Vatican II on the Religions: A Response

In a recent review essay on my The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions,¹ Eduardo Echeverria took issue with me on many points.² Let me choose eleven of his objections, treat them in the order in which they appear in his article, and refer intratextually to what he wrote.

First, Echeverria challenged my position that, when human beings accept God's revelation, they receive something that sets them on the way of salvation (839–40). Pace Echeverria, revelation and salvation may be distinguishable, but they are not separable, as years ago Juan Alfaro used to insist when citing the Johannine language of Christ being our Light (revelation) and, hence, simultaneously our Life (salvation). Joseph Ratzinger also prompted me into taking up this position. His study of St Bonaventure's concept of revelation allowed him to retrieve the notion that divine revelation is actualized in its outcome, human faith. God's self-revelation exists in living subjects, those who respond with faith. In a lecture given in 1963, Ratzinger insisted that "revelation always and only becomes a reality where there is faith. … Revelation to some degree includes its recipient, without whom it does not exist."³ Receiving in faith the offer of divine self-revelation is a saving grace, which sets believers on the way of salvation.

Later on, Echeverria remarks that, by associating revelation and salvation, I probably mean "that the purpose of revelation is salvific." He adds at once: "If so, I think we must say that this salvific purpose is not always realized." Yes, I do agree that "an individual must respond in faith to God's self-revelation in order to receive salvation" (855), and—I would add—must continue responding with such faith. But we do not know how many people, either Christians or those of other faiths, will offer such a sinful resistance to revelation as to finally block its saving purpose being realized. Hence I would not state that "this salvific purpose is [italics his] not always realized," but rather that "this salvific purpose may not always be realized."

Echeverria goes on to claim that the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium §16) "speaks of the widely realized possibility of inadequately responding" to God's revelation. He adds: "in other words, the salvific purpose of revelation is not always realized" (856). Vatican II, however, spoke of a serious and fearful possibility; Echeverria turns this into an actuality ("is not always realized").

Second, rather than call into doubt—as Echeverria asserts—that the Church is not only a sign but also an instrument of salvation for all people (844), I accept this wholeheartedly and have spelled out the kind of (instrumental) efficient causality exercised in the Church's intercession for "the others." Such intercessory prayer is inspired by a love, through which the faithful assembled for the Eucharist join themselves to Christ's high priestly intercession for the whole human race.⁴

Third, I felt quite sad to find Echeverria dismissing Jews as "mere theists" (844). How can such language be reconciled with what St. Paul wrote in Romans 9 and 11 about God's "irrevocable" gifts to the Jewish people, with what Vatican II taught about the "great spiritual heritage common to Christians and Jews,"⁵ with the teaching of St. John Paul II about "the people of God of the old covenant, which has never been revoked,"⁶ and with what Pope Francis wrote in his 2013 exhortation Evangelii Gaudium?⁷

Later on, Echeverria states that "theistic religions enjoy some knowledge of God derived from general revelation, derived from elements of goodness, truth, and beauty found in these cultures and religions" (855). Presumably this picture applies to the story of the Old Testament, since he has already named Jews as "mere theists." Does Echeverria want to deny that special revelation was mediated through God's saving acts in the history of his people and though the words of the prophets?

Fourth, Echeverria disagrees with my interpretation of the teaching of John Paul II in the 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio: that...