Inclusive Fulfilment

I don’t know why it took me so long to stumble upon the work of Paul Knitter. Knitter is a theologian who studies, practices and teaches religious pluralism. He combines Buddhism and Christianity into his personal faith practices. As someone who is perennially attracted to much of Buddhism, I’m attracted to this kind of exploration. There is a lot to delve into in comparative religious study, but alas, this is not the purpose of this blog article.

Reading some Knitter made me wonder, what do we make of this text?

John 14:6 NRSV

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Growing up in a very conservative religion, there was only one way to interpret this text. Christianity is the only true religion. You must have the right beliefs and confessions to get to God, or more to the point, get into Heaven. Often, this means you need to confess Jesus to be saved into an eternal afterlife. Sometimes it means the others get tossed into Hell. I have a really hard time believing any of that is close to what God and Jesus have in mind. I wouldn’t treat my sons this way, requiring some secret code to earn my love and presence. I’ve come to think this verse is more about following the Jesus way and that Christ – The Logos – can be incarnational in many traditions.

Religious exclusivism has begot harm throughout history. Though I would argue that many “religious” wars in history are actual fought over wealth and property and not dogma. (Citation: dear reader, open your own news feed). However, our increased global interactions in a digital world force us to a more ethical religious practice when considering diverse systems of belief. That is, criticizing another religion and culture simply for being different than my own is super shady. The hopeful among us would say that the rise in interfaith dialogue is moving us beyond our isolated perspectives. Rather than provoke a xenophobic fear, this era is an opportunity to foster love and understanding among people of different religions. We can embrace the richness of diverse faiths without harm to our own.

I usually explain my point of view in terms of three traditional views: exclusivism, pluralism and inclusivism. An overly simplified way of looking at these views is that exclusivism means you believe there is only one right religion, pluralism means that all religions are the same and inclusivism means you think your religion is the right path, but God is big enough to include that path elsewhere. I am still firmly an inclusivist and I’ll try to explain why here.

In his book, Introducing Theologies of Religions, Knitter outlines four models of religious pluralism that add more nuance from a specifically Christian perspective. These are typical ways a Christian might approach pluralism. I thought I’d discuss those here as a way forward beyond the tradition categories: replacement, fulfillment, mutuality and acceptance.

The usual caveats apply: this is one blogger’s quick summary of these ideas, you’re much better off reading Knitter for yourself.

Replacement

The first model, replacement, is basically what I think of as exclusivism. If Christianity is the only true religion, your only choice is to replace all other religions with your own. Evangelicalism and fundamentalism are quite animated by this position. So were the bloody Crusades.

To be sure, you can find converting proselytizers in every faith who believe they have the only or at least the surest way to salvation, or nirvana or mukti or paradise. Something is always false or lacking about the concept of God and salvation in other religions (Set aside the logic that seems to dictate that something must also be lacking in your own religion for the same premises).

I reject replacement, because it seems impossible to support the idea that the truth about God, salvation, human beings and the entire universe can only be found in a single religion. For one, human life preceded our current religions by hundreds of thousands of years, unless of course you still worship cave bears. Was revelation of God not present all that time? Secondly, there are hundreds of variations and denominations within Christianity itself. So, in what exact tenet does an exclusivist claim sit? Is it “in Christ alone?” If so, are you sure that Christ is only present in your religion or is limited only to the form of a first century Jesus?

If you interpret the above passage from John very narrowly – no one comes to the Father except through me – then I think you would feel it was your mission to save the planet through replacement and conversion. I find the position to be a little incoherent myself, especially given the billions of people who have never heard of Christ. If I looked in the freezer at the end of our church’s Wednesday Family Faith Night and saw we forget to get ice cream, I might say something like, “I guess no one’s getting ice cream.” I don’t mean no one in the world ever again, I mean the group of friends to whom I’m talking. The community for whom John was writing needed that message, I’m not sure it was meant to exclude the rest of the planet.

Fulfillment

I have an old work friend I called Charles for 20 years. He’s now a tennis coach at the local high school working alongside my wife. At school they call him by his preferred name, Charlie. It turns out calling him, “Charles,” was an accident of software. Our employee messaging system forced everyone’s full name from their HR file, which is why many friends of that era also call me Matthew. I have a friend Aaron who goes by John at work. My brother-in-law Steve is Kyle to his friends. The point is, if you told me something about Kyle, John or Charlie I might not realize we’re talking about the same people.

It seems natural to the modern mind that the God of all creation, the infinite source of all being, would find a home in many other places outside of Christianity and go by different names. I often find God speaking to me on a mountain trail or a favorite song or Bible verse. Why wouldn’t Christ be present in other cultures and the religions that formed from their own experiences of Christ, even if they call him John or Charlie? However, many Christians who are open to the sacred in other places would still maintain that there is a kind of nontransferable ransom paid by Christ on the cross. I think you can balance these two ideas, you can believe it is in Christ alone, but not through Christianity alone. This is Knitter’s fulfillment model.

If you read early church writers and certainly the mystics, you see a lot of intersections between the Christian world, the Hellenistic world and direct sacred experience. Then with the Reformation, it was important to point out how God’s grace was active outside of Rome. It then become a natural extension to today’s Protestants that God’s grace must be active in other religions and cultures. But, if Jesus is God’s ultimate revelation and Jesus’ saving work is what rescued humanity, other religions are somehow unknowingly and spontaneously saved through Christ.

There is some Biblical support for this position.

Acts 17:22-23

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

My uneducated guess is that half of the people you might meet in a mainline denomination instinctively gravitate to this fulfillment model. To go further toward pluralism would be uncomfortably close to saying Jesus is not unique, and yet other religions have similarities to Christianity and their people definitely lead good lives. They must have found the path to God. Christ must somehow be at work there. As a Christian I say, “Christ,” because have no other words to describe it. This is inclusivism. We can and should learn from each other while still holding onto Jesus. My outsider understanding is that this is the official position of the Catholic Church — but don’t let that dissuade your of its merits.

The fulfillment model leans into pluralism, positing that there must exist some universal truths that find their way to all earnest seekers of God. In that way, all religions point to God, but their distinctive differences grow out of language, history and culture and speak truth in different ways, at different times to people with different needs. I can hold up Christ as the single best revelation without thinking other revelations are delusory. For theology and philosophy nerds, I tend toward monism, so this approach just feels right to me. I’ve been accused of Vedanta and panentheism, and frankly, much much worse. But because I’m a good inclusivist, I don’t think monism necessarily has to hold true for you or any dualists out there who like the fulfillment model.

I also find the fulfillment position exceptionally practical. None of us can really know or communicate the ultimate reality. This is our purpose in myth, to grasp at depictions of God. This is God’s purpose in Jesus, to show us God’s true nature. God is beyond words. But like words, incarnations are bound by the culture and space in which they take form. God may be omnipresent, but Jesus’ human body while on earth could not be everywhere all at once. We can believe in Jesus while accepting that other religious traditions point to the same truths even without hearing of Jesus. As a mystic, I believe that all true seekers will have an experience of Christ even if they use different words to describe Christ. My Steve is your Kyle, your Charlie is my Charles. In the end, working together for good is what Jesus wanted, not adherence to dogma.

Mutuality

Mutuality is about finding common perspectives and shared practices. The mutualist maintains that religions are not irreconcilably separate, but instead they each contribute to our image of God. God has some salvific purpose in giving us separate revelations.

How does mutualism compare to fulfillment? My simple way of thinking about this is that the fulfillment model holds up Christ as the ultimate revelation of God and accepts other revelations as valid, though not the best, and in fact Christ might be behind it all anyway. Mutualism would say that these varying perspectives all have something to share, much like different languages can express various ideas. One is not better than another, God is using them all to express different revelations. English may be better suited for technical expression; Spanish is better at poetic imagery; German loves compounding. (The German word “Sonnenuntergangsgefühl” is a single word that couldn’t really be expressed in English. I’m not sure I could express it in German. It combines “Sonne” or, “sun,” “Untergang” or, “setting,” and “Gefühl” or, “feeling.” In English, it would likely be a phrase like “feeling of the sunset.”)

Wouldn’t this mean that religions then aren’t pointing to the same thing at all? Yes, maybe and sometimes. But just maybe they are pointing to the same thing, but in different ways. That’s probably what keeps me in the fulfillment camp – I’m trying to avoid relativism about the divine. At the end of the day, I can’t escape the magnetic appeal of Jesus. Mutualism holds that while all knowledge comes out of a cultural and historical construction there are still ultimate realities we are approaching together. There may be an ultimate source of all being, but the religions are expressing their own symbols and language as much as they are that ultimate God. God is deliberately revealing different things to different religions, but in the end they are all from God.

Even my fondness for mystical experience must be shaped by my language and culture. My mind immediately tries to categorize mystical experience and my tongue translates direct experience as best it can using the words I have available. In a sense, the more I can experience from other religions, the wider my view of God. God is dynamic, so my ideas of God should be dynamic. Mutualism is about working, learning and growing together.

Mutualism is often expressed in the famous parable of visually-impaired people examining an elephant. One holds the tail and says, “Oh I see, the elephant is like a rope.” One holds an ear and says, “Oh I see, the elephant is like a big blanket.” One feels a tusk and says, “Oh I see, the elephant is like a spear.” And so on. In mutualism, we all get a different piece of God to share. My friend Ben once used this metaphor to perfectly articulate an inclusivist-fulfillment position over a pluralist-mutuality position: “My name for the elephant is Christ, and you’re welcome to call the elephant anything else you like.”

Acceptance

But what if there is more than one elephant? Acceptance takes pluralism to a logical spectrum-ender, stating that all religion is simply its own language and may or may not reflect any kinds of truth at all. We simply cannot blend them into any universal picture of truth as they do not actually share much common ground. I have a lot of sympathy for the acceptance model. I find mutualism too wishy-washy to maintain. I may be attracted to the egalitarian approach of mutualism, but I have to confess I cannot escape my Christian bias (or language or family or culture). No matter how hard I try, I will always see other religions through this lens. Better to own up to this personal inadequacy and retreat into the fulfillment model of inclusivity as I have done or else shake off the mutualist attempt at pure syncretism and fall into acceptance.

I have composed a half-written song inspired by Jacques Derrida titled, “Nothing Outside the Text.” Words have no meaning outside of the collection in which they are found. The acceptance model is very post-modern. We can’t really know the truth anyway, so why try to amalgamate all religions into one truth? Our cultural and linguistic biases are so strong, practically part of our DNA, that we cannot truly understand each other. When I say the word, “love,” what do you immediately hear? Do you think we all hear the same thing? Does a Christian force ideas of love through self-sacrifice? Does an Hindu think about devotion to a deity? Does a Buddhist first think of universal compassion? Merging these ideas into one concept robs each of their vibrance. Does “love,” mean anything outside the text?

If our languages and culture shape our religious expression, then those expressions are only meaningful in those languages and cultures. There is no point in trying to find many commonalities, nor would it be at all salvific to convert someone from a different religion to your own. They couldn’t possibly practice your religion the way you do anymore than I can speak Dungun.

Why I Keep Returning to Inclusivism

If I had to summarize the models, I would say:

• Replacement: my way or the highway (possibly to Hell)
• Fulfillment: Different aspects of the same path are experienced in all religions, but in different ways and finding different expressions. In my view, Christ saves in all religions even if you don’t call that pathway, “Christ.”
• Mutualism: There are very real differences in religions, yet each are somehow a part of God’s plan to save everyone. The paths are different, but God is revealed more fully through these religions.
• Acceptance: The differences in religions are real and irreconcilable. There isn’t one discernable truth or throughline.

I cannot say clearly enough that no matter what box you try to put God in, that box is too small. So why do I center on inclusivism? It’s the only way I can be honest about bringing my personal prejudices and experiences to the discussion. I’ve traveled from one end of the spectrum back to fulfilment-style inclusivism. I was born into the cult-like culture of Seventh Day Adventism which holds very exclusivist views about God and salvation and likes to draw tight circles around who they think are saved. I abandoned that religion and with it all of Christianity (since SDA was all I knew of Christianity). I was grateful to be exposed to Eastern religions through my own brother, Huston Smith and Joseph Campbell, especially Buddhism. But I was constantly drawn back to Jesus and eventually had mystical experiences of my own that convinced me Jesus was very real and very much alive.

By stretching all the way into the acceptance model – which essentially says that religions really are irreconcilably different in their core – I came to believe that I needed to go deeper into the religion that fit my language and my culture if I really wanted to grow. If the acceptance model is right and there isn’t one true path somehow baked into the world religions, then I might as well choose the one that I had the best shot at practicing correctly. It somehow made sense to me to sit at one proven well and drink deeply rather than sipping random waters. If all religions are different, then I should at least pick the right one for me — my language.

But here’s a little sleight of hand for those paying too close attention to the stage magic. To fully practice a path, I must live “as if,” I fully embrace some core tenants. It seems that the only reason to call yourself a Christian is if you claim that somehow Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God. If I’m going to follow Christ as my image of God and I want to see all of humanity lifted up to realize our own God-bearing images, then I have to believe that Jesus saves and He’s doing it all over the place. God’s grace is unbounded. And when I admit that’s what I’m actually doing, I admit to my biased lens, then the fulfillment model is the only way I personally can live authentically. Again, that’s just me it doesn’t have to be you. The fulfillment model of inclusivism allows me to hold Jesus up as lord, follow Jesus, believe in Jesus and still appreciate the beauty and truth God has revealed in other places. Christ is in all. God is all in all.

I know the following verse was probably only meant to emphasize in-group Christian unity. But I like to think that it points to the presence of Christ’s love in the entire world.

Ephesians 4:4-7

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

My brother converted to Buddhism at 18 when I was only six years old, long before I deconstructed out of the SDA church and dabbled in Buddhism for ten years before returning to Christianity. I would peek into his room as he knelt before a shrine chanting, “Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō,” repeatedly. These words literally mean, “Glory and devotion to the Dharma of the Lotus Sutra.” That didn’t mean much to me. I certainly couldn’t understand that language. How he explained that to me is that the jewel is in the lotus. Each of us has the universal truth inside of us. The divine inside of me is the divine inside of you. We can all transform suffering. I agree, but I would prefer to say, “The Christ inside of me lives in you, too.” I understand those words and I can transform the suffering world with Christ’s command for love and forgiveness without worrying about your particular religious path because I believe Christ is at work in there, too.