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Problems of Religious Diversity
Problems of Religious Diversity by Paul Griffiths Blackwell, 2001 240 pp.; $28.95 
The Depth of the Riches
The Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends by S. Mark Heim Eerdmans, 2001 352 pp.; $28.00 |
Religious pluralism is anything but new. More than three centuries ago, John Bunyan wondered why such a small proportion of the planet had access to the Christian gospel: "Could I think that so many ten thousands in so many Countreys and Kingdoms, should be without the knowledge of the right way to Heaven?"
Indeed, 1,800 years ago the church was confronted by as much religious diversity as exists in a major metropolis today, and its first theologians worked hard to relate Jesus to Greco-Roman religion and philosophy. In the second and third centuries, Irenaeus and the Greek apologists (Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria) developed theologies of history and revelation that understood God to be at work in non-Christian traditions and Christ, the logos, to be teaching and saving souls outside of Israel and the church.
During the first millennium, however, most Christians were convinced that extra ecclesiam nulla salus—outside the church there is no salvation. As Cyprian (d. 258) put it, "You cannot have God for your Father if you don't have the Church for your mother." Cyprian could say this because he shared the prevailing presumption that the gospel had been promulgated everywhere and that everyone had the opportunity to accept it. Even Augustine (354-430), who knew some African tribes had not yet heard, generally restricted salvation to the church: he believed that God had foreseen that those Africans would not accept Christ if He were offered to them.
In the second millennium, attitudes began to change. Abelard (1079-1142) spoke of pagan saints such as Job, Noah, and Enoch. Pope Gregory VII (d. 1085) conceded that Muslims who obey the Qur'an might find salvation in the bosom of Abraham, and St. Francis (1181-1226) referred to Muslim "brothers." Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) introduced "implicit faith" and the "baptism of desire" for those who have not heard but would have embraced the gospel. Dante's Divina Commedia (c. 1314) places Avicenna, Averroes, and Saladin in Limbo, along with Greek and Roman sages and heroes from antiquity. Some Anabaptists (16th century) posited an interfaith church of spiritual Semites with three covenants: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim.
The discovery of the New World and its teeming millions of unevangelized souls stimulated new thinking about how non-Christians could be saved—by special illumination at the point of death, for example, or by evangelism after death. On these and other grounds, the likes of 17th-century Reformed divine Richard Baxter allowed for some outside the church to be saved. By the 19th century, Pius IX had redefined extra ecclesiam nulla salus to refer only to those culpably outside of the church. And yet many Christians—a majority, probably—continued to believe that adherents of other religions were doomed to damnation unless they came to explicit faith in Christ.
Encountering Religious Pluralism
Encountering Religious Pluralism: The Challenge to Christian Faith and Mission by Harold Netland InterVarsity, 2001 360 pp.; $19.99 
Beyond the Impasse
Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions by Amos Yong Baker Academic, 2003 192 pp.; $13.99 |
For much of the 20th century, inheriting this ambivalent tradition, Christian thinking about the religions was dominated by the question of salvation: can non-Christians be saved? Vatican II (1962-65) took Pius IX's logic a step further to say that the religions contain seeds of the Word and "may sometimes be taken as leading the way (paedagogia) to the true God and as a preparation for the Gospel."
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