Abstract
Among the plethora of books produced recently to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, this little book from the prolific pen of Gerald O’Collins is a genuine pearl. While the Council’s teaching about other religions (non-Christian) has received considerable attention from several Catholic theologians, O’Collins’s eye for telling details often missed by other commentators makes this work quite illuminating.
The book is divided into ten chapters. The first two chapters survey the historical background to the Council’s teaching on other religions. Chapters three to six provide a detailed exposition of what is said about the situation of the ‘religious others’ in five major documents of the Council: Sacrosanctum Concilium and Lumen Gentium (Chapter three); Nostra Aetate (Chapter four); Ad Gentes (Chapter five); and Gaudium et Spes (Chapter six). Chapter seven pulls together all the strands of the Council’s evaluation of other religions. Chapters eight and nine take up the question of how the Council’s teaching was received and developed in the years since the Council, focusing especially on the contributions of Pope John Paul II (Chapter eight) and Jacques Dupuis (Chapter nine). Chapter ten offers some ‘final perspectives’ on the importance of interreligious dialogue for the self-understanding of the Church and its missionary mandate.
Throughout the book O’Collins underscores the newness of Vatican II’s approach to other religions. For ‘the first time in the history of Roman Catholicism an ecumenical council honoured as the work of the living God the truth and holiness to be found in certain other religions’ (p. 85). The Council’s teaching on non-Christian religions, as O’Collins amply illustrates, brought a dramatic change in doctrine, ‘a change that has some (partial) antecedents in theology and official teaching but went far beyond these antecedents to embody a massive shift in the official doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church’ (p. 204). In addition to highlighting such obvious antecedents as the Logos Christology developed by the early Church Fathers, Justin, Irenaeus, Clement, and Origen, and, in the 20th century, the theological perspectives of Jean Danielou and Karl Rathner, O’Collins also acknowledges the positive contribution of missionary congregations and societies towards a better understanding of other religions and their followers. O’Collins rightly points out that many missionaries ‘learned to appreciate the religious teachings, moral values, and customs that they encountered, for instance, among Hindus, Buddhists, and the followers of African traditional religions’ (p. 42).
While the Council’s approach to non-Christian religions has some notable antecedents in the history of the Church, its evaluation of these religions broke new ground. O’Collins argues persuasively that the Council ‘considers other living faiths to be ways of revelation and salvation’—not perfect and complete ways, but genuine ways nonetheless (p. 163). In presenting the teaching of a number of Vatican II documents on other religions, O’Collins covers some well-trodden ground but he does so without ever being dull or repetitive. He also brings out the contribution of the document on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, to the Council’s evaluation of the followers of other living faiths. In this document, usually ignored by theologians concerned with the Church’s teaching on other religions, ‘the Council encourages those who pray and/or sing the Divine Office to give themselves wholeheartedly to two projects: praising God and interceding for the salvation of the whole world.’
Regarding the reception of the Council’s teaching on other religions in the post Vatican II era, O’Collins is much more positive than many of his colleagues. ‘Through what it said and mandated about the religious others, Vatican II set in motion a huge intercontinental project that involves, or should involve, Catholics (and other Christians) in relating actively and lovingly with more than half of the world’s population’ (p. 168). In considering how Pope John Paul II received and developed the Council’s teaching on other religions, O’Collins highlights the significance of his many gestures of outreach to the religious others as well as his writings. Pope John Paul II’s first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, echoing Rahner’s ‘supernatural existential,’ stated that every person ‘even before he or she makes any conscious decisions, is already sharing in the reality of the reality of the crucified and risen Christ’ (p. 170). Even more significantly, as O’Collins shows, his encyclical on mission, Redemptoris Missio, stated that the Holy Spirit is present and active everywhere in the world, not simply in the lives of individual persons, but also in their cultures and religions. While Pope John Paul II never stated explicitly that other religions, apart from Christianity, could be regarded as ways of salvation, he does acknowledge that there exist, beyond Christianity, ‘participated forms of mediation of different kinds and degrees’ (Redemptoris Missio 5), which, however, acquire their salvific value from the unique mediation of Christ.
In presenting and evaluating the contribution of the Belgian theologian, Jacques Dupuis, to the reception and development of the Council’s teaching on other religions, O’Collins defends the essential orthodoxy of Dupuis’s position. Yes, Dupuis states explicitly that other religions may be regarded as ways of salvation for their followers, but he always adds that these ways are dependent on the once-for-all mediation of Christ. O’Collins wonders how any intelligent person, who had read carefully what Dupuis has written, could have accused him of rupturing the unity of the divine plan of salvation or of creating two economies of salvation. Dupuis, as O’Collins clearly shows, insists that there is only one economy of salvation, though within this economy he distinguishes between the Word of God as such ‘and the Word of God precisely as incarnated’ (p. 186). Dupuis’s theology of the religions, far from espousing a relativism which would undermine the mission of the Church, endorsed ‘the official teaching and action of Pope John Paul II and provided it with a massive theological underpinning’ (p. 198). However, O’Collins pays more attention than does Dupuis to the Church’s role in the salvation of those who are not her members, highlighting ‘the prayers made by the Church for the world through Christ the high priest’ (p. 195). I can only recommend strongly this clear, balanced, and very readable book to anyone interested in how the Church today views other religions and their followers.