INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE VIS-À-VIS FAITH IN CHRIST
Dr. Ishanand Vempeny
Part IV
III. OUR WAY OF ENTERING INTO DIALOGUE
A little more than a decade ago I was attending a
seminar on Christian Fundamentalism in Manila, Philippines. I had the
opportunity of meeting various groups of fundamentalists including those with
military names like the Navigators of the Lord, Crusaders for World Conquest,
etc. For the seminar, we had invited the representatives from some five groups
for a panel discussion. All of them propounded the ideal that only those who
have been baptized through the Holy Spirit and have had the experience of
having been born again could attain eternal salvation. According to them not
only the Non-Christians but also the Christians of the Main Line Churches who
did not receive the baptism of the spirit will go to eternal hell. When I asked
them whether they believed that the Christian God is a God of love, two of them
with many familiar and unfamiliar Biblical quotations tried to prove to me that
He is Love Itself. One spoke about God’s unconditional love quoting a number of
biblical verses and said that any sin is forgiven by God, provided that we go
to Him in repentance.
I told them bluntly that in spite of
their quotations, the God whom they believed in is very much like the devil I
had read about in the Bible. In spite of the uproar, shouting, “blasphemy,
blasphemy!”, I managed to put in the following words, when slowly silence was being restored:
Please listen to me. You say that God created, as an
expression of His love, the whole of humanity within the universe. But this God
watches daily more than one and a half
billion Christians of the Main Line Churches move towards eternal damnation
day-in and day-out. Similarly he watches with no particular concern or interest
more than a billion Chinese, a billion Muslims and some 800 millions Hindus
move towards eternal hell ‘where the fire never gets extinguished and where the
worms die not’. He is not a loving person if he does not do anything to stop
this horror. He is sadistically cruel to watch the eternal torture and pain of
his creatures when he could stop this horror by his supreme power. Certainly he
is totally unwise to create and preside over such a horrible creation. The
attributes of sadistic cruelty, the supreme power unwilling to help the hapless
tortured billions, and unwise and loveless decisions, and so on, belong to my
concept of the devil.
The basis of Christian faith is the experience of God
as love (1 Jn. 4: 8 & 16), as an unconditionally loving Father (Lk. 15),
and all humans as brothers and sisters (Mt. 23:8 and 9). We called this
experience of various degrees of intensity and depth Abba Experience and we affirmed that it is the basis of the KG
ideal. This is the reason why the Church insists that our approach to the
Non-Christians should be with respect, openness and love.
Here an important point has to be made
very briefly. One of the aspects of our faith commitment is our faith in the
uniqueness of Christ for our Salvation[1]. We shall not get into the various NT texts
and their interpretations according to which salvation is only through Christ: “I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE”
(Jn. 14:6). “For of all the names in the world given to men, this is the only
one by which we can be saved” (AA 4:12). “For there is only one God, and there
is only one mediator between God and mankind, himself a man, Christ Jesus who
gave himself as ransom for them all” (1 Tim. 2: 5-6). How can we find some sort
of openness in these kinds of absolutistic statement?
It is far beyond the scope of this paper
to answer this question somewhat satisfactorily. We shall make briefly a few
points which could lead one to some meaningful answers. The first point is that
we should read these apparently exclusivistic texts in the context of
inclusivistic ones. We have given above considerable amount of space for this
latter type of texts. Often theologians try to answer this question taking
recourse to what they call ‘Logos-theology’ of the Apostolic Fathers. Here the
inclusivistic aspect of Christ’s name, namely the ‘Cosmic Christ’, is taken up[2].
Some theologians consider these exclusive texts in terms of ‘Love-language’ of
legitimate ‘exaggeration’ rather than ‘the Science-language’ of precision and accuracy.
Non-Christian Scriptures in the Dialogal Context
After
contextual involvement when the liberation theologians read the Bible they saw it
in a new light. These theologians took seriously the socio-economic context. For
us in India Religious Pluralism is another challenging contextual reality. This
context leads us to biblical texts which are dialogue friendly. We can also
make use of the non-Christian scriptures to get in touch with the dialogue
friendly texts and texts that promote WF ideals.
One of the Rigvedic text very often quoted by the
Christians as well as the Hindus is the following: Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti (=Truth is one but sages interpret diversely,
Rg. 1:164:46) cfr. also Ekam santam
bahudha kalpayanti (=Though truth is one, it is diversely imagined, Rg.
10:1l4:5). Since Hinduism is very much a dialoging religion the non-Hindus can
find many such texts without laboriously looking for them. Islam however is
usually considered not as a dialogue friendly religion. But once some
initiatives were taken up for Christian-Muslim dialogue especially in the West,
people began to point out various Quranic texts which are open to other
religions. One of such texts is found in Quran 29:46: “Our God and your God is
One; and it is to Whom we bow”. Another Quranic verse which is often quoted in
the dialogal context is the following: “To each among you have prescribed a Law
and an Open Way
Inter-Religious Dialogue and
Nation Building
In the Chennai allocution
(1986) Pope John Paul II said that for creating a better world we need
inter-religious dialogue which proceeds from the “internal drive of charity”. A little more than a decade back a Christian priest
invited me to inaugurate a bridge on the river Manimala to help the pilgrims to
reach Shabarimala through a short-cut. In the building of this bridge contributions
in money and hard labour were made by Hindus, Muslims and Christians. On the
inauguration day as on the days of the common works, women from all the three
religions cooked food together and served it to all the participants.
A crying need of our country is the creation of an
inter-religious front to oppose all pervading corruption. The so-called people
who seem to be advocating the value of dharma
do not seem to do much effectively to oppose adharma – in this case the adharma
of corruption. This adharma is very
powerful. But if all the religions in India bring their resources together they
can effectively oppose the adharma of
corruption. But unfortunately for us in India there are rivalries among
religions and are divided among themselves.
There could be many other areas for dialogal cooperation.
Education and medical care for the poor, finding employment for the unemployed,
establishing whom for the aged, etc. are very much in need of inter-religious
collaboration. But it is far beyond the scope of this paper to describe
dialogal action in many such sectors. Indeed, dialogue in terms of Jnana (inter-religious research,
seminars, etc.), karma (dialogal
action in various fields) and bhakti (inter-religious
prayer, celebrations of festival) is very much in keeping with the Indian Ethos
and it can our country more and more united and powerful. Jai Hind.
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