Three Paths—Whither?

We are celebrating the thirty-third anniversary of a then-new articulation of the religious understanding of the ultimate meaning of life as coined by Alan Race: exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism.¹ This tablature has been both insightful and inciteful, as can be seen by its almost universal reference among theologians. Many simply accept it as obvious, now that it has been stated; some emphasize its perspicacity by denouncing it, and still others by presenting it as “variations on a theme,” such as “inclusivist pluralism” or “pluralist inclusivism.” Doubtless, Race has created theological categories with which every serious contemporary religious thinker has had to wrestle for the past three decades, and doubtless they will for more decades to come—positively, negatively, or variationally.

Simply put, the exclusivist position claims that its institution alone contains the means of “salvation.” This was expressed as early at the third century by the Christian bishop Cyprian of Carthage with the words: Salus extra ecclesiam non est, “Salvation outside the church does not exist,” and was repeated regularly over the centuries, right into the present for conservative Protestants, and into the middle of the twentieth century for conservative Catholics. For example, even just a half-dozen years ago I had a white Protestant undergraduate student at Temple University (despite its name, a state university) who, somewhat embarrassedly, stated in class that sadly his non-Protestant classmates (and presumably me as well!) were all going to go to hell upon their demise unless they converted to his evangelical brand of Protestantism. I have also met Muslims who held a similar exclusivist position. Then, there is the odd kind of exclusivist atheist who claims that she or he knows that at death we all just “evaporate.”

The inclusivist position is considerably more nuanced, admitting that, yes, there are religions/ideologies that contain some of the means of salvation, but my religion includes all of those means. For example, when in Catholic primary school in the 1930’s, I was taught by “Sister Mary Holy Card” and “Monsignor O’Hooligan” that there were three kinds of baptism: baptism of water, baptism of blood, and baptism of desire:

1. 1. Baptism of water was the standard one, which made you a Catholic.

2. 2. Baptism of blood was the one of persons who were martyred for committing themselves to Christ, even though they had not yet been baptized—such as the catechumens, who in the early Christian centuries had to go through a long instruction period before being baptized.

3. 3. Baptism of desire was of persons who, through no fault of their own, did not learn that Jesus was the Savior of humankind but, if they had, and lived properly according to their consciences, they would have desired to be baptized; hence, they were reckoned by God to have done so virtually.

An ironic twist on that Catholic inclusivist teaching occurred in the late 1940’s when I was an undergrad at St. Norbert’s College in DePere, Wisconsin. Jesuit Father Leonard (I am embarrassed by this eponymous connection) Feeney had gained a certain minor fame as a poet and was the Catholic chaplain at Harvard University. He rejected the inclusivist position that I had learned in Catholic primary schools and publicly proclaimed a rigid exclusivist position based on the above-mentioned doctrine, extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church no salvation)—as noted, first articulated by third-century St. Cyprian (also the name given to me as a Norbertine novice—is there a message in these two coincidences?). Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston, whose favorite nephew by marriage was a non-Catholic, could not stomach the idea that he would be destined for hell. After trying in vain to quiet Feeney, Cushing petitioned the Holy Office in Rome to render a decision on the matter. Cardinal Francesco Marchetti-Selvaggiani of the Holy Office wrote back in 1949, telling Feeney to desist from such teaching; he refused, and, on February 13, 1953, he—in strange irony—was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for continuing to claim that outside it no one could be...