J.B. Banawiratma, S.J., Professor of Theology, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

1. Christian Concerns

Since the Second Vatican Council the reality of religious pluralism has been intensively and extensively discussed. Once the possibility of salvation outside the Church is affirmed, the question is “in what sense do we understand non-Christian religions as “channels” or “ways” of salvation?” Most recently the question has shifted to “does religious pluralism have meaning in the plan of God as intended by God?” Here I want to raise some considerations for further discussion.

Being Christian is to follow Jesus Christ as the Way, to be with Him where He is and to do what He did and is doing. O’rthop’raxis has priority over orthodoxy, and both are contextually performed.

Christians witness that the worldly manifestation of God happens in Jesus and in the Spirit. However no worldly manifestation of God (also in Jesus) can exhaustively absorb God, who is always greater. Furthermore, our capability to understand and to accept the incomprehensible God is limited.

Christian tradition and truth are neither inclusive nor exclusive of all other religious traditions and truth, but they are related to all of them. Non Christian traditions are not just stepping stones or preparatio evangelica. They have their own meaning in the historical manifestation of God, and therefore interreligious dialogue is needed to understand and to come closer to the Mystery of God. To be religious today is to be interreligious.

The proper attitude in religious pluralism is to recognize and to accept the uniqueness and meaning of every religion, recognizing that each can learn from the other. This can also be called dialogical pluralism, an attitude of “open integrity.” Open integrity takes seriously one’s faith and religion as well as the faith and religion of others, and thus offers the best possibility for dialogue and mutual enrichment. Amidst the more and more communicable society where various religions live together, the vision and identity of the respective religions can be expressed and developed.

2. Being Open Church

The above considerations call our Churches to be open to sisters and brothers of other faiths. We need to develop a new way of being Church, the Church in dialogue and transformation. The struggle for justice, peace and integrity of creation or our preferential option for and with the poor and the oppressed should become the concern of dialogue. We need to learn not only from other religious traditions but also from the poor and their culture that is linked with the whole culture. We can use the following diagram to show a new way of being church.

dialectical communication in a Communion of communities:
Basic Christian (Ecumenical) Community: Christ as common ground,
towards
Basic Human Community: Human values as common ground,
Basic Interreligious Community: Unity of interfaith experience.

By the work of the Holy Spirit (pneumatically)
Jesus Christ (full: glorified, historical) is encountered: Faith-experience.

a. Being Open Church: Communion of Communities

The Church is called to live not for herself, but to be open to follow Christ and bearing witness to the Reign of God. The encounter with Christ and following Him can only be experienced and manifested contextually. Other ways of encountering and following Christ would offer a Christ of colonialism. A new way of being and living Church that is more flexible to face current challenges can be described as communion of contextual community, namely Basic Christian (Ecumenical) Community towards Basic Human Community and Basic Interfaith Community as a community of dialogue and transformation.

Basic Christian Community consists of neighborhood groups gathered by the word of God to pray and share the Gospel of Jesus, living their daily lives, in one mind and heart realizing their mission. Basic Christian Community has to be contextually integrated with Basic Human Community or Basic Interreligious Community.

Basic Human Community can be described as a small community involved in social activities to eliminate suffering, to struggle for a just sustainable society and integrity of creation. It is primarily a community of poor people and secondarily includes their facilitators. It can be territorial or categorical (functional). Its concern is not only practical matters and carrying out certain projects, but also a fundamental concern related to Christian orthopraxies. In Christian language, it is a community of GodlJs Reign; it is a
response to the demand of Christian faith that is a preferential option for the poor in our multicultural and multireligious context.

The community is united in life situation and concern crossing the boundaries of religions and beliefs. Basic Human Community can be integrated with the experience of the Ultimate Mystery and becomes Interreligious or Interfaith Community.

b. Threefold dialogue: With the Poor, Religjons, and Cultures

The Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences has put dialogue as the focal point of the Asian Churches. Dialogue helps the Church be free from self-centered community and to live for the Reign of God. There are three interrelated dialogues corresponding to Asian situation, namely dialogue with the poor, with religions and with cultures. A contextual Church needs to be developed in threefold dialogue: with the poor, the religions, and cultures.

First, the poor are the subjects and agents of social change. The Church’s option for the poor cannot achieve its goal without listening and learning from them. In this sense we can speak of “the magisterium of the poor”. Secondly, the Church promotes religious freedom, not only out of respect to human diguity and human rights, but also out of admitting truth in other religions. “Let Christians, while witnessing to their own faith and way of life, acknowledge, preserve and encourage the spiritual and moral truths found among non-Christians, also their social life and cultures” (NA 2). Thirdly, closely connected with the poor and religion is culture. Inculturation means all efforts of a community of faith to live out the Gospel in concrete culture. Those efforts include always intercultural encounter. Hence inculturation is always inter-culturation.

c. Rooted in the Christ’s Gospel: Christian Resources

Contextualization of faith is not an application of abstract truth within the concrete reality of life. It means accepting the concrete reality, namely the Jesus event, as meaningful for all cultures. The tension between particularity and universality is not overcome by abstract formulation (monocultural) but by dialectical and continuous communication (multi- and intercultural).

d. Faith experience

By the work of the Holy Spirit we encounter Jesus Christ (glorified and historical). We come to faith experience as we can say together with the Samaritan people: “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world” (Jo. 4:42). This encounter is expressed and deepened through prayer and contemplation.

3. Five Levels of Dialogue

The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (1991) has mentioned four Levels of dialogue, which are inter-connected, namely (1) dialogue of Life, (2) dialogue of religiousexperience, (3) theological dialogue, and (4) dialogue of action. Nevertheless a responsible action can not bypass analysis and reflection, therefore one level should be added, namely one of “contextual analysis and reflection”. Starting from dialogue of life the process can be depicted as follows.

(1) In the dialogue of life people strive to live in an open and neighborly spirit, sharing their joys and sorrows, their human problems and preoccupations. This level of interreligious dialogue happens in small groups who know each other, in daily life where men and women of different faiths experience together a common situation, with its ups
and downs, anxieties and hopes, and thus common concerns emerge. They are concerned about the need for clean water, healthy housing, adequate education, field of work etc.

(2) Contextual analysis and reflection explain the condition of life and offer ethical orientation for common well being (political ethics). People of different religions do a common analysis of social situation experienced together aiming to have common social option and action.

An example from Indonesia shows the importance of contextual analysis and reflection within interreligious dialogue. Since 1995, Indonesia has been massively marked by unrest and collective violence. Those incidents of collective violence, in which religions are involved, destroyed houses, markets, shops, factories, banks, cars, police outposts, government offices, and court buildings, as well as churches and orphanages. More than that, people have been cruelly treated and tortured. All unrest and collective violence -except in Jakarta on 27 July 1996 ancf in West Irian - were marked by religions. On the one side, the collective violence of the last two years has shown how religions are instrumentalized for political interests. On the other side, religion also has become source of political ethics.

Learning from much violence in the last years, where religions were involved, interreligious dialogue and cooperation should work out the political context, in terms of involvement for societal life as well as action through political power. Religious people cannot deny the fact of being a part of the society and politics, cannot avoid building a responsible attitude toward politics. To be neutral means to support the powerful persons or groups. From a theological point of view religious people are called to be committed to the common good, in which the poor and powerless are helped to empower themselves. Interreligious harmony without common concern for working out the political contexts would tend to promote a false and unjust harmony.

(3) Based on the inrespective traditions, people share their religious experience and spiritual riches and enrich one another through the dialogue of religious experience. The believers live in open integrity, knowing where they stand and opening themselves to other religious traditions. They share their experience of faith, their prayer and contemplation, their ways of searching and following God or the Ultimate. Without this kind of dialogue, our witness could move in an aggressive and manipulative manner, motivated by individual or communal egoism and not directed by the Truth.

(4) Theologians or specialists can perform the dialogue of theological exchange on the scientific level, seeking to deepen their understanding of their respective religious heritages, and to appreciate the other’s spiritual values. Theological exchange should take the historical process of every religion into account. This is open integrity at the theological level. Materials of inquiry and even suspicions can also be discussed. Thus, for example, one can discuss issues of Christianization, Islamization and also different opinions and interpretations about existing social situations.

Doing theology is moved by the faith experience. Theology is not religious studies which can be developed without the experience and commitment of faith. Contextual theology should be rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which has been always interpreted and will be always interpreted by a community of faith. It is an effort of intellectus fidei as well as intellectus amoris. Contextual theology addresses the community of faith, and as a part of the community addresses different groups and societies. Contextual theology exercises its function by reading the signs of the time: listening, interpreting, and announcing the Logos and the Sophia of life. Contextual theology is not an isolated effort disconnected from Christian traditions. The crux of the matter is not rejecting or taking traditions, but relativizing them in order to come to the core of faith. It might happen that through critical and dialogical reflection what is hidden in Christian witness would be revealed or that what is forgotten will be rediscovered. It includes the concrete direction and impetus for further actions of the faithful.

Contextual theology is always intertextual and intercontextual, since it brings the textual and contextual communication of a concrete community with the community of Scriptures and of the history of the Church, as well as the community of other religions. In this way, we can be more conscious of the limits of our interpretation and move to continous dialogue and reinterpretation.

Theological reflection should take seriously the reality of life. The complexity of reality pushes us to collaborate with other disciplines. Through an interdisciplinary approach, theology can be more capable of reading the signs of the times and offering an impetus to the community of faith. The process of critical dialogues between theology and other disciplines is aimed at the life and action of the community.

(5) Through the dialogue of action, Christians and sisters and brothers of other faiths work for the integral liberation of people. At this level of dialogue, people of various religions and beliefs transform society to become more just, free and human, as well as more ecofriendly. In the context of interreligious pluralism and the challenge of poverty, the identity of the church is lived as a serving community, as a dialogical and transformative community. The transformation happens not only in the life of society, but also in the ambit of the faith life that deepens it.

The struggle for justice and integrity of creation is an integral part of Christian witness. Within the existing context of the conflicts between God’s Reign vs the Anti-Reign of God, the Church is called to be the sign of God’s Reign. To be Christian means to follow Jesus the Way in the orthopraxis of God’s Reign. Amidst the ambivalence of cultural, political, and economic realities, a contextual response demands discernment and raising affirmations and confrontation aimed at transformation. As a human and limited reality, the Church can only exercise her mission and become dynamic a community of faith if she becomes a community of dialogue and transfonnation. The demand of developing contextual communities and theologies is ultimately the demand of truly encountering and following Christ, of embodying the contextual Christ as the medium that transforms life in God who is always greater, until God becomes all in all.

The spirituality of dialogue is following Jesus’ spirituality, that is, keriosis spirituality, self-emptying until the final consequence. Spirituality is related to what is experienced, either human beings, or the universe, or God. It can be understood as a way of responding to the data of experience. Jesus lived out the spirituality of solidarity with the world. He was born in solidarity with the homeless. His words and actions delighted the sick, the hungry and the suffering. We are used to the concept of “the Word became flesh” without being adverting to the fact that the Word became servant, washing the feet of the disciples and dying on a cross. Incarnation is only the beginning of the kenotic way of Christ. Following the Jesus’ kenotic way, the disciple is transformed to be more similar to Him. This self-transformation stimulates deeper solidarity for wider transformation, namely the transformation of societal life.

The various levels of honest dialogue bring out the important elements of Christian life, which are conversion and forgiveness. To be converted means to be aware of the sins and faults that one has committed and, at the same time, to believe in the mercy of God’s unlimited forgiveness. Conversion is a new hope; one is not imprisoned by the past, the future is open. The willingness to forgive is a sign that one is ready to receive God’s forgiveness. On the contrary, an unwillingness to forgive others is a sign that one is not yet ready to receive God’s mercy and pardon. Conversion and forgiveness are important elements in the movement of dialogue.