John Stott in Dialogue
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REFLECTIONS ON DIALOGUE
Chris Wright
John Stott’s lifelong commitment to the “uniqueness and finality” of the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, Lord and God, along with his submission to the truth and authority of the Bible, compelled him to contend against any theology or ideology that appeared to threaten either. Religious pluralism came squarely into that category. He was, however, careful to distinguish between the social facts of religious plurality, and the ideology of relativistic religious pluralism. On the one hand, it is an obvious fact that people of many different faiths live together in the world, and in many contexts do so in close proximity. Given that reality, Stott affirmed that people need, at the very least, to talk to one another and seek to understand one another, simply as an act of human respect and dignity. In that sense, he saw no problem with interfaith dialogue and indeed welcomed and encouraged it (as this chapter explains). But on the other hand, the theology or ideology of religious pluralism claims that all religions have their own independent validity as “ways of salvation” (however that may be defined), but that no religion has an absolute understanding of ultimate truth, or provides the only, exclusively unique way to “God” (again, however that may be defined). Dialogue within that framework of assumptions then becomes either a syncretistic attempt to find as much common ground as we can all affirm together (while abandoning our clashing distinctives), or an openness to be corrected in one’s religious understanding by the persuasiveness of the other party’s convictions. Such relativistic dialogue Stott condemned as resting on assumptions that biblical faithfulness to the uniqueness of Christ could not accept.
My own very modest and limited engagement with this topic is another area where our paths crossed. I first met John Stott personally in 1978, in the immediate post-Lausanne years, as one of many younger evangelicals in whom he took a mentoring interest. So he was supportive and encouraging when I went with my family to India in 1982 to teach the Old Testament at the Union Biblical Seminary, Pune. While I was there, I was invited by David Wenham, then editor of Themelios, a journal for theological students, to contribute an article on a Christian approach to other religions. Although I was living in the multireligious land of India, I was not engaged in either evangelism among, or dialogue with, people of other faiths in that country (though I was teaching and interacting daily with students whose ministry was certainly in that context), so I stuck to what I knew—the Scriptures. So the article was published as “The Christian and Other Religions: The Biblical Evidence.” Having read this article, John Stott invited me, during our home leave in the United Kingdom, to deliver a lecture in April 1986 at his recently founded London Institute for Contemporary Christianity on “The Uniqueness of Christ in the Context of Religious Pluralism.” The article and lecture were then combined and expanded in a small booklet published by All Nations Christian College in 1990, What’s So Unique About Jesus? Finally, this too was revised and expanded to full book length and published in 1997 as The Uniqueness of Jesus. John Stott was kind enough to write a foreword, showing his own assessment of the matter in his opening words, “The greatest challenge to Christianity today is without doubt religious pluralism, with its denial of the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ.”
I do not know whether Stott would have continued to consider it the “greatest challenge” in the following years. He certainly addressed a whole range of other issues that challenge the Christian faith in Issues Facing Christians Today, and in later years he was convinced that climate change was a major threat to the earth itself, and therefore needed to be taken far more seriously by Christians. Whatever may have been his personal taxonomy of “challenges,” it is interesting that he did not take on the issue of religious pluralism himself in any major single book on the topic. However, he did address it tangentially in at least two chapters of other composite works, in four successive editions of Issues Facing Christians Today between 1984 and 2006, and in The Contemporary Christian (1992).
Clarifying Inclusivism
When Stott wrote the present book in 1975, the familiar classification (in academic circles at least) of Christian approaches to other religions as “exclusivist,” “inclusivist” and “pluralist” had not yet been forged. It seems to have originated with Alan Race in 1984, and Stott refers to that source in a very brief summary of the three positions in The Contemporary Christian (1992). However, even without that name, Stott is contending in this chapter not only with relativistic pluralism, but also with views that have since come to be labeled inclusivism.
That term has become rather slippery, however, and indeed many Christian theologians engaged in reflection, dialogue and mission among people of other faiths would now say that the issues “on the ground” are far too complex to be captured in such a simple triple classification. Nevertheless, in order to clarify and comment on Stott’s argument here, it might be helpful to offer a concise definition of each position, as provided by Harold Netland.
Exclusivism maintains that the central claims of Christianity are true, and that where the claims of Christianity conflict with those of other religions, the latter are to be rejected as false. Christian exclusivists also characteristically hold that God has revealed himself definitively in the Bible and that Jesus Christ is the unique incarnation of God, the only Lord and Savior. Salvation is not to be found in the structures of other religious traditions.
Inclusivism, like exclusivism, maintains that the central claims of the Christian faith are true, but it adopts a much more positive view of other religions than does exclusivism. Although inclusivists hold that God has revealed himself definitively in Jesus Christ and that Jesus is somehow central to God’s provision of salvation for humankind, they are willing to allow that God’s salvation is available through non-Christian religions. Jesus is still held to be, in some sense, unique, normative, and definitive; but God is said to be revealing himself and providing salvation through other religious traditions as well. . . .
Pluralism parts company with both exclusivism and inclusivism by rejecting the premise that God has revealed himself in any unique or definitive sense in Jesus Christ. To the contrary, God is said to be actively revealing himself in all religious traditions. Nor is there anything unique or normative about the person of Jesus. . . . Christian faith is merely one of many equally legitimate human responses to the same divine reality.
Now it is clear, from Stott’s chapter on dialogue, that he stands firmly in the first camp, and that he rejects the third position as incompatible with biblical Christianity. However, within the second, position, inclusivist, there are some elements he accepts and some he rejects. The question he asks, “Is Christ present in the non-Christian world?” cannot be answered (he wisely point out) with a simple “yes” or “no.” In fact, the answer has to be both, in different senses. For Christ is both the revelation of God’s truth as well as the mediator of God’s salvation.
So to the extent that we find any truth embedded in other religious systems, we must attribute that to the general revelation of God. So, yes, Christ is there in the truth known through general revelation. But knowledge of some truth does not constitute salvation, and since other religions do not tell the story of what God has done to save the world through Jesus Christ, then, no, they cannot therefore be means of salvation. So, the answer to the question above, “Is Christ present in the non-Christian world?” (meaning the world of other religions), would be: in general revelation, yes; but in salvation, no.
Mainline Protestant theologians, like Stott himself, positively affirm this nuanced answer. They agree that “all truth is God’s truth” and therefore “truth in Christ”—who is Truth. Such truth remains true even if it is known and believed within the context of religious systems that contain much else that is false. In that sense, Christ remains central to the inclusivist position as to the exclusivist. But they reject the greater, salvific inclusivism found in the documents of the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council and the influential theology of Karl Rahner, who was an official adviser at it. This is the form of “inclusivism” that is generally rejected by evangelicals: the view that other religions can function (by God’s providential permission) as means of salvation for those who never hear of Christ—but the salvation they mediate is in some way still salvation through Christ and accomplished by Christ.
Stott refers very briefly to Rahner’s “anonymous Christianity” theology, but it may be helpful to expand it a little. The following is excerpted from my own book.
To summarise Rahner’s view, God’s universal saving grace is so powerfully seeking people that those who have as yet had no contact with the Christian gospel are “allowed” to find in their own religion “a positive means of gaining a right relationship to God and thus for attaining salvation, a means which is therefore positively included in God’s plan of salvation.” He regards sincere non-Christians as “anonymous Christians,” in virtue of the grace of Christ which they have received and unwittingly responded to in their own faiths. Thus, people can be saved by God’s grace and by Christ, without actually belonging to the visible Christian church. The sincere Hindu, for example, will be saved by Christ, but it is through the “sacraments” of Hinduism that Christ saves him. He is in fact an “anonymous Christian.”
Rahner’s “anonymous Christianity’” has been the target of much debate and plenty of criticism. Many critics say that it is patronising towards people of other religions to think we are doing them a favour by regarding them as anonymous Christians. . . . It is easy to imagine what Christian reaction would be if we were to be told by ardent representatives of Islam, that we are in fact “anonymous Muslims.”
Stott responds to this form of salvific inclusivism with a survey of apostolic examples and teaching, drawn from Peter, Paul and John. He then concludes,
We do not therefore deny that there are elements of truth in non-Christian systems, vestiges of the general revelation of God in nature. What we do vehemently deny is that these are sufficient for salvation and (more vehemently still) that Christian faith and non-Christian faiths are alternative and equally valid roads to God.
I agree with that assessment. However, I would differ somewhat from the way Stott presents the specific case of Cornelius. Inclusivists argue that Cornelius was in some sense “saved” by being acceptable to God even before Peter arrived to tell him the good news about Jesus, and therefore, they argue, others who in some way “fear God and do what is right” may be saved without hearing about Jesus. Stott denies such a simplistic conclusion. But I think we need to be more nuanced than the simple question “Was Cornelius already saved or not?” Here is how I have discussed Cornelius elsewhere:
To ask the question that way is somewhat off-beam. First of all, it is clear from the whole context that Peter’s statement [Acts 10:34-35, in which Peter says, “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him”] is not merely a general affirmation that everybody everywhere is saved. It is Peter’s recognition . . . that the gospel of Jesus had now broken down the distinction between Jew and Gentile. . . . Peter’s point, then, was not that God saves everybody, but that God welcomes anybody. . . .
Secondly, one has to have regard to the unique historical context of the event. In a sense, Cornelius, before his hearing about Jesus, was in the same position as those Gentiles in the Old Testament who came to believe in the living God and act accordingly. . . .
However, unlike the Old Testament believers, Cornelius lived in the generation in which the Messiah had actually come. . . .
Cornelius thus becomes a key turning point in the book of Acts in the story of how the gospel went to the Gentiles. . . . The whole point of the story seems to be: now that Jesus the Messiah has come, salvation must be preached in his name. . . . It is misusing the story to suggest that the favourable comments on Cornelius’ “Old Testament behaviour” before he was evangelised imply that evangelism in general is somehow unnecessary.
To conclude these reflections on “inclusivism”: it seems best to me that, if we continue to use the three terms “exclusivist,” “inclusivist” and “pluralist” at all (and as I said, many if not most Christian theologians who tackle the question of other faiths would say that the classification is too simplistic for the exceedingly complex reality), then we should reserve the middle word for the position described earlier as “salvific inclusivism.” That is, the view that Christ not only includes within himself whatever truths of general revelation may be found in the teachings of other religions, but also that the salvation Christ accomplished can somehow be mediated through the “sacraments” of other faiths. People can be saved by Christ but through their sincere practice of their own religion. That kind of inclusivism therefore attributes some saving capacity, function or validity to other religions. That is a form of inclusivism that both John Stott and I reject.
That is very different from the view adopted by some evangelicals, who hold firmly to all the elements defined above within the “exclusivist” paradigm (especially that salvation is to be found only and exclusively in the cross and resurrection of Christ), but who leave open the question as to whether God may save some people (by grace and through Christ) who never hear of him in their earthly lifetime but may turn to God in some form of repentance and faith.
That issue will be discussed in the next chapter, but for the moment, I would prefer not to call such a position “inclusivist” (though the label has been applied to me). It is rather “exclusivist” (salvation is exclusively through Christ), but without being restrictivist (meaning that salvation is restricted to, that is, actually possible only for, those who hear about Jesus Christ—that is, the evangelized). And it is certainly not “inclusivist” in the sense of affirming that people can be saved through the mediation of their own religion. The very idea that salvation comes through religion (any religion) at all is roundly and regularly denied by the Bible itself. More on this, however, in the next chapter.
John Stott in Dialogue
The four words that Stott uses to describe the quality of true dialogue that sacrifices nothing of the uniqueness and truth of the Christian faith while remaining open and respectful to other people—authenticity, humility, integrity and sensitivity—could without question be applied to the man himself, though he would have strongly disapproved of me saying so! I do not know whether Stott ever had the opportunity to engage in sustained personal dialogue with persons of other major world religions, but within the wider Christian world he often found himself in disagreement (sometimes radical disagreement) with nonevangelical perspectives (and even with some evangelicals!). His customary practice, whenever it was possible, was to invite those who had criticized him, or with whom he had disagreed in public or on paper, to come and visit him and talk together—often over breakfast, or afternoon tea. He believed it was important to listen, to seek to understand as well as to be understood, to clarify where there were real and significant differences, and where there could be agreement. He would read widely in the writings of those with whom he disagreed in careful, annotated, detail—something he once told me he sometimes found to be a distressing but necessary exercise. Unfortunately, it has to be said, many of those who have been quick to dismiss Stott himself (usually on the hearsay of some other Christian leader or commentator) have not taken the trouble to do the same.
Two examples of his principles in action may be mentioned. Ironically, in spite of Stott’s own appeals for the legitimacy of respectful dialogue, both examples caused him trouble and loss of respect in some quarters.
A liberal-evangelical dialogue. That is the subtitle of the book that is the record of a sustained dialogue through correspondence between David Edwards and John Stott in 1988. David Edwards, a prominent English Anglican church leader, church historian and writer within the liberal Catholic tradition was also a critical admirer of John Stott. For a while they both served in different churches in London as Anglican clergymen, with Edwards about eight years Stott’s junior. Aware of the rising evangelical movement in the United Kingdom that owed much to Stott’s leadership in the 1960s and ’70s, and having read all Stott’s books (including this one) and his wider contributions such as the Lausanne Covenant, Edwards set out, with a historian’s interest, to explore and critique the evangelical theology that Stott represented. He invited Stott to respond to each chapter of his book, which begins, in fact, with a remarkably detailed and warm appreciation of all that Stott was doing at All Souls Church and in the wider evangelical world.
The book’s chapter titles indicate the breadth of the subject matter—and how well Edwards had identified the core elements in evangelical faith and practice.
In each chapter Edwards affirms his own classic liberal understanding of those topics (within his personal faith as a Christian) and then radically questions the way evangelicals such as Stott present them. Each chapter is then followed by a full-length response by Stott, arguing point by point, and with detailed exegesis of biblical texts (Stott’s responses alone contribute some thirty-five thousand words to the book).
What is remarkable about the book is the spirit of the interchanges. Both men combine a willingness for robust challenge of each other’s positions with a gracious tone and a respectful appreciation of the force of each other’s counterarguments. Stott is happy to accept criticism of evangelicals when it is deserved, for example where some traditional views go way beyond what is clear from Scripture. He is also very ready to state with all humility when he has not come to a clear decision on certain points, or has not yet resolved his own mind over some testing points of doctrine over which learned theologians have debated for centuries. Both men respect the integrity of the other one’s personal faith and commitment to Christ, but both seriously challenge the way the other articulates, teaches and justifies their respective theological understandings.
For Stott, clearly a lot is at stake. After all, the subjects of all the chapters are at the very core of evangelical commitment: the saving power of the gospel, the Bible, the cross, the historicity of the Gospels, the authority of the Bible in Christian social engagement, and the urgency of world mission. So he does not hesitate to defend the evangelical position on all of these topics with vigor and sustained argumentation. He exposes the inadequacies and contradictions of theological liberalism and the way it distorts or deviates from traditional biblical understanding of our faith. However, each response is framed as a letter beginning “My dear David,” and ending “Yours ever, John,” and he addresses Edwards throughout as “you.” The tone is gracious and friendly, even if the disagreement is fundamental. And inasmuch as the kind of liberalism represented by Edwards is still around (though tending to be much less friendly or respectful in its rejection of evangelical convictions), the book is still well worth reading as a model of intelligent, thorough, biblical and cogent response to many of the accusations that are still made against orthodox Christian doctrines. In other words, this is dialogue exactly as Stott claimed in 1975 that it should be: marked by authenticity, humility, integrity and sensitivity, but without surrendering the truth of the gospel.
“A Common Word.” We live now in a post-9/11 world. And over a decade later we live also in an ISIS-threatened world. It is increasingly difficult to envisage respectful interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims, marked by authenticity, humility, integrity and sensitivity—though of course it still does take place.
In 2007 a remarkable document emerged from the Muslim community. It was in the form of an open letter signed by 138 internationally prominent Muslim leaders (academics, politicians, writers and clerics) and addressed to the leaders of major Christian communities, including the Roman Catholic pope; various patriarchs of the Russian, Greek, Syrian, Coptic and other Orthodox churches; and a range of Protestant denominations—Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, Methodist and Baptist, and the World Council of Churches. Under the title, “A Common Word Between Us and You,” the letter urged Christians and Muslims worldwide to seek to live in peace and justice, on the foundation that at the core of both faiths lies the twin imperatives to love God and love our neighbor. The document quotes from the Old Testament and the Gospels in making this point, along with of course the Qur’an.
Christian response varied between warm and enthusiastic welcome, leading to efforts to make it the foundation for wider dialogue and combined efforts for peace building, and cautious suspicion that it was little more than a rather cynical form of Islamic dawa, or “mission,” to soften up Christians and call them to accept Islam as essentially no different from their own faith. Somewhere in between uncritical welcome and outright rejection, the World Evangelical Alliance published a well-crafted response that, while welcoming the tone of “A Common Word” and agreeing on the common longing for peace and justice, made quite clear the Christian commitment to the uniqueness and deity of Jesus Christ, and called on Muslims to recognize the rights of Christians in Islamic countries.
One particular response was organized by a group of theologians at Yale Divinity School. They wrote a lengthy reply titled “‘A Common Word’ Christian Response.” In it they welcome the Muslim leaders’ overture, recognize that there is indeed “common ground” in the teaching of love for God and neighbor, and receive the document as a kind of mutual handshake. “We receive the open letter as a Muslim hand of conviviality and cooperation extended to Christians worldwide. In this response we extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbors.”
Before publishing their response, however, the Yale group wrote to a very large number of Christian leaders around the world inviting them to sign their letter. Included among those so invited were John Stott and me. Before agreeing to sign it, however, the two of us very deliberately did three things together.
First, we read the Yale response carefully to see whether it could be construed as compromising any essential Christian truth, such as the deity of Jesus Christ, or the distinctiveness and finality of God’s revelation in the Bible, or the legitimacy of Christian witness to Muslims. We concluded that it did not. We accepted that the Yale response was not an exercise in apologetics, or an attempt to define the whole of the Christian faith in response to Islamic doctrine, but simply an openhanded gesture of friendship, and a desire to build a better commitment to peace and justice on whatever common ground could be established—without denying that there were many crucial areas where there would be no common ground at all.
Second, we wrote to those we knew personally as evangelical friends among the Yale theologians and asked them very directly whether the Yale response intended or implied in any way that evangelism among Muslim people should be deemed out of order—theologically or practically. We were concerned that the document not be understood or used in a way that would undermine the calling of those who seek to share the good news of Jesus, with loving sensitivity, gentleness and respect, among people in majority Islamic communities—sometimes at considerable cost, and many of them our friends. We received several replies from those who had produced the Yale response, assuring us that this was not at all the intent, but rather, on the contrary, the irenic spirit of the response could open doors for such sensitive witness. Two of those replies are quoted later in this chapter.
Third, we wrote to a number of our personal friends who live and work in majority Islamic contexts—many of them Arab Christians and Langham scholars. We asked them the same basic questions and sought their advice as to whether we should or should not add our signatures to the Yale response. We did not want to take any action that would embarrass or betray those for whom this is not a matter of polite interfaith dialogue but often a matter of daily existential stress and potential danger. With only two exceptions (in the correspondence we had), they all affirmed that we should sign, and indeed several of them signed it themselves and are included in the list at the end of the document.
Reassured in these various ways, John Stott and I added our names to the list of signatories. When the document was subsequently published, we were encouraged (and not a little surprised) to see how many others among those we knew as convinced evangelicals and “thought leaders” in the world of evangelical theology and mission had also signed it. We felt ourselves to be in good company!
Not surprisingly, however, the criticisms trickled in. I say “trickled” because actually they were not very many. But they were often quite fierce, and usually along the lines that John Stott had (unbelievably!) signed a document that equated “the Christian God” with “Allah,” that did not affirm the deity of Jesus, that did not preach the necessity of the atoning work of the cross, that did not primarily seek to convert Muslims, and so on. I answered many of them individually, on John’s behalf, but eventually we crafted the following agreed response to send to any further critics:
A Common Word and the Yale Response
John Stott and Chris Wright, when invited to sign the Yale Response to A Common Word, studied both documents very carefully. We did this not only because of their intrinsic significance, but also because those inviting us to do so (and many of those who have signed the Yale Response) are close personal friends with unquestionable, strong and life-long evangelical commitment, some of whom either are citizens of Islamic countries and bear courageous witness to the gospel in such contexts, or are leaders of movements and organizations that are deeply committed to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with Muslims.
We wrote to those who had framed the Yale Response seeking clarification and to ensure that neither the message nor the intention behind it, was in any way to be understood as denying the necessity of sensitive witness to Muslims about the non-negotiable claims of Jesus Christ as only Lord and Saviour, and our duty to bear witness to the truth of God that we see revealed in him.
The following quotes are extracts from what we received in reply from those involved in drafting the Yale Response and the invitation to Christian leaders to sign it:
Let me assure you that I in no way want to exclude the possibility of sensitive witness to Christ to Muslims. I am fully in support of such witness, and would myself not sign the document if it implied prohibition of sensitive evangelism. I consider the widening of possibility for free witness as one primary reason for engaging the Muslim letter and the Muslim community as a whole; indeed, I consider our whole response as one form of witnessing—not the only one, but certainly an essential one—to the incredible love of God for the ungodly.
The passion which motivates me to engage in this kind of discussion is my desire to make it possible for 1.3 billion Muslims to consider meaningfully the claims of Jesus Christ—not just as a prophet whose words have been changed, abrogated or superseded, but as supremely attractive Savior and Lord. I also want to remove the obstacles which cause Muslims to associate the Gospel of Christ with militaristic forms of “Christianity” which they find repugnant.
I agree totally with the position that the Lausanne Covenant takes on the question of dialogue and evangelism: “Our Christian presence in the world is indispensable to evangelism, and so is that kind of dialogue whose purpose is to listen sensitively in order to understand. But evangelism itself is the proclamation of the historical, biblical Christ as Saviour and Lord, with a view to persuading people to come to him personally and so be reconciled to God.” I also agree with John Stott’s official commentary on the Covenant, in which he writes: “Dialogue with non-Christians is not only right but is also (like presence) indispensable. Dialogue is a much-misused word. Some people are using it to describe a situation of compromise in which the Christian renounces his own Christian commitment and regards the Gospel as open to debate! That kind of dialogue we have already rejected (in paragraph 3) as ‘derogatory to Christ and the Gospel.’ But, properly defined, a dialogue is a conversation in which both parties are serious, and each is prepared to listen to the other. Its purpose is to listen sensitively in order to understand. Such listening is an essential prelude to evangelism, for how can we share the good news relevantly if we do not understand the other person’s position and problems?”
In our response letter to the Muslims we have not presented the entirety of the Gospel, but we have tried to bear sensitive witness to Jesus Christ and even mention the forgiveness of sins through what Jesus did “at the end of his life.” Muslim readers have told me that they of course understand that we are referring to the atoning death of Christ on the cross. I know personally—and have met privately—with quite a number of the prominent Muslim leaders who signed “A Common Word,” and I can assure you that I have shared with each of them the message of forgiveness of sins and eternal life through the atoning death and resurrection of Christ who is the eternal Word of God—God himself—manifest in human flesh.
I believe that the dialogue process which “A Common Word” is opening up will give us opportunity to raise with Muslim leaders the important issue of religious freedom in their countries, including freedom to evangelize.
We recognize that the Yale Response does not “preach the gospel,” in all its detail. It was never intended as a creedal statement of all that Christians believe, but merely as an act of responding to A Common Word. It is a letter, not a tract. It extends a hand of friendship in the spirit of the command of Jesus to “love your neighbor,” and indeed, to “love your enemies,”—which is a pre-requisite to meaningful evangelistic communication.
There are some who urge us to be suspicious of anything said or done by Muslims, and who see ulterior motives in A Common Word. They may be right or wrong. We are not naïve or unaware of many distressing facts and strong arguments put forward by those who did not sign the Yale Response or who criticize those of us who did. However, our conviction is that, whatever the motives or intentions of Muslims (which are varied and complex), we as Christians are called to respond and behave out of the heart of the Christian gospel, which commands us to love our neighbour and our enemy, as obedient disciples of our crucified and risen Lord. Part of such love includes willingness to engage in respectful conversation with fellow human beings from whom we radically differ, without in any way compromising our total commitment to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, the finality of God’s revelation in him, the centrality and necessity of the cross for our salvation, and the mandate of evangelism. All these things, along with the rest of our evangelical faith, we gladly and heartily continue to affirm.
John Stott and Chris Wright
I think the spirit and content of that short document illustrates and encapsulates what Stott considered to be the essence of a true, respectful but uncompromised, dialogue.
Finally, since the Cape Town Commitment was read to him slowly over several days, I know that he endorsed what it has to say on this issue. Section IIC, on “Living the Love of Christ Among People of Other Faiths,” opens with the following paragraphs:
“Love your neighbour as yourself” includes persons of other faiths.
. . . We respond to our high calling as disciples of Jesus Christ to see people of other faiths as our neighbours in the biblical sense. They are human beings created in God’s image, whom God loves and for whose salvation Christ died. We strive not only to see them as neighbours, but also to obey Christ’s teaching by being neighbours to them. We are called to be gentle, but not naïve; to be discerning and not gullible; to be alert to whatever threats we may face, but not to be ruled by fear.
We are called to share good news, but not to engage in unworthy proselytizing. Evangelism, which includes convincing rational argument following the example of the Apostle Paul, is “to make an honest and open statement of the gospel which leaves the hearers entirely free to make up their own minds about it. We wish to be sensitive to those of other faiths, and we reject any approach that seeks to force conversion on them.” Proselytizing, by contrast, is the attempt to compel others to become “one of us,” to “accept our religion,” or indeed to “join our denomination.”
We commit ourselves to be scrupulously ethical in all our evangelism. Our witness is to be marked by “gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience” [1 Peter 3:15-16; compare Acts 19:37] . . . .
We affirm the proper place for dialogue with people of other faiths, just as Paul engaged in debate with Jews and Gentiles in the synagogue and public arenas. As a legitimate part of our Christian mission, such dialogue combines confidence in the uniqueness of Christ and the truth of the gospel with respectful listening to others.