All the world?s religions can profane the name of God. After 11 September, this is a concern not only for theologians, but for the world. Giving the Tablet Open Day lecture last week, the Belgian Jesuit Jacques Dupuis, professor at the Gregorian University in Rome, developed his theory that God has one plan for all humanity. The lecture will be published in The Tablet in three instalments.

THE THEOLOGY of religions is a burning topic today. The events which took place in New York and Washington on 11 September and which have provoked a universal trauma around the world make the issue even more pressing. Religious and political leaders have wisely insisted that terrorism should not be identified with the religion of Islam. The fact remains, however, that in this case as in many instances through history, religion tends to become ideology and is used in pursuit of cruel and inhuman designs. Holy wars, it is said, are being fought in the name of God, and the men who perpetrate deeds of terrorism which create thousands of innocent victims are considered holy martyrs.

The world seems unable to maintain peace between peoples, and the religions which ought to be a factor conducive to universal peace seem often to be used to foster conflicts and wars. Hans K?ng once wrote: There can be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. There can be no peace among the religions without dialogue between the religions. There can be no dialogue between the religions without research into theological foundations.

An open and constructive theology of the religions of the world is a pressing need if we wish to foster an interreligious dialogue conducive to universal peace. It cannot be denied that Christianity has often through the centuries entertained a very negative appraisal of other religions, which in turn led to very prejudicial or even destructive attitudes. This is not the place to recall in detail this contentious past, of which however we need to be aware if we wish to evaluate honestly the events with which we are confronted today. The questions to be asked are: which new theological evaluation of the other religions must we entertain and promote today? And which concrete attitudes towards their followers must we ourselves put into practice and foster among others?

The recent doctrinal authority of the Church has insistently stressed the need and importance of interreligious dialogue as part of the Church?s evangelising mission. In his encyclical letter Redemptoris Missio (1990) John Paul II wrote: Dialogue does not originate from tactical concerns or self-interest, but is an activity with its own guiding principles, requirements and dignity. It is demanded by deep respect for everything that has been brought about in human beings by the Spirit who blows where he wills. Through dialogue the Church seeks to uncover the ?seeds of the Word?, a ?ray of that Truth which enlightens everyone?; these are found in individuals and in the religious traditions of humankind (n.56).

More recently, in the apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineunte at the beginning of the third millennium, the Pope wrote of the great challenge of interreligious dialogue, and added: In the climate of increased cultural and religious pluralism which is expected to mark the society of the new millennium, it is obvious that this dialogue will be specially important in establishing a sure basis for peace and warding off the dread spectre of those wars of religion which have so often bloodied human history. The name of the one God must become increasingly what it is: a name of peace and a summons to peace (n.55).

To what extent is true encounter and dialogue between the religions already a reality in the multi-religious world in which we are living? One may not overlook the difficulties of different kinds that the practice of dialogue must overcome. It is enough to remember the crimes against humankind which the twentieth century has known. Often, the religious traditions were involved in the conflicts. It has been suggested that the last century has been the most cruel in human history.

A purification of the memory ? and the memories ? is required from all sides, if we wish to reach a renewed mutual attitude between the religious traditions and enjoy a genuine encounter. But purification of memories is not easily achieved. Peoples and religious groups cannot be asked simply to forget what they have suffered at the hands of the other religious traditions, including Christianity, if not by way of the extermination of populations, often at least by the destruction of their cultural and religious patrimony. To forget would amount to betrayal. The personal identity of a human group is built on the foundation of a historical past which cannot in any way be cancelled, even if we should desire to cancel it. But memory can be healed and purified by a common determination to initiate new and constructive mutual relations, built on dialogue, collaboration, and a true encounter.

It is in view of such mutual and general healing of memories that in his apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente Pope John Paul proposed for the jubilee year 2000 an elaborate programme of asking and granting pardon. The Pope mentions explicitly, among other sins to be confessed by Christians and by the Church, the acquiescence, especially in some centuries, in intolerant and even violent methods in the service of truth. In the solemn celebration of repentance which took place in St Peter?s basilica in Rome on the first Sunday of Lent during the jubilee year, it fell to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to recognise publicly and to ask pardon for the fact that church people also, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes had recourse to methods contrary to the Gospel, on the pretext of defending truth. These discreet words hide many cruel and inhuman practices to which the Church?s authority has had recourse. Purification of memories is required inside and outside the Church.

But, however important the purification of memories may be, it does not by itself suffice. A purification of theological language and thinking is also needed. Besides the often hostile attitudes maintained in the past towards people belonging to other religious traditions, we should recall the traditionally negative evaluations of their patrimony, cultural and religious, which have lasted through the centuries. The Christian theological evaluation of other religions has been traditionally negative and derogatory. The claim to be the only true religion has been expressed ideologically in the axiom, Outside the Church, no salvation. The Church was considered the only ark of salvation, outside of which people were irremediably lost. That such an axiom, understood in the most rigid manner, remained for centuries the official doctrine of the Church, is truly a matter of shame for which we need to ask pardon from peoples and from God.

The theological terminology used even today by many Christian preachers and theologians retains traces of ways of speaking about the others which are clearly pejorative. There is still talk about pagans, even about infidels or non-believers. Infidels to whom or to what, it can be asked. The very term non-Christians ought to be considered offensive. What would we think if the others were to consider us and call us non-Hindus or non-Buddhists? People must be named on the basis of the self-comprehension which they have of themselves, not of some foreign prejudicial estimation.

The pluri-ethnic, pluri-cultural and pluri-religious world of the present time requires, from all sides, a qualitative leap, proportionate to the situation, if we wish to enjoy positive and open mutual relations characterised by dialogue and collaboration between the peoples, the cultures and the religions of the world: in a word, we must proceed through encounter rather than through the confrontation of the past. Nothing less than a true conversion of persons and religious groups will suffice to bring about peace between the religions of the world, without which, as has been recalled above, there can be no peace between peoples.

What then is meant by this mutual conversion? First of all it requires a true sym-pathy or em-pathy, which will help us to understand the others as they understand themselves, not as we, often due to tenacious traditional prejudices, think that we know who they are. What is required is a welcome, without restriction, of the others in their difference, in their irreducible identity.

The challenge, but at the same time the grace, of interreligious dialogue consists in this welcome for the others in their difference. Interpersonal encounter takes place necessarily between persons who are different, and a richness of communion is built on the mutual complementarity between persons. The same thing holds true for religions: unity does not mean uniformity, nor does communion mean conformism. The grace of dialogue between religions consists in the possibility of a mutual enrichment.

History at a glance: three perspectives
Let us recall rapidly the different perspectives which through the centuries have marked the Christian theological evaluation of other religions. A first perspective, which lasted for more than 10 centuries, consisted in asking whether salvation in Jesus Christ was possible for people who did not profess faith in him and were not members of the Church. To this question a negative answer was given through the axiom Outside the Church, no salvation, till such time as the discovery of the New World (1492) forced theologians to devise theories according to which explicit faith in Jesus Christ and church membership were no longer a conditio sine qua non for salvation. An implicit faith, contained for instance in the sincere following of the personal conscience in the circumstances of each individual?s life, could suffice.

This partially positive answer to the question of the possibility of salvation for outsiders remained common doctrine till the decades that preceded the Second Vatican Council: it became part of the doctrine of the Council of Trent. Only shortly before the Second Vatican Council did some theologians adopt a second and more open perspective. Going beyond a purely individual consideration of the possibility of salvation for individuals, they now spoke of positive values to be found not merely in the religious life of persons outside the Church but in the religious traditions to which those persons belonged.

This, however, could be and was understood in two vastly different ways. For some (Jean Dani?lou, Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar) such values were natural endowments of human nature which enabled people to reach a valid natural knowledge of God that by itself was incapable of leading to salvation; for others, on the contrary (Karl Rahner is here the great protagonist), those values were in fact supernatural gifts of God, elements of truth and of grace inserted by God?s gracious initiative into the various religious traditions of the world and conducive to human salvation.

As is well known, the Second Vatican Council adopted various expressions used by the earliest Christian tradition with regard to Greek philosophy and Asian wisdom, and applied them to the religious traditions. The council thus spoke of the seeds of the Word, of a ray of that Truth which enlightens everyone, found in the religions, but without stating explicitly which precise meaning it meant to attribute to these expressions. The council did not commit itself to stating that the other religions can be means or ways of salvation for their followers. Its open attitude notwithstanding, it left the question of the theological significance of the religions finally unanswered.

The third perspective, which is that of my new book Christianity and the Religions of the World: from confrontation to encounter and its predecessor, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, is thus a recent post-conciliar development. Theologians today no longer simply ask whether salvation is possible for individuals outside the Church; nor whether positive values, either natural or even supernatural, can be found in the religious traditions. They ask whether Christian and Catholic theology can affirm that the religious traditions have in the eternal plan of God for humankind a positive significance and are for their followers ways, means and channels of salvation willed and devised by God for their followers. This is the question of the meaning, in God?s own mind, of the religious pluralism in which we find ourselves in the present world; religious pluralism that exists not simply de facto, but in principle.

Let us note in passing that the declaration Dominus Iesus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its introduction (n.4), fails to make an essential distinction. It rejects any theological theory which supports religious pluralism as existing in principle. Such a position it considers doctrinal relativism. The Church?s constant missionary proclamation, the introduction says, is endangered today by relativistic theories which seek to justify religious pluralism, not only de facto but also de iure (or in principle). According to the document, the truths which are considered superseded by such theories include the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as universal saviour.

The declaration is, of course, right to reject any theory that religious pluralism exists in principle which is founded on the rejection of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as universal saviour. It is wrong, however, in seeming to imply that any theological theory supporting religious pluralism in principle must be based on the denial of what is in fact the very core of the Christian faith. There is no lack of theologians today who seek to combine and hold together, even if in a fruitful tension, their unimpaired faith in Jesus Christ as universal saviour of humankind, on the one hand, and, on the other, a positive, salvific significance of the other religious traditions of the world for their followers, in accordance to the eternal plan of God for humanity. This is the challenge which faces the theology of religions today, and represents the core of the third perspective recently opened up after the Second Vatican Council.

(To be continued)

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