for a Church Council to speak about another religion. Instead, here a door is being opened to serious scholarship and Indology theologically to flesh out and think through these starting points for engagement towards the ‘common good’.
Buddhist beliefs and practices are likewise singled out, even though there are no theistic elements within Buddhism. Nevertheless, in Pure Land and other forms of Buddhism there are emphases upon ‘divine’ aid. Thus NA affirms the insight regarding the ‘inadequacy of the changing world’ and the way Buddhists seek ‘perfect liberation’ and ‘supreme illumination’ ‘either though their own efforts or by the aid of divine help’ (2).
I want to use the example of Buddhism to make a subsidiary point. NA is only concerned to encourage positive pastoral orientation. It makes no claims about comprehensive or detailed evaluation of any religious culture. How could it? Hence, it should be no surprise that two intellectually probing popes after the Council have, in their ‘private’ writings (that is writings that have no magisterial authority), made negative judgements about Buddhism. For example, Cardinal Ratzinger in an interview with a French newspaper suggested that in Buddhism the self-help involved in meditation and release amounted to salvation by one’s own efforts and thus might be compared to ‘auto-eroticism’. He is reported as saying: ‘If Buddhism is attractive, it is because it appears as a possibility of touching the infinite and obtaining happiness without having any concrete religious obligations. A spiritual auto-eroticism of some sort.’36 Pope John Paul II, in Crossing the Threshold of Hope, raised similar searching questions about Buddhism. For example, he explored the question whether Buddhist meditation and contemplation is at all the same as meditation and contemplation in orthodox Christianity. Buddhist meditation strives to ‘wake’ one from existential delusions regarding the status of the world. Christian meditation in the Carmelite tradition begins where the Buddha left off. He continues: ‘Christian mysticism . . . is not born of a purely negative “enlightenment.” It is not born of an awareness of the evil which exists in man’s attachment to the world through the senses, the intellect, and the spirit. Instead, Christian mysticism is born of the Revelation of the living God.’37 Paul Williams, whom I mentioned earlier, an expert in Tibetan Buddhism as well as a Catholic, has further explored these critical probings.38 Taking the other religion seriously in terms of what it teaches is part of the process of respectful and informed theological engagement. None of these explorations negate the positive outreach towards Buddhism. Other Indologists and theologians have made different judgements about Buddhism39 and this is an ongoing engagement initiated by Vatican II’s attitude to search after points of contact and similarities that might facilitate work together towards the common good.
Vatican II, as I have been trying to illustrate, opened the door to the possibility that scholarship about the religions and theological reflection on the religions might rightly join hands. There is thus room here for both a theology of religions (which is concerned primarily with the dogmatic questions of Christology, Trinity, Church, grace, salvation and so on) and a theology in engagement with each particular religion (dealing with the different contexts of engagement and thus with often very particular sets of questions). Both feed upon each other, although the former drives the latter.
I should finally note that Vatican II only mentioned some religions. There are so many more in the world such as Sikhism, Confucianism, Taoism, folk and tribal religions and New Religious Movements. While the Council could hardly address all these, it started a process that would orient Catholic scholarship and practice towards a positive and critical engagement with these traditions. ‘Positive’ in the sense that one is called to seek points of contact that can be harnessed towards working together for the common good, and also positive in terms of learning and listening to the ‘Other’ knowing that God’s Spirit may have already worked within these traditions. Catholics have much to learn from this process about the disciplines and practices that help build up the common good, that help men and women resist evil and despair, and that encourage selflessness and service. But none of these things, however true, good and noble, can displace the necessity of Christ’s call to total conversion to the triune God, to rejecting the depths of sin and violence and falling upon his forgiving grace and knowing that only in this grace is there salvation. Nothing allows the Catholic Christian to forgo offering that which is the greatest gift that they themselves know: Jesus Christ, the transforming and redeeming relationship with God and his creation. Thus, engagement with other religions is inevitably complex in terms of not only acknowledging and rejoicing in that which is true, good and holy and also the many promptings of the Holy Spirit, but also respectfully questioning and critically engaging with all features of that religion. Elsewhere, I have suggested that this latter process can be modelled well upon Alasdair MacIntyre’s understanding of conversations between ‘rival communities’.40
The meaning of other religions in God’s plan of salvation
What is the theological status of these religions in the light of the two sets of discussion above? There is widespread consensus that Vatican II was silent about the theological status of these religions in terms of denying or affirming that they can be viewed as ‘salvific means’.41 The Council itself does use a group of cognate phrases that indicates a reasonably clear answer. In the most important dogmatic document, LG 16, we find the important phrases that these positive elements in the religions and non-religions are ‘considered by the church as a preparation for the gospel [praeparatio evangelica]’.42 Eusebius and the tradition after him that employed this phrase did not impute any salvific significance to what was to be found in the traditions, but rather that the truth there at least provided a bridge whereby the gospel might be understood and error abandoned. The prisca theologia tradition is not invoked, but the logos spermatikos or semina verbi is. In NA 2 it says of the religions that while differing from the Catholic Church’s teachings they nevertheless ‘often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men [sic!]’. This is also found in AG 11, which says that Christians living among non-Christians ‘should be familiar with their national and religious traditions and uncover with gladness and respect those seeds of the Word which lie hidden among them’. From Justin Martyr onwards and in the Council, ‘seeds’ is not used in any way to justify religions per se but denotes them as preparatory, like Aquinas’s potentiality, for the coming of Christ even while being immersed in error and superstition.43
Given the subsequent heated theological debate on this matter after the Council, the magisterium issued a specific declaration on this issue: On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church (Dominus Iesus, 2000; subsequently DI). Paragraphs 20–2 address the intention of the Council teachings and also indicate illegitimate explications from the Council documents. DI acknowledges that while the religions may contain truth and goodness moved by the Spirit, nevertheless: ‘it is clear that it would be contrary to the faith to consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantially equivalent to her, even if these are said to be converging with the Church toward the eschatological kingdom of God’. This thereby counters any form of pluralism de iure (in principle). It also shows why the other religions cannot be understood as a ‘means of salvation’ as this term is uniquely applied to the Church precisely because of its Christological foundations. It is for this reason that the document is able to say, despite the many positive teachings that are unhesitatingly repeated, that the other religions per se cannot be understood as ways to salvation. Section 21 is important (as are its notes):
Certainly, the various religious traditions contain and offer religious elements which
