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Religious Plurality and Contemporary Philosophy: A Critical Survey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Owen C. Thomas
Affiliation:
Episcopal Divinity School, emeritus

Extract

The fact of religious plurality and how to interpret this fact have in the last decade become central issues in contemporary theology and philosophy of religion. The discussion in recent years has been focused on the debate between the pluralists and the inclusivists, as represented respectively in the volume edited by John Hick and Paul F. Knitter, The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions and that edited by Gavin D'Costa, Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1994

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References

1 Hick, John and Knitter, Paul F., eds., The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987)Google Scholar; D'Costa, Gavin, ed., Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990).Google Scholar

2 Ogden, Schubert M., Is There Only One True Religion or Are There Many? (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1992) 77.Google ScholarPubMed

3 Hick and Knitter, The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, 22.

4 Paul, John II, Redemptor Hominis (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1979) § 14.Google Scholar Hick's internal quotation is taken from this document.

5 See Panikkar, Raimundo, “The Invisible Harmony: A Universal Theory of Religion or a Cosmic Confidence in Reality?” in Swidler, Leonard, ed., Toward a Universal Theology of Religion (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988) 135.Google Scholar

6 Putnam, Hilary, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) ix.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Ibid., 49.

8 Ibid., 50, 52, 54.

9 Ibid., 73, 49.

10 Ibid., 201, 215.

11 See the summary of this position in Jeffrey L. Johnson, “Making Noises in Counterpoint or Chorus: Putnam's Rejection of Relativism”; and Throop, William and Doran, Katheryn, “Putnam's Realism and Relativity: An Uneasy Balance”; Erkenntnis 34 (1991) 323–45, 357–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, respectively.

12 Davidson, Donald, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984) 184.Google Scholar

13 Goodman, Nelson, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978) x.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 4. See Rorty, Richard, “The World Well Lost,” Journal of Philosophy 69 (1972) 649–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, 17.

16 Ibid., 132, 138.

17 Ibid., 4.

18 Ibid., 5.

19 Ibid., 21.

20 For a similar critique see Siegel, Harvey, Relativism Refuted: A Critique of Contemporary Epistemological Relativism (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1987) chap. 7, esp. p. 153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Bernstein, Richard, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983).Google Scholar

22 Langdon Gilkey, “Plurality and Its Theological Implications”; and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, “In Search of Justice”; in Hick and Knitter, Myth of Christian Uniqueness, 44, 149–50, respectively.

23 Paul F. Knitter, “Toward a Liberation Theology of Religion,” in Hick and idem, Myth of Christian Uniqueness, 190.

24 Tom F. Driver, “The Case for Pluralism,” in Hick and Knitter, Myth of Christian Uniqueness, 207.

25 Gilkey, “Plurality and Its Theological Implications,” in Hick and Knitter, Myth of Christian Uniqueness, 45.

26 Nagel, Thomas, The View From Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) 67.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 68.

28 Ibid.. 210, 222.

29 Mandelbaum, Maurice, “Subjective, Objective, and Conceptual Relativisms,” in Meiland, Jack W. and Krausz, Michael, eds., Relativism: Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982) 36.Google Scholar

30 Davidson, Inquiries, essay 13.

31 See Jack W. Meiland and Michael Krausz, “Introduction to ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,’” in idem, Relativism, 62–65; and Siegel, Relativism Refuted, 40–42.

32 For examples, see Meiland and Krausz, “Introduction,” 62–65.

33 Davidson, Inquiries, 184–85.

34 John B. Cobb, Jr., “Beyond ‘Pluralism,’” in D'Costa, Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered, 85.

35 Ibid., 86.

37 Ibid., 87.

38 Rescher, Nicholas, The Strife of Systems: An Essay on the Grounds and Implications of Philosophical Diversity (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985).Google Scholar

39 Ibid., 125.

40 Ibid., 145.

41 Ibid., 148–49.

42 Ibid., 192.

43 Ibid., 147.

44 Ibid., 173–79.

45 Ibid., 223–39.

46 Ibid., 267.

47 Ibid., 174–75.

48 Ibid., 193.

49 Ibid., 184.

50 Ibid., 192.

51 Cobb, “Beyond Pluralism,” 86.