When people hear fellow commuters speaking 'foreign' languages in trains and buses they react differently. Some celebrate the richness that difference brings. Others are disturbed, believing that national unity requires a single shared language to be used in public affairs and conversation.
This difference of response extends beyond the relationship between English and other community languages. It touches also the relationship between the dominant cultural language and those of communities — Muslim, Hindu or Indigenous, for example — within the broader society. There is always pressure to conform to the public language, whether linguistic or cultural.
A recent book by the Jesuit Fr Gerald O'Collins, A Christology of Religions, led me to reflect on this issue. In his book O'Collins discusses the place that Christians might find for other religions and frameworks of belief in their understanding of faith.
The question has implications for society as well as for Christian churches. Interreligious violence and intolerance have long accompanied a negative view of other religions, particularly within a society where there is a dominant religious language. Rejection of intolerance, in turn, can lead people to dismiss or censor the religious language shared by particular communities if they believe others might take offence at it.
I encountered this latter response some years ago in a theological class. It considered Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner's complex argument for insisting that virtuous non-Christians could be saved. He described them as 'anonymous Christians'. Some students dismissed his argument out of hand on the grounds that non-Christians might consider it condescending to be described in that way.
Though appreciative of their sensitivity, I was concerned at the implications of their position. It seemed to imply that people may not freely use the language of their tradition to explore their relationship to others, but must adapt it to fit the public language of society.
If this approach to community languages were generalised, it might imply that Indigenous Australians who tried to make sense of European invaders would have been wrong to incorporate them in their cultural myths in ways that could offend them — as snakes or storms, for example. They would have to restrict their own cultural language to the public language acceptable to the invaders. That demand would surely not enrich but impoverish their response to this new situation.
"In much of my own writing I have been concerned to interpret Christian faith for a public audience in a public language. I found O'Collins' book stimulating and challenging because it led me to identify the potential loss that is incurred in this enterprise."
I would argue that both community and public languages are essential, and that the public language is the more enriched when community languages are given free reign. Adaptation to the conventions of the public language and of other community languages properly takes place at a later stage when the community engages with the wider society. In the theological class, the proper procedure would have been first to consider Rahner's argument in its own terms, then to consider whether the clumsy phrase 'anonymous Christians' spoke clearly and attractively to a public audience.
When conversation in a community is restricted to the public language of the broader society, its power to engage the community members is often diminished. That has perhaps happened in the development of a theology of religions within the Christian churches. It often emphasises themes that unite religions and are less specifically and distinctively Christian, and focuses on removing obstacles to the acceptance of other religions as partners in faith rather than as rivals. The goal has been worthwhile but the conversation has not seemed to energise the communities it is aimed at.
To argue for the freedom to use community languages on their own terms does not entail dismissing the language of the wider society. In much of my own writing I have been concerned to interpret Christian faith for a public audience in a public language. Done well, that is a valuable contribution to both church and society.
I found O'Collins' book stimulating and challenging, however, because it led me to identify the potential loss that is incurred in this enterprise, even while affirming its value. O'Collins writes in the community language of Christian theology. In speaking of a Christology of religions instead of a theology of religions he assumes that the reader knows what Christology is, and in developing the implications of understanding Jesus Christ as the Son of God, he speaks unashamedly the language of the Christian community.
O'Collins claims that for Christians the value of other religions is best discussed through a comprehensive reference to faith in Jesus Christ. He demonstrates his claim by considering Jesus' own reaching out to people outside the Jewish world, and his understanding that in his tortured death he was giving his life for all people. He takes into account, too, Jesus' rising from the dead and his continuing presence, especially through the celebration of the Eucharist in which he intercedes for the world, and not simply for Christians. In developing these themes he focuses on the priesthood of Christ.
In another review, written for a Catholic audience, I have described how O'Collins' exposition has not only enriched my understanding of the Catholic tradition but has energised and set within a richer framework some of my public commitments.
In my experience, at least, public and communal languages are mutually enriching.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.