In the End – Which God? Questions on the Future of Interfaith Relations – Part 2

The Problem with Pluralism

In her Gifford Lectures of 2009 Prof Diana Eck spoke of the present time as “the Age of Pluralism”, implicitly contrasting it with the exclusivism of much of the 19^th century, and the inclusiveness of many theologians and missiologists of the 20^th. She writes, “To be a pluralist involves commitment to maintaining a public space where we can all encounter one another”. That is, indeed, the admirable inspiration of all proponents of a “global ethic” (eg Hans Küng) and of fuller mutual understanding among people of all faiths. But is that charmed circle of mutual understanding to be the final resting-place of humankind? Can it represent the telos, the goal of creation? I do not believe that it can. There must be a deeper unity, a meeting together in that mysterious telos which is also a Person. ²

How might that happen? It is here that we can, I believe, be helped by a now largely neglected area of theological exploration, popular in the mid and late 20^th century, and known variously as “inculturation” and “indigenization”. To give an example from India, this involves expressing the Christian faith (theologically, liturgically and socially) in terms and symbols drawn from Hindu, Muslim, Dalit and tribal traditions. It can also express (and indeed has done so) the converse process of Hinduism being conveyed in terms familiar to Christian theology, for example by Mahatma Gandhi, who gave the title The Gospel of Selfless Action to his commentary on the Bhagavadgita. But that process is only the preliminary of the real task – the shared exploration of the Truth (satya) which Christians know as God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and the shared experience of that Truth. That Truth – working not only in word, symbol and worship, but in justice, peace and the right use of the environment, and above all in love – points towards the advent of what Tennyson described as

The one, far off, divine event

to which the whole creation moves. ³

Jesus’ word for that event, as translated into Greek by the writer of Matthew’s gospel – is simply telos. And the verb the evangelists use not merely for the achievement of that event but also for the struggle to achieve it, is teleioun, which in various contexts occurs seven times in the Gospels.

These considerations give us some indication of the theological work which needs to be done at the “high” level of interfaith dialogue, the level at which participants seek to find, experience, and describe some form of transcendent koinonia. ⁴ But at the level where most people live – in city or country communities, some multifaith and others not – Christians who take their faith seriously cannot avoid being “missional”, ⁵ lovingly sharing the Gospel (euaggelion), sharing koinonia, and carrying out acts of disinterested service. To evangelize (euaggelizesthai) means communicating the good news of Jesus not only by telling it but by living it: and it is a determinative component of authentic Christian life. Pluralism, at its very best – and it is a very important best – can only be provisional. It points beyond itself, not to the imposition of any single system, but to the telos, the culmination of that teleiosis ⁶ which is the process towards the completion of God’s plan for the world and its peoples. Pluralism is by definition divided. Teleiosis marks the coming together of the divided strands of pluralism.

What can we affirm of God’s purpose for people of other faith?

This is a presumptuous question, and we need to listen to what people of other faith themselves believe, practise and hope for, as they look to the future of their tradition. From the biblical base we can affirm that God longs for all peoples to share fully in God’s love, forgiveness, and life. Christians will interpret the Judaeo-Christian tradition in the light of Jesus’ outreach to, and appreciation of people of other faith, and also in the light of the Church’s extension of his koinonia to the gentiles, notably through the work of Peter and Paul. The great commission of Mt 28:19 shows that the Matthaean community, at least, understood that Jesus had explicitly entrusted the task of global evangelism to his disciples. ⁷ So does the “telos passage” of Mt 24:14.

But how does this specifically Christian vision of God’s purpose relate to the vision of people of other faith? Why should the life of this person Jesus of Nazareth have such cosmic relevance? How can Christians be justified in claiming that their tradition has something unique to offer the world? A convincing answer can lie only in the demonstration of the Christian experience – personal as well as communal - of forgiveness and new life “in Christ”, witnessed to in the New Testament and continually realised in the life of the Church. When Jesus is treated simply as an ethical teacher, or the founder of a tradition, or a great example of suffering love, he becomes simply one among many great leaders. The only verifiable proof of the effectiveness of Jesus in the fulfilment of God’s purpose is the reality of the “life in Christ” demonstrated by Christian individuals and Christian communities. The mission of the Church – even when carried out by a solitary witness - relies on an already existing koinonia and its demonstrated way of life; and on its loving yet disinterested invitation to “strangers” to share in this reconciling adventure. Christians do not demand that other people should submit to God’s purpose, as though it were a commodity of which they alone are guardians; but rather they invite those others to join them in exploring and furthering that purpose.

Mission as Reconciliation

Jn 20:21-2 speaks of God’s mission on earth – the missio Dei. God sends Christ, and Christ sends his followers – in the power of the Spirit - to work with God in the teleiosis of the divine purpose for the world, through proclaiming and enacting the good news of God’s reign. So Christians have set up communities and signs of the Kingdom throughout the world – in all nations and all cultures – until such time as God’s purpose is fulfilled, and the telos comes. In their Christian witnessing, Christians need to remember that God has gone before them, and has not been left without witnesses in any culture (Ac 14:17). Isaiah speaks of Cyrus as God’s shepherd (Is 44:28); and there is no reason to doubt that God has used the Buddha, Mohammed, Ramanuja, Guru Nanak and many others as instruments of love and justice, and of the movement towards the telos. Our witnessing – if it is to avoid aggression - must include a mutual sharing of stories and insights, in which Christians receive as well as giving. And while the Christian faith is a branch which springs from the stock of Israel (Rom 11:18), yet our obligation to witness extends to our Jewish sisters and brothers as well as to those of other faiths and of none: and it certainly extends to other Christians, in a loving process, not of proselytism but of mutual giving and receiving. ⁸ We must not fail in according to others the same freedom of witnessing which we claim for ourselves. ⁹

The carrying out of this task of witness does not mean that justice and peace will inevitably be established everywhere, or that the whole world will become Christian. But it does commit us to giving whole-hearted witness to all cultural groups (ethne). The ultimate outcome must include a transformed relationship, for which “reconciliation” (katallage) ¹⁰ is probably the best word, though it requires careful definition. Paul makes it clear in 2 Cor 5:18 that in Christ, God was reconciling the world (kosmos) to Godself. That is the basis from which Christians approach interfaith dialogue: through Christ’s ministry of bringing God and humankind together, human beings are reconciled with God. That understanding of God’s Christlike nature is the most important thing that Christians bring to dialogue, in a sharing (koinionia) of “life in Christ”. We are committed to God’s process of reconciling the world, the kosmos including the oikoumene, to Godself (2 Cor 5:18) in an act of cosmic katallage, the realisation of a new relationship between the followers of the world faiths which will one day clear the way for God to proclaim that the purpose of creation has been fulfilled - even in this complex area of interfaith relations.

And so there comes, not the last item of a chain of events (eschaton), but the “final person”, Christ, the eschatos, the Omega, but also the Logos, made plain at last to all nations (ethne); and Christ hands over the kingdom to God, the Father, the loving Parent, ¹¹ the Source of all being. And the Kingdom, God’s Reign, the new creation, is inaugurated. This is the vision of the telos as Christians see it. Followers of other faiths may see it differently. But the way to it can only be the way of non-violent, reconciling love.

Negatives: evil, suffering and failure

Many conservative Christians will object to this outline of God’s “eschatological” ¹² purpose, and say that it is a “soft” view, and fails to take account of those many biblical passages which are “hard” on other faiths, including those which speak of the Antichrist (eg 2 Thess 2:6) and of Armageddon (Rev 16:16). Some may even say that these apocalyptic events, centring on Jerusalem, are taking place before our very eyes, and that the countdown to the end has begun.

Here we need to distinguish between God’s purpose for humanity, and the things which might happen if God’s people fail in love, and so fail to be faithful to their “mission in Christ’s way” (Newbigin). ¹³ For the possibility of failure – even cosmic failure – is always there. Humanity has always had considerable ability to destroy itself and its environment; and since the achievement of nuclear fission its ability to do so rapidly and totally has been vastly increased. In a strange way, God has allowed the advent of the telos to be vulnerable to human sin. For in the area of the telos all cannot be sweetness and light. Against all human sin, injustice and violence stands the judgment of God: the dies irae cannot be disregarded. Human beings, unaided by God, are not capable of fulfilling God’s loving purpose for the earth; we are, sadly, capable of frustrating it.

But Christians must set their sights above that kind of failure. We recognise that there is a cosmic enemy – evil itself, the Evil One. And we are committed to fighting evil in whatever form it may present itself – pain, poverty, war, hunger, disease, injustice, destruction of the environment. “War against terror” is an ambiguous and often backfiring concept. But war against poverty, injustice and violence is a “holy war” – to use John Bunyan’s term - and we should not be afraid of using even military metaphors when we oppose such evil, protected by “the whole armour of God” (Eph 6). We affirm Christ’s promise that when the good news of God’s reign has been effectively proclaimed throughout the world as a witness to every culture, God’s purpose will have been fulfilled. This good news includes the message that God’s reign is already proleptically present – however imperfectly - in a koinonia which models God’s love and justice. And God’s purpose is that no one should perish, but that all should come to a change of heart (metanoia, 2 Pet 3:9). It is surely a sound instinct which has in recent decades led the Church away from millennial speculation based largely on the violent apocalyptic of Ecclesiastes, Daniel and Revelation. Chronological speculation, and attempts to interpret “signs of the times” have seldom proved fruitful. But the biblical concept of telos provides a firm grounding for an interfaith theology of hope.

Which God?

That brings us to the question of our title: “In the end – which God?” And the answer clearly is “There is only one God”. But there are many idols.

Since this is an article on interfaith relations written by a Christian, it obviously starts not merely from a monotheist position but from a specifically Christian one. It is an attempt to give the kind of explanation with which one might start an interfaith theological conversation – in anticipation of a comparable statement from one’s dialogue partner. Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the God of Abraham. ¹⁴ Hinduism has an underlying monotheism (advaita, visistadvaita and suddhadvaita), ¹⁵ though indeed within Hinduism the great variety of theistic and even atheistic traditions and their associated beliefs and rituals may sometimes obscure or even deny the underlying unity of God. Primal religions, with their multiplicity of sacred places and objects are familiar with the idea of an all-powerful spirit manifested in all of these. ¹⁶ Marxism and capitalism – both clearly faith-systems, if not obviously conforming to common definitions of religion - have their own idols, which are clearly not God. The earth is disfigured by the worship of false gods of power and greed, cruelty and violence, exploitative and promiscuous sexuality, which any self-respecting adherent of theism – or critical atheism! - will reject. There is certainly a problem about technically atheist faiths like Buddhism, Jainism, Soviet Marxism, and some forms of liberal humanism (including Richard Dawkins’ type of atheism), which assume a non-theological, ethical view of the future. One knows and respects people who cannot in honesty confess belief in God, yet whose life and love and service demonstrate a commitment to something or someone, to truth and integrity, which lifts them far above the sordid plane of self-centredness, and indicates some kind of transcendence. ¹⁷ Such people challenge the limited view of God which Christians often project; and Christians, as a result, are sometimes tempted to “flatten” their theology, in the hope of finding an acceptable “lowest common denominator”. So what are the options?

In dialogue with people of other faith, and with agnostics and atheists, two aspects of the Christian understanding of God are liable to raise special difficulties – the doctrine of the Trinity, and the identity of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus

We need to address the perplexing fact that for many people (Christian and other) the concepts of God as creator, and of the Spirit raise comparatively few problems, ¹⁸ while the divinity of Christ can be a stumbling block and foolishness. ¹⁹ When Christians participate in interfaith dialogue, their participation will be insignificant if they are simply talking about Jesus. They need to be practising members of the Body of Christ, who can share Paul’s confession, “For to me, living is simply Christ” (emoi gar to zen Khristos). Real interfaith dialogue, on the Christian side, cannot be carried out except by those for whom the only worth-while life is “life in Christ”, the life of those who have found forgiveness and a new beginning through the life, suffering, ²⁰ death and resurrection of Jesus. We cannot regard Jesus simply as a “Christic factor”, or even “the Logos”, unless at the same time we affirm that the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us, and is alive today as our mediator, our companion on the road of teleiosis, our way of approach to the Father. ²¹ These things cannot be proved scientifically: they can only be lived and experienced. And we expect our partners in dialogue to take their own faith equally seriously.

So how are Christians - in interfaith dialogue, and as they move towards the telos – to combine their commitment to Christ with real openness to people of other faith? The answer to that question must be along lines something like the following. The God (and there is only one), who as telos is both goal and person, cannot be less than the God revealed in the life, teaching and above all the person of Jesus, who shares God’s nature. Yet God can be more than what many - perhaps most - Christians have as yet affirmed of Jesus. To give the most obvious example, Hindus and Buddhists (certainly in theory and very largely in practice) have gone considerably further than Jesus did, or than most mainline Christians have done in the renunciation of violence (ahimsa) - whether in war, or torture, or capital punishment, or the slaughter of animals for food or any other purpose. In addition, there are many present day ethical questions with which Jesus did not deal, like population-control, or the nature of faithful homosexual partnerships. For all such issues, Christians and the followers of other faiths must be open to learning from each other, and from the renewed and shared exegesis of their received scriptures and traditions, so being drawn together in God who is the Truth.

The Trinity

The Johannine tradition commits professing Christians to witnessing to the “life of the (Messianic) age” (aionios zoe) in which we come - through Christ, in the Spirit - to the Father, in what later theology has called the Trinitarian faith. We are open to the possibility that other people may reach that same destination ²² by ways that are different, for example through participation in the Abrahamic covenant linking Jews, Christians and Muslims, or through the Hindu experience of God as Saccidananda. ²³ We must be open to hearing what our friends in dialogue are saying. But for ourselves – as long as we continue to call ourselves Christian – we must start from the witness of the Bible and the Church, because we have no other starting-place.

The doctrine of the Trinity is a scandal for Jews and Muslims, and a major problem for all those outside the Church, and for many inside, who believe that it is neither experientially meaningful, intellectually coherent, nor even biblically warranted! Yet it can be expressed remarkably simply – as it was by Tertullian and Augustine for speakers of Latin; ²⁴ and, in modern times - for those with a Hindu cultural background - through Saccidananda. ²⁵ God is truth (satya), the Source of Being (sat). And God is revealed as intelligent thought (cit), which comes to expression in God’s Word (Logos) – a familiar concept to Hindus, Jews, Christians and Muslims. God chose that the Word should become flesh, take human form, in Jesus. And God, through Jesus, gives the Spirit, the bringer of joy (ananda) to humankind – God’s joyful, life-giving presence, by which human beings, in turn, become fully alive. ²⁶ Christians, then, are people who live the life “in Christ”, in the joy of the Spirit, and so in faith-union with the Trinity. ²⁷

Christians are familiar with the concept of “life in Christ”, associated especially with Jesus’ words as reported in John 17, and with Paul’s in 2 Cor 5:17. ²⁸ “Eternal life”, the life of the Messianic aeon (aionios zoe) is defined as “knowing You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (Jn 17:3). The bhakti marga (way of devotion) in Hinduism, and Sufism in Islam claim comparable experiences of transcendence. ²⁹ People of faith can look forward to a stage beyond “global ethics” – a stage which can be experienced proleptically even here and now, in that “realised eschatology” which is worship. ³⁰ For it is above all in worship, whether individual or corporate, that human beings can share, here and now, in a limited yet real experience of the telos.

Beyond Religion

Christians should not enter interfaith dialogue in order to be advocates of “the Christian religion”. The use of the term “religion” in its current “comparative” sense is indeed largely a western invention, for there was no such generic identity as “the Hindu religion” until western scholars used this expression as a convenient term to describe the great variety of traditions built around the belief in karma and the institution of caste. ³¹ “Religion” is a very unsatisfactory term, and I would follow theologians like Karl Barth ³² and Nicholas Lash ³³ in wanting to move away from regarding the Christian faith as “a religion” at all. ³⁴ I would hope that the time would come when all the partners in interfaith dialogue might realise that this is a term which westerners have imposed upon them, and so might abandon it.

Telos as completion – and as Person

Telos implies a preceding process of teleiosis, leading to the completion of God’s purpose. On the cross, Jesus said “It is completed” (tetelestai, Jn 19:30). What does such “completion” mean for interfaith dialogue? I do not believe that it implies any reduction or flattening of what the Reformers called “the person and work of Christ”. But it can certainly imply the completion of a process of development and enrichment for the whole creation. Might we even suggest that when, on the cross, Jesus said “It is finished” (tetelestai), he was saying it proleptically? “The great transaction” had been done. ³⁵ But its final consequences had to wait for the telos, when God could say, “It is completed” for the whole process of creation. In the familiar words of an earlier John Robinson as he sent the Pilgrim Fathers on their way in 1620, “The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth from his holy Word”. The Abrahamic tradition, shared by Jews, Christians and Muslims, has not been exhausted, and there is no reason why we should not share a single telos, as we share our beginning. Competing eschatologies could be transformed into a shared teleiosis. Neither has the Saccidananda of Hinduism been exhausted. Hindus, Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with the followers of the ancestral faiths of all “first peoples”, and the oppressed – Dalits – of all cultures should not be thought of as shopkeepers selling competing wares. A more worthy analogy is that of fellow gold-miners in an ongoing gold-rush, sharing each other’s tools, supplies - and treasure - as they search for gold and find it. For Christians that treasure is Christ, the one we trust (for trust is the basic meaning of faith and belief), the one who leads into the fulness of the Trinity. In the words of one of the most significant documents ever published by the World Council of Churches (Mission and Evangelism, 1982), “Every person [in the world] is entitled to hear the Good News”. ³⁶ And “Christians owe the message of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ to every person and every people”. ³⁷

This understanding is different from an inclusive, developmental “crown of Hinduism” approach. ³⁸ Rather, while standing within the Christian tradition, and consciously and gladly living “in Christ”, Christians are sharing equally with others in the exploration of the depth and height of the glory and love of God. Christians believe that the “end” (telos) comes when God’s purpose for the creation is fulfilled, and all human beings are reconciled with God; and they believe that God has already inaugurated that end by accepting the joy and pain and limitation of human life in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This Gospel of the good news of Jesus is indeed the only “unique” contribution which Christians can make to the life of the world. The final chapter of the story of humanity, as Christians know it, is the final Person, the eschatos, Christ the Omega, the entry point into the fullness of God. A strong clue – or rather promise – as to how this will happen is given in the Johannine words of Jesus (Jn 3:14-15 and 12:32), “When I am lifted up I will draw all people to myself”. Jesus did not and does not lift himself up. People like us lifted him up on the cross to die, and people like us are committed to lifting him up (in word and deed) so that the world may know who he really is, and be drawn to him, and to the loving God who gave him to the cosmos (Jn 3:16). This is the process of teleiosis, coming to wholeness in the telos.

The Way ahead: back to Indigenization!

What is the way ahead, if we wish to move beyond pluralism towards a shared theological understanding of the telos to which God is calling all people? I would argue that pluralism – good as it is in many ways – is only a temporary resting place, a kind of camping plateau for mountaineers, from which we need to go on further. And in order to do that we first need to return to our previous base camp, where we will find a surprising and nourishing cache of provisions for the journey, left there by earlier explorers. The 20^th century, in missiological circles, could be called the century of inculturation and indigenization; but these terms have – undeservedly - fallen on evil days. I have frequently referred to Indian Christian theologians of this tradition, who have perhaps been the most meticulous, imaginative and prolific recorders of the ascent so far; but there are many others, from different countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, and the Pacific. Their efforts have been criticized – not least by their own compatriots. “Indian Christian Theology”, using the vocabulary of Brahminical Hinduism, has been heavily criticized by Dalit theologians for using “the language of the oppressor”. The Liberation theology of Latin America has long since ceased to find favour in Rome. Yet the language of contextual indigenization is not merely – and was never intended to be exclusively – a tool of evangelism, a technique for explaining the Christian faith in a way that Hindus – and Muslims and Buddhists – could understand and “internalize”. It was, and is a way in which adherents of other faiths can join in discovering a common vocabulary and a shared treasury of speech in which people of all faith backgrounds can participate, both in listening and in speaking. This is a process which goes back to the days when Paul and later the evangelists used Greek and later Latin to proclaim the good news of the Aramaic-speaking Jesus. Today it is a fact of life that European languages – especially English – have become the medium for developing and expressing the views of the most widely read theological and missiological authors. But it is vital that the theology, hymnology and liturgy of people whose language is not European should be heard and understood. The thought of a telos where everyone spoke English – or Latin! – is appalling. Pentecost was not an occasion when everyone spoke Greek – or Aramaic. It was an occasion when everyone heard – and understood – the Gospel in their own language. The rich harvest of 20^th century “indigenous theology” (including liberation, Dalit and primal theology) is still to be gathered – to the greater glory of God. On the journey towards the telos it is a priceless resource which should not be neglected, as it has been in recent years.

From Pluralism to Homecoming

This article is not an attempt – relying on a partnership with adherents of other faiths – to promote the fashioning for ourselves and them of a new god (like the golden calf of Gen 32!) to whose features we each make our contributions. Rather it envisages an effort – along with dialogue partners - to understand, know and worship the one God whom our different traditions seek in their various ways to comprehend. It will be for us all a process not only of expanding our understanding but of purifying and correcting it, of renunciation as well as affirmation. There will be a renunciation of all forms of injustice and cruelty, an affirmation of love, forgiveness and reconciliation: and a sharing in worship – shared language, shared symbols, shared music, shared silence. This understanding differs from John D’Arcy May’s view (and that of Paul Knitter whom he quotes) that “Each tradition’s commitment would no longer be exclusively to its distinctive beliefs but through them to the common enterprise which would be ethical in character; correspondingly, conversion would not be from one tradition to another, but to the shared enterprise of finding common grounds for common causes”. ³⁹ The “religious task” is here seen as essential for (and preliminary to?) the ethical task. I would hold rather that the ethical task helps to provide the basis for the final interfaith task which is theological, accomplished through a praxis of love in which conversion (in either direction) is always a possibility, but where the participants are drawn, in love, to God who is both goal and Person.

Such an enterprise will not be content with interfaith relations which concentrate only on issues of justice, peace, and better understanding – essential though these are. It will go further. To mention only one example among others, it will in the Indian context resume the quest of pioneers like Brahmabandhab, Appasamy and Abhisshiktananda, as well as the leaders of Dalit and “first people” communities – to worship God “in the cave of the heart”, and together, in shared language, to proclaim

the indescribable God who meets them and communicates with them. It will be an openness to the teleiosis of God’s loving purpose – where nothing that is bad is preserved, and all that is good and God-given is affirmed.

It will be a homecoming, a journey from the far country where people of all faiths have lived a prodigal life, a homecoming shared by the God who in Jesus became one of us. ⁴⁰ The rest we must leave to God, for the goal, the telos, is – to reflect G. B. Caird’s language – the final Person (ho eschatos) the Christlike God, into whose life Christ, in his parousia, ⁴¹ leads his people. And there is only one God. In Rev 21:6, the “one who sits upon the throne” is identified with the telos, ⁴² for beyond the telos as “bringing to wholeness” ⁴³ is the telos as Person ⁴⁴ – God, whom Christians know as Father, Son and Spirit. The Father sends the Son in order that the cosmos may believe in the loving unity and rejoice in the uniting love of this missionary God – sending, sent, received and transforming. The final stage of that journey is reflected in Jacob’s prayer in Gen 28:220-22, expanded in the Scottish Paraphrases of 1781:

O spread thy covering wings around

Till all our wanderings cease,

And at our Father’s loved abode

Our souls arrive in peace. ⁴⁵

There is one God, whom Christians know as the Christ-like God, in whose image every human being, male and female, is made: the God who calls all people home.