Pope Francis and Religious Pluralism

KEVIN HARRIS: Recently, Pope Francis caused controversy by seeming to suggest all paths or religions lead to God. Speaking to an interfaith group of Christian, Muslim, and Hindu young people in Singapore, the Pope answered a question by saying through an interpreter^[1],

If we start to fight among yourselves and say, “My religion is more important than yours, my religion is true and yours is not,” where would that lead us? It is OK to discuss because every religion is a way to arrive at God. Analogously speaking, religion is like different languages to arrive at God. But God is God for all. And if God is God for all, we are all sons and daughters of God. “But my God is more important than your God.” Is that true? There is only one God, and each of us is a language, so to speak, to arrive at God. Muslim, Hindu, they are different paths.

While some are saying that the Pope has been misunderstood, an initial reading of that statement certainly sounds like he's advocating religious pluralism. Doesn't it, Bill?

DR. CRAIG: It certainly does. I initially thought when I heard that the Pope had made a statement of this sort that he was just reiterating the view that was promulgated at the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s. At that Council, the Catholic Church moved decisively in the direction of a very broad inclusivism bordering on universalism. For example, in the documents of Vatican II in the so-called Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, the Council declares^[2] that “those who have not yet received the Gospel are related in various ways to the people of God.” It says Jews in particular remain “dear to God . . . But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator” (such as Muslims). It says people “who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel” but who strive to do God's will by conscience can also be saved. The Council therefore declared that Catholics now pray for the Jews, not for the conversion of the Jews. And it also declares that the Church looks with esteem upon Muslims. Missionary work seems to be directed only toward those who, “serve the creature rather than the Creator” or are utterly hopeless. So at the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church had already moved toward a very broad inclusivism that borders on universalism. However, what it did not do was to deny the truth of the Christian faith, and that's what makes the Pope's statement so alarming. The Pope appears to endorse religious pluralism. On the view of Vatican II, Christianity is the true religion, the true way of salvation, but people who are non-Christians can be saved through the atoning death of Christ without their having faith in Christ. It would be as though you had a rich uncle that you never knew about and suddenly one day you're contacted by his estate saying that he's passed away and he's left you his entire fortune in his will. You would be the beneficiary of your uncle's death even though you had no knowledge whatsoever of your uncle or believed in him or that you were his heir. That's the view of Vatican II. It is the truth of Christianity but it denies that you have to have faith in Christ in order to be a beneficiary of Christ's death on the cross. The Pope's statement, as you notice, Kevin, is much more radical than this. Look at the statement. I'm going to pick out a few phrases that you read to our audience. He said, “If you say that my religion is true and yours is not” then this is erroneous in the Pope's view. That is to say, you must not say, as Vatican II does, that Christianity is true, and that, say, Islam is false. Then he says, “Every religion is a way to arrive at God.” Notice he does not say Christianity is the way to arrive at God – every religion is a way to arrive at God. And then he gives this analogy. He says, “Religion is like different languages to arrive at God. But God is God for all. And if God is God for all, we are all sons and daughters of God.” So if different religions are just like different languages, they're all saying the same thing in a different language. It's as if there were to be an English speaker, a French speaker, a German speaker all expressing the same proposition in their language. So this analogy of religions to different languages, all of which are salvific, all of which arrive at God, is a pluralistic attitude. The Pope concludes, “There is only one God, and each of us is a language, so to speak, to arrive at God. Muslim, Hindu, they are different paths.” This is to contradict Catholic teaching. This is incompatible with what the Catholic Church has always taught, even Vatican II. Vatican II may border on universalism, but it never denies the truth of the Christian faith. On the Pope's view, you have this religious pluralism, and each avenue to God is an equally valid means of salvation. Now, I just want our listeners to think about this. How can all of these different religions – these different languages – be saying the same thing? How can they all be true? The different religions of the world say radically different things. Take Buddhism and Islam, for example. In Islam there is a personal creator of the world who has created us and holds us morally responsible for our actions. There is a soul that is conjoined with our body that survives death. And there will be an afterlife of heaven and hell forever. The Buddhist believes none of that! Buddhism has no room for any of those beliefs. So what the sophisticated religious pluralist has to say is not that all of these religions are true; what the sophisticated religious pluralist says is that all of these religions are false! They are all just culturally conditioned mythological expressions of this inexpressible Ultimate Reality. This is, in fact, the view that my doctoral mentor, John Hick, came to hold – that all of the religions of the world are culturally relative and culturally conditioned falsehoods trying to get at this inexpressible, ineffable Ultimate Reality. And I just wonder what Professor Hick would think were he alive today and to find that the Roman Catholic pontiff has now embraced his view.

KEVIN HARRIS: The Pope also said, “I want to tell you something historical. Every dictatorship in history – the first thing they do is take away dialogue. Inter-religious dialogue is built on respect for others. This is very important.” Again, this was a large gathering of Christians, Hindus, and Muslims. So that's a very diplomatic statement. What's been your own approach when, for example, there have been lots of Muslims in the audience at a lecture or a debate?

DR. CRAIG: I love dialoguing with Muslims or adherence to other faiths. I find it tremendously interesting, and I think when dealing with Muslims or someone belonging to another religion the first and foremost lesson that we need to practice is to sympathetically understand their worldview; to try to enter into their horizon and understand how they see the world so that we are not attacking straw men or caricatures. Rather, we make an authentic effort to really understand what they believe, and then we say why in fact we think that that view is in error. I have found that Muslims have tremendous respect for this approach. What they do not respect are these wishy-washy theologians who just want to get together and hold hands and say, “Oh, well, we all believe in the same thing, and we're all on our way to God” and so forth. What they respect is someone who articulates what he believes and stands up and defends it in the face of objections. So that has been my methodology in dealing with folks who are adherents to other faiths.

KEVIN HARRIS: We have some clips from Catholic apologist Trent Horn. He is not very happy with the Pope's statement. Here's the first clip.

I think it's important at the outset to say it is not good the Pope said these things. It just isn't. Refusing to admit that is a clear example of Pope-splaining. It's confusing, and as the shepherd of Christ’s church, the Pope shouldn't confuse his flock or the faithful. Now, some people will say statements like these don't matter because they aren't ex cathedra or they're not infallibly declared. But we still have to submit to the Pope's ordinary teachings. However, not only is the Pope not teaching infallibly in this case, he's not even teaching at all, or if he is, it carries negligible magisterial weight. The Pope was giving an informal address to a group on an overseas trip. I often speak off the cuff at conferences or on Catholic Answers Live and I don't always phrase things the best way. That kind of thing happens to everyone. But if I said something scandalous that was getting spread all over the Internet, I would make a statement. I would say I apologize for any confusion I've caused. I misspoke. I meant to say this instead. And Pope Francis should do the same thing for the good of the Church.

I'm sure you can relate, Bill. You've offered clarification on some things you've said especially when it becomes necessary due to chatter on the Internet. But are our Catholic friends faced with the additional problem of the Pope's authority or infallibility here?

DR. CRAIG: Not in this case. The Pope speaks authoritatively and infallibly only when he is exercising his magisterial role as the head of the Church. And, in fact, the Pope almost never does that. About the only times that the Pope has spoken ex cathedra as it's called for the Church is when he declared the immaculate conception of Mary and Mary's assumption into heaven – errors which Protestants wouldn't at all agree with. So that doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence in the Pope's infallibility or authority. But in this case, the Pope is just giving an interview, and therefore even for a Catholic it has no authority or infallibility whatsoever. It's just his opinion, and one is at liberty to disagree with him if one wishes to. It's comparable to the Pope's recent controversial remarks on the U.S. presidential election where he said American citizens need to choose between the lesser of two evils – either someone who believes in abortion on demand and therefore killing babies or someone who believes that you should exclude migrants from coming into your country which is an unloving behavior. That's the Pope's political opinion, and it has no binding authority upon Catholics. And fortunately neither does this opinion on religious pluralism.

KEVIN HARRIS: Trent says that there have been some attempts to show that the Pope was misinterpreted. Here's the next clip.

I mean, the Pope's advisors knew a correction could be warranted because they briefly changed the official English translation of his remarks. They added phrases like “other religions are seen as paths trying to reach God and languages that try to express and approach God.”  Now that is much more in harmony with the Church's teaching that other non-Christian religions have some truth in them that can bring people closer to God. But not salvation. In Acts 17:23, St. Paul told the Greeks “I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To an Unknown God.’ What, therefore, you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” In other words, a person could be directing worship to the true God but not know it because they are ignorant of God's true nature beyond basic facts like there being one God who is the creator.

A couple of things there. For one thing, this shows how important Acts 17 is concerning a number of issues. It's a chapter you and I discuss quite often.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. And I think that Trent's remark reinforces the impression that the Vatican officials here tried to clean up the mess that the Pope had made by in effect mistranslating his remarks into English to make them look less radical than they really were. What Trent says they did was they massaged the original statement by adding in additional phraseology to try to clean it up. So it does show that the Vatican officials were really worried about this and understood that the Pope had gone off the reservation here in what he had said.

KEVIN HARRIS: You notice he said that he didn't want to be accused of Pope-splaining. You've heard of man-splaining, but I guess in that context trying to defend the Pope or reinterpret what he said or put your own spin on it.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. I take it that that would be a sort of joke in the Catholic subculture that you and I aren't so familiar with.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the next clip from Trent on the Christian's approach to people of other religions. Let's check it out.

As for criticizing people for saying “My God is better than your God,” hopefully what he means is that we shouldn't be obnoxious or triumphalistic towards non-Christians and treat them as if God doesn't love them yet, or that they don't have any relationship with God. Instead we should find sensible common ground with the aspects of God they do recognize, and then lead those people to a fuller understanding of the triune God. Hopefully the sensible message is what the Pope meant, but the problem is that that's not clear at all from what the Pope actually said which is why the translators changed his English response back to “all religions are paths to God.” The Italian original actually means “paths to arrive at God” which is really problematic. Now, the Pope may have meant other religions are incomplete paths towards reaching God and so Christians should build on those incomplete paths to help people fully know Jesus Christ who is the path or way of salvation, but that wasn't clear in the Pope's address, and the Pope should provide that additional clarity for those who are understandably confused by his words.

A couple of things I wanted to ask you, and you touched on this earlier. The Catholic apologist sometimes has to ultimately bite the bullet and defend what the Pope says. When I was listening to this I'm thinking it comes down to the bar of Scripture which is exactly what Protestants say.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I think in this case the Catholic apologist does not need to bite the bullet and defend the Pope's unfortunate remarks here. Rather, like Trent Horn, he can criticize the Pope and say the Pope owes us a clarification and perhaps an apology for misspeaking and misleading people. But ultimately I think it does come down to the bar of Scripture. For Catholics and for Protestants alike Scripture is the ultimate and final authority for Christian doctrine. Even the statements of ecumenical councils or the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church have to accord with the teaching of Scripture in order to be authoritative. In appealing to Scripture we are appealing to a source of authority and truth which is common to us both.

KEVIN HARRIS: Trent was talking about finding common ground. You tried to offer some common ground with a Muslim apologist on a recent dialogue on the Trinity. What was your approach?

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I had a recent dialogue with a fellow named Muhammad Hijab on Cameron Bertuzzi’s Capturing Christianity.^[3] I really appreciated Cameron's final question. He wanted to, I think, bring a little reconciliation or a little unity between us. So he asked each of us what is it about your opponent's point of view that you agree with? I was able to say how much I appreciated Mr. Hijab’s defense of monotheism, his commitment to the fact that there is but one God, and I also expressed the view that I agree with him that the radical doctrine of divine simplicity that says that all of God's properties are identical to one another and that God is identical to his properties is a false doctrine that we ought not to affirm. So it was a chance for me to be forthcoming and say that there are some good things about what he had to say.

KEVIN HARRIS: I want to check out one more clip from Trent Horn because he brings up an important issue here. Here it is. Check this out.

I remember what Scripture says in Ephesians chapter 4: “Therefore, putting away falsehood, let everyone speak the truth with his neighbor for we are members one of another. Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Put away falsehoods, and don't hold on to anger.” The problem is that the Internet teaches us to do the opposite of those things. And that's really bad for our souls. I see so many Catholics online making the worst kinds of accusations – calumny against other people. That's a grave sin, and they're saying this not just about the Pope but about all kinds of people. For example, they'll say a certain non-Catholic apologist knows he's wrong and so he lies to his audience about the evidence because he's too proud to admit that he's wrong. Or they'll say a certain priest is soft on LGBT issues because he's gay or he's engaging in sex acts with other men. Or they'll say the Pope says the things he does because the Pope wants to destroy the Church. It's easy to make these kinds of accusations online especially when you have an anonymous account. But you and I are not anonymous to God which is why Jesus said on the day of judgment men will render account for every careless word they utter. James chapter 3 says “The tongue is a little member and boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire. And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is an unrighteous world among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the cycle of nature, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by humankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. A restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brethren, this ought not be so.” So let's take our anger, frustration, our fear. Let's give that back to God in prayer and not turn it into calumny or into curses that we give online. We should graciously use technology, though. We can use things like email or responsible social media use to ask our pastors to give the faithful, as well as those who are inquiring about the faith, the clarity that leads to a knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Wow. That's very convicting. Trent may be referring to you, Bill, when he mentioned the non-Catholic apologist. He's a fan of yours. He often interacts with your work. But I think he made some good points on calumny – not a common word. It's the false or inaccurate accusation against someone. He also talked about the passive aggressive nature that the Internet can produce and using social media in good ways.

DR. CRAIG: I have no reason to think that he's got me in mind when he talks about a certain non-Catholic apologist that has been attacked by Catholics. I have found in my experience that Catholics tend to be very appreciative of my work because we emphasize mere Christianity – those doctrines that we both hold in common. So I doubt that he's talking about me. But it has been my experience that many Catholic apologists seem to be more exercised and worked up about winning Protestants to Catholicism than they are with winning non-Christians to Christ, and that seems to me to be a misplaced emphasis. We ought to be burdened with the evangelistic zeal of bringing non-believers to come to a personal knowledge of Christ, and then later can talk about whether they want to become an Anglican or Orthodox or a Baptist or Catholic or whatever. The first task must be to bring them to Christ.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let’s conclude with the main topic today. Summarize your thoughts for us on what the Pope said, religious pluralism; really the ramifications of what he's saying. And also, I know you urge us to be charitable when interpreting what someone says, but are you concerned with what the Pope said?

DR. CRAIG: Oh, I'm very alarmed at what he said. I don't know if he really believes this or if he was just speaking sloppily and loosely, but if you look at what he actually said, it's an endorsement of religious pluralism. This is important because I believe that religious pluralism is the burning theological issue of our day. What do you do with people who lie outside the Christian tradition? Are they all going to hell? Is it possible for some of them to be saved? If anyone's interested in my take on this question, at our Reasonable Faith website I have several articles on this under the heading “Christian particularism” which is the view that I defend. I basically propose a Molinist solution to the problem of religious pluralism according to which God so providentially arranges the world that anybody who would freely believe in Christ if he heard the Gospel is born at a time and place where he does hear the Gospel so that no one is lost because of the accidents of history and geography. Anybody who wants, or even would want, to be saved will be saved. Interestingly, that, I believe, is one of the lessons of Acts 17 to which you referred before.^[4]