The pluralist perspective
Many people adopt the pluralist position as their solution to the exclusivity problem. The pluralist position accepts all, or at least a great many, religious persuasions as equally valid. This position is incompatible with our worldview, but probably has many subscribers among those who have left our body. Religious pluralism has a stronghold in our democratic culture, in which tolerance and pluralism in many aspects of life are the norm. We are indeed thankful that we do not live in a fascist or totalitarian state. As a society, we greatly enjoy freedom of religion, without which we might not even exist as a denomination of Christendom. It seems awkward to bite the hand that gives us freedom, but the two issues must be teased apart for our purposes here.
To argue exclusivity in a social context of pluralism, we must first distinguish between religious pluralism and religious freedom. Freedom of religion is a sociological and political issue, not a theological issue. We are thankful that we have religious freedom, and we will not discuss that issue further. We do, however, want to discuss religious pluralism.
The first step in understanding religious pluralism is to identify the underlying thinking that leads to the conclusion that the world contains many equally valid religions. A person can adopt the pluralist position based on any number of core assumptions or beliefs about God. These beliefs could include:
- God probably doesn’t even exist, so whatever god(s) a culture or group espouses is (are) as good as anyone else’s.
- God might exist, but only as a vague, impersonal power. God has provided no specific revelation because there is nothing to reveal; we only sense the might of God in nature, and any form of worship is fine because it’s only a human enterprise.
- God has provided no revelation; therefore, whatever any culture perceives about God is just as valid as any other.
- God has made no revelation, or no specific revelation, but each religion’s traditions and practices do reveal some truth or aspect about God. No one has all of it, but everyone has some of it.
- God is unknowable, there is no specific revelation, and it is utter folly and conceit for any person, organization, or culture to claim that they possess the sole repository of knowledge about God.
- God has made many revelations, and each of humanity’s many religions is only answerable to the revelation accepted by its own culture.
- God is honored by sincerity of belief and love for humanity; whatever else people add to religion amounts to bigotry.
- God has made one specific revelation, the Bible, but it is impossible for any one person or group to interpret it correctly. Anyone’s take on it is as good as anyone else’s.
All of the above positions disdain the idea that a single truth about God exists or can be known. Therefore, no religious body can make the claim that they know “the truth.” All of these viewpoints assume that religion is a subjective venture, and that there is no such thing as “error” because there is no absolute standard that measures any religion’s beliefs and practices. Everyone is entitled to his or her belief system, and every religion has its own validity — except, of course, those religions held in esteem by your enemies.
Ironically, each of the propositions above is in the form of an objective universal judgment. Each statement purports to have some factual knowledge of God, even if that factual knowledge is that we don’t have any factual knowledge. It’s not so clear how any statement about God can be considered purely subjective, for to claim that religion is subjective is an absolutist position. Let’s not worry about that detail now, however. We do need to determine if any of the positions on the list is in fact valid, or if it is possible that an objective religious position exists that would preclude subjectivity, and therefore pluralism.
When we first begin to examine the question of exclusivity, as those living in a religiously pluralistic society, we must first examine the issue of revelation and religious objectivity. Before we ask, “Are Christadelphians the only organization with a good handle on what God is all about?” we need to ask a more general question first: “Is it reasonable that a specific and absolute (not relative or culture-based) knowledge of God is available, so that any group could make the claim that their belief is solely accurate among the religions of the world?” We need first to investigate the likelihood that any such position is available before we can go about demonstrating our claim to hold that position.
This consideration leads to yet further upstream questions, so we must back up all the way to the existence-of-God question that we addressed much earlier in this series. We concluded that belief in a “god” of any kind is quite warranted from what we do know about the universe. That’s our starting point. This step eliminates religious subjectivity that emanates from atheism (proposition 1 on the above list).
The next step is to demonstrate that the Creator God is also a personal God. This I also covered in an earlier section of this series. After presenting the case for a personal God, the next step, which is just a little one, takes us to the likelihood that a personal God would also be a God of revelation, that is, One who would reveal to the people He has created whatsoever they need to engage God in a personal relationship. By definition, a “personal” God is one who communicates with “persons”. Again, at this point we are not talking about which revelation, or how God might reveal Himself, only the fact that a specific revelation is reasonable and consistent with what we can know about God outside of such revelation (Rom. 1:20-22). These two steps — a personal God and a God of revelation — eliminate any subjectivity that arises from a deist position (that God exists only as a creative force and has no interaction with creation). We’ve still more work to do, however, until we can feel comfortable with our stance.
Finally, we come to the point I covered in recent articles: that the specific revelation of God is in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ (Heb. 1:1,2). The perception that God revealed himself to humanity in the form of a human life is paramount to our argument. Secondary to that argument is that the Bible is the written record of the essential revelation, which is the life, death, resurrection, and return of Jesus Christ. The revelation of God to humanity has come in the form of historical events: the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. As I have emphasized, and will always continue to emphasize, the resurrection, being a historical event, falls first into the category of objective truth, and from that we derive theological tenets. Further, we can add the history of Israel and the seed of Abraham as further objective evidence for the specific revelation of God we know as the Bible. The facts about Jesus are inextricably embedded in this national history.
A further use of the resurrection
I want to emphasize here another important aspect of the resurrection. In order to transcend subjectivity, relativism, and pluralism (related but not synonymous concepts), a successful apologetic for exclusivity must establish some universal objective basis for its claim. For a religious idea to hold true for all persons at all times, it must have its basis in some real event, not in an abstract idea or set of moral teachings. This is not to argue that any event will do, nor is it to say that various religions haven’t come up with useful moral and social ideas. It is only to say that if a religion is going to claim universal validity, it must have as its basis some criterion that applies universally.
Christianity claims to have its basis in the resurrection of Jesus. The nature of this event concerns life and death. By appealing to resurrection, Christianity can claim a universal application; that is, it applies to everyone who ever lived, because all people are subject to death. A human, as long as he or she is alive, has a unique place in the universe — an autonomous moral agent capable of fellowship with God. When dead, however, a human is nothing. Everything we have or aspire to in life is subsumed under the larger heading of “being alive,” and it is this very most fundamental aspect of a human being that the resurrection addresses.
Now we have two facets of the resurrection that transcend relativism. It is not only a historical event, but it is also a historical event that resides in the most fundamental category of human existence. Setting aside for a moment the evidence for the historicity of a literal resurrection (covered a few articles ago), consider just the bare claim: a dead person now alive; death annulled.
The scope and nature of this claim in and of itself places Christianity in a unique category among the world’s religions. It alone tackles the most fundamental human problem, death — not by ignoring it, or by investing in any mythological solution, but by solving it in a historically verifiable and theologically sensible manner.
Let’s take one more pass across this idea to make sure that we can fully appreciate the apologetic value of the resurrection. Christianity centers on the literal resurrection of Jesus. The evidence for this is copious, and it is the most natural reading of the gospel accounts. I do not want to go over this material again. I do want to highlight a broader concept about the resurrection, which is its nature and scope.
Rather than having a religion centered on some document or alleged miracle or enlightenment of its founder, Christianity has a basis of an entirely different nature. It is not about some aspect of life or morality — it is life. Life itself becomes the defining feature, and this is the aspect that nullifies pluralism, at least for anyone subject to death — that is, regular mortal people, such as are found in 100% of the population worldwide. The position of Biblical Christianity transcends any cultural relativism (numbers 5 and 6 on the list) by establishing a single universal criterion, life from death.
Issues downstream from revelation
Thus far, we have claimed the likelihood of the existence of a personal God who has revealed Himself to humanity. He did this in many ways, but the primary revelation is the resurrection of Jesus (Heb. 1:1,2). In our day it is the record that we call revelation, that is, the Bible. At the time of the resurrection, there was no debate as to what resurrection meant: Jesus was dead, but is now alive. Within about 100 years the meaning of resurrection had shifted, and within 300 years it was essentially lost. People still used the word, but the concept was gone. For them, the atonement was no longer the atonement, and people didn’t really die. Away went orthodoxy on its errant course.
We know that people draw radically different meanings from the same Bible. We know that Christian teachings, in the world of orthodoxy, are shifting sands. Are these shifts due to God’s further revelations that changed original concepts, or is it more likely that these changes came from human origins?
It’s hard to argue that God would be inconsistent, and it’s also hard to argue that at one time people didn’t have immortal souls, but now they do. On the other hand, it’s very easy to argue that people can change teachings to suit their perceived needs. According to the pluralist position, these people aren’t wrong; they just have a different faith system. But why should it be that people, who are so capable of being so wrong in so many ways, cannot be wrong about religious beliefs also? What is it about religion that it somehow allows everyone to be “right”?
We do know that the belief in an immortal soul drives much of pluralism, because people, in general, are loathe to condemn so many souls to eternal punishment. In order to relieve their consciences, they make the bounds of religion very broad indeed, and pluralism helps out quite a bit. Pluralism is “politically correct”, but it’s a high price to pay for social comfort, because its intellectual bankruptcy is transparent.
An acceptable aspect of pluralism
People respond to God in many ways. We have a great diversity in modes of worship, ways we run our personal lives, and ways we express our works of faith. We are far from an intolerant body, even if we do sometimes have trouble being as flexible as we could be. However, all this goes on within the body, and the body has one head, Jesus. Within our body we ought to have a great pluralism of how people relate to God, because each person is different. There is one personal God, and the resurrection of Jesus provides a single reference point for religious truth. Because that one faith entails one body, inclusive of all believers in all times and cultures, there will be a multitude of ways in which these believers will worship and live out their shared faith.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One