Words are important and “religion” is a central word
in our conversation. Religion is an extremely complex word with a complex
history. Its modern usage as a reference to a set of beliefs and rituals to
provide access to God begins really with the 17th century but the
origins of the word go back much earlier to the Romans. Even there, the usage
is complex. For the Roman Empire, religion (religio)
was what bound all the people together with the gods. In that, the Emperor, as summus pontifex (highest bridge builder,
high priest) played a central role. For the Christians of the first three
centuries to refer to their Way as religion would have been the height of
blasphemy. The word never appears in the New Testament though the backdrop of
religion as practiced by the Roman Empire is quite present. It was only after
Constantine that Christians saw themselves as having a religion with the Pope
as summus pontifex. In other words,
the religion of the Empire was supplanted by the Christian religion. Basilicas
were built, people were converted massively and Christianity became the
established state religion and thus a major institution with considerable power
in the Empire of the time. Outreach to the pagans led at this point to some
pretty violent proceedings.
When I settled in Peru in 1980, Catholicism was the
established state religion there. During my time there, a concordat was signed
between the governments of Peru and the Vatican. At the same time, the Catholic
Church was disestablished, although with privileges. During the time of
Duplessis, in Quebec during the 1940s and 1950s, the Catholic Church was the
established Church, at least in practice. The connection between “religion” and
the state continues, then, right into our own day and with very significant
impact for those who belong to a major Church. Moreover, this is not limited to
Christianity. In Myanmar, Buddhism is protected by the State, with dire
consequences for the Rohingyas. In India, Hinduism is protected and Islam can
more properly be called an established religion in Indonesia, Bangladesh and
Pakistan.
So, evoking the word “religion” is unavoidably linked
to a question of privilege and establishment. I mentioned that the modern definition
of religion really dates from the 17th century. This is the time of
colonization. It cannot be said enough that Hindus, Buddhists, Shintoists and
Confucians – we often forget about these latter in China – would not normally
identify themselves as following a religion. Religion was a term imposed on
them by colonizing powers in order to provide a framework for control and,
often, repression. Hindi, in India, has no precise word corresponding to
religion.
For the West, “religion” means an institutionalized
set of beliefs and practices that has hierarchies of power and decision-making,
that has rituals of initiation and communion with the divine, that has beliefs
and disciplines and that can be controlled, managed. This institutionalized
dimension of religion has important implications when it comes to determining
how to relate to those outside its circle. The document in Vatican II on
religious liberty, largely written by John Courtney Murray and inspired by the
experience of the United States, marked a turning point in relations with
Protestants in particular. This document
was part of the final push of the Council to address also the question of Jews
and of non-Christian “religions.”
On the other hand, at least today, “religion” clearly
also refers to a very personal and cultural phenomenon of entering into
communication and communion with the Other, with the Transcendent, who gives
meaning and direction to the lives of those who belong to a specific circle. In
the Abrahamic tradition it is a journey through life rooted in a covenant. In
this sense it is a call to interiority, to an asceticism of life and a moral
journey as well. Thomas Aquinas, already
in the 13th century, defined religion as a virtue of devotion to and
service of God.
Of all the world “religions,” Christianity, and in
particular, the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Churches represent the most
institutionalized expressions of religion.
The Indigenous path is one of connection and communication
with the divine, clearly outside institutional parameters. I don’t know of any
Indigenous culture that identifies itself as “religious.” They see their ways
as “spiritual,” much like Hindus and Buddhists might.
All of this raises a question about whom we are
referring to and what is the ground we stand on when we ask about the place of
world “religions” in Catholic theology.
It would be nice if we could just agree on a proper
definition for our purposes and then proceed. It would be nice if we could say
that we are going to talk just about the “spiritual” dimension of our various
traditions and leave aside the rest. It would also be tempting to just deal
with the institutional differences. But, it is not so simple. The institutional
dimensions, the belief and ritual systems and the spiritual journey are
intimately intertwined in all dimensions in the existence of all these various
traditions. We will constantly need to remind ourselves of the distinctions and
variations of meaning we assign both to our own traditions and to that of others.
We need to use the word “religion” with respect for its complexity.
Finally, I would like to suggest, as a working
principle, that the institutional dimension of religion is ultimately intended
(although not always effective) as a support and guidance for the pathway or
spiritual journey dimension of religion. This may be an important distinction
for us as we proceed.
I suggest that we agree to swallow the complexity and
try to be a clear as we can about what we are talking about at every stage. For
example, when we say with the Catholic Church that “outside the Church there is
no salvation,” we need to be clear about what dimension of religion we are
talking about. When we, as Catholics says, that God wills the salvation of all
humanity, indeed of all creation and that Jesus died for all, we need to be
very careful how we frame this in the light of the documents of Vatican II.
When we say, as some still do, that “pagan” practices are superstitions and
idolatry, we need to be very clear about what we are saying and its implication
of exclusion.
Augustine spoke of two sources of revelation, of God’s
communication of self to us: the book of creation and the book of the
scriptures. We who belong to the monotheistic religions (Jews, Christians,
Muslims) are often called “peoples of the book.”
Of course, we are more conscious today that the book
of the scriptures is set within the book of creation since human words, events
and writing are all part of God’s creation. In the scriptures we find God
speaking through events of nature: volcanic eruptions, floods, parting waters,
famine and disease, storms on the sea, sowing the seed and reaping the harvest,
through political events like battles and voyages, through dreams. These are
often set in the form of stories and parables. There are also rituals that
evoke and commemorate all these events. Moreover, at times, certain prophets
proclaim the word of God as a warning to the people who have wandered from the
covenant that God has proclaimed between himself and them. In fact, God never
speaks outside the context of creation; it is through the natural that God
reveals the Word.
From the viewpoint of the receiver of the word, there
is therefore the natural events of life, whether something extraordinary like a
battle or bread falling from the skies or something quite ordinary like seeing
a broken jar lying at the side of the road. This natural moment takes on a
special character for the person who is attentive in faith to God’s speaking
and, through the encounter, reveals a deeper dimension that speaks God’s word.
Jeremiah raises the question whether one can always be confident of the word
that is spoken. When it is God who speaks we can be certain but since we are
imperfect hearers, we can doubt. The doubt is not whether God speaks but
whether we have listened correctly.
The fact that God speaks through the events of our
lives, means that God always speaks from within the limitations of human
perception and language. God however is not limited. God is totally other. Yet
God limits himself to our framework of communication. Moreover, we have no way
to speak of our experience of God’s revelation except through the context of
creation, of human language. Because God’s word is mysterious (utterly filled
with light to the point of blinding us), we are aware that our attempts to
express it fall short. The most adequate human language for expressing God’s
word is analogy expressed in ritual, story, analogy. This sort of language
leaves open the possibility of discovering deeper understanding. This is true
of God’s word as embodied in the scriptures and also of the doctrines, rituals
and wisdom shared today in our faith communities. Speculative theology attempts
to draw out a rational understanding of doctrines but can never replace the
analogies which ground them.
All of this will become significant when we come to
the incarnation of the Word in Jesus and the elevation of Jesus as Christ the
Lord after the resurrection.
Historically the Christological doctrine developed
before that of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity wasn’t entirely
complete before around the 8th century. Ultimately, the emphasis
here is on the unicity of God and the distinction between Father and Son.
First of all, Christianity, along with Judaism and
Islam, is a monotheistic religion at least in Christian eyes. The Jews of
course have great difficulty with the divinity of Christ. They see this as
creating two gods. Islam also has difficulty seeing Christianity as
monotheistic. It is extremely important, in today’s world, for us to continue
to insist that God is One. There is only one God.
Therefore, when we speak of Trinity, we are talking of
a reality that is interior to one God and in no way divisive of the unicity of
God. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. But, there is
only one God. More than that, it is a doctrine of the Catholic Church that all
actions God directs to the exterior (creation in particular and also
salvation/liberation) are actions of all three persons of the Trinity. This is
the doctrine. And already it is full of analogies: Father, Son, Spirit.
Doctrines posit statements of faith, not theology. Almost always they are rooted in analogies.
Analogies are always somewhat ambiguous: they are and are not entirely
representations of the reality. The Father is father, but not quite like your
or my father. The Son is son but not quite like you or I are sons. God is one
and three but the references to numbers is also analogous since we are speaking
of the divine, who manages to embody and escape all that.
Again, doctrines do not posit any explanation. They
are statements of faith. The Church never endorses a particular theology - other
than to say, Nihil Obstat. The
doctrine about Christ says that Jesus incarnates the Second Person of the
Trinity, or more accurately, is the only begotten Son of God. The doctrine says
that there are three persons in one God. These are doctrinal statements of
faith, not systematic theology. When Bernard Lonergan speaks of a stage of
theology called doctrine, he is pointing to the effort to determine exactly
what the Church has said and how and when. This is different from systematic
theology, which offers rational explanations to help us understand those
doctrinal statements of faith. In some way, I suppose it could be said that
doctrine operates on the basis of truth and systematic theology on the basis of
verified hypotheses: Does it adequately explain the doctrine?
The Church has stated, over time, that the Trinity is
made up of three persons: Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. However, right
from the start we are back to analogy. There are several words here that must
be taken analogically and not literally. They are called persons. But, they are
not quite persons like human persons. There is an analogy, but there are also
differences. I don’t want to go into any precise descriptions of the difference
between the two. Surely, we don’t think that the Father became so in begetting the
Son in the same way my father begot me! It is an analogy. Yet it is not a
metaphor. There is some real semblance between what is the normal usage of the
word and this, its analogical usage. The same is true for the Holy Spirit. And,
the whole traditional theology of the trinity, derived largely from Athanasius,
is a piece of systematic theology that helps us (in the best of cases)
understand how it could be that one God is, in some respect, three. I should
add that, in order to explain the internal nature of the three persons of the
Trinity, the basic reference is not so much to family as to the generation of
Word and Love. We can come back to that later.
I do not question either the doctrine (dogma in fact)
or the theology. But, I do want to point out the distinction between a
statement of doctrine and a theological explanation of that statement.
The distinction between doctrine and theology is true
also of the incarnation. We say that Jesus is one person (a divine person in
fact, the Son of the Father, the Word of God) with two natures (Council of
Calcedon). This is doctrine and it is full of analogous terms: person, son
word, nature. However, the explanation of how this works is a matter for
speculative theology. The doctrine of Nicea (that Jesus is divine) is a
statement of faith; the theology is not. The series of analogies - son, word,
person, nature - are taken from human experience, stated in the doctrine and
then given a theological explanation subsequently. The theological explanation
is not a matter of faith but an attempt to help us understand the doctrine,
which is a requirement.
Jesus is the incarnate Word of God, the second person
of the Trinity. This is who he is as a person. He is not a human person; he is
a divine person with two natures.
So, then, we come to the suffering, death and
resurrection of Jesus. Who suffered, died and rose? Jesus died. Did God die? Jesus died and rose. Jesus who was both divine
(by nature) and human (by nature). However, Jesus could only die in his human
nature. It is not in the nature of God, the second (or any) person of the Trinity
to die – or rise again. Jesus, the divine person died as human but not as
divine.
This is similar to the explanation of the
consciousness of Christ in Bernard Lonergan’s Christology. Jesus was a divine
person (ens, being) with two natures.
Did Jesus then know everything that God knows? Yes, as a divine person (ens) but not in his human nature. In
that he was like every other human being who had to learn. So, God died on the
Cross, as Mary can claim to be Mother of God. God died on the cross in the
human nature of Jesus. But the distinctions still have to be maintained. God
did not die as God but as human in Jesus. There is only one ens or being: that of God.
Jesus died for the salvation/liberation of the whole
world, all peoples – according to the writings of Paul and confirmed by Church
teaching throughout its history. But the salvation/liberation of the whole
world could take place not because of the human nature of Jesus but because of
the union of that human nature with the divine nature of the person who is the
Word in the Trinity. Moreover, that divine nature does not suffer the same
limitation as the human nature of Jesus. The power of the Word is divine,
extensive and enduring.
The final step is to consider what Christology might
mean for a statement that affirms the traditional doctrine that Jesus died and
rose to save all mankind and that it is only through the church (the community
of believers) that we can be “saved” while going on to say that the divine Word
through the agency of the Holy Spirit can inspire men and women who have not
been baptized. (By the way, the wording of a theology, or of a doctrinal
statement, is obviously limited to the capacity of human language. That is why
analogy is so helpful because it points, in some way, beyond the words. Our
faith is faith in someone, in the Word, not words.)
You will remember that when Peter went to visit the
home of Cornelius, he encountered a group of people on whom the Spirit of God
fell as in Pentecost (Acts 10. See also Peter’s vision and visit in Acts 11).
This was before Peter baptized them.
Thus, the Spirit works in us before baptism, that is before our formal entry
into the Church. We are made holy before baptism while technically still
outside the Church. In adult catechumens, faith is present before baptism.
Thus, the statement that we cannot be saved outside the church/Church, needs to
be somewhat qualified. God does give faith before entry into the Church. Obviously
in this case, the process led to affirmation of faith in Christ. But, the
principle remains that baptism is not a sine
qua non for the saving action of God.
Jesus, who died on the cross is also the Divine Word
whose action extends throughout all creation with God’s own freedom to act.
While, in his human nature, Jesus saving act is limited to those whom he is
able to reach through direct contact, the same is not true of his divine
nature.
It is clear from John that the key criterion for
recognizing the presence of God’s Spirit at work is agape (love). (Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.) We
know that billions of people throughout the world and throughout history have
lived exemplary lives, filled with self-sacrificing love that cannot be named
other than being lives of agape.
Agape is the work of the Holy Spirit; it is the work of the Trinity; it is the
primary sign and core reality of living in the saving grace of the Risen
Christ.
We also know that for many – the majority – of these
people, the motivating factor in their life of agape has been their
participation in religious traditions of their culture: Hindu, Islam, Buddhist,
Indigenous or other. These systems of belief and ritual have nourished them in
developing lives of agape. It seems to me not too broad a leap to affirm that
these traditions have been paths to agape
for them, paths leading them to God. God is love, God is agape. The church, the community of believers, the mystical body of
Christ can be found wherever agape is
found.
God established a covenant with Adam and Noah, then
with Abraham, then with Moses and further on with David. Finally, we have the
New Covenant offered us in Jesus. When God establishes a covenant, as the
people slowly learned, God never retires it; it is an everlasting covenant.
This is true for Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David. Those covenants remain.
“I have not come to abolish the Law…” It is true for the covenant offered
through Jesus. The question, for me, at this point is also whether there could
be further covenants. God might establish a covenant with peoples in Africa,
Asia, Latin America. Where would Jesus fit in?
I am speaking from a Christian perspective. I am
trying to understand their experience out of my own tradition and put words to
it. I am attempting a speculative theology based in part on the doctrines of
Catholicism and the challenges of a grasp of the history and contemporary
situation of humanity. I am trying, in the spirit of Gaudium et spes from the Second Vatican Council, to discern the
Signs of the Times, the ways in which the Spirit of God moves not just in the
Church but throughout the world.
My suggestion is that God indeed could and does act in
shaping and inspiring traditions other than Christian and not just as a stopgap
measure before everyone joins the Church. (After 2000 years, I think it fairly
safe to say that a world in which everyone was Catholic is highly improbable, without
prejudice to what may happen at the Parousia. I would argue that God works primarily in the
“world” (God’s nascent and largely hidden kingdom) and that it is largely the
role of the Church to bear witness to that transforming action.
All the covenants (including those with non-Christian
religions) go in the same direction and issue from the same source. They are
all covenants of fidelity and of agape.
And it is hard for me to believe, based on the words of scripture, that God
withholds that offer of covenant to anyone, to any people, ever, anywhere.
In some way I guess my position is somewhat akin to
that of Karl Rahner though I don’t like the phrase “anonymous Christian.” I
find it patronizing and colonializing. Nevertheless, that God, the Word of God,
the Spirit of God, is free to work outside the framework of our Catholic
institution and doctrinal framework seems to me unavoidable.
If I am even close to having a slight grasp of truth
here, I believe the challenge is enormous for Christians to rethink their whole
place in God’s scheme of things. I have no doubt, as a Catholic, in saying that
Jesus died for all and that Jesus calls us, above all, to a life of agape such as he himself lived it. But,
I am adding that that life of agape
is available beyond the boundaries of what we know as the Roman Catholic Church
or even of those baptized as Christians. And I am saying that other religious
traditions can be, for at least some who live within the framework of those
traditions, paths to God. I am saying that the mystical body of Christ is present
throughout time and in all nations and religious traditions and that we should
be careful not to tread too heavily on Christ’s body.[1]
There an interesting collection of contributions in
this sense from representatives from about twenty traditions in a book entitled
Toward a Global Theology. The
question asked of each contributor was: Do you think it is possible to have a
common theology? In other words, can we speak of the same God and say something
together. I think it is generally much easier for those outside the Christian
tradition to accept that our Christian tradition is a way to God than for us to
accept theirs.[2]
[1] I just finished listening to a televised news
conference in Ottawa in which a survivor of a residential school told of being
raised to be a Catholic and said that she was taught that indigenous traditions
were devil worship. There is a famous poster that was used widely by the
Oblates in their residential schools to this effect. I think it is called the Lacombe
poster.
[2] I have an interesting collection of
contributions in this sense from representatives from about twenty traditions
in a book entitled Toward a Global Theology that my little Dunamis Publications
put out about 10 years ago. I have a whole box of them in my closet!
