The Universal Salvific Will of God in Official Documents of the Roman Catholic Church

259 Pages·2007·11.673 MB·English

by  Josephine Lombardi

THE UNIVERSAL SALVIFIC WILL OF GOD
IN OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS
OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
Josephine Lombardi
With a Foreword by
John Borelli
The Edwin Mellen Press
LewistoneQueenstoneL ampeter
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lombardi, Josephine.
The universal salvific will of God in official documents of the Roman Catholic Church /
Josephine Lombardi; with a foreword by John Borelli.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7734-5246-6
ISBN-IO: 0-7734-5246-X
I. Title.
lIors serie.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Front cover illustration by Kelly-Lynn Wamsley
Copyright © 2007 Josephine Lombardi
All rights reserved. For information contact
The Edwin Mellen Press The Edwin Mellen Press
Box 450 Box 67
Lewiston, New York Queenston, Ontario
USA 14092-0450 CANADA LOS I LO
The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd.
Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales
UNITED KINGDOM SA48 8L T
Printed in the United States of America
For my husband Roberto Lombardi and our children:
Teresa, Eriberto, Aniello, Mercy, and Beata who have sustained
me with their love, patience, and support.

Contents
Commendatory Foreword by John Borelli
Acknowledgements v
1. The Universal Salvific Will and Official Documents
2. Historical Steps Toward Inclusivity 21
3. The Teaching of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) 65
4. The Pontificate of Jolm Paul II 107
5. Recent Contributions from Jacques Dupuis and the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the F ai th 145
6. Conclusion: The Development of Official Documents 183
Bibliography 223
Index 241

Commendatory Foreword
Speaking at the Catholic University of America on January 14, 1998, Cardinal
Francis Arinze, President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue
challenged Catholic theologians to take up the real issue of salvation and religious
pluralism:
The theological question today is not whether people who do not belong
to the visible Catholic Church can attain salvation. It is theologically
certain that they can on certain given conditions. The question is how
do they attain salvation. The plurality of religions, the growing knowl
edge of these religions which Christians have in our times, the limita
tions of the spread of the church in space and in time, and especially the
certainty of the salvific will of God for all humanity move the theolo
gian to keep on reflecting on the working out of this divine will for
other believers. (Origins 27,35, Feb. 19, 1998)
At the time, more than thirty years after the Second Vatican Council, this chal
lenge was a surprise to too many theologians and scholars in audience that eve
ning. After the extraordinary steps of Vatican II in the field of interreligious
dialogue and relations, principally through the declaration on interreligious rela
tions, Nostra Aetate, but collectively in several conciliar era texts, very few
scholars with theological training had ventured into the study of other religions
and engagement with those religious communities in theological dialogue. A
few theologians had speculated in the field of theology of religions, often 'with
minimal information of other religions, but the study of religious pluralism sel
dom became the core commitment of Catholic scholars. In the United States,
Fordham University, a Jesuit university, stood alone with the only doctoral pro
gram in history of religions and theology, with sufficient resources on campus
and in New York City for the serious study of other religions within a Catholic
theological context, but by the time of Cardinal Arinze's address in 1998 that
program that graduated a generation of historians of religions had been disman
tled with the retirement of its pioneering director, Thomas Berry, C.P. This was
despite the fact that the Society of Jesus had committed itself to interreligious
dialogue as an essential aspect of its service to the mission of the church at its
ii
General Congregation in 1995. The Catholic theological community still rele
gated interreligious dialogue and comparative theology to the margins of theo
logical study.
Cardinal Arinze, President of the Pontifical Council for nearly 20 years,
was not known for suggesting new, unsubstantiated theories regarding religious
pluralism and salvation. He most often spoke from the experience of interrelig
ious dialogue and cited Scripture and the documents of the church, principally
the acts of Vatican II and subsequent documents of popes and Vatican offices.
That night at the Catholic University of America, he had already quoted the pas
sage in the First Letter to Timothy that God wants everyone to be saved and to
reach full knowledge of the truth ( 1 Tm. 2:4). He then paraphrased Gaudium et
Spes and a passage in the monumental Dialogue and Proclamation that he had
partially overseen: "The mystery of salvation reaches out to them in a way
known to God, through the invisible action of the Spirit of Christ (cf. Gaudium
et Spes 22; Dialogue and Proclamation, 29)." He mustered support in a series of
Vatican II acts (Lumen Gentium, 14; Ad Gentes, 7; Unitatis Redintegratio, 3)
and two post-conciliar papal letters (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 53, and Redemptoris
Missio, 55). He then took the issue directly to theologians and scholars on
Catholic faculties: "Fully equipped with such firm points of the Catholic faith,
the theologian is well poised both to work out a robust theology underpinning
missionary evangelization in its totality and also to make a proper evaluation of
the other religions."
Most striking among these various texts is the passage in Pope John Paul II's
encyclical on mission, Redemptoris Missio, marking the 25th anniversary of the
closing of Vatican II: "He (God) does not fail to make himself present in many
ways, not only to individuals but also to entire peoples through their spiritual
riches, of which their religions are the main and essential expression even when
they contain 'gaps, insufficiencies and errors.'" (55) If any official text moved
Catholic understanding forward from the bold strokes of Nostra Aetate, it was this
confident endorsement of the value of other religions as religions.
It is now more than 40 years after the close of the Second Vatican Council,
and much still remains to be sorted out. A few more Catholic doctoral programs
are encouraging the study of other religions and comparative theology, and sys
tematic theologians are beginning to take a more careful look, beyond the gen-
iii
erally less than substantive contributions of a previous generation, at the posi
tive challenges that interreligious dialogue and comparative theology have
pressed upon theological study. There were a few exceptions in the foregoing
generation, and two Jesuits come to mind-Francis A. Sullivan, SJ, and Jacques
Dupuis. Curiously, both have come under criticism for their views-aspects of
Sullivan's ecclesiology and aspects of Dupuis' theology of religions. The latter
had a case brought against his work in Toward a Christian Theology of Relig
ious Pluralism.
Josephine Lombardi has undertaken a significant study of the universal salvi
fic will of God drawing especially from the teaching documents of the Catholic
Church from Vatican II onwards and the work of Sullivan, Dupuis and others. In
doing so, she has had to address some of the controversies, especially those
around the work of Fr. Dupuis. She traces the connections between the work of
the International Theological Commission, the examination of the work of Fr.
Dupuis by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the Congregation's
document, Dominus Jesus, released the day after the final meeting over Fr. Du
puis' work. She demonstrates that what began to come to light in the work of
Pope Pius XII but ostensibly at the Second Vatican Council has always been there
in the tradition, namely the positive value of other traditions for nurturing the faith
and religiosity of those who are not Christians.
Dr. Lombardi's work provides background for understanding the theological
dimensions of interreligious dialogue through official initiatives of the Holy See
after the first two years of the Pontifcate of Benedict XVI. The interreligious leg
acy of Pope John Paul II is substantial and is still in need of a careful study, which
she provides. There are also new factors including the global preoccupations with
terrorism and the dialogue of civilizations, the public dimensions of the papacy
including news conferences and publication of the pastoral reflections, concerns
about the re-Christianization of Europe, and the challenges of the modem world.
Attempting to criticize the separation of secularized reason from religious faith,
Pope Benedict inadvertently struck deep wounds in the history of Christian
Muslim relations when he spoke in Regensburg, Germany, on September 14,
2006. A year earlier, he had referred to Nostra Aetate as the "Magna Carta" of
the dialogue with Muslims. An impressive list of thirty-eight Muslim scholars and
leaders replied respectfully a month later with an open letter calling for more seri-