Listening To Other Religions?

When I was theology student, I came across an idea about "Jesus of History" and "Christ of Faith."

I was so interested with this idea because it seems to be logical and intellectually neat.

Only to realized later, upon reading Benedict XVI that this idea is fallacious.

This distinction is actually propagated by academics who are not believers and whose intention was to portrayed that the Christ the Church is proclaiming is not accurate.

Thus, as a consequence these academics would conclude that the Jesus that the believers come to know through the Church is false, or at least inaccurate.

For Benedict XVI, the Jesus of History is the Christ of Faith. These are not separated but rather from the Jesus of History, the Christ of Faith is manifested.

The lesson I learned from this experience is that there is a need for me to become acquainted with the teachings of the Church (thru the Catechism of the Catholic Church) before I venture into theological adventures.

I think this is also the principle behind the warning by our elders who prohibited their youngsters from reading the Bible lest they become lost.

The idea is not that Catholics should not read the Bible but that they need to become solidly anchored first in the rudiments of the Catechism.

After all, in the tradition of the Church, the Church Fathers taught Scriptures as integral part of the Catechism.

In a related the train of thoughts, I was intrigued by an article written by Sir Modesto Sa-onoy. He mentioned about a homily during the Pentecost Sunday which he heard over the radio.

The preacher advised the mass goers to "listen to other religions because they may have something to say that is true."

I do not want to evaluate the theological value of such as statement because who am I to do that. After all I am not a theology expert.

Neither do I know what the context of this statement is because I did not listen to that particular homily.

In this essay, I would rather give my own thoughts with regards to the ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue.

Listening to other religions (inter-religious dialogue) and with other Christian communities (ecumenism) has its value.

The more obvious value is that on ethical level, that is, we can certainly listen and learn how to live a more loving, compassionate and non-violent life from other religions.

After all, almost all religions have its own version of the Golden Rule.

All religions will have to contribute to building a harmonious human society. Everyone has a say on that.

However, we need to draw the line in terms of revelation, of learning who God is.

Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

For believers, there is nothing to hear about God from other religions because the fullness of God's revelation is Jesus Christ.

Jesus has revealed to us who God is. Listening to other religions about who God is will just confused the believers.

More so, we will fall into the trap that "everything is the same," that "every religion is same" and that "faith saves but not religion."

Some of my readers might argue that this topic is arcane and that there are other more important topics like poverty and social justice that we need to discuss.

Well, I can only think that Judas also have the same idea. He wants attention somewhere else because he does not want to acknowledge his own fault.

Going back to the main thesis of this article, Jesus is the sign of contradiction, and the stumbling block because Jesus claimed not only as someone who preaches about God.

He claimed that he is God.

Thus, if we search for God among the Buddhists, we will reduce Jesus to a mere enlightened human person because after all there is no God in Buddhism only Nirvana.

If we listen to the Hindus, Jesus will just become one of the many (in fact millions of) gods. He is no longer the fullness of revelation.

If we listen to the Muslims, Jesus will no longer be the "Son of God," who is the Second Person of the Trinity. He will be reduced to being just one of the prophets, not even the greatest among the prophets, that honor belongs to Mohammed.

Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.