The Languages of God

Pope Francis is in the news ... again. And he is receiving backlash from his conservative critics ... again. During a recent trip to Singapore, he spoke to an interreligious group of young people and made some extemporaneous remarks about interreligious dialogue. He said: 

“Religions are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all. Since God is God for all, then we are all children of God.... If you start to fight, ‘my religion is more important than yours, mine is true and yours isn’t,’ where will that lead us? There’s only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and they are different paths to God.”   

New York Times columnist David French said that these words “touched off a tempest in Christendom.” I have read several of the tempestuous responses from the Christian press. They all criticize the pontiff for suggesting that there may be another way to God besides Christianity.  

Charles Chaput, archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia wrote: “Not all religions seek the same God, and some religions are both wrong and potentially dangerous, materially and spiritually.” Jeff Mirus of Catholic Culture wrote, “All faiths are not salutary because all religions do not lead to God. Indeed, many religions lead directly to the Devil....” 

This intramural squabble within the Christian Church may sound strange to people in our pluralistic post-Christian culture. Most people are used to a more tolerant attitude toward religion. How many times have I heard open-hearted people say: “All religions are different paths up the same mountain?”  

Yet conservative Christians disagree. They read Christ’s words in the Gospel of John, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me,” and hear only one possible meaning.  They interpret it as Christian hegemony. They do not consider the context of those words in the Fourth Gospel, wherein Christ speaks not as an historical figure but as the Eternal Word “which enlightens every man who comes into the world.”  

There is another fundamental mistake that people make when it comes to the multiplicity of religious faiths in the world. In this regard both Pope Francis and his critics go astray. Religions are not paths to God. There are no paths to God. Religions are not different paths up the same mountain. Identifying religions as paths to God assumes that God is somewhere else and we need to travel to arrive at God. 

God is not somewhere else. God is here now. That is the definition of omnipresence. Any deity that needs to be reached by means of a path is not the omnipresent God. If religions are paths, then they are dead ends. They often serve as barriers to discovering God. They become God substitutes.  

The only true path is the “pathless path.” The only way is the wayless way. God is not found by hiking a trail up a spiritual mountain but by discovering that there is no trail and no mountain. There is only the Divine here now. All we need to do is open our eyes. We need to get out of our own way. All we need is eyes to see and ears to hear.  As Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” 

That is why Francis’ description of religions as different languages is a better metaphor than religions being different paths. He said, “Religions are like different languages in order to arrive at God.... There’s only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God.” As I have said, I would disagree with Francis that we “arrive at God.” We have already arrived. We are already in God and God in us.  

Yet I agree that religions function like languages. Just like there are different linguistic languages – French, Arabic, Greek and Hebrew - so there are different religious languages – Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism – that can be used to speak about the Effable. 

Some religious vocabulary may sound very foreign to our parochial ears and minds, but they can point to the same Spiritual Reality we know by other words and names. On the other hand, all religious languages can also be used to point away from God. Examples are the words of Francis’ critics and fundamentalists of all religious traditions.  

The pope’s metaphors may be inexact, but he is pointing to God using human language, which is inadequate for the task. As the Tao Te Ching  says, “The God that can be described is not the true God. The Name that can be spoken is not the Name of God. God is unnamable. Naming God is the beginning of religion.” (The Tao of Christ: A Christian Version of the Tao Te Ching)