15 The Gospel and the Cultures
1. If, as I have affirmed, we are to reject religious pluralism and acknowledge Jesus Christ as the unique and decisive revelation of God for the salvation of the world, what is the proper attitude which believers in that revelation ought to take toward the adherents of the great world religions? Perhaps one should begin by making the elementary point that the word "religion" covers an extremely wide and varied range of entities, and the way in which we relate to them as Christians will vary accordingly. One might divide the religions, as Nicol Macnicol does in his fine book Is Christianity Unique?, into those which understand God's self-revelation in historical terms-Judaism, Christianity, Islam-and those for whom the essential religious experience is a-historical-Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism. Within the first group one would again have to distinguish between Judaism, which looks for a Messiah still to come, Christianity, which confesses Jesus as the Messiah who has come and is to come, and Islam, which affirms not a Messiah but a succession of messengers culminating in the Prophet. One should perhaps also include in this list Marxism, which functions in some respects as a religion in which the proletariat is the messianic people whose victory will inaugurate the final removal of human alienation from the sources of being. Clearly the gospel is related to each of these in differing ways.
One could also classify the religions in a different way which takes account of the very important group of religions which are known as primal religions. Dr. Harold Turner, well known as a student and interpreter of new religious movements in primal societies, says that there are only three possible ways of understanding the world: the atomic, the oceanic, and the relational-symbolized respectively by billiard balls, the ocean, and the net. This is a classification of worldviews rather than of religions, but all religions embody some kind of worldview. The atomic, which is characteristic of contemporary Western society and has deep roots in Greek philosophy, sees reality in terms of its individual units. The atom, conceived as a minute piece of matter, is the ultimate constituent of the visible world. The human individual, conceived as an autonomous center of knowing and willing, is the ultimate constituent of society. The oceanic view, on the other hand, sees all things ultimately merged into one entity which is both the soul and all that exists. Atma is Brahma. The third view sees everything as constituted by relationships, whether it is the material world or human society. This view, characteristic of what we are accustomed to call primitive societies and primal religions, is also the view of the Bible. That is probably why the gospel is more readily accepted by so-called primitive peoples than by those who inhabit atomic or oceanic worldviews. It also calls into question the conventional use of the term "higher religions" to denote the other world faiths.
2. These preliminary remarks about classifications of religions and worldviews should serve to remind us that in using the word "religion" we are already making assumptions which need to be examined. In most human cultures religion is not a separate activity set apart from the rest of life. Neither in practice nor in thought is religion separate from the rest of life. In practice all the life of society is permeated by beliefs which western Europeans would call religious, and in thought what we call religion is a whole worldview, a way of understanding the whole of human experience. The sharp line which modern Western culture has drawn between religious affairs and secular affairs is itself one of the most significant peculiarities of our culture and would be incomprehensible to the vast majority of people who have not been brought into contact with this culture. It follows that in thinking about the implications of the claim that Jesus is God's unique self-revelation for our relation to the world religions, we must take into view more than what we call religion. The contemporary debate about Christianity and the world's religions is generally conducted with the unspoken assumption that "religion" is the primary medium of human contact with the divine. But this assumption has to be questioned. When the New Testament affirms that God has nowhere left himself without witness, there is no suggestion that this witness is necessarily to be found in the sphere of what we call religion. The parables of Jesus are notable for the fact that they speak of secular experiences. When the Fourth Gospel affirms that the light of the Logos who came into the world in Jesus shines on every human being, there is no suggestion that this light is identified with human religion. The text goes on to say that this light shines in the darkness, and the ensuing story constantly suggests that it is religion which is the primary area of darkness, while the common people, unlearned in religious matters, are the ones who respond to the light. And it is significant that Justin Martyr, one of the earliest apologists to use this Johannine teaching in making contact with the unbelieving world, affirms that the true light did indeed shine on the great philosophers like Socrates, but that the contemporary religion was the work of devils. Our thought must therefore be directed not just to the religions so called; we must ask about the relation of the gospel to all who live by other commitments, whether they are called religious or secular.
3. We must look first at the strictly exclusivist view which holds that all who do not accept Jesus as Lord and Savior are eternally lost. We shall look later at the question whether this is in fact what fidelity to Scripture requires us to hold. There are several reasons which make it difficult for me to believe this. If it were true, then it would be not only permissible but obligatory to use any means available, all the modern techniques of brainwashing included, to rescue others from this appalling fate. And since it is God alone who knows the heart of every person, how are we to judge whether or not another person truly has that faith which is acceptable to him? If we hold this view, it is absolutely necessary to know who is saved and who is not, and we are then led into making the kind of judgments against which Scripture warns us. We are in the business of erecting barriers: Has she been baptized? Has he been confirmed by a bishop in the historic succession? Or has she had a recognizable conversion and can she name the day and the hour when it happened? We are bound to become judges of that which God alone knows. Moreover, every missionary knows that it is impossible to communicate the gospel without acknowledging in practice that there is some continuity between the gospel and the experience of the hearer outside the Christian Church. One cannot preach the gospel without using the word "God." If one is talking to a person of a nonChristian religion, one is bound to use one of the words in her language which is used to denote God. But the content of that word has necessarily been formed by his experience outside the Church. By using the word, the preacher is taking the non-Christian experience of the hearer as the starting point. Without this there is no way of communicating. This fact by itself does not refute the position we are considering, but it makes it impossible to affirm a total discontinuity between Christian faith and the religions. And anyone who has had intimate friendship with a devout Hindu or Muslim would find it impossible to believe that the experience of God of which his friend speaks is simply illusion or fraud.
4. An important group of writers who reject both this exclusivism on the one hand and a total pluralism on the other, take an inclusivist position which acknowledges Christ as the only Savior but affirm that his saving work extends beyond the bounds of the visible church. Probably the most influential exponent of this view has been Karl Rahner with his conception of anonymous Christianity. It is important to note here that Rahner is not merely affirming that individual non-Christians can be saved-certainly no new doctrine-but that the non-Christian religions as such have a salvific role. Rahner (Theological Investigations, vol. 5) set out his position in four theses:
a. Christianity is the absolute religion, being founded on the unique event of the incarnation of the Son of God. But, since this event occurred at a certain point in history, we have to ask about God's relation to those who lived before it occurred or before it was brought to their knowledge. This question will not be just about individuals but about the religions to which they adhered. To quote Rahner, "Man who is required to have a religion is also commanded to seek and accept a social form of religion" (p. 120).
b. It follows that non-Christian religions, even if they contain error (as they do), are lawful and salvific up to the time at which the gospel is brought to the attention of their adherents. The gospel requires us to assume that God's grace is offered to all, and that "in a great many cases at least" it is accepted (p. 124). But after the time when the gospel has been preached and heard, the non-Christian religion is no longer lawful.
c. The faithful adherent of a non-Christian religion must therefore be regarded as an "anonymous Christian." He can be saved through his faithful practice of his religion. But the one who accepts Christ "has a greater chance of salvation than the anonymous Christian" (p. 132).
d. The other religions will not be displaced by Christianity. Religious pluralism will continue and conflict will become sharper.
5. While Rahner's idea of "anonymous Christianity" has not proved widely acceptable, the idea that the non-Christian religions as such are to be understood as vehicles of salvation is widely accepted. It has indeed become a sort of orthodoxy and those who are not willing to accept it are dismissed as simply out-of-date (as by Wesley Ariarajah-see International Review of Mission, July 1988, pp. 419-20). He attacks the position of those who are not willing to make this judgment but wish to leave it in God's hands as "theological neutrality," and says that we cannot now afford this neutrality because we urgently need to have a basis for praying together with people of other faiths for world peace. An alleged practical need overrides the question of truth. What are we to say, on the basis of a scriptural faith, about the status and role of the great world religions?
6. I believe that we must begin with the great reality made known to us in Jesus Christ, that God-the creator and sustainer of all that exists-is in his own triune being an ocean of infinite love overflowing to all his works in all creation and to all human beings. I believe that when we see Jesus eagerly welcoming the signs of faith among men and women outside the house of Israel; when we see him lovingly welcoming those whom others cast out; when we see him on the cross with arms outstretched to embrace the whole world and when we hear his whispered words, "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do"; we are seeing the most fundamental of all realities, namely a grace and mercy and loving-kindness which reaches out to every creature. I believe that no person, of whatever kind or creed, is without some witness of God's grace in heart and conscience and reason, and none in whom that grace does not evoke some response-however feeble, fitful, and flawed.
7. The same revelation in Jesus Christ, with its burning center in the agony and death of Calvary, compels me to acknowledge that this world which God made and loves is in a state of alienation, rejection, and rebellion against him. Calvary is the central unveiling of the infinite love of God and at the same time the unmasking of the dark horror of sin. Here not the dregs of humanity, not the scoundrels whom all good people condemn, but the revered leaders in church, state, and culture, combine in one murderous intent to destroy the holy one by whose mercy they exist and were created.
8. All true thinking about this, as about every matter, must be held within the magnetic field set up between these two poles: the amazing grace of God and the appalling sin of the world. To live in this magnetic field is to live in an atmosphere which is charged with power, tingling, as it were, with electricity. One is always in the (humanly speaking) impossible position of knowing that one is-along with all others at the same time the enemy of God and the beloved child of God. To live in this charged field of force is always at the same time supremely demanding and supremely affirming. But we are always tempted to slacken the tension by drawing away from one or other of the two poles. Nowhere is this more clear than in the attitude we take to people outside the household of faith. We can opt for a solution which relies wholly on the universality and omnipotence of grace and move toward some form of universalism. Here the sharpness of the issue which God's action in Christ raises for every human soul is blunted. There is no lifeor-death decision to be made. We can relax and be assured that everything will be all right for everybody in the end. Over much theological writing about the gospel and the world's religions one is tempted to write the famous words of Anselm: "Nondum considerasti quanti ponderis sit peccatum"-"You have not yet taken full account of sin." Or, on the other hand, the Christian may be so conscious of the abyss of sin from which only the grace of God in Jesus Christ could rescue him that he is unwilling to believe that the same grace can operate in ways beyond his own experience and understanding. His relation to the man or woman outside the Church, or outside the particular embodiment of Christianity to which he adheres, can only be that of the saved to the lost. In both cases genuine dialogue is impossible. In the first case there is no real dialogue because nothing vital is at stake; it is merely a sharing of varied experiences of the same reality. In the second case dialogue is simply inappropriate. The person in the lifeboat and the person drowning in the sea do not have a dialogue. The one rescues the other; the time to share their experiences will come only afterward.
9. If we are to avoid these two dangers, if we are to live faithfully in this spiritual magnetic field between the amazing grace of God and the appalling sin of the world, how are we to regard the other commitments, faiths, worldviews to which the people around us and with whom we live and move adhere? I believe that the debate about this question has been fatally flawed by the fact that it has been conducted around the question, "Who can be saved?" It has been taken for granted that the only question was, "Can the good non-Christian be saved?" and by that question what was meant was not, "Can the non-Christian live a good and useful life and play a good and useful role in the life of society?" The question was, "Where will she go when she dies?" I am putting this crudely because I want to make the issue as clear as possible. The quest for truth always requires that we ask the right questions. If we ask the wrong questions we shall get only silence or confusion. In the debate about Christianity and the world's religions it is fair to say that there has been an almost unquestioned assumption that the only question is, "What happens to the non-Christian after death?" I want to affirm that this is the wrong question and that as long as it remains the central question we shall never come to the truth. And this for three reasons:
a. First, and simply, it is the wrong question because it is a question to which God alone has the right to give the answer. I confess that I am astounded at the arrogance of theologians who seem to think that we are authorized, in our capacity as Christians, to inform the rest of the world about who is to be vindicated and who is to be condemned at the last judgment. There has been an odd reversal of roles here. There was a time when Protestants accused Catholics of lacking assurance of salvation, and Catholics accused Protestants of being too sure. Today Roman Catholic theologians accuse Protestants of a failure in responsibility when they say that God alone knows the ultimate fate of unbelievers. Hans Kung (On Being a Christian, p. 99) is scathing in his contempt for Protestant theologians who say that we must leave the question of the ultimate fate of non-Christians in the hands of God. Rahner is equally sure that it is the duty of Christian theologians to tell the faithful adherent of a non-Christian religion that he can be saved but that he will have a better chance of salvation if he becomes a Christian and no chance at all if he refuses this invitation. And Wesley Ariarajah rebukes Visser 't Hooft for what he calls a "theology of neutrality" because the latter said, "I don't know whether a Hindu is saved: I only know that salvation comes in Jesus Christ" (International Review of Mission, pp. 419-20). I find this way of thinking among Christians astonishing in view of the emphatic warnings of Jesus against these kinds of judgments which claim to preempt the final judgment of God. Nothing could be more remote from the whole thrust of Jesus' teaching than the idea that we are in a position to know in advance the final judgment of God. It would be tedious to repeat again the innumerable warnings of Jesus in this matter, his repeated statements that the last day will be a day of surprises, of reversals, of astonishment. In his most developed parable of the last judgment, the parable of the sheep and the goats, both the saved and the lost are astonished. Surely theologians at least should know that the judge on the last day is God and no one else. Perhaps the "feel" of Jesus' teaching is best captured in the brief story of the rich young ruler who had kept all God's commandments but turned away from the call to surrender his wealth, prompting Jesus' famous statement that for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God was harder than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. When Peter protests, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus answers, "With men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible." I repeat that I find it astonishing that a theologian of the stature of Kung can so contemptuously reject the position of writers like Barth and Kraemer who refuse to pronounce on the final salvation of the non-Christian. If a theologian is really serious he must learn to understand the impossible possibility of salvation.
In St. Paul we find this same tension of confidence and awareness of the abyss that lies beneath. Paul, who is certain that nothing can separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus, also tells his friends that he has to exercise severe self-discipline "lest having preached to others I myself should be disqualified" (1 Cor. 9:27). The Christian life, lived in the magnetic field between the two poles of the amazing grace of God and the appalling sin in which I share, has a corresponding synthesis of a godly confidence and a godly fear. The fear is lest I should put my trust in anything other than God's grace in Jesus Christ; the confidence is in the infinite abundance of his grace to me and to every one of his creatures.
b. The second reason for rejecting this way of putting the question is that it is based on an abstraction. By concentrating on the fate of the individual soul after death, it abstracts the soul from the full reality of the human person as an actor and sufferer in the ongoing history of the world. Once again we have to insist that the human person is not, essentially, a soul which can be understood in abstraction from the whole story of the person's life. This reductionist move is as misleading as the corresponding move of the materialists and behaviorists who want to explain the human person simply as a bundle of physical activities. If we refuse both these forms of reductionism, then the question we have to ask is not, "What will happen to this person's soul after death?" but "What is the end which gives meaning to this person's story as part of God's whole story?" It has often been pointed out that the verb "to save" is used in the New Testament in three tenses-past, present, and future. We were saved, we are being saved, and we look for salvation. By common consent it is agreed that to understand the word we must begin from its eschatological sense, from the end to which it all looks. Salvation in this sense is the completion of God's whole work in creation and redemption, the summing up of all things with Christ as head (Eph. 1:10), the reconciling of all things in heaven and earth through the blood of the cross (Col. 1:20), the subjecting of all hostile powers under the feet of Christ (1 Cor. 15:24-28). The other uses of the verb (we have been saved, we are being saved) must be understood in the light of the end to which they look. The question of salvation is wrongly posed if it is posed in respect of the human soul abstracted from God's history of salvation, abstracted therefore from the question, "How do we understand the human story?" Being saved has to do with the part we are playing now in God's story and therefore with the question whether we have understood the story rightly. It follows that our dialogue with people of other faiths must be about what is happening in the world now and about how we understand it and take our part in it. It cannot be only, or even mainly, about our destiny as individual souls after death. Insofar as the debate has concentrated on this latter question, it has been flawed.
c. The third reason for rejecting this way of putting the question is the most fundamental: it is that the question starts with the individual and his or her need to be assured of ultimate happiness, and not with God and his glory. All human beings have a longing for ultimate happiness, and the many worldviews, religious or otherwise, have as part of their power some promise of satisfying that longing. We must believe that this longing is something implanted in us by God. He has so made us that we have infinite desires beyond the satisfaction of our biological necessities, desires which only God himself can satisfy. Our hearts are restless till they find rest in him. On our journey he gives us good things which whet our appetite but do not finally satisfy, for they are always corrupted by the selfishness that desires to have them as our own possession. The gospel, the story of the astonishing act of God himself in coming down to be part of our alienated world, to endure the full horror of our rebellion against love, to take the whole burden of our guilt and shame, and to lift us up into communion and fellowship with himself, breaks into this self-centered search for our own happiness, shifts the center from the self and its desires to God and his glory. It is true, God forgive us, that Christians have turned even this into something that they thought they could possess for themselves; that they have privatized this mighty work of grace and talked as if the whole cosmic drama of salvation culminated in the words "For me; for me"; as if the one question is "How can I be saved?" leading inevitably to the question, "How can anyone be saved?" But this is a perversion of the gospel. For anyone who has understood what God did for us all in Jesus Christ, the one question is: "How shall God be glorified? How shall his amazing grace be known and celebrated and adored? How shall he see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied?" The whole discussion of the role of the world religions and secular ideologies from the point of view of the Christian faith is skewed if it begins with the question, Who is going to be saved at the end? That is a question which God alone will answer, and it is arrogant presumption on the part of theologians to suppose that it is their business to answer it. We have to begin with the mighty work of grace in Jesus Christ and ask, How is he to be honored and glorified? The goal of missions is the glory of God.
What are the practical consequences of taking this as the starting point in our relation to people of other faiths? I suggest four immediate implications.
1. The first is this: we shall expect, look for, and welcome all the signs of the grace of God at work in the lives of those who do not know Jesus as Lord. In this, of course, we shall be following the example of Jesus, who was so eager to welcome the evidences of faith in those outside the household of Israel. This kind of expectancy and welcome is an implication of the greatness of God's grace as it has been shown to us in Jesus. For Jesus is the personal presence of that creative word by which all that exists was made and is sustained in being. He comes to the world as no stranger but as the source of the world's life. He is the true light of the world, and that light shines into every corner of the world in spite of all that seeks to shut it out. In our contact with people who do not acknowledge Jesus as Lord, our first business, our first privilege, is to seek out and to welcome all the reflections of that one true light in the lives of those we meet. There is something deeply repulsive in the attitude, sometimes found among Christians, which makes only grudging acknowledgment of the faith, the godliness, and the nobility to be found in the lives of non-Christians. Even more repulsive is the idea that in order to communicate the gospel to them one must, as it were, ferret out their hidden sins, show that their goodness is not so good after all, as a precondition for presenting the offer of grace in Christ. It is indeed true that in the presence of the cross we come to know that, whoever we are, we are sinners before the grace of God. But that knowledge is the result, not the precondition of grace. It is in the light of the amazing grace of God in Jesus Christ that I am compelled to say, "God, be merciful to me a sinner." Indeed, as the Fourth Gospel teaches us, it is only the presence of the living Holy Spirit that can convict the world in respect of sin and righteousness and judgment. The preacher of the gospel may well be mistaken in regard to these matters; he may see sin where no sin is, and may be blind to the sins of which he himself is a party. As a fellow human being and a fellow sinner, his relation to the man or woman of another faith must be modeled on that of Jesus to all who came to him.
2. The second consequence of the approach I suggest is that the Christian will be eager to cooperate with people of all faiths and ideologies in all projects which are in line with the Christian's understanding of God's purpose in history. I have repeatedly made the point that the heart of the faith of a Christian is the belief that the true meaning of the story of which our lives are a part is that which is made known in the biblical narrative. The human story is one which we share with all other human beings-past, present, and to come. We cannot opt out of the story. We cannot take control of the story. It is under the control of the infinitely patient God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Every day of our lives we have to make decisions about the part we will play in the story, decisions which we cannot take without regard to the others who share the story. They may be Christians, Muslims, Hindus, secular humanists, Marxists, or of some other persuasion. They will have different understandings of the meaning and end of the story, but along the way there will he many issues in which we can agree about what should be done. There are struggles for justice and for freedom in which we can and should join hands with those of other faiths and ideologies to achieve specific goals, even though we know that the ultimate goal is Christ and his coming in glory and not what our collaborators imagine.
3. Third, it is precisely in this kind of shared commitment to the business of the world that the context for true dialogue is provided. As we work together with people of other commitments, we shall discover the places where our ways must separate. Here is where real dialogue may begin. It is a real dialogue about real issues. It is not just a sharing of religious experience, though it may include this. At heart it will be a dialogue about the meaning and goal of the human story. If we are doing what we ought to be doing as Christians, the dialogue will be initiated by our partners, not by ourselves. They will be aware of the fact that, while we share with them in commitment to some immediate project, our action is set in a different context from theirs. It has a different motivation. It looks to a different goal. Specifically-and here I am thinking of the dialogue with secular ideologies-our partners will discover that we do not invest our ultimate confidence in the intrahistorical goal of our labors, but that for us the horizon is one that is both nearer and farther away than theirs. They will discover that we are guided by something both more ultimate and more immediate than the success of the project in hand. And they will discover that we have resources for coping with failure, defeat, and humiliation, because we understand human history from this side of the resurrection of the crucified Lord. It is-or it ought to be-the presence of these realities which prompts the questions and begins the dialogue. And, once again, the dialogue will not be about who is going to be saved. It will be about the question, "What is the meaning and goal of this common human story in which we are all, Christians and others together, participants?"
4. Therefore, the essential contribution of the Christian to the dialogue will simply be the telling of the story, the story of Jesus, the story of the Bible. The story is itself, as Paul says, the power of God for salvation. The Christian must tell it, not because she lacks respect for the many excellencies of her companions-many of whom may be better, more godly, more worthy of respect than she is. She tells it simply as one who has been chosen and called by God to be part of the company which is entrusted with the story. It is not her business to convert the others. She will indeed-out of love for them-long that they may come to share the joy that she knows and pray that they may indeed do so. But it is only the Holy Spirit of God who can so touch the hearts and consciences of the others that they are brought to accept the story as true and to put their trust in Jesus. This will always be a mysterious work of the Spirit, often in ways which no third party will ever understand. The Christian will pray that it may be so, and she will seek faithfully both to tell the story and-as part of a Christian congregationso conduct her life as to embody the truth of the story. But she will not imagine that it is her responsibility to insure that the other is persuaded. That is in God's hands.
It has become customary to classify views on the relation of Christianity to the world religions as either pluralist, exclusivist, or inclusivist, the three positions being typically represented by John Hick, Hendrik Kraemer, and Karl Rahner. The position which I have outlined is exclusivist in the sense that it affirms the unique truth of the revelation in Jesus Christ, but it is not exclusivist in the sense of denying the possibility of the salvation of the non-Christian. It is inclusivist in the sense that it refuses to limit the saving grace of God to the members of the Christian Church, but it rejects the inclusivism which regards the nonChristian religions as vehicles of salvation. It is pluralist in the sense of acknowledging the gracious work of God in the lives of all human beings, but it rejects a pluralism which denies the uniqueness and decisiveness of what God has done in Jesus Christ. Arguments for pluralism and inclusivism usually begin from the paramount need for human unity, a need hugely increased by the threats of nuclear and ecological disaster. We must surely recognize that need. But the recognition of the need provides no clue as to how it is to be met, and certainly does not justify the assertion that religion is the means by which human unity is to be achieved. The question of truth must be faced. C. S. Song is one of those who wishes to play down the role of truth because, as he says, truth judges, polarizes, divides. Truth, he says, cannot unite the ununitable; only love can. So the Christian mission must be an affair of love, not an affair of truth (Tell Us Our Names, Orbis Books, 1984, p. 114). But it is not love which encourages people to believe a lie. As a human race we are on a journey and we need to know the road. It is not true that all roads lead to the top of the same mountain. There are roads which lead over the precipice. In Christ we have been shown the road. We cannot treat that knowledge as a private matter for ourselves. It concerns the whole human family. We do not presume to limit the might and the mercy of God for the ultimate salvation of all people, but the same costly act of revelation and reconciliation which gives us that assurance also requires us to share with our fellow pilgrims the vision that God has given us the route we must follow and the goal to which we must press forward.