CURRENT 19

DIALOGUE
January 1991
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EDITORIAL are iTS asOuF
Hans Ucko aor San gael.
ae
THE THEOLOGY OF RELIGION IN THE IMC
AND THE WCC 1910-89 3
Kenneth Cracknell

THE CHRISTOLOGICAL DEBATE IN THE CONTEXT

OF RELIGIOUS PLURALITY 18
Jacques Dupuis

AN ORTHODOX PERSPECTIVE ON INTER-

RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 25
George Khodr

FROM YES TO AMEN OR "THE UNHEARD OF"

GOSPEL 28
Frangoise Smyth-Florentin

A NEW PENTECOST? 32
Paul Knitter

A SECOND LOOK AT "RELIGIOUS PLURALITY:

THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
AND AFFIRMATIONS" 42
Peter Lee

BAAR STATEMENT 47

Dialogue staff:
Rev. Dr. S. Wesley Ariarajah, Director (Hindu/Buddhist Relations),
Rev. Hans Ucko (Jewish Relations),
Miss Audrey Smith, Miss Luzia Wehrle, Administrative Assistants.

WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES Dialogue with People of Living Faiths

150, route de Ferney, P.O. Box 2100 — 1211 Geneva 2 / Switzerland

 EDITORIAL

Hans Ucko

Economic constraints explain why a second issue of Current Dialogue was not
produced in 1990. We sincerely hope that this year will allow two volumes of
our newsletter.

As this editorial is being written we are following the eruption of the war in
the Persian Gulf. The WCC General Secretary, Emilio Castro, in a statement on
the Gulf crisis, calls upon member churches:
- "to pray and join in prayers with people of other faiths for a speedy end
to the war;
- to continue to promote inter-religious dialogue especially because of
prevailing perceptions of the conflict in religious terms."

There are those who say that dialogue is mostly a theoretical affair. It is
possible that there are ingredients in interfaith dialogue which seem
estranged from ordinary life. But that is only one aspect. There is also the
dialogue of life where people of different faiths live together because that
is how their everyday life unfolds. It is in this context.-that we,
independent of our religious affiliations, face the same aspects of life in
that we are all threatened by an escalating war. Faced with the war in the
Gulf we will notice that we at heart share anxieties and wish and pray
together or next to each other for "a speedy end to the war".

In the same week as the eruption of the war the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva
gathered for a worship for peace with prayers from the Middle East churches.
After the worship representatives of the Christian, Muslim and Jewish
communities came together for a short interreligious meditation on peace in
Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Christian representative highlighted the
Christian paradox of weakness as a sign of strength. The Muslim representative
brought forth the inner conflict of war and peace in our own souls. From the
Jewish tradition we learned how rabbis in their prayer “Let there be peace on
earth as it is in heaven" understood the word for heaven, shamayim. In this
word is hidden two words which oppose each other: esh, fire and mayim, water.
When God makes peace in heaven he reconciles fire and water. The fire doesn't
make the water disappear. The water doesn't quench the fire.

It is probably more and more essential to make the dialogue programme attuned
to the socio-political realities and let these be a determining factor also in
the work and life of the Dialogue sub-unit.

In this issue of Current Dialogue we deal with the theological aspects of

interreligious dialogue. In January 1990 theologians from the Orthodox,
Catholic and Protestant churches gathered in Baar, Switzerland. Where are
theologians at the moment in their reflections upon the theological
Significance of the other world religions? Their statement has already been
published in the last issue of Current Dialogue and is also part of the
preparatory material for the Canberra Assembly. In this issue we present some
of the papers from Baar. I am sure they will give depth and density to the
understanding of the statement, which we have decided to render once again as
the result of a week's existential and probing ecumenical experience.

2a
 THE THEOLOGY OF RELIGION IN THE INTERNATIONAL
MISSIONARY COUNCIL AND THE WORLD COUNCIL OF
CHURCHES 1910-1989

Kenneth Cracknell
(Cambridge University)

1. Beginning from Edinburgh

“Deep respect and profound appreciation".

The Commission on 'The Missionary Message in Relation to. Non-Christian

Religions was charged with studying 'the problems involved in the presentation
of Christianity to the minds of non-Christian peoples'. It soon found out
that this was no simple remit. To use its own terms such a task was both
‘intricate' and ‘comprehensive’. ‘We have to enquire into this conflict of
faiths in the non-Christian lands the influence of that conflict on the mind
of the missionary, the effect of the whole upon the theology of the Church at
home, and the suggestions which it offers for the training of missionaries.
(Missionary Message, p.l, italics mine). The result of such a perception is
the impressive Protestant theology of religion contained in the report of
Commission Four. This can be attributed to two causes. The first of these is
the quality of theological insight displayed by the Commissioners themselves,
but the second, and more important, lies in the way in which they went about
their task. They sent a questionnaire to a sample of missionaries throughout
the world and received almost two hundred replies. In particular the
missionaries were asked ‘what attitude should the Christian preacher take
toward the religion of the people among whom he labours?' From the immense
amount of evidence gathered as a result of the list of questions the Edinburgh
commissioners we note the following representative replies:

The missionary should rejoice in every element of goodness

he finds in the religion and the practice of the people
with whom he has to deal, seeing that all truth and all
goodness, wheresoever found comes through the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, however ignorant a person may be of
this source. Every religion exists by virtue of the truth
which is in it, not by virture of its falsehood. (George
Whitehead, Burma, pp.20-21.)

He should gather the fragments of original revelation in

the old religions and use them as_ stepping stones to
Christ, ‘recognizing the logos spermatikos and the anima
naturaliter Christiana’. (George Owen summarizing Paul
Kranz ,¢Chninadse Ds 53.)

The Christian preacher should constantly take the ground

that every good teaching in the native faith is a gift of
God, the Father of all men, and is a preparation for the
coming of his fuller revelation in Jesus Christ. We should
show our real and deep respect for the 'heathen' religions;

Se Se
 we should take off our hats at their shrines, as we expect
them to do in our churches. We should ever insist that
Christianity does not come to destroy anything that is good
and true in the native faiths, but rather to stimulate, to
strengthen and fulfil it - to give it life and real energy.
(Sidney Gulick, Japan, p.95.)

Next to a thorough knowledge of Islam, the missionary

should cultivate sympathy to the highest degree, and an
appreciation of all the great fundamental truths which we
hold in connection with Mohammedans. He should show the
superiority of Christianity both in doctrine and life by
admitting the excellencies of doctrine and life in
Mohammedanism, but showing how Christianity surpasses them.
(Samuel Zwemer, Bahrein, p.139.)

An unsympathetic student of the gospels invariably misinter-

prets them and the same is true of an unsympathetic study
of other faiths. The question really lies between under-
standing and misunderstanding them; and no one can under-
stand his own religion properly who knows nothing of other
faiths, while it has been ignorance of systems of our own
that has led many to understand them as inventions of
priests, or snares of the devil. And in making our study
it must be borne in mind that we do not know religions any
more than other persons until we have seen them at their
best, that it is the highest form which gives the clue to
their crudest beginnings.

We must ever remember that religious beliefs and practices,

however they may appear to us, and though they may
themselves be false and foolish and harmful to those who
hold and observe them, are yet held in all sincerity by the
people and represent a spiritual heritage sacred and dear,
and have come to them through a providential guidance and
evolution. (T.E. Slater, South India, pp.174-5.)

These replies, from British, German and American missionaries, of Anglican,

Congregationalist, Lutheran and Reformed traditions may be taken as typical.
We see in them all elements of deep respect and profound appreciation for the
faith of other people. They can be matched by many similar testimonies in the
Edinburgh replies. We see also the elements out of which the theology of
religion of this period was being formulated. There is a sense that God the
Father has not left himself without witness, a sense of the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit, a sense of the Logos, a sense of original revelation, and a sense
of providential guidance and evolution. Christianity is not a destruction but
a fulfilment.

Consequently the Report of Commission Four, in its General Conclusions,

stresses:
 the practically universal testimony that the true attitude
of the Christian missionary to the non-Christian religions
should be one of true understanding, and as far as possible,
of sympathy. That there are of course elements in all
these religions which lie outside the possibility of
Sympathy is, of course, recognized, and that in some forms
of religion the evil is appalling is also clear. But
nothing is more remarkable than the agreement that the true
method is that of knowledge and charity, that the missionary
should seek for the nobler elements in the non- Christian
religions and use them as steps to higher things, that in
fact all these religions without exception disclose
elemental needs of the human soul which Christianity alone
can satisfy, and that in higher forms they plainly manifest
the working of the Spirit of God (p.267, italics mine). —

This ‘generous recognition of all that is good and true' goes along, in the
missionary testimony, with the ‘universal and emphatic witness to the absolute-
ness of the Christian faith'. The Commissioners, aware of a difficulty here,
write, ‘Superficial criticism might say that these two attitudes are
incompatible, that if Christianity alone is true and final, all other religions
must be false, and that as falsehoods they must be denounced as such'. But
this says the Commissioners is plainly not the case in the replies, and they
judge that it is precisely because of the strength of this conviction that
their correspondents find it possible to take this generous view. 'They know
that in Christ they have what meets the whole range of human need and therefore
they value all that reveals that need however imperfect the revelation may
be'(p. 268).

Practical Consequences

These are intensely interesting in themselves, both as recommendations still

to a large degree unacted-upon within the theological education programmes of
the member churches of the WCC, and also, in the period before the First World
War, as an ‘against the stream' series of perceptions of the necessary
developments that should take place in Christian theology during the rest of
the twentieth century.

1% There is a need for a thorough and sympathetic knowledge of the non-

Christian religions.... provision should be made for thorough teaching in
Comparative Religion in all our colleges and training institutes. ‘A new
instrument of spiritual culture and propaganda has been put into the hands of
the Church by the progress of this science and it is surely a plain duty to
use it (p.269).

2. There is a need for training in the art of teaching - ‘an art which has,
as one of its first principles, the finding of the true point of contact with
the hearer’. The ‘ordinary training in homiletics seems hardly sufficient'
and in any case ‘our theological courses have been planned on another system
and to meet different practical conditions' (p.270).
3. It is now ‘impossible adequately to teach either theology or apologetics
without provision for instruction in the nature and history of the religions
of the world, for these reveal the elemental and eternal need of man to which
the Gospel is the Divine answer. The absolute religion can only be understood
in the light of the imperfect religions, if religion is a practical matter at
all, and theology other than an mere abstract science' (p.271).

4. There should be a continuing programme of surveys like the one just

carried out among those working among people cf other faiths. ‘Such periodic
and systematic enquiry, would we believe, in time yield abounding fruit for
every department of theological study, as well as most valuable instruction
and suggestion for those who contemplate work in the foreign field. We would
Suggest in particular that in the interests of Christian theology and
apologetics the enquiry that we have endeavoured to make in these pages should
be further prosecuted. Comparative Religion is being used by many today in a
negative interest with the view of proving that Christianity is only one among
other religions. We are persuaded that its results lead to precisely opposite
conclusions, and that rightly used they will fling abounding light on the
undeveloped elements in the Christian religion’ (p.273).

Though the idioms and language may be far different from that of today, it is
striking how many of these concerns remain ours today. Recent conferences of
the WCC Programme on Theological Education in association with the Dialogue
sub-unit (Kuala Lumpur, Malawi) have stressed the need for the teaching of the
world religions. The art of teaching, as Martin Buber once made so clear, is
not at all dissimilar to the art of dialogue. Systematic theology and
apologietics are alike seriously impoverished if no cogniscence is taken of
the great religious traditions of the world. Theological discoveries are
indeed waiting to be made through ‘comparative religion' and the missionary
experience with people of other religions (the My Neighbour's Faith and Mine
project). In the Edinburgh findings we see much that we would call today
interfaith dialogue, though the term was not yet known. This is why Wesley
Ariarajah suggests that we pick up the discussion from where it was left in
1910 (The Implications of Recent Ecumenical Thought for the Christian-Hindu
Relationship, unpublished Ph.D thesis, 1987, p.279).

Jerusalem and Tambaram

Despite all the immense energy that went into both I.M.C. conferences, at
Jerusalem in 1928 and Tambaram, Madras in 1938, it will be argued here that
little or no advance was made in the understanding of the other religions in
the purposes of God, 'the theology of religion', or theology of religions'
(theologia religionis, theologia religionum). Robert Speer, giving the
Introductory Address in Jerusalem put his finger on the reason why this was to
be ultimately so:

At Edinburgh the first business was the report of the

commission on carrying the Gospel to the world, and it
consisted of a survey of the fields yet to be occupied.
The matter of the message was relegated to the fourth
place. At this conference it was now at the foreground.
The topic at Edinburgh was the missionary message in

#és2
 relation to the non-Christian religions. At Jerusalem
there were two noticeable changes. It was the Christian
message that was being discussed in relation to
non-Christian systems. Another significant change was that
a new word had been inserted. It was the Christian life
and message that was being discussed in relation to the
non-Christian systems. The word ‘life' was significant and
its warrant and meaning demanded reflection. Another
noticeable change as compared with the Edinburgh conference
was that there was then no reference to the home-base
aspect of the message, whereas today they realized that the
whole subject of the message was of profound importance for
the mission task in other lands but for the home base
also. (Minute of Discussions, in The Christian Life and
Message in Relation to Non-Christian Systems (p.343).

Both at Jerusalem and Tambaram, the emphasis was on the nature of the
Christian message itself (cf. the title of Hendrik Kraemer's magisterial
preparatory volume for Tambaram, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian
World), and thus only incidentally on the other’ religions. This is
demonstrable from the official Statement of the I.M.C., entitled "The
Christian Message'. Of the sixteen pages it takes up in The Christian Life
and Message, only three or four have direct reference to ‘the non-Christian
religious system'. The Statement reflects very little of either preparatory
papers (those on Christianity and the other religious systems were by Nicol
Macnicol (Hinduism); Leighton Stuart and Willard Lyon (Confucianism); K.J.
Saunders and A.K. Reischauer (Buddhism); W.H.T. Gairdner and W.A. Eddy
(Islam) or the intense discussions during the conference. It is clear that
the differences of opinion were too great to produce anything but rather vague
statements about other religions, and that it was possible to make affirmations
acceptable to the whole Council concerning the Christian message alone. It is
nevertheless of some interest to reproduce here some of the incidental
material contained within the Statement. In the section entitled ‘The Spirit
of our Endeavour', we find a confession that the Church has not:

sufficiently sought out the good and noble elements in the

non-Christian beliefs, that it might learn that deeper
personal fellowship with adherents of those beliefs wherein
they may be most powerfully drawn to the living Christ. We
know that, even apart from conscious knowledge of Him, when
men are true to the best light they have, they are able to
effect some real deliverance from many of the evils that
afflict the world; and this should prompt us the more to
help them find the fulness of light and power in Christ
(p.487).

This hint that 'the best light they have' may be the light of Christ is made
explicit a few pages later:

We rejoice to think that just because in Jesus Christ the

light that lighteneth every man shone forth in its true
splendour, we find rays of that same light where He is
unknown or even is rejected. We welcome every noble quality
 in non-Christian persons or systems as further proof that
the Father, who sent His Son into the world, has nowhere
left Himself without witness.

Thus, merely to give illustration, and making no attempt to

estimate the spiritual value of other religions to their
adherents, we recognize as part of that one Truth that
sense of the Majesty of God and the consequent reverence in
worship, which are conspicuous in Islam; the deep sympathy
for the world's sorrow and unselfish search for the way of
escape, which are at the heart of Buddhism; the desire for
contact with ultimate reality conceived of as spiritual
which is prominent in Hinduism; the belief in a moral
order of the universe and consequent insistence on moral
conduct which are inculcated by Confucianism; the
disinterested pursuit of truth and of human welfare which
are often found in those who stand for secular civilization
but do not accept Christ as their Lord and Saviour (p.491).

and a little later, there is this passage:

We call on the followers of non-Christian religions to join

with us in the study of Jesus Christ as He stands before us
in the Scriptures, His place in the life of the world, and
His power to satisfy the human heart; to hold fast to the
faith in the unseen and eternal in the face of the growing
materialism of the world; to cooperate with us against all
the evils of secularism; to respect freedom of conscience
so that men may confess Christ without separation from home
and friends; and to discern that the good of which men
have conceived is fulfilled and secured in Christ (p.492).

But at the end of the day, the religious systems are irrelevant to the Gospel
and its message, and are only to be taken seriously by the Christian
missionary for the motive of invitation to conversion:

But we would insist that when the Gospel of the Love of God
comes home with power to the human heart, it speaks to each
man, not as Moslem or as Buddhist, or as the adherent of
any system, but just as man. And while we rightly study
other religions in order to approach men wisely, yet at the
last we speak to men, inviting them to share with us the
pardon and the life that we have found in Christ (p.492).

Of the sense, so manifest at Edinburgh of living encounter with other forms of

faith and life, which must help Christians to do their own theology better
there is not a trace. The discussions at Jerusalem were sterile, and the
attempt in the Statement to avoid controversy merely begot controversy. This
was what happened at Tambaram ten years later.
 The Findings of Tambaram

We have already alluded to the central thrust of the Tambaram I.M.C.

conference in December 1938. It too was more concerned about the nature of
the Christian message itself, especially in a world period tense with the
fears of war. Even its venue was a symptom of this, for it had been originally
scheduled for Hangchow but hostilities between China and Japan had prevented
that. In Tambaram the Christian Message would have to spelt out against the
background of what were called the ‘New Paganisms' in nationalist, fascist,
communist and scientific materialist forms. No wonder, therefore, but that
its emphasis should have been on 'The Authority of the Faith', with, psycho-
logically, little room left for doubt and questioning. As Kraemer expressed
it, and in doing so caught the prevailing mood:

---ethe Christian Church, religiously speaking, in the West

as well as in the East is standing in a _ pagan,
non-Christian world, and has again to consider the whole
world its mission field, not in the rhetorical but in the
literal sense of the word. (The Christian Message in a
Non-Christian World, pp.16-17.)

All forms of idealism and liberalism (and their attendant possibility of

syncretism) were to be vehemently opposed by ‘Biblical Realism', i.e. through
the self-revelation of Christ the Crucified' which is ‘at the same time an act
of divine salvation and divine judgement' (ibid., p.71).

Kraemer's influence is felt all through the Tambaram 'Findings', as for

example in the following passage:

There are many non-Christian religions that claim the

allegiance of large multitudes. We see and readily
recognize that in them are to be found values of deep
religious experiences and great moral achievements. Yet we
are bold enough to call men out from them to the feet of
Christ. We do so because we believe that in him alone is
the full salvation which man needs. Mankind has_ seen
nothing to be compared with the redeeming love of God in
the life and death and resurrection of Christ (p.200).

and again:

We do not think that God has left himself without witness

in the world at any time.... Men have been seeking Him all
through the ages. Often this seeking and longing have been
misdirected. But we see glimpses of God's light in the
world religions, showing that His yearning after His human
children has not been without response. Yet we believe
that all religious insight and response has to be tested
before God in Christ; and that this is true as well within
as outside the Church (pp.200-201).

But, reflecting the deep divisions of opinion at Tambaram, the 'Findings' do

go on to say, ‘As to whether the non-Christian religions as total systems of

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thought and life may be regarded as in some sense manifesting God's revelation,
Christians are not agreed' (p.201). There was also even a certain repudiation
of the ‘discontinuity' theme, at least in as far as it concerned ‘the appro-
priation of all that traditional cultures may contribute to the enrichment of
the life of the church local and universal':

---we strongly affirm that the Gospel should be expressed

and interpreted in indigenous forms, and that in methods of
worship, institutions, architecture, etc., the spiritual
heritage of the nation and country should be taken into use
(p.45).

From 1938 to 1952: the I.M.C. and People of Living Faiths

This can be a very short section. When the I.M.C. Committee met in Whitby,
Ontario in 1947,and in Willingen in 1952 there was no attention paid to the
great problems that had stirred Commission Four at Edinburgh: the question of
mission itself had now become problematic, hence the key study programme of
this period on 'The Missionary Obligation of the Church', the theme of the
Willingen meeting in 1952. The question was precisely put, 'Why Missions?'
This kind of theme and self-questioning precisely matched the discussions of
the WCC Central Committee at Rolle, Switzerland, in 1951, which were given
over to the ‘Missionary and Ecumenical Calling of the Church'. The Central
Committee put on record its conviction:

---the time is ripe for a fresh study of missionary

principles and practice, and especially for a very earnest
reconsideration of our present methods in the light of the
Bible. (Minutes, p.66.)

Thus themes like the relation of mission and church, ecclesiology and
eschatology, history and Heilsgeschichte, kingdom and shalom, Missio Dei
and the ‘Great Commission' were fully discussed. The relation of any or all
of these themes to the world of many faiths was not. Yet from Willingen there
emerged one fruitful proposal, namely that the I.M.C. should set up in various
parts of Asia Study Centres where continuous study and research should take
place into the living religions of Asia. This programme was carried out by
the joint committee of the I.M.C. and W.C.C., and may be seen as a forerunner
of the joint I.M.C.-W.C.C.-W.S.C.F. study entitled 'The Word of God and the
Living Faiths of Men'.

‘The Word of God and the Living Faiths of Men‘

We can turn now to the WCC stream which was to come together with the I.M.C.
at the Third Assembly in New Delhi in 1961. If the first WCC Assembly in
Amsterdam in 1948, made no comment of any signficance on the world of many
religions in which it came into being, the second, at Evanston, did recognize
the rapid developments in the world of faiths:

= Ons
 --ethe Renaissance of non-Christian religions and _ the
spread of new ideologies necessitates a new approach in our
evangelizing task. In many countries, especially in Asia
and ea partsS@., Of... Africa, these religious revivals’ are
reinforced by nationalism and often present themselves as
effective bases for social reform. It is not so much the
truths of these systems of thought and feeling which make
the appeal, but rather the present determination to
interpret and change oppressive conditions of life.
Therefore they confront us not only as reformulated creeds
but also as foundations for universal hope. (The Evanston
Report, p.99.)

Such recognition was the background for the important study on 'The Word of
God and the Living Faiths of Men'. This was commissioned on the WCC's part by
the Central Committee in its meeting at Galyateto, Hungary in 1956. It was to
have four broad areas of enquiry:

1. The nature of the living faiths of men and the elements

in them of appeal and power.
2. The nature of the Word of God which is addressed to men
who live by these faiths.
3. The nature of the relationship between the Christian
message and these faiths.
4. The way in which the Church may be enabled to
communicate this Word to those who live by these
faiths. (Minutes)

The study process began with contributions from the I.M.C. and
continued in research papers and local consultations especially in
East Asia (E.A.C.C.). Daniel Niles eventually wrote a semi-official
report, Upon the Earth (1962). An interim report was given at the
New Delhi conference and the following points were made:

At an early stage it was agreed to proceed from an abstract

discussion of systems of belief to a study of the actual
faith by which men and women live, and of the elements
therein of experienced appeal and power. It was also
agreed to study the nature of the Word of God, which is
addressed to those who live by these other faiths, and the
way in which the Church can effectively communicate this
Word of the Gospel.

The first stages of this enquiry led to the recognition of

two important truths. The first, that the relationship
between Christians and non-Christians is based upon the
sharing of a common humanity and on an equal place within
the Love of God. It is a human relationship, founded not
upon some meeting point of religious systems, but on the
shared experience of secular community. The second was
that the Gospel is addressed not to religions but to men
and women. It seemed that at the point of the varying
doctrines of man, there might appear some mutual openness
and therefore the possibility of vital encounter.
(Evanston to New Delhi, p.64.)

lth =
Reference was also made in the interim report to the New Delhi Assembly to the
Kuala Lumpur Assembly of the E.A.C.C. where the following suggestions for
study were proposed:

(i) The relation of the ‘once-for-allness' of the

redemptive act in Jesus Christ to God's concern for
the redemption of men of other religions;
(ii) The ways in which God is at work in the non-Christian
religions;
(iii) Other religions as themselves “in a positive way
drawing from the redemptive activity of God, and at
the same time, negatively using God's power against
God."
(iv) The conception of man as under the grip of ‘powers'
which prevent him from heeding the Gospel _ and
reaching decision for Christ;
(v) The significance of the eschatological view of the
Gospel and its relevance to the hopes created by
renascent Asian religions;
(vi) The Christian understanding of conscience and of
‘conversion' as in fact "a racial replacement of all
other authority over man's conscience by the sole
authority of Jesus Christ." (Evanston to New Delhi,
Dab oa)

New Delhi 1961

Consequently at the New Delhi Assembly the groundwork had been done to
enabling the WCC now united with the I.M.C. to be clear that:

if The other faiths of humankind were to be regarded as

living faiths.
ii. That there was a continuing need to reassess our own
theological understanding of the relationship of the
Gospel to these faiths.
iii. That there were possibilities for fresh understanding
of the Gospel in the Christian encounter with other
religious traditions.

The key passage in the New Delhi Report (in the Section on Witness) reads
therefore as follows:

Above all else, the Spirit stirs up the Church to proclaim

Christ as Lord and Saviour to all the nations and in all
spheres of life. The Church is sent, knowing that God has
not left himself without witness even among men who do not
yet know Christ, and knowing also that the reconciliation
wrought through Christ embraces all creation and the whole
of mankind. We are aware that this great truth has deep
implications when we go out to meet men of other faiths.
But there are differences of opinion amongst us when we
attempt to define the relation and response of such men to

ai
 the activity of God amongst them. We are glad to note that
the study of this question will be a main concern in the
continuing study on ‘The Word of God and the Living Faiths
of Men'. We would stress the urgency of this study. In
the churches, we have but little understanding of the
wisdom, love and power which God has given to men of other
faiths and of no faith, or of the changes wrought in other
faiths by their long encounter with Christianity. We must
take up the conversations about Christ with them, knowing
that Christ addresses them through us and us through them.
(The New Delhi Report, p.82)

Uppsala 1968

Between 1961 and 1968 the most important happening connected with our theme
within the life of the WCC member churches was the Kandy, Sri Lanka
consultation. This was convened by the Department of Studies in Mission and
Evangelism and was to have an important role in the Uppsala discussions. Here
there met for the first time “Orthodox” and Roman Catholic “as well as
Protestants, and it is noticeable that the Kandy Statement drew upon the
Decrees of Vatican II, notably Lumen Gentium. The Report given to the Uppsala
Assembly was in the following terms:

There was general agreement on the nature and purposes of

true dialogue, and many useful things were said about it in
the statement drawn up at the consultation. The key
question, however, remained unsolved. “We are not agreed
among ourselves whether or not it is part of God's redemp-
tive purposes to bring about an increasing manifestation of
the Saviour within other systems of belief, as such." This
led to a very important practical conclusion: "This very
fact is one of the reasons which should make us leave it to
the conscience and inner illumination of those who within
other systems take up Christian discipleship, whether or
not it is God's will for them that they should leave their
own social and religious community". But the theological
issues involved will need to be studied thoroughly, and in
a fresh way within the different confessions, as well as
ecumenically before any useful attempt can be made to speak
together on the subject. In this latter setting it will
have to be placed in the context of our understanding of
God's action in history as a whole. (New Delhi to Uppsala,
pp.74-5)

Though the idea of interfaith dialogue clearly commended itself, as in the

important Section 6 of the Report on "Renewal of Mission" adopted by the
Assembly makes clear it is also obvious that the theology of religions
questions raised in it were avoided. The Uppsala Report reads as follows:

6. The meeting with men of other faiths or of no faith

must lead to dialogue. A Christian's dialogue with another
implies neither a denial of the uniqueness of Christ, nor

=~ ioe
 any loss of his own commitment to Christ, but rather that a
genuinely Christian approach to others must be human,
personal, relevant and humble. In dialogue we share our
common humanity, its dignity and fallenness, and express
our common concern for that humanity. It opens the possi-
bility of sharing in new forms of community and common
service. Each meets and challenges the other; witnessing
from the depths of his existence to the ultimate concerns
that come to expression in word and action. As Christians
we believe that Christ speaks in this dialogue, revealing
himself to those who do not know him and connecting the
limited and distorted knowledge of those who do. Dialogue
and proclamation are not the same. The one complements the
other in a total witness. But sometimes Christians are not
able to engage either in open dialogue or proclamation.
Witness is then a silent one of living the Christian life
and suffering for Christ. (The Uppsala Report, p.29)

After Uppsala

In August 1968 Dr. Stanley J. Samartha was invited to continue the work on the
‘The Word of God and the Living Faiths of Men'. This appointment may be said
to mark a new era in the WCC involvement with people of other faiths. On the
one hand it led in 1971 to the creation of the sub-unit on Dialogue of the
WCC, and on the other to an emphasis on dialogue with as opposed to discussion
about people of living faiths. The Central Committee meeting in Addis Ababa
(1971) said "that the engagement of the World Council is to be understood as a
common adventure of the churches" and so it has continued ever since, though
not without controversy.

Nairobi 1975

Though there were valuable recommendations to the churches about participation

in dialogue with people of living faiths (see Breaking Barriers, Nairobi
Assembly Report, pp.83-85), it is clear that the theological issues were far
too difficult to handle. In the Assembly itself the debate was both heated
and inconclusive, see the report on Section III, “Seeking Community: The
Common Search of People of Various Faiths, Cultures and Communities", Breaking
Barriers, pp.70-73.

Chiang Mai 1977

Here we come to our own agenda. The most important achievement of the Chiang
Mai consultation of the Dialogue sub-unit was the elaboration of the
Guidelines on Dialoque with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies, whose
unfinished work we are proposing to tackle at this consultation in January
1990. Its theology of religion section is to be found in paragraphs 21-23.
The accompanying draft is built round these paragraphs. But our survey of
where the WCC is in the theology of religion is not yet ended, for we must
still take note of the findings of the Vancouver Assembly in 1983 and the San
Antonio C.W.M.E. consultation in 1989.

i Ho
 Vancouver 1983

The Vancouver Assembly, notable both for the participation in the Assembly
itself of people of living faiths and the success of a number of additional
meetings where these delegates and others could air questions of common
concern to them as to Christians. The Vancouver Assembly itself however was
not able to make any theological affirmation about the presence of God with
them or with their religious tradition except for the following remarks in the
official report under the heading ‘Witnessing among people of living faiths':

41. In our discussions and reflections on the question of

witnessing to Christ among people of other faiths we have
heard encouraging reports of many examples of dialogue in
local situations. But we have also become aware of some
matters which remain to be explored in the years that lie
ahead. We note amongst other things the following:
a) We wish to place on record our appreciation to our
friends from other faiths who have been present with us in
this Sixth Assembly. We value their contribution and their
presence has raised for us questions about the special
nature of the witness Christians bring to the world
community.
b) While affirming the uniqueness of the birth, life,
death, and resurrection of Jesus, to which we bear witness,
we recognize God's creative work in the seeking for
religious truth among people of other faiths.
c) We acknowledge the experience of common action and
cooperation between Christians and persons of other faiths
and the urgency of working together, especially in areas
concerning the poor, basic human dignity, justice and
peace, economic reconstruction, and the eradication of
hunger and disease.
42. We see, however, the need to distinguish between
witness and dialogue, whilst at the same time affirming
their inter-relatedness.
43. Witness may be described as those acts and words by
which a Christian or community gives testimony to Christ
and invites others to make their response to him. In
witness we expect to share the good news of Jesus and be
challenged in relation to our understanding of, and our
obedience to that good news.
44. Dialogue may be described as that encounter where
people holding different claims about ultimate reality can
meet and explore these claims in a context of mutual
respect. From dialogue we expect to discern more about how
God is active in our world, and to appreciate for their own
sake the insights and experiences people of other faiths
have of ultimate reality. (Gathered for Life, p.40.)

Note how carefully non-committal clause 41b and 44 are in the theology of
religion, and compare that with the sense of affirmation of dialogue itself,
fully endorsed in the recommendations to the _ churches. Allan Brockway
commented on the underlying issues:

sie
 Perhaps the Christian critics of dialogue see more clearly
than do its advocates where the dangers lie. Dialogue does
indeed call into question the missionary enterprise and,
even more significantly, calls into question a _ basic
assumption about the church. To what extent has the church
failed in its mission when the testimony it gives is
rejected by those who hear it? How integral to the self-
understanding of the church is the necessity for ever-
increasing numbers of Christians? Is the whole truth the
sole possession of the church? If the answers to these and
related questions are problematic, as the spirit of dialogue
at the very least implies, then dialogue may be seen as
striking at the foundations of long-cherished Christian
beliefs. Careful and systematic thought is required within
the churches about these matters.
We are beginning to recognize that dialogue has more far-
reaching implications for the church than simply a means
towards world community, as necessary and important as that
is. It raises, for instance, questions about Christology,
about mission, about soteriology, exegesis, doctrines of
God, and all the rest. The next stage in the church's
discussion about dialogue, clearly, is the development of
coherent Christian theologies that take fully into account
the legitimate questions raised from the practice of
dialogue. (Art. "Vancouver and the Future of Interfaith
Dialogue" in Current Dialogue, No. 6, pp.6-7.)

After Vancouver

So is it possible that the Christian community linked through the WCC could
begin to affirm God's presence with our neighbours in new Christological and
Pneumatological ways? There are some signs of hope that this may be so.
There is the continuing programme "May Neighbour's Faith - And Mine" now being
worked upon by WCC member churches throughout the world (it has_ been
translated into 16 languages). There are the notable declarations or
affirmations of the recent C.W.M.E. consultation in San Antonio, New Mexico in
June 1989. We note with considerable interest the following formulations:

25% In reaffirming the "evangelistic mandate" of the

ecumenical movement, we would like to emphasize that we may
never claim to have a full understanding of God's truth:
we are only the recipients of God's grace. Our ministry of
witness among people of other faiths presupposes. our
presence with them, sensitivity to their deepest faith
commitments and experiences, willingness to be _ their
servants for Christ's sake, affirmation of what God has
done and is doing among them, and love for them. Since
God's mystery in Christ surpasses our understanding and
Since our knowledge of God's saving power is imperfect, we
Christians are called to be witnesses to others, not
judges of them. We also affirm that it is possible to be
non-aggressive and missionary at the same time - that it
is, in fact, the only way of being truly missionary.

Ly |e
 26. We cannot point to any other way of salvation than
Jesus Christ; at the same time we cannot set limits to the
Saving power of God.
27. We recognize that both witness and dialogue presuppose
two-way relationships. We affirm that witness does not
preclude dialogue but invites it, and that dialogue does
not preclude witness but extends and deepens it.
28. Dialogue has its own place and integrity and is
neither opposed to nor incompatible with witness. or
proclamation. We do not water down our own commitment if
we engage in dialogue; as a matter of fact, dialogue
between people of different faiths is spurious unless it
proceeds from the acceptance and expression of faith
commitment. --e-In dialogue we are invited to listen, in
openness to the possibility that the God we know in Jesus
Christ may encounter us also in the lives of our neighbours
of other faiths.
29. In affirming the dialogical nature of our witness, we
are constrained by grace to affirm that "salvation is
offered to the whole creation through Jesus’ Christ"
(Tambaram II). "Our mission to witness to Jesus Christ can
never be given up" (Melbourne,p.188). We are well aware
that these convictions and the ministry of witness stand in
tension with what we have affirmed about God being present
in and at work in people of other faiths; we appreciate
this tension, and do not attempt to resolve it. (Report of
Section I: ‘Turning to the Living God', sub-section iv.
‘Witness among people of living faiths.)

These are valuable affirmations upon which we may be able to build now.

Come Holy Spirit - Renew the Whole Creation

A third sign of hope is the theme of the Canberra Assembly of the WCC in
1991. Already one issue of the Ecumenical Review has been given over to the
theme of the Holy Spirit, and we note for example the article of Prof. Justin
Ukpong (Nigeria) on "Pluralism" and the Holy Spirit, as well as _ many
fascinating side comments in other articles. Could we hope for beginnings of
a new understanding of the Holy Spirit in relation to the world religious
traditions even from this meeting in Baar?

CPE MS CCD: DARD a>» >

Ln) Be
 THE CHRISTOLOGICAL DEBATE IN THE CONTEXT
OF RELIGIOUS PLURALITY

Jacques Dupuis
(Gregorian University)

The Christological problem has always been at the heart of the Christian
theology of religions. It remains so today. In fact, the present context of
religious plurality and the practice of interreligious dialogue give to the
Christological question new emphasis and urgency. It is generally agreed that
the New Testament bears an unequivocal witness to the finality of Jesus Christ
as universal Saviour of humankind. The question is, however, being asked
whether in the present context of dialogue such a massive affirmation needs
not be re-examined and re-interpreted. Does it belong to the substance of the
revealed message, or is it due to the cultural idiom in which the experience
of the early Christians has been expressed? In the light of what we know
today about the followers of other religious traditions and of the traditions
themselves, is it still possible to make their salvation depend on the
particular historical event of Jesus of Nazareth, about whom often they have
not heard or whom otherwise they have failed to recognize? Is Jesus Christ
the one and universal Saviour? And, if so, how can we account for the
salvation in him of millions of people who do not acknowledge him?

It is important to note that the question being asked is about Jesus Christ,
not about the Christian Church or Churches. The Christological question, not
the ecclesiological one is at the heart of the debate; and in whatever way
theology may conceive the relationship between Jesus Christ and the Church,
both can never be placed on one and the same level of necessity. Only of
Jesus does the Gospel of John say that he is "the way, the truth and the life"
(John 14:6); and only of the "man Christ Jesus" does Paul affirm that he is
the "one mediator between God and men" (1 Tim. 2:5), and Peter that "there is
no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts
4:12). A Christocentric theology of religions needs to be clearly distin-
guished from an ecclesiocentric perspective to the same.

The various theological positions on the subject have been differently classi-
fied by theologians. One classification distinguishes four main opinions:
1) an ecclesiocentric universe and an exclusive Christology; 2) a Christo-
centric universe and an inclusive Christology; 3) a theocentric universe and
a normative Christology; 4) a theocentric universe and a non-normative
Christology.! For the sake of simplicity other classifications reduce the
spectrum of opinions to three main categories: ecclesiocentrism, Christo-
centrism, and theocentrism; or, equivalently, exclusivism, inclusivism, and
"pluralism". 2

The first opinion holds that the explicit knowledge of Jesus Christ and
membership of the Church are required for salvation; it maintains the axiom
Extra _ecclesiam nulla salus in its rigid interpretation. The second seeks to
combine the twofold New Testament affirmations of the concrete and universal
salvific will of God, on the one hand, and of the finality of Jesus Christ as
universal Saviour, on the other; it affirms that the mystery of Jesus Christ

ee ee
and of his Spirit is present and operative outside the boundaries of the
Church, both in the life of individual persons and in the religious traditions
to which they belong and which they sincerely practise. The third opinion
holds that God has manifested and revealed himself in various ways to different
peoples in their respective situations; no finality of Jesus Christ in the
order of salvation is to be upheld, for God saves people through their own
tradition even as he saves Christians through Jesus Christ. Thus, for the
exclusivist position Jesus Christ and the Church are the necessary way to
Salvation; for the inclusivist Jesus Christ is the way for all; according to
the pluralist model Jesus Christ is the way for Christians while the respective
traditions constitute the way for the others.

It should be noted that the three categories above have but an indicative
value and may not be taken rigidly. They leave room for many shades of
opinion among theologians.3 Taken rigidly, they would become misleading as
they would freeze theological opinions into the straight-jacket of
preconceived labels. They nevertheless have the merit of showing clearly that
the universality of the mediatorship of Jesus Christ in the order of salvation
is at the centre of the debate.

In the context of the ecumenical discussion on the theology of religions it is

no less important to note that, rather than representing distinct church
traditions, the various opinions of the spectrum cut across the different
churches.* It may be true that the exclusivist paradigm is mainly held by
Protestants of the evangelical tradition; yet the concrete attitudes of
missionaries belonging to various churches would seem more often than not to
betray a similar theological stand, notwithstanding - on the Roman Catholic
side - the official disavowal of the rigid interpretation of the axiom Extra
ecclesiam nulla _salus.» On the other hand, the inclusivist paradigm, while
being proposed by a large number of Roman Catholic theologians, is not their
exclusive preserve any more than is the pluralist the preserve of liberal
Protestants. Both these models are being proposed - with notable variations -
by authors belonging to distinct church traditions. Theology fo religions
should not be misconstrued to be a factor of division between the churches;
it rather offers an opportunity for a broad consensus - within a diversity of
opinions - as members of the various churches reflect together on their common
Christian identity in the context of the plurality of religions.

This paper is primarily intended as a brief presentation of the state of the

question from a Catholic perspective. It may therefore be useful to show
succinctly what direction the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church
has taken in recent years on the subject of other religions and their
relationship to Christianity.

I have already recalled the disavowal by authoritative Church teaching of the

exclusivist position: salvation must be held possible outside the Church.
The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) has reaffirmed this doctrinal stand in
unambiguous terms in its dogmatic constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium,
nn.16-17), as well as in its declaration on the relationship of the Church to
non-Christian religions (Nostra Aetate), its decree on the Church's missionary
activity (Ad Gentes), and its pastoral constitution on the Church in the
modern world (Gaudium et Spes). A celebrated passage of the latter document,
after stating how Christians come in contact with the paschal mystery of the

. wf
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, affirms clearly that the same applies
- "in a manner known to God" - for members of the other religious traditions.
It says.

All this holds true not only for Christians, but for all
men of goodwill in whose hearts grace works in an unseen
way. For since Christ died for all, and since the ultimate
vocation of man is in fact one, and divine, we must hold
that the Holy Spirit in a manner known to God offers to
every man the possibility of being associated with the
paschal mystery (Gaudium et Spes, 22).

Several points need to be noted here. First, the Council looks at God's
universal salvific will not as an abstract possibility but as a concrete
reality, actually operative among people. Second, the concrete possibility of
Salvation available to all men and women of goodwill is salvation through
Jesus Christ and his paschal mystery. Third, this salvation reaches out to
them through the universal action of the Holy Spirit. Fourth, the manner in
which salvation in Jesus Christ is made available outside the Church through
the working of the Holy Spirit remains for us mysterious. This last point
does not amount to saying that the ‘how' of salvation outside the Church lies
altogether beyond the scope of theological investigation; however, whatever
theological explanation may be given would have to preserve the reference to
Christ and his Spirit. God's saving grace or the faith that justifies has,
even outside the Church, a Christological and a pneumatological dimension.

Has Vatican II gone beyond affirming that salvation in Jesus Christ is

available
to persons outside the Church? Does it consider the other religious traditions
as constituting valid ways of salvation for their followers? For sure,
Vatican II is the first Council in a long concilliar history to speak
positively of the other religions. It recognizes positive elements not only
in individual persons belonging to those traditions, but in the traditions
themselves. It speaks of "elements of truth and grace" (AG, 9), of "seeds of
the Word" (AG, 11, 15), and of “rays of that Truth which enlightens all men"
(NA, 2), lying hidden in them. However, it leaves unanswered the question how
the saving mystery of Jesus Christ operates in the members of the other
religious traditions through the Holy Spirit. Yet, it is clear to the Council
that those traditions cannot be considered as channels of salvation for their
followers without reference to the mystery of Jesus Christ - outside whom
there is no salvation.

This is the point on which the inclusivist theory and the pluralist one are
sharply divided. The inclusivist model - of which there exist different
varieties - professes to hold fast to the universal significance of the
mystery of Jesus Christ, constitutive of salvation, as affirmed by the New
Testament. While, however, the saving mystery of Jesus Christ is available to
Christiams in and through the Church, it reaches out to the followers of the
other religious traditions, in some mysterious way, through these traditions
themselves. There is thus one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus
Christ; but there exists different channels through which the saving action
of the one mediator attains people inside and outside the Church through his
Spirit. Admittedly, the Church, as the eschatological community representing
sacramentally the mystery of Christ, mediates the mystery of salvation in an

—-t 70.
eminent way; but it is not the only channel of the mystery. The same attains
people outside the Church in the concrete situations in which they find
themselves; that is, in and through the religious traditions to which they
belong, which inspire their faith-response to God and in which this response
finds concrete expression. For the inclusivist theory, therefore, the task to
be accomplished by a theology of religions consists in showing that the Christ-
event, its particularity in time and space notwithstanding, has universal value
and cosmic consequences in such wise that the mystery of salvation in Jesus
Christ is everywhere present and operative through the Spirit.

The pluralist theory finds this inclusivist theological agenda unpracticable

and unnecessary. It criticises the inclusivist model for preempting the
uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ and thereby affirming a_priori the
superiority of Christianity over the other religious traditions. It also
accuses inclusivism for evaluating the other traditions not in themselves but
in relation to Christianity; for seeing them not as they see themselves but
as pale and incomplete realizations of what Christianity embodies in its
fulness. In the present context of religious plurality and dialogue, such a
position would seem untenable, for it assumes that Christianity is the
yardstick by which all religious traditions must be theologically evaluated
and closes the door in advance to an inter-religious dialogue on a basis of
equality. A "paradigm shift" is therefore necessary.

It consists in substituting for the Christocentric perspective a theocentric

one, according to which Jesus Christ and his saving mystery no longer stand at
the centre of God's saving design for humankind. That place belongs to God
alone towards whom all the religious traditions, Christianity included, tend
as to their end. It needs to be recognized plainly that God, who "shows no
partiality" (Acts 10:34), has manifested and revealed himself in various ways
to different peoples in different cultures, and that the various religious
traditions of the world embody, each in their own way, such divine self-
revelation. It follows that, partial contradictions notwithstanding, the
various religious traditions complement each other in their differences; what
is required between them is neither mutual exclusion nor inclusion of the many
into one, but reciprocal enrichment though open interaction and _ sincere
dialogue.

The pluralist paradigm is not, however, a monolithic theory; it covers

different theological positions the distinction between which needs to be
rapidly mentioned. In its extreme form - with which the term "copernican
revolution" is associated® - pluralism calls for Christianity to give up all
claim to uniqueness or finality for Jesus Christ in the order of God's
relationship with humankind. Universality can only be understood in the sense
that the person of Jesus Christ and his message is capable - as other saving
figures also are - of a universal appeal to people, that is, of arousing in
them a response to God and to that which is truly human. But such a universal
appeal is in no way a distinctive or exclusive feature of Christianity.

Other versions of the pluralist model are more restrained. They hold -
perhaps illogically, once the claim for the universal constitutive mediator-
ship of Jesus Christ is abandoned - that among the various paths, all valid in
themselves and in their own right, Jesus Christ keeps a relative prominence:
compared with other saving figures, he remains the ideal symbol of the way in
which God has been dealing with humankind salvifically, and in this sense is
"normative". / According to some views, Christianity must renounce her claim
to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ once for all.8 Others, on the contrary,
call on Christianity to put such claim "between brackets" provisionally to
allow for sincere dialogue with the other religious traditions; the practice
of dialogue will perhaps help rediscover that Jesus Christ is indeed unique. 2

This survey, though rapid and incomplete, allows for two observations to be
made. The first is that at stake in the Christological debate in the context
of religious plurality is the traditional Christocentrism of much Christian
theology. A growing number of theologians suggest that a Christocentric
perspective is no longer tenable in the present context and that a theocentric
model must be substituted for it. This assumption, however, calls for some
clarifications. Are Christocentrism and theocentrism mutually opposed as two
distinct paradigms? To affirm it constitutes by itself a theological and
Christological option. The Christocentrism of Christian tradition is not, in
fact, opposed to theocentrism. It never places Jesus Christ in the place of
God; it merely affirms that God has placed him at the centre of his saving
plan for humankind, not as the end but as the way, not as the goal of every
human quest for God but as the universal mediator of God's saving action
towards people. Christian theology is not faced with the dilemma of being
either Christocentric or theocentric; it is theocentric by being Christo-
centric and vice-versa. This amounts to saying that Jesus Christ is the
sacrament of God's encounter with people. The man Jesus belongs, no doubt, to
the order of signs and symbols; but in him who has been constituted the
Christ by God who raised him from the dead (Acts 2:36) God's saving action
reaches out to people in various ways, knowingly to some and to others
unknowingly.

The second observation has to do with the kind of Christology that underlies
the Christocentric and the theocentric paradigms. In terms of the distinction
often made between a high and a low Christology, it is clear that the
inclusivist or Christocentric model of a theology of religions is consonant
with a high Christology in which the personal identity of Jesus Christ as the
Son of God is unambiguously recognized; on the contrary, the pluralist or
theocentric model is in keeping with a low Christology which either questions
or prescinds from such ontological affirmations about Jesus Christ. It is not
by chance that the main protagonist of a "copernican revolution" in Christology
in the context of the theology fo religions, had previously advocated the
“demythologisation" of the mystery of Jesus Christ as the Son of Goa. 10
Both paradigms are in this regard fully consequent with themselves. The
implication is, as the Christian tradition also testifies, that the only
adequate foundation on which the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ can
be based is his personal identity as the Son of God made man, as God's
incarnate Word. No other Christology can, in the last analysis, account
persuasively for Christ's universal mediatorship in the order of salvation.

Concretely, then, the choice between a Christocentric and a _ theocentric

paradigm in the theology of religions depends on the option which is made
between a high, ontological Christology and a low Christology which remains
deliberately at the functional level. There remains to be asked whether other
paradigm shifts from the Christocentric model are possible and to review
several suggestions which have been made in that direction in recent years.

eo ee
One suggestion is that an eschatological perspective be substituted for the
traditional Christocentrism. This new "paradigm shift" would consist in
centring the theology of religions no longer on the Christ-event but on the
Reign of God which builds itself up through history and is destined to reach
its fulfilment in the eschatological time. The focus in the new perspective
would no longer be on the past but on the future: God and his Reign are the
goal of history towards which all religions, Christianity included, tend
together as to their common destiny.

The Reign of God model is a new version of the theocentric. It has the merit
of showing that the followers of other religious traditions are already
members of the Reign of God in history and that together with Christians they
are destined to meet in God at the end of time. Does this new model, however,
represent a paradigm shift from the Christological? To affirm it would be to
forget that the Reign of God has broken through to history in Jesus Christ and
the Christ-event; that it is through the combined action of the risen Christ
and his Spirit that the members of the other religious traditions share in the
Reign of God historically present; finally, that the eschatological Reign to
which the members of all religious traditions are summoned together is at once
God's Reign and that of the Lord Jesus Christ. Once again theocentrism and
Christocentrism seem to go hand in hand as two aspects of the same reality;
they do not constitute distinct paradigms. Nevertheless, in the context of
dialogue the Reign of God model has the advantage of showing how Christians
and the members of other religious traditions are co-pilgrims in history,
heading as they do together towards God's eschatological fulness.

Another suggestion is to base the theology of religions on the recognition of

the universal presence and action of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God has
been universally present throughout human history and remains active today
outside the boundaries of the Christian fold. He it is who "inspires" in
people belonging to other religious traditions the obedience of saving faith,
and in the tradition themselves a word spoken by God to their adherents. In
short, the Holy Spirit is God's "point of entry" into the life of people and
of peoples; hence his immediate action opens up the way for a distinct model
in the Christian theology of religions, one no longer Christocentric but
pneumatocentric.

That the Holy Spirit is God's "point of entry" wherever and whenever God
reveals and communicates himself in history to people, is certain. Indeed, it
is so in virtue of the necessary correspondence which exists between the
mystery of the Triune God as he is in himself and that of his manifestation in
the world. Outside the Church as inside the immanent presence of the Holy
Spirit is the reality of God's saving grace. However, does a model centred on
the Spirit represent for a theology of religions a paradigm shift from the
Christocentric model? It does not seem to be so. For the pneumatological
perspective is only partly distinct from the Christological. In fact, both
are inseparable in the Christian mystery, insofar as the cosmic influence of
the Holy Spirit is essentially bound to the universal action of the risen
Christ. The Spirit of God whose abiding presence confers salvation is at the
same time the Spirit of Christ, communicated by the risen Lord. His saving
function consists in centring people on the Christ whom God has established as
the mediator and the way leading towards him. Christ, not the Spirit, is at
the centre. Christocentrism and pneumatology must not be set in mutual

2 ae
opposition as two distinct economies of salvation; they are two inseparable
aspects of one and the same economy. Nevertheless, the specific role played
by the Holy Spirit in salvation both inside and outside the Church, and the
immediacy of his action make it possible to recognize his personal imprint
wherever salvation is at work. The influence of the Spirit manifests the
operative presence of God's saving action in Jesus Christ.

& & &

Our survey of the various theological models for a Christian theology of

religions seems to lead to the following conclusions. The ecclesiocentric
model is too narrow a perspective to account for the presence of God and of
his saving grace outside the Church. A paradigm shift is called for from the
ecclesiocentric to a Christocentric perspective. Whether the Christocentric
model turns out in turn to be unequal to the task and a further paradigm shift
is required towards a theocentric model is a debated question among Christo-
logists: while low Christologists will be inclined to agree, their high
counterparts will insist that a theocentric perspective is intrinsic in the
Christocentric model itself; it must not be construed as a distinct paradigm.
But if a Christian theology of religions needs to be Christocentric, it must
bring out the full dimension of the mystery of Jesus Christ and put in evidence
its cosmic significance. In particular, a Christian theology of religions
must show that the members of the other religious traditions, together with
Christians, share in the reign which God has established in history through
Jesus Christ, and that the Spirit of Christ is present among them and
operative in them.

FOOTNOTES

1 See J.P. Schineller, "Christ and Church: A Spectrum of Views",

Theological Studies 37 (1976), pp.545-566; reproduced in W.J.
Burghardt/W.G.Thompson, Why the Church?, New York, Paulist Press,
1977, pp.1-22.

4 See, for instance, A.Rice, Christians and Religious Pluralism:

Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions, London, SCM Press,
1983; H.Coward, Pluralism: Challenge of Other Religions, Oxford,
Basil Blackwell, 1986.

3 For a more elaborate exposition of the various opinions, see my

recent book, entitled Jésus-Christ a la rencontre des religions,
Paris, Desclée, 1989; especially pp.133-141.

4 Paul F.Knitter, No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian

Attitudes towards the World Religions, Maryknoll, New York, Orbis
Books, 1985, adopts a fourfold division of opinions, distinguishing
between the "conservative evangelical model: one true religion", the
"mainline Protestant model: salvation only in Christ", the "Catholic
model: many ways, one norm", and the "theocentric model: many ways to
the centre".

(Cont'd on page 31)

perl
AN ORTHODOX PERSPECTIVE OF INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

Metropolitan George Khodr

In treatises of dogmatics, the category of pneumatology appears in a final

chapter. The Third Person was probably hidden because it was considered as
rather instrumental, and thus confined to its role as an "operator". It is
quite difficult to witness to a divine Person whose function is to reveal the
Father and the Son. Yet, we must remember that the Nicean Creed is built on a
Trinitarian scheme, that all doxological prayer life, and consequently
doxological theology, became Trinitarian.

That Trinitarian perception of divine reality is not easily bearable because

Western Christianity over-emphasized the historical Jesus, i.e. the synoptic
Christ. This may be more connatural to human sensitivity. And the mono-
hypostatic God manifested in a Sabellian manner and incarnated in Jesus seems
to be nearer to "ordinary" people. It may speak more to the humanism of many
theologians. Paradoxically, the first heresy was not the negation of our
Lord's Godhead but docetism. All the gnostic streams had to be challenged by
the fact of incarnation. Yet the East remained Trinitarian because it suffered
so much from arianism. Did a remnant arianism lead to the affirmation of
Christ as the Lord of history and thus sustain what was called Christocentrism?
I have no difficulty with the word itself, if the Christ is never displaced
from the bosom of the Father, and whose presence in the Church and the world
is known by the Holy Spirit. I rather suspect of connotating a monolinear
understanding of the salvation history, while the Christ of glory contemplated
in the light of the Trinity belongs more to the category of mystery which is
at the depth of the biblical revelation. Jesus is placed at the centre of
history because history is regarded as the meeting place between God and
humankind in the Old Testament. History is the way of God to human beings.
In our reading of the New Testament Christ is the fulfilment of time. The
kairos reaches its destiny, meaning, and pleroma in Christ. The kairos
becomes the bearer of the divine mystery.

The Son understood in His eternal reciprocity with the Spirit, receiving it
and sending it to the world, is himself the cosmos of the Church. And the
Church is itself, as Origen put it, the cosmos of the cosmos. This Church has
then to be regarded as founded on a twofold divine economy, the work of Christ
and the work of the Holy Spirit. Remember that saying of Ireneus: "Where the
Church is, there is the Spirit; where the Spirit is, there is the Church."
Thus the "pneumatised" Christ does "contain" the Church. It is within his
whole mystery that we may envisage the mystery of religions.

Let me first suggest that what is more important than living faiths is living
people whose depth are known to God, and who are capable of manifesting God to
us. Our Eastern understanding of the O.T. prophethood is that revelation took
place in the Prophets themselves and not in their books. They did receive the
uncreated energies, (i.e. the Thaboric light) that were manifested to the
Saints and to all believers. In a N.T. perspective the Spirit is seen as
dwelling in them. This is why they were canonized by the Church.

Lae
Isaiah, Ezekiel and others are true Saints in the N.T. Church and received the
Holy Spirit without knowing the historical Jesus. They had through the Spirit
a full experience of Christ. They could not receive truth without being full
of the Christ. In conveying Truth, they did transmit the Christ of God. The
Spirit here preceded, in his salvific action, the historical Jesus. That was
the economy of the prophets according to Irenaeus affirmation: "There is one
but the same God who, from beginning to end, through various economies, came
in assistance to humankind". Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of
Nazianzus speak clearly of God's presence among heathens. The Apologists and
other Fathers were aware of the corruption of paganism. But they nevertheless
thought that God's hand was guiding humanity to the true God.

We are confronted with a state of various economies ante or post Christian.

Time here does not matter and has no particular significance precisely because
the Logos is not exhausted in the Incarnation. Its presence overwhelms
everything and could be experienced with no historical reference to the N.T..
Paul and the Ascetic Fathers speak of the discernment of Spirits. "He that is
spiritual judges all things". We should not consider a priori that the
various religious spheres are by definition external to the Church. A very
severe and continuous critique needs to be undertaken in order to recognize
what is Christlike. Also, there is a great temptation to comprehend rapidly
all religions in Christianity. That implies a refusal of their genuiness. A
spatial and historicist understanding of Christianity would consider all other
faiths as external. In this sense Christianity would be a religion among
other religions, a system among systems, the last and final economy which
destroys all others. But in the N.T. it is spoken of the Christians as being
the little flock, a leaven amidst the dough but never all the pastry. The
salt of food but never all the food, the light of the world because never
identified with the world. Nowhere we heard the promise that all humanity
will be converted. So it seems that the disciples of Jesus will always be
confronted by a vast majority of non-Christians. In other words, Jesus
foresaw that heathens, agnostics and others will dominate the scenery of this
world. This situation lies in the providence of God. We may never understand
within history the reason for this vast realm of diversity of faiths. Ge
seems that it belongs to a permanent oikonomia of God. This oikonomia is not
linked to a particular event, in a sense it does not confront the Church even
if the Church is intended to be the organ of the mystery of salvation for all
nations. The Church is the breath of humanity, the image of the humanity to
come. This makes clear for us that its function is to read, through the
mystery of which it is the sign, all other signs sent by God through all times
and in the various religions in view of the full revelation at the end of
history.

God's economy begins at the creation as a manifestation of God's kenosis. The

cosmos bears God's seal. Here God enters into a covenant with Noah. This
cosmic covenant continues after Abraham's covenant. It includes those nations
that did not enter into a covenant with Abraham.

In Christ, the "election" of all nations is disclosed. After the people's

exodus we attend Jesus' exodus. Israel saved from the waters and peregrinated
to the promised land represents the redeemed humanity. It is the figure of
the Church saved by Christ. Israel is saved as a type of vicar of humanity.
Israel is the place of the revelation of the Word. It lives in the mystery of
God in solidarity with the just and holy people of the gentility.

- et
If each event in Israel takes its significance in Christ, every message in the
Gentile world draws also its significance from Christ. Religions are typo-
logical of Christian reality. They are, as it were unhistorical or meta-
historical types, even if they may regard themselves, as incompatible with
Christianity. Christ is hidden everywhere in the mystery of His self-
abasement. Any reading of religion is a reading in Christ. It is the Christ
alone who is received as light when grace visits a Brahmam, a Buddhist or a
Muslim reading their Scriptures or performing their prayers. It is the
Johannine agape that was experienced by those great witnesses of the crucified
love lived by the muslim sufis.

This salvation which is at work outside the boundaries of Israel and the
historical Church is the product of the Resurrection of Christ. Prophecy and
spiritual wisdom, even if manifested outside the sanctuary still have a
mysterious link with the Risen Lord. The economy of Christ is not understand-
able without the economy of the Spirit. The Spirit fills everything in an
economy distinct from that of the Son. The Word and the Spirit are called the
“two hands of the Father". We must here affirm their hypostatic independence
and visualize in religions an all-comprehensive phenomenon of _ grace.
Pentecost, says Lossky, is not a continuation of Incarnation but its
consequence. Creature became able to receive the Spirit. Between these two
economies there is reciprocity and mutual service.

This presence of God in these various economies does not imply at all any
confusion between the Christian message as an objective content and other
messages. The fullness of the Gospel pre-empts any addition to it. It is not
in terms of inclusiveness or exclusiveness that we speak. We do rather evoke
the idea of affinity or similitude among religions. Christ, remains the typos
par excellence of every being and dispensation. The perfection of the Gospel
excludes syncretism. Comparative religion may be a source of catharsis and it
does facilitate dialogue. But a Christian is primarily concerned with follow-
ing the path of Christ everywhere. He is met in religions, but also in poetry
and art.

Facing other religious structures and people, our spiritual endeavour invites
an attitude of meekness, patience which is an imitation of God's patience. It
is an attitude of eschatological expectation, a desire to eat the eternal
passover with all people. The non-Christian is as unique as a Christian,
equally loved by God, possibly a source of edification for fellow human beings
and a place of Epiphany. We go to them with the humbleness of the poor. We
are vulnerable before them, ready to receive even Christ for them.

By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought

him, but I found him not.
I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in
the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought
him but I found him not.
The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said,
Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? (Song of Songs 3:1-3)

In a non-Christian milieu we bare witness to Christ as others recognize

themselves as being the beloved. His divine name may never be disclosed.
Before his second advent we go with our friends from various religions, along
the path of hope.

Py ae
 FROM YES TO AMEN OR"THE UNHEARD OF" GOSPEL:
Is there a Holy Spirit for inter-religious dialogue ?

Francoise Smyth-Florentin
(Protestant Faculty of Theology, Paris)

Mgr Khodr's "spiritual oikonomism" marked an epoch in Protestant milieus since

his 1984 address at St. Polten. Note, by the way, how his approach criticizes
but accepts the heritage of Barth, thus meeting up with certain models of
philosophical questioning today.

God's exercise of his liberty with regard to events such as religious ones
shows here a "mystery". Deciphered in the light of Christ, the expression,
especially in Scripture, of the universal religious community testifies to the
fact that the Spirit visits man and then that man's doings enrich the
experience of the strictly Christian conscience of the Church. Hence we have
to define a dynamic Christic ontology and an ecclesiology so as to best make
clear the relations by which they are linked together. This means in fact
depicting the true site of pneumatology.

John 14:26 "The Counsellor, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my
name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I
have said to you" (RSV).
2 Cor. 1:20 "For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why
we utter the Amen through him, to the glory of God" (RSV).

These verses constitute a reservoir of semantic figures which open up

linguistic approach in keeping with contemporary analyses of the religious
datum as language, or even of religions as languages (Wittgenstein). (Good
against the traps of chronological history of salvation which may induce a
positivism of revelation and, at the same time, a mythology where historical
realism tends to dissolve into uncritical, militant, ideologies).

The Johannine formula is threefold rather than trinitarian. In the temporal

order, the present tense of the discourse establishes a past, "All that I have
said to you", as the one and only to be referred to, final but finite, limited
to what Jesus (John) actually said. Its future is expressed in terms of
anamnesis (recall) - which could be understood as mere repetition or as teleo-
logical recall of the meaning, geared for instance to the historical process -
but interpreted here in a radical hermeneutical switch: for it becomes "a
teaching of all things"; and this implies the dimensions of creation - time
and space: such a surcharge that an eschatological intervention becomes
necessary. The text is rigorously Christocentric of course: Jesus is speaker;
the Spirit, whom the Father sends, will be in his name, referring exclusively
to the teaching work performed by the Son among his own, but will no less
Strictly be at the service of the pneumatological moment which actuates for
its sole recipients, the Son's disciples, the still undefined possibilities of
the founding discourse of their community.

All goes on as if Christology alone - already forcefully worked out in the

Fourth Gospel - remained proto-eschatological, in the expectation of the
coming of man as son of the Creator. It might also be said that the eschato-
logical dimension of Christology is given it in the interpretative history of
feats of memory where the community of witnesses takes shape. The Holy Spirit
acts as revealer among the disciples in their own time, their history, meaning
that He reveals there to them their true condition as creatures, brought to
see everywhere their creatureliness in the world. The Holy Spirit acts as
metalinguistic universe of discourse, and acts decisively be giving everything
relevant content and meaning in the light of what the Father says through the
person and work of the Son, on behalf of his brothers. Like all metalanguage,
it partakes both of the audible and the other-worldly (elsewhere?): the
object of expectations corresponding to the "non-said" in the text, to its
difficulties; and quite unexpected. It is anything but a supplement of
information: the “unheard of", without which what the hearers of the message
remember, cannot be part of the promised fulfilment of its meaning. The
dynamism of the relation thus set up outlines a model of dispensation - now
present, terminating a past to which a future greater than itself was promised
- which points only to the opening out, an excess of meaning or availability
of being which might evoke Godel's theorem. Thus the limit of all exegesis,
even the most learned, is set down, as is that of the traditional type of
history writing. One might say that in terms of the language, the Spirit
works on a translinguistic level.

The figure used in the Pauline texts offer another way into the space which
the Spirit creates according to the eschatological paradigm in the syntax of
our history. This approach goes well with the questions asked in our way of
practising inter-religious dialogue.

The radical otherness of God, the concentration of Christology, reconciliation

by way of substitution in the rather passive theatre of creation, have been
acknowledged as very Protestant themes. And it has been said that this has
given rise to an aggressivity (perhaps with excellent effects) in missionary
testimony. This was in accord with the pathos of salvation and relegated the
non-Christian or even the denominationally different religious entities to the
region of paganism and its variations such as idolatry, superstition and so
on. The dialectic of incompatibility of grace and condemnation, following up
that of faith and works, or Gospel and Law, created a close universe of
discourse, self-sufficient, where the autonomy of God as a subject colonises
the autonomy of the ante-subject, man. Man as work of God in the infinite
riches of his differences is of little interest here where compared to his
Christic identity, and of none at all in himself. These exclusive themes may
have had liberating effects, especially as regards the jumble of systems which
turns differences into hierarchies, unable as they are to value particular-
ities. They can also, sustained by a nominalist ontology, sterilize the
theological approach of religious phenomenon.

Now, "the Yes to all these promises" which God pronounces in the person of
Christ", which is the Gospel, is, following Paul, a Yes of which we, all
believers, still know little. What is God saying Yes to? Where does he say
it? What is it composed of? - I shall learn no more about this Yes, I shall
learn no more about this Gospel uttered in Jesus Christ, except by listening
to the wants of every man, my brothers in the Church, the synagogue or the
Muslim community (see S. Rushdie, The Satanic Verses) and all the rest of

- ee
mankind, polytheists, theists and atheists. They are all putting questions or
giving answers - with every answer putting a fresh question - arising from
something in them signifying the sigh of the creature; for ever voices in
man's desire and need to understand himself in and through his fellow, the
other with or without capital. The great task assigned to man which is not
merely religious but is religious all the same, calls for our decided
attention: for we always wish to learn more about the many meanings, or the
"flesh" of the Yes uttered by God to his creatures, all awaiting its
accomplishment.

Would it not be a sort of blasphemy against the Spirit to regard his inter-
pretative work as incubti, that is, as incapable of giving a radically new
meaning, a different one to what we think we already know of the Father's Yes.

It is a bit like Jonah. He could not bear the idea that the divine message he
was to transmit "Niniveh will be destroyed" could in fact mean the grace soon
to be given to the mighty pagan city.

Systematic theology in particular, through inter-religious dialogue, finds

once more an often hidden aspect of its structure, which cannot be the simple
accumulation of data and objects, or of affirmations. Neither is it a
combination of answers to existential anguish; even though its story tends to
show a tendency to respond to the great anxieties of history: elaborating on
resurrection as against the anguish of death; then on salvation as against
the anguish of judgement after death; then on the meaning of life as against
the "“absurd". And so on. Theology has to be the building site of new
questions capable of breaking through the present day barriers of thought and
action, especially those which bar the way to the problems arising from the
claims to autonomy of people in their expression of differences, identities or
whatever.

This kind of theology finds its legitimacy and its norms in the Holy Spirit
understood on the hermeneutic model, and its object in the semantics of the
"particular" as opposed to the dialectic models chained to the logics of the
excluded middle term and the rather modalist trick distributing as it may an
essential unity. If one plus one plus one may equal one, what of religious
history of Man? Maybe a trace of the unicity of God who in the Bible has
spoken, but through his Spirit still goes on speaking to us in the yet
unachieved work of creation, as he did decisively in Jesus Christ.

And this is not just a matter of kenosis and incarnation. It speaks of kenosis
and incarnation in correlation with eschatology.

The eschatology we are to define cannot shut itself up in a static self-

consciousness of Christian privilege. The world's lights are not mere parables
for the sake of the Christian onlooker. They are the historical trace of the
work of the Creator which invokes the Reconciler's grace. They point back to
origins and on to a fulfilment to come in the end - eschatological. Even if,
in fact, we for our own sake, have to use the Gospel to gauge their truly
luminous quality, they bear witness to the truth of the Word made flesh. "The
light came unto his own (which is what Israel means), and his own received him
not, but to all who received him..."(RSV)
Besides inter-religious dialogue, inter-denominational ecumenicity, promises
also a more audible "Yes which is in Christ". The ecumenical movement tends
to beat its breast in a chorus of mea culpa to bewail multi-denominationalism.
Where is the praise to God for the radiance of this diversity? - "God knows",
there may be more dynamic demands in "acknowledging" differences than in
trying hard to establish a unity modelled on political, monarchichal or
democratic institutions! In fact, making allowances for the diverse and the
fragmentary, calls primarily for the intervention of the Holy Spirit if this
acceptance is to become an Amen in answer to the Father, integrating the
Christian community to the very movement of the Trinity. Which means that it
is called to tend to an anthropology where it is lost and can only find itself
again by the grace of the Spirit whose work, strictly world-shaping, consists
in keeping with its hermeneutical parable, of becoming one with the others by
transgressing their multiplicity.

The Spirit urges us on to look hard at the stones rejected by builders. It is

with these stones that the - ever new - Amen to the glory of God is to be
enunciated. That is an Amen which in the living memory of the work of Jesus
Christ made real, not only speaks of, but shows who God is.

k/k/SRSL RS

(Dupuis cont'd from page 24)

5 See the letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston, USA (8
August 1949), in which the opinion of Leonard Feeney is disapproved of,
according to which explicit belonging to the Church or the explicit
desire of joining it is absolutely required for individual salvation.
Text in H. Denzinger/A. Schonmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum
et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, Freiburg im Breisgau, Herder,
1965, nn. 3866-3873.

6 It is mainly exposed by J.Hick in several of his works, especially God

and the Universe of Faiths; Essays in the Philosophy of Religion,
London, Macmillan, 1973.

7 See for instance H.Kung, Qn Being a Christian, London, Collins, 1977;

Id., Christianity and the World Religions: Paths of Dialogue with Islam,
Hinduism and Buddhism, London, Collins, 1987.

8 See A.Race, op. cit. (note 2).

9 See P.F.Knitter, op cit. (note 4).

10 See J.Hick, The Myth of God Incarnate, London, SCM Press, 1977.
 A NEW PENTECOST ?
A PNEUMATOLOGICAL THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS

Paul F. Knitter
(Xavier University, Ohio, USA)

In his opening presentation, Kenneth Cracknell offered the participants of the

Baar Consultation an insightful historical overview of the efforts of the
International Missionary Conference (IMC) and the World Council of Churches
(WCC) to formulate a theology of religions. The history he reviewed resembled
a lava flow which began in an eruptive challenge (at Edinburgh 1910), then
proceeded in a long period of snail-paced movement, leading today to a sense
of possible new formations. As I reflected on our meeting during my return
flight to Cincinnati, I realized that Cracknell's historical overview could
well serve as a "hermeneutical key" for understanding what took place during
our week in Baar. In many ways, our efforts between 9-15 January 1990 to
sketch a theology of religions were a recapitulation in miniture of what the
IMC and WCC experienced between the years 1910 and 1989. With izsuch® ‘an
hermeneutical key, one can better appreciate both the significance and the
promise of our Consultation.

Day 1: Historical Review - Context and Challenge

Cracknell's guided tour through past attempts of the WCC to deal with the
issue of the many religions gave us a sense of both historical context and
urgency. With compelling lucidity, he reminded us that the task before us was
originally formulated and launched at the Edinburgh meeting of the IMC in
1910: to elaborate a theology of religions that would both make sense of the
churches’ new experience of other religious traditions and at the same time
maintain the evangelical imperative of the Gospel, Cracknell then reviewed how
and why the challenge of Edinburgh and the “impressive Protestant theology of
religions" already contained in its documents were not developed - indeed,
were set aside - at the IMC conferences in Jerusalem (1928) and Tambaram
(1938). Although post-war WCC world Assemblies (New Delhi 1961 and Uppsala
1968) once again recognized Edinburgh's appeal to resolve theological issues
posed by the experience of other faiths, no real efforts to respond to that
appeal were made. Even with the establishment of the sub-unit on Dialogue in
1971 and with the rousing calls for openness to other believers in the
"Guidelines on Dialogue" of Chiang Mai 1977, the theological foundations for
such dialogue were still lacking. As one participant of the Baar meeting
pointed out, we have to pick up the discussion on a theology of religions
essentially where Edinburgh left it.

As the participants pondered how to do that, many sensed that our meeting was
taking place in a kairos that would enable us not just to pick up the
discussion but to carry it forward creatively. Recent indications that such a
kairos might be upon us were the success of the sub-unit's programme and
publication, "My Neighbour's Faith - And Mine", as well as the _ bold
theological statements and directions regarding other religions formulated by

ee Pe
the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) consultation in San
Antonio, Texas in June 1989. These are signs of new stirrings and promises of
new breakthroughs in the WCC's determination to catch up theologically with
the churches' experience of other religions. It was indeed fitting and hopeful
that our Consultation was in preparation for a world Assembly dedicated to the
Holy Spirit's power to renew the face of the earth. That Spirit, some of us
suspected, was brooding creatively over the depths of past WCC efforts to
formulate a theology of religions and over our own efforts at Baar. In the
ensuing days we were to experience that Spirit, both the confusion of her
brooding and the hope of her creativity.

Day 2: Pluralism —- the Promise

The deliberations of the second day of our consultation, dealing with the
reality of religious pluralism, were a reflection of the awareness and excite-
ment regarding other faiths at the Edinburgh conference of 1910. Most of the
participants at Baar resonated with the excellent presentation of Bishop Piero
Rossano in which he interpreted the plurality of religious paths as a fact
that we must not just live with but embrace. There was widespread recognition
among the consultation participants that despite the inherent ambiguity of
religious pluralism, despite the threats it may pose for traditional Christian
attitudes, we must recognize that the manyness of religions is willed by God.
As one participant put it, religious pluralism challenges the authenticity of
our Christian doctrine of God. What kind of a God do we believe in if this
God would not enable us - would not demand of us.- to embrace in love and
respect those who are religiously other? Indeed, it is precisely the God
revealed to us in Jesus Christ, a God of universal love and presence, who
calls us to take the risk of affirming and then opening ourselves to others.
A number of participants working in countries where Christianity is a new or
minority religion echoed the reports sent to the Edinburgh conference by
missionaries in the field: we must listen to the experience of our churches
when they tell us that the old theological categories simply do not fit their
experience of their "non-Christian" neighbours; we must provide. our
seminarians with a theology that will enable them to affirm their own cultural-
religious past.

To recognize other religions as somehow willed by God is also to recognize the

necessity of dialoguing with them. To embrace the others, therefore, entails
not only our traditional reaching out to them through witnessing the Gospel
but also the newer experience of listening to, working with, learning from
persons of other religious paths. In our discussions on this second day, the
recognition took shape that when the "fact" of religious pluralism is combined
with the Christian law of love of neighbour, the result is a dialogical
imperative. How can we love our neighbours of other religions unless we take
them seriously, respect them, genuinely listen to them?

But we also recognized that this dialogical imperative was not just a command
of love; it was also a command of knowledge. Already on this second day, we
heard among us voices calling for a "dialogical theology" - a theology that
would recognize that we cannot truly and adequately comprehend the riches of
our own revelation unless we are trying to interpret and live that revelation
in conversation with others. In embracing other religions we are enriching
ourselves; in listening to their Words we understand more deeply the Word of
God given to us. Spirits were high at the end of this second day.

. 3386
Day 3: Christology - Tensions

But the presentations and discussions of the third day of the consultation
brought many of these soaring spirits back down to Christian earth. The topic
was Christology - “Christ and the Faiths". We were reminded that all our
affirmations of the plurality of religions as willed by God, as inviting us to
dialogue, as opportunities to learn would have to be made on the basis of a
faith that is not just religious but Christocentric. We Christians are
religious persons because of Jesus the Christ. We affirm not just a
universally loving God, but a God who acts decisively through a particular
medium. Throughout the day, we felt the necessary tension between affirming
the value of other religions and affirming the value of Jesus Christ. In
trying to maintain and creatively interpret this tension, we experienced, I
would say, a condensed version of the struggling history of the WCC, especially
from Tambaram to Chiang Mai, in which it attempted in vain to formulate a
theology of religions that would balance universal openness to other faiths
with particular affirmation of Christ's role.

The difficulty of arriving at such a balance was incorporated in the presenta-

tions made on this day 3. Robert Neville traced the contrast between a "low
Christology", which starts with a historical Jesus who is open to all and
seeks to serve rather than to be served, and a “high Christology", which
revolves around the glorified Christ as the exclusive mediator of universal
Salvation. Even more sharply, Jacques Dupuis pointed to the tensions contained
in affirming simultaneously the two "non-negotiables" in any Christian theology
of religions: the universal saving will of God and the universal saving role
of Jesus. Neither of these two convictions, rooted deeply and enduringly in
Christian tradition, can be watered down for the sake of the other. In opening
ourselves to embrace other religions in love and dialogue, we cannot diminish
what one Orthodox participant termed our “passion for Christ".

During our discussions on this third day, this Christological reservation was
experienced in a variety of forms. It animated the Orthodox concern that in
extolling the mediating role of institutions or religions we might forget that
the saving grace of Christ works primarily in the hearts of individuals. It
was pointed out that similar fears of diminishing the central role of Jesus
were, most likely, the reason why Vatican II, despite all the positive things
it said about other religions, could not bring itself to state explicitly that
these religions serve as “ways of salvation". For the WCC, too, the fear of
many member churches that all these new calls for dialogue with other religions
would lead to a decentering of Christ in God's plan has been one of the main
reasons why in its official statements the WCC has so far not been able to
give systematic theological substance to its ethical appeals for interreligious
dialogue.

Dupuis suggested to the consultation that the only way to creatively maintain
the tension between the two non-negotiables of God's universal salvific will
and Jesus' universal salvific role is some version of the so-called model of
“inclusivism" - to affirm Jesus the Christ as the normative, final, unsurpass-
able expression of God's saving will and to view other religions as having to
be "included" or fulfilled in the fullness of God's truth and grace in Jesus.
Yet Bishop Rossano, who essentially endorses some form of inclusivism, gave an
example of the difficulties of putting such a model into practice. He

_ Shee
recounted his experience of giving a talk in India in which he rather proudly
informed his audience that the Catholic Church, in Vatican II, had overcome
its narrowness and could now proclaim that Hinduism contains "rays of God's
truth". Upon which, a Hindu in the audience expressed public gratitude for
having been granted at least some "rays" of divine truth. He was matching
Hindu irony with Christian condescension. Rossano admitted that his remarks
looked like condescension. Some asked whether even such appearances of
condescension are compatible with authentic love of neighbour.

Even Dupuis admitted that with the inclusivist model, with its understanding
of the Christ event as final and normative, there is the danger of "fitting"
the other religions into our own categories before we really listen to them.
And he recognized that to do this is not really in dialogue. In the dis-
cussion, I remarked to Dupuis that his understanding of dialogue - and his
exemplary practice of it in India - does not neatly fit his inclusive model
for understanding Christ and other faiths.

My sense at the end of this third day was that although these Christological
discussions were absolutely essential for reminding us of necessary tensions
in any Christian theology of religions, they were insufficient for resolving
these tensions. As one of the participants asked, should we begin a theology
of religions with Christology? In doing so, aren't we creating problems
before we have the means to solve them? Perhaps such an inappropriate
starting point has been the reason why ecumenical efforts to work out a
theological basis for understanding and relating to other believers have, for
the most part, stalled or moved so sluggishly.

As I look back at the end of this third day, the image I have is of the
consultation participants gathered together by Christ, committed to Christ,
but now, seemingly, abandoned by Christ. Our conference room in the Focolari
Centre in Baar was at that point like an upper room in which we waited for
guidance and inspiration.

Day 4: Pneumatology - A New Creation

For many of us, that guidance and inspiration came only day 4, devoted to
“Pneumatological Issues". I sensed that in the presentations offered by
Metropolitan George Khodr and Frangoise Smyth-Florentin, and in the animated,
fertile discussions they inspired, the Holy Spirit was descending upon us and
was leading us out of the Christological impasse by leading us more deeply
into the Christological mystery. For many of us, Khodr and Smyth-Florentin
made clear, not so much the inadvisability of starting a theology of religions
with Christology, but the advantages of doing so with Pneumatology. By begin-
ning with the Spirit, we are able, as Khodr asserted, to affirm the value and
permanence of other religions without jeopardizing the value and permanent
salvific role of Christ; we can hold that "the non-Christian is as unique as
a Christian" without diluting the uniqueness of Christ. As Khodr suggested, a
Pneumatological theology of religions could dislodge the Christian debate from
its confining categories of "“inclusivism or exclusivism" or pluralism.

Khodr laid out for us the possibilities of a Pneumatological theology of

religions mainly through his creative reflections on traditional Orthodox
trinitarian theology. The crux of these reflections was contained in the way

2335&
he described the relationship between Word and Spirit and then applied that
relationship to a theology of religions:

The Spirit is omnipresent and fills everything in an

economy distinct from the Son. The Word and the Spirit are
called the "two hands of the Father". We must here affirm
their hypostatic independence and visualize in the
religions an all-comprehensive phenomenon of = grace.
Pentecost...is not a continuation of the incarnation but
its consequence...Between these two economies there is
reciprocity and mutual service. (Emphasis mine)

In line with traditional trinitarian theology, Khodr affirmed real difference,

and yet essential relatedness and reciprocity, between Word and Spirit. This
means that while the Spirit can never be understood and experienced without
reference to the Word, neither can the Spirit, explicitly or implicitly, be
reduced to the Word, subordinated to the Word, or understood as merely a
different "mode" of the Word. There is "hypostatic independence" - that is,
real, effective difference. This is why Pentecost and the energy that it
embodies and unleashes throughout history is to be understood not as a mere
"continuation of the incarnation", that would make for subordination of the
Spirit to the Word - or a form of modalism. Rather, the economy of the Spirit
is a consequence of the incarnation, originating from it (Filioque) but living
out its own identity (its own hypostasis). And yet, such "independence" is
qualified, for both the economy of the Word and that of the Spirit are
essentially bonded to each other, in a relationship that is complete ad _ intra
but still realizing itself and being discovered by humans in the historical ad
extra of creation.

When such a trinitarian theology is applied to a theology of religions, we

have, I suggest, a way of approaching and understanding other believers that
is different, for the most part, from what has previously been achieved in WCC
conferences and statements. If we can take the Spirit, and not the Word in
Jesus Christ, as our starting point for a theology of religions, we can affirm
the possibility that the religions are "an all-comprehensive phenomenon of
grace" - that is, an economy of grace that is genuinely different from that
made known to us through the Word incarnate in Jesus (in whom, of course, the
Spirit was also active). And in that sense, the economy of religions is
"independent" - that is, not to be submerged or engulfed or incorporated into
the economy of the Word represented in the Christian churches.

Khodr could therefore boldly declare in his presentation that it would be "too
facile" to "comprehend rapidly all religions in Christianity. That would be a
refusal of their genuineness" - or, it would be a refusal of the genuineness
of the economy of the Spirit. Christianity, he told us, should not be under-
stood as "the last and final economy which destroys all others". Christianity
understands itself as "the little flock, a leaven amidst the dough but never
all the pastry, the salt for food but never all the food". And yet, at the
same time, this independence of the economy of the religions is qualified, for
there is an essential relatio between Word and Spirit. Though truly different,
the Spirit has her existence within the Word, just as the Word exists also in
her. Thus the genuine difference of other religions must be related, under-
stood, clarified within the Word incarnate in Christ and living in the
churches.

=~ 3662
In the discussion of Khodr's presentation, concerns were voiced. A Western
theologian (the majority at the consultation!) insisted that Christianity and
other religions cannot be described theologically as two economies; rather,
they must be seen as two aspects of one economy. Khodr would accept such
terminology because it expresses the essential relationship and therefore
inseparability between Word and Spirit; after all, the Spirit active through-
out creation before and after the incarnation was also an essential element
within that incarnation. But Khodr would accept such talk of "two aspects of
one economy" only as long as these “two aspects" were recognized as really
different, as long as one did not end up with an activity of the Spirit in
creation that was really only the extension of, or unthematic presence of, or
temporary preparation for, the activity of the Word of Jesus. He warned
against a “monocentric abuse" of the Word in Christ Jesus, adding that if we
always seek to "include" the economy of the Spirit in the religions into that
of the Word in Christianity we cannot develop a theology of religions that
will be truly trinitarian, nor one that will successfully promote dialogue.

Another participant (also from a Western church) responded enthusiastically

and with a sense of eureka to Khodr's Pneumatology. The Metropolitan's stress
on both the autonomy and the relationality of the economy of the Spirit in the
religions provides, the commentator declared, a much more workable and appro-
priate model for understanding other religions than the model of the "cosmic
Christ" often used by Christian theologians and in earlier statements of the
WCC. Models of "the cosmic Christ" or "anonymous Christians" tend to evaporate
"Christ" into some kind of free-floating cosmic energy that is very difficult
to relate to the concrete historical Jesus; in Khodr's model, the Christ, or
the Logos, is not detached from Jesus but, rather, preserves the full reality
of its concrete, historical incarnation in the Man of Nazareth. At the same
time, by recognizing a different economy of the Spirit within the religions,
we can really relate to them as others without having to reduce them, either
at the beginning or end of our conversations, to our Christian categories.
Any relationship between Christianity and the religions that does occur will
be between two really different economies.

The presentation of Frangoise Smyth-Florentin, though thoroughly different

from Khodr's in her exegetical-linguistic approach, was profoundly comple-
mentary. From her interpretation of John 14:26 and 2 Cor. 1:20, what for
Khodr was the genuinely different economy of the Spirit was for her the
genuinely new. Jesus told us all that he could. But when the Spirit enables
us to remember "all that I have said to you", the “all things" (ta panta) that
she teaches us in this remembering turn out to be more than what Jesus said!
This is the trinitarian paradox of both relatedness and yet genuine difference:
remembering expresses the relation of the Spirit to the Word in Jesus, but the
"new" or ta panta that is made known represents the genuinely different. What
the Spirit makes known to us in the anamnesis of Jesus' teaching is there-
fore not just a repetition or clarification or "supplement" to what we have
heard from Jesus. It is something really new, though related to what Jesus
has said. Thus, Smyth-Florentin announced, we can regard "all that I have
said to you" as both final and yet finite - final in that it is decisive and
axial for our lives, but finite in that, through the Holy Spirit, there is
more to come.

In her interpretation of 2 Cor. 1:20, Smyth-Florentin creatively reflected on

_ a72
how this Spirit enables us to remember God's "Yes" in Jesus. We can penetrate
the depths of this Yes only insofar as we listen to the Spirit speaking to us
in the "wants of every person" and in the "questions of all humankind". Only
in openness to and dialogue with the Spirit speaking in those who are other -
especially in the world's religious traditions - can we understand the Word in
Jesus. Smyth-Florentin could even identify the "blasphemy against the Spirit"
as a refusal to recognize that the Spirit speaking in others can give "a
radically new meaning, a different one to what we think we already know of the
Father's Yes (in Christ)". Therefore, just as we as Christians can and must
announce to the world of religions that God has spoken "decisively in Jesus
Christ", so we must recognize in our dealing with the world of religions that
God speaks continuously "through his Spirit...in the yet unachieved work of
creation". And we need to listen to this continuous speaking of the Spirit,
especially in other religions, if we are to understand the decisive speaking
in Christ Jesus. From such a Pneumatology, Smyth-Florentin concluded to a
dialogical imperative: "The Spirit urges us on to look hard at the stones
rejected by the builders. It is with these stones that the - ever new - Amen
to the glory of God is to be enunciated".

Khodr and Smyth-Florentin offered members of the Baar Consultation a first

draft for a Pneumatological theology of religions that seemed to move us beyond
the Christological impasse that we were facing. For many of us, it was an
approach that enabled us finally to take up the issues posed at Edinburgh and
to answer the theological questions raised in the Guidelines on Dialogue,
without jeopardizing the centrality that Jesus Christ must occupy in all
Christian belief and practice. With a theological model that sees the economy
of the Spirit within the religions as genuinely distinct from, but essentially
related to, the economy of the Word in Christianity, we can extract ourselves,
it seems to me, from the bottleneck created by the debate between
“inclusivists" and "pluralists".

Insofar as a Pneumatological approach calls us to recognize that the work of

the Spirit within the religious traditions of the world can be genuinely
different and distinct from what the Word has revealed in Jesus, it responds
to the concerns of the pluralists, for it enables us to view the possible
truth of other religions as really different from Christian revelation.
Indeed, as Smyth-Florentin reminded us, we must be prepared to hear "something
new" in the urgings of the Spirit outside of Christianity. Thus, we need to
be careful not to "include" too quickly this work of the Spirit amid other
faiths into the work of the incarnate Logos.

At the same time, a Pneumatological theology of religions responds to concerns

of the inclusivists insofar as it does not allow for the absolute autonomy of
other religions and erects guard-rails above the slippery slopes of relativism
down which pluralists are prone to slide. Because the Pneumatological approach
insists that the activity of the Spirit in other faiths is essentially related
to the Word spoken in Jesus Christ, it is not content simply to marvel at the
"newness" and the "differences" of other religions; what is new and different
must be brought into relation with the "grace and truth" that have appeared in
the man Jesus. (John 1:17)

But in a Pneumatological theology of religions, just what this relationship

between the economy of the Spirit and the economy of the Word will be is left

25
open. Our faith affirms the hope that the relationship between the genuinely
different economies will be one of ultimate complementarity. How this comple-
mentarity will express itself - whether in particular instances the work of
the Spirit in the religions will be "fulfilled" or "included" in the Incarnate
Word of the Gospel, or whether the "Yes" given to us in Christ will be clari-
fied and completed by the Spirit given to others - such questions can be
answered only in the relationship, only in the dialogue.

This points out another advantage of beginning a theology of religions with

Pneumatology rather than Christology. If we try to make sense of other
religious ways on the basis of what has been revealed to us in the Word
incarnate in Jesus, we have the tendency to begin with some kind of a
cognitional content that serves as the criterion for assessing the religions.
But if we begin our efforts to understand others with the recognition that the
Spirit is active in them in ways we have not yet understood, we are inclined
to look upon a theology of other religions as a process in which we first have
to experience those others and their way of viewing the world before we can
come to our clear criteria or judgments. As one of the members of the con-
Sultation put it, theologizing about other religions will become a "second
step" to the first step of dialoguing with them. The content of the theology
will develop from this process.

Just as the relationship between the Word and the Spirit within the Trinity is
neither one of inclusivism (that is, ultimate subordination) nor one of
pluralism (that is, absolute autonomy), but rather one of relationality in
which both have their being in their relationship to each other, so too the
relationship between Christianity and other religions - a _ theology of
religions - cannot be simply either inclusivist or pluralist. Perhaps there
is a real analogy between the way we might describe the religions and the way
scholastic theology has described the persons of the Trinity: they are
relationes subsistentes - subsistent relations, subsisting as really different
entities, but living out or realizing their differences in relationship to
each other. The most appropriate model for a theology of religions is not one
of inclusivism or pluralism, but one of relationality.

Commentary on the Final Statement

Much of the consultation's Final Statement, "Religious Plurality: Theological

Perspectives and Affirmations", emodies, either expressly or indirectly,
essential ingredients of the Pneumatological approach discussed on the fourth
day of our deliberations. In showing how this is so, I hope also to make
clear why this statement represents a cautious but clear advance over previous
WCC documents on a theology of religions.

In the second section of the Final Statement, on “Religious Plurality", the

Baar consultation states lucidly what previous WCC statements either shied
away from or would only suggest: that because of God's presence within other
religious ways, Christians can expect to discover in them expressions of
authentic revelation and salvation. Repeatedly this section of the Statement
affirms the "saving presence", the “saving power", the "saving activity” of
God within other religions, not just within individual religious believers.
Therefore, taking up a controversial issue within past WCC deliberations, the

439 =
Baar Statement makes bold to declare that God has been present within other
traditions not just in their seeking but also in their finding. Such a
declaration is made not merely on the grounds of the empirical evidence of
wisdom, knowledge, love, holiness, justice, liberation evident among other
believers, but also, and especially, because of "our Christian faith in God" -
specifically, "the Spirit of God...at work in ways that pass human under-
standing..." The revealing, saving Power active within other religions is
that of the Holy Spirit. Implicitly, what is affirmed here is the distinctive
economy of the Spirit operative beyond the Christian economy of the Word
incarnate.

This section adds a further essential ingredient to a Pneumatological theology

of religions: the distinct economy of the Spirit present in other faiths,
like the economy of the Word incarnate within Christianity, is caught in the
ambiguity of sin and evil. This is where the previously-mentioned anology
between the persons of the Trinity and the religions of the world as relationes
subsistentes limps. Whereas the relations between the triune persons are
always and only complementary, the work of both Word and Spirit, given the
reality of evil in creation, is often frustrated or rejected. Thus, the
relationship between the religions can be not only complementary but also
contradictory. One religion will sometimes find itself obliged to resist and
speak a clear "no" to particular practices or beliefs of another religion.
How and when this is the case, cannot generally be known "in advance", but
only within the dialogue, as we experience the light of the Word and the
Spirit of grace in the act of relating with others.

Sections 3 and 4 of the Final Statement, on Christology and the Holy Spirit,
illustrate how Pneumatology enabled the consultation to suggest a new theology
of religions and at the same time affirm, and intensify, traditional Christo-
logical beliefs. It was on the basis of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit that
we were able to "confront with total seriousness" and suggest an answer to the
burning theological question posed by the Guidelines _on Dialogue of how to
balance "the universal creative activity of God toward all humankind and the
particular redemptive activity of God" in Israel and in Jesus Christ. On the
one hand, we saw no reason to dilute the essential contents of the Christians'
traditional message about Jesus the Christ: we affirmed not simply that he
reveals (nostically) for us the universal saving mystery of God as its "focal
point" and “clearest expression", but also that he accomplished (ontologically)
the “irrevocable bond and covenant" between the human family and God. The
universal relevance of Jesus Christ, and the necessity of universally proclaim-
ing him, are unambiguously affirmed in these statements.

On the other hand, because these traditional Christological beliefs were made
together with traditional, but perhaps often neglected, Pneumatological
beliefs, we could also say that such an affirmation of the particularity of
Jesus does not exclude, indeed it requires, an affirmation of the universal
activity of the Spirit. In announcing that "we affirm unequivocally that God
the Holy Spirit has been at work in the life and traditions of people of living
faiths", we were attesting to the economy of the Holy Spirit as distinct from
that of the Word in Jesus Christ. This work of the Spirit is one of revealing
and saving. Therefore we could not endorse a theology that would limit the
reality of salvation to knowledge of or commitment to Jesus Christ.

ie LS
And yet, the consultation went on to say that if the universal gift of
Salvation cannot be limited or tied to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, it must
be related to what has been revealed in Him. If section 4 of the Final State-
ment emphasizes the real difference between the activity of the Spirit in
creation and that of the Incarnate Word, section 5 on “Interreligious Dialogue"
emphasizes the essential relatedness between the two. That relationship is
one of interpretation which means clarification, enhancement, deepening. As
the Interpreter of Christ, the Holy Spirit is the energy of dialogue, enabling
Christians to “understand afresh" their faith by encountering others, and
enabling others to “understand afresh" who they are in the light of the Word
made flesh in Jesus. Such fresh understandings contain, as the Statement
makes clear, not just a clarification of what we already know but a discovering
of "facets of the divine mystery... not yet seen or responded to... a fuller
understanding and experience of truth".

Dialogue is indeed a “two way street" - a matter of both witnessing and

listening. We must listen because what the Spirit is doing in others may be
different from what we know in Christ; we must witness because whatever the
Spirit is doing throughout creation can be more fully known and lived in what
the Word has revealed in Jesus the Christ. As the final paragraph of the
Statement declares, such a Pneumatological understanding of dialogue will
transform the way we do thelogy, certainly the way we work out a theology of
religions. The “sources" or "loci" of theology that are listed by Christian
theologians as necessary for interpreting God's Word in Scripture will include
not only "human experience", and "society and culture", and “the struggle for
liberation", but also dialogue with persons of living faiths. Because the
Holy Spirit is alive and well among those persons, ours must be a dialogical
theology.

kekekkekik

At the end of our consultation, most of the participants, I suspect, felt that
they could clearly answer the question which Kenneth Cracknell posed at the
end of his opening presentation: "Could we hope for beginnings of a new
understanding of the Holy Spirit in relation to the world religious traditions
even from this meeting in Baar?" In the way our deliberations proceeded and
ended, we had experienced such beginnings. Our hope is that those beginnings
at Baar will continue to stir at the WCC world Assembly in Canberra.

cs ae
 A SECOND LOOK AT "RELIGIOUS PLURALITY:
THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES AND AFFIRMATIONS"

Peter K.H. Lee

(Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religions & Culture, Hong Kong)

I was present at the Consultation on the Theology of Religions at Baar,

Switzerland, January 1990, called by the Dialogue sub-unit of the WCC. The
consultation produced the statement, "Religious Plurality: Theological
Perspectives and Affirmations". Although I was not on the drafting committee,
I took part in the discussions and, along with the rest, endorsed the
statement.

Back in Hong Kong and several months later, I took a second look at the
statement and my thoughts are registered in this paper.

To begin with, I share - as I did then - the sense of historical continuity in

the work of the sub-unit. This statement recollects that since 1971 dialogue
with people of living faiths has been part of the work of the WCC, as was
attested by the Central Committee in Addis Ababa that year, that dialogue is
to be understood as the common adventure of the churches.

It is further recalled that in the WCC Nairobi Assembly in 1975, interfaith

dialogue was placed in the setting of community living. It means that by
entering into dialogue with neighbours of other faiths in the community,
Christians share concerns with them, exploring such issues as peace, justice
and humanity's relation to nature. Surely these are vital concerns. Thus
dialogue on common concerns with their neighbours who are from other religious
traditions, is obligatory for Christians living as responsible members of the
community.

If ‘dialogue in community' is a practical activity, theological questions are

implied. The Guidelines on Dialogue articulated in 1979 suggested:
"Christians engaged in faithful ‘dialogue in community' with people of other
faiths...cannot avoid asking themselves penetrating questions about the place
of the people in the lives of hundreds of millions of men and women who live
in and seek community together with Christians, but along different ways."

Let it be said that the sub-unit on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths,
Since its inception, has broken ground in setting guidelines for interfaith
dialogue and in raising consciousness on the importance of dialogue with
people of living faiths. Though those involved in the sub-unit on Dialogue
are theologically competent and have raised theological questions from time to
time, only more recently have they focussed on the theology of religious
plurality, i.e. trying to make theological sense out of the complicated
implications of belief in the Christian Triune God in a world of multiplicity
of religious traditions.

Before the advent of the WCC, theologians had tried to understand the
Significance of religious plurality. Kenneth Cracknell in his paper read at
the consultation did a masterful job in tracing the debates on the question

_tipe-3
from the earliest beginnings of the Ecumenical Movement (Edinburgh 1910). He
reminded the participants how open-minded some of the Christians missionaries
were who had actually encountered religions other than their own, and how
innovative some of the ecumenically-minded theologians were who tried to take
into account the presence of non-Christian religions. In Jerusalem 1928 an
effort was made to rally the religions together to deal with the onslaught of
secularism. The Madras 1938 debate over continuity vs. discontinuity of
Christianity in relation to non-Christian religions, however, put a stop to
further thinking on the theology of religions, with Hendrick Kraemer's
discontinuity thesis carrying the day.

A good deal of water has flown under the bridge since the days of Barth-
Kraemer dominance in theological circles about mission and religion. David
Lockhead, who was present at the Baar meeting, reminded the group that Karl
Barth said nothing about non-Christian religions, but Barthian theology has
wielded a strong influence, not only in Europe and N. America but in certain
circles in Asia, with Kraemer's thinking on non-Christian religions clearly an
application of Barth's theology. Nevertheless, theology of religions has yet
to find new vistas. It is the present writer's observations that the
following factors are stumbling blocks to be overcome:

First, missiological thinking since Edinburgh 1910, however ecumenical at

times, has stemmed from the missionary movement initiated and carried on by
Western Christianity. The Church (through its missionary activities) in its
embeddedness in Western Christendom, has been understood to be the chief
vessel of mission. Thus consciously or unconsciously a whole salvation
history of the world is conceived with the Church in all its Western-
rootedness as the head-engine, with the heretofore non-Christian lands at the
tail-end, so to speak. In this kind of salvation history it is difficult to
conceive how God can act through the religious experiences of people outside
the Christian world. If “the mission of God" is a strange concept in
church-centered missionary thinking, "the God above all religions" is an
equally strange concept even for most ecumenically-minded theologians who are
children of Western Christianity.

Second, theological thinking concerning religions makes use of thought-forms

which are typically Western. Exclusiveness vs. inclusiveness, universalism
vs. pluralism, continuity vs. discontinuity, fulfillment vs. judgement... these
are logical categories of Western origin. Granted these are but shorthand
ways of framing issues for theological discussion. But when a theory dealing
with multiple religious traditions or complex religious phenomena is con-
structed in terms of simplistic logical categories, a great deal that is of
vital importance, religiously speaking, is left out. The result is a grossly
misleading way of approaching living faiths.

Getting back to the Baar statement, the intention is to place the theological
task in the light of biblical thought. Thus, "God is the creator of all
things, and He is the God of all nations and peoples. God makes a covenant
with His people. God is holy, wise, just, loving and powerful. The biblical
testimony to the Spirit of God at work in ways that pass human understanding
and in places that are least expected" (quoted from CWME statement, "Mission
and Evangelism") is taken to heart. These references are meant to provide
clues to beginning afresh the theological task of understanding religious
plurality.

= aha
Christological considerations are certainly important. It is recalled that
the 1979 Guidelines on Dialogue already raised the question concerning the
universal creative and redemptive activity of God towards all humankind and
the particular redemptive activity of God in the history of Israel and in the
person and work of Jesus Christ. Does “the universal creative and redemptive
activity of God towards all humankind" include the beliefs and experiences of
people of other faiths? If it does, the present statement does not show how,
other than recognizing the need "to move beyond a theology which confines
salvation to the explicit personal commitment to Jesus Christ." The statement
does affirm that the saving presence of God's activity in all creation and
human history comes to its focal point in the event of Christ. For those who
call themselves Christians, that is certainly true. But what may such a
“focal point" mean for a Hindu, a Muslim or a Confucian? It is difficult to
imagine. To turn the question around, will the focus on Jesus Christ enhance
or restrict one's appreciation of revelations in religions other than the
Christian faith? It is evident that both these questions are important for a
theology of religions to ask and to answer.

The statement does quote scriptural references (Jn. 4:7-24, Matt. 8:5-11 and
Matt. 15:21-28) to show that Jesus reached out to those beyond the house of
Israel. These references will help Christians open their hearts and minds to
people of other religious traditions, yet by themselves these biblical
references do not give us a theology. The statement also believes that the
cross and the resurrection disclose the universal dimension of the saving
mystery of God. Christians always believe that. The question is how to build
that. into a theology of religions.

Certainly, the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, must be given a
place in theological considerations on the subject of religions. The statement
affirms “unequivocally that God the Holy Spirit has been at work in the life
and traditions of peoples of living faiths." Here one can afford to be
"vague". After all, the activity of the Spirit is beyond definition,
description and limitation, as "the wind blows where it wills". I recall
during the consultation there was animated sharing and discussion on the way
the Holy Spirit moved, and still moves, over the face of the earth "to create,
nurture, challenge, renew and sustain". Someone spoke of the way the Spirit
can "stir things up", but of course theologians are not apt to use an
expression like that in a formal theological statement.

The statement then makes an important dual affirmation in relation to the

plurality of religions. On the one hand, “it is within the realm of the
Spirit that we may be able to interpret the truth and goodness of other
religions and to distinguish the ‘things that differ', so that our ‘love may
abound more and more , with knowledge and all discernment'" (Phil. 1:9-10).
On the other hand, "the Holy Spirit, the Interpreter of Christ and of our own
Scriptures (Jn. 14:26), will lead us to understand afresh the deposit of the
faith already given to us, and into fresh and unexpected discovery of new
wisdom and insight, as we learn more from our neighbours of other faiths."

This dual affirmation leads to a theological perspective on interreligious

dialogue (the last section of the statement). It is really a theological
perspective on interreligious dialogue as a process rather than on the pheno-
menology of religions. What the statement suggests has been confirmed by the

see
experiences of people who have been actively engaged in interreligious
dialogue. The statement puts it very well: "Interreligious dialogue is a
‘two-way street’. Christians must enter into it in a spirit of openness,
prepared to receive from others, while on their part, they give witness of
their own faith." Authentic dialogue opens both partners to a deeper
conversion to the God who speaks to each through the other.

The drafters of the statement, and the others in the consultation who endorsed
it, would be the first to admit that what they have done is only a first
step towards a theology of religions.

What are the next steps? Presumably the Working Group will formulate plans
for the future. Speaking as an Asian Christian theologian who has considerable
experience in interfaith dialogue, I would like to see that the following
elements be taken into account:

1. That more Christian theologians from the non-Western historical context

who have been in direct contact with their non-Christian compatriots, be
included in the working out of theological considerations for the plurality of
religions. If they are true to their historical experiences, the Asian,
African, and the Pacific islands peoples have a different view of world history
even if Christian missions started by Western missionaries have made their
impacts on their own national histories. They also view the non-Christian
religions indigenous to their lands or regions, in a different light from the
Western missionaries and theologians, (although some Third World Christians
have not been able to shake off categories and standpoints adopted from the
First). Not that the experiences and views of Asians, Africans and others are
"truer" or "better"; but they should be taken seriously, along with the
Western theologians' ideas.

2. That non-Western modes of consciousness should be given ample room for

expression in theological thinking on religions. Modes of consciousness are
inseparable from religious worldviews. Certain religious traditions are less
prone to the subject-object split and the contemplation-action dichotomy which
plague Western theology. The Asian, African and Pacific islanders' approach
to reality are apt to be more "holistic" than that of the Western logical
mind. If they are Christians, they probably embody some of these in their
innate modes of consciousness, and if they - as some Western theologians have
done - enter into dialogue in depth with living faiths other’ than
Christianity, they will come up with ways of mediating ultimate reality not
confined to the Western mode. Not that traditional Western systematic
theology should be replaced; but especially in relating to religions other
valid ways of perceiving reality should be allowed to come into play.

It would be unfair to limit "Western theological thinking", more specifically

regarding the Christian faith and other religions, to mainly Protestant
efforts among Europeans and Americans in the 20th century. The paper of Fr.
Alexandru Stan from Romania on Orthodox theology of religions reminded the
group that the Church fathers in the early centuries already gave some thought
to the question. It is not just the answers given but their ways of thinking
that are worth recalling. Bishop Pietro Rossano shared his notes on emerging
Catholic attitudes to religious plurality. It is of particular interest that
the sophina-wisdom tradition in the Bible is invoked as one of the resources

ile
to deal with the question. I now privately wonder why the Vatican II
documents which take relation to non-Christian religions to be an integral
part of the process of reformulating Christian teachings, escaped _ the
attention of the meeting at Baar. The point is that Christian theological
thinking on religious plurality ought to be ae fully-fledged ecumenical
endeavour: Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic; Western theologians’ and
theologians from Asia, Africa, the Pacific islands and other regions. Now
that the WCC sub-unit on Dialogue has adequately acknowledged its debt to
history, it is ready to move on.

There cannot be just one Christian theology of religions; 0° wil Pebetta

plurality of theological reflections on religious plurality. Let the
theologians concerned challenge and enrich one another in continuous
dialogue. The Christian theologians in turn have entered into dialogue, and
continue to be in dialogue, with people of living faiths other than their own.

Seventh Assembly, Canberra 1991 |

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= Boas
 STATEMENT
RELIGIOUS PLURALITY
THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES AND AFFIRMATIONS

I. INTRODUCTION

Dialogue with people of living faiths has been part of the work of the WCC
Since 1971 when the Central Committee meeting in Addis Ababa affirmed that
dialogue “is to be understood as the common adventure of the churches".

Since the Nairobi WCC Assembly in 1975 this common adventure has been seen
primarily as "dialogue in community". This has meant entering into dialogue
with our neighbours of other faiths in the communities we as Christians share
with them, exploring such issues as peace, justice, and humanity's relation to
nature. We have found repeatedly that Christians may not behave as if we were
the only people of faith as we face common problems of an interdependent
world. It is evident the various religious traditions of the world have much
to contribute in wisdom and inspiration towards solving these problems.

In this ecumenical consultation we have reaffirmed the importance of Dialogue

in Community as articulated in the Guidelines on Dialogue (1979). We also
recall the affirmation of the Central Committee in adopting these guidelines:
"To enter into dialogue requires an opening of the mind and heart to others.
It is an undertaking which requires risk as well as a deep sense of vocation"
(Central Committee, Kingston, Jamaica, 1979).

We turned our attention with particular urgency to the theological questions

that have emerged from the practice of dialogue. As the Guidelines
suggested: "Christians engaged in faithful ‘dialogue in community' with
people of other faiths....cannot avoid asking themselves penetrating questions
about the place of these people in the activity of God in history. They ask
these questions not in theory, but in terms of what God may be doing in the
lives of hundreds of millions of men and women who live in and seek community
together with Christians, but along different ways" (Guidelines, p.11).

Dialogue with people of other living faiths leads us to ask what is the
relation of the diversity of religious traditions to the mystery of the one
Triune God? It is clear to us that interfaith dialogue has implications not
only for our human relations in community with people of other faiths, but for
our Christian theology as well.

From the beginning Christians have encountered people of other faiths, and
from time to time theologians have grappled with the significance of religious
plurality. The modern ecumenical movement from its earliest beginnings
(Edinburgh 1910) has made many attempts to understand the relation of the
Christian message to the world of many faiths.

Today our greater awareness and appreciation of religious plurality leads us

to move in this "common adventure" toward a more adequate theology of

en Ss
religions. There is a widely felt need for such a theology, for without it
Christians remain ill-equipped to understand the profound-= religious
experiences which they witness in the lives of people of other faiths or to
articulate their own experience in a way that will be understood by people of
other faiths.

II. A THEOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF RELIGIOUS PLURALITY

Our theological understanding of religious plurality begins with our faith in

the one God who created all things, the living God, present and active in all
creation from the beginning. The Bible testifies to God as God of all nations
and peoples, whose love and compassion includes all humankind. We see in the
Covenant with Noah a covenant with all creation. We see His wisdom and
justice extending to the ends of the earth as He guides the nations through
their traditions of wisdom and understanding. God's glory penetrates the
whole of creation.

People have at all times and in all places responded to the presence and
activity of God among them, and have given their witness to their encounters
with the Living God. In this testimony they speak both of seeking and of
having found salvation, or wholeness, or enlightenment, or divine guidance, or
rest, or liberation.

We therefore take this witness with the utmost seriousness and acknowledge
that among all the nations and peoples there has always been the saving
presence of God. Though as Christians our testimony is always to _ the
Salvation we have experienced through Christ, we at the same time "cannot set
limits to the saving power of God" (CWME, San Antonio 1989). Our own ministry
of witness among our neighbours of other faiths must presuppose an
"affirmation of what God has done and is doing among them" (CWME, San Antonio
1989).

We see the plurality of religious traditions as both the result of the

manifold ways in which God has related to peoples and nations as well as a
manifestation of the richness and diversity of humankind. We affirm that God
has been present in their seeking and finding, that where there is truth and
wisdom in their teachings, and love and holiness in their living, this like
any wisdom, insight, knowledge, understanding, love and holiness that is found
among us is the gift of the Holy Spirit. We also affirm that God is with them
as they struggle, along with us, for justice and liberation.

This conviction that God as creator of all is present and active in the
plurality of religions makes it inconceivable to us that God's saving activity
could be confined to any one continent, cultural type, or groups of peoples.
A refusal to take seriously the many and diverse religious testimonies to be
found among the nations and peoples of the whole world amounts to disowning
the biblical testimony to God as creator of all things and father of human-
kind. "The Spirit of God is at work in ways that pass human understanding and
in places that to us are least expected. In entering into dialogue with
others, therefore, Christians seek to discern the unsearchable riches of
Christ and the way God deals with humanity" (CWME Statement, Mission and
Evanglism).

TNE e
It is our Christian faith in God which challenges us to take seriously the
whole realm of religious plurality. We see this not so much as an obstacle to
be overcome, but rather as an opportunity for deepening our encounter with God
and with our neighbours as we await the fulfilment when "God will be all in
all" (1 Cor. 15-18). Seeking to develop new and greater understandings of
“the wisdom, love and power which God has given to men (and women) of other
faiths" (New Delhi Report, 1961), we must affirm our "openness to. the
possibility that the God we know in Jesus Christ may encounter us also in the
lives of our neighbours of other faiths" (CWME Report, San Antonio 1989, para.
29). The one God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ has not left Himself
without witness, anywhere (Acts 14:17).

Ambiguity in the Religious Traditions

Any affirmation of the positive qualities of wisdom, love, compassion, and

spiritual insight in the world's religious traditions must also speak with
honesty and with sadness of the human wickedness and folly that is also
present in all religious communities. We must recognize the ways in which
religion has functioned too often to support systems of oppression and
exclusion. Any adequate theology of religions must deal with human wickedness
and sin, with disobedience to spiritual insight and failure to live in
accordance with the highest ideals. Therefore we are continually challenged
by the Spirit to discern the wisdom and purposes of God.

III. CHRISTOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS PLURALITY

Because we have seen and experienced goodness, truth and holiness among
followers of other paths and ways than that of Jesus Christ, we are forced to
confront with total seriousness the question raised in the Guidelines on
Dialogue (1979) concerning the universal creative and redemptive activity of
God towards all humankind and the particular redemptive activity of God in the
history of Israel and in the person and work of Jesus Christ (para. 23). We
find ourselves recognizing a need to move beyond a theology which confines
salvation to the explicit personal commitment to Jesus Christ.

We affirm that in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, the entire human family
has been united to God in an irrevocable bond and covenant. The saving
presence of God's activity in all creation and human history comes to its
focal point in the event of Christ.

In Jesus's words and action, in His proclamation, in His ministry of healing

and service, God was establishing His reign on earth, a sovereign rule whose
presence and power cannot be limited to any one community or culture. The
attitudes of Jesus as He reached out to those beyond the house of Israel
testify to this universal reign. He spoke with the woman of Samaria,
affirming all who would worship God in Spirit and truth (Jn. 4:7-24). He
marvelled at the faith of a centurion, acknowledging that He had not found
such faith in all Israel (Matt. 8:5-11). For the sake of a Syro-Phoenician
woman, and in response to her faith, He performed a miracle of healing (Matt.
15:21-28).

But while it appears that the saving power of the reign of God made present in

-uAo&
Jesus during His earthly ministry was in some sense limited (cf. Matt. 10:23),
through the event of His death and resurrection, the paschal mystery itself,
these limits were transcended. The cross and the resurrection disclose for us
the universal dimension of the saving mystery of God.

This saving mystery is mediated and expressed in many and various ways as
God's plan unfolds toward its fulfilment. It may be available to those
outside the fold of Christ (Jn. 10:16) in ways we cannot understand, as they
live faithful and truthful lives in their concrete circumstances and in the
framework of the religious traditions which guide and inspire them. The
Christ event is for us the clearest expression of the salvific will of God in
all human history. (I Tim. 2:4)

IV. THE HOLY SPIRIT AND RELIGIOUS PLURALITY

We have been especially concerned in this Consultation with the person and
work of the Holy Spirit, who moved and still moves over the face of the earth
to create, nurture, challenge, renew and sustain. We have learned again to
see the activity of the Spirit as beyond our definitions, descriptions and
limitations, as "the wind blows where it wills" (Jn. 3:8). We have marvelled
at the "economy" of the Spirit in all the world, and are full of hope and
expectancy. We see the freedom of the Spirit moving in ways which we cannot
predict, we see the nurturing power of the Spirit bringing order out of chaos
and renewing the face of the earth, and the ‘energies' of the Spirit working
within and inspiring human beings in their universal longing for and seeking
after truth, peace and justice. Everything which belongs to ‘love, joy,
peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control'
is properly to be recognized and acknowledged as the fruit of the activity of
the Holy Spirit. (Gal. 5:22-23, cf. Rom. 14:17).

We are clear, therefore, that a positive answer must be given to the question
raised in the Guidelines on Dialogue (1979) "is it right and helpful to
understand the work of God outside the Church in terms of the Holy Spirit"
(para. 23). We affirm unequivocally that God the Holy Spirit has been at work
in the life and traditions of peoples of living faiths.

Further we affirm that it is within the realm of the Spirit that we may be
able to interpret the truth and goodness of other religions and distinguish
the "things that differ", so that our "love may abound more and more, with
knowledge and all discernment" (Phil. 1:9-10).

We also affirm that the Holy Spirit, the Interpreter of Christ and of our own
Scriptures (Jn. 14:26) will lead us to understand afresh the deposit of the
faith already given to us, and into fresh and unexpected discovery of new
wisdom and insight, as we learn more from our neighbours of other faiths.

V. INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE: A THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Our recognition of the mystery of salvation in men and women of other

religious traditions shapes the concrete attitudes with which we Christians
must approach them in interreligious dialogue.

- 50 4
We need to respect their religious convictions, different as these may be from
our own, and to admire the things which God has accomplished and continues to
accomplish in them through the Spirit. Interreligious dialogue is therefore a
“two-way street". Christians must enter into it in a spirit of openness,
prepared to receive from others, while on their part, they give witness of
their own faith. Authentic dialogue opens both partners to a deeper
conversion to the God who speaks to each through the other. Through the
witness of others, we Christians can truly discover facets of the divine
mystery which we have not yet seen or responded to. The practice of dialogue
will thus result in the deepening of our own life of faith. We believe that
walking together with people of other living faiths will bring us to a fuller
understanding and experience of truth.

We feel called to allow the practice of interreligious dialogue to transform

the way in which we do theology. We need to move toward a dialogical theology
in which the praxis of dialogue together with that of human liberation, will
constitute a true locus _theologicus, i.e. both a source and basis for
theological work. The challenge of religious plurality and the praxis of
dialogue are part of the context in which we must’ search for’ fresh
understandings, new questions, and better expressions of our Christian faith
and commitment.

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