Abstract
This chapter analyzes how soteriological exclusivism poses a fundamental problem for Reformed Christians who desire to learn from other religions and to engage with them in a non-exclusivist manner. The chapter probes the work of Catholic comparative theologians, especially Francis X. Clooney, S.J., to address whether and how Reformed theologians could attempt a similar project without the inclusivist foundations of contemporary Catholic theology. The author treats three primary questions: Can soteriological exclusivists engage in comparative theology? How can Reformed theology engage in comparative theology without reconsidering its soteriological commitments? Finally, are there any models of Reformed theology that offer an insight into the possibility of performing comparative theology? The author draws on the Neo-Calvinist tradition to argue that Reformed theology offers a unique perspective by which soteriological exclusivists can practice comparative theology, especially by distinguishing between soteriology and epistemology, and shows that a Reformed theological model exists upon which one can successfully pursue such comparative work.
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Notes
- 1.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 1, Article 1.
- 2.
There are a number of Presbyterian and Reformed churches both in the United States and abroad. Although there are several significant differences between them, they all acknowledge the importance of the Westminster Confession of Faith as a foundational creedal document. Some denominations, like the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) have developed their own confession, that is, the PCUSA’s Book of Confessions, yet this confession is still derived from the Westminster Confession of Faith. Thus, I suggest that the Westminster Confession of Faith is a document all Reformed and Presbyterian churches should take into account.
- 3.
“Total depravity” and “unconditional election” are two points of what has been termed “The Five Points of Calvinism.” Although these points were not specifically developed by Calvin himself, they were given at the Synod of Dort (1618–1619) in response to the “Five Articles of Remonstrance” crafted by followers of Jacobus Arminius.
- 4.
The root of this problem goes as far as the fifth-century Pelagian controversy, where Augustine and Pelagius grappled over free will and its role in our salvation. See on this topic Brinley Roderick Rees, Pelagius: A Reluctant Heretic (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1988), Gisbert Greshake, Gnade als konkrete Freiheit: Eine Untersuchung zur Gnadenlehre des Pelagius (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald Verlag, 1972).
- 5.
Daniel Strange, Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 24.
- 6.
The comparative theology of Francis X. Clooney, S.J., and those who are building upon his work is a “new” comparative theology in that there previously existed a practice called “comparative theology” at the turn of the twentieth century. Clooney recognizes his practice is connected to, but distinctly different than, this earlier method. Hugh Nicholson provides a clear contrast between Clooney’s “new comparative theology” and the “comparative theology” practiced in the late nineteenth century. See Hugh Nicholson, “The New Comparative Theology and the Problem of Theological Hegemonism” in The New Comparative Theology: Interreligious Insights from the Next Generation, ed. Francis X. Clooney, S.J. (London: T & T Clark, 2010), 57ff. For an example of an equally pioneering thinker from beyond Roman Catholicism, see the work of British Anglican Keith Ward .
- 7.
Among the many scholarly accounts of the theology of religions in the conciliar texts, two recent (and contrasting) works by theologians who have engaged in these debates for many years stand out. Gerald O’Collins, S.J., The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions (Oxford: University Press, 2013); Gavin D’Costa, Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews & Muslims (Oxford: University Press, 2014), esp. 59–112.
- 8.
Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), xvi.
- 9.
Ibid., 10.
- 10.
A number of the theologians working in North America who frame their work as “comparative theology” are themselves former doctoral students of Clooney at Boston College, for example, Hugh Nicholson and Tracy Tiemeier. Clooney’s contribution to this burgeoning field thus extends far beyond his impressive list of publications therefore he can be considered an exemplary representative of the field. For examples of complementary approaches to the discipline, one can see the work of James L. Fredericks or Klaus van Stosch; the insights of the latter are clearest in a new volume co-authored with Clooney . James Fredericks, Buddhists and Christians: Through Comparative Theology to a New Solidarity (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004); Klaus von Stosch, Komparative Theologie als Wegweiser in der Welt der Religionen (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012); Francis X. Clooney and Klaus von Stosch, How to Do Comparative Theology: European and American Perspectives in Dialogue (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018).
- 11.
Clooney , Comparative Theology, 8.
- 12.
Ibid., 58.
- 13.
Ibid., 59.
- 14.
Ibid., 112.
- 15.
Hugh Nicholson makes a thorough and convincing argument that not only are theologies of religions hegemonic, but that it is impossible to avoid the problem of political exclusion in the act of religious identity formation. Hugh Nicholson, Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 8ff.
- 16.
James L. Fredericks, Faith Among Faiths: Christian Theology and Non-Christian Religions (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 164.
- 17.
Ibid., 8.
- 18.
Clooney, Comparative Theology, 16.
- 19.
Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Theology After Vedanta: An Experiment in Comparative Theology (Delhi, India: Indian Books Centre, 1993), xvi.
- 20.
Nicholson, Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry, 14. Nicholson develops this argument in detail of the course of this monograph; for a shorter sketch of his position, see Nicholson, “The New Comparative Theology and the Problem of Theological Hegemonism.”
- 21.
Nicholson, Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry, 8–9.
- 22.
Ibid., 80ff.
- 23.
Ibid., 12.
- 24.
Ibid., 81.
- 25.
Ibid., 12.
- 26.
An example Nicholson gives is Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho. In the dialogue Justin argues that Logos theology is unique to Christian conceptions of God, suggesting the Jewish tradition of Trypho does not have such a concept. Yet, the Jewish tradition did have a rich Logos theology, particularly through the works of Philo of Alexandria (25 BCE–50 CE). Nicholson suggests that Justin, and the subsequent Christian tradition, imperialized the Jewish tradition by stripping it of an identity which contained a Logos theology.
- 27.
By “adversary” Nicholson means “an adversarial relation between an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ that stops short of declaring the ‘them’ an enemy.” He argues that “when the political is understood in this way, it is compatible with an acceptance of religious pluralism and a respect for other religions.” Nicholson, Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry, 8–9.
- 28.
Ibid., 102.
- 29.
In this regard, Nicholson does not merely stake out a position in a debate among theologians about theology of religions; he also intervenes in the disciplinary struggle between theologians and practitioners of religious studies, arguing that theological commitment has a legitimate place in the comparative study of religion. The bugaboo of hegemony also shadows non-theologians, who operate with a different set of normative claims that may or may not be explicit. Reid B. Locklin and Hugh Nicholson, “The Return of Comparative Theology,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78, no. 2 (2010): 477–514, esp. 480.
- 30.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 10, article 1.
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
Ibid., Chapter 10, article 4.
- 33.
Clooney, Comparative Theology, 150.
- 34.
Clooney, Theology After Vedanta, xvi.
- 35.
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), vol. 4 (Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation), 726–727. Emphasis mine.
- 36.
This is not to say that Reformed theology is therefore necessarily universalist. What I am saying is when it comes to judging whether or not a person is saved, the Reformed position is ultimately agnostic because God’s ultimate will is inscrutable. It is in the spirit of this agnosticism that the question of soteriology within a Reformed theology of religions remains an unanswerable question.
- 37.
The important question is whether epistemology is necessarily connected to soteriology. My argument is that comparative theology has been constructed upon the assumption that epistemology necessarily proceeds from a positive soteriological status. This is untenable for Reformed theology. Yet, under the Reformed tradition one can construct a theology where epistemology and soteriology are possibly related, but not necessarily, which is also amenable for comparative theology.
- 38.
Richard Mouw, “Volume Introduction” in Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, Volume 1, ed. Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill (Grand Rapids: Christian’s Library Press, 2013), xx.
- 39.
Abraham Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 488.
- 40.
Richard Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 4.
- 41.
Abraham Kuyper, “Review,” in Common Grace, 591. Although Kuyper was a post-lapsarian, Herman Bavinck was a prelapsarian and believed common grace was extended to Adam and Eve before the Fall. The concept of common grace does not depend on lapsarian doctrines as much as it depends on a concept that God bestows grace differently throughout creation. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 333.
- 42.
John Murray, Collected Writings of John Murray: Professor of Systematic Theology, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1937–1966. Volume Two (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1976), 93; cf. Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair, 11.
- 43.
Herman Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” Princeton Theological Review 7 (1901): 437.
- 44.
John Calvin and John T. MacNeill, Institutes of the Christian Religion, II, 2, 14, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 273.
- 45.
Mouw, “Volume Introduction,” xxii.
- 46.
Nelson D. Kloosterman, “Editors Introduction,” in Kuyper, Common Grace, xiii.
- 47.
Kuyper, Common Grace, 539–540.
- 48.
Mouw, “Volume Introduction,” xxv.
- 49.
Kuyper, Common Grace, 589–590.
- 50.
Ibid., 593.
- 51.
Ibid., 591.
- 52.
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged, 318.
- 53.
Ibid., 83.
- 54.
Ibid., 82.
- 55.
Ibid., 83.
- 56.
Ibid., 72.
- 57.
Ibid., 72.
- 58.
Ibid., 71.
- 59.
For the works of some prominent Neo-Calvinists associated with this line of thought, see Herman Hoeksema, The Protestant Reformed Churches in America: Their Origin, Early History and Doctrine, (Grand Rapids: First Protestant Reformed Church, 1947), Klaas Schilder, Christ and Culture, (Hamilton, Ontario: Lucerna, CRTS Publications, 2016), and Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology: Prolegomena and the Doctrines of Revelation, Scripture, and God (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P & R Pub., 2007).
- 60.
Calvin, Institutes, II: 2, 12.
- 61.
Richard Mouw, Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 61.
- 62.
Strange, Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock, 276, 319.
- 63.
Ibid., 319.
- 64.
Ibid., 306–307.
- 65.
Ibid., 276.
- 66.
Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair, 36.
- 67.
Kuyper, “Common Grace,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, 181.
- 68.
Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair, 44.
- 69.
Ibid., 50.
- 70.
For discussion, see Gilles Emery, O.P., The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: University Press, 2007), 312–359; Anselm Kyongsuk Min, “God as the Mystery of Shared Love: Thomas Aquinas on the Trinity,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity, ed. Peter C. Phan (Cambridge: University Press, 2011), 100–104; Ilia Delio, “Does God ‘Act’ in Creation? A Bonaventurian Response,” Heythrop Journal 44 (2003): 332–3.
- 71.
Abraham Kuyper, On Islam, ed. James D. Bratt (Bellingham: Lexham, 2017), 167.
- 72.
Johan Herman Bavinck, The Church Between Temple and Mosque: A Study of the Relationship Between the Christian Faith and Other Religions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 125.
- 73.
Ibid.
- 74.
Ibid.
- 75.
Ibid.
- 76.
Johan Herman Bavinck, The J.H. Bavinck Reader, ed. by John Bolt, James D. Bratt, and P.J. Visser (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 45.
- 77.
Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair, 26.
- 78.
Ibid., 25.
- 79.
Ibid., 14.
- 80.
Mouw, “Volume Introduction,” xxiv.
- 81.
Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair, 100.
- 82.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 177.
- 83.
Ibid., 182.
- 84.
Clooney, Comparative Theology, 112.
- 85.
Ibid., 152.
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Massad, A.E. (2018). Epistemological Openness: A Reformed Neo-Calvinist’s Theological Response to Vatican II and Comparative Theology. In: Latinovic, V., Mannion, G., Welle, O.F.M., J. (eds) Catholicism Engaging Other Faiths. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98584-8_11
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