by Felix Machado, Vol. 11

Rev. Maurice Ryan

Monsignor Machado’s elegant and erudite paper ‘Dealing with Difference: A Catholic Point of View’ constitutes an important corrective to the tendency towards the adoption of a false or facile irenicism in interfaith relations. The broadening of sympathies that interfaith activity encourages should not be allowed to degenerate into a blurring of the ideological differences between religions, which indeed can only result in conflict and the corrosion of interfaith ideals. As partners in dialogue we ignore the reality and richness of religious diversity at our peril.

But if ‘it is necessary to acknowledge differences and deal with them’, it also behoves us to recognise and respect those ideals and values that we share in common with the followers of other faiths. In the course of the last century a cosmic shift has taken place in interfaith affairs as evidenced in the impact of Vatican II, the outworkings of a series of Parliaments of the World’s Religions, the proliferation of global and local interfaith organisations and initiatives, radical rethinking regarding the role of missionary enterprise, possibilities for communal worship, and so on. One of the great issues of the moment in interfaith circles is whether the religions can agree on a set of common or shared values which would provide a sufficient degree of coherence to produce a ‘Global Ethic’. What lies behind this is the thought that even if we can’t (or cannot easily) agree on things theological, across the religions, we can perhaps find real common ground with regard to a generally agreed set of moral values and standards. After all, the historic religions, and indeed responsible humanists also, seem to espouse generally comparable ideals for the conduct of human affairs and relationships. Very much under the inspiration of the great Hans Kung, a great variety of organisations and interests are looking now at how this might be achieved as a basis for interfaith dialogue and development.

Ethical dialogue and agreement is one thing, of course; theological dialogue is something else. One recalls the reported comment of a Zen Buddhist abbot who remarked: ‘I get rather tired of people telling me that all the ways are the same. They are spectacularly not the same!’ And when we come down to some of the central theological concepts such as the personhood of God, the mystery of suffering, the means of grace, and the world to come, we can understand why there seems to be more mutual mileage in the ideal of the Global Ethic than in anything like theological convergence across the religions.

At the same time the Global Ethic ideal, in spite of its feast of possibilities, leaves one with a pang of hunger—and the tentative hope that, somewhere beyond the possibility of a sort of global moral solidarity, the ultimate dream of ‘theological alignment’ might be realised. Is it possible that, notwithstanding the many and complex issues of faith and doctrine seeking resolution, a key or clue to the advancement of theological dialogue could lie in the recognition that if the ethical dimension represents the ‘basic prose’ of religion, theology is its poetry, abounding in symbolism, metaphor, and the language of myth as it attempts to describe that which is ultimately indescribable? As poetry it represents an extraordinarily powerful vehicle for the expression of spiritual truth, but its findings are inevitably limited by the boundaries of human thought and language, as by diverse paths in different spiritual traditions it seeks an ultimate and universal goal. The challenge for theological dialogue is to recognise the limitations of all religious language and to move beyond the divisive constraints of theological literalism towards an appreciation of the power and majesty and truth of the poetry of faith within the religious experience of humankind. This may be the arena where the spiritual traditions ultimately have to come to terms with each other, discovering the possibilities for theological global understanding through mutual acceptance and appreciation of the poetic inheritance of the religions, by which we variously reach for Transcendence.

The two references that follow seem particularly pertinent to the idea that this viewpoint on the nature of theology could help the religions move towards fuller mutual understanding and symbiosis:

It is the very ineffability of God / Ultimate Reality that presents a basis for theological agreement across religions. All our theologies, from whatever religious tradition they emanate, are schematic, analogical attempts to describe the Indescribable. The great religious systems are all aspirational in trying to say something meaningful about what God (or Ultimate Reality) is like—in terms of fatherhood, creativity or life-force. If we can realise that fundamental area of commonality, then a new sense of openness and objectivity can inform our endeavours towards theological dialogue. (Dr Chris Arthur, In The Hall of Mirrors: Problems of Commitment in a Religiously Plural World, 1986)

We must recognise that, ultimately, all religions possess a provisional, interim character as ways and signs to help us in our pilgrimage to Ultimate Truth and Perfection. Theology . . . represents the struggle of faith seeking understanding . . . and any dialogue must wrestle with this task. By relating our respective visions of the Divine to each other we can discover a still greater splendour of divine life and grace. I am not advocating a single-minded and synthetic model of World Religion . . . . What I want is for each tradition (and especially my own) to break through its own particularity (as Paul Tillich put it). Indeed, Tillich is worth listening to here: In the depth of every living religion there is a point at which religion itself loses its importance, and that to which it points breaks through its particularity, elevating it to spiritual freedom and to a vision of the spiritual presence in other expressions of the ultimate meaning of human existence. (Dr Robert Runcie, Francis Younghusband Memorial Lecture, 1986)

The interfaith experience reinforces the sense that the Divine transcends human thought and language, that our theologies are all ‘provisional’, ‘interim’ attempts to express the Inexpressible, and therefore no religion (and certainly no Church!) can claim a monopoly of truth. It is this that offers the ultimate basis for accepting others’ religious legitimacy, while seeking sincerely to maintain one’s own. This is, I believe, what Christianity must grasp in the exciting experience of encounter with people of faith worldwide.