The Pluralist Paradigm in the Christian Theology of Religions

Scot. Journ. of Theol. Vol. 39, pp. 211-224.

THE PLURALIST PARADIGM IN THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS by GAVIN D'COSTA increasing contact and knowledge of non-Christian W ITHreligions and in the light of colonialist missionary

endeavours, a number of Christians have recently advocated what I shall call a pluralist approach to non-Christian religions. This pluralist paradigm may be characterised as one which maintains that non-Christian religions can be equally salvific paths to the one God, and that Christianity's claim to be the only way (exclusivism), or the fulfilment of all other religions (inclusivism), should be rejected for good theological,

phenomenological, and philosophical reasons. This view is shared

by Christians from different denominations, and is best expressed in the works of Professors John Hick, Paul Knitter, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and Mr Alan Race.1 In this study I wish to isolate and examine a number of commonly held pluralist assumptions, while also paying attention to significant differences within this paradigm. My contention will be that the pluralist approach, although not without its valuable insights, encounters serious theological, philosophical and phenomenological difficulties. If the pluralist paradigm is to gain ground, it must meet these objections. Theological arguments: Two major theological arguments are employed by pluralist practitioners to validate their position. Against exclusivists, who maintain that salvation is only to be found in submission and confession to God in Christ, pluralists argue that this is blatantly incompatible with the venerable Christian teaching of the universal salvific will of God who ' J. Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths (Collins, Fount Paperback, 1977), God Has Many Names (Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1982), Death and Eternal Life (Collins, Fount Paperback, 1976), The Second Christianity (SCM, London, 1983), 'Religious Pluralism', in ed. F. Whaling, The World's Religious Traditions (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1984) pp. 147-64 (subsequently and respectively referred to as GUF, GMN, DEL, TSC, WRT); P. Knitter, No Other Name? (SCM, London, 1985) ( = NON); W. C. Smith, The Faith of Other Men (Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1972), The Meaning and End of Religion (STCK., London, 1978), Towards a World Theology (Macmillan, London, 1980) (=TFM, MER, TWT); A. Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism (SCM, London, 1983) ( = CRP).

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desires to save all people. Hick, for example, asks whether such a God could have 'ordained that men must be saved in such a way that only a small minority can in fact receive this salvation?' 2 There are, after all, many millions who have never heard of Christ, before and after New Testament times. The theological axiom of the universal salvific will of God is the first argument employed by pluralists. The second theological argument follows on from the first. If Christianity and Christ are not the only means to salvation, then we require what Hick has called a 'Copernican revolution in the theology of religions', and Knitter, a 'theocentric model for Christian approaches to other religions'. 3 The pluralists maintain that it is God, and not Christianity and Christ, towards whom all religions move, and from whom they gain their salvific efficacy. Pluralists realise that the chief objection to this shift is its apparent violation of 'traditional' incarnational Christology and, in Knitter's words, the apparent debilitating of 'both personal commitment to Jesus Christ and a distinctly Christian contribution to the needs of the world'. 4 Pluralists argue that their respective Christologies do no such thing. Consequently, the second theological strategy employed by pluralists is to sever any normative ontological linking between Jesus Christ and God, while allowing that Christians may legitimately claim that they, and not everyone else, have come to know God through Christ. 5 They carry out this procedure in a number of ways. Hick, like Knitter, argues that a proper understanding of New Testament Christological language shows that Jesus was truly the Saviour for the early Christians, as he is for Christians today, but that the exclusivist nature of some biblical language (John 14.6; Acts 4.12), reflects psychological, cultural and historical factors which are extraneous to the real gospel. For example, there are numerous instances of the common human tendency to transpose psychological absolutes into ontologically exclusive absolutes. We would clearly recognise the proper status of a lover's claim that his 'Helen is the 2 Hick, GUF, p. 122; and also Knitter, NON, p. 140, ch. 8; Smith, TWT, p. 171, TFM, p. 138; Race, CRP, ch. 8. 3 Hick, GUF, ch. 9; Knitter, NON, p. 147. ' Knitter, NON, p. 167. 5 Hick, GUF, ch. 11, 12, GMN, ch. 7; Knitter, NON, ch. 8; Smith, TWT, pp. 168fT; Race, CRP, ch. 5.

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sweetest girl in the world'. Claims that Jesus is the one Lord and Saviour should be viewed similarly. Race distrusts ontology altogether and adopts an action Christology, where 'Jesus is "decisive", not because he is the focus for all the light everywhere revealed in the world, but for the vision he has brought within one cultural setting'.7 Phenomenological arguments: Pluralists also employ a number of phenomenological strategies to support their case. They all testify to meeting and recognising the presence of God and much that is good and true in non-Christian religions.8 Their contention is that the pluralist paradigm offers the best account of this phenomenon — the salvific efficacy of non-Christian religions. Hick maintains that phenomenologically, the major religions exhibit a common soteriological structure which he calls the turning from 'self-centredness to reality-centredness'. Knitter, Smith and Race also recognise this, in as much as a religion provides and allows 'psychological wholeness . . . enables the person to engage in healthy relation with others . . . offers a sense of peace and enables a more intense productive engagement in the world'.9 While Race and Hick think that the truth of this thesis will be eschatologically verified,10 Knitter thinks this can be affirmed in the present." Another phenomenological insight employed by pluralists is the fact that one's religion is normally dependent upon where one happens to be born. In effect, the 'accidents of cultural geography' often determine one's religion, so that to claim that other religions are 'partial or inferior' is a form of cultural parochialism.12 Philosophical objections: Pluralists also employ a number of common philosophical considerations which cumulatively present the case for their paradigm. The first concerns the extension of the principle utilised by Christians as to the veracity of their own religious experience. Surely, argue the pluralists, it is not consistent to grant the veracfty of our own experience ' ' • '

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Hick, GMN, p. 57; Knitter, NON, p. 185; Smith, TWT, p. 178. Race, CRP, p. 135. Hick, GUF, ch. 10; Knitter, NON, ch. 1; Smith, TFM; Race, CRP, ch. 1. Knitter, NON, pp. 68-9; Race and Smith, CRP, pp. 101, 147. Hick, DEL, GUF, ch. 2; Race, CRP, p. 146. Knitter, NON, p. 269. Hick, GUF, p. 132.

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while denying veracity to the experience of others.13 They argue that the pluralist paradigm, more than any other, facilitates this insight. Secondly, they argue that, for far too long, Christians have been dominated by an Aristotelian notion of truth, where truth 'is essentially a matter of either-or. It is either this or not this: it cannot be both.'14 They go on to argue that 'in all ultimate matters, truth lies not in an either-or but in a both-and.'15 Christians should adopt a complementary model, rather than one of contradiction, whereby different religious insights can be harmonised and viewed as different aspects of the one truth. Thirdly, they argue that any future for real inter-religious dialogue is impossible if one partner thinks that he or she has already gained access to the whole truth, or to a partial truth which nevertheless is the most important one. Can such a person really be open to the riches and insights from other religions? Pluralists claim that their view accommodates genuine dialogue and encourages a 'mutual mission of sharing experiences and insights, mutual enrichment and . . . co-operation'.16 The attitude of Christians to other religions need not be characterised by mistrust, desire to convert, or claims to superiority, but a will to learn and grow together towards the truth.17 An examination of the pluralisms theological arguments: The

theological thrust of pluralist practitioners has been to jettison one of two major theological axioms which have characterised Christian history and have come to the fore in the formulation of a Christian theology of religions. Against the axiom that salvation and grace come from God alone in Christ, they assert a

second (which has with varying success been held together with the first): that of the universal salvific will of God. My major question to Christian pluralists is this: can the second axiom be intelligibly held and properly grounded without the first? On what basis can pluralists assume the universal salvific will of God without giving normative ontological status to the revelatory " Hick, WRT, p. 157; Knitter, NON, p. 228; Smith, TWT, p. 101, Race, CRP, pp. 5-6. "Knitter, NON, p. 217. 1S Smith, TFM, p. 17; Hick, TSC, pp. 85fT; Knitter, NON, pp. 220-21. " Hick, WRT, p. 164. " Hick, GMN, ch. 7; Knitter, NON, p. 134; Smith, TWT, p. 96; Race, CRP, pp. 45ff

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events upon which this axiom is grounded, that is, the revelation of God in Christ? In effect, can Christian pluralists plausibly retain a normative theocentricism without a normative Christocentricism? Clearly, the two arguments utilised by pluralists must be considered together. The severing of these two traditionally indissoluble axioms is achieved by a questionable relativising of Christology, while uneasily maintaining the non-relativity and objective status of insights derived from Christology! This involves the odd notion that we may know something to be true, while denying the validity and normative status of those events which reveal and are part of that truth. This tension, I submit, remains unresolved in the pluralist paradigm. Let us look more closely at Knitter and Hick in this respect. Despite his Copernican intentions, Hick admits in a number of recent publications that a Christian experiences his or her own life 'in greater or lesser degree, as being lived in the presence of God, as made known to us by Jesus'. In this sense, Jesus is 'decisive' or 'normative' for us.i% Problematically, the implications of this Christ event are then used in a wider than for us context. In his earlier works, before his Copernican days, Hick seems more sensitive to the indissolubility of Christ's revelation and the Christian meaning of God when he writes: 'it was the experience of the disciples that God's fatherly love was revealed in the life of Jesus'; and later, 'the event from which the Christian conception of providence is derived, is the death of Jesus Christ'.19 Knitter attempts to circumvent Hick's 'for us' difficulty, and also Race's '"wretched historicism" and relativism'.20 Knitter argues for a Christology which is 'universally relevant' rather than 'definitively and normatively' relevant.21 However, it is difficult to make sense of this distinction. On what basis can Knitter and other pluralists make claims that there is a 'common ground and goal of all religions', and that the 'same God . . .(is) " Hick, 'Pluralism and the Reality of the Transcendent', Christian Century, 98, 1981, pp. 46-7; TSC, ch. 1, especially p. 19. " Hick, Faith and Knowledge (1957), (Collins, Fount Paperback, 1978), pp. 225, 233. 10 Knitter, NON, p. 225. He uses Race's criticisms of Troeltsch against Race himself. This criticism may not be applied to Hick for he does retain the ontological status of Christian language. !1 Knitter, NON, p. 142.

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animating all religions', other than through the revelation of God in Christ, which is thereby universally and normatively relevant?22 How can Knitter discern this 'same God' in all religions without a normative revelation of God? Smith betrays this unrecognised difficulty when he writes that 'God is as Christ reveals Him to be, active and redemptively at work, always and everywhere'.23 Although Knitter admirably tries to steer between the Scylla and Charybdis of Barthian exclusivism and Racian relativism, he sails perilously close to Charybdis and is perhaps sucked in with his ambiguous distinctions. Dr Haddon Willmer has well characterised this pluralist tendency in Christology as the fruits of 'liberalism and enlightenment', whereby the teaching that 'God is revealed in Christ' is interpreted with the 'emphasis on the God revealed in Jesus, as though we can know him apart from Jesus Christ. Then we can make statements like "God is love" and use them apart

from and even against much of this history of Jesus and the history from Jesus.'24 Willmer's comments are especially pertinent, as they also alert us to the close, although not total, identification between Christ and his community, the church. If this Copernican or theocentric shift away from a Christocentric (and ecclesiocentric) approach to other religions has been found theologically wanting, it is worth noting that Hick, whom Knitter has rightly called the 'most radical' of pluralists, has recently proposed yet another shift away from theocentricism. I shall briefly deal with this novel development within the pluralist paradigm. In response to the criticism that it was a Christian God at the centre of the universe of faiths, which also failed to accommodate non-theistic religions (a major problem for Knitter, Race and Smith), Hick introduced and developed a Kantian-type distinction. He distinguished between the divine noumenal reality, analogous to Kant's 'noumenal world, which exists independently and outside man's perception of it' which he calls the 'Eternal One' or the 'Real', and the phenomenal world, 'which is that world as it appears to our human consciousness', 12

Knitter, NON, p. 208. Smith, TWT, p. 178. 24 In C. F. D. Moule, The Origins of Christology (Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 166. 11

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and which corresponds to the responses within different religious traditions, both theistic and non-theistic.2S These traditions can be viewed as authentic but different responses to the noumenal divine reality. This new pluralist development, rather than overcoming my earlier criticisms, actually entails two further objections which eventually lead back to my initial criticisms above. Surely this shift to an unknowable noumenal reality, away from theocentricism and the ontological axiom of the universal salvific will of God, undercuts the very basis and initial argument for the pluralist paradigm? Remove an all-loving God from the centre, and the requirement for the Copernican, or pluralist, revolution is also removed. In response to this criticism, it may be argued that Hick must now shift the weight of the pluralist case upon the phenomenological and philosophical arguments, which we will consider shortly. For the moment, a second serious objection arises. Hume's comment on mystics may be appropriately applied to Hick's noumenal reality: 'Is the name without any meaning, of such mighty importance? Or how do MYSTICS, who maintain the absolute incomprehensibility of the deity, differ from sceptics or atheists . . .?'" In this journal, it has already been noted that Hick's distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal comes 'very close to unbelief.27 Incidentally, Kant's noumenal encountered the same problem, for how can Kant 'claim to know that there is a correspondence between phenomena and things in themselves, and that the latter act upon consciousness'?28 However, I believe that Hick would want to steer clear of this type of agnosticism and unbelief, because it is his contention, in common with Race, that the question whether the various religions are equally valid salvific apprehensions can only be decided by eschatological verification. The problem is that Hick has attempted such an eschatological analysis in Death and Eternal Life, where the eschaton is quite definitely theistic, if not altogether Christian! He describes his own eschatology as one 1S Hick, GMN, p. 105. " D. Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1st paragraph, part 4. 17 P. Byrne, 'John Hick's Philosophy of Religion', Scottish Journal of Theology, 35, 1982, p. 301. " A. Wedberg,i4 History of Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1982), Vol. 2, p. 174.

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which depicts persons as still in the course of creation towards an 'end-state of perfected community in the divine kingdom. This end-state is conceived as one in which individual egoity has been transformed in communal unity before God.' 2 ' He also admits that this eschaton requires a 'conception of God as personal Lord, distinct from his creation', and thereby 'implicitly rejects the advaitist view that atman is Brahman, the collective human self being ultimately identical with God'.30 If Hick tries to abandon God at the centre of this new pluralism and substitutes for him the unknowable noumenal reality, God once more appears at the end of Hick's new pluralism! Consequently, we are led back to the initial set of criticisms with which I began: — on what basis can Hick assume an all-loving God?31 Phenomenological arguments: If the theological arguments of the pluralists are problematic, what of their phenomenological considerations? Their first and major point is that experience and study of the non-Christian religions testifies to the presence of God, and that one can phenomenologically discern common soteriological structures. Without wishing to deny the possibility of the presence of God in the lives and religions of nonChristians, my contention here is that this kind of recognition and evaluation is not viable in terms of phenomenological analysis, but requires theological and, for the Christian, Christological criteria. Because of the pluralist tendency to jettison a normative Christology, their criteria for religious truth tend to be pragmatic, humanistic and phenomenological, which for some reason they think more acceptable. We noticed earlier how their Christological considerations were deeply influenced by the heritage of the enlightenment and liberalism. Here again, the same seems to be true. I do not intend to advocate an entirely Barthian rejection of any criterion outside the revelation of God in Christ, but wish to draw attention to the either implicit or explicit rejection by pluralists of this criterion — with its problematic consequences. " In ed. S. Davis, Encountering Evil (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1981), p. 51. Hick, DEL, p. 464. I have developed these criticisms further in 'John Hick's Copernican Revolution: Ten Years After', New Blackfriars, July/August 1984, pp. 323-31, and in a response to G. Loughlin's defense of Hick, (both articles), in New Blackfriars, March 1985, pp. 127-37. 10 31

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I have noted the attendant difficulties arising from the eschatological criteria used by Hick (and Race). Here, I shall examine Knitter's pragmatic and psychological proposals. Knitter argues that a true common soteriological structure within the different religions can be identified, in as much as a religion brings about 'psychological wholeness', and encourages 'healthy relations . . . a sense of peace . . . (and) more intense, productive engagement in the world'. He develops this by stating that personally the belief must move and satisfy the human heart, intellectually it must satisfy and broaden the mind, and practically it must 'promote the psychological health of individuals'.32 Knitter clearly acknowledges that he uses 'Jung's simple and pragmatic criterion for judging whether a religion is true'.33 But why should this normative Jungian notion be any more acceptable (and to whom?), than the normative revelation of God in Christ (although not exclusively understood)? Furthermore, even deeper epistemological and ontological problems are raised by the somewhat nebulous notion of 'psychological health' which Knitter only touches on in a footnote of his book. There, he quite rightly acknowledges that just 'what makes for "good psychology" is, admittedly, an extremely complex question. It ties into the question concerning what is the fulfillment and goal of human nature; and this leads to the broader and even more controverted epistemological problem: what is the truth and how do we know it?'3"

Without minimising the complex epistemological and hermeneutical difficulties, surely, for the Christian, questions concerning the 'fulfilment and goal of human nature', and questions of 'truth', find their primary answer in Christ and not in Jung? In fact, the scandal of the cross and its terrifying consequences might even disqualify much of the gospel on Jungian criteria. The burden of my objection is not to dismiss the possibility that God is present in the lives of non-Christians and acts through their religions, but to argue that the procedure of, and

"Knitter, NON, p. 231. " Knitter, NON, p. 68, my emphasis. " Knitter, NON, p. 240, footnote 61, my emphasis.

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assumptions made by pluralists in treating this question are not without grave difficulties.35 Let us turn to the second phenomenological consideration concerning an individual's place of birth determining his or her religion and the danger of cultural parochialism. Pluralists are surely right in noticing this phenomenon. However, whether and how this consideration bears upon the question of religious truth is not at all clear. Taken to its logical conclusion, as an argument against parochialism, it would lead to the notion that truth is a function of birth, so that presumably the beliefs of a materialist atheist, a Roman Catholic Christian, and an Advaitin Hindu would all be deemed to be equally true if these persons were born into families and cultures with those beliefs. Whether the pluralist 'both-and' model can accommodate such differences without minimising and reducing the import of either one or all of these views will be shortly investigated. Philosophical arguments: The criticism above equally applies to the extension of the principle that the veracity of one's own experience implies that all (religious) experiences should be treated veridically. But here a deeper objection can be raised against pluralists, which once more takes us back to the heritage of the enlightenment and liberalism. Kant's turning to the subject and Schleiermacher's emphasis upon experience were perhaps understandable reactions against an excessive and sometimes exclusive attention to the object of experience. When pluralists utilise this argument from experience, they are often in danger of concentrating too exclusively on the experience and its effects on the knowing subject, rather than the object and source of the creation of these effects. For instance, I have pointed out how Hick's Kantian-type distinction leads to precisely this problem. The question of the truth and nature of the noumenal reality is abandoned, and is only taken up again because Hick has always maintained that religious language is cognitive and can be eschatologically verified. This tension is difficult to resolve on pluralist premises and leaves Hick holding what I think are two contradictory positions. On the one hand, the 'Real is equally authentically 15 1 have tried to develop and defend the inclusivist approach to these questions in my forthcoming book, Theology and Religious Pluralism (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1986).

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thought and experienced as personal and non-personal'; and on the other hand, when the object of experience is brought into focus in the eschaton, humankind's final relation to the Real is one of eternal, loving communion with a personal God.26 Knitter's use of Jung is also symptomatic of this tendency to concentrate on experience and its effects. The issue underlying a number of the criticisms above leads us to the important plea by pluralists that truth-claims should and can be harmonised by means of a both-and, rather than an eitheror, model. Undoubtedly this conviction is an important corrective to an excessively logical and intellectualist contrast between religious beliefs and doctrines. It may also remind us of and warn us against the sometimes over-theoretical comparison between religious truth-claims, as if they were purely and simply sets of intellectual propositions, without due attention being paid to the practices, rites, worship, rituals and other contexts of meaning within which truth-claims are generated. Knitter and Smith are sometimes sensitive to these issues. But it is precisely this latter point that leads to the first of two objections against the both-and model utilised by pluralists. Can we be quite sure, for instance, that when two religions are being compared we are not in fact improperly comparing incommensurable paradigms? Surely it is only by means of a careful hermeneutical process, involving perhaps teams of researchers, paying attention to detailed field studies, philological, orientalist, phenomenological and other findings, that we can even tentatively come to a proper understanding of the meaning of religious terms and their import. Take for example Knitter and Hick's assertion that there is really a common reality behind the terms dukkha and sin. They both argue that these religions use different terms to point to this same reality.37 For a start, both terms have a multiplicity of meanings according to the different varieties of the Christian and Buddhist traditions. For a liberal Irenaean Christian like Hick, sin has a vastly different import to that of a Lutheran Christian, like Pannenberg, and a Roman Catholic, like Rahner. Furthermore, " Hick, 'The Theology of Religious Pluralism', Theology, 66, 1983, p. 337, my emphasis. 31 Hick, TSC, p. 86; Knitter, NON, p. 118.

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dukkha takes on quite a different colouring for a Japanese Buddhist in the Pure Land tradition of Shin-Shu, deriving from Shinran, and a Sri Lankan monk in the Theravadin tradition. And even if these very real complexities and difficulties are put aside for the moment, Hendrik Kraemer's objection to the assimilation of even the Christian and Buddhist notions of 'transience', seemingly less controversial than sin, is worth recalling. Yet even he sometimes ignores these difficulties of interpretation: 'Buddhist transiency has meaning only on the background of a void, God-less universe; whereas Biblical realism proclaims the transiency of men on the background of a real world'.38 Terms, myths, ideas and rites from different religions cannot be so easily compared, let alone assimilated, without more detailed attention to the whole context of practice, worship and inter-related beliefs which give them their meaning. The second objection to this both-and model is this: just as

extreme Barthian exclusivists deny a priori that any truth is compatible with Christ's revelation (either-or), so the pluralists problematically tend towards an a priori acceptance that other religious truths must be compatible with Christ's revelation. For example, Smith writes, in surely too confident a manner: 'in all ultimate matters, truth lies not in an either-or but in a both-and'. Given the immensely difficult hermeneutical task of understanding and interpreting another person's religious convictions, there seems to me to be absolutely no reason why, in principle, two adherents from different religions may not hold two ultimately contradictory and incompatible sets of belief. Numerous examples are readily available.39 If religious language and symbols are to have any cognitive status at all, and our four pluralists, often despite themselves, admit this, then genuine and perhaps irresolvable oppositions must be catered for.40 Furthermore, and here we can also appropriately take up the final pluralist argument concerning fruitful dialogue, this bothand model seems to lead to a very abstract, reductive and unhistorical view of dialogue and religious truth. As a " H. Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (Edinburgh House Press, London, 1938), pp. 138-39. " See W. Christian, Oppositions of Religious Doctrines (Macmillan, London, 1972). '° Race, despite his Christology, later acknowledges the cognitive status of language and symbols, CRP, p. 147.

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consequence of this both-and model, Knitter, for example, writes that the 'cognitive claims of Christian tradition must somehow be true for those of other religions if these claims are to be genuinely true for Christians!'41 Smith also writes in the same vein: 'No statement about Christian truth is valid to which in principle a non-Christian could not agree . . . (and) should be acceptable to, even cogent for, all humankind.'42 While it is a proper apologetic and dialogical concern that the Christian faith be intelligibly and cogently expressed to adherents from other religions, it is somewhat reductive and Utopian to state that the validity or truth of the Christian faith, and for that matter any other faith, is dependent on its acceptance by believers from other religions. Must a Christian constantly reinterpret (and no doubt eventually reduce) the cognitive claims concerning the incarnation, trinity and atonement, until the materialist atheist, Advaitin Hindu and 'all humankind' state that they accept these truths, before they are acceptable to Christians? It is almost impossible to imagine what these Christian truth-claims would amount to! The concern for truth in dialogue becomes the function of universally acceptable truth-criteria, whatever these may be. (Would Jung be of much help with the Freudians still about?). The desire to move away from superiority, mistrust, hostility and the exclusive intention of conversion, in dialogue with people from other religions is admirable, as is a willingness to learn, grow and increase in co-operation. But all of this is also perfectly compatible with retaining one's deepest convictions and disavowing the pluralist paradigm. No doubt the Christian will learn much about his or her own faith as well as that of their partners; and this will be a constant cause of joy, surprise and pain. Furthermore, through the self-examination experienced in dialogue, Christians may alter or possibly lose their most cherished convictions. But the very richness, variety and depth of the different religions, which gives cause for dialogue, oddly seems to be the very enemy of pluralists. My aim throughout this study has been to demonstrate that many commonly-held theological, phenomenological and 41

Knitter, NON, p. 228. " Smith, TWT, pp. 101, 126.

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philosophical assumptions of pluralists are open to serious objections. If these objections are not met, the pluralist paradigm seems to lack plausibility, internal coherence and explanatory power. If these objections are met, it may be that pluralists may turn into inclusivists! GAVIN D'COSTA

West London Institute of Higher Education Lancaster House Borough Road Isleworth Middlesex TW7 5DU