If this is so, what then can be made of the Resurrection of Jesus? Does the fact that we can know of the physical Resurrection only because of the witness of the Apostolic Church, for whom it was a unique and unrepeatable experience, mean that it is an obstacle to spirituality? Many today would say yes. Following in Rudolf Bultmann’s footsteps, in which the Resurrection is seen as a myth without basis in history, they see it as having relevance only insofar as it evokes the experience of “new life” in us–illuminates our psychological condition and helps us improve it.

This is becoming an attractive position for many today, such as biblical scholar John Crossan, who says quite categorically that there is no biblical basis for belief in the Resurrection. It merely records the apostles’ belief that a person of Jesus’ character could not have been totally destroyed. If this is correct, then Christianity becomes just one of many sources for “spiritual” ideas. At best, the Resurrection opens up realms of personal experience for exploration. But it is simply a religious idea on par with others, such as the Hindu belief in reincarnation. The hope for a universal spirituality will then rest on the possibility of integrating all the “best” beliefs and practices of the various religions, however mutually contradictory they often are.

Theologians like Ron Miller of Loyola University are prepared to say: Yes, definitely! It is ecumenically inappropriate to insist on the unique status of Jesus. Hence he complains of orthodox Christians that, in their “particularism,” they cannot “entertain the possibility that, just as Jesus is the name for that embodiment of the divine which characterizes Christian experience, Krishna is the name for that same reality among Hindus.” Christ and Krishna, then, are merely two different ways of doing the same human thing–breaking through to the divine.

Is there not a radical parting of the doctrinal ways here? For the [Christian], Jesus is not just one of many names for the divine drawn from experience. Jesus is the person through whom we truly come to know what the divine is, insofar as that is capable of being revealed to human beings. There is no neutral experience of the divine against which we can compare Christian and Hindu experiences, such that we can say they are both equally valid experiences of the divine. For Christians Jesus Christ is “The Word of God”: He is the one by whom a truly religious experience of the divine is defined. He is not one of many words about God, but the Word of God which judges all other words. All other religious experiences are judged by the standard of the historical person of Jesus the Christ, in whom the Church proclaims God was incarnate.

Jesus’ unique status was attested to precisely by the Incarnation and Resurrection. Our salvation is God’s gift, not the result of human effort. The Church’s role is to proclaim this Good News and to challenge the world to respond.

Theologians like Miller see this claim to a definitive role in salvation as “scandalous.” They claim that to accord such a pre- eminent position to Jesus is a major stumbling-block in dialogue with other faiths. It prejudices the outcome of such talks by relegating other spiritualities to an inferior position. They would say that it must be given up. Similarly, Leonard Swidler seems to be trying to avoid this scandalous element in [Christian] faith when he says: “there is a deeper reality which goes beyond the empirical surface experiences of our lives, and for us Jesus is the bond-bursting means of becoming aware of that deeper reality (as for Buddhists it is Gautama).” He suggests that, while for Christians the way to the transcendent is through Jesus, for others it is through their own revered figures. Undoubtedly, from an empirical point of view, there is some truth to this. However, there seems to be much more implied here.

Theologians like Swidler seem reluctant to ascribe any uniqueness to the revelation in Jesus Christ that could put it on a different level from that which comes from any other person. Others would explicitly deny that in Jesus anything unique happened in the relationship between God and humanity or that this has universal significance in a way that no other event does. It is the reluctance to assert this distinctiveness that opens the way for syncretistic thinking: Christianity becomes only one way among many in which humanity has sought to make contact with the divine. Christianity is no longer the definitive way in which God made contact with humanity.

The New Testament clearly indicates that, from the beginning, the Church rejected the syncretistic approach. The Epistle to the Colossians is the first clear indication of the Church’s early battle with syncretism. For the writer, Christian spirituality was built on the risen Christ. It was not drawn from any other sources. It was not created by amalgamating ideas and practices. So he tells Christians not to be captivated by “an empty, seductive philosophy according to human tradition, according to the elemental powers of the world and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8). As early as A.D. 70, then, the Church was aware that it had a distinct identity that governed its relationships with other spiritual traditions. It was on this basis that it dealt with the Judaism from which it emerged, the mystery religions which abounded at the time, and emperor worship which anchored the Roman social and political order.

Catholicism is not a syncretistic religion, but a synthetic one, always seeking to bring forth something new as it learns from its interactions with every culture and religion. Because it is Catholic, it does not wish to overlook anything in other traditions which is good and touched by grace. It enters into cultures and seeks to preach the Good News to all peoples through their own language and cultural forms.

While it thus extends its inner self to incorporate every people and culture, yet it discriminates what it assimilates in accord with its own identity. It has a critical function vis-a-vis the cultures it encounters. It learns from and also reforms and develops the cultures it encounters. Its whole history reflects this. The Church assimilated Roman law, Barbarian feasts and mythologies, and Arabic philosophy–but transformed them. It was the Church’s synthesizing dynamic that led it into dialogue with Hellenistic thought and thereby added to the development of its moral thinking. St. Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius absorbed Neo-Platonic spirituality, and produced a Christian understanding of mysticism. Thomas Aquinas engaged Aristotelian philosophy, and developed that great synthesis of theology which continues to be a major source of spiritual and theological insight and practice even today.

[Christianity] is not a syncretistic religion, but a synthetic one, always seeking to bring forth something new as it learns from its interactions with every culture and religion. Because it is Catholic, it does not wish to overlook anything in other traditions which is good and touched by grace. It enters into cultures and seeks to preach the Good News to all peoples through their own language and cultural forms.

While it thus extends its inner self to incorporate every people and culture, yet it discriminates what it assimilates in accord with its own identity…