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Notes
See Karl Barth,Church Dogmatics, 1/2 (Edinburgh: Clark, 1956), 280–361, and Hendrick Kraemer,Religion and Christian Faith (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956).
See Karl Rahner,Theological Investigation, vol. 5 (Baltimore: Helicon, 1966).
For example, the Evangelical John Stott argues that, in ‘true’ dialogue and encounter, ‘we seek both to disclose the inadequacies and falsities of non-Christian religions and to demonstrate the adequacy and truth, the absoluteness and finality of the Lord Jesus Christ’ (John Stott, ‘Dialogue, Encounter, Even Confrontation’ inFaith Meets Faith: Mission Trends No. 5, ed. Gerald H. Anderson and Thomas F. Stransky [New York: Paulist Press, 1981], p. 168).
It is to be noted that, according to G. van der Leeuw's phenomenological method (Religion in Essence and Method [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986]), Hick and Heim develop their contrasting models of religious pluralism according to the object of religion: whether different religions represent the same divine reality or different ones. As I shall point out later, these two contrasting models of religious pluralism can also be maintained by focusing on the subject of religion: human faith.
Stanley J. Samartha, ‘The Lordship of Jesus Christ And Religious Pluralism’, inChrist's Lordship And Religious Pluralism, ed. Gerald H. Anderson & Thomas F. Stransky (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1981), p. 29.
John Hick,God Has Many Names (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1980), p. 52.
For Hick's own discussion of the relationship of his pluralism to Kant's epistemology, both similarity and difference, see hisAn Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 240–246.
John Hick,Disputed Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 21.
John Hick,Problems of religious Pluralism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), p. 69.
S. Mark Heim, ‘The Pluralistic Hypothesis, Realism, and Post-eschatology’,Religious Studies 25 (1992): pp. 215–6.
John Hick,Disputed Questions, p. 94.
John Hick,Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 68.
John Hick,God Has Many Names, p. 89.
Ibid., p. 81.
Ibid., p. 57.
For example, he once thought that the day will come when ‘what we now call different religions will constitute the past history of different emphases and variations within something that it need not be too misleading to call a single world religion’ (‘The Outcome: Dialogue into Truth’, inTruth and Dialogue in World Religions: Conflicting Truth Claims, ed. John Hick [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974], p. 151). InGod Has Many Names (pp. 7, 58), however, he gives up on this hope.
John Hick,God Has Many Names, p. 8.
For the similar theo-centric views, see also Stanley J. Samartha,One Christ — Many Religions: Toward a Revised Christology (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1991), p. 5; Paul Knitter,No Other Names: A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1990), pp. 208–9.
For other critics, see J. A. DiNoia, ‘Varieties of Religious Aims: Beyond Exclusivism, Inclusivism, and Pluralism’, inTheology and Dialogue: Essays in Conversation with George Lindbeck, ed. Bruce D. Marshal (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), pp. 249–274; and Kenneth Surin, ‘A “Politics of Speech”: Religious Pluralism in the Age of the McDonald's Hamburger’, inChristian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religion, ed. Gavin D'Costa (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1990), pp. 192–212, and ‘Towards a “Materialist” Critique of “Religious Pluralism”: An Examination of the Discourse of John Hick and Wilfred Cantwell Smith’, inReligious Pluralism and Unbelief: Studies Critical and Comparative, ed. Ian Hammett (London & New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 114–129.
S. Mark Heim, ‘Pluralism and the Otherness of World Religions’,First Things 25 (1992): p. 34. Heim's criticism here is quite to the point. For the global theology that Hick espouses has been dubbed a theological Esperanto by Leonard Swidler, another universalistic pluralist, For him, ‘when we say X in “ecumenical Esperanto”, it corresponds to A in Christianity, B in Judaism, C in Marxism. Thus we would really be able to talk to and understand each other to a large extent by means of the ‘translation’ of our traditional languages into “ecumenical Esperanto”. (‘Interreligious and Interideological Dialogue: The Matrix for All Systematic Reflection Today’, inToward a Universal Theology of Religion, ed. Leonard Swidler [Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1987], p. 24).
S. Mark Heim, ‘Pluralism and the Otherness of World Religion’, p. 29. For similar criticism, see also Lesslie Newbigian, ‘Religion for the Marketplace’, in Gavin D'Costa, ed.,Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered, p. 137.
See Surin, ‘A “Politics of Speech”: Religious Pluralism in the Age of the McDonald's Hamburger’.
See S. Mark Heim, ‘Mission and Dialogue’,Christian Century 105 (6 April 1988): p. 342.
S. Mark Heim, ‘The Pluralistic Hypothesis, Realism, and Post-eschatology’, p. 211.
Heim,Is Christ the Only Way? (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1985), p. 29.
Ibid., p. 30.
See Ibid., p. 25.
Ibid., p. 143.
Ibid., p. 138.
See S. Mark Heim, ‘Pluralisms: Toward a Theological Framework for Religious Diversity’,Insights 107 (1991): 23.
In criticizing Hick, Joseph Prabhu holds the same view. While Hick for him is only a religious pluralist but a metaphysical universalist, he calls himself a radical pluralist, a pluralist both religious and metaphysical. According to him, ‘the conceptual drive to thinking of the Real as one for us by no means warrants the conclusion that the Real in itself is one⋯. Each of the experienced ultimates of the religious traditions is different from the others, but still real’ (Joseph Prabhu, ‘Critical Response’ to Julius Lipner,Problems in the Philosophy of Religion: Critical Studies of the Work of John Hick, ed. Harold Hewitt [London: Macmillan Press, 1991], p. 240).
Heim,Is Christ the Only Way, p. 150.
For Heim's more detailed arguments, see his ‘Pluralisms: Toward a Theological Framework for Religious Diversity’, pp. 19–20.
See Heim,Is Christ the Only Way, p. 150. For criticism of such a view as commercializing religions, see Lesslie Newbigin, ‘Religion for the Marketplace’, inChristian Uniqueness Reconsidered, ed., Gavin D' Costa, p. 138; Jürgen Moltmann, ‘Is “Pluralist Theology” Useful for the Dialogue of World Religions?’ in ibid., p. 153; and Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, ‘Christian Redemption between Colonialism and Pluralism’, inReconstructing Christian Theology, ed. Rebecca S. Chopp & Mark Lewis Taylor (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), p. 284.
Heim,Is Christ the Only Way, p. 141.
For a similar critique of metaphysical reality in philosophy, see Richard Rorty,Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 8.
While emphasizing that our language of Jesus as Incarnated Son of God is poetical and metaphorical, Hick insists that our language of God is realistic and literal. See hisProblems of Religious Pluralism, pp. 16–17.
John Hick,Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 37.
John Hick,An Interpretation of Religion, p. 234.
John Hick,Disputed Questions, p. 14.
Heim,Is Christ the Only Way, p. 30. See also his ‘Toward a Theological Framework for Religious Plurality’, p. 23.
John Hick,Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 97.
SeeThe Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, ed., John Hick & Paul F. Knitter (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1987).
Gordon Kaufman,In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology (Cambridge, MA & London, UK: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 39–40.
For a distinction between these two interpretations, see John Hick,An Interpretation of Religion, pp. 1–3.
For Hick's distinction between religious realism and non-realism, see hisDisputed Questions, pp. 3–16.
Immanuel Kant,Critique of Practical Reason (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1956), p. 59. John Rawls renders Kant's distinction clear when he says that ‘practical reason is concerned with the production of objects according to a conception of those objects — for example, the conception of a just constitutional regime taken as the aim of political endeavor while theoretical reason is concerned with the knowledge of given objects’ (Rawls,Political Liberalism [New York: Columbia University Press, 1993], p. 93)
Gordon Kaufman,An Essay on Theological Method (Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1979), p. 76.
William James,The Will to Believe (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), p. 23.
See Fiorenza, ‘Christian Redemption between Colonialism and Pluralism’, p. 290.
Wilfred Cantwell Smith,Faith and Belief (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 130.
Wilfred Cantwell Smith,Towards a World Theology (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1981), p. 126.
George Lindbeck,The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1984), p. 23.
Lindbeck,The Nature of Doctrine, p. 18.
Fiorenza combines these two premises in this way: ‘on the one hand, we are increasingly conscious of the particularity of diverse cultures, religious beliefs, life-habits, and political organizations. On the other hand, tele-communication and travel increasingly make the world into a global village’ (‘Christian Redemption between Colonialism and Pluralism’, p. 296).
This interpretation of religious plurality, which emphasizes unity without universality and uniqueness without separateness, is indeed very similar to that of Fiorenza's (see his ‘Christian Redemption between Colonialism and Pluralism’, pp. 285–299). The only difference between us is merely terminological. While Fiorenza calls his communicative interpretation of religious plurality as an alternative to exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism, I identify myself as a dialogical or communicative pluralist, in distinction not only to exclusivists and inclusivists but also to universalistic and particularistic pluralists.
Richard Rorty,Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 215.
Ibid., p. 26.
Ibid., p. 215.
Jeffrey Stout,Ethics after Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents (Boston: Beacon, 1988), p. 63.
See Hilary Putnam,Reason, Truth, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 114.
Ibid., p. 119.
For similar argument, see David Tracy,Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 99.
In this sense, I think Leonard Swidler's distinction between dialogue and debate is misleading. According to Swidler, one enters dialogue with a desire to change one's belief, while one enters a debate in order to induce change in the other (see his ‘Interreligious and Interideological Dialogue: The Matrix for All Systematic Reflection Today’, p. 6). In contrast, John Cobb is right to say that ‘one enters dialogue both as a believer convinced of the claims of one religious tradition and as a human being open to the possibility that one has something to learn from representatives of another religious tradition’ (‘Beyond “Pluralism”, inChristian Uniqueness Reconsidered, ed. Gavin D' Costa, pp. 85–86).
Stanley Samartha,One Christ — many Religions: Toward a Revised Christology, p. 147.
See John Cobb's similar argument: if interfaith dialogue ‘leads some day to a merging of all the great ways into one that is at the same time Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, primal, and so forth, so be it. If that merged way is fully and authentically Christian, I as a Christian see nothing to fear from that. But if all the great ways continue to the last day distinct from one another, each open to all, enriched by all, and transformed by all, I as a Christian see nothing lacking in that’ (‘Toward a Christocentric Catholic Theology’, inToward a Universal Theology of Religion, ed. Leonard Swidler, p. 99).
For Smith's argument for a transition from Christian (Islamic, Judaic, Buddhist, etc.) theology of comparative religion to a world theology of human faith, see hisTowards a World Theology, pp. 107–129.
For an interesting discussion of the relationship between the two, see Peter Beyer,Religions and Globalization (London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994).
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Huang, Y. Religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue: Beyond universalism and particularism. Int J Philos Relig 37, 127–144 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01318322
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01318322