Are We Too Tolerant?

Perhaps the question should not be put. In our society tolerance is more than a virtue. It is an axiom, something taken as self-evident. It requires no demonstration. The one thing we cannot tolerate is intolerance.

This has some unfortunate consequences. We tolerate violent men and are rather hurt when the result is violence. We tolerate those who put the individual above the law and are disconcerted when we reap lawlessness. But we all insist on toleration.

The attitude carries over into the sphere of religion. We have learned so much about the intolerance of earlier generations, with their religious wars and the like, that we will have none of it. Let all religions flourish and let none of them interfere with the others. It is felt unwise, or even downright wrong, to seek converts. This is given names like “proselytizing.”

Being tolerant, we ought to tolerate proselytizing. But for some reason we don’t. Perhaps it comes under the heading “intolerance.” At any rate, it is usually held to lie outside the bounds of what is proper.

All this was brought to mind by the announcement of plans for the Congress on Evangelism in the Philippines last month. This followed other such congresses, in Berlin, in Singapore, and elsewhere. Clearly some Christians believe that evangelism is a continuing duty of the Church, and that it is well to give time and thought to it.

Others are not so sure. There has been a good deal of close and sympathetic study of the other religions of the world by Christian scholars. Some interesting similarities emerge.

It should not surprise us that most if not all religions have trouble with the formal and the devout. Man naturally finds it easier to make a solemn profession than to put that profession into practice, and all religions make their protest against declaring oneself an adherent but not getting on with the job. In many there is an emphatic avowal that if moral and ethical considerations are not given their proper place, nothing else matters much.

What is perhaps more surprising is that many of the topics dealt with in the world’s religious systems are much the same. There is, for example, a constant wrestling with the problem of free will and predestination. The Calvinist-Arminian debate has its equivalents in non-Christian religions. The point is important, and no religion seems to have worked out an understanding of it that satisfies everyone.

One of the great doctrines of the Christian faith is salvation by God’s free grace, and by God’s free grace alone. This is often regarded as distinctive, so that Christianity can be characterized as a religion of grace over against others as religions of works. There is something to be said for this, for works do have a way of creeping into most religions.

But we should be aware that among the Hindus there has been debate on this point. Ninian Smart points out that Ramanuja’s followers split up into two schools, the “Cat” and the “Monkey,” names given on account of the differing ways the two schools had of viewing the soul’s relationship to God. The mother monkey carries her baby about, but the baby has to hold on. Apart from this piece of self-help it will not get far. But the cat picks up the kitten by the scruff of the neck and carries it off quite independent of any ideas the kitten may have. The application to the doctrine of grace is obvious.

Smart finds a similar tension in Buddhism and in Islam. It is plain that the discussion of grace is the concern of many religions.

A problem all the religions must face is that of evil. The good that men do is no problem, but the evil is. And all the world’s great religions have something to say about evil and how men should react to it. So is it with transcendence and immanence. Is God far and away above us? Or is he close at hand? In the end it seems that we can do without neither thought, and the religions in their several ways affirm the duality.

These days we extend our study beyond the religious to agnostic humanism. The humanist may not recognize any God, but he does recognize his duty to his neighbor, which most religions see as the significant outworking of love for God. In his concern for the underprivileged and the unfortunate the humanist is often not far from the religious man, and sometimes indeed, he outdoes him in his strenuous efforts to right wrongs.

It is all to the good that in our day men of good will in the various religious systems of the world, and even outside them all, are making genuine efforts to understand and appreciate one another’s positions. We have had far too much narrow sectionalism, as people with imperfect understanding of the systems they have been condemning have engaged in bitter polemic. The injunction in Romans 12 that we must strive to live peaceably with all men demands something better than that.

Many are calling for more than a genuine understanding. They point out that as a confident secularism marches on, it is to the advantage of all religions to stress what they have in common and to unite against the common foe.

Some go farther still. They point out that since the foe is universal and very stubborn, and since the religions are basically concerned with many of the same issues, more than a temporary alliance could be sought. The idea is that we should try to find what is common to all the religions and thus form the basis for a universal faith, one religion compounded of the best elements in the great religions to which the vast majority of men owe their allegiance.

But this is something the Christian cannot concede. While it is true that the great religions have much in common, and while it is also true that we must tolerate rather than persecute, still we cannot deny what God has revealed.

Specifically, we cannot deny the incarnation or the atonement. If “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19), then the Christian simply cannot abandon this truth no matter how much he wishes to accommodate himself to non-Christians. It is the very reason for his existence as a Christian. This is not proud self-assertion but humble acceptance of what God has done.

Christians must insist, courteously but firmly, that it is no service to truth to keep quiet about it when it is uncomfortable. We have lost our understanding of what truth is unless we seek to bring others to see it for themselves.

LEON MORRIS

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