Fulcrum Conference Islington 2006

Gospel in Context:
Among Many Faiths

by David F Ford
Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge
Director, Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme

The notes in the text are hyperlinked into the end notes; to return to the text, click on the end note number

Introduction

The 21^st Century Global Context

It seems safe to predict that relations among religions will be an important factor in the history of the 21^st century that is now beginning. It may even be that they will be decisive in shaping our world in the coming decades. This is a very different prospect from what appeared safe to predict during most of the twentieth century, when the major ideologies of capitalism, communism and fascism had all more or less eliminated religion from a significant role in their scenarios of the future.

That future was imagined as secular in different ways. What has happened now is not, of course, that secular forces and understandings have disappeared, but that there is more recognition of what many had maintained throughout: that the world is not simply religious and not simply secular but is complexly both religious and secular, with all sorts of constantly shifting interactions and balances. The billions of those directly involved with religious communities and practices had never disappeared; they had simply been written off as insignificant by a view of history that had consigned them to the past without a future.

But now that they have re-emerged on the world stage, for worse as well as for better, we are able to see more clearly some of the challenges that our context poses.

Here today we are a group of Christians asking about the Gospel in the context of many cultures and faiths. John Sentamu has already tackled some of the issues about the Gospel and cultures, and I will now address the topic of the Gospel among many faiths. The first thing to say is obvious: how deeply connected these two aspects of our context are and, for those who believe in God (which will include Jews, Christians, Muslims and many others), the most essential connection between them is that God created both and continues to be involved with both - and God does not have to be a respecter of our dualistic categories. A second point flows from my description of our world, and certainly this society in Britain, as complexly religious and secular: how the religions relate to secular forces and understandings is inseparable from how they relate to each other. And, stated crudely, there are three basic tendencies that a faith community can follow when faced either with religious or with secular others.

The first is, either defensively or aggressively, to define itself competitively over against others. This usually requires clear definition of boundaries, a well-delineated package of distinctive beliefs and practices and a suspicion of any interaction that might call in question or threaten this identity. At the other extreme is an openness that assimilates or capitulates to the other, having no definite identity to sustain. In between are a range of positions that try both to maintain a particular identity and also to engage peacefully across boundaries, and to discern in that engagement what is to be affirmed, what is to be rejected and what might be transformed through further engagement.

I take it that Fulcrum is a Christian group that for Christian reasons refuses either of the extremes but tries to engage with cultures and with other faiths in that mode of discerning engagement just described. That is what I would see as the mainstream orthodox Christian position over the centuries, beginning in its early centuries as it tried to work out its relationship to Judaism, to the other religions of the Roman Empire and beyond, and to the popular and highly sophisticated dimensions of Hellenistic and Roman civilisation. It is well summed up by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his Ethics where he sees it rooted in the reality of Jesus Christ, who in his incarnation radically affirms the goodness of creation, in his crucifixion radically judges the whole world, and in his resurrection radically transforms it. It is the simultaneity of those together that sets the core task in relation to others and indeed ourselves: what is to be affirmed, rejected and transformed? And why, when, where, by whom, with whom, and how? Above all there is the reality of the living Jesus Christ who is other to everyone, who does not stay within the boundaries we define, but often appears on both sides of them or transforms them, who is simply not completely assimilable to our categories, doctrines or cultures, who does not give his followers, immersed as we are in the complexities of history, an overview of reality or of other people and their relationships with him, and whose teaching about how people will ultimately be judged by God assures us of many surprises.

Universality: Facing and Gathering

So for Christians the Gospel among many faiths is first of all the living Jesus Christ among many faiths. What this might mean in our context today is the core issue this afternoon. I want to develop it further by first meditating briefly on two texts which have been with me for many years and go on being fruitful. The first is 2 Corinthians 4:6:

The God who said, 'Let light shine in darkness' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

The face of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, shining in our hearts and before whom we live, is also turned towards all humankind. His universality now is not so much that of a system of doctrine that has the truth wrapped up, or a spectacular appearance, as of innumerable person to person, face to face relationships, of which we cannot have any overview. The mystery of the Gospel in relation to other faiths is part of the superabundant mystery of all those relationships. We only glimpse a little of a very few of these relationships. And when we take seriously the Gospel assurance that many are incognito ('When was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you? - Matthew 25:39) then we have to be very modest indeed about what we claim to know about the relationship of the living Jesus Christ to those of other faiths (or, for that matter, to those of the many varieties of fellow-Christian). Those of us who live now in faith before this face are invited to try to follow his gaze, to look with his eyes on others, to seek 'the mind of Christ' and to be committed to the new, extraordinarily diverse relationships that open up.

The second text is Ephesians 1:8-10:

With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

If we are called to take part in the fulfilment of that plan (oikonomia) and assume that the 'all' being gathered up must include all people of all faiths, what might the mode of that gathering be? The verse mentions wisdom and insight - clearly there is an immense challenge to seek more and more wisdom about this; the rest of Ephesians is strong on love, gentleness, forgiveness and humility, and an ethic of communication summed up as speaking the truth in love. What might it be to imagine our engagements with those of other faiths in that mode, seeking wisdom in love, anticipating now in the Spirit of Christ an ultimate gathering together in peace (and note the extraordinary conception of peace and between Jews and Gentiles in Ephesians Chapter 2)?

I am sure that many of you here have had glimpses of that being realised. I have had some too, and I want now to be autobiographical for a while.

Birmingham: Drains, Newbigin, Hick, Hooker

Birmingham in the 1980s was a fascinating place to learn about the Gospel in the context of many faiths. It was then pioneering ways of living as a multi-faith city and having vigorous debates about policing; racism; education, welfare and housing policy; religious education in schools; and engagement among faith communities. I was part of my local parish church, an inner-city evangelical Anglican congregation, for fifteen years (five years as Church Warden - I had not quite appreciated before that how crucial a part of Church life drains and heating systems are, or how ignorant I was of so many technical terms for parts of buildings), with a house-mosque on the corner of the road I lived in, and a hugely varied population racially, culturally and religiously. What was imprinted on me through that experience has been a touchstone for theological thinking ever since. For a young theologian in his first job in the Department of Theology in the University of Birmingham it was also a chance to be apprenticed to some remarkable people who were deeply involved in the issues of relations between faiths and cultures. (And might I say that in this whole complex area of relating the Gospel to other faiths, as in other aspects of discipleship, one of the essentials is apprenticeships to people who both lived it and thought it through wisely.)

Let me now name just three people (to two of whom I would see myself as having been apprenticed).

One is Lesslie Newbigin, who came to Selly Oak Colleges to lecture on mission and then retired in Birmingham, having behind him many years in India as a missionary, a leader of the international missionary and ecumenical movements, a shaper of the Church of South India and a bishop in it. Here was someone who impressively combined some key elements:

• a deep love of scripture (I remember him saying that, as General Secretary of the International Missionary Council, whenever he visited a new place his favourite way of getting acquainted was to have a Bible study);

• a sharp and well-educated theological mind (having just finished my doctorate on Karl Barth's interpretation of scripture I was impressed to find that Lesslie had, in the middle of everything else, found time to read the whole six million-word Church Dogmatics);

• years of living in a country where Christianity is a small minority and developing the linguistic competence to engage in deep dialogue and witness (and, because of the integrity of both his dialogue and his witness, finding no contradiction between them);

• commitment to the institutional church at all levels, from local to international, recognising that, for all the priority of the face to face, we need not only local communities but structures at other levels too;

• and, amazingly, the ability to go on thinking creatively and take new initiatives even in his retirement, as seen in the series of books and conferences that continue in The Gospel and Our Culture movement: he saw that the engagement with Western culture went along with relating to other faiths.

I was privileged to be part of a small group that met regularly in his home, and also to work with him on the report, Faith in the City of Birmingham, which Bishop Hugh Montefiore asked Lesslie to head after the national Faith in the City report came out. Lesslie Newbigin made a deep impression in many ways, but on our topic now the lessons include:

• at the same time as you engage with people of other faiths, allowing them to speak for themselves, go deeper into the Gospel, which always has new riches, new light, new possibilities;

• essential to this is ever-renewed study of scripture - I think the most important work of Newbigin's later years is his commentary on the Gospel of John.

• modern Western culture is a powerful set of influences on all faiths now, and there can be no thorough inter-faith engagement that does not at the same time respond to these.

• attend constructively to the need for appropriate institutional structures and networks. [Cf Fulcrum]

Newbigin was not the only person doing pioneering thinking in this field. As different as could be was my colleague in the University of Birmingham, Professor John Hick. For ten years I met with him in a monthly discussion group, as well as engaging in other settings. During these years he was developing further his alternative to orthodox incarnational Christianity and his radically pluralist understanding of religions. With John the theological relationship was mostly one of opposition: I became less and less convinced by his account of Christianity or by his approach to other religions. The arguments involved cannot be rehearsed here (there is now a vast literature discussing his work), but the point I want to make is how he contrasted with Newbigin on the matters I have emphasised. John offered a clearly argued overview solution to the problem of a plurality of faiths. But where was the sense of going deeper into the Gospel or scripture? Where was the prophetic engagement with modernity? Where was the commitment to institutional transformation and construction?

Then there was Roger Hooker, the least widely known of the three (to whom I was also personally closest, and who became a much-loved godfather to our second child). Graham Kings has written an excellent book[1] on him and his father-in law Max Warren. Roger, like Newbigin, had spent many years in India, had learnt Sanskrit and Hindi, and returned to Selly Oak Colleges. Later he was inter-faith adviser to the Diocese of Birmingham and wrote a doctorate interpreting in theological terms an Indian novelist who wrote in Hindi. A great deal could be said about his approach to other faiths (and is said very well by Graham Kings and by his own letters quoted in Graham's book), and in broad outline he had much in common with Newbigin. The thing that stood out was his way of long-term, largely hidden, local, patient learning, his forming of mutual relationships across boundaries, and a sense that deep differences of faith and practice can yet accompany deep respect and friendship. Indeed, Roger's inter-faith work might be read as a practical commentary on 1 Corinthians Chapter 13: in this sphere, as in others, whatever we do without love gains us nothing; what is built in love lasts. This in practice places friendships in a pivotal role in inter-faith relations.

Scriptural Reasoning

The lessons of Birmingham went deep, and on moving to Cambridge in the early 1990s it was quite a shock to me and my wife to leave the vitalities of Britain's second city. But on the inter-faith front a surprise was in store from an unexpected quarter. I had been attending the American Academy of Religion annual meeting for many years and in the early 1990s began, with another Christian theologian, Daniel Hardy [who had been perhaps the most important of all the theological relationships owed to the time in Birmingham] to sit in on sessions by a new group that met there.

This was a group of younger Jewish text scholars (of scripture and of the rabbinic traditions written in the Talmud) and philosophers and theologians. They were concerned that there was little fruitful engagement between their sets of disciplines.[2] Most scholars got on with their textual work without taking much notice of current philosophy and theology, and most philosophers and theologians were regular modern academic thinkers who did not see much point in studying ancient scriptures and traditions. They began to meet together to study texts from scripture and Talmud in dialogue with Western philosophy, [in particular those Jewish philosophers who had themselves tried to cross this divide, such as Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig (perhaps the most embracing influence), Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas and Eugene Borowitz]. These text scholars were trained in both traditional Jewish interpretation and the methods of the modern Western academy, and these philosophers and theologians were likewise students of Jewish thought as well as of Western thought from classical Greece up to the present. The name they gave to what they did, 'Textual Reasoning', simply referred to the two sides that were brought together: the interpretation of traditional texts and the practices of philosophical and theological reasoning. A core question they shared was about Judaism after the Holocaust[3], leading them to interrogate both the modern Western context within which the Holocaust had been possible and also the resources - premodern, modern and postmodern[4] or contemporary - for responding to it within Judaism.

One perhaps surprising conclusion[5] that many of them came to was that post-Holocaust Judaism needed both to appropriate afresh its own scriptures and traditions of interpretation and at the same time to engage more deeply with others who are wrestling with the meaning of their faith today, especially Christians and Muslims. In other words, they were a Jewish example of the third position I have just described, engaging with their own particular roots while also relating across their boundaries with both secular and religious understandings.

Attending their meetings was a remarkable experience: they were full of vigorous argument, deep learning, creative insights and laughter. The relationship of a number of Christians with them led to the formation of a group called 'Scriptural Reasoning', which was at first Jewish-Christian[6] and then in the late 1990s became Jewish-Christian-Muslim. Scriptural Reasoning has been the way in which during the last decade I have learnt most about the Gospel in the context of other faiths. I want to describe it to you and try to distil from it some wisdom for our relations as Christians to those of other faiths, especially Judaism and Islam.

At the heart of scriptural reasoning is: Jews, Christians and Muslims coming together to read our scriptures, Tanakh, Bible and Qur'an. We have found that it makes deep sense for this to be a primary form of interaction between these three faiths. For each, scripture is central to worship, doctrine, ethics, and other dimensions of the faith community's world of meaning and imagination. For each, scripture is the most studied, quoted and loved book and is essential to its core identity. So if engagement between them is to take account of core identities it must go deeply into their scriptures. Each faith is also constantly challenged by new situations and issues, and if these are at all weighty then they are bound to lead to appeals to scripture. None of the faiths can simply repeat its scriptures, and each has well-developed traditions of interpretation with considerable internal differences.

What happens when there is close engagement with each others' texts and their interpretations, past and present, in a spirit simultaneously of academic study, of being true to one's own community and convictions, and of truth-seeking and peace-seeking? The answer is: usually not consensus. In fact differences often emerge more sharply, and yet at these points there is often a deepening awareness of the meaning of one's own faith as well as the others' faith. Yet the intensive conversation around these texts has begun to create what I call collegiality among some members of the three communities. I see this as crucial for the future of inter-faith relations. Each tradition has at present well-developed forms of collegiality for study, education, debate and deliberation. But there are almost no sites of collegiality between all three. It is something like the situation among Christian churches before the ecumenical movement provided ways to help turn competitive and often confrontational relationships into more conversational and even collaborative ones.

Scriptural Reasoning is now practised in various countries and in different locations in this country - here in London two groups meet regularly at St Ethelburga's and more are planned. It is just one little example of how inter-faith collegiality might be shaped, and there are of course many other things going on too. Yet it is worth trying to distil something of an inter-faith wisdom from its experience. One thing that has come up again and again is the centrality of mutual hospitality. It is not a matter of one being the host and the other two guests. Each is guest and each is host at this gathering around scriptures. The scriptures enable each to offer to the others their best and most distinctive 'food and drink', prepared with the help of their interpretative and theological cuisine. This is a place of respectful witness which can allow for radical differences and unresolved debate. But it also allows for that most delightful of events, when hospitality helps to generate friendship.

As with any collegiality, the pitfalls and learning experiences are endless. I have been asked to co-edit an issue of the journal Modern Theology devoted to Scriptural Reasoning (due out in July) and one of the articles, by a long-term Jewish participant (a founder member of Textual Reasoning), is a 'Handbook of Scriptural Reasoning', an attempt to gather some of the wisdom and practical guidelines that have been learnt over the past ten years about performing this sort of inter-faith engagement.

There are also many possible further developments of this practice. One discovery is that to study scriptures with those of another faith increases the desire and urgency of knowing one's own scriptures far better. Some of the Christian postgraduate students in Cambridge responded to participation in Scriptural Reasoning by forming a specifically Christian group, called Biblical Reasoning, which now has a life of its own quite apart from the inter-faith aspect. This is what one would expect and hope for: joint study with those of other faiths is always likely to be a minority practice, and, even for that minority, a practice that is less central than study, prayer and discussion within one's own community. Other developments relate to schools and universities. One of the founding members of Scriptural Reasoning has just had a sabbatical funded by an American centre devoted to teaching and learning in religion in order to work out a pedagogy centred on the three scriptures that might work well in the classroom. Further developments are exploring how joint conversation around scriptures might contribute to synagogues, churches and mosques getting together locally, and to civic education that is more sensitive to faith than it has generally been in the past, and to professions and places of work that include members of these three faiths, and to the training of chaplains in hospitals, prisons, schools, universities, the armed forces and elsewhere. In Cambridge, Scriptural Reasoning is one of several elements in the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme, which focuses both on teaching and research in Judaism, Christianity and Islam and their interrelations and also on educational outreach and public understanding. The list could go on, but I want now to offer two sets of concluding reflections.

The first is about how complexly demanding and long term this way of building collegiality through mutual hospitality and friendship is. As a Christian, I see it rooted in the daring hospitality of Jesus, his crossing of boundaries in his day in the interests of love and compassion and his being willing to go the way of the cross for the sake of reconciliation with God and among people. Other faiths have their own analogous ways of rooting it in their core truth and practice. But of course there are also justifications within each tradition for more defensive or aggressive approaches to the others. It is so much more straightforward to define boundaries sharply and engage in confrontational witness without the complications and commitments that come from spending a good deal of time engaging in more conversational or collaborative ways. There is a strong attraction in clear, competitive identities, complete with packaged faith and neat answers, and without the consumption of time and energy, or indeed the risks, of love and friendship. The way of understanding and loving is easy to dismiss and often seems to go wrong, and its long term nature make it as hard to justify as marriage or growing oak trees. This long haul often requires what the Australian theologian Stephen Pickard described (though he was talking about current problems in the Anglican Communion) as the spiritual discipline of patience, involving 'a cultivated waiting that brims full of vigour, life and resilience'[7], and is crucial to enabling 'a richer and resilient koinonia [in my terms, collegiality] informed by God's Spirit'.[8]

The second and final point is about faith and its relationship to God. What might wise Christian faith be, faith in line with the wisdom of God in Jesus Christ? Classically, it combines trust and the content that trust trusts in, summed up most succinctly as trust in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Clearly that involves trust in certain affirmations, classically summed up in the creeds, and also certain imperatives, classically summed up in the command to love God and neighbour. But there are other vital dimensions too. There is also a faith that is interrogative, a trust that questions need to be raised and pursued - seen most dramatically in the Psalms and the book of Job, but also running all through scripture and the tradition. A further dimension is the faith that is willing to explore possibilities, take risks and be open to surprises. But perhaps embracing all the modes of faith - affirmative, imperative, interrogative and exploratory - is the trust in what God is leading us into, a trust in God's promises that is overwhelmed by the desire for God's future. We know that now we are immersed in very puzzling situations and historical dynamics, that we only see through a glass, darkly, that we do not have the ultimate truth or the definitive ethic, and that faith, hope and love are the essentials.

But even that is not enough. Our desire is not just for God's future; it is for God. The core wisdom of faith is to desire God for God's sake, for his name's sake. 'Hallowed be your name' might be taken as the encompassing petition of the Lord's Prayer. John Donne says of Psalm 63 that 'the spirit and soule of the whole booke of Psalmes is contracted into this psalme.'[9]

O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.
3 Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.
4 So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your name
NRS Psalm 63:1)

I suspect it is only that sort of desire for God as God that can liberate us in our context of many cultures and many faiths to seek in trust God's new ways of wise and prophetic love in the twenty-first century.

Endnotes

The notes in the text are hyperlinked into the end notes; to return to the text, click on the end note number

[1] Graham Kings, Christianity Connected: Hindus, Muslims and the World in the Letters of Max Warren and Roger Hooker (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2002).

[2] For the best account of textual reasoning by participants and commentators, see Textual Reasonings, edited by Peter Ochs and Nancy Levene (SCM, London 2002).

[3] Cf. Peter Ochs, 'Textual Reasoning as a model for Jewish Thought after the Shoah' in Filosofia E Critica Della Filosofia Nel Pensiero Ebraico, edited by P Amodio, G Giannini and G Lissa (Giannini Editore, Napoli 2004) pp233-272.

[4] In the early years they used 'postmodern' in self-description, but as that term has become overused and ceased to have much specific meaning they have tended to drop it. My own preferred term for the modernity that has been traumatised by the Shoah and other twentieth century horrors and disasters is 'late modernity', with 'chastened modernity' for those aspects of it that have tried best to learn from the twentieth century - cf David F Ford, Holy Spirit and Christian Spirituality, and David F Ford Christian Wisdom, Desiring God and Learning in Love, (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press 2007), Chapter 4.

[5] Peter Ochs, 'Reading Scripture Together in Sight of Our Open Doors' in The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, Vol. XXVI, No. 1, new series, 2005, pp. 36-47.

[6] For a Jewish account of Christian theological engagement with Judaism that includes discussion of various strands that have fed into scriptural reasoning see Peter Ochs, 'Judaism and Christian Theology' in The Modern Theologians. An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918, edited by David F Ford with Rachel Muers (third edition, Blackwell, Oxford 2005), pp645-662.

[7] 'Innovation and Undecidability: Some Implications for the Koinonia of the Anglican Church', �Journal of Anglican Studies Vol.2.2 December 2004 p103.

[8] Ibid p104.

[9] Gale H Carrithers, Donne at Sermons. A Christian Existential World (SUNY Press, Albany 1972) p232.

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