Whiteheadian Philosophy and Genuine Religious Pluralism:

Rationale for a Conference

David Ray Griffin (Copyright March 2001)

Prefatory Note: This paper provides a rationale for a conference of Whitehead-inspired philosophers of religion and theologians to discuss genuine religious pluralism. The hope behind the conference is that the participants, representing various religious traditions, will jointly articulate a Whiteheadian version of religious pluralism that can be seen to be acceptable and helpful from these various confessional stances. This rationale for the conference is, however, developed in terms of the need for a Christian pluralistic theology because it is the Christian form of absolutism that has been most destructive and, partly for this reason, most of the discussion of religious pluralism thus far has occurred among Christian thinkers. The purpose of the conference, however, is to articulate a Whiteheadian approach to religious pluralism, with the Christian version being one among others. (The intention is that this essay, being sent as a background paper to all participants, will, in slightly modified form, provide the introduction to the volume to come out of the conference. It can, therefore, be presupposed and cited in the other papers.)

For Christians to accept religious pluralism is to accept two affirmations--one negative, the other positive. The negative affirmation is the rejection of Christian absolutism, which means rejecting the a priori assumption that Christianity is the only religious tradition that provides saving truths and values to its adherents, that it alone is divinely inspired, that it has been established by God as the only legitimate religion, intended to replace all others. The positive affirmation, which is more than simply the reverse side of the negative, is the acceptance of the idea that there are religions other than Christianity that provide saving truths and values to their adherents. This twofold statement provides a summary account of what can be called “religious pluralism in the generic sense.” To accept generic religious pluralism is not necessarily to deny that Christian faith has distinctive truths and values of universal importance, the acceptance and implications of which Christians should seek to spread. But it means that, if Christians do believe they have such truths and values, they assume that other religions may as well.

      Many Christian theologians, believing that Christian faith should accept religious pluralism, have been developing pluralistic Christian theologies, or at least advocating the development of such. This development of pluralistic Christian theologies is seen as necessary for many reasons, including:

      1) The need for Christian theologians to help other Christians see what the acceptance of religious pluralism--which has been likened to “crossing a theological Rubicon”--would mean.  

      2) The need for theologians to help other Christians see that there are good theological, ethical and philosophical grounds for accepting religious pluralism.

      3) The need to show that the acceptance of religious pluralism is not antithetical to authentic Christian faith.

      4) The need to provide a new basis for Christian mission by showing that the rejection of Christian imperialism does not necessarily require the acceptance of a debilitating relativism.

      5) The need to support interreligious dialogue by clarifying both the motivations within Christian faith for engaging in it, especially in light of the global crises confronting humanity today, and the attitudes on the part of Christians that will increase the likelihood that such dialogue will be fruitful.

      The present essay, written as a rationale for a conference on Whiteheadian Philosophy and Genuine Religious Pluralism, is based on three convictions. The first is that the effort to promote the acceptance of religious pluralism, especially among Christians, is vitally important. The second conviction is that thus far most of the discussion of this issue has been based on a wrong turn. The very idea of “pluralistic Christian theology” is being brought into disrepute because it has become largely associated with a very problematic image of what such a theology would be. This image has evoked a fourfold critique of pluralistic Christian theology: that it falsely claims a neutral universality, that it is not really Christian, that it is not even genuinely pluralistic, and that it entails a debilitating relativism. The third conviction behind this conference is that Whiteheadian philosophy provides a basis for articulating a version of pluralistic Christian theology that does not pretend to an impossible neutrality, that is clearly Christian, that is genuinely pluralistic, and that clearly avoids a debilitating relativism. The hope is that we can produce a set of essays that will help convince fellow Christians that the emergence of pluralistic Christian theology is a development to be celebrated and promoted, not bemoaned and rejected--that the “pluralistic turn” in theology is not itself a wrong turn.

      However, although this rationale is written in terms of the issue of pluralism within Christian theology, there is a wider purpose behind this conference. Whitehead-inspired philosophers of religion and theologians from a variety of religious traditions are being invited. We hope to have representatives from at least Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and some primal or indigenous traditions as well as from Christianity. The hope is that the participants in the conference will articulate a Whiteheadian version of religious pluralism that can be seen to be acceptable and helpful from these various confessional stances. In spite of this wider purpose, this rationale for the conference is developed in terms of the need for a Christian pluralistic theology for two reasons. First, the Christian form of religious absolutism is the one that has had the most destructive consequences. Second, most of the discussion of religious pluralism thus far has occurred among Christian thinkers; in particular, the wrong turn taken by pluralism, mentioned above, is a turn taken by Christian thinkers. For these reasons alone, this rationale discusses the issue in terms of the need for a genuinely pluralistic form of Christian theology.

      This rationale proceeds in the following way. The first section illustrates, by means of Mark Heim’s critique of pluralism, how the equation of pluralism with one problematic type of it can lead to the conclusion that pluralistic theology as such is to be rejected. The second section discusses the notion of “generic religious pluralism” as that which all pluralistic theologies have in common. The third section further clarifies the meaning of generic pluralism by discussing four bases for the pluralistic turn in Christian theology. The final section discusses the relation between religious pluralism and modernity. The conclusion reemphasizes the need for a better version of religious pluralism than that which has dominated the discussion thus far.  

1. Heim’s Critique of Pluralistic Theology

The hitherto dominant proposals for how to develop a pluralistic theology have evoked an enormous amount of criticism.^[1] In his 1999 book, Salvations, Mark Heim provides an acute and extensive critique that is to a large extent a systematic synthesis of much of the prior criticism.^[2] I will use it to illustrate the way in which the widespread tendency to equate theological pluralism with one type of it--a type that is not very pluralistic--is creating a negative impression of pluralistic theology as such.  

Heim’s Examples of Pluralistic Theology

Part I of Heim’s book, entitled “Pluralisms,” contains critiques of three pluralist theologians, John Hick, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and Paul Knitter. Heim’s stated reason for focusing on them is that they provide “the most extensive and consistent cases for ‘pluralistic’ interpretations of religious diversity” (S 8).^[3] The implication of this statement is that if their versions of theological pluralism turn out on examination to be inconsistent and otherwise problematic, pluralism as such will have been shown to be unsatisfactory. Indeed, Heim suggests at the outset that this will be his conclusion. While saying that the pluralists have raised real questions, he adds: “If their accounts of religious diversity are seriously wanting, then . . . we may learn from them and search further” (S 2). By the end of the book he is consistently speaking negatively of “pluralism” and “the pluralists”--alternatively “the pluralist hypotheses,” “pluralistic theologies,” “pluralistic theology,” “pluralistic theories,” “pluralistic doctrine” (S 87, 88, 89, 90, 101, 103, 109, 125, 130, 228)--and calling for “a ‘post-pluralistic’ conversation” (S 226).

      However, although this is the central thread in the book, it is not the only one. A paradoxical feature of Heim’s critique is that although he consistently refers to Hick, Smith, and Knitter as “the pluralists” and of their positions as “the pluralistic hypotheses,” he contends that their positions are not really pluralistic.^[4] Referring with scare quotes to “‘pluralistic’ theologies,” Heim says: “Despite their appropriation of the title, these theologies are not religiously pluralistic at all” (S 129). Compounding the paradox, Heim indicates that he considers pluralism a good thing by offering a “true religious pluralism,” a “more pluralistic hypothesis,” “a truly pluralistic hypothesis” (S 7, 8, 130).

      This paradox raises the question as to why Heim continues to call Hick, Smith, and Knitter pluralists. If he believes they are not really pluralists, why not call them alleged pluralists, self-styled pluralists, or pseudo-pluralists? This change in language would remove the paradox, as there would be nothing inconsistent in offering a hypothesis that is more pluralistic than a pseudo-pluralistic hypothesis. This change would also mean that the rhetoric of the book would not be directed against pluralism. If all the negative comments were about pseudo-pluralists and pseudo-pluralist hypotheses, the book would not seem to suggest that pluralism as such should be left behind. The call for a “post-pseudo-pluralistic conversation” might be a mouthful, but it would make clear that what we now need is a genuinely pluralistic conversation. As it is, however, the dominant message of Heim’s book is that the pluralistic turn as such has been a mistake.^[5] 

      To understand this conclusion, along with the paradox in Heim’s position, we need to look more closely at his decision to let “pluralism” in theology be represented by Hick, Smith, and Knitter. It is always dangerous to judge a genus in terms of a limited number of species, to judge a type on the basis of a few tokens. Due to limitations of time and space, however, this practice is often necessary. The danger must, nevertheless, be kept in sight, the danger that one will make generalizations about the genus (type) that in reality apply to only some of the species (tokens). This danger is especially acute in polemical writing. With regard to a type of thought of which one is critical, one way to guard against this danger is to include among one’s samples the positions that are arguably the best or strongest versions of that type. Heim suggests that he did do this, saying that his three writers provide “the most extensive and consistent cases for ‘pluralistic’ interpretations” (S 8). Of Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis in particular, Heim says that “[n]o other version of pluralistic theology has reached the same level of breadth, clarity and consistency” (S 42). The dozens of critiques of Hick’s position that have been published, however, are replete with charges of inconsistency.^[6] Heim’s statement comes, in fact, at the close of a chapter in which he demonstrates that Hick’s position is full of inconsistencies. That demonstration, in conjunction with other problems Heim finds in his trio of pluralists, supports, of course, the conclusion toward which his book is headed--that pluralistic theology is to be left behind. That conclusion would follow, however, only if the problems that Heim identifies as belonging to pluralistic theology apply to every version of it. But they do not apply, for example, to the version put forth by John Cobb.

      The fact (to be shown below) that Cobb is an exception to Heim’s generalizations about pluralistic theologies raises the question of why he was not included among the representative pluralists. The criteria Heim mentions in justifying his decision to use Hick, Smith, and Knitter as the “three primary versions of pluralistic theology” (S 102) are five: the extensiveness, clarity, and consistency of the case they have made for pluralism and their prominence and influence (S 8, 42). In terms of these five criteria, one might suppose that Cobb should have been included.^[7] The reason for Cobb’s exclusion, however, seems not to be Heim’s doubts about his prominence or the clarity and consistency of his writing--although there are only a few references to Cobb’s writings in Heim’s book, they are all positive^[8]--but Heim’s view of Cobb as a critic, not an advocate, of pluralistic theology (S 88). To see the reason for this surprising view, we need to look more closely at how Heim’s equation of a particular species of pluralistic theology with the genus leads him to characterize pluralistic Christian theologies as not really pluralistic and not really Christian.

Pluralistic Christian Theologies as Not Pluralistic

In the first paragraph of this essay, I gave a brief account of what I am calling religious pluralism in the generic sense. Although there are many varieties of pluralism in this sense, they can be divided into two broad types, which can be called “identist pluralism” and “pluralistic pluralism.” In these expressions, the noun (pluralism) refers to generic pluralism while the adjectives refer to different ontological and soteriological theses about the relations of the various religions to each other. According to identist pluralism, all religions are oriented toward the same religious object (whether it be called “God,” “Brahman,” “Nirvana,” “Sunyata,” “Ultimate Reality,” “the Transcendent,” or “the Real”) and promote essentially the same end (the same type of “salvation”).^[9] Identist pluralism is, in other words, identist both ontologically and soteriologically. Pluralistic pluralism, by contrast, says that religions promote different ends--different salvations--perhaps by virtue of being oriented toward different religious objects (perhaps thought of as different ultimate realities). Pluralistic pluralism, in other words, is pluralistic soteriologically and perhaps also ontologically.^[10] There can, of course, be various versions of both identist and pluralistic pluralism.

      In light of these distinctions, there are two basic problems with Heim’s use of Hick, Smith, and Knitter to characterize pluralistic theology. First, they are all identist pluralists, so Heim’s sample includes no pluralistic pluralists. The second problem is that Heim fails to distinguish between these thinkers’ religious pluralism as such, which I have called their generic pluralism, and their identist versions of it. This second problem, more precisely, is that Heim ignores their generic pluralism in favor of their particular hypotheses. Because these particular hypotheses are all identist, Heim comes to think of this identism as, paradoxically, that which all pluralists have in common. In Heim’s mind, in other words, the pluralism that is generic to the pluralistic theologians is the denial of pluralism. (He says, for example, that the “principles of ‘pluralistic theology’ have the odd similarity of denying precisely any pluralism of authentic religious consequence” [S 7].) It is no wonder that he concludes that pluralistic theology is not really pluralistic.

      Although Heim does see all three members of the trio of as exemplifying what he calls the principles of pluralistic theology, it is plain that his characterization has been derived primarily from Hick, whose “pluralistic hypothesis” Heim considers “the most extensive and detailed case yet made for a pluralistic account of the religions,” adding: “No other version of pluralistic theology has reached the same level of breadth, clarity and consistency” (S 8, 42). Because Heim thinks of Hick as the paradigmatic pluralist, it is Hick’s version of pluralism that he especially equates with pluralism as such. This tendency is evident even in the title of the chapter devoted to Hick’s position. Although one might have expected a title such as “John Hick’s Pluralistic Hypothesis,” which would indicate that Hick’s is one pluralistic hypothesis among others, the chapter is titled simply “John Hick and the Pluralistic Hypothesis.” In the first section, headed “The Pluralistic Hypothesis,” Heim says that Hick

summarizes the “pluralistic hypothesis” this way. An “infinite Real, in itself beyond the scope of other than purely formal concepts, is differently conceived, experienced and responded to from within the different cultural ways of being human” (Hick 1989, 14). (S 15)

Part and parcel of this hypothesis, Heim adds, is that in each tradition a “transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness is taking place” (S 15). In later summarizing “the pluralistic hypothesis,” Heim says that it rests on two dubious assumptions: “a metaphysical dogma that there can be but one religious object, and a soteriological dogma that there can be but one religious end” (S 23).

      What Heim is here discussing, however, is not a hypothesis that is held in common by all pluralistic theologians, but only Hick’s particular hypothesis. Hick, in fact, makes this point, referring to “religious pluralism as a family of theories about the relationship between the religions.” Contrasting these pluralistic theories with exclusivist and inclusivist theories, he says that they all “acknowledge the other great world religions as independently authentic spheres of salvation/liberation/enlightenment.” Pointing out that this “broadly pluralistic view” is expressed in a “range of pluralistic points of view,” he distinguishes between “[his] own particular version of religious pluralism” and “other forms of religious pluralism” (CTR 149).^[11] 

      To be fair, however, I must immediately add that this statement, in which Hick distinguishes clearly between pluralism as such and his own version of it, is contained in a book, A Christian Theology of Religions, that was published only in 1995, the same year as Heim’s book appeared, and that prior to that statement Hick himself tended to write as if pluralism as such could be equated with his version of it.^[12] Indeed, in Hick’s 1989 book, The Interpretation of Religion, on which Heim primarily based his interpretation, Hick spoke of his own view--according to which there is only one religious ultimate, to which all the world religions are oriented (IR 234, 248, 347),^[13] and salvation in each of them is essentially the same, being “the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centredness” (IR 300)--simply as “The Pluralistic Hypothesis” (the title of Chapter 14), which Hick in turn seemed simply to equate with “Religious Pluralism” (the title of Part Four).

      Other commentators have also been misled by Hick into equating religious pluralism as such with Hick’s particular version of it. For example, Keith Ward, having said that Hick’s 1989 book “is a statement of the position which has come to be known as religious pluralism,” adds: “The pluralistic hypothesis is that religions provide different valid but culturally conditioned responses to a transcendent reality, and offer ways of transcending self and achieving a limitlessly better state centred on that reality.”^[14] Kevin Meeker and Philip Quinn provide an even clearer example. After rightly distinguishing religious diversity (which refers simply to “the undisputed fact that different religions espouse doctrines that are at least apparently in conflict and offer alternative paths of salvation”) from religious pluralism, they “reserve [the latter] term to refer to the position John Hick adopts in response to the fact of religious diversity.”^[15] Heim is far from alone, therefore, in equating religious pluralism as such with Hick’s version of it.^[16] 

      This said, however, this equation is a confusion, and one with unfortunate consequences. The principal consequence is that Heim, who sees Hick as making “the philosophical case for a pluralistic outlook” (S 15), regards Hick’s position, which “grounds the cognitive and experiential cores of the great religious traditions in one common object and one common salvific process” (S 16), to be representative of “pluralistic theologies” as such. Heim says, for example, that the “assumption that there is and can be only one religious end is a crucial constitutive element of ‘pluralistic’ theologies” (S 129). He also says that such theologies are opposed to the view that “different religions may offer alternative religious objects” (S 103).

      Although this characterization seems to be derived primarily from Hick, Heim sees all three members of his trio of pluralists as making similar points. Having said that in spite of their significantly different approaches they have “real similarities,” Heim continues:

One of the most dramatic is the way that each appears to deconstruct the pluralism it seeks to affirm. They insist that despite any apparent indications to the contrary, there is no diversity in the religious object (Hick), in the human religious attitude (Smith), or the primary religious function (Knitter).^[17] Thus they agree that the faiths cannot be regarded as serious religious alternatives. (S 102)

      Having thereby equated pluralism with the identist type of it, Heim offers, as “A More Pluralistic Hypothesis” (the title of his fifth chapter), the idea that there are “various realities . . . which are religiously significant and which ground diverse religious fulfillments (for instance, both some form of personal deity and a condition similar to that described as nirvana)” (S 146). In contrast with Hick’s view “that ‘Sunyata’ and ‘God’ are mythological cultural forms which represent ‘the Real,’ [Heim’s] hypothesis presumes that they are real religious ineffables available to their seekers” (S 154).^[18] Another point Heim makes against the position of Hick and the other (identist) pluralists is that, by regarding all the religions as essentially the same, they provide no motivation for dialogue among them, because their view implies that “the specific and special aspects of another faith tell us [nothing] that is of significant importance,” whereas Heim’s more pluralistic hypothesis “offers real hope for mutual transformation” (S 125, 123).

      However, as anyone knows who has read John Cobb’s Beyond Dialogue or some of his essays on religious pluralism in general or the relation between Christianity and Buddhism in particular--some of which have been helpfully collected by Knitter in Transforming Christianity and the World--these points are central to Cobb’s version of religious pluralism. Cobb criticizes, for example, the assumption that “what is approached as ‘ultimate reality’ must be one and the same” (TCW 87).^[19] He rejects, in particular, the idea that the terms “God” and “Sunyata” (or “Emptiness”) refer to the same reality (BD 87-90, 110; DOD 116).^[20] In a criticism of Hick’s position, Cobb says that in light of the fact “that Emptiness is not an object of worship for Buddhists. . . , it is not illuminating to insist that Emptiness and God are two names for the same noumenal reality” (BD 43). Cobb has long insisted, furthermore, that the “nirvana” or “satori” experienced or sought by the Buddhist is radically different from the salvation experienced or sought by the Christian.^[21] In response to the statement by fellow Christian theologian Monika Hellwig that “we have a common starting point and a common end in the transcendent ultimate” and that “what is truly ultimate is unified so that all quests for communion with the ultimate are in process of converging” (DOD 81), Cobb points out that “there are many Buddhists who do not understand themselves as seeking communion with the ultimate,” so their Buddhism offers “a different path to a different goal, a different name of a different aspect of reality, a different language through which something quite different from communion is sought” (DOD 81-82).^[22] On these bases, Cobb has not only pointed out that members of different religious traditions can learn from each other but has also advocated that the various traditions can undergo “mutual transformation.” In fact, although Heim uses this phrase with no reference to him, the prevalence of this phrase in discussions of interreligious dialogue is surely due primarily to the influence of Cobb, who employed it in, among other places, the subtitle of his Beyond Dialogue. What Heim is proposing as an alternative to pluralistic theologies is, in sum, what Cobb’s version of pluralistic theology has been proposing for some time. Rather than leaving pluralistic theology behind, therefore, we perhaps need merely to cease equating it solely with identist versions of it.^[23] 

Pluralistic Theologies as Falsely Claiming a Neutral Universality

One of the central points in Heim’s critique of pluralistic theologies is that they pretend to have transcended particularity--to have a neutral, universal perspective from which to decide what is valid and invalid in historic Christian faith and other particular religious traditions. They assign normative cognitive status, in other words, to an allegedly neutral meta-theory of religion, which is thought to stand equidistantly above Christian faith and all other particularistic religious commitments (S 4, 10, 30, 34). Rejecting the “imperialism” involved when Christians judge other religions by their own norms, these pluralists “claim not to impose a particular norm as universal” (S 105). But, says Heim,

[T]his is largely an optical illusion. There is no ‘God’s eye view’ from which to discern [the general facts of the religions or human existence]. A meta-theology claims to offer a view which is not a Christian one or a liberal Western one alongside an orthodox Jewish one or a liberal Muslim one, but rather a view on a different level and in some qualitative way beyond such particularity. It is a claim that cannot be validated. To demonstrate that one, for instance, no longer grants authority to Christian or Muslim norms is no evidence that one does not hew to others just as particular. (S 105)

This twofold criticism--that pluralistic theologians unrealistically and even incoherently insist that it is wrong to use the norms of one’s particular religious tradition to evaluate others, and that they then turn around and use their own norms, which are in fact just as particularistic, to judge all the religious traditions--is one that Heim reverts to time and time again (S 4, 10, 30, 34, 66, 91, 120, 124, 138, 141-42, 190, 210)). It is, along with his related point that pluralistic theologies are not really pluralistic, his fundamental criticism.  

      It is, however, a criticism that does not apply to Cobb’s version of pluralistic theology. The denial of a neutral standpoint has, in fact, been central to Cobb’s perspective from the outset. Two of Cobb’s earliest books argue that, on the one hand, Christian theology proper requires a “natural theology” in the sense of a philosophical account of God, humanity, and the world, and that, on the other hand, there is no such thing as a “natural theology” in the sense of a purely neutral account, unaffected by some particular historical tradition with a particular vision of reality.^[24] What the Christian theologian needs, therefore, is a Christian natural (philosophical) theology,^[25] because the normative employment of a philosophy embodying some other vision of reality will inevitably lead to a distortion of the Christian message.

      This standpoint is reflected in an essay originally written for a volume titled Toward a Universal Theology of Religion.^[26] Cobb begins with a critique of that title, saying that he fears that the phrase “universal theology” suggests “that theology can begin with a perspective shaped neutrally by all the ways rather than by any of them in particular,” which would mean that “a universal theology will replace specifically Christian theology” (TCW 79). In a paragraph that could have been written by Heim, Cobb continues:

If that is the meaning, then I protest in the name both of realism and of Christian faith. In the name of realism I protest that the pretense to stand beyond all traditions and build neutrally out of all of them is a delusion. In the name of Christian faith I protest against the implicit relativization and even negation of basic Christian commitments. (TCW 79)

It would seem, therefore, that pluralistic theologians need not be unaware of the impossibility of shedding their historical spectacles in favor of a God’s-eye point of view.

Pluralistic Christian Theologies as Not Christian

Besides characterizing pluralistic Christian theologies as not really pluralistic and as falsely claiming to have transcended particularity, Heim also portrays them as not really Christian by virtue of the fact that they call for “an unequivocal denial of Christian uniqueness,” thereby rejecting the idea that the Christian tradition has any “unique religious value” (S 2). This complaint is closely related to the idea of a neutral meta-theory of religion. Any allegedly neutral meta-theory adopted by a Christian theologian will be either implicitly Christian, which is Heim’s critique of Knitter’s attempt to employ “justice” as a neutral norm (S 91-98, 127),^[27] or else hostile to Christian faith, as is Hick’s meta-theology. In the latter case, employing it normatively will lead to emptying Christian faith of its substance.

      In Hick’s case, the meta-theory in question is the hypothesis that the various ideas of ultimate reality--whether they be ideas of ultimate reality as personal or as impersonal--are all phenomenal appearances of “the Real,” understood as a noumenal reality, in the Kantian sense, with this taken to mean that no categories applying to worldly beings can apply to it, even analogically. One implication of this meta-theory is that none of the substantive predicates that Christians apply to God, such as “being good,” “being powerful,” and “having knowledge,” can be thought to apply to the Real in itself (IR 239). The result is that, as Heim says (S 20), “Any language within a religious tradition which intends to be about the Real in itself . . . can only be mythological”--with myths being true if, as Hick says, they “evoke in us attitudes and modes of behaviour which are appropriate to our situation vis-à-vis the Real” (IR 351). Although Hick means to validate the cognitive content of religion, the cognitive content of the theistic religions that is validated is identical, Heim points out (S 21), with the cognitive content of the nontheistic religions. Accordingly, although Hick says that religions evoke dispositions “appropriate to the Real” (IR 353), this phrase, Heim rightly says (S 30), “tells us literally nothing,” because we are said to have no idea what the Real is like. This position supports Hick’s view that nothing about the salvific process as understood in Christianity (or any other tradition) has any essential importance, nothing beyond the abstract description of the move from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness. In the name of this meta-theory of religion, Heim complains,

Hick is willing to limit sharply the extent of the truth value he could otherwise grant to particular traditions. For instance, since he is committed to the conclusion that the religions are all talking about “the Real” and about the same identical ultimate human destiny, he is committed to the assumption that everything the faith traditions say or do which points to another conclusion is fundamentally mistaken. (S 34)

Hick’s use of his meta-theory leads to the denial, Heim adds, that the Christian (or any other) tradition has unique religious value (S 2).

It seems to be a paradoxical axiom in [Hick’s] hypothesis that anything about which it is possible to differ religiously cannot be religiously significant to the extent of leading toward a different religious fulfillment than others. By means of your religious tradition you achieve religious fulfillment. But absolutely nothing which is distinctive in your tradition, in the life of faith that you lead, can be integral to that fulfillment itself. (S 26)

      Seeing a similar denial of Christian uniqueness in Smith, with his reduction of Christian faith to a disposition or attitude that is identical with the “faith” of all religious people, and in Knitter, who wrote the preface to The Myth of Christian Uniqueness,^[28] Heim concludes that a position that would “include grounds for crediting as valid and appropriate the various traditions’ testimony regarding their own uniqueness” would require going “beyond the existing pluralistic theories” (S 125).

      That conclusion follows, however, only because Heim has drawn his picture of pluralistic theories from identist pluralists alone. Heim’s generalizations are again disproved by Cobb’s pluralistic pluralism. Cobb explicitly affirms that Christianity is unique in the sense that it “achieves something fundamentally different from other religions” (TCW 62). “It is quite likely,” he adds, “that the precise salvific experience  brought about through faith in Jesus Christ occurs in no other way” (TCW 86). Similarly to Heim, who wants a position that will allow each tradition to affirm its own uniqueness (S 125), Cobb declares, in response to the question whether he is affirming Christian uniqueness: “Certainly and emphatically so! But I am affirming the uniqueness also of Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. . . Further, the uniqueness of each includes a unique superiority, namely, the ability to achieve what by its own historic norms is most important” (TCW 72).

      That reference to norms might sound too relativistic for Heim, given his insistence that we cannot help but use our own norms to judge the beliefs and practices of other religions. Cobb, however, explicitly says that “[a]s a Christian I can, and do, evaluate other communities and traditions by [my] norm,” meaning “what I would like everyone and every community to be about,” namely, “[c]ontributing to the indivisible salvation of the whole world.”  This statement is not antithetical to Cobb’s pluralism, however, because he recognizes the equal right of people in other traditions to evaluate Christianity by their own norms (TCW 182).

      We can see, therefore, that Heim’s reasons for considering pluralistic Christian theology not really Christian do not apply to Cobb’s position. This is not a judgment with which Heim would disagree. Heim, in fact, cites Cobb favorably for holding that, in Heim’s words, “there is no reason for religious traditions not to bring convictions of uniqueness and the universal validity of their special beliefs into [interreligious] dialogue” (S 144). What is at issue, as I indicated above, is whether Cobb should be considered a pluralist. Heim assumes not.^[29] On the page just cited, Heim contrasts Cobb’s position with “contemporary pluralistic views.” Heim elsewhere mentions Cobb as one of the theologians who contributed to a “collection of essays critical of pluralistic theology” (S 88). Heim’s reference is to Christian Uniqueness Considered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, edited by Gavin D’Costa, which was written in opposition to The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, edited by Hick and Knitter.

      To sort out this issue, we need to look at Cobb’s contribution to the D’Costa volume, which he titled “Beyond ‘Pluralism.’”^[30] The possibility that Cobb did not mean to be rejecting pluralism as such, but only a position that has misleadingly usurped the name, is suggested by the scare quotes around the term.^[31] That this is indeed the case is confirmed in the essay’s first paragraph, in which Cobb says:

How odd I find it to be writing for a collection of essays in criticism of theologies espousing religious pluralism! Yet I have agreed to do so because of the very narrow way--indeed an erroneous way, I think--in which pluralism has come to be defined. By that definition of pluralism, I am against pluralism. But I am against pluralism for the sake of a fuller and more genuine pluralism. (TCW 62)^[32] 

In the following paragraph, Cobb explains that he had declined to write a paper for the conference on which the Hick-Knitter volume was based because he rejected “the consensus that conference was supposed to express and promote,” which was that “the several major religions are, for practical purposes, equally valid ways of embodying what religion is all about. The uniqueness that is rejected is any claim that Christianity achieves something fundamentally different from other religions” (TCW 62). The crucial point for our purposes is that Cobb rejects the idea that religion has a “normative essence” (TCW 66)--an essence (“what religion is all about”) that can be used normatively to evaluate the various religions (TCW 64-65)--so that one could say, as Hick and Knitter wish to say, that all the religions have “rough parity” in the sense that “they all accomplish the same goal equally well” (TCW 64).^[33] 

      Cobb’s criticism, being based on his conviction that different religions have different goals, which he calls “radical pluralism” (TCW 72), is the same as Heim’s criticism (S 26) of Hick’s belief that, because “one identical salvific process is taking place in them all,” we can comparatively evaluate the religions by asking “how well is each doing at what all are about?” The only difference between Cobb and Heim here is that Cobb makes this criticism in the name of a “fuller and more genuine pluralism,”^[34] whereas Heim, having accepted the definition of pluralism that Cobb regards as narrow and erroneous, makes this criticism in the name of a rejection of pluralism. The fact that Heim has accepted this definition, however, leads to several problems.

Resulting Problems in Heim’s Position

One problem resulting from Heim’s acceptance of the term “pluralism” for a position he rejects is that although he, like Cobb, wants a more truly pluralistic position, he must come up with some other term for it. He chooses the term “inclusivism.” But this is confusing. Inclusivism as usually understood, as Heim knows (S 131, 159, 224), is a soteriological doctrine affirming a twofold inclusiveness of Christianity. It asserts that Christianity is the only religion in full possession of saving truth, so that whatever religious truths are found in other religions are already included in Christianity. And it asserts that although all salvation comes through Jesus Christ, people in other religions can be included in this salvation.^[35] Heim rejects inclusivism in this classical sense, arguing instead that other religions provide alternative fulfillments, different “salvations,” involving different religious truths. Heim calls this position “pluralistic inclusivism” (S 152), suggesting that it simply involves moving “a step beyond” classical inclusivism. In Heim’s usage, however, “inclusivism” no longer has a soteriological meaning. The soteriological dimension of Heim’s position--the fact that salvation (of one type or another) can be realized by members of various religious traditions--is carried by the adjective “pluralistic.” The term “inclusivism” has for Heim only an epistemic meaning, referring to the aforementioned fact that we necessarily regard the grounds of our own judgments as the best (S 138, 222), which Heim takes to mean that one inescapably believes that “one follows the most inclusive true religion” (S 227). Because this epistemic point and the point about a plurality of salvations are notions that his “pluralists” deny, Heim means his position to be an advance--to a “post-pluralistic” position (S 26). However, given what the term “inclusivism” has usually been taken to mean, at least in contrast with exclusivism and pluralism, Heim creates confusion by using it for a purely epistemic doctrine.^[36] And in light of the fact that inclusivism as usually understood rules out pluralism, the label “pluralistic inclusivism” seems oxymoronic.^[37] But, given the fact that Heim had accepted the equation of “pluralism” with a theological position that he found untenable, he needed some other term, and “inclusivism” evidently seemed the best candidate, given the fact that identist pluralists tend to deny that Christians should use their own norms to evaluate other religious-ethical positions. Seeing a reason for this choice of terms does not, however, remove the confusion.

      A second problem is that Heim’s characterization of theological pluralism simply does not apply to most of the theologians who call themselves pluralists and/or would normally be considered pluralists. Besides Cobb, there are many such theologians that Heim himself recognizes as pluralists. For example, on a page in which he is justifying his selection of Hick, Smith, and Knitter to represent pluralism, Heim includes a footnote in which he explains that he did not include Raimundo Panikkar,  even though Panikkar’s work is sufficiently broad and extensive, because “he literally breaks the mold which pluralistic theology has set for itself” (S 14n). One problem here is Heim’s reifying language, as if “pluralistic theology” were itself a thing, even an agent, that could set a mold for itself. Would it not be more accurate to say that certain theologians have articulated a type of pluralism that they hoped would become the mold for pluralistic theology, and that Heim (among others) has accepted this mold? The more important problem, however, is that Heim has admitted that there is at least one bona fide pluralist who does not fit his characterization. Moreover, Heim also mentions Aloysius Pieris and Stanley Samartha as theologians who, along with Panikkar, are “on somewhat different wave-lengths than my three primary subjects, despite their own willingness to be identified in some way as ‘pluralists’” (S 8). Heim also mentions still more pluralists--David Krieger, Marjorie Suchocki, Grace Jantzen, and George Bosworth Burch--to whom his characterization would not apply. One could, furthermore, come up with a list of many other pluralistic theologians who would not fit the mold. Contained in such a list would be theologians from previous generations, including Ernst Troeltsch, called by Heim himself the “Protestant pioneer in the field of religious pluralism” (S 173).

      These problems in Heim’s position--that his characterization of theological pluralism does not fit all or even most theological pluralists, that it leads him paradoxically to reject pluralism while offering “a more pluralistic hypothesis,” and that it leads him to resort to a confusing label for his own position--suggest the need for something that Heim does not provide: a characterization of generic religious pluralism--of what religious pluralism in the most general sense is--on the basis of which different species of religious pluralism could then be identified. Providing such a characterization is the task of the next section.

2. Generic Religious Pluralism

For Christians to accept religious pluralism, as I suggested at the outset, involves the rejection of what can be called Christian absolutism, the idea that Christianity is the absolute religion, the sole vehicle of divine salvation.^[38] This Christian absolutism, as we have seen, has taken two major forms: “exclusivism,” according to which only Christians can be saved, and “inclusivism,” according to which people in other religious traditions can be saved--perhaps if they have followed the light available to them in those traditions--by virtue of the salvation effected by Jesus Christ.^[39] Alan Race, whose 1983 book is usually credited with first articulating the exclusivist-inclusivist-pluralist typology, mentioned Paul Tillich, John Hick, W. C. Smith, and John Cobb as four examples of Christian pluralists in the then-contemporary discussion (CRP 71, 88, 98). In the more recent discussion of prominent advocates of pluralism, Tillich has largely been replaced by Paul Knitter. I will, accordingly, use Hick, Smith, Cobb, and Knitter as my four primary examples of recent pluralists.

      My main purpose here is simply to show that these pluralistic theologians do clearly affirm what I am calling generic pluralism. This point is important because in much of the criticism of pluralism, as illustrated in the previous section, this generic meaning of pluralism tends to drop from view as critics focus on more particular theses of this or that pluralist. What needs to be more clearly seen is that religious pluralism as such should be equated simply with generic pluralism. Because Hick is the pluralist in relation to whom this distinction is most often ignored, I will document his affirmation of generic pluralism first.

John Hick

In an essay titled “The Non-Absoluteness of Christianity,” Hick rejects the “absolutist position,” which affirms “a Christian monopoly of salvific truth and life” and thereby the conviction that the Christian religion should seek “to dispossess the non-Christian religions.”^[40] The pluralistic position, he says, holds instead that “Christianity is not the one and only way of salvation, but one among several.”^[41] In a previously mentioned chapter, “The Pluralistic Hypothesis,” Hick says that pluralism rejects the view that “there can be at most one true religion, in the sense of a religion teaching saving truth” (CTR 24). The traditional belief that “God must intend [Christianity] to supersede all other religions and to embrace the entire human race,” Hick later adds, is “incompatible with a pluralist understanding of Christianity as one salvific response among others” (CTR 87). In a chapter with the title “A Christianity That Sees Itself as One True Religion Among Others,” Hick attributes an “implicitly pluralistic theology” to Christians who assume that their “Jewish or Muslim or Hindu or Sikh or Buddhist friends and acquaintances are as fully entitled in the sight of God to live by their own religious traditions as we are to live by ours,” because they have “their own authentic form of faith” (CTR 125). All these statements, while underlying Hick’s particular hypothesis about the Real and the universal movement from Self- to Reality-centeredness, could be affirmed by many theologians (such as Cobb) who reject that particular hypothesis.

      Heim, as we saw, equated Hick’s pluralism with his particular hypothesis as to how best to develop a pluralistic philosophy and theology. This equation led Heim to the conclusion that Hick’s position is not really pluralistic. At one point, however, Heim said of Hick and other (identist) pluralists that their “pluralism is real but superficial” (S 7). However, given his identification of Hick’s pluralism with his “pluralistic hypothesis,” Heim had no way to explain this point. By recognizing the affirmation of generic pluralism underlying Hick’s particular hypothesis, we can see that his pluralism is indeed real.^[42] The distinction between identist and pluralist pluralism allows us, at the same time, to explain why the pluralistic position developed in Hick’s particular hypothesis is superficial. That point should not prevent us from seeing, however, that Hick clearly affirms, and is motivated by, pluralism in the generic sense.  

Paul Knitter

This generic pluralism is also clearly affirmed by Paul Knitter, who speaks of “the simple but profound insight that there is no one and only way” and of the “possibility that other religions may be ways of salvation just as much as is Christianity” (NON 5, 17).^[43] Describing the “paradigm shift” from either exclusivism or inclusivism to pluralism as the move from an insistence on the absoluteness of Christianity “toward a recognition of the independent validity of other ways,”^[44] Knitter holds with other pluralists that there are “many equally valid religions” and that “no one religion can claim to be absolutely . . . superior over all others.”^[45]  Whereas absolutists insist that Christianity has a total or virtual monopoly on religious truth, Knitter affirms “the plurality of religious truth” (JON 28).^[46] Endorsing “historical consciousness,” which realizes that “insofar as every existing reality is historical, it is limited,” Knitter explicitly draws the conclusion that Christianity, like every other religion, is limited (NON 36; JON 29). This conclusion leads to the “dialogical imperative,” because it is through dialogue with members of other religious traditions that “we can expand or correct the truth that we have,” thereby overcoming the “limitations of our own viewpoint” (JON 31).^[47] 

Wilfred Cantwell Smith

Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s endorsement of generic pluralism is illustrated by his dismissal of the “fallacy” held by traditional Christians that “they alone were in God’s grace, were saved,”^[48]  in favor of “pluralism,” according to which “the figure of Christ” is only “one form among others [through] which God has entered history,” so that we can hold that “God has played in human history a role in and through the Qur’an, in the Muslim case, comparable to the role in the Christian case in and through Christ.”^[49] Given the notion that the meaning of idolatry is “to treat, mistakenly, something mundane as if it were divine,” Smith considers idolatrous the tendency of Christians “to hold that their own forms [doctrines and practices] are given by God, others’ forms are not.”^[50]  

John Cobb

This generic pluralism is also clearly affirmed by Cobb. In Christ in a Pluralistic Age, he indicates that the pluralism he accepts involves the rejection of the traditional view “that Christianity is the one right or true way” (CPA 18).^[51] In his book on interreligious dialogue, he says, after having indicated that he endorses pluralism, that he “join[s] with Paul Knitter, John Hick, and Wilfred Cantwell Smith in their rejection of the deep-seated tendency of Christians to absolutize their tradition in some way” (BD 14, 41).^[52] Cobb’s endorsement of generic pluralism is also illustrated by his acceptance of the normative judgment “that in a plurality of religious movements each deserves respect in its own terms and that Christians should not make claims for their doctrines of a sort that they do not accept as equally legitimate for others to make about theirs”--a judgment that implies that the various movements are “on the same level” (TCW 35). Besides recognizing the descriptive fact that we live in a pluralistic age, meaning one in which “almost everyone is forced to come to terms with religious differences,” Cobb endorses the normative interpretation that “the diversity is acceptable and that people should learn to live with it in mutual appreciation” (TCW 50). As well as supporting the need for Christians to engage in dialogue with members of other religious traditions, Cobb explicitly endorses the implication of this engagement, which is that the Christian thereby “sets aside all claims of an exclusiveness that entails a monopoly of wisdom” and respects the other traditions “as comparable in worth” (DOD 10). While regarding the Christian experience of salvation as distinctive, he accepts “the Hindu account of moksha or the Zen Buddhist account of satori [as] just as authentic” (TCW 86).

3. Four Bases for the Pluralistic Turn

Each of these pluralists has his own specific proposal for the best way to develop a pluralistic theology suitable for Christians in our time. These specific proposals differ more or less greatly from each other, and some of the proposals, especially Hick’s, have provoked an enormous amount of debate. Most of this debate, as Heim’s book illustrates, has tended to blur the distinction between pluralism as such, which I am calling generic pluralism, and one or more specific proposals as to how to develop a pluralistic Christian theology. The nature of generic pluralism can be brought into clearer focus by seeing the various bases for affirming it.

      Because it is important, as I emphasized earlier, to have a conception of generic pluralism that applies to all theologians who would normally be considered pluralists, I will expand my examples of recent pluralists in this discussion to include Langdon Gilkey, Huston Smith, Gordon Kaufman, Alan Race, Marjorie Suchocki, and Paul Tillich. For a list of religious pluralists to be representative, furthermore, it must take account of the fact that pluralism did not arise suddenly in recent decades but has a much longer history. Alan Race points out, for example, that forms of pluralism were articulated in the early part of the 20th century by William Ernest Hocking, Arnold Toynbee, and most notably Ernst Troeltsch, whose work, says Race, “represents the real beginning of the argument for pluralism in the Christian theology of religions” (S 82). Although Troeltsch was certainly a pivotal figure, it is probably more correct to call him, as does Cobb, “the first great Christian relativist” (BD 13). Religious pluralism as such must be traced back to some of the 18th-century deists, such as Matthew Tindal and G. E. Lessing.^[53] In this discussion of various bases for what is sometimes called the “pluralistic turn” in Christian theology, nevertheless, I will limit the examples to pluralists from the time of Troeltsch. Of the various bases for this turn, four seem especially important: sociological, theological, ethical, and ontological.  

Sociological

One of the reasons for the rise of religious pluralism among Christians in the West is a twofold sociological change. One side of this change involves the fact that there is now much more knowledge of other religions, based not only on books and other forms of mass media but also on increasingly having neighbors who belong to these other religions. This greater knowledge has broken down old stereotypes and brought awareness of the spiritual riches in the other traditions and the beautiful lives they can produce. In Hick’s words, “it has become a fairly common discovery that our Muslim or Jewish or Hindu or Sikh or Buddhist fellow citizens are in general no less kindly, honest, thoughtful for others, no less truthful, honourable, loving and compassionate, than are in general our Christian fellow citizens” (CTR 13).^[54] Occurring concurrently with this rising appreciation of the wisdom and beauty in other traditions has been a more critical appraisal of Christianity. In the process of decolonization after World War II, Langdon Gilkey observes, the Christian faith widely came to be seen as more morally culpable, more imperialistic, and less spiritual than other religions.^[55] This twofold sociological change has made increasingly implausible the idea that Christianity is somehow different in kind from the other religions in terms of the ability to mediate saving truth.

Theological

Another basis for the shift to pluralism is a theological judgment about the primacy of the doctrine of divine love.^[56] Many modern Christian thinkers came to see Christian absolutism as in conflict with this doctrine. Arnold Toynbee argued, for example, that the Jewish-Christian “vision of God as being a jealous god, the god of my tribe as against the gentiles outside my tribe or my church,” should be rejected in favor of “the Jewish and Christian vision of God as being love,” which makes it seem “unlikely that He would not have made other revelations to other people as well.”^[57] Langdon Gilkey, more recently, has said that the emphasis put on “the width of the divine love” by modern Christian theologians has given rise to a rhetorical question: “Could the divine agape choose us because of the external ‘religion’ in which we live, and not reach out to others because of the external religions in which they grew up and which they now affirm?”^[58] Huston Smith, affirming the form of religious pluralism embodied in the “perennial philosophy” articulated by Frithjof Schuon, says that “it follows” from the divine benevolence that God’s “revelations must be impartial, which is to say equal: the deity cannot play favorites.”^[59] 

      This primacy of the divine love plays a central role in Knitter’s account, in his first book, of the modern theological move toward pluralism. Saying that traditional Christian faith involved a tension “between two fundamental beliefs: God’s universal love and desire to save, and the necessity of the church for salvation” (NON 121), he gives priority to the former, saying that “Troeltsch’s foundational conviction that God’s revelation is offered to all peoples and to all religions” is demanded by “Christian belief in a God who loves all human beings” (NON 33). Endorsing Karl Rahner’s point of departure in the doctrine of God’s universal salvific will (NON 125), Knitter says that this doctrine should be seen to imply that the revelation given to others must be a potentially saving revelation, so that “Christians not only can but must look on other religions as possible ways of salvation” (NON 116-17, 140).

      This motivation has also been central to Hick’s adoption of a pluralistic outlook. In one of his earlier books on the subject, for example, he said that “in wrestling with the problem of evil I had concluded that any viable Christian theodicy must affirm the ultimate salvation of all God’s creatures. How then to reconcile the notion of there being one, and only one, true religion with a belief in God’s universal saving activity?”^[60] In another book published about the same time, Hick spoke of an “acute tension” between the Christian teaching that “God is the Creator and Lord of all mankind and seeks mankind’s final good and salvation,” on the one hand, and the idea that “only by responding in faith to God in Christ can we be saved,” on the other, because this idea would mean that “infinite love has ordained that human beings can be saved only in a way that in fact excludes the large majority of them.”^[61] The particular way in which Hick has developed his pluralistic hypothesis means, to be sure, that he can no longer attribute love or benevolence to Ultimate Reality as it is in itself, except in a mythological sense, so it would now be incoherent for Hick to appeal to this theological justification for generic pluralism. The fact that Hick’s later thought has undermined this original justification, however, does not negate the fact that his turn to pluralism was originally motivated, at least in part, by the implications of the doctrine of the universal divine love.

Ethical

In the recent discussion, even more emphasis has been given to the ethical basis for the shift to pluralism. This ethical basis is very evident in Hick, who devotes several pages to the “destructive effects of the assumption of Christian superiority.”^[62] Speaking of these effects in relation to Jews, Hick says that “there is a clear connection between fifteen or so centuries of the ‘absoluteness’ of Christianity, with its corollary of the radical inferiority and perverseness of the Judaism it ‘superseded,’ and the consequent endemic anti-Semitism of Christian civilization, which has continued with undiminished virulence into and through [the] twentieth century.”^[63] With regard to the evils of the European colonization of most of the planet, Hick says that “the moral validation of the imperial enterprise rested upon the conviction that it was a great civilizing and uplifting mission, one of whose tasks was to draw the unfortunate heathen up into the higher, indeed highest, religion of Christianity.”^[64] The moral passion behind Hick’s pluralist project is especially evident in his discussion of the ways in which political conflicts can be intensified by religious differences, with the biggest obstacle to peaceful solutions coming from those people on both sides “with the most absolute religious beliefs.” Saying that “the absolutist aspect of each faith motivates young men to be willing to kill and be killed for a sacred cause,” Hick adds that “if this absoluteness were dismantled by the realization that one’s own religion is one among several valid human responses to the Divine, religion could become a healing instead of a divisive force in the world” (CTR 123).

      This ethical motivation for rejecting Christian absolutism is sometimes expressed in terms of the implications of the centrality of the commandment to love our neighbors. “In light of the primary, foundational role that love of neighbor plays in Christian life,” says Knitter, there is “something wrong with . . . the way traditional Christian theology has instructed me to look upon [my neighbors in other faiths] and treat them.” Knitter’s point is that we cannot really love these neighbors if we, instead of listening to their religious witness, are trying to convert them to our religion (JON 39-40).

      Marjorie Suchocki makes this point in terms of the idea of the “reign of God.” Pointing out that Jesus’s message of the reign of God invoked the prophetic demand to extend kindness and well-being to the stranger within the gates, which involves a reversal of the typical human proclivity to show kindness only to our own kind, Suchocki suggests that today the challenge to live the reign of God “meets its ultimate test in relation to those whose religious ways are not our own--those strangers who are now indeed ‘within our gates’ in this increasingly small world.” Contrasting this demand with Christian kindness to others based on the missionary aim of conversion, Suchocki adds that we are called “to extend well-being to those whom we neither require nor expect to become like ourselves.”^[65] We are today called, she concludes, “to live a reign of God that reaches not toward an imperialism of one religion--our own!--sweeping the planet, but that reaches toward a new form of community: a community made up of diverse religious communities, existing together in friendship.”^[66] 

      This ethical passion motivating the theological pluralists has been emphasized by Heim, who considers this passion to constitute their primary motivation: “The pluralist’s Copernican revolution begins with revulsion at the crimes of religious pride. . . . Before it is any kind of theory, pluralism is a commitment to exorcise the religious sources of human oppression” (S 72).

Ontological

Although these sociological, theological, and ethical bases are certainly important, there is yet another basis for the modern shift from Christian absolutism to pluralism, which in the current discussion is usually more presupposed than explicitly acknowledged. Indeed, it is arguably obvious that there must be another basis for the shift, because the sociological fact of religious diversity is not wholly new and the theological and ethical motivations, rooted in the doctrine of divine love and the commandment to love our fellow human beings, have been present in Christianity all along. To explain why pluralism has arisen among Christian theologians only in modern times, we require some distinctively modern basis for it. This basis is surely the rejection of supernaturalism, in the sense of the belief in a divine being that occasionally interrupts the world’s normal causal processes. Although supernaturalism in this sense was still affirmed by some of the founders of distinctively modern science, including Newton, it quickly lost support. As early as the 18th century (in France and Germany) and certainly by the middle of the 19th century (in Great Britain), it was widely assumed that the “scientific worldview” rules out any divine interruptions of the world’s normal causal processes.^[67] 

      Given this definition of supernaturalism, its rejection could be called the affirmation of naturalism. Simply to say that pluralistic theologians have affirmed naturalism, however, would be misleading, because the term “naturalism” has come to be used for a doctrine far more particular than simply the denial of supernatural interruptionism. It is now widely used, as by Hick (IR 1, 111), to designate an atheistic worldview. It is also often equated with a materialistic worldview, which, among other things, identifies the mind with the brain and thereby denies the possibility of life after death (given the denial of supernaturalism and thereby the possibility of any “resurrection of the body”). This materialistic naturalism is also usually regarded as involving the sensationist theory of perception, according to which all perception is sensory perception, because of the presumed impossibility of any nonphysical and hence nonsensory perception. This sensationism thereby implies, among other things, the impossibility of genuine religious experience understood as a nonsensory perception of a Holy Reality. Using “s” to stand for sensationism, “a” for atheism, and “m” for materialism, I refer to naturalism in this sense as “naturalism_sam.”^[68] One need not affirm naturalism_sam, however, to reject supernaturalism in the sense of a divine being that sometimes interrupts the world’s normal causal processes. Using “ns” to mean “nonsupernaturalist,” I have called naturalism in this more limited sense naturalism_ns.^[69] 

      Naturalism_ns is embodied, of course, in naturalism_sam and other forms of atheism (including doctrines that, while using the term “God” positively, think of God as an imaginary projection or in some other way that denies any causal efficacy to the referent of the term “God”). But it can also be embodied in many other worldviews. It is embodied in the deism affirmed by Matthew Tindal and the early John Hick. It is also embodied in Spinozistic pantheism, Kantian idealism, Hegelian idealism,^[70] and Whiteheadian-Hartshornean panentheism. As some of these examples illustrate, it is not self-contradictory, given the definition of naturalism as simply the rejection of supernatural interruptionism, to speak of “naturalistic theism.” Naturalism_ns does not, therefore, necessarily imply the denial of theism, in the sense of belief in a Holy Actuality distinct from the world. It does not even imply the denial that this Divine Actuality exercises variable causal influence in the world.^[71] But it does mean that interruptions of the world’s normal causal relations are never to be affirmed.

      Naturalism_ns is a (negative) ontological doctrine, asserting that events of a certain type never occur.^[72] It most clearly rules out the occurrence of miracles as traditionally defined--that is, as events that are brought about by divine causation in a way that is different in kind from the way in which most events are brought about. In the scheme of primary and secondary causation, which was long the standard framework for understanding the nature of miracles, God as the primary cause of all events was said to bring about most events by means of secondary (natural, finite) causes, whereas miracles were regarded as events in which God brings the events about directly, without the use of secondary causes.^[73] The acceptance of some version of naturalism_ns involves the affirmation that there are no events devoid of natural, in the sense of finite, causes. But, whether or not the language of primary and secondary causation be employed, the more general point of naturalism_ns is that if there is divine causation in the world, it is integral to the world’s normal causal processes, never an interruption of them.

      This ontological doctrine has epistemic implications. Human beings are fallible, their belief-forming processes being shaped by cultural conditioning, sin, and invincible ignorance. Ontological supernaturalism, however, allows for divine causation to override the normal belief-forming processes of particular human beings, canceling out the causes of fallibility, so that human beings could be vehicles of infallible revelation and inerrant inspiration. Ontological supernaturalism thereby supports epistemic supernaturalism, according to which certain doctrines can be affirmed as true simply on the basis of their alleged mode of origination. Questions of truth can be settled, in other words, by an appeal to authority. The rejection of ontological supernaturalism in favor of naturalism_ns implies the rejection of epistemic supernaturalism, with its authoritarianism. The question of the truth of a given worldview must be settled by appeal to the normal rational-empirical criteria of self-consistency and adequacy to the facts, not by the “way of authority.”^[74]

      This rejection of ontological and epistemic supernaturalism can be seen to be common to the various pluralistic theologians. Troeltsch explicitly rejected “the theory that the truth of Christianity is guaranteed by miracles,” whether “the so-called ‘nature-miracles,’ involving an infringement of natural law” or the so-called inward miracles of interior conversion, in which “an entirely different type of causation comes into operation from that which is operative anywhere else in the world.” Regarding the latter type, Troeltsch rejected the idea that we could be justified “in tracing the Platonic Eros to a natural cause, while we attribute a supernatural origin to the Christian Agape.”^[75] Alan Race, in dating the beginning of pluralism with Troeltsch, points to the connection between Troeltsch’s rejection of Christian claims to truth based on a supernatural account of Christian origins and his emphasis on the consequences of a historical consciousness (CRP 82). Race himself, in fact, evidently endorsed this connection. “Some form of pluralism in the Christian theology of religions is inevitable,” said Race, “if historical studies are treated seriously” (CPR 97). This rejection of supernaturalism could also be documented in the other early pluralists named by Race. Divine interruptions of the world’s normal causal processes is clearly ruled out, for example, by Tillich’s doctrine that God is being itself, not a being. The rejection of the idea that God acted supernaturally in Christian origins can also be seen in the writings of contemporary pluralists.

      Hick says, for example, that insofar as Christianity has “believed in miracles which arbitrarily disrupt the order of nature,” it is “incompatible with the scientific project” (CTR 53). At the center of Hick’s revision of traditional Christian doctrines to make them compatible with pluralism is his rejection of a substance christology based on a social trinity, which says that Jesus “was God--more precisely, God the Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity--incarnate” (CTR 15). This doctrine would imply “that Christianity, alone among the religions, was founded by God in person,” making it “God’s own religion in a sense in which no other can be” (CTR 15)--a point that Hick makes repeatedly (CTR 23, 87, 126; PRP 34).^[76] Given this supernaturalistic christology, the superiority of Christianity to all other religions is guaranteed a priori (PRP 36). Arguing that “this kind of arbitrary superiority-by-definition no longer seems defensible,”^[77] Hick says that if the question of superiority is raised, it must be treated as an empirical issue, to be settled by an examination of the facts.^[78] 

      This empirical approach involves the rejection of another dimension of the supernaturalism of traditional Christianity, its soteriological supernaturalism, according to which salvation involves a divine decision, based on arbitrary standards, that saves one from eternal damnation. Recognizing that Christian exclusivism and inclusivism both depend on some such definition of salvation, such as “being forgiven and accepted by God because of the atoning death of Jesus” (CTR 16-21), Hick suggests that “we define salvation . . . as an actual change in human beings, a change which can be identified . . . by its moral fruits” (CTR 16, 17). This actual change, which he usually calls the shift from self-centredness to Reality-centredness, is “a long process,” not a sudden, supernaturally-effected transformation (CTR 18). Hick decides that, even on this empirical or a posteriori approach, there is no basis for affirming the superiority of Christianity, because this salvific process seems to take place within all the great traditions “to a more or less equal extent,” leading Hick to attribute “rough parity” to all of them with regard to their salvific effectiveness (CTR 18, 68). The more fundamental point, however, is Hick’s denial of “any a priori overall superiority” based on a supernaturalistic understanding of Christian origins.^[79] 

      The importance of the rejection of supernaturalism is also clear in Langdon Gilkey’s discussion of the reasons why the plurality of religions came to be understood as “rough parity.” Besides connecting this notion of the “rough parity of religions” with “removing the absolute starting point of each,” he also defines the shift to parity as the move “from Christianity as the definitive revelation . . . to some sort of plurality of revelations.”^[80] Perhaps most significantly, Gilkey, with reference to “the liberal theology that grew out of the Enlightenment,” refers to the cultural forces through which “the doctrines of faith--creeds, confessions and even the words of scripture itself--began to be seen as human, as therefore historical and hence relative expressions.”^[81]  

      The rejection of supernaturalism can also be discerned in W. C. Smith’s form of pluralism. Smith says that our theology needs to be true to “our modern perception of the world.”^[82] He rejects the idea “that God has constructed Christianity” in favor of the idea that God “has inspired us to construct it, as He/She/It has inspired Muslims to construct what the world knows as Islam, or . . . Ramanuja to write his theological commentaries.”^[83] He rejects the idea “that God has given [Christianity a privileged status].”^[84] And he says that the assumption by Christians that “they have been accorded quite special treatment by God, available to no one else in like measure,” is “theologically awry.”^[85] Smith’s rejection of the idea of God as an omnipotent being who, whether always or only sometimes, simply determines the events of our world is suggested by his statement that part of the truth about God is that “God is confronted with the recalcitrance . . . of us human beings.”^[86] It is also expressed in his rejection of the idea that “the flow of time is interrupted by the intrusion of the divine into the historical,” as if “God’s presence [were] an interruption.”^[87] 

      The rejection of supernaturalism involved in Knitter’s affirmation of pluralism is suggested by his favorable description of Troeltsch as “dissatisfied with concepts of revelation that had God swooping down from heaven and intervening into history at particular spots,” in his rejection of “supernaturalism,” according to which deity would “have to ‘step down’ and enter history here and there,” in favor of “a nondualism between God and the world,” and in his endorsement of those who see “God’s incarnation in Jesus as an expression of the nondualistic unity between divinity and humanity,” so that “[i]ncarnation is not a one-time event” (NON 26, 68, 191). Knitter’s rejection of supernaturalism also lies behind his seeming rejection of the “uniqueness” of Jesus and Christianity.^[88] Knitter’s point here has been widely misunderstood. Although he said in the preface to The Myth of Christian Uniqueness that by calling “Christian uniqueness” a myth he did not mean to say that it is simply false but only that it must be carefully interpreted (vii), critics have taken him, along with other pluralists, to be denying Christian uniqueness altogether. What needs revision, said Knitter, are “traditional understandings of ‘the uniqueness of Christ and Christianity’ (together with similar understandings of the Qur’an)” (DOD 32; emphasis added). But even the usually careful John Cobb responded by saying that “I affirm and celebrate the uniqueness of Christ, of Christianity, of the Qur’an” (DOD 83), thereby implying that Knitter rejected such uniqueness altogether. If Knitter had said that he rejected the idea that Christianity is unique in the sense of being the only religion to be supernaturally founded, his point would have been clearer (and seconded by Cobb, who also rejects the “metaphysical uniqueness of Jesus” [DOD 14]). That this is Knitter’s meaning seems clear from his statement that what he is rejecting is “the absolute superiority” of Christianity (DOD 127; emphasis in original), his affirmation that “Jesus is unique . . . without being exclusively unique” (DOD 94; emphasis added),^[89] and his assertion that Christians cannot “really play the game of dialogue [if they believe that] they have been given all the trump cards by God” (DOD 12). Knitter’s rejection of a supernatural account of Christian origins is also reflected in his criticism of theologians who believe that present experience can be ignored in favor of biblical authority (NON 90-91, 143).  

      The rejection of supernaturalism behind Gordon Kaufman’s affirmation of pluralism is shown by his denial that the assertions of Christian theology are “directly and uniquely authorized or warranted by divine revelation,” his affirmation that Christian theology should “understand itself in essentially the same terms that it understands other religious activity and reflection,” his rejection of “[b]eliefs about divine inspiration and revelation [that have] enabled theologians in the past to [claim] that this or that affirmation or position is grounded directly in the very truth of God,”^[90] and his rejection of the view that the Christian gospel is “grounded in God’s own special revelation in and through Jesus Christ” in a way “taken to set Christian faith apart from all other religious orientations.”^[91] 

      John Cobb has thought in terms of Whitehead’s nonsupernaturalistic understanding of divine power for so long that he for the most part simply assumes, rather than explicitly stating, an understanding of Christianity that is not supernaturalist. But some more or less explicit statements can be found. In an early essay on christology, for example, Cobb says that God is present in Jesus as prehended or experienced (not as experiencing), that this divine presence involved no “displacement” of any feature of Jesus’ humanity, that “the actual occasions constituting Jesus as a living person were not in any instance the . . . actual occasions constituting the divine life,” and that “[s]trict identity of Jesus with God is simply nonsensical.”^[92] In his book on christology he explicitly rejects the traditional “supernaturalist and exclusivist” interpretations of the incarnation of the divine Logos in Jesus, according to which Jesus was “a supernatural being,” namely, “the transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient ruler of the world . . . walking about on earth in human form” (CPA 27, 163). With regard to Christianity: After saying that it is “one historical movement alongside others,” Cobb adds: “Nothing historical is absolute; so any tendency to absolutize any feature of Christianity is idolatry” (TCW 44). Cobb has also endorsed a naturalistic soteriology in dealing with “salvation as something we participate in here and now rather than, or in addition to, life beyond” (DOD 13).^[93] Finally, he has encouraged Christians not to resist “appropriation of the universal truth offered by modern science” (BD x), which could well be taken, and is probably intended by Cobb, to include the truth of naturalism_ns.^[94] 

      Whereas the examples of the rejection of supernaturalism summarized thus far have emphasized the negative point that this rejection undermines the basis for assuming that God’s participation in the origin of Christianity was ontologically unique, Marjorie Suchocki shows how this rejection can lead to a positive argument for pluralism. Overagainst the traditional view of creatio ex nihilo, Suchocki suggests that we should think of “creation through call and response.” In place of the idea of a passive creation, she suggests that “the world has the capacity for novelty within itself.”^[95] Although at the outset of our universe, the chaos is sufficiently unresisting that “God can set down the parameters of all future becomings,” each stage of the creative process, in bringing forth creatures with greater complexity, provides the conditions for increasing diversity of response, with each divergence laying the ground for even greater diversity in the future. Although God’s call in each context is for the greatest possible well-being, given the past history of the creatures in question, the divine calls to different creatures become increasingly diverse. Her conclusion: “If creaturely response is so integral to the creator’s call, then there is simply no way there could even be a world without great diversity.”^[96] Because freedom is greatest at the human level, furthermore, diversity within the human race will be the greatest. The divine calls to the various cultures will therefore be very diverse. Although God is always calling each culture to the most inclusive form of well-being possible for it, “the type of response God gives within any culture depends upon the type of response those within the culture have given to God’s call.”^[97] Given the Christian belief in the faithfulness of God, we should assume that, even though aboriginal culture is very different from ours, “God is as surely creatively involved in the evolution of aboriginal culture as in Jewish and Christian culture.” Arguing that “diverse communities of peoples develop as a result of the creative interaction between God and the world,” she concludes that “[w]e can affirm other religions because God has been at work in calling them as well as ourselves into being.”^[98] In this way, Suchocki shows how the ontological rejection of supernaturalism leads to a view of the God-world relation that not only makes religious diversity expected, rather than a theological aberration, but also shows God can be understand as equally involved in radically diverse religious traditions.

      The ontological basis for religious pluralism, I am suggesting, is the most fundamental of the bases, both for explaining the rise of generic pluralism and for understanding its nature.^[99] But this ontological basis can also provide a reason to claim that Christian pluralistic theologies, by accepting an alien ontology from modernity, are not really Christian.

4. Religious Pluralism and Modernity

For critics who oppose pluralistic theology because of its generic pluralism--rather than simply because of defects in one or more of its species--Christian faith as such involves the claim to be the only true religion, or at least the claim that all salvation comes through Jesus Christ, with this claim being based on the conviction that God did act supernaturally in Christianity’s originating events. These critics would, in effect, be rejecting the compatibility of naturalism_ns with authentic Christian faith. The Christian belief in God, they would say, involves belief that God has the power to interrupt the world’s basic causal processes--which, they would say (perhaps with a reference to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo), were freely established by God, so they can be freely interrupted--and that God used that power in founding Christianity. Insofar as these critics see the fundamental error of pluralists to be their acceptance of naturalism_ns, their critiques may involve negative comments about (uncritical) acceptance of “modern” (or “Enlightenment”) rationality.

      The observation that modern assumptions are central to the pluralist project is not, however, necessarily connected to criticism of the rejection of supernaturalism. This centrality has been noted by pluralists, such as Gilkey (in statements cited above), and by critics whose criticism is not necessarily dependent on supernaturalist assumptions. One such critic is Heim,^[100] who speaks of “an underlying similarity in Hick, Smith, and Knitter which has very much to do with liberal Christianity’s appropriation of modernity” (S 9). Heim says, in particular, that pluralists assume the universality of “Western academic principles” (S 60). He is not necessarily critical of this assumption. His point is rather that pluralists need to provide an argument for the universal validity of the principles they are assuming (S 92-93, 123-24, 214). He believes, in fact, that the task of “mak[ing] explicit their case for the global normativity of the Western critical principles” they are employing is “[t]he primary challenge to pluralist theories” (S 123). Whether or not this should be considered the primary challenge to pluralists, Heim is certainly right about both the centrality of modern assumptions and the need to argue for their universal validity. This is one of the issues that should be addressed by Whiteheadian pluralists.

Conclusion

The more general concern behind the proposed conference is to show how Whitehead’s philosophy provides the basis for a pluralistic Christian theology that is not subject to the criticisms that have been rightly directed at religious pluralism understood in terms of its identist form--that it is not really pluralistic, that it is based on a false claim to neutral universality, that it leads to a debilitating relativism, and that it is not really Christian. A finally convincing answer to this last issue, of course, would involve showing that a theology can be adequate to Christian faith without presupposing supernatural intervention.^[101] More broadly yet, the concern behind the conference is to show that Whitehead’s philosophy equally provides a basis for African, Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu, Islamic, Jain, Jewish, Native American, Shinto, Sikh, Taoist, and other versions of religious pluralism that can be accepted by members of these traditions.  

      In a defense of his pluralistic hypothesis, which is intended to explain the fact that religious experience results in conflicting truth-claims, John Hick says that “critics who don’t like it should occupy themselves in trying to produce a better one” (CTR 50). He is absolutely right. There is little point in continuing to turn out criticisms of Hick’s version of pluralism. Although some of this criticism has been repeated here, as a basis for pointing out the need for a more adequate hypothesis, the main target of this critique has not been Hick’s version of pluralism, or even identist pluralism more generally, but the widespread tendency to equate pluralism as such with this version of it. This point having been made, the task now is to make available a better hypothesis.