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The Impossibility of a Pluralist View of Religions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Gavin D'Costa
Gavin D'Costa
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol, 36 Tyndall's Park Road, Bristol BS8 IPL
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Abstract

In the debate about Christian attitudes to other religions, a threefold typology has emerged depicting differing Christian responses: pluralism, inclusivism and exclusivism. (This typology is not restricted to the Christian debate alone.) Traditionally, pluralism is opposed to exclusivism, the former claiming that it is arrogant and untenable to make exclusive truth claims, and that all religions are potentially equal paths to salvation and truth. In contrast, I argue that pluralism must always logically be a form of exclusivism and that nothing called pluralism really exists. The main purpose of my paper is to show that there is no high-ground in the pluralist position, for in principle its logic is no different from the exclusivist position. If this is established, then the debate can proceed with more substantial issues regarding the justification and clarification of truth claims.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 223 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 See Markham, Ian, ‘Creating Options: Shattering the Exclusivist, Inclusivist, and Pluralist Paradigm’, New Blackfriars, LXXIV, 867 (1993), 33–41Google Scholar; Surin, Ken, ‘A Politics of Speech’, in G., D'Costa (ed.), Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered (New York: Orbis, 1990), pp. 192–212Google Scholar; DiNoia, J., The Diversity of Religions (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Ogden, S., Is There Only One True Religion or Are there Many? (Texas: SMU, 1992)Google Scholar. I have briefly responded to these critics in ‘Christian Theology and Other Faiths’, in P. Byrne and L. Houlden (eds), Companion Encyclopedia of Theology (London: Routledge, 1995).Google Scholar

2 London: SCM, 1983Google Scholar; 2nd ed., 1994 – and Race sees no reason to question the typology in the second edition.

3 See Coward, Harold, Pluralism: Challenge to World Religions (New York: Orbis, 1985)Google Scholar; Paul, Griffiths (ed.), Christianity through Non-Christian Eyes (New York: Orbis, 1990).Google Scholar

4 See the declarations in Lindsell, H. (ed.), The Church's Worldwide Mission. Proceedings of the Congress on the Church's Worldwide Mission (Waco, Texas: World Books, 1966).Google Scholar

5 Such a version is found in Lindbeck, George, ‘Fides ex auditu and the Salvation of Non-Christians’ in Vajta, V. (ed.), The Gospel and the Ambiguity of the Church (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), pp. 92–123.Google Scholar

6 Examples of such pluralist texts that could be so analysed can be found in John, Hick and Hasan, Askari (eds), The Experience of Religious Diversity (Aldershot: Gower, 1985)Google Scholar, and also the texts used by Paul Griffiths (ed.), op. cit. Jane Compson does precisely such an analysis in her paper: ‘The Dalai Lama and the World Religions: A False Friend?’, see pp. 271–279 of this volume.

7 The main works from which I will draw in each case are: Hick, John, An Interpretation of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Paul, Knitter, ‘Dialogue and Liberation’, Drew Gateway, LVIII (1987), 1–53Google Scholar; his co-authored part in Knitter, P., Cobb, J. Jr, Swidler, L. and Hellwig, M., Death or Dialogue (New York: Orbis, 1990).Google Scholar

8 Keith Ward replaces the terms myth/liberal with iconic/ontological to launch a similar argument in A Vision to Pursue (London: SCM, 1991).Google Scholar

9 Detailed references to Hick's text to support this condensed expositon can be found in my, ‘John Hick's Transcendental Agnosticism’, in H. Hewitt (ed.), John Hick's Philosophy of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 130–47.Google Scholar

10 Respectively: London: Macmillan; London: Collins; London: Macmillan.

11 For detailed references to Knitter's texts to support this condensed exposition see my ‘A Response to Cardinal Tomko: the Kingdom and a Trinitarian Ecclesiology. An Analysis of Soteriocentricism’, in Mojes, P. and Swidler, L. (eds), Christian Mission and Interreligious Dialogue (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), pp. 51–61.Google Scholar

12 See MacIntyre, A., Whost Justice: Which Rationality? (London: Duckworth, 1988)Google Scholar; Hauerwas, S., A Community of Character. Towards a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).Google Scholar

13 See Smith, Huston, Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1945)Google Scholar; Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, Knowledge and the Sacred (New York: Crossroads, 1981)Google Scholar; Radhakrishnan, S., The Hindu View of Life (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1927)Google Scholar; and Jane Compson, op. cit.

14 See my ‘Revelation and Revelations’, Modern Theology, X, 2 (1994), 165–85.Google Scholar

15 I am grateful to Professor Paul Helm of King's College London for inviting me to present a version of this paper to a day conference at King's. I am especially grateful to Dr Alan Torrance, Dr Francis Watson, Mr Peter Byrne and Mr Christopher Sinkinson for their most helpful comments on an early draft version.