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240. “The Diversity of Religions is the Will of God”. A Window into Pope Francis’s Theology of Religions

Many Roman Catholics raised their eyebrows when they read: “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.” The one who was saying this was Pope Francis in the 2019 Abu Dhabi Statement on “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together”, co-signed with Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar.
 
That God willed (and therefore created) the diversity of colour, sex, and race is unquestionable: these are all good traits of God’s creation. One could argue that as far as language is concerned, the account of the tower of Babel (Genesis 9) should be taken into account to realize that the multiplicity of languages is also the result of sin. But what about the diversity of religions? Is it really the will of God that men and women should worship gods and goddesses other than the One and True God, i.e. the Triune God of the Bible? The straightforward biblical answer is No. Period. However, Pope Francis said Yes.
 
How is it possible? Does the Roman Catholic Church now accept that all religions lead to God? Where does this new view of religions come from? These are all legitimate questions. According to Alberto Caccaro, L’uomo fa la differenza in Dio. La questione cristologica in Jacques Dupuis (Brescia: Queriniana, 2024), in order to to grasp the present-day theological debate on religions within Roman Catholicism, one needs to be aware of the work of the Jesuit theologian Jacques Dupuis (1923-2004). This Belgian theologian, who spent part of his life as a missionary in India, is an important voice that forms the Pope’s theological framework. Pope Francis, himself a Jesuit, does not quote him either in the Abu Dhabi Statement or in the encyclical “All Brothers” on fraternity among all peoples, but Dupuis’s thoughts are part of the backbone of his positive and “fraternal” approach to religions.

Questioning the existing models for thinking about the role of religions (i.e. exclusivism = Christ excludes other religions; inclusivism = Christ includes all religions; pluralism = Christ is one among many religions), Dupuis explored new “frontiers” in light of what he believed to be the “surplus” of the mystery of Christ over the linguistic and institutional forms of Christianity. His theology of religious pluralism was a response to what he considered an oversimplification of traditional accounts and an invitation to rework Christology by recognising the “space” of religions as a constitutive part of Christ and the gospel. In Dupuis’ view, religions are convergent and complementary mediations of salvation, and therefore the task of theology is to elaborate a Christology of religions that corresponds to their role.
 
This study by Caccaro, a Roman Catholic theologian and missionary working in Cambodia, takes up the themes of Dupuis’s reflection precisely from the Christological question and considers Dupuis’s three books on the subject: Jesus Christ at the Encounter of World Religions (English edition: 1991), Towards a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (English Edition: 2002) and Christianity and the Religions. From Confrontation to Dialogue (English Edition: 2002).
 
These works caused debate not only in the theological academies but also in the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (at the time presided over by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger), so much so that the Congregation sent him a “Notification”, a yellow card for having entered minefield territory, for “serious doctrinal errors” and “ambiguities” in his thinking. Although it generated some heat, this “Notification” had no disciplinary outcome. After Dupuis’s death, the trial was dropped.
 
In Dupuis’s thought, the distinction between Logos énsarkos (incarnate Word) and Logos ásarkos (non-incarnate Word) is central. While the former coincides with the person of Jesus Christ and the biblical account of him and his work, the latter is by its very nature open, spacious and irreducible to any closed codification. On the side of the Holy Spirit, while the Spirit of Christ is associated with the historical person of the God-man Jesus (i.e. the hypostatic union), the Spirit of God “blows where He wills,” and possibly in all religions.

As a Roman Catholic theologian, Dupuis glimpses the problems raised by these insights, and in his theology, one can see the struggle to keep Christology anchored to the incarnate Person of Jesus Christ while opening the non-incarnate Logos to accomodating and welcoming the different religions. The underlying question is: can one find salvation beyond the historical and embodied revelation of Jesus Christ? If yes, as argued by Dupuis, there is room for “differentiated and complementary revelation” and salvation offered by other religions. Since Dupuis wants to affirm both that Jesus Christ is the final revelation in his embodied Person and the possibility for other religions to be revelatory and salvific in his non-incarnate reality. Roman Catholic theology, a master in holding tensions together (et-et), must open its synthesis to the maximum exercise of its catholicity, i.e. its ability to embrace two opposites at the same time.
 
Dupuis speaks of “polarities at play.” In the unresolved polarity between the incarnate Word (biblically attested) and the non-incarnate Word (spacious enough as to include other religions), there would be room for the salvific role of religions. Compared to traditional models (i.e. exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism), Caccaro claims that Dupuis’s thought can be understood as “inclusive pluralism” or “pluralistic inclusivism” (91).
 
Even on a first reading, the problems with this position are evident. If the non-incarnate Word is pitted against the incarnate revelation of God in Jesus Christ, doesn’t one devalue the necessary scandal of the incarnation and the cross? If the Spirit and the Father operate outside of and without Jesus Christ, isn’t the unity and harmony of the Trinity endangered? If salvation can be found outside of the incarnate Word, doesn’t conversion to Christ become redundant?
 
Caccamo is helpful at exploring the “acrobatics” of Dupuis’s theology of religions especially as far as his concepts of “surplus” and “superabundance” of the mystery of the Word which cannot be contained in closed and pre-defined schemes of thought.
 
What is perhaps most interesting is to see how his work influenced Pope Francis’s claim that the diversity of religions is the will of God. Dupuis is only the latest development of a long-term process within Roman Catholicism that the Pope echoed. In fact, the theology of religions was given a shock at Vatican II (1962-1965) when it was argued that the plan of salvation includes people who don’t profess faith in Jesus Christ and that those who don’t know the gospel can attain salvation (Lumen Gentium, n. 16). Then, Redemptoris Missio, the 1990 encyclical by John Paul II, stated that “participated forms of mediation of different kinds and degrees are not excluded” (n. 5).
 
A lot of water has passed under the bridges of Roman Catholic theology: from the “anonymous Christianity” of Karl Rahner to the “All brothers” of Pope Francis. Of course, there have been pushbacks here and there (e.g. the 2000 critical declaration Dominus Iesus signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger), but the direction seems to be clear. The theology of religions is fertile ground in post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism. It is therefore not by chance that Pope Francis could write that “the pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.” In this sense, the spirit if not the letter of Dupuis’s work was at play in the Pope’s mind.
 
One glimpses a pattern: Dupuis broke new ground in his work, the immediate Vatican reaction was fairly negative, then his main concerns were accepted and integrated, and now they are part of the mainstream teaching of the Roman Church, at least implicitly. Here is how the Roman catholicity works: on the one hand, the traditional exclusivist and inclusivist positions are formally maintained, but on the other hand, they have developed in the “inclusive pluralism” or “pluralistic inclusivism” that Dupuis gave theological weight to in his work. There is no commitment to the ultimate authority of the Bible, and therefore the Roman Catholic system can flex one way or the other away from gospel boundaries.

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239. Fifteen Years (2010-2025) of Vatican Files at the Service of Evangelical Discernment

It is a modest anniversary, both for its relatively short time (only 15 years) and for the relatively small achievements to remember. Yet, it is worth mentioning for a few reasons. It was 2010 when the website www.vaticanfiles.org (VF) was opened and articles began to be posted on a regular basis, eventually becoming a monthly column. Now the VF have almost 250 free articles offering “evangelical perspectives on Roman Catholicism” translated in multiple languages and reposted by other outlets like Evangelical Focus, Evangelicals Now and Protestante Digital, as well as appearing in the monthly newsletter of the European Leadership Forum. The VF have 650 subscribers, but through the above-mentioned channels, the readership is far wider and global.

The VF are a small but not insignificant pool of resources to help evangelicals approach, understand and assess the vast and complex reality of Roman Catholicism with gospel clarity and theological breadth. It is a free resource at the service of evangelical discernment.

How the Vatican Files Began
The origins of the VF date back to the time when I arrived in Rome in 2009. Having a published PhD on evangelical interpretations of Vatican II, having taught courses on Roman Catholicism at Istituto di Formazione Evangelica e Documentazione (Padova, Italy), and having read papers on Roman Catholicism at international conferences such as the Fellowship of European Evangelical Theologians, the World Reformed Fellowship, and in various places in Italy, the UK, Germany and France, I thought of ways to make my expertise available to the wider evangelical public, taking advantage also of me now living and ministering in Rome.

At that time, I was also vice-chairman of the Italian Evangelical Alliance, and I offered to the World Evangelical Alliance to write regular updates for its leadership on Vatican documents and events and more generally on Roman Catholicism-related topics. It was through the WEA that I was admitted to the Vatican Press Office as correspondent. In this way, I gained direct access to official press conferences and had opportunities to interact with Vatican experts from all over the world.

The first VF were sent to a list of WEA leaders and interested people. It was only a few months later that the number of people who wanted to receive them grew considerably and the website was opened so that the articles could be posted there and become freely accessible.

Blind Spot
Since 2010, the VF have assessed documents and initiatives of the late Benedict XVI up to his abrupt resignation, the election of Pope Francis and the unfolding of his pontificate, the various theological, ecumenical, missionary, cultural, institutional trends that can be observed in Roman Catholicism through the analysis of books, events, journals and other resources.

As a theologian and not a journalist, in the VF I have tended to offer a theological interpretation of the Roman Catholic world from an evangelical viewpoint. When I researched what the evangelical world was producing in terms of its own assessment of Roman Catholicism, I came to the sober conclusion that very little was available and even less in progress. On the one hand, Roman Catholicism had become a regular dialogue partner in many evangelical constituencies and circles world-wide; on the other hand, very little effort was put toward understanding the dynamics of what had come out of Vatican II and the present-day reality of Rome.

Evangelicals were opening to the ecumenical embracement of Rome or entering joint activities with Roman Catholic agencies and movements, not having done the proper and necessary homework of trying to come to terms with the Roman Catholic system. The latter is capable of being traditional and progressive, Marian and seemingly “evangelical”, sacramentalist and “charismatic”, papal and “missionary”, always keeping its institutional outlook and spiritual agenda. The root problem was the lack of evangelical engagement with what had happened at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) coupled with a process that was leading to the weakening of evangelical distinctives with regards to the multiple and changing faces of Roman Catholicism. This was the blind spot that the VF tried to overcome.

From the VF to the Reformanda Initiative and Beyond
The VF began small and unassuming, and they remain such. However, they cover ground that is hard to find in the evangelical world. As their circulation increased, so opportunities to write, speak, give papers and talks grew correspondently.

A major step forward was the launching of the Reformanda Initiative (RI) in 2016 as a more comprehensive project, brewed out of the inspiration received at the European Leadership Forum. As an independent entity, RI’s aim was and is to “Identify, unite, equip, and resource evangelical leaders to understand Roman Catholic theology and practice, to educate the evangelical church and to communicate the gospel.”

Since 2016, the Rome Scholars and Leaders Network has been gathering each year 30-40 global theologians and leaders from around the world to participate in a weeklong seminar. The RI podcast was launched soon after. Opportunities to write books and invitations to speak at conferences multiplied (e.g. Australia, Brazil, USA, Canada, various European countries), involving also my dear friends and colleagues Reid Karr and Clay Kannard.

The work of the RI is expanding fast, although it is still organic and with potential to grow. It will be for another occasion to evaluate the impact of the RI. Suffice it now to say that it was birthed also out of the preceding experience of the VF.

As already indicated, fifteen years is a modest anniversary that should not fuel human pride but praise to God. The evangelical world needs faithful, updated and comprehensive perspectives on Roman Catholicism. It is neither a luxury nor a speculative endeavor: it is a must that is required by the evangelical commitment to the biblical gospel. To that end, the VF have given a small but incremental contribution.

In closing, I wish to say thank you to David Valente, Gordon Showell-Rogers, Reid Karr, Clay Kannard, Greg Pritchard, Tom Wilson, Becca Paternoster, Abby Dill, Rob Clarke, David Barker, Joel Forster, Rosa Gubianas and many others whose names I may have forgotten, who in various ways (e.g. encouragement, web design, graphics, editing, translating) have helped the VF to be known over the years. Soli Deo gloria.

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