Abstract
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.
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Notes
Neville (2002), 21.
This proposal will not satisfy classical theists, but religious pluralism does not exist in a vacuum. Neville can be read as existing within the tradition among various religions (Tillich for Christianity and Sankara for Hinduism) that argues God/Ultimate Reality cannot be a personal being. If convinced by this argument, as I am, it would be odd indeed to bend over backward to integrate what has already been rejected into a proposal for religious pluralism. It is not excluded because it is not real.
Hick (1989), 236.
Hick (1989), 248.
Gyatso (1998). Gyatso shows how Jigme Lingpa understood emptiness to manifest the illusory appearances of samsara as self-expression. Thus, one cannot rest in a purely indeterminate state of reality, but should engage those expressions as the way emptiness is present without claiming it really has those characteristics.
Connolly (2005), 20.
Connolly (2005), 25, 31.
Connolly (2005), 73.
James (1977), 34.
Connolly (2005), 106.
Connolly (2005), 40–41.
Connolly (2005), 42.
Connolly (2005), 123.
Connolly (2005), 32.
Rescher (1993), 79.
Rescher (1993), 73.
Rescher (1993), 75.
Rescher (1993), 96.
Rescher (1993), 96.
Heim (1997), 133.
Heim (1997), 136–138.
Heim (1997), 141.
Heim (1997), 164.
Heim (1997), 161.
Neville (2000), 70.
Dewey (1946), 87.
Neville (2006), 69.
Neville (2000), 62.
Dewey (1905), 325.
Freud (1962), 25.
Of great importance but beyond the scope of this paper is how symbols adapt to changing knowledge of the world to which they are connected. Particularly, religious symbols need not be static. Religious engagement can be enhanced through a dynamic relation between interpreters and knowledge of the world from other disciplines such as science, art, or poetry.
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Chicka, B.J. Indeterminacy, Ultimacy, and the World: the Self-Creation of Religious Pluralism through Community and Creation. SOPHIA 49, 49–63 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-009-0152-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-009-0152-1