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"Interfaith Monologue" - 14.3 - 1997
Bishop Michael Ingham's new bookMansions of the Spirit
I cannot say I approached Bishop Michael Ingham's latest book with any great expectations. His last foray into print, Rites for a New Age: Understanding the Book of Alternative Services (1986), often presented as a definitive rationale for those liturgical experiments, was not very impressive. As our reviewer, Wayne Hankey, commented at the time "the book is so full of historical and theological errors...there is scarcely a page without egregious errors." Worst of all, Hankey found, "his teaching method is inherently polemical. He decides first what is presently true and good. This he credits to the BAS, and then he ascribes the opposite to the Prayer Book , or some other past position, generally without evidence. As a result, Mr. Ingham [not, at that time a bishop] simply invents a Prayer Book and a history of theology and culture to suit his purposes. The Prayer Book and the past are given whatever character they need to have so as to justify the BAS" [The Anglican Free Press, Vol. 3, No. 4 and Vol. 4, No. 2].
The new book, called Mansions of the Spirit: The Gospel in a Multi-Faith World (Anglican Book Centre, 1997), a treatment of Christianity's relation to other religions, unfortunately exhibits the same weaknesses in 'its approach as those identified by Dr. Hankey in Rites for a New Age. Ingham has read a few books on the subject, and collects some intriguing thoughts, spun some purple prose, but far from being "a book of engaging clarity" (to quote Lord Runcie's endorsement) it is a confused and confusing tract, incoherently and unconvincingly advocating that the Church move beyond the Biblical and traditional claims for Christ as only and universal Saviour.
The debate Ingham enters is ground that has already been well-covered in the last twenty or thirty years by a number of contemporary theologians, such as John Hick and Hans Kung. Nor is he the first Anglican bishop to venture into such territory: that honour belongs, as one might expect, to Bishop John Spong, whose spiritual experiences in a Buddhist temple have already been well-publicized. It seems that liberal Canadian Anglicans are always following in trails well blazed by Americans.
Ingham provides a survey of the positions already established in this debate on the relation of Christianity to other religions, those commonly identified as "Christian exclusivism", "Christian inclusivism", and "religious pluralism".
Exclusivism holds that there is no salvation apart from explicit faith in Jesus Christ, and thus in the formulation of Cyprian of Carthage, "no salvation outside Christ's Church". It is supported by a broad range of texts in scripture, provides an excellent motivation for evangelism, but appears to imply that God has created an awful lot of people to live and die without hearing the gospel.
Inclusivism also holds that Jesus Christ is the one revelation of God to man, and the only Saviour. The whole truth is revealed in the Christian religion. But other religions have some part of the truth, indeed, may have quite a lot of truth in them. Moreover, the grace of God in Jesus Christ may work "anonymously", making many apparent non-Christians "anonymous Christians" (as Karl Rahner put it), in some way or other. Christian Inclusivism then has the advantage of retaining the biblical basis of exclusivism, while providing for a more respectful attitude towards other religions and their adherents. Its disadvantage is that it is highly speculative.
Thirdly, Religious Pluralism holds that there is one "ultimate reality" to which all, or most, religions lead. None may be regarded as superior to the others, for all grasp one aspect of this transcendent reality. This position appears to offer a basis for tolerance among religious groups, but pays a heavy price for that good, which Ingham himself notes. It fails to offer any norms for discriminating between good and evil, truth and falsehood, and provides no reason for commitment. In addition, the Biblical witness to the uniqueness of Christ is largely abandoned, and the impetus for evangelism vanishes.
Ingham concludes his survey of these three positions with an interesting quotation from Bishop Leslie Newbiggin, who calls for a complex position incorporating aspects of all three, and it appears (one is never quite sure in this book) that this is the position Ingham attempts to stake out under the title of "grounded openness". From the basis of firm commitment to a community of faith, believers may recognize the fundamental equality of all, or most, religions, and are free to explore other faiths. Evangelism is only confined to those of no faith Commitment.
Now Newbiggin's idea of a complex position one incorporating in itself certain aspects of Christian exclusivism, Christian inclusivism, and religious pluralism, is not unattractive. It would be interesting, at least, to explore the possibilities. But Ingham's effort to think this through in terms of "grounded openness" is not much of a success. Apart from a few gestures in the direction of Christian commitment, it is hard to see how it would not simply collapse back into pluralism. On the one hand, we are told, Christian pluralists must remain grounded in their faith communities, and that Jesus Christ as Saviour is non-negotiable. If Jesus Christ is not the only way, truth, and life, still he is the only Saviour "for me". On the other hand, however, we are thus free to explore other faith traditions, and in that exploration discover a need to revise our own beliefs and practices in light of what we find in other religions. And indeed, why not? What does Ingham identify to ground us in our faith communities? What but the arbitrary choices of the autonomous individual in his unlimited subjectivity?
But the trouble with Ingham's argument starts much earlier, as one might expect, in his treatment of Scripture and doctrine. He only deals with the Gospel of John, although it is not the only New Testament witness to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. That text beloved of St. Augustine, I Timothy 2.5, is ignored: "there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (especially notable, since it follows so hard on the heels of that text suggestive of universal salvation, "God... will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth", v.4). Nor do we hear of Peter's claim before the Sanhedrin in Acts 4.12: "there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." Nor does he deal with the Old Testament's polemic against other religions: "As for all the gods of the heathen, they are but idols; but it is the LORD that made the heavens" [Ps. 96.5, BCP]. These other voices are all found to be adequately explained away by his analysis of john's Gospel, the source of numerous "absolutist" statements about Christ, notably: "No one cometh unto the Father but by me" [14.6]. Ingham's analysis comes directly from a German theologian named Reinhold Bernhardt: "The Johannine community", we are told, "reacted to the acute threat from outside by making its own conviction absolute. The sharp statements which thus arose are to be interpreted as a reaction to a quite specific challenge and not as universal supra-historical judgments on the religions of the world. They simply cannot be transferred to quite different situations". So that's that.
Ingham then accuses exclusivists of reading scripture "by separating the texts from their historical setting". But even if the historical setting of John or any other book could be definitively established (which is a matter for some debate), yet his way of locating Scripture in its historical context effectively prevents it from functioning as Scripture for an other human beings in any other time or place than its original setting. Ingham so roots Scripture 'in human history that it is virtually imprisoned in history: by Ingham's method, the voice of the eternal Father cannot be heard resounding in the words of Scripture, just the extravagant claims of a paranoid sect. Ingham is untroubled by this possibility - in fact, it does not even appear to have occurred to him. He is perhaps so absorbed in his vision that he ignores the problems it creates.
Yet having dismissed the texts unfavourable to his position by a little hypothetical sociology, he then goes on to find texts favourable to it, and these, apparently, may be read as " universal supra-historical judgments", without qualification due to their historical context. Again relying on Bernhardt, he cites a number of passages where Jesus interacts positively with Gentiles - the Canaanite woman, the Roman centurion of Capernaum, the Samaritan woman by the well, the good Samaritan and so on. And of course, they do show Christ's openness to Gentiles, but hardly in the way Ingham has in mind: Jesus does not exactly congratulate them on their commitment to paganism. In each one of these passages, his openness consists precisely in the opening of the exclusive covenant between Israel and the one God, the Maker of heaven and earth, to the Gentiles. "I have not found so great faith" marvels Christ at the centurion, "no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, That many [i.e. Gentiles] shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven" [Matthew 8.10,11].
Ingham, like so many liberals before him, sees in the Bible " a gradual development in the doctrine of God, an evolution from tribalism to universality, from pluralistic polytheism to inclusive monotheism. The circle keeps getting wider. Its orbit sweeps more and more people into its vision. It is a gradually but inexorably enlarging idea whose dimensions keep resisting cultural and doctrinal confinement" and so on (p. 132). There is of course something in what Ingham says. There is indeed to be seen in Scripture a development, the emergence of a clear vision of the universal community of salvation, but that development actually depended upon some radical narrowing - Abraham, the faithful remnant of Judah, and Jesus Christ himself being the tight constrictions which lay the foundation for the radical widening of the circle. The role of such constrictions, and their relation to the expansions, are ignored. The fruitful tension between uniqueness and universality is dissolved.
Ingham is looking for unlimited, unrestricted expansion, a movement to take us beyond Scripture itself "If ... we take the view that the growth of God-consciousness need not end with Jewish-Christians of the first century, that a new understanding is possible and indeed necessary for world peace and survival, then we may feel ourselves impelled towards a yet wider view of God's self-disclosure [than that provided 'in Scripture]. This would, in my view, be entirely consistent with Scriptural tradition taken as a whole and with the God of love made manifest in Jesus Christ. It would be faithful to the pattern, already evident in the Bible, of historical evolution in human understanding of God, an ever-widening circle of knowledge based on the core foundation of the old and new covenants between God and Israel. It would not deny the central witness of Scripture to a universally sovereign Lord whose will it is that all people should be saved, but rather take that witness to its next logical step ... divine grace may be experienced through other religious paths without any contradiction of the way of salvation offered in Jesus Christ" [p. 134].
Notice that what brings Ingham to this interpretation of Scripture is his sense of what is "necessary for world peace and survival"; with this remark, Ingham's argument is exposed in its true nature. This argument is not properly theological. It does not arise out of a consideration of the nature of God who has revealed himself in the Gospel. It is rather an entirely pragmatic argument, based on Ingham's subjective discernment of what is expedient and relevant to the world today. In short, Ingham's argument need not be taken seriously on a theological level - nor really does he provide any grounds to take his argument seriously on a pragmatic level either. I found nothing in his account of the role of religion in communal strife that could not be found, for instance, in the TV news. One finds no special political or sociological expertise here.
"The new global context of religious and cultural pluralism requires new acts of biblical interpretation. The ancient world that produced the epistles and gospels was not facing the situation we face today. Its answers to those questions are not necessarily answers to our questions" (p.135). But does the difference in geographical quantity really amount to a big difference in cultural quality? The Mediterranean world in which Judaism and Christianity first flourished was small enough, to be sure, but it was arguably just as much characterized by "religious and cultural pluralism" as the world is today. It was a world in which Jews and Christians knew themselves to be but a small minority among the nations with their many languages, cultures, and gods. Indeed, one might argue that the religions of the Mediterranean world were naturally pluralist. When the Greeks conquered the Syrians and the Egyptians, they readily identified the native deities with their own; and the Romans did the same when they conquered the Greeks. Astarte became Aphrodite became Venus; Baal became Ares became Mars. Such syncretizing pluralism was indeed the very religion against which Jews and Christians defined themselves, and against which they stood out like a sore thumb. Indeed, it is what is so theologically remarkable and historically significant about them. And if Christians had followed Ingham's advice about evangelism, of course, they would hardly have expanded at all, for ancient societies of the Mediterranean did not know of the religiously uncommitted in the modern sense. Such obvious questions Ingham simply ignores, and for lack of it, his argument fails to develop any roots.
Similarly, Ingham falls into the usual liberal rut of disparaging doctrine as divisive, setting truth against love, and looking for some way past doctrinal distinctions in mystical experience or in love. Ingham exhibits unconcern about his anti-doctrinal prejudices. That they have been subjected to devastating criticism for the last couple of decades (notably by post-liberals like George Lindbeck) one might never guess.
Ingham talks a lot about the need for humility in approaching other religions, but it does not seem to occur to him that humility might be useful in other ways too. The impression left on this reader by his book is not of humility, but great arrogance. Ingham simply cannot be bothered to think his ideas through in a disciplined, coherent way, and to ground them in Scripture, or tradition, or reason, and to provide a reasoned defence against reasonable objections. His method is opportunistic. He picks and chooses here and there whatever seems to suit his immediate purpose, and then moves on without regard for what he said before. I suppose you might call this logical pluralism. Underneath his pluralism, however, is a one-track mind. As liberals are fond of saying about conservatives, Ingham sees everything in very black and white terms. You are either with him in his pluralist vision of world peace and harmony, or you are against him, and aligned with the dark forces of "evangelicalism" and "fundamentalism". "The stakes are high. We can opt for world peace, with people of diverse religions working together for better understanding and acceptance, or we can succumb to suspicion, intolerance, and violence". There is no middle ground, no grey area, no other way than his.
Ingham's arrogance thus has disturbing practical implications for a bishop of a diocese with a large conservative evangelical Anglican component. And it has disturbing implications for any conservative Christian minorities, like catholic-minded, Prayer Book Anglicans.
Ironically, for one who is committed to peace among religious communities, he does not seem to have a method for dealing with the real diversity in his own. In one tantalizing passage, he comes close to admitting this: "There are two broad streams emerging within modern Christianity, which are locked in a highly competitive relationship with each other ... One is the conservative - evangelical - fundamentalist coalition on one side of the theological spectrum, and the other is the modernist-liberal-progressive coalition on the other. Each of them claims to be 'orthodox'...but each defines the essence of orthodoxy differently, and each perceives the other as threat and rival.... Each is engaged in a struggle for power within all the mainstream denominations of the church today" [pp.94-95], and so on. But his train of thought veers off into a generalized discussion of religious rivalry and competition, and we never find out that Ingham is indeed a prominent member of the liberal coalition which dominates the Canadian church establishment. Ingham does not talk about how that tension is to be dealt with, and the rest of the book does not hold out much hope for tolerance of the conservative community in the Canadian church. "Tolerance" he opines at one point "must exclude intolerance" [p. 138] - a rubric which could justify the extirpation of any non-pluralist theology.
For it is questionable whether theological pluralism can really provide a good basis for genuine tolerance. Tolerance after all, is not really tolerance, if it does not involve toleration of genuine diversity. Yet pluralism abolishes each religion's distinctive claims for and understanding of the truth. The Contradictory claims of other religions are to be regarded as possessing equal validity with one's own. All diversity in essential matters disappears, and all outward diversity of practice is reduced to differences of style, taste, or fashion alone - consumer options in the religious supermarket, ultimately interchangeable. It means that you are free to hold any sort of view you like provided it does not affect the established religion of theological pluralism in any concrete way whatsoever. So in the end theological pluralism does not provide a basis for any religion that is not itself pluralist. In the end, theological pluralism surely tends not to support religious diversity but rather to undermine it. The real challenges of securing religious tolerance in culturally diverse societies are not to be met by "grounded openness". What is it grounded in? And to whom (or to what) is it open? One fears that the mansions of Ingham's spirit have neither firm foundations nor much room for outsiders. +
A note on our Editor:
The Rev'd Gavin Dunbar was Rector of the Parish of Ecum Secum, Nova Scotia, and now serves as an associate priest in the parish of St. John's, Savannah, Georgia.
He is the editor of the Anglican Free Press, and past Vice-President of the Nova Scotia / PEI branch of the Prayer Book Society of Canada, and a former instructor at the Atlantic St. Michael's Youth Conference. He has written and lectured extensively on a range of topics, and has many god-children.