Chapter 17: Christianity and the World Religions
17
Christianity and the World Religions
Christianity is a world religion, having expanded from its origins in Palestine to take root in just about every region of the world. In the course of its expansion, it has encountered other religious traditions and been forced to consider how it relates to them. It is important to remember that Christianity had its origins within the matrix of Judaism and that significant portions of the New Testament are concerned with the clarification of the relationship of the gospel to its Jewish context.
Christians themselves have always been clear that Christianity is continuous with Judaism. The “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” is identical with the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Early Christianity emerged within Judaism, and most of the first converts to the movement were Jews. The New Testament frequently mentions Christians preaching in local synagogues. So similar were the two movements that outside observers, such as the Roman authorities, tended to treat Christianity as a sect within Judaism rather than as a new movement with a distinct identity.
The emphasis on the continuity between Christianity and Judaism raised a number of serious difficulties for the early Christians. First, there was the question of the role of the Jewish Law in the Christian life. Did the traditional rites and customs of Judaism have any continuing place in the Christian church? There is evidence that this issue was of particular importance during the fifth and sixth decades, when non-Jewish converts to Christianity came under pressure from Jewish Christians to maintain such rites and customs. The issue of circumcision was particularly sensitive, with Gentile converts to Christianity often being pressed to become circumcised, in accordance with the Jewish Law.
But, as Christianity expanded, it encountered other faith systems with which it had no obvious historical or cultural connection. What about its relationship to the mystery religions? To Gnosticism? And, as its expansion continued, to Islam? To Hinduism? To African indigenous religions? To the various forms of Buddhism? To study the history of Christian theology is to observe the increasing importance of these questions. Indeed, it is fair to suggest that the serious discussion of such issues within the western theological tradition dates from as late as the eighteenth century.
Surprisingly little attention was paid to these issues in the theological literature of the Middle Ages and Reformation periods. There are clear indications that individual writers were aware of the issues. Peter Abelard (1079–1142) wrote of “pagan saints” such as Job, Noah, and Enoch. Pope Gregory VII (c.1020–85) conceded that there was a possibility that Muslims who obeyed the Qu'ran might find salvation in the bosom of Abraham. Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–74), who was well aware of the importance of Jewish and Islamic philosophies at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century, developed the notion of “implicit faith” and the “baptism of desire” for those who have not yet heard the gospel but would have embraced it if they had. Yet the issue did not attract as much serious reflection as we might expect.
In part, this was due to the rise of Christendom. Western Europe, which was the stronghold for most of the world's Christian population from about 1000 to 1800, tended to be a set of uniformly Christian societies with little experience of religious diversity. An important exception was medieval Spain, in which Christian, Jewish, and Islamic populations coexisted, not always peaceably, until 1492. With only a few exceptions, western theology simply did not see the question of other religions as significant over the period 1000–1800. Two developments brought about a change of perception.
First, western colonial expansion led to first-hand encounters between Christianity and other religions, especially in southeast Asia and Africa. An excellent example is provided by the British occupation of India, which led to the foundation of schools and universities designed to raise the levels of literacy. British theologians who taught there, especially during the nineteenth century, found themselves having to wrestle with issues arising from the cultural dominance of Hinduism, which had no parallel in any western society. How could this be accommodated within a Christian perspective?
Second, immigration to the west from regions in which Hinduism and Islam were culturally dominant became socially significant in the period after the Second World War. The growing presence of non-Christian communities in the west once more raised the profile of the question of how Christianity understood these faith communities. The philosopher of religion John Hick (1922–2012), for example, has described how the development of his distinctive theory of religions was catalyzed by his personal friendships with members of other faiths in Birmingham, England's second city.