FOUR WAYS TO HAVE A CONVERSATION

Jonah 3:10-4:11, John 14:1-7

 

[Since spoken communication differs from written, some of the grammar and syntax of this transcript may seem awkward in written form. To keep integrity with the spirit of the original delivery, the transcript seeks to stay close to the exact words spoken.]

Blaise Pascal once said, "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

The Most Reverend George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, acknowledging that Christians are no less guilty of this tendency, said at a church convention in 1997: "We have lobbed verses of Scripture, like hand grenades, into the camps of others, convinced we only have truth."

Let me say something that is perhaps obvious if we spend just a little bit of time reading the newspaper in a given week: religion can serve as just one more incendiary device in the hands of human beings to use for the cause of extremism, nationalism and various other forms of self-assertion. It is true that each religious tradition is guilty of inspiring some of its followers to violence and terrorism. This situation has led some to the ironic conclusion that "the truth" is killing us. Indeed, some of the so-called new atheists, like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, have made a tidy living on the claim that we'd be better off without religion.

I will not be dealing with that question today. Rather, the question I'd like to reflect with you upon today is this: how do we, as Christians, have a healthy conversation with those who practice faith differently--those practitioners of other religious traditions who also claim to describe the truth about ultimate reality?

This is a rather urgent question for our time, given that we live in a world of ever-deadlier and more accessible technologies with which to kill each other. If we are to survive as a species, we need to figure out how to have this conversation.

And, to make clear the question here--how do we as Christians approach that conversation? I think we need to begin with the heart of the matter, and with the real challenge for us as Christians. If you heard the text from John 14 today, you heard something that seems a stumbling block to the conversation. A sort of scandal to our modern, multicultural sensibilities. Because ours is a tradition that seems to be making an exclusive claim on the truth: salvation comes only through Jesus Christ. Jesus himself claims to be "The way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) What do we make of this radical claim about the Truth, with a capital "T", in light of other truth claims, in other religions?

Today, I'm going to suggest four different approaches to that conversation. And before we delve into the meat of this, let me say that I'm using you as something of a crowd of guinea pigs this morning, since this sermon came out of a class I took this spring for my Doctor of Ministry program, a class called "Engaging the narratives of other religions." I want to share with you through this sermon some of my learnings from that experience. And I realize that this will be a somewhat more academic and "teachy" sermon--so hope you can hang with me for it. I've also provided for you an outline for the sermon; I hope it'll help if you get lost along the way.

Let me say too that these four approaches are meant to spur your own thinking. Today, I will not tell you where I stand, and which of these models most closely fits my belief. But I would be more than delighted if this sermon inspires us in further conversation about the topic. I'll certainly be around during fellowship hour, happy to tell you where I stand on the question, and I hope at some point we might create an Adult Education event around this topic.

OK, so let's get to it.

The first model I want to talk about is called exclusivism. Simply put, one might say this model for interfaith conversation takes the words of John 14 very seriously: Jesus is THE way, the truth and the life. No one comes to God but through God's revelation in Jesus Christ.

There are some very extreme versions of this school of thought out there, and we could easily dismiss it as something of a caricature--perhaps most notorious and popular would be the kind of theology one might hear from Pat Robertson's 700 Club, or in the preaching of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. Such a view would hold up Christianity itself as the true religion, and unless you hew to their version of belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you ain't gettin' to heaven.

But there's another way of looking at this exclusive claim Christianity makes about truth that I think is much more compelling. Karl Barth is a theologian who popularized a version of this school of thought in the mid 20th century. Surprisingly, he begins by saying that Christianity does not represent "true religion," or the true religion. Because, religion is a human enterprise. As such, we're bound to get it wrong. We're never going to get fully God's revelation in Jesus, we're never going to be able to fully or adequately express or embody that truth. We will never come up with a perfect means to express the full mystery of this truth. But that doesn't mean that God hasn't revealed the truth in Jesus; you see, there's a distinction between God's revelation in Jesus, and our apprehension of it. But Christianity is unique because it bears witness to that truth, and the only way we ever get close to getting it right in any way is through God's action, through the Holy Spirit's work among us.

Later in his life, Barth did say that there is "light" in other religions, that Christ's light can be reflected in other religious traditions--but it's still Christ's light, which is necessary for salvation. It's a very Christ centered way of looking at the truth.

Now the advantage of this way of thinking is that it takes seriously what Christianity says it is--a witness to unique revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Even though it doesn't possess or even fully understand that truth, it bears witness to it. It's clear that what makes Christianity what it is, is an exclusive claim that what happened in Jesus is the revelation of divine Truth with a capital T.

So, think about it: if Christianity is going to make a claim on your life--is indeed going to ask you to take up your cross and follow--don't you think you ought to believe that what has claimed you is really THE truth? Here's another way to put it: if you really believe that God's revelation in Jesus is just one choice in a boutique of religious truths, is it really going to change your life?

And as far as how this enables a conversation, the advantage might be that it is a way of "getting real" with what we believe as Christians--not hiding it. This is where I stand--in a passionate belief about the unique truth that is revealed in the gospel. I respect others' truth claims, but this is where I stand. It's then that we can have a real conversation.

Of course, the disadvantage here is that it doesn't leave much room for us to imagine that truth might be found in other traditions, and can tend to paint Christians with the brush of chauvinism. Why can't divine truth be revealed via other religious paths?

Which leads us to the second model for engaging the narrative of another religious traditions. This model we will call inclusivism.

This way of thinking about other religious traditions is really an expansion of that idea of Karl Barth's I mentioned earlier: that Christ's light is reflected within other religious traditions, but it is Christ's light, of which we find evidence in those who practice faith differently.

Here's a way to think about it: why would God limit God's mode of communication only to those who hear the specific message of Christian faith? Why would God use only Christians to accomplish God's mission in the world? Is God not free to choose non-Christians as a way to express the gospel, and accomplish the ends of the Kingdom? Why could God not use a Buddhist teaching to advance the gospel, or a Muslim spiritual practice to promote the Kingdom? This view holds that there is grace in other religious traditions; we can find the cross of Christ, though not called that, in a variety of places, embedded in other religions.

This view attempts to avoid religious chauvinism by being humble about where we might find the truth--an admission that we don't have a unique corner on the market; it doesn't belong to us.

Jonah is such a wonderful book for interfaith dialogue, because it weighs against the kind of thinking that God is only on our team, only present in our faith, among our people. As Louise explained a moment ago, part of the plot has to do with Jonah wanting God to crush the enemies of the Hebrew people, the Ninevites. He gets all ticked off when they actually obey the prophecy God asked Jonah to preach. Basically, this story is saying that God is not just the God of the Hebrew people; God is capable of using other people to accomplish God's ends. God's truth does not only belong to the Hebrew people--even the Ninevites, the arch-enemies of the People of God, have access to it; God's truth and grace can be found among them too.

One of the most well-known proponents of this school of thought is Karl Rahner, who made famous the phrase, "Anonymous Christians." His assertion was that there are those practicing other traditions who are "anonymous Christians," practicing in the way of Christ without being aware of it.

Of course, the advantage of this approach is that it's very kind--it's not denying that there's truth in your religious tradition, and that Christianity has a corner on the market in truth. But the understanding is that it's still the truth of which I speak in my own religious tradition--I'm just finding it disguised within your tradition. And indeed, there are likely people who do not wish to be anonymous, nor do they wish to be Christian.

The third approach to interfaith conversation seeks to respond to this apparent weakness. Whereas the first two models I've spoken about really maintain that all truth, in one form or another, ultimately finds its place under the banner of Christ. In this third model, which we'll call Pluralism, we liberate ourselves from this exclusivistic notion that salvation is to be attained through Jesus alone. It claims that we ought not make value judgments about one religious path being necessarily more right than another. Think about it: because of the vicissitudes of time and circumstance, I grew up a Christian. How is it that this places me in a unique position to know, or bear witness to, THE truth? Because I'm Christian, my religion is the right way? What gives me a right to any exclusive claim to the truth? Indeed, is it not more rational to admit that there are other traditions out there with equally valid ways toward the truth? Is it not more reasonable to say that there may be only one Truth, but each religious tradition has equal access to it?

The clearest metaphor to describe this model is that of the mountain: there are many paths up the mountain, but we're all on the same mountain, and each path is leading us to the top. And the moutain itself looks different depending on where you are, which path you're on. But they are all leading in the same direction, and if we could all meet at the top, we would all fully see that.

John Hick, the theologian most associated with this position, puts it this way:
"I suggest that [salvation]"--and by that, he means the salvation of which all traditions are really speaking in attempting to portray ultimate reality--"is the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to a new orientation centerd in the divine reality."¹

What he's saying is that all of us practicing these differing forms of religiosity are really talking about the same thing, just using different languages and metaphors. We're all aiming at the top of the mountain, and each is a different way to get there. And no one religion has the definitive means to get there, or to describe the mountain top.

Now, this is a very appealing position, especially for those of us who are children of the enlightenment who want to base their faith on a rational foundation and take a kind view of their neighbors in other religious traditions, as our faith calls us to do. But those who are critics of this position point out what seems to be a very obvious logical fallacy. Because this way of thinking first is saying that no one religious metaphor is completely "right" or unique in conveying the truth--for example, Jesus is not the only way, but is simply one way to get to God. Jesus is a metaphor among other metaphors, and the reality is that no one set of symbols and metaphors is better than any other. But those who critique this way of thinking say that it is asserting its own system of language and metaphor as the predominant way of understanding truth. Without saying so, this model is in reality asserting as the predominant metaphor the "mountain with many paths."

If there is a truth out there that each tradition is trying to get at--that in itself is a concept about "THE truth." And if all religions are talking about this truth in their own way, this understanding is itself a universal assertion about what really is true. Those who critique this way of thinking say that pluralists are doing the very thing they are criticizing, and are therefore unconsciously chauvinistic in their approach. To say all religions have equal access to "THE truth" is itself a truth-claim, a universal one. You see what I'm saying? The critique here is that folk who think this way, in attempting to avoid arrogance, are unaware of their own arrogance.

So, I said that there are four ways to have a conversation. There's one more model for this conversation that seeks to respond to the weakness of the previous ones I've been describing. This model we will call particularism. It's a newer concept for thinking about interfaith dialogue, a more recent entry in the race.

So how is it different from these other models? This model is very subtle and complicated--but perhaps to put it at its simplest, allow me to use a somewhat clunky metaphor. If you were to say that religions are like fruit, the first model might assert that this fruit, Christianity, is an Apple, which is really the only real and true fruit. The others seem to be fruit, but to really experience fruit, you need an Apple. The second model, inclusivism, is basically saying: yours looks like an orange, but inside it's really an Apple; we find that flavor, the real flavor of fruit, is distinctly there, inside of your orange. Now, the third model, pluralism, might say--hey, it's all fruit. It all tastes good, and is trying to do the same thing; all nutritious, and no one fruit is better than the others, because they are all aiming at what "real" fruit is about. They are all valid approaches to being fruit.

But now, this fourth model is saying something different. It is saying that each religion, each fruit, is fundamentally different. An apple is not an orange. You cannot really compare them on the same basis. They are different, and we need to appreciate the differences between them if we are to have a conversation about religious truth.

This model for interfaith dialogue begins with the idea that even the goals that each religious system holds for its adherents are different; the concept of salvation is different for different religions. A Buddhist is not trying to get into heaven; indeed, for a Buddhist, to attempt to get into heaven is a form of suffering. For him, the goal is to give up that desire, and to realize that I have no self that is separate from all other causes and effects; it's when I wake up to that reality, and realize I'm one with all that is--only then do I attain liberation.

You see, each religion is fundamentally different, even with respect to what that religion is trying to attain. And if we realize this, we can learn most from each other if we treat each other and honor each other as different. It also means that I as a Christian don't need to stop being a Christian, and thinking Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, because that passionate faith has liberated me. Christianity requires me to espouse that passionate belief if it is to accomplish in me what it holds out as its aim, it's goal. To get there, I have to be passionately committed to the truth of Jesus Christ.

But that doesn't mean I can't observe and learn from what a Buddhist, or a Hindu or a Muslim has attained through his or her religion, and to respect that real human transformation is taking place there, albeit in a very different way. It's from this point of view that we can have a real, authentic conversation about truth, whose ultimate mystery I also will admit is mysterious, for now "we look through a glass darkly." But this is where I stand, though I can learn from where you stand. It's actually more difficult to have a conversation if I'm trying to be like you, or find what is mine in what is yours.

Well, perhaps this is a good place to end. I hope you've hung in there with me, and I hope these descriptions have been helpful to you in your thinking about this subject, in thinking about how to approach this conversation. But perhaps the most important thing is to remember this: it's a conversation. And I believe that the real conversation that takes place not between scholars or theologians; the most important conversation takes place between ordinary people who are trying to practice their faith. Ordinary people bearing witness to what faith means to them.

All this to say...we can only have a conversation, by having a conversation. By beginning. So this is what I encourage you to do sometime this week, or this month: have a conversation. Find someone who practices faith differently from you, and have a conversation with them. Ask them what their faith means to their life, to their sense of meaning and destiny. And if it seems appropriate and loving, bear witness to your own faith, and what it means to you and your life.

The only way to have a conversation is...to have a conversation. To begin. I encourage you, all of us, to do just that. Have a conversation. Begin.

May it be so. Amen.

¹John Hick, Rainbow of Faiths. 1995, Westminster John Knox Press, p. 106. Later, Hick simply referred to "the divine reality" as simply "Reality."

A summary of four models for approaching a conversation with other religious traditions.

July 4, 2010

The Reverend Jeffrey A. Vamos

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