1. Celebrating diversity?

In the world of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, or multi-faith work you often hear the slogan, “celebrating diversity”. And, I must confess, that I really love it. Nevertheless, there is a difficulty. Diversity as such is clearly not of any value. There would be no reason to celebrate diversity simply for the sake of diversity. The fact that there is a diversity of deadly diseases does not make fatal illnesses any better. Or the fact that humanity has invented a vast diversity of torturing methods rather than just one does not make this a pleasant and praiseworthy cultural achievement. But on the other hand, the fact that there is not only one beautiful flower but a whole range of different ones makes natural beauty even more stunning. Or the fact that there is a vast variety of ways in which lovers can show their affection to one another is indeed wonderfully enriching.

So, I think, diversity is not anything good or valuable in itself. It is rather a kind of accelerator or intensifier. A diversity of evils makes evil even more evil, and a diversity of goods makes good even better. The problem with religious diversity is that religions are usually not sure whether they should regard other religions as something good or as something bad. And, consequently, whether they should look upon religious diversity as a diversity of evils or as a diversity of goods, whether religious diversity is something to welcome or something to overcome.

At times I suggest a kind of little self-test, which I invite you to do right now. Imagine for a moment that all the religious people in the world would give up their present faith and become a member of your own religious community or Church. This means that all other religions or churches would disappear – St. Mungo i would become a museum not of living but of dead religions. Your own religion would be the only one left, the one and only existent religion in the world. How would you feel about such a situation? Would you feel that this is too good to be true? That this would indeed be the ideal state - the whole world being Christian, or Muslim, or Buddhist, etc? Or would you feel the opposite - that this would be a tremendous, deplorable loss? I will not ask you to reveal the results of this little self-test. But I can tell you: if your feelings tend towards the first response, if you think a conversion of the whole world to your own form of religion would be great, then you do not really or deeply appreciate religious diversity. Religious diversity, therefore, will be something, that you have to tolerate, something that you have to endure as a kind of evil. But if you feel that the disappearance of all religions other than your own would be a great loss, then there is something in you that does indeed appreciate religious diversity and sees in it a genuine value.

Perhaps, and presumably, your feelings are a bit more complicated than my little self-test would indicate. One possible complication, for example, is that even if one genuinely appreciates religious diversity, no one is likely to appreciate everything in the world of religions. Thus even if we feel there is a range of diverse religious phenomena which we assess to be good and valuable, there will also be a range of other phenomena which we do not and can not appreciate - things which we feel should perish or not exist at all.

This brings me to my basic point: Whenever there is something in the world of religions, either in our own religion or in the religious traditions and communities of our fellow human beings, that we don’t like, something that we cannot regard as good or true or holy, then toleration is needed. But for those things which we do like, either in our own religion or in our neighbour’s faith, we don’t need tolerance but ways – theological and practical ways – of showing our appreciation. These two, tolerance and appreciation, should be clearly distinguished and not be confused. Both are necessary, but they are very different. That is, we should not speak of tolerance when we mean “appreciation”. For then we would lose the whole point of what “tolerance” is all about, namely to live with what we disapprove of. And we should not impute the meaning of “appreciation” when we speak of “tolerance”. There are cases in which it makes a lot of sense to ask for tolerance and even speak of a certain obligation to be tolerant. But this should not and must not imply any need or obligation to “appreciate”.

For the rest of my talk I will try to elucidate the two concepts a bit further. That is, I will first speak in more detail about tolerance and the reasons why tolerance is a necessary and indispensable virtue. Subsequently I will look a bit more closely at the implications of inter-religious appreciation.

2. Why tolerance is necessary

The original meaning of the word “tolerance” is “endurance”. The point is, to bear something which is not that easy to bear. The meaning of tolerance here is similar to the question of how much of a poisonous substance an organism can tolerate without suffering serious damage. Tolerance is not approval, just the opposite. To tolerate something presupposes that we do not approve of it, and this is precisely why we are called to bear or tolerate it. To tolerate a different opinion does not mean that we share this opinion but that we are prepared to accept the fact that there are people who have views which we think are wrong. Or to tolerate a different lifestyle does not mean we approve of this lifestyle. Quite the contrary, to tolerate it means that we accept that people choose life-styles which we deem to be false.

It is therefore nonsense to accuse people who are critical of certain views or life-styles as being intolerant. To tolerate something implies that you are very critical of it. This is precisely what makes tolerance important. Tolerance is an attitude that we need in the face of those views or practices of which we are highly critical. If we lost this original meaning of tolerance, we would lose a crucial achievement of the Enlightenment. For what would be the alternative? If we equate tolerance with approval, what then would be our attitude towards those people who hold views and who pursue life-styles which we cannot approve of? If we do not tolerate, we will eliminate. And this is what intolerance means. Intolerance is not to bear or endure the fact that people have views and follow life-styles which we reject, it is also to deny them the freedom to do so. Therefore tolerance is needed, in the first instance, to guarantee as much freedom and peace as possible within a society of diverse views and lifestyles. To quote the Harvard philosopher T. Scanlon: “tolerance requires us to accept people and permit their practices even when we strongly disapprove of them.”ii This makes tolerance a rather difficult thing. It has even been called an “impossible virtue”, for – as Bernard Williams from Oxford rightly remarked – “Toleration, we may say, is required only for the intolerable. That is the basic problem.”iii

Let me now introduce a distinction which may be of some help at this stage: the distinction between tolerance as a guideline for political action primarily related to the state, and tolerance as a moral demand primarily relevant to individuals or individual groups within the state.

When it comes to religious tolerance the demand on the state is to grant equal rights and freedom of religious practice indiscriminately to all religious communities and churches. The state itself must not persecute any religious group and, in addition, the state must protect them against unfair treatment by any other powerful or influential group or institution within society. For the religious individual and for the individual religious community the quest for tolerance requires that they accept and support the ideal of a tolerant state. And the crucial question is, whether their own religious beliefs and convictions permit them to support the idea of a tolerant state.

Clearly, it is here where the problems begin. For how can I or how could any religious community accept the idea that the state should tolerate and, even to some extent, support religious groups whose beliefs and practices I or my religious community do not and cannot approve of? If tolerance includes the element of disapproval, and if tolerance is primarily about equal rights and support, it seems to be self-contradictory to accept the idea of tolerance and to demand freedom and support for something that I or my religious community do not appreciate at all.

I think that there are at least three arguments which nevertheless provide a strong support for religious tolerance in this sense:

The first one is the pragmatic argument of the lesser evil. This is to say, tolerance can and should be recommended as a lesser evil than violent conflict, especially when related to tensions between religious groups. These groups themselves might come to accept that it is a lesser evil to tolerate the other than to face a complete disruption of peace within or between societies. The strength of this argument is convincingly illustrated by the confessional wars in Europe which are rightly regarded as the main historical force behind the rise of the Enlightenment ideal of religious toleration. But on the other hand, the evident weakness of the pragmatic argument is that it does not work very well in a situation in which one of the parties is incomparably stronger than the others. Thus it does not work when it comes to the rights and protection of small minorities, or even individuals, whose beliefs and practices are disapproved of by the majority and who could be easily silenced by the majority without any risk to the peace of society. I am sure that most, if not even all of the religious communities represented here today, could tell stories and have historical memories of situations in which they were, or are, a minority threatened with elimination.

This apparent weakness in the pragmatic argument can be redeemed by a second argument which understands tolerance as something intrinsically connected with the value of individual autonomy. One can disapprove of certain beliefs and practices but still support the view that the subject of these beliefs and practices should nevertheless be respected and protected in his or her individual freedom to hold or pursue them, even when those subjects form a small minority.

The idea of individual autonomy and its great value is rightly associated with the central conceptions of the European Enlightenment. But it does not exclusively depend on the Enlightenment. There can be various reasons and justifications for the endorsement of individual autonomy, and surely one among them is the widespread religious conviction that individual faith, saving faith, must be free. To mention just a few random examples: There is the famous statement in the Qur’an that “there should be no compulsion in religion” (Sura 2:256). Or the Buddha admonishes his disciples that their conduct is spiritually wholesome only when it emerges from their own genuine insight (Anguttara Nikÿya 3:65). According to the great Vedÿnta Philosopher Rÿmÿnuja God has provided human beings with the freedom and power to do either what is good or what is evil, so that through their own actions they may find the way to ultimate goodness and bliss (cf. Commentary on Brahma Sÿtra 2:2:3).iv Among the Jewish narrations of the Chassidim the idea of human self-governance and authenticity is marvellously expressed in the following little story: Rabbi Sussja said: “In the world to come, I will not be asked: ‘Why have you not been Moses?’ But I will be asked: ‘Why have you not been Sussja?’v

In early Christianity it was Tertullian who vehemently expressed the idea that faith must be free vi and subsequently this has been affirmed by a number of Church fathers. But the fact that freedom of faith was - not always, but nevertheless frequently - reaffirmed by Christian theologians demonstrates that this affirmation alone was obviously not strong enough to establish the ideal of religious tolerance. One can even observe that sometimes the same theologians who defended the freedom of faith also argued in favour of religious intolerance, as in, for example, the case of Thomas Aquinas.vii According to Aquinas, faith must be free and cannot be enforced. But at the same time, says Aquinas, it must be protected from the evil influence of heretics. Thus Aquinas was on the one hand opposing any converting of Non-Christians by violent means, but on the other hand defending violence against Christians with deviant theological convictions. His main argument was that, by distorting the true faith, the heretics threaten the eternal salvation of the regular believer and thus constitute one of the worst evils. For if the use of violence is justified in fighting lesser evils, for example in order to safeguard one's earthly well-being, it must be even more justified when it is necessary to protect the eternal well-being of people.

This type of argument is in no way an exclusively Thomistic one, but it was often used in theological debates on religious tolerance. Thus a standard position from the early church onwards was to compare the activity of so-called heretics with the spread of a dangerous pestilence.viii It therefore seemed not only justified, but even ethically required, to employ all means to eliminate the dangerous virus and protect people from becoming victims of the plague. It would be interesting to see whether similar pictures were used in other religions to justify religious intolerance, that is the comparison with a physician who has to employ some painful and nasty remedy to protect the higher good of health.ix

Within Christianity, defenders of religious tolerance, few as they in fact were, put forward a counter-argument which I regard as the third important point in favour of religious tolerance. It can properly be called a sceptical argument despite the fact that it began as a theological one. It refers to the biblical parable of the tares among the wheat (Mt 12,24ff). If someone has sown tares among wheat, it would not be wise to try to gather up the tares, since one might very well root up the wheat with them. Thus, Jesus finishes the parable: “Allow both to grow together until the harvest.” Christian defenders of religious tolerance made use of this parable and argued that in religious affairs it is frequently quite uncertain, what and who are tares and what and who are the wheat. In persecuting the so-called heretics, we run the risk of killing those who are in fact justified in the eyes of God. This argument can and should be stretched so far as to rule out any religious intolerance which is based on the argument of protecting people from eternal damnation. It is simply not certain enough whether there really is eternal damnation, and if so what would lead to it. At least it is not certain enough to be used as grounds for justifying intolerant political action. For some people, belief in hell might be an integral part of their religious world-view, but even they should concede that belief is not the same as indubitable knowledge. In matters of eternal things there might be enough light and enough darkness to take one's own personal risk of faith, but there is not enough light to risk the life of our neighbour.

Let me summarise. If we keep the original meaning of tolerance and understand it as toleration of the disapproved, the three arguments I have just described seem to me to be still valid and important in justifying tolerance. That is, religious people can and should support the idea of religious tolerance, because firstly toleration is the lesser evil compared to violent conflict or suppression. Secondly, because religious faith or conviction needs to be free in order to be genuine. And thirdly, because it is not certain enough whether what we consider to be a false religion leads to any negative results in the afterlife, at least not certain enough to justify public and legal forms of intolerance, of restriction and suppression.

But - and this is an important “but” - such an understanding of tolerance implies that there are also limits to tolerance. Not everything that we disapprove of, can or should be tolerated. The views and behaviour of people, individually and collectively, can become so evil – undoubtedly evil - that they are no longer tolerable. For example, tolerance can not be regarded as the lesser evil when it comes to the question of whether one should tolerate something like Hitler's Nazism. Or consider the cases where tolerance cannot be justified by individual autonomy: for instance, when an individual commits a crime, or when that which is to be tolerated is itself an attack on individual freedom. And the evil consequences of some religious beliefs and practices – evil consequences not in any afterlife but here and now - can sometimes be so evident that there is no more room for any doubt as to whether this would cause serious harm or not. Cases like these are clearly setting limits to tolerance. However, the inner drive behind the ideal of tolerance is to keep these limits as wide as possible.

Let me come back now to the religious attitude towards religious diversity. Can religious people see religious diversity only as a diversity of evils? As a diversity which they must tolerate, but which ideally should be overcome, for example through peaceful missionary efforts? Or is there also the possibility of understanding religious diversity as a diversity of what is good, true and holy? As something that we – from the bottom of our heart and faith – can really rejoice in and celebrate?

3. The move towards appreciation

What would such a genuine appreciation of religious diversity entail? Let me tell you a little anecdote. Towards the end of the 17th century Louis XIV, the so-called “sun king” of France, exchanged a number of embassies with Narai, the king of Siam, or – as we call it today – Thailand. One of the French embassies brought a letter from Louis XIV, in which he suggested that King Narai might convert to Christianity because, as the “sun king” wrote, “Knowledge and Worship of the true God … is only to be found in the Christian Religion.”x In his polite but firm response, King Narai declined and explained his stance by the following words:

“For would not the true God that made Heaven and Earth, and all things that are therein, and hath given them so different natures and inclinations, when he gave to Men like Bodies and Souls, if he had pleased have also inspired into them the same sentiments for the Religion they ought to follow, and for the Worship that was most acceptable to him, and make all Nations live and die in the same Laws?

… ought not one to think that the true God takes as great pleasure to be honoured by different Worships and Ceremonies, as to be Glorified by a prodigious number of Creatures that Praise him every one in their own way? Would that Beauty and Variety which we admire in the order of Nature, be less admirable in the Supernatural Order, or less beseeming the Wisdom of God?”xi

I think that King Narai’s response points us in the right direction. Religious diversity is admirable to the extent that we can understand it as a reflection of the diversity of humanity itself. Narai is by no means a postmodern relativist. He affirms that all humans were given “like bodies and souls”. Thus there is a basic equality and common dignity among human beings. But this goes together with a vast cultural, ethnic and individual diversity and variety. Most importantly, King Narai suggests that the diversity in religion too reflects this natural diversity of humanity and is therefore welcome to Godself. God enjoys the diversity of “Worships and Ceremonies” as much as he/she/it enjoys the vast variety of natural beauty.

Now, why do I think that this points in the right direction? Because we can arrive at a genuine appreciation of the religious other to the extent to which we understand that there is a legitimate diversity of ways in which human beings relate themselves to the ultimate divine reality. And it is part of this legitimate diversity that this ultimate reality is designated by a number of different names and approached under a variety of different images and metaphors. For in itself, it is – as the great medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury affirmed - necessarily greater than everything that we humans can conceive. Similar affirmations can be found in all the major religious traditions. The different images, metaphors and concepts under which humans relate themselves to ultimate divine reality are deeply interwoven with a corresponding diversity of religious practices and a wealth of age old experiences, gathered and transmitted by countless generations, – experiences which can still teach us how whatever is good and true and holy might flourish among us.

Inter-faith encounter, as I see it, is a process – the process of moving from toleration towards genuine appreciation. Both aspects are important. Initiatives like inter-faith councils should be primarily based on toleration and on the awareness of some common interest. It cannot and should not be expected that all members of inter-religious bodies are motivated by a full appreciation and acceptance of the others. But it is sufficient if there is mutual toleration and the recognition of certain fields where different faith communities can meaningfully cooperate in their own interest and in the interest of the wider society. But while this is entirely sufficient as the basis of inter-religious encounter, it is also desirable that every participating individual and community is open to make some new discoveries. To encounter the other is to move beyond our preconceived image of the other. It means to keep oneself prepared for a genuine learning process, for uncovering something new about the other and thereby, in the long run, also about oneself and one’s own religion. Appreciation of the religious other is not a prerequisite of inter-faith encounter, but something that may very well happen through this encounter and for which the participants should keep themselves open.

A major recent inter-faith gathering, which took place this September in Lyon (11-13 Sept) and which brought together 360 leaders from 10 different faith communities, expressed the transformation that may happen through inter-faith encounter with the appropriate words: “Dialogue transforms strangers into friends”.12 This suggests that partners in dialogue progressively acquire a better mutual understanding. We must learn what those religious traditions that are not our own, mean to those who live in and by them. If we do not understand what a certain belief, a symbol, a ritual, a practice, etc. means to those who live with it, we haven’t understood it properly. And in order to acquire that sort of understanding we need to learn to see the world through the others eyes. As Wilfred Cantwell Smith, one of the outstanding scholars of religion in the 20th century, repeatedly said: “In order to understand the faith of Buddhists, one must not look at something called ‘Buddhism’. Rather, one must look at the world – so far as possible, through Buddhist eyes …”13 And this applies, of course, to all religions.

Among the things that we will see when we begin looking through the eyes of our friends from other faiths is our own religious tradition. I think it is a very important step in the process of inter-faith encounter and a real sign of maturing, when we are able to see our own religious traditions through the eyes of our religious neighbours. This can, at times, be a quite sobering and perhaps even painful experience. But it is an important and truly enriching one, because it will lead to a more realistic perception and understanding.

In developing a better understanding of what our religious traditions mean to us we should also remain aware of the difference between a religious tradition and the individual human being who lives under the influence and by the inspiration of this tradition. There is a clear danger in inter-religious perception that we do not perceive each other as the unmistakeably individual persons that we are, but as representatives of a collective religious identity.

This may be a particularly strong danger in inter-religious organisations which, in a sense, can easily tempt us to see our neighbour not as the particular individual person that he or she is, but as the Buddhist, the Hindu, the Muslim, the Sikh, the Catholic, the Presbyterian, the Jew etc. I call this a danger, because it implies once again a distorted view. Our personal identities are far too complex for being easily equated with a kind of collective pattern or stereotype. And so are the religious traditions themselves. It is an illusion to assume that there is something like the Islam, or the Buddhism or the Christian religion. All these traditions are not monolithic but internally diverse and varied. When strangers are really transformed into friends – across the borders of religious communities – it is quite evident that we cannot be friends with a religious stereotype – we cannot be friends with a Muslim as a Muslim as such, or a Catholic as a Catholic as such, etc. We can only be friends with a concrete person and then – perhaps, hopefully – learn how our friend in his or her life is nourished, sustained, guided and comforted by certain features of a complex religious tradition. Then we may begin to appreciate how good it is that there is such a broad diversity of ways in which the many different individual human beings are related to the ultimate and in which the ultimate is related to each one of us. And so we will begin to celebrate religious diversity as something really precious.

4. And Finally …

This sort of inter-religious appreciation does not mean that we become uncritical or naïve in relation to religions. Not everything in religion is good and far too much is rather dreadful. We all know this from our own religious tradition, and the more we know about its history, the more we will be aware of its own ambiguities, of its light and its dark sides. When it comes to the issue of inter-religious criticism, we need to admit that in the past the perception of other religions has far too often been extremely biased and was focussed on whatever appeared to be negative in the religion of the other. It is a quite human feature to idealise one’s own faith and demonise the faith of others. But through genuine inter-religious learning and friendship, we may come to understand that these sort of negative judgements were often based on misunderstanding and mischief. What we need to do is to learn to articulate inter-religious criticism as friends do - being slow and not fast to do it; but also remaining honest and not being hypocritical. And always to do so in the knowledge that it is much easier to see the speck in the eye of the other than the log in our own (cf. Mt 7:5). But this is just another good reason to listen to every honest criticism that comes from our friends in the other traditions.

P. Schmidt-Leukel is Professor of Systematic Theology and Religious Studies at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies of Glasgow University. This paper was read at the Annual General Meeting of the Scottish Inter Faith Council (09/10/2005).

Notes

i. The St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art in Glasgow was the venue where this paper was presented.
ii. T.M. Scanlon, "The Difficulty of Tolerance", in: David Heyd (ed.), Toleration. An Elusive Virtue, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996, p. 227.
iii. Williams, in: ibid. p. 18.
iv. Cf. S. Radhakrishnan, C. Moore (eds.), A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989, p. 553.
v. Cf. M. Buber, Die Erzählungen der Chassidim, Zürich: Manesse Verlag (no year), p. 394.
vi. Patrologia Latina (PL), ed. by J.P. Migne (Paris 1844-55), vol. 1, col. 777.
vii. Cf. Aquinas' discussions in Summa Theologica II/II qq. 10 and 11.
viii. Cf. R.I. Moore, Heresy as Disease, in: W. Lourdaux, D. Verhelst (eds.), The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages (11th-13th c.), Leuven 1983, 1-11.
ix. Some examples for a Buddhist employment of this comparison in order to justify the use of violence are mentioned in P. Schmidt-Leukel, “War and Peace in Buddhism”, in: idem. (ed.), War and Peace in World Religions, London: SCM 2004, 33-56, pp. 47f.
x. Guy Tachard, A Relation of the Voyage to Siam. First Published: 1688. Reprinted 1985 by Bangkok: White Orchid Press, p. 221.
Ibid. p. 224.
xi. www.santegidio.org/en/ecumenismo/uer/2005/form_appel.htm
E.g. W.C. Smith, Modern Culture from a Comparative Perspective (ed. by J. Burbidge), Albany: SUNY 1997, p.137.

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