicated.
However there is an objection from one group of missionaries that this presentation is not acceptable, because it degrades non-Christian religions to an effort from below and exalts Christianity as the religion coming from above, whereas in truth all religions are equally inspired by God and constitute ways of salvation. This group of missionaries has in fact withdrawn from direct pastoral activities and has devoted itself to socioeconomic collaboration with the non-Christian majority, in the spirit of a “dialogue of life.” In that region there are many possibilities of evangelization through direct announcing and catechesis; the native clergy is insufficient, but because of these missionaries’ conviction of the role of Christian and non-Christian religions in salvation the surge of evangelization has diminished.
This practical attitude is, however, based on ideas. And the ideas revolve around some central points such as:
a. God’s plan of salvation
b. Jesus Christ’s role in this plan
c. the mission of the Church in relation to salvation
d. the role of non-Christian religions.
Today everyone admits the universal saving will of God, who “Wishes to save every human being” (1 Tim 2: 4) even though many stop at this point in the reading of the Pauline text and neglect or consider as less important what follows: “and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). However it may be, many questions remain open as to how God realized and realizes this universal plan in history: with what means, through which people and instruments.
And here attention immediately moves to the other three points of interest: Jesus Christ, the Church, non-Christian religions. St. Peter, in front of the Sanhedrin, asserts that there is salvation only in the name of Jesus Christ, “and in no one else” (Acts 4:12). This affirmation gives theologians the difficult task of explaining whether and how people were saved before Christ and how, even after Christ, those who do not know or do not accept Jesus Christ are saved. The question of the necessity of the Church for salvation comes as a consequence and in connection with the person and the work of Christ. And so the focal center of the problem is reduced to two poles: Christ and non-Christian religions.
Paul Knitter had the merit of reducing all theological reflection on religions to four schemes or patterns of the Christ-non-Christian religions relationship.1
a) The first period that dominated nearly all the history of Christianity was that of hostility towards “pagan” religions: Christ “against” religions.
This hostile attitude was influenced by a rigid interpretation of Origen’s and Cyprian’s affirmation: “Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus,” which limited divine grace to the Church. The geographical discoveries of other continents led other theologians, like Bellarmine and Suarez, to correct this narrow perspective-which Knitter calls “exclusive”-to a rather “inclusive” one: from no salvation “outside the Church,” they went to no salvation “without the Church.” This perspective remained until our own century in the form of various theories concerning invisible or potential membership in the Church.
It has been noted that this schematization is not sufficiently objective.2 It is true that the Fathers of the Church assumed a hostile attitude toward cults, rites and myths considered as idolatry and aberrations; yet it remains to be seen whether they were so in reality! However in the Church there is also positive appreciation of the valid aspects of religions: St. Justin also speaks of the “logos spermatikos” or “seeds of the Word”; St. Clement of the “illumination of the Logos”; St. Irenaeus of the “divine teaching”; Pope Gregory the Great gives wonderful missionary directives for the evangelization of England; Raymond of Penafort and Raymond Lulle support dialogue with Islam; St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of “natural religion” which is a “praeparatio evangelica.” Then there is the attitude of love and respect towards everything that is not an error in many missionaries, like St. Francis of Assisi, in Ricci and De Nobili, in the famous 1659 Instruction of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. And what can be said of the theologians of at least four centuries who maintained that God’s grace operated also outside the visible confines of the Church, but was always mediated by Christ and by the Church, until the thesis that excluded nonmembers of the Church from salvation was officially condemned in the Holy Office’s letter to the Archbishop of Boston, in the case of Fr. Feeney, dated 8 August 1949.3
b) The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and its Declaration “Nostra aetate” opens a decidedly new perspective which Knitter characterizes with the dual concept: Christ within religions.
The positive statements on the possibility of salvation also for non-Christians were “made clear”-according to Knitter4-by Karl Rahner.5 He maintained that other religions are and can be ways of salvation positively included in God’s plan of salvation; it is always the grace of Christ that operates in the non-Christian, offered through the respective non-Christian religion. The person thus touched by Christ is unconsciously directed to Christ and to his Church, he is an “anonymous Christian,” who must however be transformed into an explicit, fully ecclesial Christian. Rahner’s theory, however, developed above all by Robert. Schlette and by Anita Röper6 and accepted by Edward Schillebeeckx, does not satisfy Knitter, because it would end up “only in a partial and provisional approval of them.”7
c) In the last decade, a certain number of theologians have been searching for a new perspective described as “Christ above religions.” Not satisfied with Rahner’s theory, they maintain that other religions have an independent validity: even if Christ is not, in their opinion, the exclusive cause of saving grace, yet He remains above all religions and all peoples. To preserve the fact of faith in the uniqueness, finality and so on of the normativity of Christ, they give various explanations. Christ is the only “critical catalyst” also for other religions, in the face of our modern world:8 Hans Küng. Claude Geffré uses the universality of the right that Christ has over all peoples, in that he is the Word of God made flesh, whereas this would not be due to Christianity as a historical religion.9
d) To put Christ above religions does not seem very ethical if an honest dialogue is to be held. This, at least, is what the theologians think who propose a model that sees Christ together with other religions and with other religious figures. According to them, after the abandonment of “ecciesiocentrism,” it is necessary to eliminate “Christocentrism” as well and put God at the heart of religion, in a theocentric vision.
Knitter himself upholds the theory of “unitive pluralism” or of “the coincidence of opposites,” according to which “each religion (or religious figure) is unique and decisive for its followers; but it is also of universal importance.” It is neither exclusive-“against” nor inclusive-“within” or “above”-but is “essentially related to other religions,” so, “perhaps ... other revealers and saviors are as important as Jesus of Nazareth.”10
Raimundo Pannikar reaches the same conclusion from the distinction between the Christ-Logos and the historical Jesus. There is more in the Christ-Logos than there is in the historical Jesus, so that the Logos can appear in different, but real ways in other religions and historical figures, outside of Jesus of Nazareth.11
The faithfulness of this theology to Christ is assured because it still maintains that God really spoke through Jesus, but it is fully open to God’s possible message in other religions.
e) Finally, Knitter crosses also this Rubicon in order to “liberate” the theology of religions. Using the methodological criteria of the theology of liberation (option for the poor, orthopraxis), he resolves to “go beyond theocentrism, towards soteriocentrism,” so that “the primary concern of a theology of religions should not be “rightful belief’ in the uniqueness of Christ, but “rightful practice” with other religions, of the “promotion of the Kingdom and of its soteria”; in other words: “This means that the basis and principal interest of every theological evaluation of other religions is not their relationship with the Church (ecclesiocentrism) or with Christ (Christocentrism), or even with God (theocentrism), but rather the degree in which they are able to promote salvation: the well-being of humanity.”12
This well-being in which the Kingdom, the Reign of God, consists is the Reign of justice and of love to be reached in collaboration or dialogue with all. Exalting interreligious dialogue, Knitter reduces faith in Christ to the level of an ambiguous earthly “well-being.” Here at last is a reassuring conclusion for missionaries who are perhaps perturbed: ‘The missionary goal is reached if the announcing of the Gospel to all peoples makes the Christian a better Christian and the Buddhist a better Buddhist,” since “the primary mission of the Church is not salvation business” (to make people Christian so that they can be saved), but the task of serving and promoting the kingdom of justice and of love.”13
I do not know how far the missionaries I mentioned at the beginning acted on the basis of the opinions explained here. What is certain is that they concentrated on social action, trying to achieve this in dialogue with non-Christians and abandoning the direct announcing of Jesus Christ more and more.
This reduction of evangelization occurred also in other countries and in other continents. It is justified in various ways, but it always starts from at least two presuppositions: first, every religion is a way of salvation; second, it is necessary to seek dialogue with other religions, which must be re-evaluated.
It also presents a common tendency to eclipse or reduce the role of Christ, of the Church and of announcing and to concentrate all the activity and finality of evangelization on the building up of the Reign of God, sometimes undefined and at other times identified with social well-being, justice, peace and love.
3.1 The “Missio Dei”
The most explicit theological motivation of this tendency is found in the most radical derivations of the theory of the “missio Dei.”14 The real protagonist of the mission is God. God’s sovereignty or absolute lordship must in the end overcome the “Christomonism” in which the Christian missiology, both Protestant and Catholic, was enclosed (A. van Ruler; M. K. Miskotte). The “extra” promised by Jesus is realized in the building up of the Reign of God. “The real end of the missio Dei is the Kingdom of God, not the ecclesia viatorum,” Anderson decrees.15 God saves as God wants and when God wants; God’s action is not bound to the Church. Mission today is the action which tries to discover God’s action in the world: to discover God in the world and serve God and not “to bring Christ” to the world. So also the Church, like Christ, must practice kenosis, self-emptying, in this service.
Even more radically opposed to the Church’s role in mission is the tendency of “out-churchism.” The Reformed Dutch theologian and missionary J. C. Hoekendijk16 asserts that mission is realized with the proclamation of the “shalom” in hope; so the “missio” is “pro-mission” in the service of the world, building up peace--“shalom,” that leads to intercommunion and participation. With this service to the world people are coagulated and so the Church happens as an event and not as a structure.
Also the Catholic L. Rütti17 rejects the theology of the Decree on missions of the Second Vatican Council as being too ecclesiocentric and not very realistic when it refers to the trinitarian missions and the mandate of the Lord. For Rütti, mission is the responsibility of Christians before a world in the hope of transforming it, in order to create a new world.
‘The commitment of Christians (N.B. not of the Church!), bestowed with a new promise for the world, is not to maintain or spread a church, but it consists in efficacious responsibility for the present hope in the new world.”18
3.2 The Centrality of God’s Reign
The centrality of the Reign of God appears more and more frequently in these theories. And the Reign of God, in the full ambiguity of interpretation, is also the cornerstone of the more recent reflections of some Asian theologians, who were influenced by their experiences of direct contact with the great ancient religions and cultures. Indeed, one sees “a Copernican revolution of the theology of evangelization” in the fact that “the centre of the approach moves from the Church to the Kingdom.”19 First he analyses and then relativizes the role of the Church for salvation. He reports the opinion of some who “called the Church an extraordinary way in opposition to the other ordinary ways” of salvation represented by religions.20
After Vatican II, the relationship between the Church and religions could not be presented in terms of the presence-absence of salvation, nor of light-darkness, and not even with the divine-human or supernatural-natural dichotomy; today the binomial explicit-implicit, or full-partial, is more common. Since “the Church, as she is, is a historically and culturally limited realization of the Good News.”21 he abandons ecclesiocentrism. ‘The Church does not offer an easier or a fuller salvation ... because of God’s universal saving will and the socio-historical nature of the human person, God’s saving encounter with man occurs also through other religions and their symbolic structures: writings, codes of conduct and rituals.... The Church is called not only to witness, to proclaim, but also to collaborate in humility and respect for the divine mystery that operates in the world.”22 “Being a member of the Church is not an easier or surer way of salvation.”23 Our theologian recognizes the saving role of Jesus Christ and refuses to set Christocentrism against theocentrism. But here too, with Pannikar, he distinguishes between the cosmic Christ and the historical Christ. The saving mediation of non-Christian religions is linked to the cosmic Christ, whereas the Church’s role is linked to the historical Christ and to his paschal mystery. Now we must not take advantage of the “communicatio idiomatum,” attributing certain qualifications such as “final, last, unique, universal” to the historical Christ, because they belong not to Jesus, but to the Word. But in the end, how is the divine universal plan of salvation accomplished?
Through evangelization that knows three patterns: the first ecclesiocentric, the second centered on the world and the third on the Reign of God. The author aims at an evangelization in the global sense in which “the new focal point”24 is the Reign of God, i.e., the building up of a new humanity that will unite all people in a community of love, justice and peace. This is the mission in which the Church must collaborate-with dialogue, with inculturation and with liberation: strangely, but significantly, proclamation, i.e., the announcing, is omitted. The explanation is found, perhaps, in our theologian’s extremely radical doubt: “In this context of religious pluralism does it still make sense to proclaim Christ as the only Name in which all people find salvation and call them to be disciples through baptism and to enter the Church?.”25
Starting from the experience Jesus had of the Father, also another Indian theologian concludes that “the Church’s mission is not so much to bring salvation as to bring the manifestation, not to obtain the conversion to the Church as the necessary means of salvation, but to help in the realization of the broader Kingdom of God as it develops in history. This includes the effort to help followers of other religions to follow those religions in a better manner.”26
These theories are now widespread and beginning to bear fruit in the practical field. One pastoral magazine presented the following program of a missionary institute: “We go out on the missions not so much to plant the Church or to bring the faith, but rather to discover a faith and a goodness that already exist there.”27
Some missionaries who work among the Indios in Latin America pose the same problem for themselves from a different angle. They were faced with the difficulty of changing the customs with which the Indios live happily and with an easy conscience; so why should they disturb their good faith with the severe demands of the Christian morality which is too hard for them and leads them to continuous spiritual distress? On the other hand following their conscience, the Indios are saved just the same. Some of these missionaries then asked themselves whether it was not perhaps better to try to raise the level of social life and concern themselves more with the physical health of the Indios than with their salvation.
So the need for a clear answer to the problem is felt in many continents. It is even vaster with regard to the relationship between salvation and human promotion in any form (economic, social, political, development, liberation, justice and peace).
3.3 Salvation and Human Promotion
Several recent theological opinions on non-Christian religions have weakened one of the motives that urged missionaries to sacrifice themselves for the salvation of non-Christians, announcing Jesus Christ and the Christian faith to them. These theories exalt the role of other religions and common commitment for the renewal of the world and for human promotion; some reduce evangelization to this purpose, others include this renewal in the very concept of salvation, yet others give human promotion priority (“first make men, then Christians,” or “first feed the hungry, then speak of God”). In this field all continents feel the need for clarity: mission continents in order to give a correct orientation to missionary activity, other regions in order to direct their animation and cooperation properly.
The radical position that reduces the Church’s mission to human promotion is expressed by G. Davies in one concise sentence: ‘The purpose of mission is not to make Christians, but to help peoples to become men.”28 Also for some liberation theologians mission is a historical practice in the revolutionary process; without this participation mission becomes omission, whereas “participation in the process of man’s liberation is already, in a certain sense, the work of salvation.”29 Without adopting Karl Barth’s diametrically opposed Puritan opinion, which maintains that the purpose of mission is exclusively eschatological salvation, it is necessary to confirm and deepen the balanced position reached by the Church in the last two decades, but only imperfectly passed into missionary practice and into certain theological theories.
4. Challenges and Questions to Theologians
After this vast but incomplete presentation of various opinions about salvation, it is necessary to explain at least some anxieties, challenges and questions the missionary world addresses to experts.
a) The first series of challenges and questions the missionary pastoral addresses to experts and theologians concerns the contents of salvation, i.e.: Which salvation are we dealing with? Salvation-liberation from what-or for what?
1. Is it an essentially religious salvation? And if this is so, does it concern only the next world, in the exclusively eschatological sense, as Karl Barth wished, assigning to the mission the task of bringing this salvation and of being a “crisis” of all human, cultural and religious values?
2. According to divine revelation, can it be said that the salvation to which evangelization tends is of an economic, political, social or cultural nature? Or is it limited to service to the “world,” for the “well being” of the world?
What are the bonds between the “human” dimension (liberation, progress, development, justice and peace) and the “divine” or “spiritual” dimension of salvation: liberation from sin and from evil (which are its fruit and consequence), the rebirth of God’s children to the new life and final participation in the happiness and glory of God in life everlasting?
3. In evaluating the elements of salvation of non-Christian religions, should one not take account of the difference-sustained for example by Hans Urs von Balthasar30-between the religions of revelation that profess a personal God (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and those that believe in an impersonal divinity and thus see the contents of salvation differently?
b) Putting oneself on the level of the Christian faith, another series of fundamental questions concerns the divine plan of salvation in its three pillars: God, Christ, Church.
1. “God desires to save all human beings” (1 Tim 2: 4)--this is clear and is generally accepted in all theologies. It becomes more problematical if what is also revealed and follows immediately in the Pauline text is likewise respected: “. . . and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). What does this addition mean? Is the solemn mandate to preach the Gospel to all peoples and to baptize those who believe not perhaps the interpretation that Jesus himself gives to God’s saving will? How can one explain the solemn and decisive tone of this command (cf. Mt 28: 19f.; Mk 16: 15f.)?
Obviously, what divine revelation understands as “salvation” desired by God for all must be established.
2. Jesus Christ is humanity’s only Savior and the only Mediator between God and humans, according to revelation: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Peter’s testimony before the Sanhedrin: Acts 4:12). “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and humans, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2: 5f.); “No one comes to the Father, but by me” (Jn 14, 6). With his death and resurrection Jesus became for all humans “the source of eternal salvation” (Heb 5:9) and “Leader and Savior” (Acts 5:31).
Can the only definitive role Jesus Christ has in the work of salvation perhaps be disputed (“No other name?”) without neglecting the facts of the Christian faith? Or is it sufficient to consider them as later Christologies of the New Testament and as emphatic statements on a level with those of the enamored husband who thinks his own wife is the most beautiful and most lovable woman in the world (Knitter)?
3. Does the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God made man, the incarnate Word, have some impact on the quality of his message and of the Christian faith? Can the “revelation” brought by him be put on the same level as the “revelations” or “divine inspirations” contained in other religions?”
4. Can he be put “next to” or “together with” other founders? Is he not a savior also for them?
5. Does God save those who do not believe in Christ, without Christ? Does Christ’s grace constitute salvation? How does Christ reach those who do not believe in him?
6. What should one think of the difference between the cosmic Christ and the historical Christ?
7. The necessity of receiving baptism and of being part of the Church is also contained in the divine plan of salvation: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mk 16:16); in fact one cannot enter the Reign of God unless “one is born of water and the Spirit” (Jn 3: 5); through baptism one enters the Church, which is by the will of Christ “the universal sacrament of salvation” (LG 48) and it is only through it “that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained” (UR 3).
8. So is it necessary to believe with the Second Vatican Council and in the Council itself when “basing itself upon sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation” (LG 14)? We are well aware that the obligation to follow the Church belongs only to those who know this necessity (LG 14) and that “those also can attain to everlasting 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” (LG 16).
9. So in what sense is the Church the “universal sacrament of salvation”? Since non-Christians who lead a good life are excluded from formal and explicit membership of the Church, can it still be said that it is necessary for salvation and, in the affirmative case, in what sense?
10. Is complete aversion to the so-called “ecclesio-centrism” theologically justified? Must the mission forego planting the Church as one
of her goals? (Cf. Eph 3:17; 2, 19; AG 6, 9; Evangelii nuntiandi EN 62, etc.)?
11. Have other religions a “sacramental” function for salvation in the same way as the Church which is “the universal sacrament of salvation,” or are they only “occasions” of salvation?31
c) The specific Christian purpose of the mission also needs to be clarified. The questions have already been partially asked in the first series of questions concerning the contents of salvation. But some theories expounded need a thorough critical examination, above all as far as the Reign of God and dialogue in relation to the mission is concerned.
1. Can it be said that the Reign of God is the center of Jesus Christ’s mission (and of that of the Church), separating it from or setting it against the great mandate that obliges us to “teach” and “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them,” “teaching them to observe all that (he has) commanded you” (Mt 28, 20); to “preach the Gospel” (Mk 16:15), to preach “repentance and forgiveness of sins” (Lk 24:47); and announce and “testify that he is the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42)? What meaning does the “Reign” have on the lips of Jesus Christ?
2. Following the text and context of the Gospel, does the Reign of God precisely mean earthly social well-being? Are “the values of the Reign” reduced to justice, fraternity and peace?
3. Is “the Reign of God” not at the same time “the Reign of Christ”?
4. Has “the Reign of God” no relationship to the Church?32
5. If “the proclamation of the Reign of God is evangelization,33 according to Evangelii nuntiandi (8-10), is it not also true that evangelization is a complex and rich reality? and that among other things it includes the “plantatio ecclesiae” (AG 6; CIC c. 786; EN 59, 62)? And yet is it not equally true that “evangelization will also always contain-as the foundation, center and at the same time summit of its dynamism-a clear proclamation that, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made human, who died and rose from the dead, salvation is offered to all humans, . . . and not an immanent salvation.... but a transcendent salvation” (EN 27)?
6. Does the fact that God operates with grace also on non-Christians release the Church from the obligation of announcing the Gospel?
7. Does dialogue replace the announcement-proclamation? Does the announcement eliminate dialogue? Or do both belong to the “complex and rich reality” of evangelization?
Conclusion
The challenges and questions presented do not exhaust the expectations, nor the tasks that lie before this Congress, but they do show how important its theme can be at the present moment.
Because today, even more so than in 1974-75, the years of the Synod of Bishops and of Paul VI’s Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi, which was the fruit of it, the words of this document are extremely true:
The presentation of the Gospel message is not an optional contribution for the Church. It is the duty incumbent on her by the command of the Lord Jesus, so that people can believe and be saved. This message is indeed necessary. It is unique. It cannot be replaced. It does not permit either indifference, syncretism or accommodation. It is a question of people’s salvation. It is the beauty of the Revelation that it represents. It brings with it a wisdom that is not of this world. It is able to stir up by itself faith-faith that rests on the power of God (cf. 1 Cor 2:5). It is truth. It merits having the apostle consecrate to it all his time and all his energies, and to sacrifice for it, if necessary, his own life (EN 5).
At this point I would add: it is also fitting that this Congress should dedicate a deep reflection to it.
ROMAN CATHOLIC RESPONSES
THE HOLY SPIRIT AS POSSIBILITY OF UNIVERSAL DIALOGUE AND MISSION
Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer
The question of universal salvation and the huge interpretations it brings to the missionary task of the Church is certainly a very central one. It seems difficult to reconcile God’s universal desire of salvation with the commitment to announce the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to promote belonging to a particular Church. Christology and ecclesiology will not help us very much at this point. Perhaps it would be useful, however, to take: pneumatology as our point of departure because of the guarantee and the evidence that we have of God’s universal desire of salvation is the Spirit of God who is poured out over the whole creation as Spirit of Life.
The history of the Holy Spirit as active among God’s people, as we find it in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament and in the narratives of the early Church, displays certain characteristics which enabled the people to discern its presence and recognize that presence as divine.
The first of these characteristics is the “production” of life. When the Spirit is active the mist and disorder of chaos become an organized and harmonious cosmos (Gen 1: 1. ff.); the wilderness is transformed into a garden (Is 35: 1-6); and dry bones are changed-before the astonished eyes of the prophet, himself possessed by the same Spirit-into a strong and mighty army (Ezek 37).
By contrast, when the Lord God takes away the Spirit, the creatures die and return to the dust from which they came (Ps 104: 29-30). The Spirit’s absence, or any attempt to restrict, stifle or grieve the Spirit, results in a diminution of life and an increase in the predatory, destructive power of death.
The Spirit, who was outpoured over the whole creation, and not only over the Church and determined religious spaces and confessions, is the Person and the Divine Force who, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, brings salvation while-because-it brings life. The Spirit is also the One who since the origin of Creation, gives life and breath to everyone and everything that lives. Thus the production of life is the sign of the presence of the Spirit. Likewise where life grows and increases, we must search and find the Spirit of God. Because of this, the Spirit is the only possibility of a mission which is really universal, as well as of a dialogue among different religions-starting from this common point: life. And life, before, and because it is a theological question, is an anthropological one.
1. The Pneumatological Subversion of Anthropology
The presence of the Spirit of God within human beings provokes important consequences: it alters and affects their deepest and most essential constitutive anthropological categories, by radically subverting the foundations of their being.1
The first characteristics of this pneumatization is that the Holy Spirit provokes in human persons an exodus, a going out of themselves and moving towards the other or others.2 The first movement caused by the Spirit which announces its presence in humankind is, therefore, a movement of drawing out of the person his/her immediate interests and attachments so that s/he becomes open and serviceable to all, capable of facing the most adverse situations, dangers and tribulations, rejection, suffering and death.3
This is true not only in those people who are conscious of the presence of this Spirit in the Christian way of being and believing, but in every man and woman who lives in this earth. Taking this anthropological fact from the Christian faith point of view, we can affirm that on that we can see the trinitarian movement of God, the exodus of the Spirit who is constantly being sent out by the Father and by the Son, the “other” Paraclete, who was present at the beginning of the whole creation (Gen 1: 1) and now fills the earth with its divine presence and can be recognized by the fruits of life it produces in the middle of that same Creation.
That presence of the Spirit in creation, in humankind and within each human being makes of those human beings pilgrims, who find themselves not in their own selves, but rather in the other, or in the others. That is to say, people in constant “mission” towards the others, perhaps not to announce the Gospel or to share religious beliefs, but to announce and make happen the most fundamental belief, common to all human beings: the faith in life as something beautiful and worth doing, the greatest of all gifts, the most precious good.
That is why the Spirit draws the human beings out of themselves, of their categories, their deepest prejudices, their most entrenched habits, comfort, securities, in order to live with and for others, and to make them aware of their potential for living. And this consequently, provokes in them, no matter which religion they belong to, a need to work for more life, which is equal to saying, for salvation for others, for everyone.
2. The Spirit Alters Human Space
This process is the beginning of the subversion of the anthropological categories that belong to al] human beings. It will alter their deepest and most constitutive egos to the extent that they will now understand themselves in the life of the other, from the other’s point of view, both the Other who restructures the being through its re-creator breath, and the others who hope for their participation in the praxis of the construction of life. That is to say, the Spirit at work in the whole of creation and within all the creatures draws them out of themselves and alters their inner and outer space.
Anthropologically, that means living in the space of the other and letting the other live in their own space. Several important consequences at all levels, for mission and interfaith dialogue follow from this. The permanent change of this space means, on the one hand, having to move always towards the unknown and to be open to the invasion of the unknown. The other remains a mystery which will never be fully revealed. To be willing to live in the other’s space means to accept being eventually rejected, choked, saddened, offended and even destroyed. It means also having to live in anonymity or obscurity. It means accepting the characteristics, culture and the categories of others in order that Life may happen within the frame and categories of the other, and not as an imposition of foreign categories which will hinder the communication started by the Spirit in order to produce Life in a different way that we are used to.4
The consequence of this world presence of the Spirit on the other hand are positively felt also in the creation of an alternative space for human beings. The Spirit who alters the anthropological categories in order to produce life at all levels, subverting the same notions of mission, religion and salvation, is the same Spirit who draws human beings out of their selves in order to place them in another space. Space is one of the fundamental ways of human self-understanding. The loss of site, of place, of land, of space-in other words, atopia-is always, felt as a source of anguish and despair, disgrace and malediction, menace to life, death.
So, by altering and subverting the human space in the process of producing life, the Spirit prevents the human beings from constantly understanding themselves in the light of their own selves and from their own geographic situation, and from defending, tooth and nail, a space of their own. The Spirit allows, even when there is not an explicit consciousness of it, the space to be a common space, the space of everyone, where sharing and flavoring the fruits of creation is a normal practice and where anthropology is subverted and reconstructed, inside and outside, by a new concept of life wider than the limits imposed by determined religious creeds and a narrow idea of mission. Where there is life, where human life and creation can grow and develop themselves, there is the presence of the Spirit
of God. And those situations which produce life that way, altering the space of human beings should be stimulated, even if not explicitly in the name of some determined religion-for to stimulate life is to stimulate the life of God to fulfill the whole earth and the whole created space.
3. Trans-Formation and Con-Formation by the Spirit
Besides altering the anthropological space, the Spirit alters the human form as well. The New Testament is full of passages where the change of form undertaken by the Spirit in the human beings appears under different names: seal (Eph 1: 13; 4: 30), image (2 Cor 3: 18), dressing (Col 3:, 10; Eph 4: 24). It is, in fact, a true transformation, a metamorphosis of the human beings which takes place with the presence of the Spirit. And that process of transformation gradually alters vitally and essentially the form of human beings by giving them a new configuration, in fact, Christ’s configuration.
Therefore, the transformation accomplished by the Spirit in human form is, in fact, a conformation-conformation to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the most beautiful of the children of Man, the one who came in order that everyone have life, and abundance of life. So, when the Spirit conforms h