A Charitable Orthopathy

Christian Perspectives on Emotions in Multifaith Engagement

John W. Morehead, Brandon C. Benziger

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781532654138
  9781532654145
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532654152
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Evangelicals and other conservative Christians of the twenty-first century face enormous challenges in the pluralistic public square, not least with Muslims and atheists. Contrary to biblical injunctions to "keep in step with the Spirit" (Gal 5:25b) and to love our neighbors as ourselves (e.g., Matt 22:37-40; Luke 10:25-37)--both of which involve not only behavioral but also important affective elements--we often harbor deep-seated antipathies toward atheists and adherents of other religions. While such feelings are at times justified and help us cope with conflict-related tragedies, they are also often baseless, misconstrued, and counterproductive, priming us to avoid religious others, support discriminatory policies against them, and even confront them in verbal or physical ways. The purpose of this volume is to offer an academically informed yet practically oriented collection of essays that challenges and encourages Christians to engage their religious neighbors in a much more loving, compassionate, hopeful, and courageous--indeed, orthopathic--manner, whether in the realm of politics, in debate and conference venues, on the mission field, or in their own homes, schools, churches, and neighborhoods. As such, a set of reflection and discussion questions is included to facilitate individual and/or group study.

Part I

Biblical, Theological, and Social-Psychological Foundations

1

“He Had Compassion for Them”

A Key Biblical Foundation for Interreligious Relations

Bob Robinson

This is a volume whose writers aspire to enhance the way Christians relate to people of other faiths in today’s world, a world in which the place and role of “outsiders” can provoke a wide range of responses. But this is also a volume that begins not in our contemporary context but in another place, by appealing to something old—Christian Scripture, from which biblically derived attitudes and examples might, with contextual care, be transposed into contemporary settings—to provide something new: a fresh approach to interreligious relations.

A Summary Survey of the Biblical Attitudes (Beyond the Gospels) to Outsiders

Constraints upon space allow no more than a summary survey of the biblical attitudes to non-Jewish outsiders.33 The prevailing response in the Old Testament is negative in tone: Gentile religion and religions are usually seen as rebellious and idolatrous; there is no avoiding the condemnation of idolatry and other forbidden praxis34—a disapproval that inevitably diminished Jewish openness to those called nokrîm (“foreigners”). Nonetheless, these same Gentiles are made in the divine image and are the beneficiaries of the providential care and “general revelation” of the God who declares his intention to bless all peoples. And there are also two notable sets of exceptions to the generally negative assessment of Gentile “aliens.”

Firstly, there is the way in which the Old Testament acknowledges some Gentiles as believers in and followers of Yahweh in some significant and tangible way; for example: Melchizedek, Abimelech, Jethro, Balaam, Rahab, Naaman, Ruth, the Ninevites, Job. These appear to be “people who already know and are faithful to God within the borders of their existing religions.”35 Or as Gerald McDermott puts it, there is “surprising knowledge of God among Bible people outside Israel and the church.”36 Secondly, there are practices and attitudes that might be called inclusive in tone. In a helpful and well-documented discussion entitled “Hospitality, the People of God, and the Stranger,” Amos Yong offers what he calls a revisiting of the history of ancient Israel “through the lens of hospitality.” He draws attention to “the God whose redemptive hospitality was first made known to Abraham and his descendants,” to the multiple obligations of the people of Israel toward “aliens,” and to what Yong calls “the multicultural character of ancient Israelite hospitality” as seen in the Wisdom literature.37

The New Testament introduces the teaching of Jesus by means of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5–7). It prescribes attitudes and forms of behavior that remain central to the way in which Christians are still called to live, including in a religiously conflicted world: the need for non-selective greeting of people, the avoidance of hypocrisy, and, especially, directives for dealing with those seen as adversaries: do not kill; do not return evil for evil; love one’s enemies, along with a frequent emphasis on forgiveness (a plea that is later repeated from the cross). The book of Acts records multiple encounters with both Jews and Gentiles. In Acts 4, there is the forceful reminder to the Jewish Sanhedrin that salvation is found only in “the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.” But that exclusive and apparently excluding attitude seems somewhat muted in further encounters. There is the example of Cornelius, the Gentile and Roman soldier described as devout, God-fearing, generous, and prayerful (Acts 10:2), who is reassured by the apostle Peter that God is impartial and “accepts people in every nation who fear him and do what is right” (v. 35).38 In Paul’s Areopagus speech in Acts 17, he appears to begin with affirmation of the religious quest of his listeners with their altar to an “unknown god” (vv. 22–23). Paul goes on to describe God as the universal creator who “is not far away from each one of us” because “in him we live, and move, and exist”—the reason why all humanity is made in order to search for God “and perhaps grope for him and find him” (vv. 27–28). Gerald McDermott, after a survey of what he calls “The New Testament on Other Real Supernatural Powers Besides God,” nonetheless concludes—mainly because of this Areopagus speech—that despite Greek religious ignorance, “the religions had some access to some true notions of the living God” and that despite the way in which fallen intermediary powers “have taken what is good and holy and used it for unholy ends . . . in the process, some truth emerges. Human beings under their thrall still learn something of God’s truth and law.”39 Acts 19 (an account of Paul’s two-year stay in Ephesus) also deserves comment because of its description of a fourfold range of interfaith encounter. In it, Luke employs the verbs dialegomai and dialogizomai (from which the English “dialogue” is derived) to describe one dimension of Paul’s method of engagement in both synagogue and beyond, although there are some decidedly negative features also on display as well. One of Mark Heim’s conclusions from these encounters in Ephesus is that “respectful dialogue with those in other religions, acceptance of their prior knowledge of God, and even shared religious practice with others (as Paul surely exhibits in the synagogue) do not rule out confrontation and critique with some religious groups, in some settings.”40

Concerning the rest of the New Testament, two implications of its “high,” universal, and even cosmic Christology for interreligious engagement deserve comment.41 (1) In the Pauline letters, it is clear that Jesus Christ is Lord. Nonetheless, there is no record of Paul explicitly adding the negative (though warranted) inference that, for example, “Christ is Lord, but not Caesar.” This is because, as the British academic John Barclay argues, “Paul’s gospel is subversiv...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• Foreword by Richard J. Mouw
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Biblical, Theological, and Social-Psychological Foundations
• Part II: From Heteropathy to Orthopathy in Multifaith Engagement
• Part III: Avenues of Orthopathic Multifaith Engagement
• Afterword
• Appendix
• Bibliography