Is There Such a Thing As a Neo-Augustinian Response to Religious Diversity? a Comparison of John Milbank and Joseph Ratzinger

Is There Such a Thing as a Neo-Augustinian Response to Religious Diversity? A Comparison of John Milbank and Joseph Ratzinger

Frederiek Depoortere

Abstract. — The label ‘neo-Augustinian’ is used to refer to theologians who fall back on Augustine in times of upheaval. In today’s world, one major challenge faced by Christian theologians is the one posed by religious diversity. This article will investigate if there is such a thing as a contemporary neo-Augustinian approach to religious diversity. It will proceed through a comparison of two prominent, contemporary neo-Augustinian theologians, John Milbank and Joseph Ratzinger, with the help of the following research questions: Is religious diversity an issue for Milbank and Ratzinger? How do both theologians evaluate religious diversity and how do they respond to it? Do they fall back on Augustine when doing so? The comparison between Milbank and Ratzinger undertaken here will suggest that there is no such a thing as a contemporary neo-Augustinian approach to religious diversity (or at least not in the two authors that will be compared here). In the second part of the article, the scope will be widened and the way Milbank and Ratzinger respond to the pluralist theology of religions will be investigated. This will lead to the suggestion that Milbank and Ratzinger do not sufficiently take into account that “the break of the Enlightenment” (Slavoj Žižek) cannot be reversed.

I. Introducing the Label ‘Neo-Augustinian’

Throughout the history of the Western Church, theologians have fallen back on Augustine in times of crisis and upheaval. Seemingly, the work of the Church Father has enabled them time and again to deal with new challenges and changing contexts.1 In the last decade of

1. See Lieven Boeve, “Retrieving Augustine Today: Between Neo-Augustinianist Essentialism and Radical Hermeneutics,” Augustine and Postmodern Thought: A New Alliance Against Modernity?, ed. Lieven Boeve, Mathijs Lamberigts, Maarten Wisse, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 219 (Leuven: Peeters, 2009) 1-17 (at 7).

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the twentieth century this happened once more when a number of British theologians, headed by John Milbank and forming a movement that would become known as ‘Radical Orthodoxy’, developed a so- called ‘postmodern critical Augustinianism’ as the answer to the ills and problems of late-modern and postmodern life.2 But, as noted by Lieven Boeve in the introductory chapter to a recent volume on Augus- tine in postmodern thought, the neo-Augustinianism of Milbank and his fellow Radical Orthodoxy theologians is not an isolated phenom- enon. There are also theologians who do not belong to the Radical Orthodoxy movement, but who can nevertheless be considered as neo- Augustinians in the sense that they turn to Augustine to find answers to the predicaments of contemporary life. The most prominent exam- ple of these, as explained by Boeve, is without a doubt Joseph Rat- zinger.3 The aim of the present article is, first of all, to investigate the way in which contemporary neo-Augustinianism has responded to the challenge of religious diversity, which is, arguably, one of the major challenges for Christian theology today; and to determine whether there is such a thing as a response to religious diversity that can rightly be called “neo-Augustinian.” The following questions will guide our investigation of this topic: Is religious diversity an issue for contemporary neo-Augustinianism? How do the authors belonging to contemporary neo-Augustinianism evaluate religious diversity and how do they respond to it? Do they fall back on Augustine when responding to religious diversity? And if they do, do they refer to specific works or even specific fragments from works of the Church Father? How do they appropriate him and put him to use? To keep our investigation manageable, we will focus on two authors, namely Milbank and Rat- zinger. This choice is justified by the fact that Milbank is the founding father of the Radical Orthodoxy movement; as such, and despite differences among the different theologians belonging to the movement, he is the one who shaped and determined its outlook to a very large degree. As for Ratzinger, he is probably, as was already indicated, the most important and influential contemporary neo- Augustinian theologian outside the Radical Orthodoxy movement.

2. The expression “postmodern critical Augustinianism” was used by Milbank as a characterisation of his theological project in John Milbank, “‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’: A Short Summa in Forty Two Responses to Unasked Questions,” Mod- ern Theology 7, no. 3 (1991) 225-237. 3. Boeve, “Retrieving Augustine Today,” 5.

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II. Is Religious Diversity an Issue for Contemporary Neo-Augustinianism?

Let us begin with the first of the aforementioned research questions and examine whether religious diversity is an issue at all for Milbank and Ratzinger. As recently noted by Paul Hedges, “Milbank is normally silent, even worryingly so, on the religious Other.”4 The only important exception to this general silence is a chapter that was published in 1990 in a book titled Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Plu- ralistic Theology of Religions.5 As the sub-title of the book showed, the contributors to the volume reacted against the pluralist stance in the theology of religions as it had been developed mainly by John Hick and Paul Knitter. These two had published an edited volume titled The Myth of Christian Uniqueness three years before and to which Milbank and the other contributors to Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered responded.6 Ratzinger, for his part, clearly pays more attention to the issue of religious diversity than Milbank. In 2003, he even published an entire book on the relationship between Christian belief and the world religions. The bulk of this book, titled Truth and Tolerance,7 is made up of the (sometimes revised, sometimes unchanged) text of lectures given by Ratzinger during the 1990s. The only exceptions to this are the first chapter of Part I – which is a revised version of a text initially written in 1963 and published the next year in a Festschrift for Karl Rahner – and the first section of Chapter 3, which was written in 2002 (TT 15, 55, and 113- 114). Thus, although Truth and Tolerance only appeared after the publication of Dominus Iesus in August 2000, its content actually predates the publication of this controversial declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church.” The book gives us an insight in the

4. Paul Hedges, “Privileging Prejudice in Theology: Radical Orthodoxy and the Other” (unpublished paper) 3. 5. John Milbank, “The End of Dialogue,” Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, ed. Gavin D’Costa, Faith Meets Faith Series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990) 174-191. Recently reprinted in John Milbank, The Future of Love: Essays in Political Theology (London: SCM, 2009) 279-300. In what follows I refer to the original version (henceforth cited as ED). 6. John Hick and Paul F. Knitter (eds.), The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, Faith Meets Faith Series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987). 7. Joseph Ratzinger, Glaube – Wahrheit – Toleranz: Das Christentum und die Weltreligionen (Freiburg: Herder, 2003). English translation: Truth and Tolerance: Chris- tian Belief and World Religions, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 2004) (henceforth cited as TT).

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reflections that were behind the document, for, as explained by Gerard Mannion, while Ratzinger did not personally write Dominus Iesus, “he obviously assented to all that the document states,” something that can be derived from the fact that he “later confer[ed] a crucial promotion upon the person believed to be the document’s author.”8 Moreover, as further explained by Mannion, the topic of religious diversity is one of those instances in which the border line between the views of Ratzinger the theologian and the views of Ratzinger the Church official is blurred and difficult to draw.9 This suggests that it is justified to read and use Dominus Iesus when discussing the views of Ratzinger the theologian (and vice versa, that the views of Ratzinger the theologian also shed light on Dominus Iesus). Thus, we can answer our first research question by saying that neo-Augustinian theologians have focused different degrees of attention on the issue of religious diversity: while Milbank is almost completely silent about the religious other, Ratzinger has dealt with the challenge of religious diversity, especially during the 1990s in the build- up to the publication of Dominus Iesus, but also already long before (and as far back as 1963).

III. How Does Contemporary Neo-Augustinianism React to the Religious Other?

This brings us to our second research question, the question of how Milbank and Ratzinger respond to religious diversity. Let us first take a closer look at Milbank. As explained by Frank Burch Brown, Milbank employs the notion of ‘religion’ in two ways in his magnum opus Theol- ogy and Social Theory (which was published in 1990 and can be considered as the founding manifesto of the Radical Orthodoxy movement).10 On the one hand, Brown explains, Milbank uses the term to refer to ‘classical metaphysics’, ‘pagan religion’ and ‘modern neo-paganism’, suggesting that these are essentially forms of ‘deficient mythology’ that share in the ills of modern secular reason (incoherence, nihilism, violence). On the other hand, the term ‘religion’ is used by Milbank to refer to Chris- tianity. Or, as Brown puts it: “Christianity provides the standard for religion generally, transcending and implicitly critiquing religion in every

8. Lieven Boeve and Gerard Mannion (eds.), The Ratzinger Reader: Mapping a Theological Journey (London: T&T Clark, 2009) 143. 9. Ibid., 140-141, 142. 10. John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, Signposts in Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).

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other guise.”11 In this way, Milbank operates with an opposition between ‘bad’ religion (classical metaphysics, paganism, and neo-paganism) and ‘good’ religion (Christianity). What drops out of view here, however, is not only Judaism (as noted by Brown, who characterises himself as “a Christian theologian committed to ‘doing theology in conversation with Jews’,”12 which may explain his sensitivity for the fact that Milbank by and large ignores Judaism), but also all the other major world religions as we know them today (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism – and each one of them with a wide variety of different forms). Indeed, there seems to be no place for the other of these religious traditions in Milbank’s grand narrative according to which Christianity is the only answer to nihilism and violence. And although this is not stated explicitly, Milbank’s opposition between ‘bad’ religion (as being nihilist and violent) and Christi- anity (as the only way out of nihilism and violence) can even be interpreted as implying that all the other world religions are on the side of ‘bad’ religion and that they are thus nihilist and violent too. This suggests that religious diversity is judged negatively by Milbank and that non-Christian religions cannot have any inherent value. This is precisely what worries commentators like Brown: “Is [Milbank’s theology] not another, and blatant, form of supersessionism? Is not Christianity here sharply divided from, and (as in older orthodoxy) set far above, every other form of religion?”13 Let us now return to Ratzinger. Is such a sharp division between Christianity and all the other religions also present in his thought? To answer this question, we will take a closer look at the text that Ratzinger wrote in 1963 as it appeared in 2003 (English translation in 2004) and in which he develops the basics of his view on the relationship between Christianity and the other religions.14 In this text, Ratzinger takes issue with what he considers to be the dominant view on religious diversity at that time, namely the view that all religions, despite the many differences between them, nevertheless “are and mean one and the same thing” (TT 22). According to Ratzinger, this view is based on the conviction that all religions are ultimately based on “that form of inner experience

11. Frank Burch Brown, “Radical Orthodoxy and the Religions of Others,” Encounter 63, no. 1-2 (2002) 45-53 (at 48-49). 12. Ibid., 45. 13. Ibid., 50. 14. Ratzinger explains that his 1963 text “was simply intended as preparatory work, to show more clearly the place of Christianity in the history of religions and thereby to reinvest with some concrete and particular meaning theological statements about the uniqueness and the absolute value of Christianity” (TT 18-19).

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of the divine that is experienced in its final common form by mystics of all times and all places” and that religions are only genuine insofar as they somehow allow those who are not mystics to have access to the experience of the mystics (TT 26). For Ratzinger, this dominant view is mistaken in that it reduces religion to mysticism and ignores that mysticism is only one path in the history of religion. To explain this further, we can discuss the overview of the history of religion that Ratzinger sketches in very broad strokes in his text. He divides the history of religion into three major phases: early or primitive religion, mythical religion, and a taking leave of mythical religion. Early religion was, according to Ratzinger, characterised by “the most varied experiences” that were brought together in unified and all-encompassing myths during the second phase. The exit from mythical religion took three directions: mysticism, monotheism, and enlightenment. The three ways can be distinguished according to what they postulate as absolute: “the absolute value of an unnameable experience” in the case of mysticism,15 “[t]he absolute nature of the divine call that is issued through the prophet” in the case of monotheism, and the absolute value of rational knowledge in the case of enlightenment (TT 28). In Ratzinger’s view, mysticism characterises the many religious traditions of the East (TT 33), monotheism originated in Israel (and was continued by Christianity and Islam), and enlightenment can be traced back to the first philosophers in Ancient Greece (but only began to flourish in the modern age) (TT 28). In the 1963 text, however, it is the opposition between mysticism and monotheism that is the most important. Ratzinger distinguishes between both ways as follows: in mysticism, the emphasis is on experience and inward- ness, God is passive and the human being is active and seeks union with God, a union which leads him or her away from involvement in history. In monotheism, in contrast, the human being is passive while God is active: God acts in history, reveals Godself, addresses humankind through his prophets, and human beings open themselves to salvation by responding to God’s call in history (TT 36, 39). In the conclusion that was added to the text when it was republished in 2003, Ratzinger regrets the earlier use of the terms ‘mysticism’ and ‘monotheism’, but he holds onto the idea of two basic religious options which he now terms as ‘mysticism of identity’ and ‘personal understanding of God’. As he

15. “‘Mysticism’ is here understood … as one path in the history of religion, as an attitude that does not tolerate any other element superior to itself; rather, it regards the imageless, unmetaphorical, and mysterious experience of the mystic as the only determinative and ultimate reality in the realm of religion” (TT 32).

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further explains, the ultimate question at stake here is the one “of whether the divine ‘God’ stands over against us, so that religion, being human, is in the last resort a relationship – love – that becomes a union … but that does not do away with the opposition of I and Thou; or, whether the divine lies beyond personality, and the final aim of man is to become one with, and dissolve in, the All-One” (TT 45). It is clear from what follows, however, that these are not two equal options for Ratzinger and that in his view the “unity of love” (TT 47) is clearly superior to “becom[ing] one with, and dissolv[ing] in, the All-One” (TT 45), which is dismissed by him as “formless identity” (TT 47). The reason for this is that only the former can guarantee “the individual value and dignity of each person” (TT 47) and the ultimate “distinction between good and evil” (TT 49). And although this is not explicitly stated by Ratzinger in Truth and Tolerance, the logical outcome of this defence of the superiority of the ‘unity of love’ over ‘formless identity’ nevertheless seems to be that the religions with a personal God (that is: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are somehow superior to the religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism, that tread on the path of mysticism. This leads us to a comparison between Ratzinger’s and Milbank’s respective responses to religious diversity. A first observation can be that Ratzinger (although he is also making very general and broad distinctions) is already much more nuanced than Milbank. As we have seen, Milbank is basically contrasting Christianity as the only ‘good’ religion with all the other religions as ‘bad’ religion. Such a crude opposition between Christianity and all the rest as equally bad is not, or at least not explicitly, present in Ratzinger. Ratzinger does not rule out the possibility of some positive appreciation of non-Christian religions insofar as they may somehow function as precursors to Christianity (see TT 21, where Ratzinger mentions that “a partial recognition [of the religions of the nations], under the heading of preparation” is part of the Biblical legacy).16 But the recognition of non-Christian religions can always only be partial. Ratzinger rejects any relativisation of “the uniqueness and the absolute value of Christianity” and the aim of his 1963 text was precisely “to reinvest with some concrete and particular meaning theological statements about the uniqueness and the absolute value of Christianity” (TT 19). In the end, Ratzinger and Milbank both agree that Christianity is the ‘best’ religion; where they differ is on the question of how ‘bad’

16. See also TT 44: “If, in looking at this question, what divides us from others has been emphasized, what unites us with them should not be forgotten: that we are all a part of a single history that is in many different fashions on the way toward God.”

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the other religions are (with Milbank suggesting that all other religions are all equally bad and Ratzinger defending a more hierarchical view according to which some non-Christian religions are better than others). And in the end, both theologians consider Christianity to be the religion on the basis of which all the other religions are to be judged. This seems to imply, however, that Ratzinger is, just like Milbank, not able to escape from the clutches of supersessionism, although the supersessionism that is lingering in Truth and Tolerance is obviously less blatant than the one detected by Brown in Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory. But that there is nevertheless a lingering supersessionism in Truth and Tolerance can be derived from two instances in particular. First, on p. 154, Chris- tianity is described as “that form of Judaism, with a universal dimension, in which what the Old Testament had hitherto been yet unable to give was now fully granted” and, second, on p. 171, Ratzinger defends the view that Christianity amounts to a universalisation of Jewish monotheism and an opening-up of Judaism to the non-Jew, who had until then only been an outsider and had never truly belonged. But by associating Judaism with particularity, closedness, and provisionality, Ratzinger is implicitly tending towards supersessionism. Finally, Ratzinger, like Mil- bank, hardly pays any attention to the third monotheistic religion, Islam. In Truth and Tolerance, he limits himself to recognising the challenge posed by Islam, but he adds that he cannot deal with that challenge within the context of his present work (see TT 85).

IV. Does Contemporary Neo-Augustinianism Fall Back on Augustine When Responding to the Religious Other?

Let us now take up the question of whether Milbank and Ratzinger make use of Augustine when reacting to the challenge of religious diversity and, if so, whether they use any specific works or fragments of the Church Father and how they appropriate him and put him to use. First, Milbank. In “The End of Dialogue,” the single text in which he deals with the issue of religious diversity at some length, Augustine is mentioned in passing when Milbank makes the suggestion that so-called ‘Trinitarian pluralism’ “can perhaps be construed … as effectively a reworking of the Indo-European triadic structure which de-hierarchizes and temporalizes it” (ED 188). Here, Milbank adds between brackets that Augustine’s version of Trinitarian pluralism may be the form of that pluralism that is the most apt for the de-hierarchising and temporalising of the Indo-European triadic structure that he has in mind here (ED

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188), although Milbank also adds (in a note) that this requires a rein- terpretation of Augustine’s book on the Trinity, De Trinitate (ED 191 n. 32). A few lines further down, Milbank refers to “the Augustinian theories of substantive relation, and of the difference of the Spirit as itself the infinite communicability (as community) of the love that binds Father to Son” in order to substantiate the view “that the Trinitarian series, in which Christian life participates, is an ethical, peaceful series, which constantly repeats and reinvents a nonviolent consensus” (ED 188- 189). These references to Augustine appear in the context of a response to Raimundo Panikkar, one of the contributors to The Myth of Christian Uniqueness.17 Milbank understands Panikkar as defending an “ontological pluralism” that implies “that reality itself is ‘plural’” (ED 188) and “that all local differences represent some aspect of an ultimate plural reality” (ED 189). Milbank also takes Panikkar’s pluralism as intending to be both neo-Vedantic and Trinitarian (ED 188).18 According to Mil- bank, however, it is impossible to have a pluralism that is both neo- Vedantic and Trinitarian: if Panikkar’s pluralism wants to be neo- Vedantic, it cannot be Trinitarian, and vice versa (ED 188). Milbank argues for this on the basis of a supposedly insurmountable gap between the Hindu-Buddhist traditions of the East and the Greek- Roman-Semitic-Christian traditions of the West. The reason why East and West cannot be reconciled, according to Milbank, is because they offer completely irreconcilable solutions to what Milbank characterises as the “originally more-or-less single, Indo-European problematic” (ED 185). The idea that there is such an original and single Indo-European problematic is inspired by the work of Georges Dumézil (Milbank is referring to the second edition of the latter’s Mitra-Varuna: Essai sur deux représen- tations indo-européennes de la Souveraineté, which was published in 1948

17. Raimundo Panikkar, “The Jordan, the Tiber, and the Ganges: Three Kairo- logical Moments of Christic Self-Consciousness,” The Myth of Christian Uniqueness (see above) 89-116. 18. I am leaving aside here the issue of whether Milbank does justice to Panikkar’s position and whether he interprets him correctly. But there is at least one reason to be suspicious in this regard: Milbank does not seem to be aware of the fact that Panikkar is making a sharp distinction between ‘plurality’ and ‘pluralism’, and the connected adjectives ‘plural’ and ‘pluralistic’. For instance, Panikkar does not write that “reality itself is ‘plural’” (as Milbank quotes him) but that “reality itself is pluralistic” (p. 109; emphasis added). The fact that I do not deal with the question of whether Milbank interprets Panikkar correctly does not mean that I do not care about whether or not Milbank interprets his sources correctly, but has to do with the fact that I cannot go into Panikkar’s thought within the scope of the present article. It may of course be telling for Milbank’s attitude towards ‘the Other’ that he is not doing justice to the author he is here responding to.

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[first edition in 1940]). Dumézil (1898-1986) was a French comparative philologist who developed the so-called “tripartite conception of the Indo- Europeans” (“conception tripartite des Indo-Européens”). This theory boils down to the view that the original Proto-Indo-European culture was characterised by a separation into three classes (each represented by its own deities): the rulers (occupying themselves with government and religion), the fighters (responsible for military affairs) and the peasants/ labourers (taking care of the production of food and welfare).19 According to Milbank, this threefold division of society confronted Indo-European cultures with a specific problem they all share, namely, how the three classes relate to each other. A first aspect of this problem is the issue of how the rulers can ever control the fighters if they do not possess any force of their own and another aspect of the same problem is formulated by Milbank as the question of “how sovereign rule can deal with the family feudings of the military powers ... and cope with the rebellious tendencies of the peasants” (ED 185). In Milbank’s view, ‘the East’ solves this problem through a sacred and god-like king who has “untrammelled and total power,” who stands outside/above the three classes, and whose authority works automatically because he “is seen as evidently god-like and as chan- nelling a sacred force” (ED 186). According to Milbank, this also implies that the ideal of the East is to become ‘king-like’, that is: to become detached, and this detachment is then thought by Milbank to solve the problem of family feuding in the military class. Referring to the Bhagavad- Gita, he writes that “[t]he family feuding … is … transcended … by a perfect plunging into this agonistic action which yet leaves one unaffected by its outcome” (ED 186). Unfortunately, Milbank does not bother to explain this in more detail or even to refer to the exact fragment from the Bhagavad-Gita on which he bases this claim. ‘The West’, in contrast, solves the original Indo-European problem through the rule of law, which is not arbitrary but is based on a vision of the Good (in this regard Mil- bank refers to Plato’s The Republic). The Western alternative for detachment is, Milbank explains, education of the military, who should be trained in legal and moral norms (ED 186). This brings Milbank to a distinction between ‘Eastern’ imperialism and ‘Western’ imperialism. Unfortunately, he does not make the difference between them very clear, but the tenor of his argument seems to

19. For an introduction to Dumézil’s tripartite conception, see Wouter W. Belier, Decayed Gods: Origin and Development of Georges Dumézil’s “Idéologie tripartite”, Studies in Greek and Roman Religion, 7 (Leiden: Brill, 1991) Chapter 1 (see esp. the short outline of Dumézil’s view of Proto-Indo-European culture on p. 10).

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be that Eastern imperialism is merely lust for power while Western imperialism is, beyond pure lust for power, also inspired by a concern for justice, equality, freedom, and the Good (see ED 186-187). This also leads Milbank to a critique on the pluralist stance in the theology of the religions: insofar as they seek to bring religions together on the basis of common action for justice, peace, etc. (the so-called ‘praxis solution’20), they are precisely imperialistic because they are forcing a Western concern on the East. We will return to Milbank’s criticism of the pluralist stance in the next section, but let us first conclude our presentation of how Milbank opposes East and West by returning to his evaluation of Panik- kar’s suggestion that “reality itself is ‘plural’ [or, rather, as we have mentioned above in n. 18, ‘pluralistic’].” According to Milbank, Panikkar’s proposal amounts to an “infinite resignation to war” because it turns conflict and disagreement into something necessary, something that can never be overcome in principle (ED 189).21 A Trinitarian understanding of pluralism, however, suggests that “a nonviolent consensus” is possible and that difference does not disallow peace (ED 188-189).22 While Milbank only mentions Augustine in passing in his “The End of Dialogue,” the Latin Church Father has a more prominent role in Ratzinger’s Truth and Tolerance. In a section titled “Christianity – The True Religion?” (originally delivered as a lecture in 1999 [see TT 113]), Ratzinger makes use of Augustine’s discussion, offered in De civitate Dei, of the reflections on religion that were offered by the ancient Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro (116-127) in the latter’s Antiquities (the

20. The ‘praxis solution’ is the belief “that practical (ethical or political) reason can provide a common starting-point for interreligious dialogue theoretical reason cannot sup- ply” (ED 174). In Milbank’s view, Panikkar is the only contributor to The Myth of Chris- tian Uniqueness who tends to be critical of the praxis solution, but, as we have seen, his alternative – ontological pluralism – is, for Milbank, not more successful (see ED 175). 21. There is also a political aspect to Milbank’s critique of Panikkar. In his view, the latter’s pluralism is all too complicit with contemporary capitalism: “The neo-Vedan- tic pluralist claim that all local differences represent some aspect of an ultimate plural reality, will tend to ideologically reinforce the pluralism of liberal society, because a claimed theoretical equality will disguise the gross global inequalities resulting from a market whose tensile balancing only records the relative dispositions of economic and political coercion” (ED 189). Similar political criticisms of the pluralist hypothesis in the theology of religions have also been voiced by other contributors to Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered (see, for instance, also the contributions by Lesslie Newbigin and Kenneth Surin). 22. Here again, Milbank could have done more to make his case. A phrase like “the Augustinian theories of substantive relation, and of the difference of the Spirit as itself the infinite communicability (as community) of the love that binds Father to Son, indicates that the Trinitarian series, in which Christian life participates, is an ethical, peaceful series, which constantly repeats and reinvents a nonviolent consensus” may be impressive, it is not really insightful without further explanation.

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Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum). Augustine’s discussion of Varro was not new to Ratzinger at the time of writing the section pres- ently under consideration. On the contrary, he had already written on this material in his doctoral dissertation (which was completed in 1953) and thus here he is basically falling back on ideas that he had developed almost fifty years earlier.23 As noted by Augustine and explained by Ratz- inger, Varro distinguished between three forms of theology: mythical or fabulous, physical or natural, and civil or political theology. These three types of theology can be distinguished according to (1) their theologians (the poets – the philosophers – the people), their location (the theatre – the cosmos – the city), (3) their content (the stories about the gods – the question of who the gods are – the cult), and (4) the reality that is behind their content (divine nature in the case of physical theology and human institutions in the case of mythical and civil theology) (DcD Book VI Chapter 5;24 TT 166-168). This fourth way to distinguish between the three types of theology suggests that Varro’s threefold distinction actually boils down to a twofold distinction, namely the one between, on the one hand, mythical/civil theology and, on the other hand, physical theology. And in fact this is precisely the conclusion Augustine draws in De civitate Dei, in which he goes to great pains to demonstrate that a distinction between mythical theology and civil theology (as made by Varro) cannot be upheld (see DcD Book VI Chapters 6-9).25 In Augus- tine’s view, it is therefore inconsistent to dismiss, as Varro does, mythical theology (because the stories about the gods fabricated by the poets are “base, absurd, unworthy and false” [DcD Book VI Chapter 9]26) while defending civil theology: the gods of the myths are the gods of the city (see DcD Book VI Chapter 6)27 and the obscenities and atrocities taking place in the temples may even exceed those related in the myths (see DcD Book VI Chapter 7).28 As noted by Augustine, Varro even goes as far as

23. Ratzinger’s dissertation was titled Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche (The people and house of God in Augustine’s doctrine of the Church). The text has recently been republished in Ratzinger’s Gesammelte Schriften: Joseph Ratzinger, Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche: Die Dissertation und weitere Studien zu Augustinus und zur Theologie der Kirchenväter, Joseph Ratzinger: Gesammelte Schriften, 1 (Freiburg: Herder, 2011) 41-418. 24. See Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 246-249. 25. Ibid., 249-260. 26. Ibid., 260. 27. Ibid. 28. See ibid., 254, where Augustine “thank[s] the actors [who] have spared the eyes of men, and have not laid bare in public all the things which are hidden within the

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to admit that the gods of the city were also humanly fabricated (DcD Book VI Chapter 4)29 and from this, it follows that the philosopher, had he been consistent, should have drawn the conclusion that “natural theology alone remains as worthy of choice” (DcD Book VI Chapter 9).30 Let us now return to Ratzinger and take a closer look at the way these ideas of Augustine function in the former’s thought. In his Truth and Tolerance, Ratzinger interprets the distinction between mythical/civil and physical theology in terms of an opposition between “religion”/“cultic pre- scription” and “truth”/“rational perception” (TT 166).31 In this light, (ancient, Greco-Roman) religion is for Ratzinger essentially a political phe- nomenon: worship of the gods is, as admitted by Varro, instituted by the city/state and it basically serves the continued existence of the state and its correct ordering (TT 166). This of course explains why Varro was not able and/or willing to admit that civil and mythical theology are actually two sides of the same coin: admitting that civic religion is as “base, absurd, unworthy and false” as mythical religion would, Varro believed, endanger the continuation of ordered civic life. The cost of this, however, is – to put it in Ratzinger’s terms – that civic religion is without a divinity (it is “merely ‘religion’,” merely worship), while natural theology does have a divinity (or is at least searching for it), but is without worship/religion (TT 168). Thus, the philosophical search for truth resulted in a growing gap between (civic) religion and truth, implying that civic religion could only continue to exist by separating itself from the philosophical quest for truth.32 Yet, it became increasingly difficult to uphold this gulf between religion and truth and, according to Ratzinger, it was the widening gap between religion and (the search for the) truth that caused the collapse of

temple walls” and adds that “if those sacred rites which are brought out into the light are so detestable, what good is to be attributed to those which are shrouded in darkness?” 29. See Augustine, The City of God, 244: “cities came into existence first and divine things were instituted by them subsequently.” 30. See ibid., 249: “the gods laughed at in the theatres are none other than those who are adored in the temples; and those to whom you exhibit games are none other than those to whom you sacrifice victims.” 31. See also TT 168, where the terms “physics, in the ancient sense” and “cultic worship” are used. 32. See already the inaugural lecture given by Ratzinger in June 1959 when he became a professor in Bonn: “Die Philosophie, noch ungeschieden von der Physik, deckt die Wahrheit des Wirklichen und so auch die Seinswahrheit des Göttlichen auf; die Religion nimmt ihren Weg unabhängig davon, ihr geht es nicht darum, das zu verehren was die Wissenschaft als den wahren Gott entdeckt, sie stellt sich vielmehr außerhalb der Wahrheitsfrage und unterstellt sich allein ihrer eigenen religiösen Gesetzlichkeit” (Joseph Ratzinger, Der Gott des Glaubens und der Gott der Philosophen: Ein Beitrag zum Problem der theologia naturalis, 2nd ed., ed. Heino Sonnemans [Leutesdorf: Johannes, 2005] 26).

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ancient, Greco-Roman religion.33 It is against this background that Ratz- inger explains the place assumed by Christianity in the Greco-Roman world and why it was so successful. What is extremely significant in Ratz- inger’s view is that, when biblical faith entered into the Greco-Roman world, it did not seek an alliance with existing forms of religion, but it allied itself, on the contrary, with philosophy and its demythologising search for the truth. Thus, what we see happening in Christianity, according to Ratzinger, is that the gulf between piety and reason, between worship and philosophy, is healed, but from the side of philosophy: the fundamental message of early Christianity was that the God of the Greek philosophers (the Absolute, Being itself) is a Person who reveals himself to humankind and addresses human beings, and who can be addressed and worshipped by them. Thus, in Christianity the truth reveals itself as the object of religio (worship) and therefore Christianity is the religio vera (‘true religion’) (while all the forms of Greco-Roman religiosity are outside the truth) (TT 170). At the same time, Christianity is also the vera philo- sophia (‘true philosophy’) because in it, the philosophical quest for the truth finds its end point. Or, as Ratzinger puts it, Christianity is “the perfect philosophy, that is, the philosophy that has attained to the truth” (TT 171). All this of course raises important questions: if, as Ratzinger claims, “[i]n Christianity, enlightenment [or demythologisation] has become part of religion and is no longer its opponent” (TT 170), how can this be understood in today’s world, in which Christianity is challenged, not only by Western philosophy that has developed well beyond the confines of the Neoplatonism with which the first Christian theologians engaged, but also by other major religious traditions that were beyond the scope of these theologians and that cannot simply be put on a par with the religio of the Greco-Roman world. Or to put it more concisely: how can we still uphold in today’s world the claim that Christianity is the religio vera?

V. Intermediary Conclusion

Let us now take stock of our research findings until now. First, we have found that Milbank and Ratzinger have focused different degrees of attention on the issue of religious diversity. Second, they are in

33. As explained by Ratzinger in his Einführung in das Christentum: Vorlesungen über das Apostolische Glaubensbekenntnis (Munich: Kösel, 1968). See: Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trans. J. R. Foster, Communio Books (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1993) 139.

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agreement that Christianity is the ‘best’ religion, but differ on how ‘bad’ the others are. More in particular, we have drawn attention to fact that supersessionism is present in their work, more explicit in the case of Milbank while more hidden in that of Ratzinger. Third, with regard to our third research question, the question of whether Milbank and Rat- zinger fall back on Augustine when responding to the religious other, a different picture emerges in each case. Augustine does not play any significant role in Milbank’s “The End of Dialogue.” The Church Father is only mentioned in passing when the idea of “Trinitarian pluralism” is introduced and the only work of Augustine that is referred to is De Tri- nitate, but this work does not seem to have any substantial impact on Milbank’s argument. The picture is different in Ratzinger’s case. In his Truth and Tolerance, Augustine does play a prominent role, but it is only the Augustine of De civitate Dei, the Augustine who is writing to defend Christianity against the charge that it caused the collapse and imminent end of the Roman Empire (which is of course a rather specific aim and an aim that cannot but have influenced Augustine’s approach of matters such as pagan philosophy). Neither Milbank nor Ratzinger pays any attention to how the historical Augustine, in his very particular context, responded to and dealt with concrete religious others. The historical Augustine, as sketched by Anthony Dupont elsewhere in this issue, was somebody who engaged a diversity of very concrete religious others through numerous writings and sermons, and who also combined a theoretical rejection of the religious other with a certain degree of tolerance in practice. Augustine’s engagement with concrete religious others receives no attention, however, neither by Milbank nor by Ratzinger – and in the latter’s case this is despite his extensive use of De civitate Dei. Therefore, we may be tempted to conclude that both Milbank and Ratz- inger – whom we have designated as ‘neo-Augustinian’ in the sense that they are considered as theologians who fall back on Augustine to meet the many challenges posed to Christianity by the ills and discontents of late-modern and post-modern culture – are, despite their neo-Augustin- ianism, not taking the historical Augustine as a source of inspiration. This suggests that it may in fact not be helpful to characterise the way Milbank and Ratzinger respond to the religious other as being ‘neo- Augustinian’ and that there may therefore be no such a thing as a ‘neo- Augustinian’ approach to religious diversity (or at least not in the two authors that we are comparing here). I will therefore now stop approach- ing Milbank and Ratzinger from the angle of neo-Augustinianism. This does not mean, however, we should also stop comparing them. In the remainder of my article, I will now elaborate my comparison of both

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theologians from a different angle, namely from the perspective of how they have both responded to the so-called ‘pluralist’ stance in the theology of religions.

VI. Milbank’s Rejection of the Pluralist Theology of Religions

In a previous section we have already touched upon Milbank’s critique of the pluralist stance in the theology of religions. In the present section, we will now deal with this critique in more detail, before examin- ing Ratzinger’s response to the pluralist theology of religions in the next section. At the outset of “The End of Dialogue,” Milbank distinguishes between two forms of pluralist theology that are present in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness. First, there is the pluralism of a John Hick or Wil- fred Cantwell Smith, which, according to Milbank, presupposes that theoretical reason can adopt a bird eye’s perspective “from which one can objectively survey all religious traditions, or that religions are ‘about’ an ultimate reality specifiable independently of their traditional modes of discourse” (ED 174). But, although this type of pluralism is present in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, Milbank notes that most contributors reject the possibility of theoretical reason being able to reach a neutral bird eye’s view in matters of religion. Yet, according to Milbank, these contributors, though critical of Hick and Smith, nevertheless remain within the confines of pluralism insofar as they still believe that reason can provide a common ground between the religions on the basis of which interreligious dialogue can take place – the only difference is that this common starting-point is now no longer expected from theoretical reason but from practical (that is: ethical or political) reason. It is this so-called “residual pluralism” (ED 174), Milbank contends, that explains why so many of the contributors to The Myth of Christian Uniqueness tend to the aforementioned ‘praxis solution’, the belief that religions can meet each other in shared action for justice, peace, and liberation. The reason for the residual pluralism that is present in so many contributions to The Myth of Christian Uniqueness is found by Milbank in a number of assumptions that are, in his view, false but that are not put into question in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness. The first assumption detected by Milbank is the one that the different religions are comparable and commensurable entities. The religions are, so to speak, the species of a single genus. Yet, according to Milbank, this is a modern, Western idea. As a result, “[t]he usual construals of religion as a genus ... embody covert Christianizations” (ED 176) and “tend to reflect

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merely the construction of religion within Western modernity” (ED 177), which understands religion as “a realm within culture” rather than as consisting in “the basic organizing categories for an entire culture” (ED 177; emphases added). To put it differently: according to Milbank, religion should not be understood as a specific human activity or discourse – which, in distinction from and relatively unaffected by other human activities and discourses (like politics, economics, the administra- tion of the law, etc.), deals with a specific aspect of reality (for instance, the nature of and relationship toward the ultimate reality) – but as the foundational “images, word-forms, and practices which specify ‘what there is’ for a particular society” (ED 177). Therefore, religious differences are a lot more fundamental than simply being different answers to shared questions or different views on a shared subject matter. Instead, they concern deeply different and incommensurable construals of “what there is.” This brings Milbank to the second assumption present in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, namely that dialogue is the “privileged mode of access to truth” in religious matters (ED 181). According to Milbank, dialogue presupposes that we talk about the same subject matter and that is precisely what cannot be presupposed when different religions enter into dialogue – because religions construe “what there is” in such “sheerly different and incommensurable ways” (ED 177), there is simply no shared subject matter and thus nothing to talk about when they meet. That the contributors to The Myth of Christian Uniqueness are trib- utary to the modern understanding of religion as a separate and limited realm within culture is also clear from their third assumption, namely that “[t]he uniqueness of the major religions consists in their cultic attachments rather than in their social formations” (ED 181). This assumption implies that they do not consider different religions to be offering completely different social projects, and that they see religion only entering in the political realm under the form of “private inspiration of the individual activist” (ED 182). In line with his understanding of religion as determining the basic outlook of an entire culture, including the way society is politically organised, Milbank rejects this assumption and underscores that religions do offer “incommensurable social projects” (ED 179). This shows, Milbank argues, that we cannot expect religions to reach agreement on political issues, at least not as long as their integrity has not yet already been harmed by modernisation, secu- larisation, the encroachment of liberal values and the impact of capitalism (ED 179, 181-182). This brings Milbank to a rejection of the aforementioned praxis solution: this solution can only work insofar as the

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non-Christian religions have already been contaminated by processes and values that are clearly Western and thus as such they are no longer ‘pure’, no longer truly other, but already, to a certain extent, Westernised. According to Milbank, there is a similar problem with dialogue: dialogue also presupposes a modern outlook because it requires participants that are already Western, modern, liberal subjects that are no longer completely immersed in their particular tradition, but have gained a large degree of freedom in their spiritual outlook and value an open search for the truth (ED 177-178). This suggests that, at least for Milbank, interreligious dialogue will never be an encounter between religious others that are truly other for each other, but only an encounter between West- ern liberals and their Westernised/liberalised counterparts from other religious traditions. This leads us back to the issue of imperialism (already mentioned in the previous section). According to Milbank, the contributors to The Myth of Christian Uniqueness have a rather limited understanding of imperialism as being “simply the arrogance of locality, especially Western locality” (ED 181). According to this limited understanding, imperialism can be overcome by giving up or relativising religious truth claims, like the claim that Christ is the universal saviour, and cultic attachments. Yet, Milbank argues, the requirement that religions should give up, or at least relativise, their truth claims and cultic attachments is itself imperialistic because such a requirement is precisely based on a Western, liberal, post-Enlightenment outlook. Or, as Milbank already put it at the beginning of “The End of Dialogue:” The terms of discourse which provide both the favored categories for encounter with other religions – dialogue, pluralism, and the like – together with the criteria for the acceptable limits of the pluralist embrace – social justice, liberation, and so forth – are themselves embedded in a wider Western discourse become globally dominant. And the implication of this paradox is evident: The moment of contemporary recognition of other cultures and religions optimistically celebrated by [The Myth of Christian Uniqueness], is itself ... none other than the moment of total obliteration of other cultures by Western norms and categories, with their fright of Christian influ- ence (ED 175). All this leads Milbank to the conclusion that dialogue should be replaced by “mutual suspicion” and conversion, which he understands as “pursu[ing] further the ecclesial project of securing harmony through difference” (ED 190). Let us conclude the present section by offering a short evaluation of Milbank’s rejection of the pluralist option in the theology of religions. As we have seen, Milbank rejects pluralism because he denies the possibility

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of a neutral observer’s perspective from which one can objectively compare and judge the different religions. And because such an uninvolved bird’s eye view cannot be had, the pluralist stance – which consists in, to put it in the words of Gavin D’Costa, the view that “all religions are equal and valid paths to the one divine reality and Christ is one revelation among many equally important revelations”34 – is based on an unverifiable claim. And, Milbank adds, neither does the so-called ‘praxis solution’ offer a way to save the pluralist stance because it is fraught with Western, and therefore particular, presuppositions. Thus, Milbank contends, the praxis solution is imperialistic. Against the pluralist claim that religions (or at least a number of them) are comparable entities that relate to a shared Ultimate Reality, Milbank defends the view that each religion is constructing reality in its own unique way and that there is therefore no common ground between them (people from different religions live in different realities, so to speak). Yet, is Milbank not doing exactly the same as what he is reproaching the pluralist theologians for? Is he not also claiming a bird’s eye view when he claims to know that all religions are incomparable and incommensurable entities, just like a pluralist theologian is doing when he or she claims to know that all religions are equally valid paths? On what basis can Milbank claim to know that religions are incommensurable if there is, as he defends, no neutral and non-involved observer’s perspective above the different religions from which they can be compared? It seems that Milbank is no more justified in saying that religions are by definition incommensurable than a pluralist is in saying that all religions relate to the same Ultimate Reality. Indeed, both claims are equally unverifiable as general a priori statements made in abstraction from factual interreligious encounter and study. This suggests that the issue of the possible incommensurability or commensurability of religions, the question of whether there is a common ground between them, is something that has to be investigated and explored through the hard and long work of making factual comparisons rather than something to be settled a priori. But such comparative work is clearly beyond the scope of Milbank’s theological endeavour. Indeed, even in the single text in which he deals with the issue of religious diversity, “The End of Dialogue,” there is no serious engagement with the religious other.35

34. Gavin D’Costa, “Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Religions,” A Universal Faith? Peoples, Cultures, Religions, and the Christ, ed. Catherine Cornille and Valeer Neckebrouck, Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs, 9 (Leuven: Peeters, 1992) 139-154 (at 140). 35. Hedges evaluates “The End of Dialogue” as “showing a rather stereotyped por- trayal of [Hinduism], employing sectarian sources to mask any possible connection with

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VII. Ratzinger’s Rejection of the Pluralist Theology of Religions

Let us now return once more to Ratzinger. Just like Milbank, Ratz- inger also rejects the pluralist stance in the theology of religions, a position he links with the names of Hick, Knitter, and Perry Schmidt-Leu- kel, but also with Jacques Dupuis’ project of developing “a Christian theology of religious pluralism” (TT 52-53). Ratzinger describes the pluralist option as giving up the unicity of Christ as universal saviour and the indivisibility of Christ and the Church. Pluralism, Ratzinger explains, considers the plurality of religions to be willed by God and the religions to be (at least potentially) equal paths to salvation. This does not mean that Jesus can no longer be considered as an important religious figure, but it is no longer possible to uphold the view that salvation comes through him alone (TT 52). It was against this kind of relativisation of Christ and the Church that the declaration Dominus Iesus also responded.36 It did this by recalling “certain indispensable elements of Christian doctrine” (§3) that set the limits of legitimate (Catholic) theological reflection on the issue of religious diversity. The following elements were listed as examples of elements that are indispensable: the definitive and complete character of the revelation of Jesus Christ, the nature of Christian faith as compared with that of belief in other religions, the inspired nature of the books of Sacred Scrip- ture, the personal unity between the Eternal Word and Jesus of Nazareth, the unity of the economy of the Incarnate Word and the Holy Spirit, the unicity and salvific universality of the mystery of Jesus Christ, the universal salvific mediation of the Church, the inseparability – while recognizing the distinction – of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ, and the Church, and the subsistence of the one Church of Christ in the Catholic Church (§4). On the basis of these indispensable elements, Dominus Iesus then rejects the following “theological proposals” (§3) as being contrary to the faith of the Church (we limit ourselves to the proposals that have to do with the relationship with the non-Christian religions): (1) “the theory of the limited, incomplete, or imperfect character of the revelation of

the Christian tradition” (Hedges, “Privileging Prejudice in Theology,” 3). For a more elaborate critique of the way Milbank portrays the religious other in “The End of Dia- logue,” see Paul Hedges, “Radical Orthodoxy and the Closed Western Theological Mind: The Poverty of Radical Orthodoxy in Intercultural and Interreligious Perspective,” The Poverty of Radical Orthodoxy, ed. Lisa Isherwood and Marko Zlomislić, Postmodern Ethics Series, 3 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012) 119-143 (at 130-136). 36. The text of the declaration is available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html.

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Jesus Christ, which would be complementary to that found in other religions” (§6),37 (2) the identification of so-called “theological faith” and “belief in the other religions” (§7), (3) “the hypothesis of the inspired value of the sacred writings of other religions” (§8), (4) the proposal “that there is an economy of the eternal Word … in addition to an economy of the incarnate Word” (§9), a proposal implying either the introduction of a “separation between the Word and Jesus Christ” or “a separation between the salvific action of the Word as such and that of the Word made man” (§10),38 (5) the denial of the universality, unicity and once-for-all character of the redemption brought about by the Christ event (§11, §13, and §14), (6) “the hypothesis of an economy of the Holy Spirit with a more universal breadth than that of the Incarnate Word” (§12), and, finally, (7) the view that non-Christians can be saved without any relationship to the Church (§§20-1). The publication of Dominus Iesus provoked criticism and complaints, offended surprise and consternation as well as anger and even outrage.39 The declaration was widely perceived as a setback in the commitment of the Catholic Church to interreligious dialogue and ecumenism. Yet, according to Kilian McDonnell, an American theologian with a strong ecumenical engagement, in an article that appeared in the biweekly Prot- estant magazine The Christian Century in the wake of the publication of Dominus Iesus, this widespread perception of the declaration as a setback was mistaken. In fact, McDonnell explained, the document contained “nothing new,” nothing that was not yet in the documents of Vatican II and subsequent ecumenical agreements.40 Other theologians have confirmed this view. For instance, Robert Imbelli interpreted Dominus Iesus as a reaffirmation of “the robust Christocentrism of Dei verbum,” Vatican II’s dogmatic constitution on divine revelation, in light of a “situation of covert and overt relativizing of Christological normativity.”41 Anthony

37. See also §9, where “an approach to Jesus of Nazareth that considers him a particular, finite, historical figure, who reveals the divine not in an exclusive way, but in a way complementary with other revelatory and salvific figures” is rejected. 38. Or, to put it differently, the declaration states that, since the Incarnation, there can no longer be any “salvific activity [of] the Logos as such in his divinity, exer- cised ‘in addition to’ or ‘beyond’ the humanity of Christ” (§10). 39. These were the reactions to Dominus Iesus mentioned in Kilian McDonnell, “Imperial Claims? The Vatican Reasserts Its View of the Church,” The Christian Century, October 18, 2000, 1038; Stephen J. Pope and Charles Hefling (eds.), Preface to Sic et Non: Encountering “Dominus Iesus” (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002) vii-x (at viii); and Robert Imbelli, “The Reaffirmation of the Christic Centre,” Sic et Non: Encountering “Dominus Iesus,” 96-106 (at 96). 40. McDonnell, “Imperial Claims?,” 1041. 41. Imbelli, “The Reaffirmation of the Christic Centre,” 97 and 98 respectively.

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Akinwale subscribed to this view of Dominus Iesus as reaffirming the theology of revelation that had been set forward by Dei verbum and even spoke about the declaration as “a timely reaffirmation and clarification of Vatican II.”42 That Dominus Iesus is indeed not retreating from Vatican II’s “open and positive approach” towards the religious other is, for instance, shown in §2 of the declaration. There, Dominus Iesus affirms the famous statement from Nostra aetate, Vatican II’s declaration on the relation of the church to non-Christian religions, that “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men” (§2).43 In §12, Dominus Iesus also affirms the view of Gaudium et Spes 22 “that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery”44 and in §14 of the declaration, theologians are “invited to explore if and in what way the historical figures and positive elements of [non-Christian] religions may fall within the divine plan of salvation.” This invitation is underpinned by a reference to Lumen Gentium 62, where – in the context of a discussion of the place of Mary in the mystery of Christ and the Church – it is stated that “the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude, but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation which is but a participation in this one source.”45 Admittedly, Dominus Iesus explicitly states “that objectively speaking [the followers of non-Christian religions] are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation” (§22; emphasis in original). But even this, at least at first sight rather harsh, statement is not in contradiction with the teaching of Vatican II. Indeed, both in Lumen Gentium 14 and in Ad Gentes 7, the necessity of the Church for salvation is affirmed. Moreover, in the same sentence in which Dominus Iesus states that non-Christians are in a gravely deficient situation, the declaration also affirms “that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace.” This indicates that

42. Anthony A. Akinwale, “A Timely Reaffirmation and Clarification of Vatican II,” Sic et Non: Encountering “Dominus Iesus,” 169-178 (at 171). 43. The text of Nostra Aetate is available at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_ councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html. 44. The text of Gaudium et Spes is available at http://www.vatican.va/archive/ hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_ en.html. 45. The text of Lumen Gentium is available at http://www.vatican.va/archive/ hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_ en.html.

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Dominus Iesus is far from limiting the activity of God’s salvific grace to the limits of the visible Catholic Church – a view, moreover, that was not introduced by Vatican II (cf. Gaudium et Spes 22 and Ad Gentes 7), but was already present in Mystici corporis Christi, the encyclical that was issued by Pope Pius XII in 1943.46 All this suggests that Dominus Iesus is not a return to an exclusivist position, not a return to the adagium extra ecclesiam nulla salus, but a reaffirmation of the inclusivist stance that is commonly associated with Vati- can II. To obtain a better grasp of the inclusivism that is set forth in Dominus Iesus, it is helpful to turn back to Ratzinger’s Truth and Tolerance because that book, as explained above in Section 2, offers insight into the mindset from which the declaration emerged. In Truth and Tolerance, Ratzinger explicitly defends inclusivism as the only option in the theology of religions that “belongs to the essence of the cultural and religious history of mankind” (TT 81). According to Ratzinger, cultures are not monadic, they do not constitute self-enclosed wholes, but are open towards each other and can interact (TT 64). Here, Ratzinger is clearly in disagreement with Milbank, who is precisely considering cultures as self-enclosed entities because in his view each culture is based on a different religion, a “sheerly different and incommensurable” construal of what there is (see ED 177). In this regard, Ratzinger is clearly more realistic because he is aware of and accepts the fact that interaction between cultures and religions is a given and has happened throughout history. According to Ratzinger, we should also raise the question of what makes this interaction between cultures possible and he adds that this question can only be answered by invoking a higher dimension (TT 64). Indeed, Ratzinger argues that differences between cultures can, in the end, never be insurmountable because all human beings share “a single being” and that we are all “touched and affected in the very depth of [our] existence by truth itself” (TT 64-65). “Any culture,” Ratzinger adds, “exists ultimately as an expectation of truth” (TT 67) and “this truth is the sphere within which everyone can find and relate to one another and, in so doing, lose nothing of his own value or his own dignity” (TT 72). There is no doubt, however, that

46. Indeed, although Mystici corporis Christi states that “those who do not belong to the visible Body of the Catholic Church” are in a “state in which they cannot be sure of their salvation” and “remain deprived of those many heavenly gifts and helps which can only be enjoyed in the Catholic Church,” the encyclical does leave open the possibility of salvation outside the visible church and clearly states that “[those who do not belong to the Catholic Church] have a certain relationship with the Mystical Body of the Redeemer” on account of what the text calls “an unconscious desire and longing” (§103). See http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p- xii_enc_29061943_mystici-corporis-christi_en.html.

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Ratzinger fully identifies the truth that is in the depth of our being and to which all cultures strive with (the Christian) God.47 Thus, the “expectation of truth” (TT 67) that lives in every culture is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, “the self-revelation of truth itself” (TT 72), and it is precisely because every culture is ultimately oriented to the truth that is Christ that the Church has to proclaim Christ until the ends of the world and that by proclaiming Christ ad gentes, the Church leads the cultures of the world to their final destination. The position defended by Ratzinger in Truth and Tolerance is the inclusivism that was adopted by Vatican II: other religions share to a certain degree in the truth that the Church possesses in fullness and if people from other religions are saved it is because of Christ. Moreover, it is also this inclusivism that explains the element of Dominus Iesus that many readers, especially those engaged in interreligious encounter, found the most troubling aspect of the declaration, namely its claim, made at the beginning of the document (in §2) and repeated towards the end (in §22), that interreligious dialogue is a means to be used by the Church as part of her evangelising missio ad gentes.48 Yet, in light of the previous paragraph this at first sight very troubling claim appears as very logical. Indeed, if you believe, as Ratzinger and the Catholic Church do, that Christ is “the self-revelation of truth itself” (TT 72) and that this revelation of the truth is present in and preserved by the Catholic Church, then you have no other option than to proclaim this truth you live by and to do this by all means, including interreligious dialogue.49 Thus,

47. This is less clear in the English translation because it speaks about humankind’s “being secretly touched by the truth spoken by God” (TT 53). The German original, however, speaks about humankind’s “verborgenen Berührtsein durch die Wahrheit, durch Gott“ (54) (literally: “being secretly touched by the truth, by God”). 48. This claim was not new, it was also made in Redemptoris missio (see §55) and repeated in Dialogue and Proclamation (see §3-4). Redemptoris missio was an encyclical of John Paul II that appeared in 1990 and Dialogue and Proclamation was issued in 1992 jointly by the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue and the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. The text of Redemptoris missio is available at http://www. vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_07121990_ redemptoris-missio_en.html; Dialogue and Proclamation can be found at http://www. vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_ doc_19051991_dialogue-and-proclamatio_en.html. 49. This necessity of mission was also affirmed by Nostra Aetate, the document in which Vatican II formulated its view on the relationship of the Church to non-Christian religions. Indeed, immediately after expressing their reverence for non-Christian religions (see above), the council fathers continued by writing that the Church “proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself” (§2).

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although he is more optimistic than Milbank about dialogue (he is not suggesting we replace dialogue with mutual suspicion), Ratzinger is also emphasising conversion (the necessity of conversion is underscored towards the end of Dominus Iesus 22). When we compare Ratzinger and Milbank, we find that the former is much more optimistic about cultures, about their openness for Christ, and about the prospects of Chris- tianity ‘incarnating’ or ‘inculturating’ in new cultures and transforming these from within. As we have seen, Ratzinger believes that, in their depth, all cultures are grounded in the truth that has revealed itself in a definitive way in Christ. Milbank, in contrast, emphasises the differences between cultures and even their incommensurability. This of course seems to imply a different understanding of conversion. If, as Milbank understands it, each culture is a self-enclosed whole, being a Christian seems to require being part of a Christian culture (or at least, if one’s culture is not or no longer Christian, a Christian counter-culture) and becoming a Christian therefore seems to require that one leave behind one’s home culture and adopt a new culture (or new subculture). Ratz- inger, in contrast, explains that becoming a Christian does not mean that one has to leave behind one’s culture: the Church gathers people from all cultures and it is not necessary to give up one’s native culture in order to become a member of the Church.

VIII. Concluding Reflections

I now want to conclude the present article by offering some reflections starting from the question of whether Ratzinger succeeds in avoid- ing the objection that Milbank voiced against pluralist theology, but that can, as we have explained, equally be made against his own view of the religions: namely that they claim a bird’s eye view from which it is possible to make general comparative claims about how the religions relate to each other. From our discussion of Ratzinger in the previous section, it is immediately clear that Ratzinger also claims a bird’s eye view when he claims to know that all cultures are oriented towards the same truth. Indeed, how can Ratzinger know that, behind the plurality and diversity of cultures, there is an ultimate unity and that all human beings and cultures are in the very depth of their existence touched by the same truth? Especially since here again we are confronted with an approach to religious diversity that is largely a priori and that is not the fruit of long and detailed comparative work. (In this regard, Ratzinger is not unlike Milbank, something that is confirmed by the fact that Ratzinger also

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tends to make very crude distinctions, especially between ‘the East’ and ‘the West’, as we saw in Section 2.) Thus, what Milbank, Ratzinger, and the pluralist theologians they react against have in common is an a priori approach to religious diversity. Indeed, Milbank decides that cultures/ religions are incommensurable entities, Ratzinger envisions all cultures and their religions as finding their fulfilment in Christ, and the pluralism against which they react considers all religions as equally valid paths towards the same ultimate reality that none of the particular religions is able to grasp in full. Saying that Milbank, Ratzinger and the pluralist theologians all have an a priori approach to religious diversity obviously does not mean that there are no real differences between them. On the contrary, they differ on two important issues, namely on the issue of whether humanity is ultimately one (or not) and on the issue of whether Christianity is superior to the other religions (or not). Against Milbank, both Ratzinger and the pluralists agree that, beyond religious and cultural diversity, humankind is ultimately one, but they differ on where that unity can be found: the pluralist seeks that what binds humankind together beyond any particular tradition, including Christianity, while Ratzinger considers that what binds humankind together as having revealed itself in Christ and as being present in the Church. Thus, against the pluralists, Ratzinger agrees with Milbank that Christianity is the best religion and superior to all others, which are either completely dismissed as ‘bad’ religion (in the case of Milbank) or given limited appreciation as prepa- rations for the fullness of religion, the religio vera, that is Christianity (in the case of Ratzinger). Thus, in the end, Milbank and Ratzinger agree that Christianity sets the standard against which all other religions are to be measured and, despite the fact that Ratzinger is more appreciative of non-Christian religions and more willing to find traces of the truth in them than is Milbank, what both theologians nevertheless have in common is their affirmation of the superiority of Christianity. This affirmation of the superiority of Christianity, which is shared by Ratzinger and Milbank, of course raises the question of whether such an affirmation can ever be more than, as Hedges puts it, a “naked assertion,” an assertion that is solely based on “reasons internal to [the Chris- tian story] itself?”50 Indeed, can the affirmation of Christian superiority ever be more than a matter of arbitrariness and bias (“my religion is superior simply because it happens to be my religion”)? This problem

50. Paul Hedges, “Is John Milbank’s Radical Orthodoxy a Form of Liberal The- ology? A Rhetorical Counter,” The Heythrop Journal 51 (2010) 795-818 (at 807).

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especially confronts Milbank because he explicitly rejects meta-narratives and the possibility of a bird’s eye view. But instead of accepting a plurality of competing perspectives on reality, he nevertheless wants to reassert the Christian story as the best narrative. That this is inconsistent is clear: how can one religion (which is of course his own) be superior to all others and why should that religion argue for its superiority if religions cannot be compared in the first place and simply ‘do’ different things?51 But the problem of arbitrariness also confronts Ratzinger. To explain this, it is important to note that when Ratzinger defends the superiority of Christianity on the basis that it is the perfect synthesis of reason, faith, and caritas (see TT 174 and 175), the reason he has in mind is not modern scientific reason, but, in the words of Slavoj Žižek, “the premodern teleological Reason, the view of the universe as a harmonious Whole in which everything serves a higher purpose.”52 Or, to put it differently: the marriage of Greek philosophy and biblical faith could happen because Greek philosophy was still deeply religious and oriented towards the transcendent truth. Modern reason, in contrast, is no longer oriented in that way and no longer allows for the same intimate connection between faith and reason as premodern reason did. So, there being no longer a unified reason oriented towards the transcendent truth, we can of course no longer ground Christianity in that single and unified reason and it can no longer be argued that Christianity is the only religion that corresponds to and fulfils the aspirations of natural reason. And if this is no longer the case, it is also no longer possible to defend the superiority of Christianity on that basis and the claim that Christianity is the best religion becomes an arbitrary one (in the sense that only reasons internal to the Christian story can be given for it, or only reasons that appeal to insiders). This of course does not rule out the possibility that ultimately, probably at the eschaton, Christianity will indeed turn out to be the true religion, but in the absence of any such eschatological verification, we should at least take into account that our religion may turn out to be not the true one and that we may be mistaken by adher- ing to it. Thus, the problem with the affirmation of the superiority of Chris- tianity offered by Milbank and Ratzinger is that they either reject (Mil- bank) or do not sufficiently take into account (Ratzinger) that, again in

51. For a critical evaluation of Milbank’s defence of the superiority of Christian- ity, which amounts to the claim that only Christianity allows for non-violence, see Hedges, “Radical Orthodoxy and the Closed Western Theological Mind,” 136-139. 52. Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialec- tic?, ed. Creston Davis, Short Circuits (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009) 84.

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Žižek’s terms, “the break of the Enlightenment is irreversible.”53 This “break of the Enlightenment” implies that it is simply no longer possible to be completely immersed in our particular tradition because a gap has opened up between what we are (our essence) and that we are (our existence), between our self as our substantial being that was shaped through our identification with and existence within particular traditions and the subject as an empty and substanceless point of pure being-there. This gap between self and subject implies that we can always distance ourselves from ourselves and look at ourselves from a third-person perspective. In this way, every particular belonging appears as ultimately contingent, as (structurally) involving a moment of choice (even if the subject never consciously made such a choice),54 and no direct identification of one particular form of being-human with the universal human essence is still legitimate. This does not justify, however, a complete relativisation of the particular. The reason for this is that, although the subject never coincides with the self, there is no subject without self, no subject that exists in isolation from a set of particular belongings. We cannot be human without being human in a particular way. Another way to put this is that there is never a direct and immediate access to the universal human essence, but that this essence is always realised in contingent particularities and that therefore there always remains a proviso of the universal human essence vis-à-vis any particular realisation of that essence (the universal is semper major).55 This way of conceiving the relationship between the particular and the universal now offers a way to bring forward the debate on whether or not humankind is ultimately one. Here and now, there is indeed only a plurality of particular ways of being-human and it is not clear how these different ways of being-human are, in the end, commensurable. This much has to be admitted to Milbank. But Milbank is claiming too much when he claims that the particular ways of being-human are not commensurable. Indeed, it may simply be a factual error to uphold that

53. Slavoj Žižek, Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out, new ed., Routledge Classics (New York: Routledge, 2008) 211. 54. To elaborate this idea further, we can fall back on the notion of ‘primordial choice’ as developed by Žižek. For further details, see my “Belief as Primordial Choice: Slavoj Žižek on the Status of Faith and Belief after the Enlightenment,” Faith in the Enlightenment? The Critique of the Enlightenment Revisited, ed. Lieven Boeve, et al., Cur- rents of Encounter, 30 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006) 157-166 (at 163-165). 55. See my “Rowan Williams’s Shari’a Lecture: Law, Love, and the Legacy of the Enlightenment,” Political Theology 13, no. 4 (2012) 425-443 for a development of these ideas in the context of Rowan Williams’s so-called ‘shari’a lecture’ and Edward Schille- beeckx’s idea of ‘the humanum’ (see esp. pp. 436-437).

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cultures and religions are completely incommensurable entities. In this regard, Hedges refers to recent developments in anthropology to argue that behind the wide variety of religions, cultures, and languages, people may have a lot more in common than Milbank allows, also adding that interreligious interaction is simply a reality, both today and in the past.56 This does not mean, however, that it is therefore justified to follow Ratzinger and the pluralist theologians in their claim that humankind is ultimately one, because they are also claiming too much when they claim to know that this is the case. The issue of whether humankind is ultimately one or not cannot be decided a priori. Or, to put it differently: the essence of being human is not something that is already given and is the object of knowledge, but something that can only be the object of hope in the sense that it is something that we are looking for and something that we hope to discover. And, as there is no access to the universal than through the particular, this discovery can only happen through an ongoing conversation and encounter between particularities in search of the truth, of which we hope that it will not only be the result of our conversation, but of which we also hope that it is the sphere in which we now converse with each other; or, to repeat the phrase from Ratz- inger already quoted above, “the sphere within which everyone can find and relate to one another and, in so doing, lose nothing of his [or her] own value or his [or her] own dignity” (TT 72).57

Frederiek Depoortere is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven (Belgium). Address: KU Leuven – Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, St.-Michielsstraat 4/3101, BE-3000 Leuven, Belgium. E-mail: Frederiek. [email protected].

56. Paul Hedges, “Particularities: Tradition-Specific Post-modern Perspectives,” Christian Approaches to Other Faiths, ed. Paul Hedges and Alan Race, SCM Core Texts (London: SCM, 2008) 112-135 (at 123-125). 57. This suggests a truth-centred and softened version of the pluralist stance. For a further exploration of this prospect, see Frederiek Depoortere and Magdalen Lambkin, “The Question of Theological Truth in a Multireligious World: Reflections at the Inter- face of Continental Philosophy and Interreligious Studies,” The Question of Theological Truth: Philosophical and Interreligious Perspectives, ed. Frederiek Depoortere and Magda- len Lambkin, Currents of Encounter, 46 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012) 267-307.

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