Concerning Self-Deception
21 Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you who behave lawlessly.’ [Matthew 7:21-23, NRSV].
Pope Francis with young people at an interreligious dialogue in Singapore
Experts in the field of inter-religious dialogue generally articulate themselves from a position within three theological camps: exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist.
The exclusivist insists that there is no salvation other than in Christ. Even though this position prejudges the possibility or otherwise of human salvation before God, and sounds somewhat bigoted, it is a theologically serious position that claims strong Biblical support. Perhaps one gentle way to refuse this pivot is to argue that God is always bigger than one’s supposedly exclusive ideas and beliefs, and that “what is impossible for men is not impossible for God” (Mt 19:26; Lk 18:27; Mk 10:27).
The inclusivist finds salvation in Christ but, conscious of God’s will for universal salvation, keeps the door open for possible salvation to all people of good will whose lives manifest good morals and conscience in accordance with the light that is planted by the Creator God in their hearts. Salvation is ultimately for God to decide. This is the official Catholic position. One well known proponent of this position is the renowned Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner who introduced the famous theory of “anonymous Christianity”.
- Rahner suggests that people can be saved through God’s grace without being explicitly aware of Jesus Christ or identifying as Christian. His idea is that people who live a life of goodness and love, reflecting Christian moral teachings, are implicitly united with Christ and can be saved. With a vision which is broad and magnanimous, Rahner holds that God’s grace is not limited to any particular religious tradition, and that people can and do basically respond to God’s grace even if they do so through other religious traditions or have no religious affiliation. Rahner’s theology is done solidly within the Christian fold. Within his huge and complex legacy of theological ideas, he has posited that humanity is created with conditions of possibility to know God, and that therefore there is a prethematic knowledge of God in every human person, so that there exists in every human who ever lived an implicit faith awaiting thematisation in every new cultural situation. Ultimately, he believes in essential goodness having been planted in every human person by the One Creator God. We believe that every inclusivist, and that includes Pope Francis, embraces some elements of “anonymous Christianity” in their thinking without using that label.
The pluralist basically treats all religions equally, as a result of which Christ is reduced to one of many saviours of equal ranking. This position is rejected for being incompatible with the Christian faith.
Anyone who has followed Pope Francis to some degree since his election to the papacy in 2013 will know that he is conscious of a common phenomenon where so many of us Christians are willing to be indifferent to the darkness within us, in exchange for the self-righteous demands we make of non-believers. So when people around the globe heard that Pope Francis expressed gratitude for the existence of a variety of world religions, that this plurality was willed by God, and that all religions are paths to salvation, there was at once, as expected, a flurry of reactions, both positive and negative, to the Holy Father’s statements.
Previous to the Pope’s Singapore visit, wherever the Pope were in friendly meetings with leaders of other religions, there would be nasty comments from various quarters charging him with having failed as a Christian leader to insist on Jesus as the Only Saviour of humanity. Our response has always been to raise the contextual consciousness, pointing out to them the relevance of the occasion and the location. The occasion is a friendly meeting of leaders of different world religions where courtesy and mutual respect are of utmost importance to promote world peace. It is not an occasion of in-house Christian theology class. The location is a place of diplomatic encounter, not a Christian seminary or a catechism class. Within your Christian community, you can preach for all you want on the doctrine of the unique status of Christ as Saviour, but to insist on preaching like that to others at goodwill gatherings on peace-promotion can only get us all killed – like there are not enough of wars already in this violent world.
The negative responders to Pope Francis’ peace outreach are all too often too quick to draw their guns, too thin in their theological understanding, and too susceptible to what is observable as a common trait in fallen humanity, that is, to make loud righteous claims about their religion, with a thinly-veiled suggestion, as usual, that theirs is exclusively the best. This is also a common trait in most every facet of mundane daily life – “mine” is better than yours. This “mine” covers everything under the sun really, including in its sweep religion, politics, culture, personal likes and dislikes, things, thoughts and opinions, friends we keep, food, habits, attire, manners of behaviour, every this and that. If only we would take a step back, be less assertive and demanding over “my one” and be more broad minded and accepting of the “particles of truth” in the other person’s package and be a little more honest about the shortcoming and inadequacy in our own package, this would be a far better and more peaceful world to live in. Can we hear what the other person is thinking? – “Your perennial ‘superiority’ is suffocating; I can’t breathe”.
It is all too common as well to find in the negative responses to what Pope Francis said and did in Singapore, a reading into the Pope’s words all kinds of ideas which are either unnecessary or in any case never intended by him. These negative responses bear witness to a simple but serious flaw, namely, a failure to even give credit to the fact that as a Jesuit, the Holy Father embraces the official teachings of the Church with regards to the plurality of religions in the world, and is clearly in continuity with recent Pontiffs in regards to his concern for reconciliation and world peace, as we have tried to show in the two posts previous to this.
One badly misreads Pope Francis if one fails to give credit for the magnanimous heart the Holy Father has, the broad and global concerns that capture his daily attention, and the love and generous spirit he operates from in his broad vision of the world. To Pope Francis, God and Christ are big realities of the universe, in sharp contrast to the constricted realities of a tribal narrow-visionary. And as the Holy Father calls all in the Church to prepare well for the coming Jubilee Year 2025, it is well to take to heart that the motto for the Jubilee is “Pilgrims of Hope” and that the two key words of the motto are points of emphasis in Pope Francis’ pontificate. At the opening of the October final session of the Synod on Synodality, he again stressed at the synod’s opening Mass: “We must free ourselves from everything that prevents the charity of the Spirit from creating harmony in diversity in us and among us… Those who arrogantly claim to have the exclusive right to hear the voice of the Lord cannot hear it.”
We also suggest that Pope Francis’s faith in the Creator-God as the Maker of heaven and earth, of all that’s seen and unseen, has a natural corollary. It is inconceivable that the Creator would leave the human species that He has created and spread over all corners of the earth without any means of reaching Him, and responding to His design for human salvation. As Nostra Aetate has underscored, there are the rays of truth and the seeds of truth which God spread throughout the world as the positive foundations for the multitude of religions (as well as the lack of explicit religious affiliations), to help direct humanity forward so that all could come prepared, in their own way, to the revelation given by Jesus Christ. We can see why the inclusivist category of thoughts and Rahner’s “anonymous Christianity” are the more useful guides compared to others.
As Christmas approaches, we again note that Jesus of Nazareth, the Word of God made flesh (John 1:14), is all about the kingdom of God where people live in peace and harmony, having concerns not only for themselves but for others as well. In God’s kingdom, people take to heart that God is all about love and mercy, compassion and forgiveness. Throughout his ministry, Jesus teaches the people that whether they will dwell in God’s kingdom will depend on the choices they make in life, and whether the way they treat others, the way they see themselves, and the priorities they embrace, reflect and express their innate oneness with all that God is.
For the end of times, God has appointed Christ to return to earth to be the judge of all nations. This excludes nobody, but includes all peoples of the world regardless of religious affiliation. And when all peoples of the world appear before God’s appointed end-time judge, the singular criterion for salvation (eternal bliss in God’s presence) or non-salvation (eternal hell due to the absence of God) is whether one has practised love and mercy in solidarity and co-humanity with the the poor and those thirsting for justice, the wounded and the sufferers of this cruel world (see Matthew 25). Believers will call Christ “Lord”, but that alone will not be enough. Nor would mouthing the right doctrines alone do it. One has to live the love and goodness God has planted in every human heart. What is decisive is how one lives one’s life, not all those empty words.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, December 2024. All rights reserved.
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