Clarity for Religious Pluralists: Do All Roads Lead to Rome?

My mind has returned to thinking about religious pluralism because of a conversation I had with a coworker the other day, and also because of Lost (where something very similar to the above picture is in a prominent spot in the church where the final scene is held). The basic theory is this: all religions lead to God; therefore, all religions have an equal grasp of truth and goodness. It baffles me that people believe this theory, since it logically does not work. People will not say the same things of different philosophical schools, political traditions, etc., but they feel like they can say this about religions.

So, I’ve finally decided to publish a few short thoughts and questions that must be posed to the religious pluralist:

1. The fact that we have the debate provides some sort of a clue that not all religions believe the same God.
2. Religious pluralists can’t answer the question of what happens to people who are not evangelized, because it doesn’t matter whether you know the truth or not.
3. In fact, a religious pluralist must decide whether or not heaven is for all, since we all pursue goodness in some regard. Bad people pursue their own pleasure, though they do it in a bad way (but how can a pluralist say that anyone’s belief is bad at all?). Therefore, even very bad people believe in God, according to the pluralist. Therefore, religion is completely useless.
4. Pluralists deny that both goodness and truth are important. Yes, most religions agree on basics of morality (don’t kill, etc.) but the metaphysical truths taught are quite different. In fact, even the ethics (i.e. the goodness that is taught) vary greatly. Therefore, religious pluralist care little for goodness or truth, even though they believe that they care very much about goodness.
5. There are definite truth claims that are not compatible at all between religions. Many of these claims are significant and cannot be reconciled.
6. Religion has been around for so many years and the smartest and best advocates of these religions do not advocate that they combine. Why?
7. No mention of pluralism is mentioned in the Bible, why is this?
8. If all religions lead to God, would the religious pluralist be willing to die for Jesus or Allah, etc.? Somehow I doubt it. When the questions become this serious, the religious pluralist will not die for a specific figure or religion.

These are basic questions and statements that a religious pluralist must think through in order to be more faithful to themselves as human beings. For human beings are special in that they can use their brains to ponder such intricacies.

It is good to include a long quote from John Polkinghorne’s book that affirms the truth of the Nicene Creed, The Faith of a Physicist. Polkinghorne is more intelligent, eloquent, and helpful than I am, and so his words will be helpful to understand the topic a little more. I will fill out the blog post with a few more comments at the end.

The Nicene Creed was formulated in the course of the same century that had earlier seen Constantine’s conversion, with its consequence that, for a long while after, the theological debate was internal to Christianity. The ‘many “gods” and many “lords”’ (1 Cor. 8.5) of the Mediterranean world disappeared, as would the gods of Northern Europe, while the rift with Judaism was too deep for serious exchange to take place between the two religions for many centuries. For several centuries after the rise of Islam, the principal Christian response to this new religion was by way of resistance to its incursions and attempts at reconquest. How different is the situation today! World-wide communications, and extensive immigrations, have made us only too aware that Christianity is but one among the several great historic traditions present in the world of the faiths. For a bottom-up thinker there is a perplexing contrast with the spread of modern science. Originally the product of Western Europe, it has proved eminently exportable, so that one can expect to receive the same answer to a scientific inquiry, whether it is made in London or Tokyo, New York or Delhi. In contrast, while there is some degree of Christian presence in almost every country, in many it is tiny and the other historic religious traditions have shown great stability in the face of more than two centuries of widespread Christian missionary effort. It is a pressing problem for a credible theology, second only to the problem of suffering, to give some satisfactory account of why the diversity of religious affirmations should not lead us to the conclusion that they are merely the expressions of culturally determined opinions.

Of course, there is unquestionably a degree of cultural determination in our actual religious beliefs. If I had grown up in Saudi Arabia, rather than in England, it would be foolish to deny that the chances are I would be a Muslim. But the chances are also that I would not have spent most of my life as a theoretical physicist, but that does not mean that science is simply a cultural artifact. We must not commit the genetic fallacy of supposing tat origin explains away the content of belief.

To some extent the effect of culture is the inescapable deposit of the separate historical developments of communities. That does not seem to me to be enough. As with the problem of suffering, the difficulty lies not in the existence of the phenomenon, but in its scale. That there should be diversities of religious understanding is not surprising; that the discrepancies in the accounts of ultimate reality are so great, is very troubling. That perplexity is increased when we consider that it is knowledge of God, with all his power to make himself known, which we are considering. An American Indian said to a missionary, ‘If this faith is so true why was it not given to our ancestors?’ (Cragg points out that an Englishman could reply that it wasn’t given originally to his ancestors either. Some propagation of locally given revelation through space and time is not an incoherent possibility for personal divine action.)

There have been three broad avenues of approach to the problem of religious diversity. [The three avenues are 1) religious pluralism, 2) religious exclusivism, and 3) religious inclusivism. I will not include Polkinghorne’s thoughts on 2) and 3), but he settles on 3), which I think is correct.] The approach which is usually called pluralism regards the worlds’ religious traditions as being, in essence, equally valid expressions of the same fundamental religious quest, different pathways up the spiritual mountain. Its driving force is the conviction that God cannot have left himself without a witness at most times and in most places; that most people cannot have been cut off from his saving grace just by the accidents of circumstance. One of its chief proponents is John Hick, who writes, ‘Can we then accept the conclusion that the God of love who seeks to save all mankind has nevertheless ordained that men must be saved in such a way that only a small number can in fact receive salvation?’ I have already made it clear (chapter 9) that I agree with him in answering ‘No’ to that question. But ultimate universal access to salvation does no require the proposition of the essentially equal validity of all current religious points of view. Hick’s pluralist strategy is based on viewing religious tradition as alternative schemes of salvation for ‘the transformation from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness’. The Real itself is inaccessible, and it is only the culturally formed personal or impersonal masks of Reality which the world faiths present to us. Hick’s strongly instrumentalist view of religion means that, for the traditions, ‘their truthfulness is the practical truthfulness which consists in guiding us aright.’ ‘The basic criterion, then, for judging religious phenomena is soteriological.’ No one should deny the importance of religious praxis – ‘the tree is known by its fruit (Matt. 12.33, par.) – nor the presence of compassion in all the traditions, but a purely pragmatic account is as unsatisfactory for religion as it is for science.

When we come later to consider some of the conflicts of understanding between the traditions, we shall see how difficult a pluralist position is if one wishes (as I do) to assign cognitive, rather than merely expressive or dispositional, content to religion. Commenting on Hick’s programme claming to discern a noumenal common denominator, Ward says that ‘The assertion that “only the vague is really true” seems highly dubious; but even if it is made, one is making a selection from a wider range of competing truths in religion.’ It is just not the case that, under the skin, the world’s religions are really all saying the same thing, and one can question whether the attempt to impose pluralism on the traditions does not lead, as Schwobel says, ‘to a personal construction of the history of religions and religious attitudes that very few who participate in them would recognize as their own.’ The driving force of much pluralist thought is the desire to iron out differences in the search for tolerance, but this ‘can all too easily turn into a new guise of Western imperialism where subscribing to the principles of the Enlightenment becomes a precondition for participation in dialogue’ (D’Costa).. The particularities of the traditions must be respected.

Reflecting on all that has gone before, religious pluralism seems to spring from a supposedly intuitive opinion, where we realize that all religions lead to similar goods (i.e. ‘be good’, etc.). However, this opinion is simply that, an opinion that seeks reconciliation between religions, while really destroying them all. That religions are dependent on culture or “different interpretations of the one great light behind all religions” is simply not tenable, as simple logic shows us that their principal statements of faith are incompatible. (p. 176-179)

The goal, then, is to seek for the best and most true of the religions, which I am certain is Christianity. To stop gazing at and looking for the truth is to be anti-human, which is a challenge to those who simply think that we just cannot know very much about God beyond that he wants us to do good and love one another. Those people who claim that we cannot know much about God other than simple ethical truths deny the fact – or are blind to it – that love and goodness fall back on truth. For if something is not true, it cannot be good. And to seek God is the greatest task. We watch shows (I am thinking of BBC’s Planet Earth series) where we humans attempt to learn all there is about our natural planet, just so that we can ‘know.’ It is very human to ‘just want to know’. And yet, on the greatest of topics, theology, we chose to turn our brains off and settle for mere opinion, not founded on solid ground.

However, it is very important to note that other religions have aspects of goodness and truth, and that some religions are closer than others to knowing God. To deny this usually comes from a fear that does not allow for gradations of truth and goodness. To release an arrow and have it hit close to the bull’s-eye is much better than to miss the target completely. However, to hit the bull’s-eye is best by far. The bull’s-eye is to know Jesus Christ.