A Careful Look at Religious Pluralism

Introduction

Princeton professor of philosophy, Diogenes Allen, shares the following anecdote. He writes,

"…now and again I have met a person who has claimed that religion has nothing to offer. 'Why should I go to church,' someone once said to me, 'when I have no religious needs?' I had the audacity to reply, 'Because Christianity's true.'"

Audacious indeed! Sadly, it seems that any claim to truth these days is considered arrogant, intolerant, or narrow-minded. Recently, some very dear friends of mine came under attack for this very thing. Of course, this was no ordinary truth by which they steadfastly stood. This was the kind of truth that the apostle Paul assured us would bring on scorn and contempt by those who stumbled over it and were offended by it. No, this was no ordinary truth. What was this intolerant, arrogant, and narrow-minded truth-claim? It was the declaration that only those who respond in faith to the explicit preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ will be saved. That is, that Jesus Christ is one and only Savior of the universe and all other attempted means of salvation lead to destruction. A bold claim indeed. But is it arrogant?

How did the objectors to this truth-claim respond? With biblical opposition? With philosophical counters? With the rejection of such an exclusive notion by citing the giants of church history? No! Instead, my friends received condemnation, ridicule and condescension for "putting God in a box;" for making God too small; for being so arrogant; for being so intolerant of other religions; and for the obvious "unfairness" of such an primitive and "fundamentalist" idea. Furthermore, every hard-case scenario was given to prove that such a closed-minded idea is utterly unjust. Scenarios such as the person who is just about to trust in Christ, but who dies right before he does, were offered as solid objections that clearly disproved their conviction.

I believe it is self-evident to suggest that these sentiments are the norm in our day. Instead of lively discussions or debates over essential and important matters, many today get sidetracked by red herrings. These distractions take our attention away from matters of truth and, instead, refocus the discussion on issues of preference, perceived relevance and other secondary questions.

There is so much material to cover on a subject such as this. Thus, I have attempted to restrict my focus in this paper to a close examination of soteriological pluralism, (the belief that there are many "paths to heaven," and that Christ is only one of many. Therefore, this paper will be primarily negative in nature. That is, the object of this paper is to show the erroneousness, and therefore, arrogance of pluralism as a philosophy or doctrine of salvation. I will not set out to prove the positive case for the exclusivity of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. That will be for another time. However, I do want to expose pluralism for the weak and destructive, and dare I say, false, theology it truly is.

Pluralism: America's Official Doctrine

It seems as though most Americans believe that our day is the first time a pluralistic society has existed. We take pride when discussing our open minds, liberality of thought and the potpourri of beliefs that make up our melting pot. This is especially true during those rare instances when Americans discuss their eternal destinies. Erwin Lutzer writes,

"According to the 1993-94 Barna research report, nearly two out of three adults contend that the choice of one religious faith over another is irrelevant because all religions teach the same basic lessons about life."

One does not have to have a doctorate in cultural studies to acknowledge this prevalent trend. Mere casual observation will certainly lead one to this conclusion. Lutzer points out several lines of thought that tend to dominate our culture. I too, believe these are true statements about our culture, but I would add that these beliefs are also alive and well in the church. They are:

1. The doctrines of the different faiths should not be held as truths but shells that contain kernels that are found in all religions. Since the claim for truth is a stumbling block to unity, it is best to speak of religious traditions rather than religious truths.

2. No religion should be thought of as superior to another. Indeed, this belief in superiority is the major roadblock to religious unity…

3. We can retain our own particular religion but must move beyond it to deeper levels of experience. As we move away from religion to this true spirituality, we are united.

4. Proselytizing (Christians call it evangelism) is bigotry, pure and simple. The idea of winning converts is based on the antiquated notion that one religion has more to offer than another. Our task is to help others discover the hidden inner meaning of their religions, rather than convert them to our own."

Lesslie Newbigin concludes this thought well by saying,

"It has become a commonplace to say that we live in a pluralist society - not merely a society which is in fact plural in the variety of cultures, religions and lifestyles which it embraces, but pluralist in the sense that this plurality is celebrated as things to be approved and cherished."

Pluralism and the Christian Message: Nothing New Under the Sun

Unfortunately, the false conclusion drawn from this modern day worship of tolerance and the proliferation of varying worldviews, is that truth-claims and exclusive appeals to one's own faith are outdated and bigoted concepts. However, this modern-day chauvinism is grounded upon a false assumption. Alister McGrath points out that the "Christian proclamation has always taken place in a pluralist world, in competition with rival religious and intellectual convictions." In fact, many books in both the Old and New Testaments were written as polemics against the competing religions that Israel and the early Christian community faced daily. McGrath comments:

"Ancient Israel was acutely aware that its faith was not shared by its neighbors. The existence of other religions was simply a fact of life for the Israelites. It caused them no great difficulties, in that they believed that theirs happened to be right, whereas others were wrong. The same pattern emerges in the New Testament. From the first days of its existence, Christianity has recognized the existence of other religions and the challenge they posed. …Christianity was born amid religious pluralism…"

Similarly, Michael Green comments,

"I find it ironic that people object to the proclamation of the Christian gospel these days because so many other faiths jostle on the doorstep of our global village. What's new? The variety of faiths in antiquity was even greater than it is today. And the early Christians, making as they did ultimate claims for Jesus, met the problem of other faiths head-on from the very outset. Their approach was interesting… They did not denounce other faiths. They simply proclaimed Jesus with all the power and persuasiveness at their disposal."

The early church faced the lions, became burning torches in Nero's garden, and other such fates, because they actually believed the truth of what they were proclaiming. Therefore, they proclaimed that the Christian message was true and therefore, rejected false teachings. David Wells asks:

"Why were [the early Christians] so adamant about the preservation, appropriation, and propagation of this doctrinally framed teaching? The answer is that it is the 'truth' (2 Cor. 4:6; Eph. 1:13; Col. 1:5; 2 Tim. 2:15; Tit. 1:14; 1 Pet. 1:22; 2 Pet. 1:12; James 1:8; 3 John 4) It is only by coming to know this 'truth' that one comes to know God, for he can be known only through Christ who is the center and object of this teaching (Tit. 2:4; Heb. 10:26; 1 Pet. 1:22; cf. 2 Tim. 3:7)."

In The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments, C.H. Dodd "showed in a convincing way that the apostolic preachers all followed a broadly accepted outline of key facts concerning the life and ministry of Jesus Christ when they presented the gospel to unbelievers." Furthermore, this content-filled faith which proclaimed that Jesus Christ alone was the truth, was proclaimed "in the midst of a world that was more religiously diverse than any we have known in the West until relatively recently." Is it not therefore arrogant for the pluralist to suppose that our modern-day culture is the first to deal with the issue of pluralism?

There is nothing inconsistent with proclaiming Christian truth in the midst of alien worldviews and beliefs. In fact, this is the very setting in which the church sprang to life. The false assumption by many, however, is that the only way this can be done is by tearing down the moral character of the adherents of those other faiths. This, it should be adamantly stated, is an erroneous implication. The truth of a belief can be discussed and debated without casting aspersions upon the one who holds it. In fact, 1 Peter 3:15 says that Christians are to proclaim and defend the truth of the Christian faith with gentleness and respect. This has been the marching orders for Christians for two millennia.

Truth: The Christian Worldview's Foundation

It is important for Christians to maintain that "the faith once delivered" was a faith in what "really happened" in time-and-space history. It would be a destructive revision of history to suggest that early Christians were bringing to the world, a subjective philosophy or worldview based on what they "wished" had happened. "It would be a remarkable example of cultural chauvinism if we supposed that our faith about what really happened, shaped as it is by our cultural perspectives, must necessarily displace that of the immediate witnesses." Yet on what basis can Christians proclaim that they have "truth to tell?" On what foundation can Christian truth-claims be made and defended?

From the very beginning, the Christian faith has proclaimed and defended the position that it is a revealed-religion. Never has it declared itself to be a speculative philosophy. It has always submitted to a higher authority. Ronald Nash says that Christianity's "touchstone proposition" is that "Human beings and the universe in which they reside are the creation of the God who has revealed himself in Scripture. The basic presupposition of the Christian world-view is the existence of the God revealed in Scripture." This is both the ontological and epistemological foundation for the Christian faith. Appeals to any other authority than the living God, is an appeal to human speculation and vain autonomy. Carl Henry correctly observes that:

"All merely human affirmations about God curl into a question mark. We cannot spy out the secrets of God by obtrusive curiosity. …Apart from God's initiative, God's act, God's revelation, no confident basis exists for God-talk. …If we are authorized to say anything at all about the living God, it is only because of God's initiative and revelation. God's disclosure alone can transform our wavering questions concerning ultimate reality into confident exclamations!"

Christians are therefore not arrogant because they claim to know the truth. Christians confess to be humble servants of the one true God who has revealed the truth to them and has called them to be witnesses in the world to this. However, it is not simply by "revelation-in-general," that human beings come to this epistemological foundation. Instead, it is through the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible through which God has specifically revealed himself, and not simply "in Christ." Francis Schaeffer has brought attention to the fact that "the Reformation said 'Scripture Alone' and not 'the Revelation of God in Christ Alone.' If you do not have the view of the Scriptures that the Reformers had, you really have no content in the word 'Christ'…" This is important to point out, because without the proper epistemological foundation, truth shifts to preference and utter subjectivity. Indeed this is what has happened.

The Results of a Wrong Foundation

David Wells suggests that "Truth is now simply a matter of etiquette: it has no authority, no sense of rightness, because it is no longer anchored in anything absolute" This certainly addresses the issue of why religious pluralism is running rampant. Carl Henry says that, "The West has lost its moral and epistemic compass bearings. It has no shared criterion for judging whether human beings are moving up or down, standing still, or merely on the move only God knows where." Henry suggests that:

"Once the living God is banished, both Jesus Christ and the Bible become cognitive orphans. Not only are history and nature rendered godless, so that they can be assimilated readily either to mechanical determinism or to chaos, and not only is mankind rendered godless, so that humanity is free to play deity or to consider itself mere soulless specks of cosmic dust, but also the most basic referents of Christianity become embarrassing enigmas."

Gene Veith concurs by suggesting that today's apathy toward truth is because,

"there is no universal consensus about what is true." He contends that the postmodern culture "teaches that meaning is created by a social group and its language. According to this view, personal identity and the very contents of one's thoughts are all social constructions."

Thus, the postmodern person will want to shed an oppressive understanding of truth that seeks to restrict one's autonomy to construct the world as he or she sees it. Postmodernism advocates relativistic variety and rejects restrictive structures that seek to tyrannize individuals with "rules or criteria" for making or defending "truth-claims." This philosophical underpinning can be clearly seen in the debate over the exclusivity of salvation through Jesus Christ. Until the participants of a debate can agree about what their epistemological foundations are, there will be no way to even begin the debate or dialogue. While, both parties will appeal to an authority for their position, the Christian will point past autonomous reason to God himself. However, while the other participant is "free to reject the authority of Scripture, [he or she] will only substitute some other authority in its place." Nash reveals that this is precisely what happened to the philosopher John Hick. Hick once embraced at least some aspects of orthodox Christianity. However, once he gave up the epistemological foundations for those beliefs, he drifted away from orthodoxy into the pluralism he now embraces. The abandonment of truth in the secular world has certainly made powerful inroads into the church. David Wells comments,

"Without this transcendent Word in its life, the church has no rudder, no compass, no provisions. Without the Word, it has no capacity to stand outside its culture, to detect and wrench itself free from the seductions of modernity. Without the Word, the church has no meaning. It may seek substitutes for meaning in committee work, relief work, and various other church activities, but such things cannot fill the role for very long. Cut off from the meaning that God has given, faith cannot offer anything more by way of light in our dark world than what is offered by philosophy, psychology, or sociology. Cut off from God's meaning, the church is cut off from God; it loses its identity as the people of God in belief, in practice, in hope. Cut off from God's Word, the church is on its own, left to live for itself, by itself, upon itself. It is never lifted beyond itself, above its culture. It is never stretched or tried. It grows more comfortable, but it is the comfort of anesthesia, of a refusal to pay attention to the disturbing realities of God's truth."

This has certainly happened in my denomination as well as the church at large. Christ's church has mirrored the culture instead of leading the culture. The result is that instead of clinging to the touchstone proposition of the Christian faith, the church's anchor has been lifted and many of God's people are epistemologically adrift. The result is that the polls taken now show that there are as many people in the church as there are outside of the church who reject the notion of absolute truth. Yet in the face of this retreat from truth, the contemporary culture has not faced up to the logical consequences of a world and worldview without objective and absolute truth.

What is Truth and How is It Tested?

It is, of course, not enough to show that the culture and the church have strayed from their roots. The issue of what truth is and how a truth-claim may be tested now needs to be addressed. The essential nature of truth's relationship to faith cannot be abandoned for relativistic pluralism. Elton Trueblood says:

"If any religion or any part of religion is not true, we ought to give it up. To maintain the appearance of a faith merely because it is socially useful, or comforting, though believed to be false, is to deny what is asserted. If a religion is not true it is evil! If God is not, then prayer is a waste of good time and wholly indefensible. If there is no life after death, the sooner we find that out the better. In any effort to deal with religion philosophically, we must try to understand what we mean by truth. If we have differing or ambiguous conceptions of the nature of truth, further fruitful discussion will be impossible, for we may be arguing for different positions without knowing it."

Therefore, what is truth? Winfried Corduan provides a helpful way of understanding this question. He says,

"…there is some kind of reality that is constituted independently of what we say about it. In other words, either my car is in the parking lot or not; either the geometry of right triangles follows the Pythagorean theorem or not; either God exists or He does not. This reality is a given. Our statements are true if they correspond to the reality in question; they are false if they do not correspond. We call this the correspondence theory of truth…"

In other words, regardless of what reality might be, if something is true, it corresponds to that reality. For Christians, the truth proclaimed relates to God because he is ultimate reality. Because truth is ultimately grounded in the person and character of God, truth is absolute or objective, unchanging, and universal. This absolute, unchanging and universal truth corresponds between a belief, a judgment or proposition, and a fact or state of affairs. Again, it is important for the Christian to respond to the charge of being arrogant with the humble claim that it is God alone who is omniscient. It is God who knows "all the truth about everything and knows it perfectly. As creator of all, he is the ultimate source of all our knowledge, so that our attempts to know truth are dependent on him and bear witness to him." Thus, the Christian freely and humbly admits dependence upon the living God for his or her epistemological foundation.

Nevertheless, it is one thing to assert that one's proposition or religious belief is true and quite another thing to test that truth-claim. How does one test a religious or philosophical truth-claim? Ronald Nash suggests five such tests: reason, experience, outer world, inner world, and practice. While all five are extremely helpful in evaluating a worldview, the limitations of this paper prohibit examining all of them. Therefore, only the test of reason will be considered.

Nash says that by referring to the test of reason, he is referring to "logic or the law of noncontradiction." The law of noncontradiction states that A cannot be B and non-B at the same time and in the same relationship. What this means is that when two contradictory truth-claims are stated and compared to one another, if one is true, then the other one is necessarily false. Nash writes:

"Since contradiction is always a sign of error, we have a right to expect a conceptual system to be logically consistent, both in its parts (its individual propositions) and in the whole. A conceptual system is in obvious trouble if it fails to hang together logically."

This test obviously will not be as useful for those subjective religions or philosophies which make no universal truth-claims. However, Carl Henry says that "Logical inconsistency sacrifices plausibility; a logically inconsistent system cannot be valid or true."

Furthermore, any repudiation of the law of noncontradiction is purely artificial and temporary. Aristotle showed that the law of noncontradiction is indispensable for significant action, significant thinking and significant communication to take place. This means that one cannot explicitly "prove" the law of noncontradiction, yet any argument against it actually assumes the law. In order for significant action to take place one cannot therefore do and not do a certain task at the same time and in the same relationship. If significant thinking is to take place then one cannot affirm two contradictory propositions as true. Finally, if significant communication is to take place, then words and propositions cannot be contradictory nor have infinite amounts of meaning. More importantly, the use of logic is not the use of a human invention or meaningless word-games. According to Ronald Nash:

"'The true nature of logical conclusions has not been arranged by men, rather they studied and took notice of it so that they might be able to learn or to teach it. It is perpetual in the order of things and divinely ordered." For Augustine, the truth of propositions like '2+2= 4' does not consist simply in the mental act of making this judgment. Rather, its truth lies in the eternal reality which makes the judgment true. The truths of logic are not empty tautologies devoid of any reference to being."

Moreover, this is not merely a law of thought, but has a direct relationship to ontological reality. Nash suggests:

"The denial of the law of noncontradiction leads to absurdity. It is impossible meaningfully to deny the laws of logic. If the law of noncontradiction is denied, nothing has meaning. If the laws of logic do not first mean what they say, nothing else can have meaning, including the denial of the laws."

Thus a truth-claim, to be considered true, must actually correspond to reality or to the way things really are, and must not contain contradictions within the system. Once again, the test of reason can only serve as a negative test for truth. "…[T]he absence of contradiction does not guarantee the presence of truth." However, as one of five tests for truth, it is extremely useful.

More Than One Kind of Truth?

Forgive the "un-academic" length of this next quote, however, I believe it goes a long way in supporting the definition of truth just offered as well as dismantling the notion that there are two kinds of truth. Ravi Zacharias tells a humorous story about what happens to someone when they try to deny the universal, abstract and invariant nature of the laws of logic.

He writes,

Some time ago, when I was in California delivering a series of addresses on the Christian faith, a professor of philosophy who had been in the audience confronted me with a rather stern challenge. The situation was somewhat ironic and would have been quite humorous had it not involved some obvious irritation on the part of my antagonist. Flinging down the gauntlet, he dared me to speak the next night on the subject of "Why I Am Not a Hindu." I must confess I was rather taken aback, as this was an American gentleman who had adopted the Eastern mystical worldview for himself and was most agitated that I, an Indian, had committed my life to Christ. I interacted with him for a few moments in order to get a feel for the levelheadedness of our discussion and then said I would rather not deal with a frontal attack on any issue so culturally sensitive in such a setting. "Besides," I said, "I have heard it said that when you throw mud at others, not only do you lose a lot of ground, you also get your hands dirty." He was neither persuaded nor amused.

He was insistent and continued to challenge me. "Go ahead, speak on that subject, and I will bring my philosophy class with me. They will take you apart after you are through." Without question, by his polemic stance he was waging a psychological war.

By this point quite a crowd had gathered to listen with gladiatorial glee to this verbal slugfest. Unable to shake off this determined man, I finally made him a counteroffer. I had been planning to speak one night on "Why I Am a Christian"; I suggested that perhaps that would provide sufficient material upon which his philosophical heavyweights could pounce. "I would be delighted," I said, "to respond to any challenge on that. After all, implicit in that presentation would be why I am not anything else." And so he agreed.

As the lecture unfolded I could sense his discomfort, for I was touching upon the nerve of his worldview - the basic laws of logic and how they apply to reality. I began by establishing the law of noncontradiction, which contends that if a statement is absolutely contradictory, without qualification, that statement cannot be true. I continued by demonstrating that in the myriad postulations by Hinduism there are numerous contradictions, a fact admitted by even some of its leading proponents. If the law of noncontradiction applies to reality and Hinduism is plagued by contradiction, then I concluded that, as a system, Hinduism is false. To this very day, Hinduism lives with a titanic struggle between its two poles of theism (a belief in a personal deity) and monism (a belief in an impersonal, absolute reality). In fact, more and more, Hindus are prone to offer Hinduism not as a religion but as a culture because of its admixture of so many contrary strands.

Parenthetically, for those who are not familiar with this kind of thinking, and for whom philosophy is not part of the daily diet, the law of noncontradiction works something like this: Suppose my wife and I were walking together and you came by and said, "Hello, Mr. And Mrs. Zacharias. I hear you are expecting a baby." If, to your question, my wife answered "Yes" at the same time that I said "No," what would you think? You might conclude that an attempt at humor was being made, or that perhaps the woman accompanying me is not Mrs. Zacharias, or possibly that she has not yet broken the news to me. This is because the same question, at the same time, meaning the same thing cannot elicit two absolutely opposite answers. It is the simple clue to truth that we use in the courtroom and at our workplace. It is the law of noncontradiction. This was the key issue that this professor was going to address in our discussion.

At the end of the lecture, he stormed to the front with his note-takers and exploded, "You have done the greatest damage to Eastern philosophy I have ever seen anyone do, and the reason is that you don't understand the Eastern mind." Even his own students could not help but see the irony of a Westerner telling an Easterner that he did not understand the Eastern mind. This was indeed comical.

I decided the time had come to rescue this discussion from ridicule, so I asked him to meet me for lunch the next day where we could try and work through our disagreement. He accepted, and when we met, he wasted no time. He began with, "Your biggest problem is that you do not understand Eastern logic." I concluded it would be best to let him explain Eastern logic to me. His argument expounded on two kinds of logic, one the either/or logic and the other, the both/and logic. "The either/or logic," he said, "is built on the law of noncontradiction, meaning that if a statement is true, its opposite has to be false." So far I agreed with him.

As the professor waxed eloquent and expounded on the law of noncontradiction, he eventually drew his conclusion: "This is a Western way of looking at reality." I disagreed with that conclusion and asked him to cross it off his place-mat where he had delineated his syllogisms. He refused, and I allowed him to proceed, knowing that sooner or later he would have to reject his conclusion.

His next major explanation was on the dialectical method. This is not either/or; this is both/and. G.W.F. Hegel used this in his dialectic between an idea (a thesis) and its opposite (an antithesis) to form the synthesis (finding a middle ground). …My philosopher friend went to great lengths to establish the both/and logic as a superior way by which to establish truth.

"So Dr. Zacharias," he said, "when you see one Hindu affirming that God is personal and another insisting that God is not personal, just because it is contradictory you should not see it as a problem. The real problem is that you are seeing that contradiction as a Westerner when you should be approaching it as an Easterner. The both/and is the Eastern way of viewing reality." Again I asked him to strike out the last line of his conclusion on the both/and system, but of course he did not.

After he had belabored these two ideas of either/or and both/and for some time and carried on his tirade that we ought not to study truth from a Western point of view but rather from an Eastern viewpoint, I finally asked if I could interrupt his unpunctuated train of thought and raise one question. He agreed and put down his pencil.

I said, "Sir, are you telling me that when I am studying Hinduism I either use the both/and system of logic or nothing else?"

There was pin-drop silence for what seemed an eternity. I repeated my question: "Are you telling me that when I am studying Hinduism I either use the both/and logic or nothing else? Have I got that right?"

He threw back his head and said, "The either/or does seem to emerge, doesn't it?"

"Indeed it does emerge," I said. "And as a matter of fact, even in India we look both ways before we cross the street - it is either the bus or me, not both of us."

Do you see the mistake he was making? He was using the either/or logic in order to prove the both/and. The more you try to hammer the law of noncontradiction, the more it hammers you."

The universal, invariant and abstract nature of the laws of logic are unavoidable. There is no getting around it.

Blind Men and Elephants, Mountain Paths, and Wheel Spokes

Those who embrace pluralism eventually arrive at their "ace in the hole" objection to the Christian's exclusive truth-claim. The enlightened objection typically takes one of three forms: the story of the blind men and the elephant; a mountain with many paths to the top; or a wheel with many spokes leading to the common center. Upon close inspection, however, these "unanswerable" analogies proffered by the pluralist fall apart almost effortlessly.

Perhaps you have heard the story of the blind men and the elephant. Basically, the story is told from the perspective of a king who assigns five blind men to touch different parts of an elephant's body: a tusk, an ear, the side, a leg, and the tail. Thus, when they are told to reveal what an elephant is, they give different answers, all the while, speaking about the same object. The world's religions, we are told, are represented by the blind men. They are partially correct in their assessment about religion, God, or ultimate reality, but they only have part of the truth. The rest of the truth is found in the other religions. Therefore, the conclusion drawn is that it is the height of arrogance for a person to presume to make an absolute truth-claim about God or salvation that applies to all people in all places.

However, Lesslie Newbigin sheds some helpful light on this analogy. He writes,

"In the famous story of the blind men and the elephant… the real point of the story is constantly overlooked. The story is told from the point of view of the king and his courtiers, who are not blind but can see that the blind men are unable to grasp the full reality of the elephant and are only able to get hold of part of it. The story is constantly told in order to neutralize the affirmations of the great religions, to suggest that they learn humility and recognize that none of them can have more than one aspect of the truth. But, of course, the real point of the story is exactly the opposite. If the king were also blind, there would be no story. The story is told by the king, and it is the immensely arrogant claim of one who sees the full truth, which all the world's religions are only groping after. It embodies the claim to know the full reality which relativizes all the claims of the religions."

The fact is, all three of the analogies are designed at the beginning to bring about their desired conclusion. They may work for denominations of one particular religion, but they are inadequate to capture the essence of the world's religions and philosophies. A better analogy for the mountain with many paths to the top, would be many mountains with many paths. Instead of one wheel with many spokes moving toward a common center, a better analogy would be to speak of an 18-wheeler. The point is: pluralists are making the arrogant claim of knowing what the real truth of all the world's religions are, even if they are in sharp disagreement with the adherents of those religions. They attempt to place the burden of arrogance upon the Christian who is making a truth-claim about Christianity while reserving for themselves the virtuous characteristics of tolerance and open-mindedness. The truth is, the pluralist is making every bit as much of a truth-claim as the Christian. Therefore, we ought to ask: Is it arrogant to make a truth-claim? Or, is it arrogant to assume that everyone else is but you?

We're All Saying The Same Thing, Aren't' We?

The obvious point the pluralist wants to draw from the analogies listed above is that all religions are essentially teaching the same thing - are all trying to get to the same place. About those pluralists who suggest that we are all traveling different paths to arrive at the same destination, McGrath responds,

"Discussions about religious pluralism have been seriously hindered by some folk with a well-meaning but ultimately spurious mindset that is locked into the 'we're really all saying the same thing' worldview, which suppresses or evades the differences between faiths in order to construct some artificial theory to account for commonalities. The deliberate suppression of differences is academically unacceptable. Their evasion cannot be tolerated by any who are concerned about doing justice to the religions of the world as they are viewed by their own adherents, rather than in the artificially reconstructed versions of these faiths that emerge from the homogenizing tendencies of scholars of religion.

In an important recent study, Yale theologian Kathryn Tanner argues that liberal pluralist theology has succumbed to 'colonialist discourse.' Any attempt to reduce the religions to manifestations of the same transcendental impulses or to minimize their differences for the sake of theoretical neatness is unacceptable:"

The fact is, the world's religions and philosophies are not saying the same thing at all. "Ravi Zacharias has observed that most people think all the religions of the world are essentially the same and only superficially different. But the opposite, he says, is the case: The religions of the world are essentially different and only superficially the same."

Erwin Lutzer clarifies this important point. He writes,

"When you travel through Switzerland, you often see two mountains in the distance that appear to be joined, but as you get closer you may find that they are separated by very sheer cliffs. And down below is a fast-flowing, uncrossable river.

Take a superficial look at Christ and other gods and you might think there are some impressive similarities. Take a closer look and you will discover that they are separated by an unbridgeable chasm. Christ has little in common with other teachers, prophets, Swamis, and gurus. It is not just that He stands taller than others; in His presence they disappear somewhere beyond the horizon."

Conclusion

The point of this paper is this: The pluralist's position is false, and therefore, arrogant. The Christian who makes an exclusive claim for salvation in and through Jesus Christ alone would also be arrogant if the claim was false. However, the Christian believes with all of his heart, soul and mind that it is true. Furthermore, the Christian believes that the One about whom he is making such a bold claim, has told all Christians to proclaim this truth to all the world. Of course, the pluralist, if he is correct, is not arrogant by saying that there are many paths to God. However, he is if his belief is false, for then he is merely offering a personal preference or opinion. Lutzer comments on this:

"What happens when religion is reclassified as nothing more than personal opinion? Modern man no longer has a criterion by which competing ideas about God can be judged. As Lesslie Newbigin has pointed out, Hitler was certain that he had a mission from God. Do we take his word for it? If not, on what grounds do we deny his testimony? Without an objective standard, everyone is free to affirm even a demonic god and we have no rational reason to say he is wrong. In a world of uncritical pluralism, in a world where idolatry is impossible, each person's idea of God or gods has just as much validity as that of someone else."

I believe this "uncritical pluralism" has indeed been shown to be manifestly false, and therefore, arrogant. Conversely, because Christianity claims to be a revealed truth, it is actually a sign of humility and obedience that believers embrace, proclaim, and defend their Christian faith. To avoid or reject this responsibility is the highest form of of arrogance because one presumes to know better than God. Therefore, what other response could possibly be more appropriate than to confess with one's mouth and believe in one's heart that Christianity is true, and not merely preferable. Far from being arrogant, Christians have historically proclaimed instead, that they are the humble stewards of the truth of the one, true, and living God.

Appendix:

Brief Examples of Varying Religious Beliefs

Although many examples could be cited, we can see the radical differences of the world's religions and philosophies by just looking at just two doctrines; their understanding of God, or the Religious Ultimate and their view of salvation. Erwin Lutzer has summarized these very well for our general purposes.

Doctrine of God or Religious Ultimate

"As you might have guessed, the major non-Christian religions not only disagree regarding their understanding of the Religious Ultimate, or God, but they don't even agree on whether such a being (of whatever description) exists!

Hinduism believes in 300,000 gods. …If we ask how these gods can peacefully co-exist, the answer is that they only represent an impersonal force, Brahman, the One, the Soul of the Cosmos. Our goal is to lose our identity in this ultimate Oneness.

Hinduism is not concerned with contradictions, hence there are many and often conflicting paths to the same Ultimate Reality." (Lutzer, p. 47)

"The Shinto religion, found primarily in Japan, is animistic, believing that gods (kami) reside in all creatures - even trees, the soil, or objects they inhabit; they are a part of the natural world. These gods are indifferent to morality and make no contribution to the battle between good and evil. Since the gods are seldom offended, sin does not exist. Disharmony, yes; sin, no." (Lutzer, p. 48)

"In contrast, most Buddhists do not even believe in a god (or gods). When the Parliament of the World's Religions issued a Global Ethic, it did not even use the word God because some Buddhists would have been offended." (Lutzer, p. 48)

"Islam is monotheistic… a concept which was borrowed from the Hebrew-Christian tradition. This deity is not a trinity, and he is so far removed from us that he could never become man. Allah is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ but actually was the tribal deity of Mohammed, who elevated his god to the position of Supreme Ruler. Nor can Allah be associated with other non-Christian gods because of the basic creed, 'There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.'" (Lutzer, p. 48)

The bottom line: The non-Christian religions cannot even agree on a basic understanding of the Religious Ultimate. Think of how vast the differences would be if we compared these ideas with Christianity! (Lutzer, p. 48.)

Doctrine of Salvation

"Hindus and Buddhists believe that we are trapped in a cycle of rebirths; we transmigrate, though how we do so is unclear. Both religions believe man's problem is not sit but ignorance. Through meditation and obedience we can be brought from confusion to reality.

But at this point, the two religions part ways: Buddhists are committed to the eight paths of Buddha, hope for Nirvana which is the elimination of all desire. Hindus, in turn, seek freedom from karma through disinterested selfless action. Shintos have no clear doctrine of the afterlife and therefore believe that salvation is striving to have a healthy, robust life in the here and now.

In Islam salvation comes by doing the will of Allah which is spelled out in 'the five pillars.' In the day of judgment some will be consigned to hell and others to paradise filled with sensual delights. Worshipers of gods other than Allah will certainly go to hell; but on one, not even a devoted Muslim, can know his eternal fate with certainty. One can only hope that in the day of judgment the good will outweigh the bad. (Lutzer, pp. 48-49)

Every religion makes truth-claims, not just Christianity. "Hindus believe in karma and reincarnation because they think these doctrines actually correspond to the way things are (they believe them to be true). Christians believe in the Trinity and strongly disagree with Islam which denies the deity of Christ and holds that Mohammed was a prophet of God. Would any one of these followers of these religions be willing to say, 'I believe these doctrines, but I do not claim they are true'?" (Lutzer, p. 51)

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