[The Wide Shot] We cannot put God in a Catholic box

I can only shake my head at how Pope Francis’ statement of unity — “All religions are a path to reach God” — ended up as one of the most divisive words by a Catholic leader.

Many Catholics vilified the Jesuit pontiff, in the same way that they called him the antichrist or a heretic when he witnessed an indigenous ritual at the Vatican gardens in October 2019. 

How can the Pope make this statement in Singapore, critics asked, when Jesus himself declared the opposite? They cited John 4:16, where Jesus states, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

These “real” Catholics, as they love to depict themselves, are the same people who criticize other Christians for their “literal” interpretation of the Bible. 

I wonder, then, how these Catholics interpret Matthew 23:9 — “Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven” — when they call their priests “Father.” 

I also want to see if they still have hands, feet, and eyes. Jesus, after all, said in Matthew 18:8-9, “If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away…. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.” Except in the case of babies, which human being has body parts that have never led to sin?

So should we interpret “I am the way and the truth and the life” — and other verses — in a literal sense?

I am stating this because we cannot simply pick a verse from the Bible, interpret it literally, and use it like a slogan to attack the Pope or anyone else. We need to consider the context, the big picture, the wide shot, as it were, as we seek to understand the Pope’s controversial words in Singapore. 

The Pope’s statement on all religions as “a path to reach God” is best understood in the context of a world where diversity is more of a rule than an exception. 

A world of mostly non-Catholics

As a Catholic myself, I believe that the pronouncement of Jesus that “no one comes to the Father except through me” is forever true. 

But what does it mean in a world where 6.63 billion people, or nearly 83% of the world’s population, do not belong to the Roman Catholic Church? Does it mean 6.63 billion people now, and billions of others before them, have always been destined for eternal fire? How should we interpret this verse in a world of many religions?

In last week’s edition of The Wide Shot, we tackled how the Catholic Church’s view of other religions evolved through the centuries. From holding the exclusivist stance of “extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church, there is no salvation)” in the third century, the Catholic Church gradually evolved to be inclusivist especially after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. 

Even the brightest theologians grappled with the issue, and did not pretend that the Roman Catechism of 1566, the Baltimore Catechism of 1941 or the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1992, have settled the question of non-Christian religions once and for all.

One of the theologians who closely studied the matter was Karl Rahner, a German Jesuit who lived from 1904 to 1984 and is considered one of the most important Catholic thinkers of the 20th century. He was considered “a driving force” of the Second Vatican Council, along with the likes of another German, Joseph Ratzinger, who would later become Pope Benedict XVI.

Rahner introduced a concept that can help us view the Pope’s words in a new light.

In his writings, Rahner spoke of “anonymous Christians,” or non-Christians who act in a Christian way and are thus bound to be saved. 

Understanding anonymous Christians

Rahner stated in Volume 14 of his classic work Theological Investigations: “We might therefore put it as follows: the ‘anonymous Christian’ in our sense of the term is the pagan after the beginning of the Christian mission, who lives in the state of Christ’s grace through faith, hope and love, yet who has no explicit knowledge of the fact that his life is orientated in grace-given salvation to Jesus Christ.”

In his 1976 book Foundations of Christian Faith, Rahner said “there can be no doubt that someone who has no concrete, historical contact with the explicit preaching of Christianity can nevertheless be a justified person who lives in the grace of Christ.” This is “according to the Catholic understanding of the faith, as is clearly expressed in the Second Vatican Council.”

For context, the Second Vatican Council or Vatican II — a historic gathering of all the world’s Catholic bishops — released at least two groundbreaking documents that shed light on non-Christian religions. Here are notable excerpts:

• From the dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium: “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. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life.”
• From the declaration Nostra Aetate: “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards 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.”

An anonymous Christian, Rahner continued, exercises his or her obedience to God “by accepting his (or her) own existence without reservation.” Alongside anonymous Christianity, “there is the fullness of Christianity which has become conscious of itself explicitly in faith and in hearing the word of the gospel, in the church’s profession of faith, in sacrament, and in living an explicit Christian life which knows that it is related to Jesus of Nazareth.”

How can this happen? For Rahner, “Christ is present and operative in non-Christian believers and hence in non-Christian religions in and through his Spirit.”

Rahner’s concept of anonymous Christians — although viewed as insufficient, as I will explain below — allows us to read the Pope’s words as a restatement of church teaching, not a novelty that should divide Catholics. 

The verse “No one comes to the Father except through me,” as stated in John 4:16, can then apply even to non-Christians. In a way, even if they worship other gods or no god at all, they still come to the Father through Jesus without them being aware that they are considered anonymous Christians.

Ratzinger critiques Rahner

I have my own questions about the concept of anonymous Christians, which has generated criticism from Catholics and non-Catholics alike. One common criticism is how it portrays Christianity as a “superior” or “more important” religion. “Why does Christianity always need to be the point of reference?” critics would ask.

Another criticism is how it tends to downplay the need for missionary activity in the Catholic Church.

Ratzinger, when he was still a Vatican official under Pope John Paul II, tackled anonymous Christians in the 1985 book The Ratzinger Report, where he was in conversation with journalist Vittorio Messori.

Ratzinger stated, “It is part of the Church’s ancient, traditional teaching that every man is called to salvation and de facto can be saved if he sincerely follows the precepts of his own conscience, even without being a visible member of the Catholic Church.” 

However, this teaching, which he described as “already accepted and beyond dispute,” has been advanced “in an extreme form” since the Second Vatican Council “on the basis of theories like that of ‘anonymous Christians.’” 

Ratzinger criticized how the anonymous Christians theory proposes that “grace is always given provided” as long as the person, believer or not, “accepts himself as a human being.” The only advantage of the Christian, based on this theory, “is only that he is aware of this grace.” 

This led to “the overemphasis on the values of then non-Christian religions, which many theologians saw not as an extraordinary paths to salvation but precisely as ordinary ones.”

“Naturally, hypotheses of this kind caused the missionary zeal of many to slacken. Many a one began to wonder, ‘Why should we disturb non-Christians, urging them to accept baptism and faith in Christ, if their religion is their way to salvation in their culture, in their part of the world?” asked Ratzinger, then the doctrinal chief of the Vatican.

Whether one agrees with Rahner or not, it cannot be denied that his concept of anonymous Christians has opened wide the doors of our imagination. What are the different ways by which we can interpret an otherwise exclusivist verse like John 4:16?

Reimagining the world, especially our understanding of God, is crucial at a time when walls — and closed minds — have done more to fuel rather than to shield us from war.

In the case of theology, who are we to box God in a set of words, even if it is a Bible verse, interpreted apart from the realities of our diverse world?

The World Council of Churches, representing over 580 million Christians across 120 countries, including the Philippines, stated it eloquently in its 1989 world mission conference: “We cannot point to any other way of salvation than Jesus Christ; at the same time we cannot set limits to the saving power of God.” – Rappler.com