Religious Pluralism?
"He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus"
Recently Pope Francis went on a trip through several countries in Southeast Asia, though not without leaving controversy in his wake, unfortunately. The controversy emerged from a speech of his to a group of religiously diverse young people in Singapore on September 13th, 2024. Here is what the Pope said:
"One of the things that has impressed me most about the young people here is your capacity for interfaith dialogue. This is very important because if you start arguing, “My religion is more important than yours...,” or “Mine is the true one, yours is not true....,” where does this lead? Somebody answer. [A young person answers, “Destruction”.] That is correct. All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine. But God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children. “But my God is more important than yours!”. Is this true? There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian. Understood? Yet, interfaith dialogue among young people takes courage. The age of youth is the age of courage, but you can misuse this courage to do things that will not help you. Instead, you should have courage to move forward and to dialogue."
Understandably, given that these remarks came from the mouth of the person who is commonly believed to be the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, and the head of the world's largest Christian communion, these remarks engendered a great deal of controversy on the Internet and in Christian discourse in general. Even anecdotally, I saw this seep into real life last week when people at the RCIA class I have been assisting with were asking the priest with concern why Pope Francis was making statements like this.
We need to analyze this statement. Some people have been pointing to statements that Pope Francis made in the past which seem to say that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, and other such similar sentiments. For me, I do not think that this necessarily solves the issue that we see here. For me, I think it is entirely possible (whether it is orthodox or not is another question) to believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, and that all religions are paths to reach God. How? It's simple. Given that the Son is the universal Logos through which, and for which, all things on heaven and earth were created (Colossians 2:15-20), and which all of humanity partakes of, to some extent, the same Logos by virtue of our common creation. Ascending up to this divine / cosmic principle is the way to eternal life, for, as Jesus Himself says, He is the way, the truth and the life. It is entirely coherent to distinguish between an exoteric and esoteric dimension of religion, and to say that beyond the outer forms of normative Christianity, Sikhism, Islam, Hinduism, etc, that there is one and the same identical object, the Logos, who in history became the man Jesus Christ around 2,000 years ago.
It is not impossible to reconcile the statements of Pope Francis which say that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven with what I just laid out here. I say this because Pope Francis here gives me the building blocks for saying this in his own words. Let us look at his example of language. Languages are complex symbolic systems which, using the mouth and the throat, are able to encode and transmit information through the combination of different segments, sounds, articulations, etc. One and the same meaning can be conveyed through very different structural, grammatical and phonological means. Just to given an example:
My new car is red
Mein neues Auto ist rot
Ma nouvelle voiture est rouge
Watashi no atarashii kuruma wa akai (私の新しい車は赤い)
Here we have four different languages: English, German, French and Japanese. Though expressed in differing combinations of sounds, with differing morphology, gender systems, etc., fundamentally the differing complex systems of auditory symbols and associations that we call 'language' are expressing one and the same notion, i.e. that a car that I possess is of a red color. To one who does not know the meanings and grammar of a given language, it will sound like gibberish without meaning, but to the one who knows the structure, the words, and the meanings, suddenly the same idea is presented to the mind, with the auditory symbols in context leading everyone to one and the same notion.
It is my contention that Pope Francis is essentially saying the same thing about different religions, given how he rhetorically asks the audience whether it is right to say that 'my God is more important than yours', with the implied answer to this clearly being 'no', which is made even clear given that he goes on to say that there is one and the same God shared by the religions of the world, after which he goes on to present his idea of God being the one and the same object behind the various forms of the world religions.
My thoughts on this statement are very mixed, and more negative than positive. Obviously such notions are very much against the entirety of the orthodox Catholic tradition, and it is frankly scandalizing to hear Pope Francis say these things, especially to young people. This raises the question, of course, of what exactly Pope Francis should have said, and how religious dialogue is to proceed. Personally, I believe that religious pluralism is a non-starter for Christians, in the sense that other religions can be said to be equally valid or true. If I were to categorize myself, it would have to be more in the camp of religious inclusivism. I am firmly in agreement with Church Fathers such as St. Justin Martyr who believed that individuals such as Plato, Heraclitus, and others had been ‘Christians’ after a sense because they lived, as much as they could given the knowledge and means available to them, in conformity to the universal Logos:
We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; and among the barbarians, Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others whose actions and names we now decline to recount, because we know it would be tedious. So that even they who lived before Christ, and lived without reason, were wicked and hostile to Christ, and slew those who lived reasonably. But who, through the power of the Word, according to the will of God the Father and Lord of all, He was born of a virgin as a man, and was named Jesus, and was crucified, and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, an intelligent man will be able to comprehend from what has been already so largely said. And we, since the proof of this subject is less needful now, will pass for the present to the proof of those things which are urgent.
Having a view like this allows me generally to have a much more positive view of other religions, while ultimately knowing that these people need to convert in order to arrive at the fullness of truth and to the highest path to God. Not all religions are equal, and any religion other than Christianity is in its final sense a distorted path, or a man-made path. Maybe its symbolical ways of speaking or relating to deity hinder them, or maybe they have distorted the original revelations or true insights that a select few had come across over time, or perhaps they have diluted the purity of their natural knowledge of God with moral abominations such as human sacrifice, etc. Certainly such things can keep one from God.
I will readily admit that texts such as the Bhagavad Gita contain much truth, as do the teachings of Zoroaster, the insights of the Sufi mystics, the Hermetic corpus, and many other texts. In one sense this makes perfect sense, we live and share one and the same reality, and we are all gifted with the natural powers of reason which allow us to grasp the preambles of the faith. Throughout time and across the world, are we really to believe that no one every encountered God mystically apart from a small corner of the world in the Middle East? Personally, from my reading, I do not believe that this is true, even though my own research and spiritual experience has led me to believe that Christianity is fundamentally true in its basic claims and prophetic basis. We do posit the same God as do the other religions, and personally I believe that this is an uncontroversial claim, whether approached from the standpoint of reason, mysticism or Scripture. St. Paul assumes that the Jews had zeal for the true God, but not according to knowledge in Romans 10, while at the Areopagus in Acts 17, Paul is quite comfortable in quoting from non-Christian / non-Jewish writers such as Epimenides, Aratus and Cleanthes to make true statements about the nature of God. Some of the statements even refer to Zeus in their original context (Acts 17:28)! Using the repertoire of indigenous statements about the divine, Paul announces to them the identity of the Athenians' Unknown God, which is none other than the Holy Trinity. This is what effective evangelization looks like. The good and true is affirmed, while the Gospel of the Lord is proclaimed.
With such a view as this, we can have true dialogue, while also not merely reducing Christianity to just another 'language' in the world of faith and traditions. I do not want to deny a Muslim his previous experiences of the divine, but I want to acknowledge the positive things, and to lead him to something better. Indeed this has been my experience as a Catholic, I have not lost anything good in becoming Catholic, but have only received more good things. It will be the same for the Muslim, as it will be for those of other traditions. I believe that this is essentially the teaching of Nostra Aetate when interpreted in an orthodox fashion. The relevant section reads as follows:
The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.
In summary, Pope Francis' statement is certainly problematic from the perspective of historical Christian orthodoxy and tradition. The example of languages is not an appropriate one for Christians to use, because the association of given sounds and structures with given semantic content is, in the realm of linguistics, held to be completely arbitrary outside of a few specific instances which tend to be more iconic than symbolic (onomatopoeia). For the analogy to work, there would have to be one true language which all other languages approximate, but this is simply not true. An appropriate sort of religious inclusivism, which is in a sense taught by the Second Vatican Council in the document Nostra Aetate recognizes that the religions of the world contain many true and good things, and following the example of St. Paul in the Book of Acts, we should be ready to acknowledge and use such truths for the proclamation of Jesus Christ as the ultimate person signified behind the good and true within the other religions of the world. So in essence this is a question of emphasis, but it is a very important one. What Pope Francis appears to be saying is untenable, while the notion I am putting forward here has more of a historical pedigree among Christian thinkers, and is compatible with Christian revelation and tradition. Let us hope Pope Francis is saying this.
St. Peter pray for us
St. Pius X pray for us
Sources
Apostolic Journey to Singapore: Interreligious Meeting with Young People in the Catholic Junior College (13 September 2024): https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2024/september/documents/20240913-singapore-giovani.html
Nostra Aetate: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html
The First Apology by St. Justin Martyr:
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm