Religious Pluralism and Theology

What are the 2 problems highlighted by religious pluralism (highlighted by Wilcockson)?

• Epistemological - extent to which non-Christian religions can be considered true

• Soteriological - questions whether non-Christians can receive salvation

What are the 3 accepted views which seek to answer the problems highlighted by religious pluralism?

• exclusivism - only christians can be saved

• inclusivism - Christianity normative means of salvation - accepts that other faiths can have truth

• pluralism - everyone can be saved; every religion offers truth

What do exclusivists believe?

• non-Christians unable to achieve salvation

• accepting Christ’s sacrifice necessary to achieving salvation

All agree that…

1. religions all have different beliefs and teachings, cannot all be correct

2. without Church, God is unable to be known, salvation unachievable

3. Jesus was God incarnate - makes Xtianity correct religion

How does belief in human sin contribute to the exclusivist ideology? (+challenge)

Belief:

• original/subsequent sin means salvation must be earned to achieve heaven

• through faith, salvation can be achieved

• some people argue that good work means non-Christians can achieve salvation

Challenge:

• good work has a place in salvation

• truth is the most important thing to achieve salvation

How does belief in God’s immanence contribute to the exclusivist ideology? (+challenge)

Belief:

• consistently acted in the world

• makes himself known purposefully

• Christianity provides special revelations about God

• therefore only Christians can be saved

Challenge:

• God may not be that of Abrahamic religions:

  • not omnibenevolent/omnipotent

  • working with other gods

  • involved in creation but watches from afar

How does belief in God incarnate contribute to the exclusivist ideology? (+challenge)

Belief:

• Jesus was God incarnate

• through Jesus, Christians have infallible teachings

• Jesus was God - gives his teachings authority

Challenge:

• how do we know there aren’t higher/truer deities?

• not everyone is aware of Jesus/Christianity

How does belief in baptism contribute to the exclusivist ideology? (+challenge)

Belief:

• baptism = salvation

• until baptism, still tainted with original sin

Challenge:

• babies who die before baptism

• isolated/rural communities

• no choice/autonomy in infant baptism

How does belief that you must be a member of the church to be saved contribute to the exclusivist ideology? (+challenge)

• salvation only available through directly hearing gospel

• RCC: transubstantiation means receiving God’s grace

• different beliefs among exclusivists about what is means to be a member of the Church

What is narrow exclusivism? (Restrictive Access Exclusivism)

• salvation only available to those who have been baptised in the RCC/those who receive regular Mass

• e.g. Augustine and Calvin believed salvation was only available to those whom God has saved

What is broad exclusivism? (Universal Access Exclusivism)

• view mostly held by protestant theologians

• all people who accept Christ are able to be saved

• love of Christ is offered to everyone, but must be accepted for salvation

What were Kraemer’s beliefs on salvation?

• non-Christians cannot achieve salvation through their own faith systems: must convert to Christianity

• God’s revelation can be seen by others outside the Christian faith but salvation can only be found in Christianity

• all world religions have to be evaluated as whole systems and cannot be taken apart and considered in a piecemeal way

What were Barth’s beliefs on salvation?

• ‘theology of the Word’ - knowledge of God can be found only where God chooses to reveal it

Argued the Word consists of three forms…

1. Jesus (the living Word) - made known to humanity via his life/death - word of God in human form

2. the Bible (written word) - ‘witness’ to revelation of God in Christ

3. Church teachings (Preached word) - bringing Christian message to people and spreading the Gospel

Why does Barth argue that God can only be known through Christ?

Jesus is fully and uniquely the way in which God has chosen to make himself known

What did Emile Brunner think of Barth’s beliefs about salvation?

• disagreed with Barth

• argued that Natural knowledge of God is useful, can prepare the mind ready to receive the gospel

What is exclusivism’s key strength?

• logically coherent

• If Jesus = son of God, makes sense that exclusivist beliefs about salvation are correct

• gives reason to believe in Christianity - is the full truth

How can Jesus never calling himself the Son of God be used to critique exclusivism?

• never called himself the Son of God (didn’t deny it)

• Jolk: title used to show that Jesus acted in a God-like way, rather than truly believing he was the son of God

[How can Jesus never calling himself the Son of God be used to critique exclusivism?] Challenge to this argument - in favour of exclusivism

• Jesus’ actions speak louder than words

• resurrection is pretty damning evidence

• others’ recognition of him as the Son of God gives more weight to his position

How can the Incarnation’s incoherence be used to critique exclusivism?

• being 100% God and 100% human is simply not possible

[How can the Incarnation’s incoherence be used to critique exclusivism?] Challenge to this argument - in favour of exclusivism

• God is transcendent - we can only understand him in human terms

• RCC: ‘divine mystery’

How can the miracle of the resurrection be used to critique exclusivism?

• miracles that Jesus performed disputed by scholars

• Hume: miracles will always have a rational explanation

[How can the miracle of the resurrection be used to critique exclusivism?] Challenge to this argument - in favour of exclusivism

• people have faith - we don’t always need a rational explanation

‘Do not live in thoughts and words but in actions and in truth’

What can belief in God’s benevolence be used to critique exclusivism?

• if God is omnibenevolent, why would his criteria for salvation be so narrow?

• what about those who lived before Jesus, could not experience his teaching/those who cannot hear God?

Challenge to this Argument… (in favour of exclusivism)

• God is transcendent - only understandable in human terms

• God’s actions may not always seem fair, but they are Just

What is the practical problem with exclusivism’s imperial nature?

• may promote views of arrogance/intolerance

• may cause religious conflict and suffering

Challenge to this Argument… (in favour of exclusivism)

• context: Jesus was always inclusive

  • ‘blessed are the peacemakers’

  • ‘love thy neighbour’

What is the practical problem with God’s unloving nature?

• contradicts mainstream christian teachings

• doesn’t take into account people who are not Christian

What is inclusivism?

Christianity holds the key to truth and salvation, but others can still be saved. Attractive to many because…

• reflects God’s love for humanity, makes salvation possible for everyone

• Jesus died on to save everyone from sin

• still accepts centrality of Jesus, doesn’t deny his ultimate importance in salvation

What was Rahner’s belief about inclusivism?

• didn’t want to exclude anyone from salvation

• questioned how people pre-Christ could have achieved salvation

“somehow all men must be capable of being members of the Church”

• ‘anonymous Christian’ - people who do not know Christ, but have genuine faith in God, act in a way that is in accordance with Christian teaching

How does Hans Urs Balthasar criticise Rahner?

• Rahner places too much focus on human experience and subjectivity

• risks reducing divine revelation to something merely immanent within human consciousness

• undermines necessity and uniqueness of Christ and the Church by suggesting salvation is available through non-explicit Christian means

What are 2 general criticisms of Rahner?

1. Offensive to non-christians - defines them as something they don’t want to be

2. Anonymous Christianity; invisible Church has no real Biblical basis → Christianity is the normative means of salvation

What are Gavin D’Costa’s beliefs about inclusivism?

• excluvism = incompatible with Christian teaching

• built on doctrine of the Trinity - Holy Spirit integral

• although Jesus is wholly God, God is not wholly Jesus

Christomonism = Christ is only way to God and salvation

• we need Trinity in its entirety to achieve salvation

• Holy spirit known in many ways, can reveal God’s love and teaching - makes salvation available to those outside of Christianity

Inclusivism - strengths

• recognises key Christain beliefs

• Jesus still has a central role in salvation

• shows how morality outside of Christianity explained

• gives a role to natural theology, God’s revelations

• Aquinas/Augustine (pre-inclusivism) believed pre-Christians could be saved through implicit faith

Inclusivism - weaknesses

• insulting/patronising to non-Christians - when they think they’re worshipping their own God, they’re not

• insulting/patronising to non-Christians - their good actions are only by God’s grace

• if salvation is available outside of the Church, is the Church necessary at all?

• ignores biblical teachings about baptism

Alan Race:

• ‘to say that one religion contains the fullest expression of religious truth… is tantamount to unjustified theological imperialism’

What is pluralism?

• all religions hold the truth

• all religions are different cultural interpretations of the same God, therefore all faiths hold equal value

• (Ancient Indian Parable)

Sri Ramakrishna

‘All religions are paths to the same truth’

What did John Hick believe about religious experience and revelation?

• religious experience = all faiths have in common

• religious experience is how we encounter the divine

• not every religion can prove their claims about God,

  • therefore religious experience = ONLY grounds for belief, meaning all faiths must be taken seriously

What did John Hick believe about the Christocentric nature of religion?

• revelation comes from God, NOT Christ

• wanted to get rid of the ‘facts’ of the incarnation, atonement and salvation and show them as myths

• Christianity should be theocentric > Christocentric

What did John Hick believe about the myth of Jesus’ divinity?

• argued against solus Christus

• incarnation is a myth, used to explain Jesus’ unique consciousness of God - wrongly interpreted

Hick: ‘the incarnation is a powerful metaphorical idea’

What did John Hick believe about the resurrection?

• highly unlikely Jesus rose from the dead

• resurrection needs to be de-mythologised

• although resurrection is valuable in terms of the message it teaches, it made Christianity seem unbelievable

What did John Hick believe about Jesus as a gift to the world?

• Christianity needs to adapt to the modern world

• these doctrines need to be understood as myths of their time

Other faiths can see Jesus as a ‘man who can enlarge the relationship with God’ that they already have

How does John Hick use Kant?

• uses Kant’s distinction between noumenal and phenomenal

• argues that religions are phenomenally different, but noumenally the same - all refer to the same reality, which Kant calls the an-Sich

What are some challenges to Hick’s ideas from Christianity?

• essence of Christianity reduced to moral stories

• incarnation is central to Christian belief

• no personal relationship with God required, whereas Bible clearly states the only way to the Father is through knowing Jesus

• Jesus’ actions defy laws of science/logic

Harold Netland: Hick reduces Jesus to…

… ‘Simply one of many great religious leaders’ - undermines Sola Christus

What are some philosophical challenges to Hick’s ideas?

• using Kant’s an-Sich leads to agnosticism - we can’t know anything about the divine

• some faiths reject the idea of a God

• Hick’s pluralism is a form of exclusivism - Christians can know what is real and then other faiths are judged by this

Keith Ward: If we cannot know what the Real is or what the Real is like…

…then we cannot know if any interpretation of it is true

What does Hick believe about the equality and validity of all religions?

All religions are NOT equally valid (e.g. Satanism)

• not every belief system is a reflection of the Divine

• genuine religions lead people away from selfishness (and towards ethical decisions)

Hick: different cannot all be true as they all say different things

• never believed that all religions = fully true

• all have elements of truth, as they have flaws

• treat all religions equally, because we do not know which has the most truth