FORUMTEOLOGI

Karya tulis Anda menghidupkan kami

Paul F. Knitter
Real inter religious dialogue isn’t easy. And it can be dangerous. If we understand dialogue to be more than just chit-chat in which we talk mainly to be nice to each other, and more than just an exchange of information so that we can understand each other better – if dialogue is going to be a real conversation in which we both talk and listen, in which we both speak our mind and open oar mind, in which we both try to persuade the other of the truth and value of what we believe and at the same time are ready to be so persuaded by what our partner hold to be true and valuable – then dialogue is going to make both difficult and risky demands. Dialogue is a complex movement of “both-and” – both speaking and listening, both teaching and learning, both clarity and questioning, both firmness and suppleness.

All these duets can be summarized in the polarity commitment and openness. In a genuine religious dialogue (really, in any conversation where people speak out of different viewpoints) one has to be firm in what one believes, persuaded that what has been true and good for oneself might be the same for others; this enables one to have something to contribute to the dialogue. And yet, if be conversation is going t be two days, if there are going to be “equal rights” for all the participants in the dialogue then one has also to be open to listening to and possibly learning from the commitments of the dialogue partner. And “learning from” can mean changing one’s mind and admitting mistakes.

For Christians, this means that we have to be fully committed to Christ and his Gospel and at the same time genuinely open to what God may be trying to tell us through other religions. But for most Christians, this is something new, maybe something bewildering or threatening. Just how does one balance such commitment to Christ and openness to other? Is it even possible? Wouldn’t it be something like asking a married person to be committed to one’s spouse and at the same time open to other potential spouses? For Christians in the dialogue, openness to other religions might lead them to lessen lose their own allegiance to Jesus and the Gospel.
Just because something is difficult or dangerous doesn’t mean that it does not remain necessary. And for many – a growing number it seems – dialogue with persons of other faiths, despite the complexities and risks, remains an ethical imperative. One might even say that one of the most urgent and daunting challenges (certainly not the only one) facing Christians as they step into the new millennium is how to carry on a dialogue with other religions that will, first of all, help all religions to work together in, as Kung puts it “global responsibility” for the ethical challenges facing humankind; but it will also be a dialogue that enables. Christians to better understand themselves and their own convictions in the light of so many other thriving religious faiths. Such a dialogue will require the complex balancing of commitment and openness. An Christians do it?

Right now, it seems to me, we Christians don’t have the equipment to manage such a balancing of commitment and openness in a authentic religious dialogue. That is, we don’t have the theological tools. We are in a situation familiar throughout Church history where out practice (or the need for practice) has outstripped our theory. (That’s really the way Christian understanding or theology grows – by trying to accompany, help, or catch up with Christian living). We don’t have the theological clarity and guidance for carrying out an interreligious dialogue that would balance commitment and openness. In the words of Jacques Dupuis, one of the most knowledgeable and careful Christian theologians of religions, such a dialogue-sustaining theology will require a “qualitative shift” in the way Christians understand other religions. That shift has not yet happened. So a Christian theology of religions that is informed by and can support a Christian dialogue with religion is “a work in progress” – A brief, hasty review of contemporary theologies of religions will. I think, indicate progress made and still needed.

CURRENT “THEOLOGIES OF RELIGIONS DON’T MEET THE CHALLENGE OF COMMITMENT AND OPENNESS

Classifying is always risky. Fitting things into meat categories often means stuffing them for leaving any misfits on the floor). Still, in an effort to bring some order into the array of current Christian attitudes toward other religions, let me offer a line-up of categories or models that. I think, cover most of the theological terrain. Most Christian theologians writing about other religions may move between these models, but each of them, I venture to say, spends more time in one than in the others. I’ll try to give a thumbnail sketch of each and then comment on how well it balances the commitment and openness needed for dialogue.

The Replacement Model
For Christians who follow this model, the best way to relate to persons of other religious path is to share the good news of Jesus with them and hope that this will bring them into the community of Jesus-followers. This attitude is found especially among the Fundamentalist and Evangelical churches, though much of its theology was laid out, powerfully and prophetically, by Karl Barth. For these Christians there are certain beliefs, given in God’s revelation through Jesus, that are simply non-negotiable. Among these are the announcement to all the world that God has given hope and the possibility of well-being (salvation) through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Here and no where else. As stated so clearly in I Tim. 2:4-5, God certainly does not discriminate in God’s love and “desires everyone to be saved”; but this God offers this saving love “through the one Mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus.” This means that in other religions we may find many worthwhile, even necessary, questions as to how humans can get their act together; but the real, effective, and only answer is given in the message and the person of Jesus. While Christians will always love persons of other religions and try to talk with them, they will snow their love by attempting to replace their previous religions beliefs and practices with baptism into Christian life and practice.

Clearly, this model meets all the requirements of the commitment necessary for dialogue. But it evidently lags in openness. How can one be open to possibly learning form others when one already has the fullness of God’s truth? How can one really cooperate with other religions in trying to solve the ethical, global issues of the day when one is convinced that the one and only solution has already been given in Jesus? Admittedly, Christians who hold to this Replacement Model see no need for dialogue and feel no uneasiness in announcing to Buddhists or Muslims that without embracing Jesus they cannot be saved. But for those followers of Jesus who feel the imperative of dialogue, this model, though it offers a good example of commitment, doesn’t work.

The Fulfillment Model
This model came into clear focus, especially for Catholics but also for Protestants, when the Second Vatican Council tried to lay the theological groundwork for a more positive attitude toward, and therefore a real dialogue with, members of other religions. For the first time, in formal, official statements of a Christian church, Christians publicly recognized that there is much that is “true and holy”, in other religions, that they contain “precious things both religious and human …elements of truth and grace”, that God is revealing, perhaps saving, through them, and that therefore Christian are “exhorted …prudently and lovingly…to dialogue and collaborate” with these religions. What, as it were, burst onto the Christian world in Vatican II has to great extent been endorsed and developed and become a consensus among many members and theologians of the so-called mainline churches – that the God revealed by Jesus cannot be confined to the Christian churches.

But what, for this model, is the ultimate purpose of dialogue? The answer is determined by the same non-negotiable belief that guides the replacement model _ Jesus as the one and only savior. Though representatives, of this fulfillment model allow the effects of Jesus’ death and resurrection to actually work outside the church, within and through other religions (cosmically or anonymously), they insist that it is only in Jesus that God’s gift of saving love is actually offered or constituted, and therefore only in Jesus is God’s truth fully, finally, unsurpassably revealed. The final end of dialogue, therefore, must be fulfillment. In Jesus and in his church, all the truth and value and beauty of other religions are to find their completion. As the Second Vatican Council put it: “Whatever goodness of truth is found among them (the religions), it is considered by the church as a preparation for the Gospel.

With this model, how do commitment and openness balance out? Like the replacement model, this attitude weighs in heavily with commitment; at the same time, it provides possibilities of greater openness by strongly affirming the active presence of God in other religions. But is this openness sufficient to sustain a conversation in which both sides are really able not only to speak but to learn? If the value of Buddha is actually made possible by Jesus, if we Christians have the full and final Word of God, if therefore whatever truth might be found in Hinduism has to be already given in Christian revelation – how much can Christians really learn in the dialogue? How much can be added to what is already “full and final”?

The Mutuality Model
Spokespersons for this model try to make up for the deficiencies of openness that they find in the other models. For them, what is non-negotiable is still open to new interpretations. And so they press their case that the witness of the New Testament of the New Testament and Christian tradition can, in this age of pressing dialogue, be so understand that Christians can proclaim Jesus to be truly Savior of the world (that’s the non-negotiable), but not the only Savior of the world. In the world, the saving role of Jesus remains universal – that is, meant for all peoples not just for Christians; but this role is not exhaustive of what God is up to in the world. Therefore, just as Christians most continue to announce that Jesus and his message are necessary for humanity to understand and live what God inter is for creation, so might other religious figures of revelations be equally necessary. (They say might, for it is only through dialogue that they can find out). This is not to say that therefore there are no differences between the religions, or that they are all essentially saying the same thing, or that every religions belief is equally valid of effective in revealing God’s truth. The differences between the religions are real; they’re often stark; and they matter. Differences constitute the stuff of dialogue.

Clearly, there is greater openness in this model. But has it just tipped the scales in the opposite direction? Openness seems to outweigh commitment. If many religious figures can have universally relevant and equally valid messages, then doesn’t Jesus end up as “one of the boys”, one of many saviors? Is this really consistent with all the New Testament language that attributes to Jesus specialness not found elsewhere? Is it consistent with the belief, in the New Testament and throughout Christian history, that Jesus was “Son of God” in a way that differs from how we are all sons and daughter of God? And if God is saving in many ways, why should I choose one way over another? Why be a Christian rather than a Buddhist?

One can also ask advocates of the mutuality model whether they are as open to other religions as they think they are. If we really hold something to be true, if that truth colors our whole life, won’t it also color what we see in other religions? Won’t we always be viewing and understanding and evaluating the other religious person from the perspective of our own commitments? We will judge something to be true and good in another religion because it reflect or relates to our own truth and good. If it doesn’t we’ll judge it to be false or evil. How open is that, really?

The Acceptance Model
This model seeks to recognize and live with the complexity, even the well-neigh impossibility, of neatly balancing commitment and openness. Influenced by what is called postmodern consciousness (that’s why this model is also termed a “post-library” perspective) its proponents accept the reality that we are living in our own cultural worlds, that the world we live in, like a pair of glasses, affects how we look at everything else, and the many cultural-religious worlds that make up humanity are very, very different. In fact, they re so different that you really can’t “measure” one from the perspective of the other; each world or religion is incommensurable with the others. Some advocates of this model suggest that each religion has its own goal, or ultimate end, different from the others. The religions are seeking, not salvation but salvations, each, as it were, going it own way to its own final destination, both in this world and in the next. This means, more clearly and practically, that we all have our non-negotiables; we all have our absolutes or full and final truths, and you really can’t judge one in the light of another. To try to do so will lead either to distorting the other so that it will fit yours, or reducing yours so it will make room for the other.

So this model calls upon Christian, and all religious person, to simply accept, let them be, be good neighbors to each other, but stay in your own backyard. Yes, talk to each other as much as you can, but let it be over your backyard fences. And if there is going to be any kind of a dialogue in which the partners search for deeper truth or a solution to common problems, know that it will realty be a conversation in which each participant, for the most part, will really be making an “apology” for, or promoting, their own truth. Dialogue is, and should be, a kind of holy competition, in which everyone lays out their own non-negotiable truths as clearly and courteously as possible, in the hope that the deeper or higher truth will prevail.

It seems that this acceptance model does achieve a neat balance of commitment and openness, recognizing that all religions make their own absolute or on-negotiable truth claims and urging them all to respect each other for doing that. But, one may ask, does this understanding of religious pluralism, even when it urges dialogue as apologetics, go anywhere? It appears that the religions are actually confined to their own backyards. Each is securely committed to its won truth. But maybe too securely. Does this model really allow for any kind of real challenge to religious truth from the outside? Also, while each religions, does this acceptance really end up as tolerance rather than as a dialogue in which both sides are ready not only to defend but to criticize their own positions? Can religions really search for truth and cooperation together when they are going in different directions, toward different “salvations”?

So where do we go from here? It seems that none of those models, by themselves, does the job of aiding Christians to achieve the convergence of commitment and openness necessary to respond to the imperative of dialogue. As I said, the theology of religions and dialogue is a work is progress. To push along the progress, I would like to outline in the remainder of this chapter some helpful ingredients for a more dialogical Christian theology of religions. My intent is not to propose a new model but to identify the components of amore dialogical attitude toward other religions. These components or ingredients are drawn form traditional Christian beliefs. But these beliefs will be, I hope, reviewed, refurbished, reappropriated under the pressure of the dialogical imperative, of the need for a more balance commitment to Christ and openness to others. What we’re doing is carrying on the age-old job of theology – linking the signs of the times or the question – and in the process, we hope, understanding both the questions and witness more deeply.

A THEOLOGY THAT WILL PROMOTE OPENNESS WITHOUT JEOPARDIZING COMMITMENT

Confessional

A theology of religions that can enable greater openness toward them (and greater openness on their part toward us!) would do well to follow the advice of H. Richard Niebuhr from way back in 1941. In relation to outsiders, he urged Christians to confess and state clearly what has been their experience of Jesus and the church, what they believe – without trying to “justify it as superior to all other faith”. Niebuhr felt that such claims of superiority “become more destructive of religion, Christianity, and the soul than any foe’s attack can possibly be”. So he counseled his fellow Christians to enter the conversation with others “by sating in simple, confessional form what has happened to us in our community, how we came to believe, how we reason about things, and what we see from our point of view “. And without any further talk of “only” or superior”, let the dialogue move forward. Here we are taking serious the recommendations of both the replacement and especially the acceptance model: confess boldly what Jesus means for us – but leave out the comparisons or condemnations.

Such an approach will help Christians interpret and make better dialogical use of the abundance of “one-and-only-language” in the New Testament. (“No other name …” Act. 4:12; “Only begotten Son…” John 1:18; “One Mediator” I Tim 2:5). This is confessional language, or, as one exegete puts it, love language. It’s poetic, affective language, meant primarily to express the early community’s excitement about, commit to, love for Jesus, and their conviction that he and his message could arouse the same feelings in all peoples. It’s not philosophiea or theological language, meant to define in clear, rock-hard concepts Jesus ontological place in the scheme of things. Its purpose is to stir love for and commitment to Jesus, not to put down Buddha or Confucius. It is, one might say, meant for internal consumption only – to be used in our liturgies and prayers to express the knowledge and hope of our hearts, not to be flaunted in the face to those who find their hopes rooted in other stories.

Kenotic

Ever since Paul, in Phil. 2: 5-11, quoted and expanded a pre-existing hymn in the Christian communities, kenosis, or self-emptying, has been at the heart of Christian understandings of Jesus. Jesus is who he was and is through kenosis. Incarnation and redemption take place through a divine self-emptying in and through and as Jesus. Without kenosis, no incarnation or redemption. But it also only recently that theologian, again under the pressure and guidance of their encounter with theologians, again under the pressure and guidance of their encounter with other religions, have begun to unpack the dialogical insight and demands of kenosis. Self-emptying, we are realizing, is self opening to, self-relating with others. Without others, without those who are different (as different as creatures are to the Creator), kenosis or self-emptying is meaningless, really impossible. Perhaps we can say that kenosis is practically synonymous with dialogue. Which means that Jesus would not be the Chris, and Christians would not be his followers, without openness to and dialogue with those who are “other” to Christ and Christians. From such a kenotic Christology, we see that, indeed, commitment to Christ requires openness to others, for as John B. Cobb, Jr., puts it, the kenotic Christ is “the way open to other ways”.

But kenosis call Christians to a greater openness than they have practiced in the past, for it requires an openness that, as proponents of the acceptance model admonish, truly respects the otherness of the other. That means that Christian will be wary of too hastily replacing, or including, or subsuming into their own understanding the differences that constitute the otherness of a Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim. For it is precisely in and through the ineradicable-yes, incommensurable-differences of the other that God preserves, reveals, and seeks to surprise us with God’s own otherness. The mystery of God’s otherness is contained and protected in the “utter mystery” of the face of her or him, who speaks a different language, practices a different culture, follows a different religion. To deny, or capture, or too hastily convert the otherness of the human other is to capture or control the otherness of God, that’s idolatry.

A kenotic theology of religions still allows Christians to believe, as the replacement and fulfillment models insist, that Jesus brings the fullness of God’s truth. But Jesus does this kenotically or dialogically, which means that we cannot grasp, or unpack that fullness unless we are opening and emptying ourselves to others. We need others in order to understand who Jesus is and to delve ever more deeply (but never totally) into the depth of the riches that God offers in him. This means that the uniqueness of Jesus needs the uniqueness of others. But it also means that, as the mutuality uniqueness above all the others. Kenosis and ranking are uncomfortable bedfellows. David Jensen, a pioneer in showing how the kenotic Christ is the dialogical Christ, makes this point strongly.

The movement of kenosis is to de-center the “Self” – and anything else – from a privileged place of permanence ….The confession of the kenotic Christ cannot rest in pointing to the figura of Jesus Christ alone, above all others….Christomonism – the proclamation of Jesus Christ at the expense of everything else – is a distortion of the life of discipleship and not its faithful execution. Indeed, conformity to Christ involves being claimed by others, and not claiming others as our own.

Sacramental

The openness to others that the dialogical imperative requires of Christians (and, that, as we just saw, a kenotic Christology makes possible) call on Christians to recognize the real possibility that God is saving in and through other religions. But such a recognition ricochets back on to traditional theology: if God is saving through others, how does that fit with the way God saves through Jesus? That’s the soteriological question to Christians have been trying to answer through the ages. In our present, religiously – plural age, I would suggest we can achieve a dialogical understanding of Jesus salvific role by drawing more on the Johannine writings of the New Testament (and not just on Paul). In terminology from my Catholic background, this will enable us to develop a sacramental soteriology (Protestants prefer the term representative) in order to balance the traditional constitutive soteriology. To summarizes (without, I hope trivializing) the difference: as a sacramental cause, Jesus saves by revealing; as a constitutive cause, he saves by fixing.

As the constitutive cause of salvation, Jesus is generally understood to have effected something, or did something which in some way repaired, of bridged, the rift between God and humanity. His death and resurrection are basically what he did, or underwent, and they were the act that opened the gates of heaven, or reconnected humans and God, and so constitute or establish the possibility of salvation for everyone. As a sacramental cause of salvation, Jesus is understood along the lines of traditional sacramental theology; in his life, death, and resurrection he slows or reveals what is already there in the world but not really available to us because we don’t see it, or are not aware of it or don’t trust it: the ever-present, affirming, accepting, forgiving love of God. Jesus re-presents, embodies, symbolizes the universal, active presence of God – but he does so in a way in which that Divine Presence or Spirit can transform our lives in a manner that was not possible without Jesus.

I don’t think that a constitutive and a sacramental Christology or soteiology are necessarily contradictory. Yet the differences between them are stark when we apply them to the question of openness to other religions. A constitutive cause is intrinsically singular. Once something is fixed, it doesn’t need to be, or it cannot be, fixed again. But a sacramental cause is at least potentially open to being multiple. What is revealed at one point in history, or in one culture, or in one set of particular human needs, can be revealed very differently, but just as appropriately, in another culture of historical context. And when what is being revealed is the incomprehensible, ever-rich and creative Mystery of God, then a variety is of revelations, or sacraments, of this Divine mystery not only makes sense but would be expected. A theology that understands Jesus-the-Savior as Jesus-the-Sacrament is open to other sacraments.

Kingdom-centered

If we try to be more specific about what Jesus-the-Sacrament reveals, one answer would have to be the Kingdom or Reign of God. New Testaments scholars may not be able to agree on much about the historical Jesus, but on one issue they resonate: that his message was centered or the Reign of God. This is what he wanted people to believe in, hope and work for. Yes, he wanted them to believe in God, but if this God did not call and inspire them to love each other, to treat each other justly, to respond to the needs of each other, and to work for a society in which people would really live this way – then it was not the God of Jesus. A god without the Reign of God was for Jesus a false God.

A theology that is as Kingdom-centered as Jesus was would also be a more dialogical theology, open to other religions. Following the example of Jesus, the primary (which doesn’t mean the only) motivation, goal, and guideline in the Christian dialogue with other religions is not to convert them to the Christian church, not even, we can add, to bring them t o accept Jesus as their only Savior. Rather, Christians engage other believers first of all in order to work with them to further God’s Kingdom on earth, to contribute to a world of greater love, peace, justice. And the scene of the last judgment in Matthew 25 seems to tell us that to be so engaged in doing God’s work on earth does not require knowing or believe in Jesus. Certainly, Christians will want to, and will need to, bear witness to other believers about how Jesus and his God can make this Reign of love and justice possible and workable. But followers of Jesus will also know that “those who are not against us are for us”. (Mark 9:40) and that therefore they may have much to teach Christians about God’s Kingdom. Even Roman Catholic theology is recognizing that God’s Kingdom is larger than, even more important than, the Christian church. Therefore, there may be much to learn about that Kingdom from those who live outside the Christian community.

A THEOLOGY THAT WILL PROMOTE COMMITMENT WITHOUT JEOPARDIZING OPENNESS.

A real dialogue with others, as we have stressed, requires of Christians just as much a resolute commitment to Jesus and his message as it does a bold openness to others religions. In a sense, Christian belief, with its insistence on Jesus as the only way to God, has always fostered that commitment. So our question now is: what would be some of the qualities of a theology that without insisting on “only” could still inspire commitment? Again, I can only sketch some suggestions.

Christocentric

To bracket confessionally the “one and only” language of Christian claims (as Neibuhr saggests) is not to deny the uniqueness or the universal (missionary) outreach of Jesus and the Gospel. Advocates of the mutuality model stress this, and so they insist that both in their own lives and in their dialogue with others, they remain thoroughly Christocentric. To be a Christian means that one’s life is informed and formed by God-as-Jesus, by the Christ continuing to live in the community. And this centeredness is founded n the conviction, which cannot be watered down in the dialogue, that in Jesus the Christ God has done something that god has not done elsewhere. This something is particular, unrepeatable, distinctive, something that can’t be subsumed under, or boiled down to, a universal truth or principle It’s unique. And what’s more, it’s universally unique, that is, its meaning and power are to touch and transform all peoples. It’s a particularity that overflows with universality. Christians proclaim that without Jesus, salvation or human well being – as God intend it to be realized – is not really and fully possible. Without Jesus, no matter how advanced and deep and beautiful other understandings of the Ultimate and human-well being may be, something will be missing. This is why to be a Christian is to be a missionary.

Such convictions about the uniqueness and universally of Christ can be sustained in a relationship with Jesus-as-Sacrament. But this is a relationship that, as we noted, is not threatened by being open to the possibility of other, different but effective, sacraments of saving Power and Truth, other manifestations of the Divine that are also unique and universally relevant.

Prophetic.

But a theology of religions that will sustain commitment will have to face a further question: what is it that makes Jesus unique? Why are he and his message universally urgent? Two clarifications or precautions are necessary before taking up this unavoidable question. First, by uniqueness I don’t mean that which Jesus has and absolutely no one else does. (Such a view of uniqueness defines identity negatively: I am who I am because you are not). Rather, by uniqueness I mean that which makes Jesus who he is, that without which he would not be universally relevant and urgent. Maybe a better word for unique is distinctive. Whether what constitutes Jesus distinctiveness is also precaution is just as important: the question about what makes Jesus unique or distinctive can never really be answered – that is, can never be answered fully or finally or in only one way. It’s the same question that Jesus asked of his followers: “Who do you say I am?” (Mark 8:27) IT has to be answered ongoingly, again and again, in different ages, in different historical contexts, in response to different “signs of times”

So, in our ages and historical context, trying to connect the new testament witness to the signs of our times, how can we describe what makes Jesus unique? Taking up the insights especially of Asian theologians, who are trying to follow and proclaim Jesus in a world of both many religions and much proverty, I would suggest that one of the most faithful (to the New Testament) and most relevant (to the needs of our world) approaches is to located Jesus uniqueness in his role of prophet. This relates back to the centrality of the Reign of God in his message: Jesus was pa prophet announcing the coming Kingdom. But he did so in a very distinctive way: with a preferential (that doesn’t mean exclusive) concern for the poor – for the marginalized, for those who were being taken advantage of by others, for victims. Writing from Sri Langka, Aloysius Pieris, S.J. puts it this way: “Jesus is the covenant between YHWH and the non-persons of the world”. Jesus embodies and announces “the irrevocable covenant between God and the poor. Here Jesus echoes with intensity the message of his fellow Jewish prophets. But he seems to go ever further when the Cross becomes part of this covenant with the marginalized. “…. the kind of God revealed in Christ on Calvary has crossed the threshold of propriety”. God not only covenants with victims and slaves; God identifies with them, to the point of suffering with them. In Jesus, God dies with victims in order to die for victims. The cross, followed by the resurrection, contains the distinctiveness of Jesus revelation of who God is:

This God has foolishly and scandalously (I Cor 1:23) exposed the true Divine Self as Love that gets hurt and even breaks down before human ingratitude, a God who weeps, sweats, and bleeds, sharing the pain and the fear and the despair of Her co-victims on earth, a God who does not live on others but dies that others may have life in abundance, a God who opts not just to be human but to associate with the socially degraded persons in the manner of living and dying.

From his broad knowledge as Asian religions. Pieris does not think that this image of the Divine identifying with, to the point of suffering with, the outcasts of the world is found as clearly of centrally, or at all, in non-biblical religions as it is in the life and message of Jesus. Be that as it may. “Our specifically with the poor, a friendship which led him to lay down his life for the (Jn. 15:13)”. This is the message we are committed to and make bold to lay before others: If people who call themselves religious are not in some may concerned about and reaching out to the victims of this world, essential is missing in their religious experience. No matter how or assuring their vision of the Divine or the Mystical may be, no matter how much they feel at-oned with the Ultimate, if a concern for the marginalized is missing, then something essential is missing in their religious experience or in their claims to have attained salvation or enlightenment. Christians may have much to learn from other religions, other Sacraments of the Divine; but this is what they have to contribute and stand for in the dialogue.

Such a commitment to Jesus, Pieris continues, not only allows for openness to what our religious brothers and sisters may have to tell us, it also fosters openness on their part to us. Jesus invitation to all religious people to hear the cry of the poor and to act with the hope of moving the world closer to what he called the Reign of God – this can be heard by other believers as “Good News”. For Pieres’s Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim friend in Sri Langka. “This God who lives and dies in Jesus, and who is Jesus, is not a threat to them as the Colonial Christ had been”. The colonial Christ had come insisting on the superiority of Christianity (and of Europe), on we-have-it-and you-don’t, on Jesus as the only Savior. Jesus as the divine-prophet, embodying the kenotic God who invites us to follow his example of giving oneself for others, especially the poor and the victims, is perceived as the Dialogical Christ, challenging yet open.

Reconciliatory

But Jesus the prophet remains is Jesus the self-emptying servant. He joined bold prophecy to which Christians, especially in our present conflict-ridden and violent world, must be committed. This means that if Christians who follow the prophetic Jesus must denounce those who are exploiting others, this denunciation will always have to be kenotic – loving, self-giving, embracing. In loving the victims of injustice, Jesus-followers can never hate, or exclude, the perpetrators of injustice. The preferential option for the poor can never be disconnected from the self-emptying embrace of all.

Stated more positively: Jesus call all to pursue justice and reconciliation. In fact, if we follow the imagery of Philippians 2:7, the Divine in Jesus had to first empty itself (cauton ekenosen) in order to “Take the form of a slave” (labon morphen doulon) and become a servant of the poor; this suggests that we are to pursue justice through reconciliation, or that reconciliation is a means to, not simply the result of justice. The first steps toward a more just society, then, would not be to insist on a change of political or economic structures (though that is essential), but to work toward the reconciliation of relationships. To the principle, “if you want peace, work for justice”, Christians will add, “And if you want justice, work toward reconciliation”. This is why recently Christian theologians and missiologists have been urging that the primary, central purpose of Christian mission today is to promote the reconciliation of peoples and nations.

Which means that in the interreligious dialogue Christian witness will alays include a commitment to and call for reconciliation – a reconciliation that can be achieved only through a self-emptying love for and embrace of the other, even the “enemy”. Such a Christian voice within the dialogue will certainly challenge the others, but it also stands good chances of being heard, perhaps embraced. And it allows, even requires. Christians to be open to what the other religions might have to contribute to achieving such reconciliation.

All these suggestions indicate that our “work in progress” – an adequate Christian theology of religions – call for more work. Christian theologians, from whatever “model”, need to keep talking with each other. And if they can do so using these two “hermeneutical flashlights” – searching for a theology of religions that would facilitate both commitment to Christ and openness to others – they can, I trust, achieve a theology that will make for a more satisfying Christian spirituality, a more effective dialogue with others, and a greater healing for our world.

I have tried to lay out this creative tension between practice and theory, especially for Roman Catholic, in: “Catholics and Other Religions: Bridging the Gap between Dialogue and Theology”. Louvain Studies 24 (1999) 319-354.

Jacques Dupuis, “Christianity and Other Religions: From Confrontation to Encounter” The Tablet, October 2001, 1484-85 (See also, op.cit., 1520-21, 2001-02).

I’ve tried to describe these models in a broader and balanced manner in Introducing Theology of Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002).

Well, not all of them. Recently, Evangelical theologians have been laboring to devise theological theories that would enable “pagans” who have not heard of Jesus to actually be saved – through special revelations at the moment of death or post-mortem, or through God’s “middle knowledge”, or “by exception” in anticipation of Jesus death. There have even been some Evangelical thinkers who would allow for God, in the divine “wider mercy”, to actually act and save through other traditions; such views would probably blend into the next model. See Clark Pinnock, A Wideness in God’s Mercy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992).

“Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions”, #2; “The Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity”, #9; “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”, #92.

“Dogmatic Constitution on the Church”, #16. For representatives of this fulfillment Model, see Jacque Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology (note 3). Gavin D’Costa, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2000). Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio.

Representatives of this Mutuality Model can be found in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia : Westminster Press. 1984); Joseph A. DiNoia, The Diversity of Religions (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University Press of America, 1992).

S. Mark Heim. Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1995); id. The Depth of Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends (Grand Rapids: Eerdemans, 2001).

Paul Griffith, An Apology for Apologetics, A Study in the Logic of Interreligious dialogue (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991). See also Willam Placer, An Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation (Louisville : Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989).

H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation (New York : Macmillan, 1962), pp 39.41.

For more on re-interpreting New Testament exclusive language as confessional language, see: Krister Stendahl, “Notes on Three Bible Studies”, in Christ’s Lordship and Religious Pluralism, Gerald H. Anderson and Thomas F. Stransky eds. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1981), pp.7-18; Paul F. Knitter, No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes toward World Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1985), pp.182-86; id. Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility (Maryknoll: Orbis Book, 1996), pp.67-71.

John B. Cobb, Jr., “Beyond Pluralism” in Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, Gavin D’Costa, cd. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), p.91.

David H. Jensen, In the Company of Others; A Dialogical Christology (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2001), pp.190, 87, xii.

In fact, when we consider the fundamental adage in Catholic sacramental theology, “symbolyzando causant” (they cause by symbolizing), we can also say that Jesus as Sacrament “constitutes” salvation – but he does so by symbolizing or re-presenting rather than by “fixing”.

Such an understanding of Jesus and the Kingdom is contained in the images of the historical Jesus of Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, and even Geza Vermes and N.T. Wright. See especially Jon Sobrino, Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological Reading of Jesus of Nazareth (Maryknoll : Orbis Book, 1993).

Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, pp.336-42. OR, as David Tracy prefers, christomorphic. “There is no serious form of Christian theology that is not christomorhic. This is a more accurate designation of the christological issue, I believe, that the more familiar but confusing word “christocentric”. For theology is nor christocentric but theocentric, although it is so only by means of its christomorphism”. “Theology and the Many Faces of Postmodernity”.

Theology Today 51 (1994) 111 (104-114).

Aloysius Pieris, Fire and Water: Basic Issues in Asian Buddhism and Christianity (Maryknoll; orbis Book, 1996), pp.150-51.

Aloysius Pieris, “Christ Beyond Dogma: Christology in the Context of the Religions and the Poor”, Louvain Studies 25 (2000) 220 9187-231); id. God’s Reign for God’s Poor: A Return to the Jesus formula (Kelania, Sri Langka: Tulana Research Centre, 1998), pp.71-72.

God’s Reign for God’s poor, loc.Cit

Robert J. Schreiter, “Reconciliation as a Model for Mission”, New Theology Review 10 (1997) 6-15.

And it would seem that such a self-emptying embrace of others is not possible without non-violence toward them. Kenosis and non-violence are, it seems, inseparable. Controversial though it be, one could also make the case that non-violence constitutes another essential ingredient in the distinctiveness of Jesus and therefore a necessary Christian contribution to the dialogue.

Global Responsibility and Interreligious dialogue
Searching for Common Ground

Paul F. Knitter

In conversation about religion and the manyness of religions, one often hears, both within more general as well as more scholarly discussions, remarks about “what all the religions have in common”. It’s generally taken for granted that despite the evident, often flamboyant, diversity of religions, there’s something that they all share, or something that holds them together in when even scrupulous historians of religions call, “family resemblances”. The image of a “common thread” (or threads) is often use to suggest that if we look closely and carefully enough, we’ll find a thread or threads that knit all the different religious colors into one unified picture. Such a common thread is understood to be a unifying thread. Within all the religions there is something that’s makes them religious brothers and sister to each other.

But when it comes to stating more precisely just what that common thread is – or even where we can find it or how we can search for it – conversations usually become vague or contradictory. In the reflections that follow, I’d like to review why such conversations about the “common thread” within all religions bog down, or why the search for such a common thread can be so frustrating, even futile. I’ll first review what I think are failed attempts at locating this common thread and how these failed attempts have lead many people nowadays to give up the search for what is common all religions. Then, in the second principal part of my reflections. I’ll try to outline how the search for what the religions have in common can be, and is being, renewed today. In other words, I will suggest that this search, as complex and frustrating as it is, is also very important and rewarding.

FRUSTRARED ATTEMPTS TO FIND THE COMMON THREAD.

1. The Religious Attempt: One effort to determine the common thread within all the religions comes from the various religions themselves. You can find representatives within most of the religious communities – usually they are religious leaders or theologians – who claim that what is common in all the other religions is what is found primarily, originally, most clearly and definitively in their own. In other words, they argue that what they have, what given first of all to them, is also to be detected, if one looks carefully enough, in other religions. You might say that this is an effort on the part of religious persons to be big-hearted, generous, and to share with other what was given to them.

All this sounds terribly abstract. Let me offer some concrete examples. The first is from my own Christian backyard. Since the turn of this century, Christians have felt pressured to recognize the value of other religions and to define what is common to all of them. So they have talked about the “cosmic Christ” or the “anonymous Christ” who is present in all the other religions. What is common to all religions is the saving presence of Christ of Christ’s spirit. Christ, though present clearly and fully in Christianity, is not limited co Christianity; he is active, is camouflaged ways, throughout the “cosmos” especially in the religions of the world. It is this Christ who gives the other religions their value. This view elaborated creatively and persuasively by Karl Rahner. He spoke about Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims as “anonymous Christians”.

But other religions have come up with similar efforts to identify what is common to all of them. Muslims tell us that all people are born Muslims – born to find their true happiness is submitting themselves fully to Allah’s will, even though they may not have heard of Allah through the prophet Muhammad. Buddhists talk about the inherent Buddha-nature in all people, which Gautama discovered under the Bodhi tree but which is there from the beginning in all. And Hindus see the one Supreme Brahman as that which is sought after by all religions. The mountain top to which, according to Hindus, all the different religious paths lead is the Tat Ekam – “That One Reality” which is spoken about most clearly in the Upanishads.

In one sense, such religious efforts to find common thread in all religions are noble and generous. They seek to affirm the value of other religions. But in the end they fail, for they end up defining the value of other religions on their won terms. “You are of value insofar as you are like me”. As the anonymous Christ, the common thread ends up being a Christian thread. If Buddha-nature is the common thread, then other religions are valuable only insofar as they agree with the Buddhist understanding of Enlightenment and human nature. So it seems that the common thread is discovered by the individual religions is a thread that is stitched into the other religions, not really discovered within them. Such religious attempts to find the common thread lead to what scholars call “inclusivism” you’re nice to people of other religions, but you end up including, or fencing, them into you won backyard.

2. The Mystical attempt: So we move to another attempt to determine the common thread in all religions. This one we find among the mystics, or among scholars of mysticism. Here the claim is that mystical experience is the ladder by underground current that feeds all religions. Mystics, therefore – and not priests or rabbis or ayatollahs or theologians – are our guides to the treasured common thread. Experts such as the psychologist Abraham Maslow and the comparative religionist Huston Smith assert that when you listen to the songs of the mystics from the different religions you hear harmony, despite the different instruments and different voice. From the perspective of the mystics, therefore, the common thread is discovered as an experience whose pure voice is heard at the heart of each religion, despite the external cacophony of differing doctrines and rituals. It is an experience that bears the same characteristics no matter whether the mystic follow Jesus or Buddha or Muhammad: an experience of unity and connectedness with all that is, a sense of both transcending and discovering the self, a feeling of concern and compassion for all persons, and a deep peace that does not break under the weight of suffering and apparent evil. Here we have the “essence”, the inner heart of all religion. This is why mystics embrace where theologians or dignitaries from differing religions may bicker. The mystics are bearers of the common thread.
Or are they? There are many students of mysticism – I must admit, they are, for the most part, scholars rather than mystics themselves – who sound a warning. The common thread provided by mysticism may be more tenuous than one think – certainly too tenuous to stitch the real differences among the religions into any kind of workable unity. For there are greater differences among the mystics than what first meets the non-critical, over-eager eye. This is because, as most contemporary philosophers of mysticism remind us, there is no such thing as a pure mystics experience. By that they mean that mystical experiences don’t take place in a cultural or linguistic vacuum. Even mystical experiences, we are told, are “socially constructed”. That means, they are “packaged” by the mystic’s culture and religion and historical location. And these cultural or linguistic wrappings can make for startling, even apparently contradictory, differences between not just the expression but the content of the mystical experience.

This is why mystics from the Asian religions tend to be monistic; differences between the mystic’s self and the Ultimate Self blend into one. Christian and Jewish mystics generally insist on maintaining a real distinction between the self and the Ultimate; and they understand the ultimate to be, in some sense, personal. So-called “nature mystics” don’t want to speak about a God at all, as they plunge into the wonderful pantheistic cosmic process. Some mystics see no value in this material, finite world; other insist on finding God within the world. Along the same lines, there are mystics, generally form the East, who see no reality or purpose to history; for others, usually form the Abrahamic religions, history is moving, or sometimes stumbling, toward a final stage.

In the light of such objection or caveats, I think we have to be extremely cautious about finding our common thread among the mystics. I’m not saying that they don’t have it, for I do believe – or better, I trust – that there is an experiential depth within all religions where they begin to touch each other. But it seems to me that the thread provided by the mystics is to thin, or too hard to find, to provide the connections by which the vastly differing religions of the world can begin to fashion new bonds of unity. By itself, mysticism, it seems, cannot provide a strong enough common thread.

3. The Philosophical Attempt. So we turn to another group of explorers searching for the common thread within all religions. Though many of them are theologians. I’m describing their quest as philosophical, for they don’t want to be prejudiced by any individual religion, or any specific mysticism; so they seek a place to stand outside the particular religions, a place where they can purvey all religions. This standing place can be called “philosophical” in that it attempts to make general statements, based on human intelligence about observations available to all. This attempt is usually called the “school of pluralism”. It wants to avoid the “inclusivism” of the religious attempt we mentioned earlier which ended up defining the common thread according to one’s own religious stipulations. The pluralist approach, standing outside all the religions, affirms the real “pluralism” of religion; religions are really different from one another and they are valid in their differences. So the pluralists really want to affirm religious diversity. But they are also intent on finding what we are calling “the common thread”. Within the diversity of religions, according to this pluralist perspective, there is something which makes them all valid and good. But what is it ?

Well, the pluralist s use a variety of terms, all of which they think can apply to all religions. Some pluralists, like John Hick in his early days, refer to the common thread within all religions simply as “God”, urging their fellow Christians to recognize that just as the planets revolve around the sun rather that the earth, so the religions revolve around God and not around Christ. But hick later realized that the term “God” is still too Christian or too Jewish is common to all religions as “Reality” with a capital R. Other general terms used by pluralists to indicate the common thread in all terms, one can say with the Buddhists, are not meant to be definitions; rather, they are indicators; they are not the Moon itself but fingers pointing to the moon. So for many people, the pluralist effort to find the common thread seems to be the most promising.

But once again, there are serious warning that this pluralist approach is fabricating rather than discovering the common thread. The problem has to do with the neutral standpoint that the pluralists are seeking outside all the religions. When you think about it, it seems that such an “outside of” standpoint doesn’t exist. In order to stand, we have to stand someplace, on some thing. And that means within a particular cultural, historical, and yes, religious context. To try to find a place outside of all the religions where one can see all the religions at once is like trying to find a place to stand outside of this world. In other words, the critics tell us, it’s impossible to see all the religions at once. When you look at all the religions, you’re always looking at them from one of them, whether you realize it or not. Therefore, when the pluralists speak of “reality” or the “Transcendent” or the “Great mystery”, they are working with their own particular, historical, religious understanding of these terms.

So, contrary to their intentions, the pluralists end up falling into the same pitfall as the religious approach. They end up defining the common thread according to their own criteria; only this time, the criteria are not religious but philosophical. The common thread turns out to be not very common at all; in fact, it turns out to be “my” thread. And I end up imposing it on, rather than discovering, it within, the other religions.

What results from all these efforts to find a common thread – the religious, the mystical, the philosophical – is that the real differences between the religions are lost or not taken seriously. In the effort to find the universal, common thread, the really differing threads of the various religions are overlooked. Many scholars as well as many religious people are insisting today that to neglect differences in an effort to find the common is, in the end, to destroy, or at least water down, the identity of the various religions. To insist that we must find what we have in common is to place in danger our differing identities. And that is why many people today are giving up the search for the common thread among religions.

THE ANADONED SEARCH FOR THE COMMON THREAD

I’m referring mainly to what is called the postmodern mentality. We’re supposed to be living in a postmodern age, one that is wary of universals, or common threads, not because they are bad in themselves but because, almost inevitably, they end up suppressing diversity and individual differences. This attitude often comes in expressions of extreme multiculturalism. In fact, the position I’m now trying to describe could well be termed “multi-religionism”.

But the roots for this postmodern perspective run deeper than just the fear of losing diversity. Postmodernism rests on a realization that I find hard to deny; we’ve already heard it in some of the criticisms of the search for the common thread; everything we experience and know and claim to be true is filtered through the telescope of our social-cultural context. We cannot, as it were, look at reality with the naked eye; reality, like the universe, it too complex to really see without a cultural telescope.

But the postmodern not only point out that ve need telescopes to see ourselves, the world, and the transcendent; they also force us to face two other facts: 1) each of these telescopes is limited; each enables us to see something, but that something is only a part of the universe of truth and reality, 2) and secondly, there are many telescopes throughout the world and history – and they are all different, sometimes very different.

And this why people with a postmodern consciousness raise a serious objection to any kind of search for common threads within the religions: they warn that looking for the common thread among all the religions is like looking for the one telescope by which we can see the entire religious universe – the one telescope that all the religions of the world would be able to use. Such a telescope, they insist, does not and cannot exist. To try to find or construct such a telescope is to commit what Jews and Christians would have to call the sin of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9). It would be the idolatrous effort to construct a religious telescope that would be able to reach into all the heavens and embrace the entirety of God’s truth; it would be to construct a religious language that all peoples would have to speak – a religious language that “says it all” about God. Any human construct that claims to communicate all of God’s truth is an idol. But furthermore, such a telescope or language that all peoples would be able to use would, like the Tower of Babel, create a unity that destroys the diverse religious languages that are also part of God’s creation. “E pluribus unum” we say : out of the many, one. But if the one telescope or the one common thread, destroys or maims the “many” in its determination to create unity, then it becomes an idol that not only takes God’s place but demands human sacrifice.
So far the postmodernists, diversity, or manyness, is the fundamental and most fruitful fact of God’s creation. This is why they reject any efforts to find a common or universal thread within the diversity of religions. A thread that was truly common to all the religions could come only at the price of suppressing or neglecting the diversity of religions. And this is why postmodernists make a clear option for diversity and difference, and why warn against all attempts to find that common thread that will finally knit the religions together. For this reason, S. Mark Helm, of postmodern proclivities, recently published a book on the religions entitled Salvations. His claim is that as there are different religions, there are different religions, there are different salvations sought after in each of them. Salvation for the Buddhist is very different form what it is for the Christian or Muslim. Vive la differencel.

But I would misrepresent the postmodernist viewpoint if I stopped here. They don’t simply let the religions of the world wallow in their diversity, like Blacks and Whites who don’t talk to each other. Postmodernist theologians recognize the need for the religions of the world to live together, and that means speak together. But the porpose of such interreligious engagement will be to respect each other’s differences, not to over come those differences. For postmodernists, we come together not to look for the common thread within all of us, but to learn about and respect how different our threads really are. From this postmodern perspective, them, religions do not come together to dialogue; dialogue means that two or more parties learn from each other with the willingness, even eagerness, to be changed or transformed through the encounter. For postmodernists, religions talk to each other in order to exchange information that will lead to mutual tolerance of each other. Postmodernists, I would say, propose a kind of “good neighbor policy” for the religions; let’s be good neighbors to each other, talk a bit over our fences, help each other out here and there, but basically we stay in our own back yards, for good fences make good neighbor-religions. To try to do more, will inevitably mean that we will lose our different identities (with the rich and powerful neighbors taking advantage of the poorer neighbors).

THE SEARCH RENEWED: DIFFERENT THREADS BUT A COMMON PATTERN.

So where are we left? I’ve reviewed efforts to search for the common thread that don’t seem to work, as well as reasons why many today are abandoning this search as not only useless, but dangerous I think there is much to be learned form both camps. The postmodernists are right when they tell us that the stubborn and rich reality of religious diversity is here to stay; therefore there is no such think as a common thread that will knit them all together in a neat unity. And yet, I think the postmodernists are deeply and dangerously wrong if they give up the search for something that will enable a greater unity of religions than now exists. And here is the merit of those who are searching for that common thread; they’re animated by a desire to achieve greater inter-religious unity. We need such unity. We have to be a more than just “good neighbors” to each other (although that certainly is better than being bad neighbors, s is the case in Northern Ireland and India and the Middle East). The religious neighbors of the world have to come together in the new ways. Why do I say this? Mainly because our common neighborhood is in such great danger.

As I look around the “neighborhood” of the world in which all of the religions are living, I see much pain, and great dangers. If our human species is going to do something about this pain and these dangers, then the religions of the world are going to have to be more than just “nice” to each other. There’re going to have work together, act together, cooperate as never before. Let me try to explain what I mean. Here I come to the heart of this essay.

What I’m suggesting is that that already exists within all of the world’s religions – the elusive common thread – but with something that exists outside of around all the religions; something that all of them face and can’t ignore; something that stirs them, unsettles them, challenges them; something that calls for a response form each of them. And this something is a common reality, or a common set of problems. I other word’s, it’s something that all of the religions can look at together, with their different religious telescopes; it’s common object of concern for their differences. Or, to switch metaphors, this common concern or common set of challenges can provide the religions, not with the religions can use and with which they can weave their really different threads into a new interreligious garment of religious unity. What I have in mind with such unity is not a new world religion made out of thread form all of the existing religions; rather, I envision a new kind of “community of communities” which will be held together and nourished by the common task and the common design that all of them are committed to.

The common task or the common design I’m talking about is found in a reality that many in the so-called First World countries try to hide form the sufferings and the dangers that rack and threaten our species and our earth. It is not possible in this essay, nor I believe is it necessary for the readers of this journal, to spell out what I mean. I’m referring to the spectrum of human and ecological suffering that is due for the most part to the way some human beings exploitatively and selfishly treat other human beings, other living special, and the earth itself. Such suffering comes in many forms. Let me just list three.

The human suffering due to extreme proverty, the kind of poverty that murders people with the weapons of starvation, inadequate medical care, homelessness. We know that today one out of four or five members of the human family live in a form of poverty that either kills or severely maims.

Then there is the suffering that results from violence, especially military violence. All too often, this kind of violence results from the injustice that causes the suffering of poverty; the exploiters use violence to maintain the status quo, the exploited to change it. Or, it ay be violence of our American inner cities – racial violence, domestic violence – which so often grows in the frustration of those caught in poverty and joblessness.

And finally a form of suffering that threatens us all, rich or poor, living in Harlem or Beverly Hills: the suffering of the earth and its inhabitants that result from the violent, greedy exploitation of the resources and life sustaining capacities of this planet. In the atmosphere, in the rain-forests, in the depletion of non-renewable energies, in lost top-soil, in diminishing diversity of species, in the ozone – we are destroying the mother who gives us life.

GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY THE PATTERN FOR A NEW KIND OF INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

In describing these forms of ecological-human suffering, I believe I am describing something that is “common” to all the religions, something that will be universally recognized by all of them. And by this I mean not just that eco-human suffering is an objective reality which persons of differing faiths will recognize as threatening the well-being of millions, perhaps all of us. It is also, I believe, a subjective reality that will stir similar responses in member of all the religion, no matter what their particular beliefs about God, the soul, or after life. Broadly speaking, this response will be along the lines of what the catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx describe as a :negative experience of contrast”: faced whit such suffering, religious persons will spontaneously and resolutely (dare I say “naturally”?)say “No!” They will feel, and feel strongly that something must be done. They will feel moved or called to reach out, to do something, in order to alleviate or remove such suffering. I am claiming that person in whatever religion who are taking their religious and spiritual lives seriously, and who have felt what Jesus called Abba or Buddha called Enlightenment or what the seers of the Upanishads termed moksha. Will feel claimed or challenged by such specters or suffering; they will not remain indifferent. Their way of responding to this suffering and to its challenge may, and will, be different. Their explanations as to the root cause of such suffering may also differmarkedly. But they will all seek to respond, to offer some kind of a remedy or means of dealing whit such suffering.

But I want to be cautious and more precise about what I am suggesting: I am not claiming that all people in all religions will fell this spontaneous “no” in the face of the eco-human suffering, of poverty, violence, and environmental devastation. But I am asserting, on the basis of what I see happening in all the major religious families of the earth today, that there will be many followers within all of the religious traditions who are so responding and who feel claimed and challenged by the specter of suffering. It is such religious persons whom I am both referring to and appealing to. It is they who are discovering something common, not within each religion, but in front of all religions. These religious people are not searching for a common thread, but they are discovering and feeling claimed by common ethical responsibilities. What I mean was clearly embodied in the last world parliament of religions in Chicago in 1993; the majority of the discussions and presentation at this parliament dealt not whit explicitly religious theme such us the nature of the divine or life after death but whit the practical realities of suffering due the injustice, conflict and especially environmental havoc. It was such themes that enabled people to talk to each other – not just tolerate each other but search together for shared responses to shared concerns. The power of ecological and human suffering to gather the religions together in new ways can be seen in a variety of contemporary movements.

>In the world-wide effort to formulate a final draft of a “declaration of a Global Ethics”, to be signed and supported by representatives of all the earth’s religious communities.

>In similar international efforts to formulate and affirm, inter religiously, an “Earth Charter” that will spell out the rights of the earth and its sentient inhabitant that must be respected by all earth-dwellers.

>In the meeting around the world to establish a “United Religions” — an organization that would provide a permanent forum for the religions of the world to discuss, analyze, and respond to the global problems facing all people.

What is taking shape in this ethically oriented encounter of religions, stimulated by shared responses to common eco-human problems, is a really new form a dialogue among religions. It’s a globally responsible dialogue. As a globally responsible dialogue, it has a different starting point, a different heuristic, but it ends up whit basically the same result (or even better) as have traditional forms of inter religious dialogue. Again, let me try to explain what I mean.

In the globally responsible dialogue that I’m suggesting persons of different regions begin their religious conversations non-religiously. But that I mean that they don’t start talking about religious matters; they begin whit ethics. They look around them at what are the ethical needs of their shared neighborhood – where is the human or environmental suffering – and that’s where they meet. They ask each other what they want to do together. So a globally responsible encounter of religions begins whit praxis, whit acting together, whit commitment to resolve commonly defined problems, whit the effort of taking together about how the different solutions that each religions bring can be coordinated to relieve the common problem of suffering.

Secondly, this shared concern and shared praxis provides what I called the “heuristic” for the encounter of religions. A “heuristic” is that which guides us in our effort to understand something or someone; it’s like a flashlight that help us find our way over some obscure terrain. In a globally responsible dialogue of religions, what will enable persons from totally different religious background and visions to understand each other differences will be, precisely, the way they have discovered and come to know each other through their shared ethical concerns and acting together. To put simply; religious people who act together stay together. After they have struggled to overcome situations of poverty, suppressions, degradation of the environment, they will want to know more about each other’s religious convictions. After I see my Buddhist friend lay this life on the line in confronting a paramilitary group that just attacked a village, I’ll want to learn from him what makes him tick religiously. What enabled him to act whit such clarity and conviction.

So an ethically-initiated, or globally responsible, dialogue, although it begins with ethics and with shared activity — does not end there. It will bear more explicitly religious fruits; it will call the persons who have acted together to talk together – and I must add, just as importantly, to pray or meditate or celebrate together. In fact, I think this is a way in which the mystics from different religions can identify more clearly that which they have in common beneath their differing mystical images and languages. Mystics who have compassion together and than act together in some concrete way will be able and pray and mediate together with even greater fruits. That’s my point; not just that acting together leads to talking and praying together, but that it leads to a different kind of taking and praying together; it enables talking and praying together to beer fruits that would have been impossible if acting together did not precede the talking and praying. I suspect that an inter religious dialogue nurtures by shared ethical praxis is somehow qualitatively different from dialogue that proceeds only through study or prayer.

What I’ve tried to describe and propose contains a paradox; the problems are suffering, which are now so evident throughout our world and which, of course, we wish did not exist, are also offering the religions of the world the opportunity for a new kind of dialogue — a globally responsible dialogue. And in this kind of dialogue, the motivation behind the search for a “common thread” is given a new direction and hope. As I’ve said, the problem of our earth and of our species are not providing a common thread, but they are offering us a common pattern of design that all the religions of the world can us together in order to weave, with the different threads of their different religious traditions, a new cloak of religious cooperation and unity that will protect and heal our wounded, ailing earth. And in weaving such a cloak, in working together to relieve the suffering of the world, in coming to know each other and learn from each other as they go about this common task of globally responsible dialogue, the religions of the world will be helping to transform not only our world, but also themselves. Any religious person or community who truly engages in such a globally responsible dialogue with other religious communities will not remain the same. They will not lose their identity; but they will not remain the same. Some kind of transformation will take place. And this is our also hope, perhaps an even bolder hope – that through such a globally responsible dialogue, not only the world but also the religions themselves will be changed – and that ever greater diversity will produce ever greater unity.

Karl Rahner, Theological Investigation, vol.5 (Baltimore: Helicon, 1996), pp. 115-34; id. Theological Investigations, vol.12 (New York: Seabury, 1974). pp. 161-78. Also see statement of the world Council of Churches, “Christian Encounter with men of other beliefs”, Ecumenical Review, 16 (1964) 451-55.

For description and criticism of “inclusivism,” see **A’an Race, Christian and Religions Pluralism: Patterns in Christian Theology of Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis Book, 1983), chapter xx, and Paul F. Knitter, no Other Name? A Critical survey of Christian Attitudes toward World Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis Book, 1985), chapter 7.

Abraham H. Maslow, Religions Values, and Peak-Experiences (New York: Viking, 1970), esp. pp, 19-29, 59-68; Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The primordial Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1976; id Beyond the Post-Modern Mind (New York: Crossroad, 1982).

See Steven Katz, “Language, Epistemology and Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, Steven Katz, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 22-74.

See Steven T. Katz, ed. Mysticism and Religious Traditions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Donald H. Bishop, ed. Mysticism and the Mystical Experience East and West (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1995).

For a collection of attempts to carry on this pluralist attempt to affirm the unity within diversity of religions, see the Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, John Hick and Paul F. Knitter, ed. (Maryknoll: Orbis Book, 1986).

John Hick, God and the University of Faiths (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973).

John Hick, An interpretation of Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

S. Mark Heim, Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion (Maryknoll, Orbis Book, 1995).

William Placher, Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989); Paul Griffiths, An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Inter Religious Dialogue (Maryknoll: Orbis Book, 1991).

Current Dialogue No. 40, December 2002

Guidelines for dialogue and relations with people of
other religions

Taking stock f 30 years of dialogue
and revisiting the 1979 Guidelines

1. From the beginning, the church has confessed that God is reconciling the world to Godself through Christ Jesus. Throughout history, the church has been seeking to understand and apply the fundamentals of its faith to concrete situation in which it found itself. The early church continuously had to rethink its self-understanding when it moved from being part of the Jewish tradition to becoming a church of Jews and Gentiles and beyond its Graeco-Roman setting into other cultures and religions of the world. Today the church is continually called upon to enable its members to relate to persons of other faith tradition and to live as witnesses with others.

2. True this vision, the World Council of Churches developed the “Guidelines on Dialogue with people of Living Faith and Ideologies” in Chiang Mai in 1979. We affirm the values of these guidelines, which where widely shared and received by the churches. However, we now have thirty years of experience in inter religious relations and dialogue, making it possible to move forward by drawing on what we have achieved or attempted. Since the 1979 guidelines, the ecumenical movement have taken significant steps towards facilitating inter religious relation and dialogue, but expectations for the fruits of our effort have also arisen.

3. In recent years, member churches have requested guidelines on inter-religious relations and dialogue that address today’s context. More than ever, we sense a growing need not just for dialogue with people of other faith but for genuine relationship with them. Increased awareness of religious plurality, the potential role of religion in conflict and the growing place of religion in public life present urgent challenges that require greater understanding and cooperation among people of diverse faiths.

4. From global perspective, we speak as Christian of diverse tradition to the member churches. We hope local churches will study, discuss and adapt the guidelines to address their own contexts. In this effort, Christians should seek to go further to produce, in collaboration with neighbors of other religious traditions, commonly agreed guidelines for relations and dialogue that would inform, instruct and enable all to embrace the way of trust and community building.

Inter religious relation and dialogue today

5. Greater the awareness of religious plurality has heightened the need for improved relations and dialogue among people of different faiths. Increased mobility, large-scale movement of refugees and economic migrations have resulted in more people of diverse faiths living side-by side. Where mechanism for dialogue and encounter exist, there are opportunities to foster greater knowledge and awareness among people of different religions. Unfortunately, increase relation between communities have sometimes been marred by tension and fear. For many communities, this tension confirms the need to protect their individual identities and distinctiveness. Sometime the different between the legitimate search for identity and hostility toward neighbors of other religions and culture is blurred. Throughout the world and among the followers of major religious traditions, there has been a rise in influence of movements and leaders mobilizing their believers in the name of preserving a distinctive identity that is perceived as being threatened . Often such an understanding of identity is made into the exclusive basis for the creation of a new a societal order, shape by a selective retrieval of doctrines, beliefs and practices from a sacralized past.

6. Whenever religious plurality gives rise to communal tensions, there is a possibility of religious sentiment being misused. Religions speaks for some of the deepest feelings and sensitivities of individuals and communities; it carries profound historical memories and often appeals to uncritical confessional solidarities. Religion is sometime seen as the cause of conflict, while it is in fact more likely to be an intensifier of conflict. Inter religious relations and dialogue are meant to help free religion from such misuse, and to present opportunities for religious people to serve together as agents of healing and reconciliation.

7. Too often religious identities are drawn into conflict and violence. In some parts of the world religions is increasingly identified with ethnicity, giving religious overto ethnic conflict. In other situations, religious identity becomes so closely related to power that the communities without power, or who are discriminate against, look to their religions as the force of mobilization of their dissent and protest. These conflict tend to appear as, or are represented to be, conflict between religious communities, polarizing the along communal lines. Religious communities often inherit deep divisions, hatreds and enmities that are, in most cases, passed down through generations of conflict. When communities identify themselves or are identified exclusively by their religions, the situation becomes explosive, even able to tear apart communities that have lived in peace for centuries. It is the task of inter-religious relations and dialogue to help prevent religion from becoming the fault line between communities.

8. Efforts to prevent polarization between religious communities at the world level are more important than ever. Through media, people tend to perceive conflict in one place as part of a conflict in another, causing enmities in one part of the world to spill over into other regions. An act of violence in one place is used to confirm the stereotype of the “enemy” in another place, or even to provoke revenge attacks elsewhere in the world. There is a need therefore to de-globalize situations of conflict and to analyze each one within its own context. The emphasis on the specificity of every context should not prevent people of faith in other parts of the world from being both concerned and involved. An inter-religious engagement in one place may in fact be an essential contribution to peace-building and reconciliation in another place.

9. There is in many countries a growing role of religion in public life that requires greater understanding and cooperation among religions. Religious leaders are being called by governmental and non-governmental agencies to address public issues of moral concern. However, to speak collectively and with moral authority, religious communities must discern their common values, decide to what extent they can express themselves with one voice and discuss how they can avoid being manipulated by political forces.
Approaching religious plurality.

10. In their encounters with neighbours of other religious traditions, many Christians have come to experience the meaning of a “common humanity” before God. This experience is rooted in the biblical affirmation that God is the Creator and Sustainer of all creation. “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it” (Ps. 24:1). God called the people of Israel to be witnesses among the nations while, at the same time, affirming that God is the God of all nations (Ex.19:5-6). The eschatological visions in the Bible anticipate all nations coming together and the created being restored to the fullness that God intend for all. This conviction is reflected in the affirmation that God is not without witness among any people or at any time (Acts 14:17).

11. When relating to people of other faiths, Christian must be aware of the ambiguities of religious expressions. While religious reflect wisdom, love, compassion and saintly lives, they are not immune to folly, wickedness and sin. Religious traditions and institutions some times support, or function as, system of oppresion and axclusion. Any adequate assessment of religious tradition must deal with their highest ideal. Christians are particularly that history testifies that our own religious tradition has sometimes been used to distort the very meaning of the gospel we are called to proclaim.

12. As witnesses, we approach inter-religious and dialogue in commitment to our faith. At the heart of Christian belief is faith in the triune God. We affirm that God, the Father, is Creator and Sustainer of all creation. We hold the life, death and resurrection of Jessus Christ as the centre of God’s redeeming work for us and for the world. The Holy spirit confirms us in this faith, renewing our lives and leading us into all truth.

13. We are conviced that we have been called to witness in the world to God’s healing and reconcilling work in Christ. We do this humbly acknowledging that we are not fully aware of the ways in wich God’s redeeming work will be brought to its completion. We now see only dimly, as in a mirror, for we now know only in part and do not have the full knowledge of what God has in store for us (cf. 1 Cor. 13:12-13).

14. Many Christ ians have found it difficult to make sense of, or relate creatively to, the reality of other religious traditions. However, as Christians we believe that the spirit of God is at work in ways beyond our understanding (cf. John 3:8). The activity of the spirit is beyond our definition, description and limitations. We should seek to discern the spirit’s presence where there is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). The Spirit of God is groaning with our spirit. The Spirit is at work to bring about the redemption of the whole created order (Rom. 8:18-27).
15. We are witnesses in a world where God has not been absent and to people how do have something to say about God. We meet pople who already live by faiths that rule their lives and with which they are at home. We witness among them in a spirit and spirituality informed by our Christians need to open themselves to the witness of others, which is made not just in words but also in faithful deeds, in devotion to God, in selfless service and in commitment to love and non-violence.

16. Our witness is marked by repentace, humility, integrity and hope. We know easily we misconstrue God’s relevation in Jesus Christ, betraying it in our actions and posturing as owners of God’s truth rather than as undeserving recipients of grace. The spirituality, dedication, compassion and wisdom we see in others leave us little room for claiming moral superiority . While waiting with longing for the freedom God wills for all creation (Rom. 8:19-21), we cannot but make known to others our own experience and witness and at the same time listen to them expressing their deepst convictions and insights.

17. In dialogue and relationships with people of other faiths, we have come to recognize that the mystery of God’s salvation is not exhausted by our theological affirmations. Salvation belong to God. We therefore dare not stand in judgment of others. While witnessing to our own faith, we seek to understand the ways in which God intends to bring God’s purposes to their fulfilment. Salvation belongs to God. We therefore feel able to assure our partners in dialogue that we are sincere and open in our wish to walk together towards the fullness of truth. Salvation belong to God. We therfore claim this hope with confidence, always prepared to give reason for it, as we struggle and work together with other in a world torn apart by rivalries and wars, social disparties and economic injustice.

Guiding Principle

18. Dialogue must be a process of mutual empowerment, not a negotiation between parties who have conflicting interests and claims. Rather than being bound by a constraints of power relations, partners in dialogue should be empowered to join in a common pursuit of justice, peace and constructive action for the good of all people.

19. In dialogue we grow in faith. For Christians, involvement in dialogue produces constant re-appraisal of our understanding of the biblical and theological tradition. Dialogue drives all communities to self-criticism and to re-thinking the ways in which they have interpreted their faith traditions. Dialogue brings about change in the experience of faith, helping people to deepen and grow in their faith in unexpected ways.

20. In dialogue we affirm hope. In the midst of the many divisions, conflict and violence there is hope that it is possible to create a human community that lives in justice and peace. Dialogue is not an end in itself. It is a means of building bridges of respect and understanding. It is a joyful affirmation of life for all.

21. In dialogue we nurture relations. Bulding bonds of relationship with those considered “the other” is the goal of all dialogues. However, such bonds are ot built easily or quickly. Therfore patience and perseverance are crucial in the practice of dialogue. The tenacity to go on, even when the fruits are not obviuos, is one of the basic disciplines of dialogue.

22. In dialogue we must be informed by context. Dialogue takes place in concrete settings. Awareness of such realities as historical experience, ecoomic background and political ideologies is essential. Further, differenece in identity such as culture, gender, generation, race and ethnicity also have an important impact on the nature and style of interction. The purpose of dialogue, once the contxt is taken seriously, is not to remove or run away from differences but to build confidence and trust across them.

23. In dialogue we strive towards mutual respect. Dialogue partners are responsible for hearing and listening to the self-understanding of each other’s faith. Trust and confidence comes from allowing partners to define themselves, refraining from proselytism, and providing an opportunity for mutual questioning, and if appropriate justified criticism. Such practices promote an informed understanding of each other, which becomes the basis for all other relationship.

24. In dialogue it is important to respect the integrity of religious tradition in the variety of their structures and organizations. Equally important is to recognize the way that participants in dialogeu define their relation with their community. Some affirm their right and obligation to speak for their community. Other whould choose to speak from their own experience.

25. dialogue is a coperative and colaboration activity. All partners involved need to be included in the planning process from the very beginning. The strength of setting to agende together lies in the fact that all partners own the agenda and become commited to making it work. For the conduct of dialogue clear objective and commonly agreed criteria for participation and reguler assessment are essential.

26. In dialogue we strive to be inclusive, since dialogue can easily become an elitist activity and be confined to certain strata of society. Care should be taken to ensure that dialogue takes places at different levels, between different groups and on subjects that affect the lives of all section of the community.

Some practical considerations.

27. Individual and communities may, even with the best of intentions, problems and difficulties in inter-religious relation and dialogue. Sometimes, the call for dialogue is met with hesitation, suspicion, indifference or opposition both from within one’s own community and from other religious communities. Sometimes inter-religious relation communicate attitudes that contrast with the values upheld by the culture and ethics of dialogue. Sometimes the possible outcome of dialogue does not seem enough to really justify participation. In addition, other problem invite careful consideration, some of them emerging in recent discussions.

28. There are often expectations that dialogue ca significantly contribute toward resolving political or communal conflict and restoring peace, in situation where religion seems to be implicated. In a number of countries there are dialogue partners who are able to cooperate, across the religious divide, in concrete effort of peace-making. There are also cases where religious leaders are invited to play a visible role in state-sponsored peace initiatives. The impact of dialogue in the context of conflict may disappoint high expectations. When it is unable to quell conflict, its relevance is questioned. However, by its very nature, inter-religious dialogue is not an instrument to resolve problems instantly in emergency situations. Contacts and relations of precious trust and friendship between people of conflict prevent religions, built quietly by patient dialogue by during peace-time, may in times of conflict prevent religion from being used as a weapon. In many cases, such relations may pave the way for mediation and reconciliation initiatives. At times of communal tension or at the peak of a crisis, contacts across the communal divide may prove to be invaluable in the construction of peace.

29. Although dialogue by its very nature is direct encounter, there invisible participants on each side in very dialogue. Our dialogue partners will every so often hold us responsible for what fellow Christians have done or neglected to do, said or not said. While this in some ways is inevitable and even sometimes understandable, we are well aware of deep disagreements within religions and we know that the dividing lines do not always go between religious communities but often within religious communities. The differences may be not only theological, but relate to social, political ad moral issues. We may for various reasons find ourselves in opposition to some of those with whom we share a common faith. We learn that religious communities are not monolithic blocs confronting each other. Plurality of positions on each side should not be ignored or suppressed while defending what is perceived to be the interest of one’s community. Commitment to a faith does not entail identification with what is done or not done in its name. therefore, we should not be defensive, but remain confident of the potential of dialogue to changing deeply held opinions or prejudices.

30. Among many religious communities, e come across people who seem to be primarily interested in the growth of their own community through various forms of missing including proselytism. They seem to have little interest in dialogue or may make use of it to further their missionary design. Such situations can be discouraging for people willing to engage in dialogue. Their disappointment often overshadows the possibility of identifying partners critical of those attitudes in their community. It is essential that we intentionally seek such partners and explore ways of rebuilding the credibility of dialogue enabling people of divergent positions to enter a relationship of mutual respect and openness in discussing divisive issues.

31. There are several expressions of dialogue, reflecting the various aspect of life itself. There is not one expression better than the other and out engagement therein should not conform to any pre-set model or hierarchy of dialogue but respond to the need, doing what is possible. In some contexts, we may discuss “cultural” differences more readily than “religious” ones, even as issues of religious concern and practice are considered in such a discussion. Similarly, cooperation about “social” concerns may be possible and even strongly supported where there is hesitancy to consider dialogue on theological issues.

32. Motivations for dialogue can sometimes be conditioned by power relations between religious communities and by the importance, objective and subjective, of numerical disparities. In many countries, these communities share the same language and often the same culture. Often their members are said to be granted by law equal civil and political rights. But discriminatory practices exacerbate distrust and division. The intermingling of state policies and confessional identities rooted in communal traditions may lead communities to look at each other as a threat. This is particularly true in times of uncertainty or political and constitutional changes involving a re-definition of state-religion relationships. Inter-religious dialogue cannot shy away from recognizing the effects of uneven power relations and the impact of mutual perceptions, no matter how distorted they are. The relevance of dialogue initiatives depends largely on their intentional and concentrated effort to dispel fears and suspicions between those who are seen to represent religious communities. Equally, it is essential that inter-religious dialogue creates an opportunity for strengthening cross-confessional loyalties, always upholding, in discussion and joint action, the centrality of the common good and inclusive political participation.
33. Participation in multi-religious prayer has become increasingly common among a large number of Christians. Concrete situations of everyday life provide opportunities for encounter with people of different religions. These include inter-religious marriages, personal friendship, praying together for a common purpose, for peace of in a particular crisis situation. But the occasion my also be a national holiday, a religious festival, a school assembly, and other gatherings in the context of inter-religious relations and dialogue. There are various forms of worship, where they should be respectful of the practices of that tradition. Christians may invite guests of another religion to a church service and should ensure a welcoming hospitality. Multi-religious prayer juxtaposes the prayer of different traditions. The advantage is that the variety and integrity of each tradition is honored and that we are praying in the presence of each other. The disadvantage may be that one remains a bystander. United inter-religious prayer is an occasion where people of different religions plan, prepare and participate together in a common prayer. There are those who feel that this risks reducing prayer to the lowest common denominator and that it can take away from the unique spirituality of prayer of each religion. For others, such prayer is not at all possible. Yet for some, praying together could be a spiritually enriching occasion. All these different responses indicate that serious conversations among Christians on this issue are not a finished task.

Conclusion
34. In the many pluralist societies where they live, Christians and people of religion are bound together in a dialogue of life, with all its difficulties but also its riches and promises. They gain new insights about their own faith and that of others. They discover afresh resources which will help them become more humane and make the world a better place for living together. They learn how to be more sensitive to the needs and aspirations of others and more obedient to God’s will for all creation.