Cited before the tribunal of reason, Religious Indifferentism stands condemned as intrinsically repugnant and utterly subversive of all true religion. Yet reason voices the judgment of God, because if unbiased it announces in finite terms the findings of God's infinite wisdom. For reason is a gift of God, bestowed on man for the purpose of finding out and knowing the truth, and where it is applied in conformity with the laws laid down by its Giver, its judgments are infallibly true. Hence it would seem almost superfluous to bring this matter before the higher tribunal of supernatural revelation; because it is a foregone conclusion that the verdict there handed down will be identically the same. However as the case is so very important, it is well to appeal it to a higher court, so that there may not remain even the possibility of doubt. Now God's verdict is embodied in the religious system which Christ proposed to his followers, and in the obligation which He put upon them to adhere to that system. This, therefore, must now form the matter of our inquiry.
That Christ proposed to the world a religious system, which in many respects differed from all previously established religions, is quite evident from the fact that He promised to found a Church of His own -- a Church that should last even till the end of time. When He said to Simon: "Thou art Peter (which name is interpreted rock), and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," {1} He expressed His intention of introducing such alterations into the then accepted true religion as would make Him the author of a new religious system. Men may and do dispute about the full meaning of the text; in what sense, namely, the word church is to be taken, and who is to be considered as the rock upon which that church was to be built, and in how far the proposed church should be safe against the attacks of the powers of hell -- all this has been, and still is, matter of controversy among Christians; but the one point about which we are now chiefly concerned, namely, that Christ proposed to give the approval of His divine authority to some definite religious system, is admitted almost without controversy. And necessarily so. Because not only in this text, but in others as well, Christ makes Himself the head of His followers in such wise that they constitute an organized society, governed by definite laws, and subject to divine constituted authority. This society He designates by various names, such as a sheep-fold, a family, a city, a kingdom, the kingdom of heaven; and as its proper end He assigns the salvation of souls. Hence He said to Peter, immediately after promising to make him the foundation of His Church: "I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven."{2} This supreme authority here promised, Christ afterwards conferred upon the same Peter, when He said: "Feed my lambs; feed my sheep."{3} Whether the fold of which Peter was thus appointed shepherd, and which Christ spoke of at various times as a family, a city, a kingdom, and lastly as His Church, was intended by Him to represent a Church in the Catholic sense of the term, need not be determined at present. That it stood for some kind of religious system is sufficiently clear from what has been said, and this suffices for our present purpose.
Now, in this system Christ established certain well defined doctrines, which were to be taught to His followers, as implied in the charge to Peter, "Feed my lambs; feed my sheep." Some of these doctrines were adopted from the Jewish religion, as Christ Himself indicated when He said: "I did not come to destroy the law, but to perfect it."{4} The reason for this is found in the fact that the doctrinal part of the Jewish religion consisted of revealed truths, and truths once revealed are intended for all times. To these truths, taken over from the Old Law, Christ added others, which until then had either not been known at all, or had been known only in part. Hence the Apostle well says:
"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these days hath spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world."{5}
Other truths, again, Christ did not communicate directly, but through the Holy Ghost, Whom, according to His promise, He sent upon the Apostles after His own ascension into heaven. This He clearly signified when He said: "These things I have spoken to you, abiding with you. But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you."{6} "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth."{7}
All these truths, therefore, communicated in a special manner, either through the Prophets of old, or by Christ, or by the Holy Spirit, constitute the doctrinal part of Christ's religion. They form the Depositum Fidei,{8} the Deposit of Faith, or the Supernatural Revelation of the New Law. That each and every one of these revealed truths was to be accepted and believed by the Apostles, is quite evident from the nature of the case. For the very fact that God communicates a certain truth, implies the obligation of belief on the part of him to whom this communication is vouchsafed. This is a necessary consequence of God's essential truthfulness. Not to believe the word of God, imports a denial either of His omniscience, or of His veracity; and such a denial is tantamount to a denial of His very existence. Hence the Apostles were under a strict obligation to believe all the supernatural truths that had been or were still to be communicated to them during their lifetime. They were not at liberty to believe one truth, and to reject another. They had no choice of creeds, and with regard to them, therefore, there was no room for Religious Indifferentism.
Consequently the one question to be settled now is, whether Christ put the same obligation upon all His followers, that is, upon all those who should come to a knowledge of the truth through the preaching of His Apostles and their successors. For if all must believe the same doctrines, there cannot possibly be more than one religion, and if there is and can be but one religion, it is sheer folly to ask whether one religion is as good as another. He who establishes one religion, and enjoins upon all to accept that religion in its entirety, by that very fact condemns all other religious systems as inventions of the devil, intended, as St. Paul puts it, to seduce the hearts of the innocent.
Now, that Christ did put such an obligation upon all, can easily be demonstrated from the various texts in which He makes reference to His Church. For clearness' sake we will take the passage that contains the commission which He gave His Apostles to preach the Gospel to all nations. And in order to forestall all objections that might be made by non-Catholics, the texts in question will be taken from the Protestant version of the Bible. These are Christ's words commissioning His Apostles to preach the Gospel: "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."{9} "And He said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned."{10}
In these words Christ put upon His Apostles a twofold obligation. First, to teach all nations; not this nation or that, but all without exception. Or as St. Mark words it: "Preach the gospel to the whole creation." So that it was evidently Christ's intention that His religion should become the one universal religion of the world. Men might perhaps refuse to accept that religion, but such a refusal would be against His wish and will and intention.
Secondly, Christ commissioned His Apostles, not only to teach all nations, without exception, but to teach all the same identical doctrines. "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you." He left nothing whatever to their own choice and discretion. They were to teach the whole Gospel to all nations: all things whatsoever He had commanded, to the whole creation.
And whilst He thus enjoined upon His Apostles to teach all nations, and to teach them all the same truths, He solemnly, and. under the severest penalties, obliged every nation, and every single individual, to accept and believe the truths thus announced. For He adds immediately: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned." As He left nothing to the discretion of the Apostles in teaching, but required that they should teach all nations, and teach them the whole Gospel; so neither did He leave anything whatever to the choice of those to whom the Gospel was announced. All without exception must believe, and believe all that is preached to them; for if they believe not they shall be condemned, or as the Protestant Authorized version has it, they "shall be damned."
Does that sound like Religious Indifferentism? Can the Christ who announced with such terrible clearness and emphasis, that all who believed not the whole Gospel should be damned -- can that Christ give utterance to phrases like these? "One creed is as pleasing to God as another." "One religion is as good as another." "It matters not what a man believes, provided he be a good man after his own fashion." If He can, He is not God, for He contradicts Himself; and yet, as was shown in a previous chapter, Christ is True God of True God -- He is Truth itself, the eternal and unchanging Truth.
Again, lest any objection should be made on the ground that the Apostles were weak human beings, liable to error and misapprehension, and that therefore those to whom they preached might unwittingly be led into false beliefs, He promised His own divine help, and the assistance of the Holy Spirit, so that the doctrines which they announced should be as infallibly true, as if they came directly from His own mouth. "And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."{11} "But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you."{12} The Apostles were indeed fallible men, but Christ sent them to all nations as infallible teachers, whose doctrines were to be stamped with the seal of His own truthfulness. He Himself had come into the world to bear testimony to the truth, and that testimony, divine and infallible, He would present to all nations, through the teaching of His Apostles. For "as the Father hath sent me," He said to them, "even so send I you." "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you." And because they were to teach with infallible authority, hence all were to heed their teaching, and believe the same with unquestioning faith, for if they believed not, they should "be damned."
This same absolute oneness of faith and religion, implied in Christ's commission to His Apostles, is inferred with equal clearness from every reference which He makes to His Church. That Church He always speaks of as one, not as many. He speaks of it as one family, one fold, one city, one kingdom. He builds it upon one foundation, the rock, which is Peter. He appoints but one supreme pastor to feed His lambs and to guard His sheep; but one vicar to whom He gives the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. He seems to have multiplied illustration upon illustration, and figure upon figure, in order to impress upon His Apostles the absolute necessity of unity in the faith.
In fact, so completely does He appear to have been taken up with the desire for unity among His followers, that He gave expression to it in season and out of season, making it even the object of His last prayer on the eve of His death. "Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me; that they may be one, even as we are."{13} And to show that He intended this unity not for His Apostles only, but for all who might believe in Him, He added: "Neither for these only (the Apostles) do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word; that they may all be one."{14} And this unity among His followers, which He desired so earnestly and prayed for so touchingly, was to be most perfect, so that "all who believeth on Him might be one even as He and the Father are one." Furthermore this perfect unity, modeled upon the ineffable unity of the Father and the Son, should be so conspicuous that it might be unto all the world a proof of His own divine mission; for He adds: "I pray . . . that they all may be one . . . that the world may believe that thou didst send me."
From all this it is quite evident that the unity of faith, which Christ prayed for and demanded in all His followers, is most absolute. He knows nothing of essentials and non-essentials in religion; nothing of fundamentals and non-fundamentals; nothing of "Branch Theories," or any other theories excogitated by modern innovators. His final injunction is: "Be ye one in faith, as the Father and I are one in nature; believe the whole Gospel, or you shall be condemned."
That this was really Christ's mind concerning the matter in hand, follows also with unmistakable clearness from the manner in which the Apostles understood and carried out the sacred commission of preaching the Gospel. Listen, for instance, to the great Apostle of the Gentiles, whom non-Catholics sometimes foolishly point to as the First Protestant. "I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called. . There is one body and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all." {15} In the same Epistle he declares that Christ's purpose in appointing pastors in His Church was to ensure unity of faith and oneness of doctrine, for he says: "And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ: till all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God . . . that we may be no longer children tossed to and fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error." {16}
What the same Apostle thought of those who ventured to reject certain doctrines, somewhat after the fashion of our modern Indifferentists, may be gathered from his Epistle to Titus, whom he directs how to deal with heretics, that is, with persons who follow their own private judgment in matters of religion. He writes: "A man that is heretical after a first and second admonition refuse; knowing that such a one is perverted and sinneth, being self-condemned." {17} The same course of action he prescribes to the Christians at Rome: "Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which are causing the divisions and occasions of stumbling, contrary to the doctrine which ye learned: and turn away from them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Christ, but their own belly; and by their smooth and fair speech they beguile the hearts of the innocent."{18}
Stronger still is his crushing condemnation of discord in doctrine, and of want of unity in faith, contained in his Epistle to the Galatians, some of whom were wavering in the faith which he had preached to them. "I marvel," he writes, "that ye are so quickly removing from him that called you in the grace of Christ unto a different gospel; which is not another gospel: only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema. As we have said before, so say I now again. If any man preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be anathema. . For I make known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man. For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ."{19}
Such is the interpretation which the great Apostle of the Gentiles put upon Christy s commission to preach the Gospel to all nations. One Gospel is to be preached to all, and if any one venture to announce a different gospel, let him be accursed. That one Gospel is to be received by every one in its entirety, and if any one refuse so to receive it, if he be heretical, that is, if in his belief he differ from the Gospel in this point or that, avoid that man, for he is perverted and sinneth, being self-condemned.
From this it is quite evident that St. Paul would make short work of our modern Religious Indifferentism. Were any one to ask him whether one religion is as good as another, his answer would be: "Let the man who preaches such a gospel be anathema, let him be accursed." This is a terrible answer, yet it is but the answer of the meek and gentle Christ Himself, Who says: "If any man believeth not all things whatsoever I have commanded my Apostles to preach, he shall be condemned."
Hence on this point, as on all others, reason and Revelation are in perfect accord. Reason teaches that the proposition, that one religion is as good as another, is an insult to God and to man; because it necessarily implies that falsehood is as good as truth. And as was just pointed out, Christ has announced it to the world as a revealed truth, that this same proposition shall be unto him who accepts it a cause of eternal damnation. Consequently Religious Indifferentism stands condemned by both reason and Revelation.
{1} Matth. XVI, 18.
{2} Matth. XVI, 19.
{3} John XXI, 15-18
{4} Matth. V. 17.
{5} Hebr. I, 2.
{6} John XIV, 25, 26.
{7} John XVI, 12, 13.
{8} I Tim. VI, 20.
{9} Matth. XXVIII. 18-20.
{10} Mark XVI, 15, 16.
{11} Matth. XXVIII, 20.
{12} John XIV, 26.
{13} John XVII, 11.
{14} John XVII, 20.
{15} Ephes. IV, 1-6.
{16} XT, 11-14.
{17} Tit. III, 10, 11.
{18} Rom. XVI, 17, 18.
{19} Gal. I, 6-13.