New book addresses indifferentism, false inter-religious dialogue

Jesus Christ made statements about himself that if not true would make him the greatest egomaniac who ever walked the earth—statements such as “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6) and “I am the light of the world” (Jn 8:12). He also said: “All things have been entrusted to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mt 11:27). And, further: “Anyone committed to the truth hears my voice (Jn 18:37).

Jesus made such audacious statements about his identity because he indeed was and is God incarnate, and the sole Savior of the world. The truth declared and defended, for which many Christians have even given their lives. And the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:

Through the centuries, in so many languages, cultures, peoples and nations, the Church has constantly confessed this one faith, received from the one Lord, transmitted by one Baptism, and grounded in the conviction that all people have only one God and Father. (par 172)

Papal indifferentism?

Pope Francis, during his September 2024 trip to Singapore, seemed to contradict the particularity of Christ and the Christian faith when he said that “all religions are a path to God” and also remarked:

If you start to fight, ‘my religion is more important than yours, mine is true and yours isn’t,’ where will that lead us? … There’s only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are Sheik, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and they are different paths [to God].

This is not the first time the Holy Father sparked controversy and was accused by some of indifferentism. In 2019, Francis signed the Document on Human Fraternity, also known as the Abu Dhabi Declaration, posted on the Vatican website, which declared:

The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.

And in September 2022, Francis participated in the Seventh Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, which took place in Kazakhstan. The Congress issued a declaration that stated, in words similar to the Abu Dhabi Declaration:

We note that pluralism in terms of differences in skin color, gender, race, language and culture are expressions of the wisdom of God in creation. Religious diversity is permitted by God.

In the wake of the Abu Dhabi Declaration and perhaps in response to his critics, Pope Francis clarified during an April 2019 general audience that God’s willing of “the diversity of religions … is only according to his ‘permissive will.'”

The position that all religions are simply different “paths to God” is closely associated with universalism—the idea that ultimately hell is empty or ultimately will be empty—a theory that goes back to Origen in the third century. On January 15, 2024, Pope Francis told Italian journalist Fabio Fazio “I like to think hell is empty; I hope it is”—though he did caution: “What I would say is not a dogma of faith, but my personal thought.” In fairness, Francis has affirmed the existence of hell, most explicitly in his 2016 Lenten message when he preached:

Yet the danger always remains that by a constant refusal to open the doors of their hearts to Christ who knocks on them in the poor, the proud, rich and powerful will end up condemning themselves and plunging into the eternal abyss of solitude which is Hell.

In the face of indifferentism and universalism, some Catholic authors have reiterated that Jesus is the only Savior of the world, that the true Faith fully subsists in the Catholic Church founded by Christ, and that hell is real (and is most probably populated). They argue that such theories undermine or even deny the significance of human freedom and that religious indifferentism articulated in such statements as “all religions are a path to God” poses a threat for the need to proclaim Christ and his mandate to “make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28: 18).

An exhaustive response to religious indifferentism

In 2024, En Route Books and Media published Jesus Christ, Scandal of Particularity: Vatican II, A Catholic Theology of Religions, Justification and Truth, by theologian Eduardo Echeverria. A professor of theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit,

Echeverria provides an exhaustive scholarly examination of the problem of religious indifferentism and in-depth refutation of positions denying that in Jesus Christ “there is salvation in no one else” (Acts 4:12). Echeverria explains in the preface that this “Christological dogma of the Church has been lost … Religious relativism, namely the idea that all religions are equally vehicles of salvation has become ever more common.” Jesus Christ, Scandal of Particularity seeks to “reassert the definitive and complete character of the revelation of Christ.” Echeverria’s work is especially a defense of the true meaning of the Vatican II teaching found in Lumen Gentium (LG)—most particularly Article 16—that lays out the conditions by which it may be possible for non-Christians to be saved. These articles in LG are often misinterpreted, exploited, or simply ignored by those who advocate that salvation may be attained by belief in and practice of any religion. In addition, the book focuses on the correct principles by which inter-religious dialogue should be conducted.

Echeverria begins with a lengthy response to the work of Fr. Gerald O’Collins, S.J. O’Collins provides a novel argument as to how all non-Christians can be saved. God reveals himself to all men through natural law and thus O’Collins concludes that “God’s revelation, in some true sense, reaches everyone.” Based on Romans 1: 20 and 2: 12-15 this is certainly true. But Echeverria points out that O’Collins’ approach fails to recognize the “important distinction between God’s general revelation, or creation revelation and his specific revelation” as O’Collins argues that simply following natural law is in itself salvific.

While LG 16 acknowledges that salvation may be possible to non-Christians who follow the dictates of conscience and “with His grace strive to live a good life,” LG also teaches that  whatever “good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel.” And Echeverria is quick to correct O’Collins’ failure to include LG 16’s admonition that persons are often deceived by Satan, and are therefore prone to false ideas and practices. Moreover, Echeverria also corrects O’Collins in that the latter ignores the other Vatican II document Ad Gentes regarding the necessity of the missionary activity of the Church. Contrary to O’Collins, Ad Gentes teaches that God wills “[a]ll must be incorporated into [Christ] by baptism and into His Church, which is His Body” (Art. 7).

In contrast to O’Collins’ “inclusivism” view of redemption, Echeverria supports what he calls an “accessibilism” more in keeping with the conditions for the possibility of redemption for non-Christians. He offers an important defense of propositional revelation—that truth about God, and thus the object of faith, can be expressed and thus known in doctrinal statements. There exists now a certain doubt and a pessimistic belief that human language is but “fallible verbalizations” of faith—rather than truly constituting “the content of God’s self revelation.”

Echeverria takes on prominent theologians such as Edward Schillebeeckx and Juan Luis Segundo, who argue that faith is not about belief in articles of faith but that God’s revelation is all about an experience of redemption—not “information, but transformation.” Of course, with such a revisionist view of faith and revelation, Christ’s own words about himself and the creedal statements of the Church are not objectively true—since in this view all human language relativizes the truth about God. Never mind that God himself has said things about himself in dialogic revelation—and he expects human beings to make a response, as he has “made something unknown known”!

In Chapter Four, Echeverria shows how O’Collins misinterprets the Vatican II document Guadium et Spes (GS)—the Pastoral Constitution on the Church—especially article 22: “For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man” O’Collins, according to his inclusivism, argues this means that indeed every man and woman, even those who do not profess the Christian Faith, are nonetheless united to Jesud as his “assumption of human nature means assuming each human person.” Echeverria, drawing on the work of Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), demonstrates this is not what is meant by the teaching of GS 22. Rather, it teaches that in the Incarnation he became truly human as Christ, in his particularity, enters into “the real plane of actual concrete human existence.”

An examination of remarks by Pope Francis

Echeverria next turns his attention to the issue of inter-religious dialogue with a primary focus on Pope Francis’s approach to this subject. Echeverria begins by stating that the manner in which Francis advocates inter-religious dialogue is burdened by the primary problem of the Francis papacy: a lack of clarity. Francis’s advocacy of inter-religious dialogue often fails to take into account the fundamental differences among religions and how other faiths teach doctrines opposed diametrically to the truths of Christianity.

Referencing a 1999 CDF document on subjectivity, Christology, and the Church, Eccheverria argues that Francis, while promoting “understanding through dialogue, tends to substitute the process of dialogue for the search for truth itself.” According to Echeverria, most egregious is Francis’s 2014 statement: “Engaging in dialogue does not mean renouncing our own ideas and traditions, but the claim that they alone are valid or absolute.” Echeverria is concerned that the pope’s statement seems to deny that truth can be known—in other words, not only that Jesus is ontologically the sole sufficient cause of salvation even for those who are invincibly ignorant, but that there is a true epistemological dimension to salvation.

Echeverria relies on the teachings of St. Paul VI and the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue (PCID)—namely, that inter-religious dialogue cannot ignore “contradictions that may exist between [other religions] and Christian revelation” and that for the mission of the Church, such dialogue must include an evangelization dimension. According to PCID, in respectful dialogue with others it is also necessary to announce the truth that there is a “divine order which is only one: that of grace, faith, of the Church and of the Christian life.”

Echeverria also asserts that Francis’s approach contradicts St. John Paul II, who taught that dialogue is a “truth-oriented process” that, far from stifling dialogue, is “a commitment to the truth of one’s religious tradition by its very nature makes dialogue with others both necessary and fruitful.”

Echeverria concludes his work with a lengthy examination of the positions of other theologians on the issue of epistemology—notably, Bernard Lonergan, and Edward Schillebeeck. He explains where they err and also in what way they are correct and helpful in showing how human beings can know objective truth.

Echeverria’s work is a scholarly contribution, full of rigorous research, to a serious issue confronting the Church today. One weakness may be found in the author’s almost heavy emphasis on evangelization as necessary because persons are subject to the darkness of the mind and prone to error, though he doesn’t completely ignore other vital reasons—that Christ wills personal unity with all people, that all men be brought into the true unity of his Church, and that human completion is fulfilled only by such a true personal union with Christ in the life of the Spirit.

This book would have benefited from better editing, as some of Echeverria’s arguments are repeated (even word for word), and from streamlining lengthy discussions. However, these are minor faults that ultimately do not detract from the important defense Echeverria has made on an issue that directly affects the God-given mission of the Church to “make disciples of all nations.”

 Jesus Scandal of Particularity—Vatican II, a Catholic Theology of Religions, Justification, and Truth
by Eduardo Echeverria, PhD
En Route Books and Media, 2024
Paperback, 529 pages