7. Problems with Religious Pluralism

Religious pluralism promises a way of understanding religious diversity without concluding that only one religion is true and the rest false. All the major religions are said to be more or less equally true and equally legitimate ways of responding to the religious ultimate. Pluralism thus seems to be accepting the many religions just as they are, and in a world weary of religious competition and strife, this is indeed enormously attractive.

But can the pluralist model really deliver what it promises? An acceptable model of religious pluralism should do at least three things: (1) recognize the clear differences in fundamental beliefs among the religions; (2) affirm the different religions as more or less equally effective ways of responding to the one ultimate reality, so that no single tradition is privileged; and (3) provide a coherent explanation of how these two points can be simultaneously maintained. John Hick’s proposal is the most sophisticated attempt to meet these requirements, but it is vitiated by serious problems. Two issues will be noted.

Some Truth Claims Cannot Both Be True

Contrary to popular perception, not even the pluralist can avoid the conclusion that large numbers of sincere and devout religious believers are simply mistaken in their religious beliefs. As we have seen, if the teachings of the religions are taken as orthodox believers in the respective religions understand them, it is clear that the religions make very different, and at times mutually incompatible, claims about the nature of reality. Each religion of course maintains that its own beliefs are true. With religious pluralism, however, no particular religion can be regarded as distinctively true. Thus, the conflicting claims of the religions are reinterpreted so that they can be accommodated in a pluralist framework.

Consider beliefs about the religious ultimate that are central to Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, respectively. Christians believe that the religious ultimate, the highest reality, is the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that Jesus Christ was the incarnate Son of God, fully God and fully man. Muslims also believe in one eternal creator God, but deny that God is a trinity or that Jesus was God incarnate. Zen Buddhists deny the existence of any God and maintain that ultimate reality is Sunyata or Emptiness. On Hick’s model, Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists can all be said to be “in touch” with and responding appropriately to the one divine reality, the Real. So in one sense John Hick’s pluralism does accept the three religions, but it does so only by changing in important ways the beliefs of actual Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists. For on Hick’s model, it is the Real that is truly ultimate, and what Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists regard as ultimate—the Triune God, Allah, and Emptiness, respectively—are only penultimate images or concepts through which they respond to the Real. If Hick is correct, then orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists are all mistaken in their claims about the religious ultimate.

Or consider what Islam and Christianity say about Jesus of Nazareth. Although Jesus is held in great esteem in both Christianity and Islam, the two religions disagree sharply over his proper identity. Christians accept Jesus as the unique incarnation of the eternal, infinite, God—Jesus was fully God and fully man. Muslims, on the other hand, reject this as blasphemous. Furthermore, Christians and Muslims disagree over the factual question whether Jesus was in fact crucified on the cross, for many Muslims interpret Surah 4:155–159 of the Qur’an as explicitly ruling out Jesus’ death on the cross. This cannot be dismissed as merely a minor disagreement over an obscure historical fact, for the atoning work of Jesus on the cross is central to the Christian message of salvation. Thus it has traditionally been maintained that Islam and Christianity cannot both be correct in their respective beliefs about Jesus of Nazareth. At least one view must be false. As we have seen, John Hick rejects the orthodox Christian teaching of Jesus as fully God and fully man and calls for a reinterpretation of the doctrine of the incarnation in metaphorical terms. The implication of this, however, is that orthodox Christians are mistaken in their belief about the Incarnation. Thus, not even religious pluralism can avoid the conclusion that large numbers of sincere and intelligent religious believers are mistaken in their religious beliefs. The critical issue here is which beliefs we should reject as false and on what basis we should do so.

Ineffability Is Incoherent

Not surprisingly, Hick’s adoption of strong ineffability with respect to the Real has been the subject of much criticism. In order not to privilege either personal or non-personal views of the religious ultimate, Hick insists that the Real transcends all concepts and properties with which we are familiar.

By ‘ineffable’ I mean . . . having a nature that is beyond the scope of our networks of human concepts. Thus the Real in itself cannot properly be said to be personal or impersonal, purposive or non-purposive, good or evil, substance or process, even one or many.³⁶

There are at least three problems with Hick’s use of the ineffability thesis:

1. Although Hick claims that none of the concepts or categories with which we are familiar can be applied to the Real, he repeatedly uses language that presupposes that at least some concepts do apply meaningfully to the Real.³⁷ For the Real is said to be the “source and ground of everything,” a “transcendent reality,” “the necessary condition of our existence and highest good,” “that to which religion is a response,” to “affect humanity,” to have a “universal presence,” etc.³⁸ If such language is at all meaningful, then clearly some concepts can be applied to the Real. Moreover, it seems that causality of some sort is implied in such language, as the Real is portrayed as (at least partially) causally responsible for the human religious responses being what they are. But in using the language of causality in this manner Hick is going well beyond what ineffability allows.

2. Furthermore, does it make any sense to claim that there is a Real but that no concepts of properties with which we are familiar apply to the Real? What would it mean for an entity to exist without it having any substantial properties? An agnostic silence concerning it would seem the only reasonable course. But then why postulate the Real in the first place? How does “There is an X, but X is such that no concepts of substantial properties can be ascribed to it” differ from “There is no X”?

3. Hick’s inconsistency is most apparent in his use of the moral criterion (transformation from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness), both as a reason for postulating the existence of the Real and for discriminating between legitimate and illegitimate responses to the Real. Hick repeatedly tells us that the Real itself is beyond moral categories such as good and evil.³⁹ But if the Real is beyond moral categories so that it is neither good nor evil and moral concepts and terms cannot be applied to it, how can “moral transformation” serve as a criterion for an appropriate relationship to the Real? Why suppose that moral transformation within a given religion is at all informative about that tradition’s relationship to the Real? Why presume that some behavior is appropriate with respect to the Real but other behavior is not? The Real itself must have moral properties, be a moral being, if the moral criterion is to be used in this manner.

Hick’s language about the Real strongly suggests that the Real is somehow causally responsible for some of what we see in the various religions and that the Real is a moral being. Thus, despite his efforts to depict the Real in terms which do not privilege any particular religious tradition, Hick tacitly assumes certain theistic characteristics of the Real (intentional action, creation, revelation, moral goodness) even as he states that no such attributes can apply to the Real. Thus Keith Yandell—not inappropriately—characterizes Hick’s proposal as “Protestant modernism minus monotheism” or “secularism with incense.”⁴⁰

8. Does God Exist?

There are two critical questions confronting any version of religious pluralism: Does an eternal creator God exist? Who is Jesus Christ? The traditional Christian answers to these questions are incompatible with genuine religious pluralism. Religious pluralism makes sense—if it makes sense at all—only on the assumption that there is a pervasive “religious ambiguity” such that theism does not have any stronger rational credentials than non-theistic perspectives. Thus, in defending religious pluralism, Peter Byrne observes,

The pluralist must, on reasoned grounds, doubt whether the detailed dogmatics of any particular religion can be known with sufficient certainty to enable such a form of religion to be the means of interpreting the whole that is human religion. There is not the certainty in any particular form of religion to enable its world-view to be the basis for a viable interpretation of religion.⁴¹

Religious ambiguity means that it can be equally rational to interpret the universe as a Christian theist or a Vedantin Hindu or a Theravadin Buddhist would, depending upon one’s particular circumstances and experiences.

But why should we accept this assumption about religious ambiguity? The question of God’s existence is thus critical to any assessment of religious pluralism. For if there are good reasons for believing that an eternal creator God exists, then there are good reasons for rejecting religions that deny God’s existence (e.g., Jainism, Buddhism, some forms of Hinduism) as false. It then becomes impossible to affirm religious pluralism, for if there are compelling grounds for accepting God’s existence, then clearly not all religions can be accepted as equally true.

Is it really the case that the proposition “God exists” has no greater evidential or rational support than its denial? To be sure, there is disagreement over the issue of God’s existence. But deeply rooted disagreement by itself does not entail that no single perspective is more likely to be true than others nor that all religious perspectives have equal epistemic support. An impressive list of contemporary philosophers have argued persuasively that there are strong reasons for believing that an eternal creator God exists.⁴² If they are correct, and I think they are, then religious pluralism should be rejected and theism accepted.