Christianity and Pluralism

Ron Dart, J.I. Packer

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781683592884
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematische Theologie & Ethik

Are the world's great religions ultimately all the same? Christianity and Pluralism is a collection of concise yet thoughtful essays by J. I. Packer and Ron Dart, interacting with and responding to the four traditional models used to answer the existence of multiple faiths (exclusive, inclusive, pluralist, and syncretist), but focusing particularly that form of syncretism which claims that all faiths find commonality through their mystical traditions. Written in response to key events in the history of the Anglican church, Packer and Dart's analysis gives us a perennially relevant model for how the church ought to respond to our own pluralistic culture with integrity and kindness—and how to uphold the distinctiveness of the gospel. Christians directly or indirectly engaging our pluralist world will find their ideas enriched by this short yet powerful book.

CHAPTER 1

CHRISTIANITY OR RELIGIOUS PLURALISM?

A Review of Mansions of the Spirit

Ron Dart

I call for a pluralism that allows each religious tradition to define its own nature and purposes and the role of religious elements within it.

—J. Cobb

The fact that we live in a global village means that we inhabit a world in which people of various faith communities mix and mingle. The “splendid isolation” (if it ever did exist) of the past few centuries has come to a close. This means that all the major and minor religions of the world (and all sorts of new ones) are faced with making sense of their truth claims in a multi-faith context. The appeal of Michael Ingham’s Mansions of the Spirit is the way he is keen and eager to face the hard questions of our ethos and not flinch from offering some difficult and challenging paths to hike. Mansions of the Spirit opens the reader to some new vistas that must be seen and sensitively responded to. Michael acknowledges that we live in a multi-faith and pluralistic context; who would deny such a reality? The response to this reality has come from a diversity of directions. The inter-faith movement, beginning with the Parliament of World’s Religions in 1893 and culminating with the successful 1993 Parliament, is discussed in some detail; many other inter-faith groups are, also, mentioned in passing. The multi-faith movement is a response to the obvious reality of religious pluralism, and it is a movement that Michael has some sympathy and interest in.

A significant segment of Mansions of the Spirit examines four models for inter-faith dialogue. The first three models (exclusive, inclusive, pluralist) are explored and explained, and the validity and limitation of each is discussed. It is difficult to know how Michael finally evaluates the fourth model (transcendent syncretism of the Primordial tradition), but this will be discussed later.

I think the church should welcome Mansions of the Spirit; it has forced the people of God to think more deeply and clearly about what they believe and why. There can be no shrinking from the fact that religious pluralism opens us up to some rather significant questions for the Christian community, and Mansions of the Spirit is one way of solving some of the pressing issues. I find, though, I must beg to differ with Michael’s position, and the trail he would have us trek. There are ten points I will, all too briefly, raise in this review; hopefully, these questions will nudge the issues raised in Mansions of the Spirit to a deeper level and enrich the meaning of dialogue.

First, Michael seems to think that we, as Western Christians in the latter half of the twentieth century, are facing “a new phenomenon.” The modern fact of pluralism, though, for the West is not new. In fact, Christianity was birthed and matured in the classical and late antique world; the Roman culture of the time was thick with pluralism and syncretism. The New Testament, postapostolic, and patristic writers swam in the waters of immense religious diversity and had to make sense of their faith within such a religious and philosophical context. The church, as it moved north from its early Mediterranean setting, constantly faced new and different cultures and religions. The period of European expansion that followed the Reformation meant that Christianity was once again exposed to other faith traditions. So, rather than assuming we live on the cusp of a new moment of history, it is much wiser to realize we have been here many times before. Déjà vu rather than chronological snobbery should be a more appropriate stance. In short, there are serious reasons for calling into question that this is a “new phenomenon” or “new context.”

Second, Michael is quick to highlight the strengths and limitations of the exclusive model. He, rightly so, points out how the exclusive approach can be used and has been used to justify some of the worst forms of cultural oppression. I don’t think many would disagree with Michael on this telling point. Michael further argues that the exclusivists tend to lack a certain sense of the historical nature of biblical texts and means to interpret them. Again, this might be true of some exclusivists. Michael, then, argues that the Council of Florence, the Lausanne Declaration, the Congress on World Mission, and the Essentials movement stand within the exclusive tribe; there is no doubt there is much truth in this, and the differences between these groups is ably and nimbly discussed by Michael. The fact that exclusivism can be found in other religious traditions is, also, acknowledged by Mansions of the Spirit. I can’t help but feeling, though, that Michael has caricatured exclusivism by presenting some of its worst faces. There is a sophisticated form of exclusivism that Michael has ignored. A good dose of Barth would have helped.

Third, Michael turns to the Primordial tradition of Schuon and Smith (with their notion of the transcendent unity of religions) as a reply to the failures of the exclusive, inclusive, and pluralist models, but it is difficult for the reader to know whether he accepts the lead of the Primordial tradition or whether its distinction between esoterics (mystics with the true insight) and exoterics (those who live within a historic tradition) must be scorned when day is done. There is little doubt that mystics, from various religious traditions, do not agree about the nature of the Ultimate, as much as the gurus of the Primordial tradition would like us to think. G. Parrinder’s Mysticism in the World’s Religions gives the lie to this perennial notion. So, if the “mystical path” in Eckhart, Mechtild, and Merton are suggestive but not definitive of a common essence, where are we then? Since the exclusive, inclusive, and pluralist models have their Achilles’ heels and blind spots, where do we go for insight?

Fourth, Michael, rightly so, is quick to point out that higher and lower criticism are crucial for any sane understanding of how to approach the Bible; most of the thoughtful would agree with this. The problem comes, though, when we begin the task of sorting through what are the words of Jesus and what are the words of the church. Michael tends to be rather hard on the exclusivists when they seem to ignore these issues, but the danger, of course, is that each clan picks the texts that suits their agenda and ignores or rationalizes away what doesn’t. History is replete with the game of textual Russian Roulette. The texts we chose to elevate often say more about our leanings than anything else. Surely Gadamer’s “Truth and Method,” critical theory, and the school of hermeneutical suspicion teach us as much.

Fifth, Michael, in various places, makes a distinction between theology (that has its limits) and mysticism that can give us clearer and cleaner insight. I find this distinction somewhat forced and rather artificial. As soon as the mystics or contemplatives speak (or don’t), theology is being done. It is much more honest to state that mystics are theologians and good theologians are mystics. The issue should not be between mystic and theologian, but what is the content or insight offered by the mystical theologian? The distinction Michael has made, of course, plays into the exoteric-theologian/esoteric-mystic approach, but I would suggest that such an either-or distinction is more reacting to a bad form of theology. Mystical theologians do differ on their view of the Ultimate; hence the issue is not so much opposing mystic and theologian as weighing what is communicated.

Sixth, Michael, in “Drawing the Circle Wider,” seems to be suggesting that there is this upward, evolutionary, and developmental process going on in the Bible and religious thinking. This sort of Hegelian dialectic can be refuted from the stubborn facts of history. The Bible has parochial-nationalist tendencies and more inclusivist leanings. It is not that one emerges and evolves from the other, though. The polyphonic nature of the Bible (and Western history and intellectual thought for that matter) highlights how many voices are often speaking at the same time; hence history can be seen more as a contest (agon) between varied and competing positions. We do not need to read the text as some incremental and upward arc into a sort of syncretistic or pluralist perspective. I think it can be argued that exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism, and varieties of syncretism have been at work at the same time throughout history. The Christian tradition, at its best, has been a blend of prophetic exclusivism and enlightened inclusivism, and these models have an ancient lineage.

Seventh, it is difficult to sort out where Michael finally is willing to plant his flag. He makes it clear that the exclusive, inclusive, and pluralist models won’t work. He seems to be pointing in chapters 8–10 to a sort of transcendent unity. If the mystical path, grounded openness, and drawing the circle wider mean anything, they seem to have something to do with pluralism (which Michael sees the difficulties with) and a sort of transcendent syncretism. The final chapters of Mansions of the Spirit, then, have a sort of unresolved tension and ambiguity about them. Is Michael, when day is done, genuflecting before the Primordial tradition? If not, is he doffing his cap to pluralism? Kung, Pannenberg, and Newbigin have surely warned him about the pitfalls of either a crude pluralism or a sophisticated pluralism. A sort of unresolved critical pluralism and transcendent syncretism leave the reader with a sense that this book needs more thought, and the author needs to get off the fence.

Eighth, Michael, in his discussion of the mystics, highlights how most of the mystics and good theologians talk about a “God beyond God” or “Wordless Godhead” or “Nameless Nothing” and many other names that suggest and point to the grand mystery of God. The Christian tradition has, of course, this approach; we call it the apophatic or negative way. The essence of such an approach is that no concept or image can exhaust the Divine; we, also, have the cataphatic and positive way. This is where the real dialogue begins. God is thick with mystery, and many of the mystics long for some sort of unio mystica with the Divine. The issue, though, is this: there are many intermediate forms between the Divine and the human; there are many mediums (gurus, sages, avatars, bodhisattvas) between God and humankind. Are they all equal and merely appropriate for different times and places, or is Christ, in fact, the fullness of the Godhead bodily? It would certainly be helpful if Michael had come much cleaner on this issue; the Christian tradition has in its long encounter and multiple contacts with other religions.

Ninth, I wonder why Michael has chosen the mystical path as his model for inter-faith dialogue; he could have chosen the prophetic or wisdom traditions or some sort of subtle blend of all three. I would think a blend of all three approaches rather than the mystical would have borne fuller fruit. It would have been interesting to see how a solid and radical prophetic approach would have taken Mansions of the Spirit in a different direction. Michael, for the most part, ends up with a rather predictable tract on a sort of mystical social liberalism; such a conclusion is very much a child of the humanistic wing of the Enlightenment.

Tenth, Mansions of the Spirit would have been much stronger if a solid and serious comparison/contrast between religious founders, texts, commentaries, or communities had been done. It is hard to know where Michael views Christianity in the world of major and minor religions. Is Jesus “God made man” so that all humanity can be lifted up and deified, or is Jesus a light of the Divine? If the former, then Mansions of the Spirit should state this and develop this argument in a fuller manner. If not, then Jesus as a son of God is merely on par with other avatars and bodhisattvas. Again, as in much of Mansions of the Spirit some clarity is called for rather than fence sitting.

In conclusion, I find that the three appendixes in Mansions of the Spirit clearly place this timely text within the Enlightenment-liberal establishment tradition; those who live, move, and have their being within this tradition will welcome, quite uncritically, the insights of Mansions of the Spirit. Those, though, who find the Statements of the Lambeth Conference on Other Religions, Küng’s Towards a Global Ethic, and Guidelines for Inter-Faith Dialogue of the Anglican Church of Canada as needing some healthy and robust criticism will long for something more substantive. As someone who has been taught and nurtured by the radical Anglo-Catholics, I find that Mansions of the Spirit lacks a rigorous mystical theology, a radical politics, and a high Christology-ecclesiology. I think, without such a full vision of what Christianity has been, is, and ever shall be, inter-faith dialogue will lack a certain depth and challenging honesty.

CHAPTER 2

THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE

A Discussion of Mansions of the Spirit

J. I. Packer

Michael Ingham, Bishop of New Westminster, is a nice man. We who form his diocese knew that before; now Mansions of the Spirit makes it plain to every reader.

Throughout this book, Bishop Michael comes across as a person of great goodwill who loves peace, who hates bigotry and violence of every kind, who abhors the fierce dogmatism that sets people at each other’s throats and the proud elitism that says some people do not matter, and who wants to see religion operating as a force for world peace rather than world war. To this end he aims to affirm all the world’s main religions and all those who practice them, and wants to see religion spread among the many whose very humanity is at risk for their current lack of it.

To be sure, there is one form of religion that is clearly anathema to him. He ascribes this repugnant form to what he calls “the conservative-evangelical-fundamentalist coalition” but which two millennia of history entitle us to describe as mainstream Christianity. This is the view that Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity incarnate, that personal discipleship to him is the only path of eternal life, and that making disciples of all the nations is the church’s unending primary task. Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and classical Protestantism share at least a nominal commitment to this belief, which world Anglicanism also shared till about fifty years ago. Bishop Michael does not understand it well and is unable to be fully respectful and temperate in what he says about it. But otherwise he is charmingly sympathetic and courteous to a fault toward all the positions of which he takes notice.

The sad burden of the present critique is that Bishop Michael’s niceness and passion to affirm people has led him to a position that in effect abolishes what Anglicans generally, indeed Christians generally, understand Christianity to be. Yet the niceness itself is a quality to appreciate, and the proper way to start is surely by celebrating the fact that Michael displays it so fully.

What, now, of his book? First let us note that its title, Mansions of the Spirit, is a phrase lifted from Robert Runcie, former Archbishop of Canterbury, who in a public lecture in 1993 declared that “dialogue can help us recognize that other faiths than our own are genuine mansions of the Spirit with many rooms to be discovered.… From the perspective of faith, different world religions can be seen as different gifts of the Spirit to humanity” (cited, p. 33). This in essence is the precise persuasion that Bishop Michael wants to share with us. It is significant that Michael sought an endorsement of his book both from Runcie himself and also from the Dalai Lama of Tibet; it is doubly significant that the Dalai Lama gave him one. Michael wishes to turn the Christian world mission into worldwide inter-faith dialogue in which no one changes their faith but all are enriched by coming to understand the faiths of others. The Dalai Lama’s comment expressed his approval of this.

Is Michael’s agenda new? Some readers will find it novel, particularly as coming from a bishop, but as Michael explains it has always been the program of the inter-faith movement that broke the surface with the 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions, and it has in fact been advocated from different quarters in the world of liberal Protestant thought since the 1920s at least. As Bishop Michael said in a newspaper interview at the time of his book’s release, there is little here that is new to Christian scholars: “All I have tried to do is crystallize a lot of academic work into readable form.”

The book has a subtitle, “The Gospel in a Multi-Faith World.” We should now note that both title, and subtitle, illustrate one of the strategies of which those in what Michael calls “the modernist-liberal-progressive coalition” constantly avail themselves, namely using historic Christian terms, drawn from the Bible, in an altered sense. This habit, though perhaps inevitable, creates problems. It encourages the users to feel closer to the authentic Christian heritage than they really ar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the New Edition
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Christianity or Religious Pluralism?: A Review of Mansions of the Spirit (Ron Dart)
• Chapter 2: The Way, the Truth, and the Life: A Discussion of Mansions of the Spirit (J. I. Packer)
• Chapter 3: Christ, the Church, and the Parliament of World Religions (Ron Dart)
• Appendix: The Enlightenment, the Liberal Establishment, and Religious Pluralism (Ron Dart)
• Recommended Reading