In ‘The Presuppositions of Religious Pluralism and the Need for Natural Theology’ I argue that there are four important presuppositions behind John Hick’s form of religious pluralism that successfully support it against what I call fideistic exclusivism. These are i) the ought/can principle, ii) the universality of religious experience, iii) the universality of redemptive change, and iv) a view of how God (the Eternal) would do things. I then argue that if these are more fully developed they support a different (...) kind of exclusivism, what I call rational exclusivism, and become defeaters for pluralism. In order to explain rational exclusivism and its dependence on these presuppositions I consider philosophers J.P. Moreland, William Lane Craig, and Alvin Plantinga, who offer arguments for their forms of exclusivism but I maintain that they continue to rely on fideism at important points. I then give an example of how knowledge of the Eternal can be achieved. (shrink)

Discussions of the relations between religions, society, politics, and the state in recent political philosophy are characterized, firstly, by a strong US American bias focusing on limitations of religious arguments in public debate. Even if the restriction or radical exclusion of religious reasons from public debate has recently been extensively criticized, secularist interpretations of liberal-democratic constitutions still prevail. Here it is argued that both strong secularism and weak or second order secularism are counterproductive for many reasons. Secondly, separationist interpretations of (...) state-church relations are predominant, even if the severe wall of separation is criticized more often nowadays. Here it is argued that there are more and more interesting options than either separationism or accommodationism, that we should not exclusively focus at the constitutional relations between state and churches but address the full reciprocal relationship between society, culture, politics, nation, state and (organized) religions, and that we need more historical and comparative perspectives for the required institutionalist turn in political theory in order to overcome the obstacles inherent in predominant American political philosophy. The articles included in this volume are first, modest steps in this new direction. (shrink)

The purpose of this discussion is to analyze comparatively the influential argument for religious pluralism offered by John Hick and the argument for religious exclusivism (sectarianism) which can be generated by proponents of what has come to be labeled ‘Reformed Epistemology.’ I argue that while Hick and the Reformed exclusivist appear to be giving us incompatible responses to the same question about the true nature of ‘religious’ reality, they are actually responding to related, but distinct questions, each of which must (...) be considered by those desiring to give a religious explanation for the phenomenon of religious diversity. Moreover, I conclude that the insights of neither ought to be emphasized at the expense of the other. (shrink)

In recent years, there have been reports about increased religious discrimination in schools. As a way of acknowledging the importance of religion and faith communities in the public sphere and to propose a solution to the exclusion of religious citizens, the political philosopher Jürgen Habermas suggests an act of translation for which both secular and religious citizens are mutually responsible. What gets lost in Habermas's translation, this paper argues, is the condition that makes translation both necessary and (im)possible. Drawing on (...) Walter Benjamin's notion of the mysterious untranslatable and the task of the translator, the paper approaches translation as an ethical process involving risk, asymmetry and uncertainty. Not knowing where this risk will lead, the paper takes the ethical ambivalence at play in Jacques Derrida's notion of the untranslatable and explores this in relation to religious difference in education. It argues that the untranslatable needs to be acknowledged in terms of a respect for difference and a limit to narration, if students with religious convictions are not to be further violated in schools. (shrink)

Common arguments for truth in religious pluralism absolutize an ultimate or lived component of religion, reducing a positive affirmation of plurality to deeper unity or exclusion. The arguments of John Hick, William Connolly, Nicholas Rescher, and S. Mark Heim fall into such a trap. By considering how an indeterminate concept of ultimacy, proposed by Robert C. Neville, fares against the problems their arguments raise, it will be shown that such a concept of ultimacy can both give rise to and grow (...) out of communal experiences and the nature of the world. The indeterminate ultimate, communal experiences, and the world pluralize themselves once understood in mutual relation. (shrink)

This essay on law and religion appears in the second edition of the Blackwell Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, edited by Dennis Patterson. It is a revision of a similar entry in the book’s first edition. The essay opens by broadly discussing the complex relationships between law and religion writ large as movements in human history – social, cultural, intellectual, and institutional phenomena with distinct but often overlapping logics and concerns. It then hones in on the efforts (...) of secular law to make sense of religion and determine its place in the civil state. The essay argues that, while the questions raised by the American Bill of Rights’ religion clauses connect in some important respects to broader constitutional principles such as free expression and equality, the most interesting and theoretically excruciating conundrums involving religion need to be approached on their own unique terms. Two useful rubrics for such understanding are “separation” and “deference.” Any honest account must also admit, however, that there is an “intractable residue,” questions in the relation of religion and law to which there simply is no determinate or completely satisfactory answer. Finally, the essay emphasizes that the full texture of the legal imagination’s effort to grapple with religion only becomes apparent in the wider range of subconstitutional and nonconstitutional contexts beyond the standard litany of constitutional discourse. (shrink)

Religious exclusivism, or the idea that only one religion can be true, fuels hatred and conflict in the modern world. Certain objections to religious pluralism, together with associated defences of exclusivism are flawed. I defend a moderate religious pluralism, according to which the truth of one religion does not automatically imply the falsity of others. The thought that we can respect persons even when holding them mistaken strains credulity when we are dealing with religious convictions. Moreover, exclusivism is informed by (...) inadequate approaches to discourse about transcendence. The intentional-descriptivist approach to reference is not comprehensively adequate, and yet is assumed by some objections to pluralism. The irreducibly metaphorical character of much religious language means that differences between world religions can be more apparent than real. Approaches to religious education should embrace a moderate religious pluralism. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the possibility that a ‘contented religious exclusivist’, will be fully rational and not neglectful of any of her epistemic duties when faced with the world’s religious diversity. I present an epistemic strategy for reflecting on one's beliefs and then present two features of religious belief that make contented exclusivism a rational possibility. I then argue against the positions of John Hick, David Basinger, and Steven Wykstra on contented exclusivism, and criticize an overly optimistic conception of (...) rationality. Finally, I describe a contented exclusivist who might very well not be fully rational in the face of religious diversity. (shrink)

Internalist pluralism is an attractive and elegant theory. However, there are two apparently powerful objections to this approach that prevent its widespread adoption. According to the first objection, the resulting analysis of religious belief systems is intrinsically atheistic; while according to the second objection, the analysis is unsatisfactory because it allows religious objects simply to be defined into existence. In this article, I demonstrate that an adherent of internalist pluralism can deflect both of these objections, and in the course of (...) so arguing, I deploy a distinction between “conceptual-scheme targetability” and “successful conceptual-scheme targeting”. (shrink)

Buddhism currently enjoys the reputation of being one of the leading voices in a chorus that sings the praises of religious tolerance and perhaps even of pluralism. It is open to question, however, whether this reputation is deserved. The purpose of the present article is to examine whether the teachings of classical Buddhism have a contribution to make to the jubilation over religious pluralism that has become fashionable in some quarters in recent years. It is hoped that this examination might (...) shed some light both on some of the implications of religious pluralism and on the spirit of the teachings of classical Buddhism. A task preliminary to dealing with this question is to clarify what is meant by religious pluralism. For the purpose of this discussion, let us take “pluralism” to signify not the mere acknowledgment that there is variety but the celebration of this variety. Whereas tolerance might be described as the attitude of being resigned to the fact that a variety exists, pluralism will be taken to mean the attitude that variety is healthy and therefore something to be desired. And religious pluralism, of course, will be taken as the attitude that it is salubrious to have a variety of religions. Such an attitude might be founded, for example, on an analogy with biology. The health of each living organism, it could be argued, is enhanced by the general health of the organism’s wider environment, and the health of this wider environment is in turn enhanced by the rich variety of species of organisms living therein. The value of variety, if one follows this biological analogy, is not merely aesthetic, not merely a pleasant respite from the monotony of too much uniformity; rather, variety is what makes life of any kind possible. Similarly, it could be argued by a devoted religious pluralist, the variety of religious beliefs and practices and experiences and modes of expression is vital to human survival and self-understanding. And just as the health of an individual organism, such as a cow, might actually be enhanced by the presence of other apparently annoying organisms, such as gadflies and mosquitoes, the health and perhaps even the very survival of any one religious tradition might actually be enhanced by the presence of other apparently antagonistic traditions, or by the presence of heresies within the same tradition.. (shrink)

I argue that Meeker is mistaken in two crucial respects. First, contrary to both myself and Plantinga, he treats exclusivism as a theory about the relation between the religions, and then claims that it is superior to the pluralist theory. But he does not say what his exclusivist theory is. Second, he bases his claim of a fundamental self-contradiction in my pluralist position on a view which I disavow, namely that altruism is the core of religion. He omits the central (...) idea of a profound reorientation in response to the Real, of which altruism is a manifestation. (Published Online April 7 2006). (shrink)

A critique of responses to the problem posed to Christian philosophy by the fact of religious plurality by Alvin Plantinga, Peter van lnwagen, and George Mavrodes in the recent Festschrift dedicated to William Alston, and of Alston’s own response to the challenge of religious diversity to his epistemology of religion. His argument that religious experience is a generally reliable basis for belief-formation is by implication transformed by his response to this problem into the principle that Christianity constitutes the sole exception (...) to the general rule that religious experience is an unreliable basis for belief-formation, thus undermining his central thesis. Plantinga’s and van Inwagen’s defenses of the logical and moral permissability of Christian exclusivism fail to address the problem posed by the existence of other equally well-based religious belief-systems with equally valuable fruits in human life. Mavrodes’ discussion of polytheism, and his clarifying questions about religious pluralism, are also discussed. (shrink)

This paper is a reply to D'Costa's article ("Religious Studies," 32, pp. 223-32) in which he argues that there is no such position as religious pluralism because in distinguishing between, e.g., Christianity or Buddhism, and Nazism or the Jim Jones cult, a criterion is involved and to use a criterion is a form of exclusivism. In reply I point out that this sense of 'exclusivism', as consisting in the use of criteria, is self-destructive; that the pluralistic hypothesis, as a meta-theory (...) about the religions, has a different logical status from the creeds of the historical religions; and I also show the origin of the ethnical criterion used by the religious pluralist who stands within one or other of the great world faiths. (shrink)

Let us approach the problems of religious pluralism through the claims of the different traditions to offer salvation-generically, the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness. This approach leads to a recognition of the great world faiths as spheres of salvation; and so far as we can tell, more or less equally so. Their different truth-claims express (a) their differing perceptions, through different religio-cultural ‘lenses,’ of the one ultimate divine Reality; (b) their different answers to the boundary questions of (...) origin and destiny, true answers to which are however not necessary for salvation, and (c) their different historical memories. (shrink)

The path of religious pluralism starts with the fact that our world contains a number of religious faiths having different ideas of the nature of divinity as the main and fundamental principle of religions and therefore, different and various dogmas, rites, and rituals.Despite the claim that the idea of religious pluralism is a product of modern philosophical schools, specifically new epistemological principles, I have attempted to demonstrate that what I have called "pluralistic religion," as a part of a necessary and (...) substantial distinction that has to be drawn between this hypothesis and John Hick's classic theory of "religious pluralism," is strongly rooted in the principle of "ultimate truth and uniqueness of .. (shrink)

Nigeria is indeed a typical pluralistic society with innumerable differences in culture, ethnicity, tribe, religion, and class. Yet there exists in Nigeria certain dominant cultures, ethnic nationalities, religions, and classes. In some parts of the country the influence of a dominant culture or ethnic group is more pronounced than in others. This paper is therefore an attempt to look into our pluralism and see how it can enhance the development and promotion of democracy in the country. This paper will address (...) this topic by considering a working definition of democracy and how it is understood and applied in Nigeria; the ethnoreligious politics in Nigeria; postmodernism, democracy, and pluralism in Nigerian society; and the role of religious leaders in the survival of democracy in Nigeria. (shrink)

John Hick's "pluralistic hypothesis" of religion essays a comprehensive vision of religious diversity and its attendant soteriological, epistemological, and ontological implications. At the heart of Hick's proposal is the belief in the transcendental unity and soteriological identity of all religions. While coherent and compelling, Hick's model militates against those traditions that do not possess an ultimate noumenal referent that undergirds the phenomenal responses of culturally conditioned traditions. One of those traditions, namely Sōtō Zen Buddhism, at once defies Hick's categories and (...) presses for an alternative understanding of the epistemological, metaphysical, and soteriological issues. (shrink)

Both in the Speeches and in The Christian Faith Schleiermacher offers a comprehensive theory of the nature of religion, grounding it in experience. In the Speeches Schleiermacher grounds religion in an original unity of consciousness that precedes the subject–object dichotomy; in The Christian Faith the feeling of absolute dependence is grounded in the immediate self-consciousness. I argue that Schleiermacher's theory offers a generally coherent account of how it is possible that differing religious traditions are all based on the same experience (...) of the Absolute. I show how Schleiermacher's programme can respond successfully to three related contemporary objections to religious pluralism: (1) different religions make competing truth-claims about the nature of reality and they cannot all be right; (2) differing traditions cannot all be based on a similar religious experience because all experience is interpreted; and (3) the pluralist needs to have criteria in place distinguishing real and illusory religious experience, but such criteria are elusive. (Published Online April 21 2004). (shrink)

“(1) All major religious traditions are equal in respect of making common reference to a single transcendent sacred reality. (2) All major traditions are likewise equal in respect of offering some means or other to human salvation. (3) All traditions are to be seen as containing revisable, limited, accounts of the nature of the sacred none is certain enough in its particular dogmatic formulations to provide the norm for interpreting the others.” P. Byrne, Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism (NY: Macmillan, 1995), (...) p. 12. In this paper, I argue that of the three claims that constitute the form of Religious Pluralism outlined by Peter Byrne in his Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism, the first is something proponents of the theory can’t think of themselves as having the resources to defend; the second is something that is in danger of being rendered trivial by the definition of religions offered; however, if one makes it non-trivial, it becomes implausible (and offering a defence of it inconsistent with other elements of the theory); and, even if the first half of the third is right, the second half is wrong. (shrink)

This paper argues that John Hick's commitment to the moral principle of altruism undermines his pluralistic claim that all of the major world religions are equally efficacious from a soteriological perspective. This argument is placed in a context of a discussion evaluating the theoretical virtues of various hypotheses about religious diversity. (Published Online April 7 2006).

"This book is a posthumous collection of some of the best papers of a distinguished, many-sided philosopher of religion, edited by one of his last students. The foreword is a humorous, piquant, and appreciative personal reminisence by Eleonore Stump.... this excellent selection of his papers on religion leaves one with high esteem for a thoroughly expert philosopher who was also a deep, compassionate, and truthful human being."-Robert C. Roberts, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews .

My goal in this brief introduction is twofold: first, to briefly sketch some of the life of this remarkable man; and second, to provide an overview of the papers that make up this collection. The papers themselves have been organized around the following central topics in Quinn’s research: religious ethics, religion and tragic dilemmas, religious epistemology, religion and political liberalism, Christian philosophy of religion, and religious diversity.

Religious pluralis does have, as James Kraft says, a negative impact on the epistemic confidence with which one holds a religious position, when epistemology is thought on both the externalist and internalist lines. I also conclude both that there is a resulting epistemic humility and that a tolerance of religious diversity results from it, but I reach these conclusions for entirely different reasons. Epistemic humility and religious tolerance are fostered by the realization that many religions are striving for the infinite, (...) though all have limited views of it. (shrink)

According to religious pluralism, the profound differences among the chief objects of adoration in the great religious traditions are largely due to the different ways in which a single transcendent reality is experienced and conceived in human life. The most prominent developer and defender of religious pluralism in the twentieth century is John Hick. Hick uses the expression ‘the Real’ to designate the transcendent reality ‘authentically experienced’ as the different gods and impersonal absolutes worshipped in the major religious traditions. A (...) central claim Hick makes is that, apart from some purely formal characteristics, the Real is ineffable in that the intrinsic properties making up its nature are beyond the scope of any human concepts. I explore this central claim and argue that it implies the dubious, if not incoherent, view that the Real in itself has neither one of many pairs of contradictory properties. (shrink)

Exclusivism is a highly appealing option in religious terms. It reflects the believers’ commitment to their religion as well as their conviction that their religion is true, and that other religions are therefore false. My central argument is that the justification of inter-religious pluralism, while not less well established than that of exclusivism, successfully preserves the social intuitions of religious devotion and commitment. The effect of this justification, which remains valid despite objections raised against various forms of inter-religious pluralism, is (...) to undermine exclusivism. (shrink)

Critics of John Rawls' conception of a reasonable pluralism have raised the question of whether it is justified to demand that religious individuals should 'bracket' their essential, identity-constituting convictions when they enter a political discourse. I will argue that the criterion for religious beliefs of being justified as grounds for political decisions should be their ability of being 'translatable' in secular reasons for the very same decisions. This translation would demand 'epistemic abstinence' from religious believers only on the basis of (...) a rigid distinction between the spheres of private opinions and public reasons. To give a more adequate account of the relation between religious beliefs and political reasons in a pluralistic society it seems to be helpful to make use of Niklas Luhmann's functionalistic theory of religion. Key Words: democracy and religious beliefs • philosophy of religion • pluralism • political liberalism • political theory. (shrink)

In the Critique of Judgment, Kantattempts to unravel the problem of Übergang that threatens his CopernicanRevolution. Having opened up a ``chasm'' betweensensible and supersensible, betweenepistemological and ontological, Kant facesboth the specter of empirical chaos in whichthe noumenal refuses to conform to theunderstanding's attempts to legislate over themanifold of intuition, and the problem offinding a place for freedom to have effectswithin the seamless phenomenal realm ofefficient causality. Central to Kant's attemptto overcome these problems is his notion of theheautonomy of reflective judging, (...) in whichjudgment subjectively legislates its ownactivity. The net effect of this strategy isto preserve the integrity of the architectonicby permitting judgment use of ontologicalprinciples in regulating its own activity, butalways placing these ontological principlesunder an epistemological ``as if'' that cannot becarried over into the noumenal realm (e.g.,judgment can subjectively operate under theprinciple that the world appears ``as if'' it haspurpose, but this cannot be thought to apply tothe noumenal). Kant shields his architectonicby allowing it to encounter onlyepistemologically neutered noumena. This paperargues that Hick faces an analogousÜbergang problem, explores his``heautonomous'' attempt to blunt the problem,and concludes that the attempt fails, leavingHick with an unresolved problem of``onto-ethical discontinuity.''. (shrink)

This article considers the difficult question of whether there are any reasons for theocratic religious devotees to affirm liberalism and liberal institutions. Swaine argues not only that there are reasons for theocrats to affirm liberalism, but that theocrats are committed rationally to three normative principles of liberty of conscience, as well. Swaine subsequently discusses three institutional and strategic implications of his arguments. First, he outlines an option of semisovereignty for theocratic communities in liberal democracies, and explains why an appropriate valuation (...) of liberty of conscience may justify a standard of that kind. Second, he addresses the question of permissible government aid for religion and symbolic endorsement of religious groups. Third, Swaine considers innovations and new approaches that could be employed internationally to better display liberal government's affirmation of religiosity, to promote liberty of conscience, and to help improve relations between liberal and theocratic parties around the globe. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Wang Yangming'sNeo-Confucian religious beliefs can bewarranted, and that the rationality of hisreligious beliefs constitutes a significantdefeater for the rationality of Christianbelief on Alvin Plantinga's theory of warrant. I also question whether the notion of warrantas proper function can adequately account fortheories of religious knowledge in which theaffections play an integral role. Idemonstrate how a consideration of Wang'sepistemology reveals a difficulty forPlantinga's defense of the rationality ofChristian belief and highlights a limitation ofPlantinga's current conception of (...) warrant asproper function. (shrink)