Bishop Michael, I have been reading your Mansions of the Spirit. This is how I understand your argument to go. You used when young to be a somewhat bigoted, closed-minded Christian [Chapter 1]. Now that the modern world has made neighbours of us all you see that inter-faith co-operation and dialogue are essential [Chapter 2 §1]. Religious intolerance is destructive [Chapter 2 §2]. Religion is potentially a positive spiritual force [Chapter 2 §3]. The desire for convergence among the great religious traditions of the world has showed itself in the 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions, when Christian exclusivism was challenged [Chapter 2 §1]; the World Congress of Faiths [Chapter 2 §2], which aims for a "fellowship of faiths" in which faith itself may become more attractive; the International Association for Religious Freedom [Chapter 2 §3]; the Temple of Understanding, from which have grown the Global Forum and the North American Inter-Faith Network [Chapter 2 §4]; the World Conference on Religion and Peace, which is activist but nonviolent [Chapter 2 §4]; the modern Christian ecumenical movement, which affirms that there is truth and integrity in all religious traditions [Chapter 2 §5]; the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions, which produced the Declaration Towards a Global Ethic indicative among other things of a growing agreement about ethics between religious traditions [Chapter 2 §6 cf. Appendix B]. If religions are to co-operate rather than compete, the question of their rival truth-claims, particularly in the case of Christianity, must be faced [Chapter 2 §7].

Historically the Christian approach to other faiths has been exclusivist [Chapter 4 §1]. Exclusivism says that Jesus Christ is the only way to the knowledge of God and to salvation, whether mediated by personal faith or through membership in the Church. It also tends to think of salvation as rescue for heaven. It produces zeal, but is essentially unbiblical, unreasonable and unkind [Chapter 4 §2]. Inclusivism, the doctrine that some not explicitly in Christ may be saved, is more biblical, but still an invalid approach because it can cut both ways and is inimical to dialogue. In it other religions are being viewed paternalistically and in terms of Christian doctrine [Chapter 5, especially pp. 71-2]. The third possible Christian approach is that of religious pluralism, the doctrine that God has revealed Himself in a variety of different ways at diverse times and places; all human knowledge is historically conditioned, so that there are no absolutes. But this too is untenable in practice and unfruitful in our human situation [Chapter 6].

Theological issues in inter-faith dialogue and relations tend to resolve themselves into social and power relationships. Thus in isolated communities pluralism is not an option and the possession of the whole truth is assumed [Chapter 7 §2]. One alternative as isolation breaks down is hostility [Chapter 7 §2]. Another is competition [Chapter 7 §3]. Then there is partnership without argument about doctrine, or in the search for new doctrine [Chapter 7 §4]. While theological harmony among the spiritual traditions is unattainable, the idea that at some deeper level all religions are one is useful for inter-faith dialogue [Chapter 8 §1]. Unity may be found at the level of mystical experience [Chapter 8 §2]. In all traditions this kind of experience seems to be the same, so that genuine spiritual experience probably comes out of communion with the same God or ultimate reality [Chapter 8 §3]. Christian mystics have practised the via negativa; so have Hindu and Buddhist ones. All such experience, which tends to monism (a static world-view that, though you do not say so, is notoriously passive in the face of evil, because in it whatever is, is good), leads us further than the external forms of any particular religion [Chapter 8 §4].

There are two kinds of reaction in the Church to the idea of multi-faith dialogue and exploration, welcoming and negative [Chapter 9 §1]. There is a transcendent unity among the world’s religions. Truth makes itself known in specific revelations, but is beyond all of them. The "exoteric" type of believer clings to familiar forms, the "esoteric" sees through forms to the substance of the hidden God. There is no final character to any specific revelation. But both psychological types will have to start inter-faith dialogue from a position of grounded openness, working from the familiar to the new [Chapter 9 §2]. We must first belong to a faith community, from which we move out in safety. We must bring what we know of God into relationship with what others have fruitfully experienced. Grounded openness may lead us to reject elements within Christianity out of the need to pursue God’s unfolding revelation. The potential rewards of these risks are worthy of noble spirits to whom peace-making and generosity of spirit are the supreme values [Chapter 9 §3].

There is a natural and necessary evolution in human thought and believing. Each stage of it has enlarged the religious imagination of the faithful [Chapter 10 §1]. By an emerging God-consciousness Israel moved from pluralistic polytheism to inclusive monotheism [Chapter 10 §2]. The new global context requires us to look for God’s truth beyond the Bible, and to broaden further our belief in the possibilities for human redemption [Chapter 10 §3]. We need a new agnosticism on the whole question of who is or is not saved, which is essentially biblical [Chapter 10 §4]. Dialogue involves a committed sharing of our faith, but not proselytism. There is a new and bigger Gospel. We must be open to see in other religions the God we know in Jesus Christ and be open to new truth about Him from outside our own tradition. Jesus is one sure way. But we must beware of a Jesusolatry which turns Jesus into an exclusivist icon or end rather than a means of God’s grace and love. The wisdom of God is bigger than all our absolutisms. Thus evangelism should be directed towards those who have no living faith, not those who do. There is no urgency to make the whole world Christian. The true work of Christ is not in correcting other people’s theology but in meeting their needs [Chapter 10 §5].

Yours is an intellectual book. With it I confess to having some intellectual and other difficulties. Under the smoothly-argued surface I detect at least three books, one on the need for inter-faith co-operation for human good, one on how Christian people may relate civilly and with integrity to those who profess other religions, and a third on the question of whether there is truth only, or only truth, in Jesus the Messiah. I am not convinced that you have quite finished writing any of them. Secondly, there are inevitably lurking assumptions over which readers may trip and large lacunae into which they may fall.

Basic to the book as a whole is the idea that religious pluralism is a Twentieth Century phenomenon [p. 14] and that most Christian people think as they do about other faiths because they originate in some "tight-knit clannish community" [p. 89]. No account, for instance, is taken of Byzantium, with its sophisticated dialogue with Islam, or the complicated religious history of the Russian Empire. It is assumed that our religious world, with "gods many and lords many" from Victoria to Charlottetown and beyond, is quite new. You conclude from the fact that inclusivism may cut both ways that it does do so [p. 71], although this is to beg the question about truth. It is supposed, ironically in view of the strictures on "arrogant" theologians quoted on pp. 135-7, that my judgment of others counts for eternity: it signifies what view I take of the spiritual condition of my beautiful Hindu friends, or others "whose depth of intimacy with God is evident and radiant" [p. 12]. It is assumed that the Fourth Gospel is very late, tendentious and therefore unreliable in detail [pp. 58 ff., but more or less retracted on pp. 82-3]. In fact biblical scholars do not have either a relative or an absolute dating of any of the canonical Gospels or know that any part of the Gospel record is a pious fraud.

Another major assumption is an instrumentalist approach to faith, i.e. a valuing of it simply for what it does: we need to be "harnessing the enormous power of religious traditions to deepen spiritual qualities" [p. 24]. Religion, you say, has as its concern "the central project of human existence" which equals "the purpose and goal of the spiritual life" [p. 104]. It is further assumed that all religious people are God’s people [p. 32 and passim]. Evangelism is "missionary competition" and involves viewing our "fellow (sic!) brother and sister as theologically or spiritually inferior" [p. 47]. Modern thinking about truth-claims aims at "ways of retaining Christian superiority" [p. 50]. The Lausanne Covenant apparently made no distinction between unbelief and disbelief, assigning the same eternal consequences to each [p. 54, cf. 66 ff.]. The Fourth Gospel constructs an identity for Jesus not found in the Synoptics or in the earliest Epistles [pp. 58 ff.]. All people are God’s children [p. 62]. Human conduct is somehow distinct from "credal belief" [p. 65]. Karl Rahner’s ‘anonymous Christian’ is "rather a novel idea" [p. 67].

Even a measured inclusivism, in your view, represents an "imperialism ... allowing Christians to hang on to their feelings of superiority" [p. 71]. Christian disagreements do not originate in, but "get pushed back into ... underlying disagreements about ... foundations" [p. 93]. All modern Christians fall neatly into two parties only, above which you as writer sit, by implication, in Olympian detachment [pp. 93-96]. "Christian theology ... is the reflected experience of the believing community" [p. 100]. In any accurate classification of types of religion, Christianity is a prophetic, as opposed to a mystical or wisdom faith [p. 101]. Doctrine divides [p. 111]. Under the New Covenant "... all people are now chosen people" [p. 132]. The story of God’s people in both Testaments is one of human beings straining towards the light [pp. 127-33]. A Christocentric Christianity arose as a mechanism for survival in a hostile environment [p. 133]. Modern Christians have effectively grown out of Scripture [p. 134]. Because "The ancient world ... was not facing the situation we face today", we have nothing to learn from it even by analogy [p. 135].

The point is well taken that ethical theory is universal and that Christian believers have no monopoly in it [pp. 24-6]. No account, however, is taken of the Christian origins of the human rights movement, or of the drive in modern times of great non-Christian religions to emulate Christian morality in practice, of which Mahatma Gandhi with his well-thumbed New Testament is the best-known exemplar, but to which one could add major changes in Islam about polygamy and the status of women; in short, you miss out entirely the matter of differing anthropologies, arguably the point at which great religions, and systems in general, diverge most markedly.

Not only is Jn. 17:23 quoted early on against the context and with a significant omission [p. 32], but in spite of strictures on interpretation which "dehistoricizes Scripture" [p. 60], there is a failure to read either Testament in its Jewish matrix: most of the citations on pp. 63-4 actually amount to an inclusivity which says "The Gentiles too", and this applies to the so-called Great Commission [Matt. 28:19]. Thus the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard is egregiously misconceived by you on p. 139. Rom. 2:7-11 is rightly interpreted as being about "those outside the realm of faith" [p. 65], but not placed in the context of Rom. 1-3. There is no obvious grasp of the pivotal significance of a covenanting God Who pursues sinners with love, in other words the great theme of the Bible and the Faith is missed. The patriarchs were saved by their "love of God" [p. 64]. New Testament passages on slavery, the woman question and so forth are scrapped in the light of our "changed thinking", when careful modern exegesis does not support any of our "discarded attitudes" [p. 135]. Early in the argument you state that "Jesus made love of God and love of neighbour a corollary of each other, and this linkage was ... unique" [p. 19]; the link was made by Moses, or by another man of the same name, and restated by rabbis earlier than or contemporary with Our Lord. Granted that systematic theology can sometimes miss the trees for the wood, such slips are profoundly troubling. One gets the impression of texts picked up from a relatively narrow band of secondary literature, most of it very recent. There is no apparent resort to good commentary at any point.

At other points I find lapses. It is odd to say "it would be impossible to exclude Buddhists from the study of religions" while not including animists, Marxists, selfists, secularists, the modern worshippers of Ares, Aphrodite and Bacchus, and other influential groupings which can be excluded in the 90s only on a priori (and probably in the end Christian) grounds.

In general you seem to hold to a doctrine of selective inspiration of the canonical scriptures. At times it is useful to treat them as having authority, at times they are awkward; thus you are able in practice to treat the text as sometimes a good stick to beat your reader with, and sometimes as a broken reed. I who have enjoyed a long theological training do not feel at one moment victimised and at another betrayed by this technique, but I am concerned for those who will.

Universalism, the doctrine that everyone will be saved, is redefined in a novel sense [p. 118]. In several places the idea of ecumenicity is broadened and secularised along with that of catholicity.

There is no obvious distinction between the instrumentalism of your book and the mindset of magic or idolatry in the classical sense. Peace and justice are your agenda, religion is one tool for their realisation. Nor is there recognition of where ‘pure’ mystical experience may or may not lead if no doctrinal parameters apply. My guess is that in this respect as in others your heart is better than your head.

I believe you to be essentially a kind man, whose great goodwill to mankind is the hallmark of your book. I am not convinced that that goodwill extends to all your fellow-disciples, to some of whom you apply fairly frequently opprobrious epithets, including a fourteen-letter word spelt f*etc. These Christians maintain "the literal truth of such doctrines as the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, and the visible return of Jesus" [p. 55]. The literal truth of the Passion is not on this list, nor is there delineation of what figurative truth would look like. A Bultmannian position on the Resurrection, that it is deeply, wonderfully and significantly true, but that it never occurred, may appeal to some moderns, but founders on the practicalities of starting a new movement in First Century Judaism. Christian catholicity has always maintained that these truths are at least literal, if not literal at most. If "We do not believe today as people did in the first century of the Christian era" [p. 127], we catholic Christians do look to bishops to recall us to catholicity. Quis in these great matters custodiet ipsos custodes?

From a Christology which is weak to non-existent follows a pneumatology to which a very large loupe must be taken. The old wine of orthodoxy has been washed out of the bottle, though some of the appellation contrôlée label still sticks, and instead we are offered the distilled water of the via negativa, very pure no doubt but scarcely a source of joy and love. Low-class pagan plonk might seem more life-giving. Perhaps mine is a specifically feminine perspective, but give me any day a warm God with skin on Him, the Christ Who has held my hand through the golden days of childhood, through youthful intensity, work, struggle and sacrifice, love, heartbreak, marriage, childbirth, personal tragedy and bereavement, and still is strong to save as I face chronic illness and my all too literal decay and death. Daily He washes away my past, purifies my motives, arms me against sloth and vice, and gives me strength to pick myself up and serve some more. That literal Christ is the source of my personhood, and, though I am one of the most intellectual as well as mystical persons you will ever know, Him I will preach, I hope without pride and without shame, with courtesy and respect. I will not withhold a spiritual tourniquet from my dying friend just because I have no admitting privileges to the hospital in which he was born. Mercy being infinitely surer than justice, I will not tell him about a back door to Heaven when I haven’t yet urged the use of the front one.

To practise ‘grounded openness’ is a balancing act difficult in theory, impossible in practice. When and with whom can a unified personality afford to discard one persona in favour of the other? Which of all the "intermediate self-disclosures of the Absolute" [p. 121] do I worship today, and with how undivided a heart? Am I, or am I not, "evangelistically committed" [p. 57]? You do not pull the act off in your book: you are manifestly in the end more grounded than open, your Christian groundedness given away by the use of such expressions as "another gospel" [p. 48];"the living God" [p. 50]; "all people of faith and goodwill" [p. 67]; "God’s grace" [p. 70]; "the divine love", [p. 125]; "God’s unfolding revelation", "grace and blessing of God", "charitableness" [p. 126]; " God’s presence", "divine grace" [p. 134]; "the majesty of God and the well-being of God’s people" [p. 138]; "living faith", "judgment" [p. 139], and the very words of your title [cf. "mansion of God’s kingdom" on p. 139]. We must, you believe, operate with "the central concept of neighbour and of God" [p. 31, if in that order of priorities]. It is important to "advance mutual respect" [p. 71]. In mystical experience "Love is the realm in which the divine and human meet" [p. 109]. "God ... creates the world and human beings with the capacity to comprehend our own eternal origin and end" [p. 120]. There are "demonic and destructive forms of religion", "diabolical" and "corrupt"; we need to avoid "the demonic" and "the exotic" [p. 124]. There are "sinfulness", "iniquity and wickedness" [p. 138]. All these categories are grounded in Scripture, tradition and Christian civilisation. Their very invocation involves truth-claims. One must in the end, even if faith is a psychological trick which one plays on oneself, believe wholeheartedly for it to work. Otherwise "grounded openness" seems a recipe for an unhappy Christian and an unhappy pluralist doing battle inside one skin.

You are right to reject imperialistic attitudes in Christian people; but it is a false opposition to mix the packaging with the gift, and to make our alternative an apologetic post-colonial guilt. The classic Christian posture has been that evangelism is a matter of one beggar telling another where to find bread. In the real world, Christian mission in the broadest sense, witness, proclamation and service, all come out of an exclusive love for and worship of Jesus as (capitalised) Lord. Only a theology of His Person as God come down will trouble to include anyone, or thinks it has anything worth being included in. This is not impoverishment, but enrichment; and it is found in no other religion. You and I are included Christians today, with all that that means to us both, because somewhere in our spiritual ancestry there was exclusivity about the person of Jesus. Anything else cuts the nerve of mission: there is otherwise simply no point in any of the funny things on which we spend our cash and energies, whether inside, outside or on the edge of church.

Anyone who raises in a comparatively slim volume such subjects of lifetime study as biblical interpretation, comparative religion, missiology, soteriology, Gospel criticism and the philosophy of religion is likely at times to look like a jack of all trades. The central concerns of this book are legitimate, if not all urgent; but I must conclude that they have been raised rather than settled by you.

People who have grown up within or been converted to the Christian system without having made a personal surrender to a personal Jesus will usually notice a gap opening up between reason and mature experience on the one hand and the system on the other. This spiritual stage is by no means incompatible with a vigorous apologetic for the truth of one’s nominal faith. I write as one who has been cosmopolitan for fifty years, and was once herself an unreconstructed and very cerebral first-year SCM student. It is not for you, or for me, to decide where anyone else is spiritually. God alone knows that. We must judge ourselves, though there will be times when I am not sure even about me. What is certain, however, is that when the gap becomes too wide to straddle each of us must make a leap, either into a mature personal adoration and heart-worship of Christ, or into some other system. It is the better part of honesty for any who cannot or have not yet done the former to cease to draw a salary which is appropriate to those who profess that worship.

Your book is elegantly written, if one discounts some turgidity on the subject of the ineffable in Chapter 8, "one side of the theological spectrum" [p. 94], "both about religions and their followers", "in both personal and non-personal terms alike" [p. 106] and "not only dissimilar in their external ... " [p. 119], and it is by ABC standards well proofread.

Priscilla Turner

Dr. P.D.M. Turner, BA, MA (Cantab.), MA, DPhil (Oxon.)