1. Can one be saved in any religion?

 There are two mistaken concepts of evangelization linked to the proclamation of Christ the Savior, the Kingdom of God and its values. Paul VI confronted the first of these errors in Evangelii Nuntiandi : he warns of the temptation to reduce the mission to a purely temporal and man-centered project, that overlooked spiritual and religious concerns and confined salvation to earthly human needs. The Christian message of liberation “would no longer have any originality and would easily be open to monopolization and manipulation by ideological systems and political parties”(32). This would compromise the Christian concept of salvation.

 The second erroneous concept is far more controversial. It could be called regno-centric (kingdom centered). The Church’s task is limited to promoting the Kingdom and its values. This concept is intended to promote dialogue between different peoples, cultures and religions. We are especially interested in the religious aspect. In this regard the Second Vatican Council was especially far-seeing. The declaration Nostra Aetate states that there are values in all religions which deserve the attention and respect of Christians. Their religious experiences and traditions contain true and good things which establish a contact with God. For this reason the Church is aware of the need to regard “with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men“ (2).

 John Paul II has frequently reiterated this idea. In his first encyclical, Redemptoris Hominis, he recalls that the Council had profound respect for the spiritual values of other religions; the Fathers of the Church saw in these values “so many reflections of a single truth” which give witness to the deepest aspirations of the human spirit. Although they follow different paths they are directed to the same goal: the search for God (cf. 11). Twenty years later in Redemptoris Missio he doesn’t hesitate to say: “interreligious dialogue is a part of the evangelizing mission of the Church.” This dialogue is not in opposition to the Missio ad Gentes, rather it leads to mutual knowledge and enrichment. One thing must be borne firmly in mind: salvation comes from Christ. Dialogue does not dispense one from evangelization, from proclaiming with confidence that Jesus Christ in the one Savior of the world and that the Church is the ordinary means of salvation (cf. 55). Behind these statements there is a thorny problem. John Paul II synthesizes this problem in a series of questions at the beginning of his missionary encyclical: “Is missionary work among non-Christians still relevant? Has it not been replaced by interreligious dialogue? … Does not respect for conscience and for freedom exclude all efforts at conversion? Is it not possible to attain salvation in any religion? Why then should there be missionary activity?” (4).

2. A sort of Copernican Revolution?

 In an attempt to answer these questions some theologians have created a Christian theology of religions that diverges from Church teaching. The point of departure for this theology is the universal salvific will of God: God wills that all men be saved and therefore has a plan of salvation which need not necessarily pass through Christ and his Church. With this in mind the new theology of religions would reject the  need to link salvation directly to Christ and his Church. Salvation would be primarily a work of God and since God’s plan of salvation is universal he would act indistinctively in all religions and would make them the normal means of salvation. This would involve a sort of Copernican Revolution: just as for centuries we believed that the sun revolved around the earth instead of the earth revolving around the sun – so after centuries of believing that Christ and the Church were at the center of salvation and that the other religions revolved around Christianity, we would be forced to believe that the center around which all religions – including Christianity – revolved was God himself. Carried to extremes and radicalized, this theology (called theocentric pluralism) could lead to the abandonment of Christianity’s assumption that it is “the one true religion.” Christianity would be just one more religion among many, and Christ would be just one more savior among many God had sent to earth. There would be many ways and paths that lead to God.

 This is a somewhat crude synthesis of a difficult and complex subject. The various theological tendencies and attempts at solving this problem cannot cover all the problems that arise in a discussion of the theology of religions or interreligious dialogue. In spite of theological progress, the Church’s documents of the Church regard other religious with a sense of condescension that graciously admits their human and spiritual values. The number of documents on this subject is ever increasing; they raise ever new questions which seem to have no answer. To what extent are these other religions means of salvation? What elements of “grace and truth” do they possess? (cf. AG 9). Is there a reciprocal complementarity? Is salvation possible outside the Church – or would it only be an exception? Is there some mystery of love greater than our own heart that includes those who adhere in different ways and different measures to the kingdom preached by Jesus? Does interreligious dialogue replace missionary activity or must there always be a direct proclamation of the Gospel always indispensable? There is no lack of interrogatives and they call into question the very apostolate of the mission and of missionaries. Those far-off people we called pagans and infidels in the past now possess a specific cultural and religious identity, they walk our streets and inhabit our cities. Their cultures and religions are bearers of ancient values, rich in fascinating symbols, worthy of our attention and our respect. We must respond to the Council’s invitation and enter into interreligious dialogue. But what kind of dialogue?

3. The Church is the Ordinary Means of Salvation

 Progress in ecclesiology has altered the meaning of the old expression “Outside the Church there is no salvation.” For a long time this sentence expressed the conviction that because of sin mankind was eternally damned. Only those who accepted the invitation and entered the Church through Baptism could hope to find salvation. In 1442 the Council of Florence in its profession of faith for union with the Coptic Church affirmed: “None of those who are outside the Catholic Church – not just pagans, but Jews, heretics and schismatics – will obtain eternal life, rather they will go into eternal fire … No one regardless of how much alms he may have given and even if he has shed his blood for the name of Christ, may be saved if he does not remain in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church” (DS 1351). This concept was derived not just from a partial and unilateral view of the Church but from the certainty that the Gospel and been preached to the whole world and therefore all those without faith had rejected the Word of God.

 The great explorations and discoveries, the increasing contact with other people, the encounter with other religions has gradually modified the context in which the above mentioned formula was first articulated. In the Second Vatican Council (and even earlier) Lumen Gentium laid the foundations for a richer discourse; a discourse that benefited from a mature reflection on the nature of the Church and the complexity and global nature of events. “Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience” (16). The Council reaffirms its conviction that the Holy Spirit “offers to every man the possibility of being associated with the paschal mystery” and that in the heart of every man “grace is working invisibly” (Gaudium et Spes, 22) and that the Church cannot feel itself alien to the working of God who wills that all men be saved.

  It is easy to see how dialogue with other religions could cause problems for the proclamation of Christ as the only savior of mankind. In an attempt to answer these problems the encyclical Redemptoris Missio reaffirms the traditional positions of post-conciliar ecclesiology: whatever sort of dialogue is taking place one cannot fail to proclaim that salvation comes from Christ and the Church is the ordinary means to that salvation. There are however many questions left unanswered. To what extent are these different religious traditions means of salvation? Are they means of salvation with or without Christ? with or without the Church? How can we recognize the signs of Christ’s presence in these traditions? What is the genuine and profound meaning of God’s revelation in the history of mankind? How can we understand and make sense of God’s plan “that all men be saved and that all men arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2,4)? These are troublesome but unavoidable questions – so much so that they have become the subject of the most lively theological research of our time. 

 The complicated relationship between proclamation and dialogue is defined with more precision in the document Dialogue and Proclamation issued by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples on May 19, 1991. Only five and a half months had passed since the publication of John Paul II’s missionary encyclical (December 7, 1990). In this document the two apparently contradictory concepts are framed in the complex reality of the Church’s mission of evangelization. Proclamation “is the communication of the Gospel message, the mystery of salvation realized by God for all in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit. It is an invitation to a commitment of faith in Jesus Christ and to entry through baptism into the community of believers which is the Church” (Dialogue and Proclamation 10). Dialogue is an integral part of the Church’s mission of evangelization but it is distinct from proclamation. Each has its own distinct purpose even though they are found together in the complex phenomenon of evangelization. 

 What is significant and somewhat new in Dialogue and Proclamation is that interreligious dialogue is based not just on a positive appreciation of other religious traditions but on Patristic texts that present a Christian theology of history. According to this theology, God reveals himself to mankind through a long series of events which culminate in the incarnation of the Son of God. John Paul II goes further: he explicitly recognizes the presence of the Holy Spirit working not just in the lives of members of other religions but in the whole world “without limitations of space or time” (cf. Redemptoris Missio 28-29). The Pope talks about a “mystery of unity” based on the common origin and destiny of mankind in God, the universal salvation of Christ Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit in all things.

 Dialogue and Proclamation goes on to say: “From this mystery of unity it follows that all men and women who are saved share, though differently, in the same mystery of salvation in Jesus Christ through his Spirit. Christians know this through their faith, while others remain unaware that Jesus Christ is the source of their salvation. The mystery of salvation reaches out to them, in a way known to God, through the invisible action of the Spirit of Christ. Concretely, it will be in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions and by following the dictates of their conscience that the members of other religions respond positively to God's invitation and receive salvation in Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognize or acknowledge him as their savior” (29).

 All of this is possible because the Church, the universal sacrament of salvation, the sign and instrument of grace in the hands of a saving God, preserves a mysterious and complex relationship with the Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus. The Church is a sacrament in which the Kingdom of God is already mysteriously present; members of other religious traditions are “mysteriously oriented towards the Church.” Not only that! Since the Kingdom of God is a much larger reality in history than the Church, the members of other traditions already “share in some way the reality signified by the Kingdom” (35). We have gone beyond the concept that there is no salvation outside the Church, even though salvation is still mysteriously linked to the Church. Since the fullness of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ was entrusted to the Church salvation finds its completion and perfection in the Church.

4. Jesus the Lord is the One Savior of the World

 This somewhat cursory reading of the principal post-conciliar documents on interreligious dialogue and missionary proclamation should be reviewed in the light of the declaration Dominus Jesus issued by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith on June 6, 2000. The declaration was ratified by John Paul II and affirms that Jesus Christ is the only savior of the world and that “ the fullness of Christ's salvific mystery belongs also to the Church, inseparably united to her Lord” (16). In this new exposition of Catholic doctrine on the unicity and salvific universality of the mystery of Christ, the declaration mentions “some fundamental questions remain open to further development” but also refutes “certain erroneous and ambiguous theories “ that endanger the Church's constant missionary proclamation and seek to justify religious pluralism (cf. 3-4).

 There is no need to recall that this declaration met with negative reactions in the Jewish, Muslim and Protestant communities. They feared that positions adopted at Vatican II were being reversed. But for anyone familiar with the Magisterium of the Catholic Church there is nothing especially new here. According to Cardinal Ratzinger “it is an invitation to all Christians to recognize once more that Jesus Christ is the Lord” at a time when “faith in Christ runs the risk of going flat.” The true theme of this document is “Jesus is Lord” and not as some would have it the end of commitment to ecumenism and interreligious dialogue.

 The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith begins with the affirmation “Jesus is the Lord” – a title which proclaims that all the promises of the Old Testament come to pass in Jesus Christ; this is a defining characteristic of Christian faith. The document goes on to affirm that “It is erroneous the opinion that holds that various religions represent paths complementary to the Church and lead to salvation.” In a recent statement (February 26, 2001) Cardinal Ratzinger reaffirms that only the Church is the path of salvation and “there is no foundation in Catholic theology for affirming that other religions can lead to salvation; these other religions contain lacunae, insufficiencies and errors regarding the fundamental truths of God, man and the world.”

5. The Missionary Proclamation

 It is inevitable that these documents of the Magisterium, as well as the thought and study of so many theologians who endeavor to open new windows for dialogue and prayer with other religions have created tension in the Church and especially in the missionary Church. While it is true that the Church has the duty to clarify the theological bases that assure the integrity of the deposit of faith, missionaries who work in close contact with the great religious traditions of the East must be cautious and pragmatic in pointing out those elements of other religions which are compatible with the Christian understanding of salvation.

 Be that as it may it is an eminently missionary task to proclaim that God, the Creator and Lord of the Universe, intervened personally in human history in a wondrous way in the person and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord of history and the savior of mankind. In Jesus who became man, was crucified and raised from the dead for us, the Kingdom of God was inaugurated. This kingdom cannot simply be defined by its efficacy and results, but rather by its very nature: it acts as a channel of God’s love in Christ Jesus, it transforms and renews human life. This is beautiful and great news. The man who seeks God tirelessly need not depend on miracles – he can depend on what is essential. The heart of the proclamation is and will always remain a person: Jesus of Nazareth, through whom God has revealed his love for man and has inaugurated his Kingdom.

 The missionary’s proclamation is never something personal, is it a proclamation of his own ideas or plans; he is called to communicate faithfully a living and precious tradition. “Having been sent and evangelized, the Church herself sends out evangelizers. She puts on their lips the saving Word, she explains to them the message of which she herself is the depositary, she gives them the mandate which she herself has received and she sends them out to preach. To preach not their own selves or their personal ideas,[43] but a Gospel of which neither she nor they are the absolute masters and owners, to dispose of it as they wish, but a Gospel of which they are the ministers, in order to pass it on with complete fidelity” (EN 15; RM 45).

 The proclamation of Christ the Savior cannot be reduced to some sort of purely human wisdom – how to live a good life. “In our heavily secularized world a ‘gradual secularization of salvation’ has taken place, so that people strive for the good of man, but man who is truncated, reduced to his merely horizontal dimension. We know, however, that Jesus came to bring integral salvation, one which embraces the whole person and all mankind, and opens up the wondrous prospect of divine filiation” (RM 11).

 The proclamation of Christ the Savior is a call to look at the history of mankind and the world with new eyes; to discover in people and events Christ as “God with us.” Through the event of Jesus Christ, God enters human history and produces a missionary impulse which is aware of the circumstances in which the hearers of the proclamation live. The salvation God offers man in Jesus Christ is consequently linked to human life, linked to specific faith ideas and expectations. The history of man becomes the history of God who saves.

 Proclamation is an irreplaceable ministry. It is not an optional accessory to evangelization but an obligation for the entire Church. “This message is indeed necessary. It is unique. It cannot be replaced … It is a question of people's salvation” (EN 5). One cannot simply presume that the Church’s evangelizing mission includes a proclamation of Christ the Savior in everything it says and does. The proclamation must be explicit, “clear and unequivocal” (EN 22). Every person has the right to hear the Good News. Saint Paul writes to the Christians of Corinth , “Woe to me if I did not preach the Gospel!” (1 Co 9, 16). “We cannot be silent” say Peter and John to the embarrassment of the leaders of Israel.

 This revelation of God’s merciful plan would fall on deaf ears and barren ground if it did not correspond to man’s expectations. ”Jesus is the expected of the nations and their savior“ (Ad Gentes 8). It would be difficult if not impossible to preach salvation if it did not correspond to and reveal the meaning of man’s inmost aspirations. “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes 22).

 In commenting this passage of Gaudium et Spes John Paul II recalls that Christ is the perfect man, and by taking on our nature he has restored to the sons of Adam their likeness to God; he has raised them up to a sublime dignity. “by his Incarnation, he, the son of God, in a certain way united himself with each man. He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved” (Redemptor Hominis 8). Further on in the same document after affirming that love is stronger than death and greater than sin or human weakness, John Paul writes that man cannot live without love. “He remains a being that is incomprehensible to himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own. ”The man who wants to understand himself completely must approach Christ. “ This is – if one may say it – the human dimension of the Redemption.” Man can find again his greatness and his dignity. The proclamation of the Word that saves is the first service the Church can perform for every individual and for the whole of mankind (cf. Redemptor Hominis 10). The mission consists in this proclamation addressed to all nations and entrusted by Christ to his Church.

POINTS FOR REFLECTION

- How can I answer those who assert that it isn’t necessary to preach Christ or follow him since all religions are equally good and all lead to the same salvation?

- What is the specific element that Christ and the Church offer in an economy of salvation? How can I explain that the Church is the universal sacrament of salvation?

- Does interreligous dialogue make preaching Christ the Savior unnecessary? Are evangelization and dialogue really compatible? How?