Our world is shrinking - technology, globalisation, and social media have each made the earth a significantly smaller place. From the devices in almost every adult’s pocket, we can now encounter and access - with ease - diverse peoples and cultures, thousands of miles away. The “post-colonial”1 world we live in has also changed the landscape of human migration in ways that our ancestors couldn’t have imagined. Among many things, both good and bad, these factors encourage a “melting-pot” culture, with people of different races, ethnicities, and creeds rubbing up against each other on our streets and neighbourhoods, towns and cities, on a daily basis.
Perhaps the presence of religious others I am most aware of in my own context, are the quasi-Christian religions of The Jehovah’s Witnesses and The Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints (markedly Capitalist religions). The JW’s are a persistent presence in the town, standing dutifully by their Watchtower stands, but unlike our LDS Sisters and Brothers, they hardly invite conversation, usually preferring to sit or stand off to one side. Those young LDS missionaries on the other hand, can be found actively perusing the streets seeking to converse to convert. Besides these, Hastings claims a deep and rich heritage of Paganism (which is probably more akin to “new-age” religions, or a neo-paganism with a “traditional” bent, rather than classic Anglo-Saxon paganism), and has made a spectacle of the anachronistic Jack-In-The-Green festival for the last four decades.
I believe it is essential to acknowledge and engage with the reality that we live in a pluralistic society, because Jesus, having dealt with Sin, is deeply concerned about the quality of our relationships, especially our relationships with the “other.” Failure to engage with the complexities and nuances of such a culture, is ultimately a failure in the Church’s divinely instituted mission.
Christians are not the “chosen people”
I think it also important to recall at this juncture, that Christians are not God’s “chosen people”. We are instead those pagans that the book of Acts speaks of, and the beneficiaries of Paul’s mission “to the Gentiles”. As Willie James Jennings puts it:
We’re inside of a Gospel story first, and that Gospel story has to do with us joining the story of another people. There are so many Christians who never got that memo, that they are inside Israel’s story.1
It is incredibly important that we grasp this. For failure to “get the memo”, results at best in a kind of functional-Marcionism, and at worst in an outright anti-Semitism. As Paul put it in Romans, “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew” (11:2). In a post-Shoah2 world, this is utterly crucial. Jews and Christians do not just share some loose affiliation. If God has not rejected Israel, then Israel remains God’s chosen people. The Church is not a new Israel, and Jesus is not a new Moses.
Pauline scholar, Douglas Campbell sums up the issue neatly:
The development of Christianity was clearly part of God’s great plan. It need not follow, however, that the Judaism that preceded it was in any way inferior to it or needed to be abandoned. God’s plan was for the church to diversify outward from Judaism as all things are gathered back into communion [God’s ultimate purpose for creation], which is a rather different thing.3
All things pivot around Christ, in Him all peoples are elected for salvation - but this universal claim does not erase the particularity of God’s dealings with Israel, for they are essentially one and the same. It is through Christ - the only truly faithful Israelite - that the Law of Moses is fulfilled. But Jesus is not only the fulfilment of the Mosaic Law, He is the fulfilment of history, space, and reality itself. It is then only through Christ that we can participate in and have solidarity with YHWH’s Israel and His salvific purposes. Especially in the wake of the recent invasion of Israel by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), solidarity with our Jewish Sisters and Brothers is essential.
Truth?
So, if we believe that our own religion is the “right” one, then why should we take other religions seriously?
Our hyper-connected world means that we are increasingly encountering people of other religions who make their own unique claims to truth. Religious claims to truth are de facto universal claims, they cannot be true in one place and not true in another. This poses a significant question to Christianity - namely, what is the truth?
But perhaps the question Christians should first ask themselves, is not so much what is the truth, but rather, who holds it? Of course, as is only good and proper for any decent theological dialogue, the answer is always Jesus. This is the “stumbling block”, the “foolishness”, the skandalon (to borrow the Apostle Paul’s word) of the Christian claim to truth. As the author (and religious “none”) Annie Dillard put it:
That Christ’s incarnation occurred improbably, ridiculously, at such-and-such a time, into such-and-such a place, is referred to—with great sincerity even among believers—as “the scandal of particularity.” Well, the “scandal of particularity” is the only world that I, in particular, know. What use has eternity for light? We’re all up to our necks in this particular scandal.4
The Christian claim is scandalous in both its universality and its particularity. Notice this again in the Apostle’s letter to the church in Rome, where he is speaking of the polarity between Adam’s Sin, and Christ’s triumph on the Cross:
Therefore, just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all [universal], so one man’s [particular] act of righteousness leads to rectification and life for all [universal].
- Romans 5:18
That Christ (particular) died for all (universal) is a contentious claim. Jesus himself corroborates these claims with statements like “No-one (universal) comes to the Father, except through me (particular).” The Bible is riddled with these universal and particular claims, which we need to square with the claims made by other religions if we are to take seriously our place in the world and treat those different from us with dignity, friendship, and respect.
Faulty dialogue…
Most Christian “inter-faith” discourse generally falls into one of three prescribed text-book typologies: pluralism, exclusivism, and inclusivism. These paradigms are all trying to answer the question about the nature and scope of Christian truth and salvation.
Pluralism
“Human meaning is accessible through a multitude of equally valid but culturally incommensurable symbol systems.”5
Pluralism, a view advocated by the likes of the late philosopher and theologian John Hick, maintains that no single religious tradition has a monopoly on truth and salvation. Christianity then is not the only true religion, it is simply one among others. Hick concluded that,
[There is] only one point of salvific contact between the divine reality and humanity, namely in the person of Jesus Christ, but that there is a plurality of independently valid contacts, and independently authentic spheres of salvation.6
Pluralism maintains that all religious truth claims are equally valid.
Exclusivism
“All human meaning is to be found explicitly and solely in the person and work of Jesus.”7
Exclusivism is a paradigm held by many faithful conservative Christians. Advocates of exclusivism believe that anyone outside the confines of the Church, those who do not explicitly express faith in Jesus, are excluded from salvation, and are instead destined for annihilation at best, and at worst for hellfire and damnation. The third century Bishop of Carthage, St Cyprian, was one such exclusivist adherent who wrote simply that…
There is no salvation outside the Church.
- Cyprian of Carthage, Letters, 72.2
Inclusivism
“All human meaning is to be found ontologically in the Logos and virtually in Jesus.”8
Adherents to inclusivism on the other hand, wish to “include believers from other religious traditions among the ranks of those who could be saved.”9 Theologian Karl Rahner writes of those included in salvation as practicing an “anonymous Christianity”10, whereby persons, consciously or not, live their lives in response to Christ, thus being drawn into the bounds of salvation, but are unable to translate that response into an explicit expression of faith in Christ.
Critiquing the threefold typology
Rowan Williams sees these paradigms as inadequate for the task of genuine inter-faith engagement and dialogue, for each in some way effectively renders dialogue null and void. He contends that pluralism allows for “no more than unquestioning co-existence”11 which is not to take the particularity of Christianity seriously, let alone other religious truth claims. Feminist theologian, Jeanine Hill Fletcher, contends that pluralism is problematic because “the distinctiveness of any given community is dissolved under the now universalized qualities of singular human fulfilment.”12 This stands at odds with the feminist commitment to genuine inclusivity.
Exclusivism shuts the conversation down at the outset, ruling out dialogue in principle. This is also a particularly dangerous position to hold as it easily lends itself to nationalism and ideological violence (such as the aforementioned Holocaust). Israel’s violent antagonists, Hamas, are essentially operating with an exclusivist paradigm - their founding Covenant of 36 articles calls for the liberation of Palestine by the complete destruction of Israel, and the establishment of a theocratic state based on Sharia law, by means of an unrestrained and unceasing Jihad (Holy War). It explicitly states that “Initiatives and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of Islamic Resistance Movement.” Christianity itself has a long, sordid, and bloodied history with exclusivism, the Crusades being a conspicuous case in point.
Inclusivism brushes shoulders with exclusivism in assuming the superiority of Christianity to make a claim for all that is good in other religious traditions. Hill Fletcher, points out that this is problematic because other religions are “judged on the basis of Christian characteristics and thus … unavoidably seen as deficient in comparison.”13 She contends that the current theological discourse “stands at an impasse of sameness and difference.”14
Where do we go from here?
“Hybrid-Identities” - Jeanine Hill Fletcher
Williams and Hill Fletcher both make attempts at other approaches to inter-faith dialogue. Employing insights from feminist theory, Hill Fletcher centres her argument on identity, contending that a person’s identity is not constructed on a single feature (such as their religion), but rather a multitude of features informed by their entire lived experience. She says that the multiplicity of these features of identity are mutually formative, and that to reduce one’s identity to one’s religion alone negates the complexity of both the human experience and religious expression (including among Christians - not all agree on what is a ‘Christian’). But perhaps more problematically than that, it serves to magnify the differences that divide those religions.
Instead, Hill Fletcher embraces the notion of “hybrid-identities.” It’s a simple argument, that essentially says “rather than measuring each other by our religious differences, let us look instead to those things that unite us.” She believes religious difference can be overcome by instead looking for commonality in the other features of a person’s identity, thus paving the way for solidarity between faiths. She concludes that
Constructing religions as communities of internal diversity allows for the partial identification of overlapping identities where a variety of identity features hold the potential for making connections.15
This is a highly commendable approach, not least because it is fairly pragmatic and person-centred, rather than being driven by lofty theories and theologies. Her insight for focussing on points of integration, and collaboration, rather than focussing on points of disintegration is certainly valuable. However, in terms of dialogue, Hill Fletcher hasn’t been able to escape the typologies. Her approach is actually a form of pluralism which attempts to solve the issue of religious diversity by essentially ignoring the religious dimension of human identity. This also belies a failure to take into account the fundamentally formative and complex way in which religious narratives shape our identities.
The Finality of Christ - Rowan Williams
In one sense, Williams also fails to escape the typologies. Whereas Hill Fletcher’s approach slides into pluralism, Williams’ approach is a thinly veiled form of inclusivism - but not without some significant nuance. Williams argument stems from the conviction that it is Christ Himself, in all His scandalous particularity, that enables, rather than disables genuine inter-faith dialogue.
Williams situates his argument in the lived experience of the early Church, exploring Jewish-Christian tensions as a cipher for reflection on the nature of Christ. He writes,
Israel’s resistance to absorption by the Church is a refusal to grant that the meanings of Israel are contained and subsumed in the Christian institution, and that refusal is essential for the truthfulness and faithfulness of the Church.16
This again is another facet of Christ’s particularity. Jesus Himself is Jewish, not Christian. Jesus did not create a new religion, nor did He depart from the “old” religion. He does however, interrupt and repristinate it. For the church to reject Israel’s story (as exclusivism does) is not to take seriously Christ’s Jewishness, it is in fact to reject Christ who plants himself not in human history in general, but in Jewish history in particular.
Christianity, cannot claim “ownership” over Israel’s worship (as inclusivism does). And unlike Hick, whose starting point for religious meaning is human experience, Williams holds fast to God’s apocalyptic incarnation in Christ as the beginning and end of religious meaning; the buck stops with Jesus, He is the be-all and end-all of truth.
In His divine freedom Jesus “enacts a judgement on tribalized and self-protecting religion, on the confusion between faith and ideology.”17 Attempts to categorize Christ (positing that this or that tribe is the only ‘right’ one, which is typically an abuse of power) is to misunderstand Christ. Here we see a Barthian influence with the insistence on God’s freedom (and ‘alienness’ as Williams puts it) in salvation; God is free to save all, and equally free to save just some (although I would argue that the evidence of God’s character revealed in Christ favours the former).
Similarly, Williams insists that the freedom of God and the recognition of our inability to contain God “becomes transforming for human beings and human communities in their readiness…for the loss of the God who is defined as belonging to us and our interests”18, in other words, Christ’s finality is not a possession of the Church with which to claim superiority over and above other religious meanings. This leads Williams to his main proposition that Jesus “is presented as the revelation of God: as God’s question, no more, no less.”19 So rather than Christ’s finality closing down inter-faith dialogue, Christ’s refusal to enter into boundary making, opens up a space that enables Christianity to be questioned by other faiths, in the same way that God questions us in Jesus Christ.
Again, in light of this, the question Christians should ask themselves is not “What is the truth?”, but “Who holds the truth?” - the answer is not the Church, it is Jesus.
Shoah is the Hebrew term for “catastrophe” - it refers specifically to what the English speaking world calls the Holocaust.
Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God’s Love, Douglas A. Campbell (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020), p693.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard (Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974), p80.
Rowan Williams, ‘The Finality of Christ’, in On Christian Theology: Challenges in Contemporary Theology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), p95.
Williams, p95.
Williams, p95.
Paul Hedges and Alan Race, eds., Christian Approaches to Other Faiths (Norwich: SCM Press, 2013), p18.
Karl Rahner, Karl Rahner in Dialogue: Conversations and Interviews, 1965-1982, ed. Paul Imhof, Hubert Biallowons, and Harvey D. Egan (New York: Crossroad, 1986), p207.
Williams, p95.
Jeannine Hill Fletcher, ‘Shifting Identity: The Contribution of Feminist Thought to Theologies of Religious Pluralism’, in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion Vol. 19, Issue 2 (2003), p9.
Hill Fletcher, p9.
Hill Fletcher, p10.
Hill Fletcher, p20.
Williams, p102-3.
Williams, p104.
Williams, p104.
Williams, p105.
Loved reading this - super helpful and clear. I especially loved this paragraph:
‘So rather than Christ’s finality closing down inter-faith dialogue, Christ’s refusal to enter into boundary making, opens up a space that enables Christianity to be questioned by other faiths, in the same way that God questions us in Jesus Christ.’
It encompasses so much that I feel! Thanks for sharing 👏🏼
Great piece! I feel like my spirit within is applauding. A great reminder and re-calibration to remember it's not about the church, or the bible or anything but Jesus.