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Inter-Religious Dialogue: Urgent Challenge and Theological Land-Mine

Adobe PDF Inter-Religious Dialogue.pdf (PDF, 72KB)

John A. Coleman S.J.

Abstract:

This paper was first presented as The Slattery Lecture, at the University of Notre Dame Australia, 5th June, 2007. Theories of religious pluralism and approaches to interreligious dialogue are discussed in relation to the current world-reality - which demands dialogue - and the as-yet-to-be adequately developed theology of interreligious dialogue. [Editor]

Introduction:

A document entitled "Our Mission and Inter-Religious Dialogue"of the 34th General Congregation of the Jesuits, held in 1995, begins with these words.; "If we imagine, as Ignatius did, the Trinity looking down on the earth as the third millennium of Christianity is about to unfold, what would we see? More than five billion human beings - some male, some female; some rich, many more poor; some yellow, some brown, some black, some white; some at peace, some at war; some Christian (1.95 billion), some Muslim (1 billion), some Hindu (777 million), some Buddhist (341 million), some of new religious movements (128 million), some of indigenous religions (99 million), some Jewish (14 million), some of no religion at all (1.1 billion). What meaning and what opportunity does this rich ethnic, cultural and religious pluralism that characterizes God's world today have for our lives and for our mission of evangelization? And how do we respond to the racism, cultural prejudice, religious fundamentalism and intolerance that mark so much of today's world"[1].(#1) The Jesuits here echo my long time colleague at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and distinguished scholar of Confucianism, Judith Berling in her book, written for theological educators and ordinary people in the parishes, Understanding Other Religious Worlds: A Guide for Inter-religious Education. Berling says "Learning other religions is a requirement for living as Christians in a religiously diverse world."[2]

I want to address, then, an issue which is truly pressing, urgent and of the very highest cultural/ political priority today (inter-religious dialogue) yet one which is, simultaneously, for theologians and Christians, a kind of dangerous mine-field. Numerous Catholic theologians, from Jacques Dupuis through Roger Haight, have been censored or silenced because of their attempts to break through the present theological impasse on inter-religious dialogue.[3] I want to begin by outlining the main points I will be developing and telegraph at the outset my two main conclusions: (1)"To be religious (or authentically Catholic) today", as the Jesuit document states it: "is to be inter-religious in the sense that a positive relationship with believers of other faiths is a requirement of a world of religious pluralism"; (2) No currently available theology of inter-religious dialogue (whether from popes, bishops or most theologians) is yet adequate! None really invites to a dialogue which is truly a two-sided dialogue and yet committed and theologically grounded. We need to shift from an over-arching theology of the religions based on soteriology, to a more modest, yet faithful, practice of dialogue by which we engage in conversation before broaching a full-blown theory of how God and the Spirit acts in history outside the visible church.

I will try to touch on four major points. (1) Inter-Religious dialogue is urgent, no luxury for the first world and an indispensable element for world peace and justice; (2) Three Stances in the church on dialogue: exclusivist, inclusivist, pluralist (3) Vatican II on Inter-Religious Dialogue: Jean Danielou versus Karl Rahner and its mirror in the post-Vatican II Church in John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger (especially as found in his 2000 Declaration as Prefect of the Congregation of Doctrine and Faith, Dominus Jesus); (4) How do we go forward now to a fruitful and urgent inter-religious dialogue? Throughout, however, I will, from time to time be referring to the Jesuit document on inter-religious dialogue as a kind of useful starting point for our inquiry.