This book presents four different perspectives on the nature of humanity’s relationship with God in terms of salvation. In the following sections I summarize the main points of each of these perspectives followed by a section delivering my opinion regarding the issues raised in each of the summaries. I rely heavily on the work of Leslie Newbigen (especially his book The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission) in my critique of this book.
Analysis:
Religious Pluralism (John Hick):
John Hick argues that all religions represent a pursuit of the “Ultimate Reality” (his term for the equivalent of God). He argues that no religion has shown superiority to any other. Each of the world’s major religions seem to exhibit a similar level of effectiveness at transforming people from natural self-centeredness to what Christianity calls a new orientation that is manifested in the “fruit of the Spirit” [page 43]. In other words, Hick believes that each of these major religions engages in salvation exercises that are relatively equal in outcomes. He readily admits that he has arrived at these conclusions inductively from personal observation within a “critical realist epistemology” [page 46].
Hick then explains his opinion regarding how humanity worships this “Ultimate Reality,” or what he later simply refers to as “the Real” [page 47]. He states that “we do not worship the Real in itself but always one or other of its manifestations to humanity…” [page 50]. This approach encourages dialogue between traditions that eliminates any claim to superiority among world religions. It also has significant implications for Christianity with respect to the traditional understanding of Jesus of Nazareth as God incarnate, the second person of the Trinity, and the resultant penal-substitutionary atonement theory. Hick denies that Jesus understood himself as God. He believes that the idea that Jesus had two complete natures in a literal sense (one God and one human) is an impossible idea to maintain with any sense of credibility. Instead, he says that Jesus should be thought of as having been “so open to divine inspiration…that God was able to act on earth in and through him” [page 58]. In this way, Jesus can be seen as making God real to humanity, without denying other manifestations of God that have been (or will be) present in other religions [page 59].
Inclusivism (Clark Pinnock):
Clark Pinnock presents the case for Inclusivism. This view point is an attempt to take seriously the claim that God loves the whole world. As a result, Pinnock believes that the Spirit is operative in the sphere of human religion to draw people closer to God and prepare them for the gospel of Christ. The premise for this belief is that God is present everywhere; however, the inference he draws from this premise is that God may be encountered in the context of non-Christian religions. He qualifies this inferred belief in two ways. First, he clearly recognizes that other religions contain wickedness. Secondly, these religions stop short of functioning as “vehicles of salvation” [page 99].
Though he believes the Spirit is operative everywhere, Pinnock is not dogmatic regarding how God’s graciousness is present. He appeals strongly to a Trinitarian foundation based on the relational being of God. He believes that traditional theologies of the Spirit have exhibited a significant weakness because they have tended to restrict the activity of the Spirit to Christian ecclesial settings. He calls for a “generous openness to the possibility of God’s gracious presence” among other religions [page 112]. He believes that all religions, including Christianity, benefit tremendously from dialogue. It is faith and “an honest search for God and obedience to God’s word as heard in the heart and conscience” that counts. One may either believe in Christ in this life or at a later date after this life [page 117].
Ultimately, however, Pinnock believes that everyone “must pass through Jesus to reach the Father, but there is more than one path for reaching this place” [page 119]. This is the crux of the difference between Pinnock and Hick. Whereas, Hick states that he welcomes much of Pinnock’s moves, and wishes him to mover further along the road leading from exclusivism, to inclusivism, and then to pluralism, Pinnock categorically rejects this perspective. Pinnock clearly views himself on a different road that must at some point go through Jesus of Nazareth. Hick, however, sees the major world religions as providing equally valid means to achieve a saving relationship with the Real (or God).
Post-Enlightenment Particularism (Alister E. McGrath):
McGrath begins his discussion of pluralism by making the distinction between pluralism as a fact of life and pluralism as a belief or ideology that in this fact of life should be desired or encouraged. He then moves his discussion to the recent, determined effort to “reduce all religions to the same basic phenomenon” [page 154]. He highlights the important point that there is tremendous power associated with making the rules that govern the discussion of defining what is or is not a religion. He clearly states that the notion of religion as a well-defined category is a fiction. He believes that it is important to remember that generalizations should only function as basic descriptions and not be used to reduce all religions “to the same mold” [page 156].
In that vein, McGrath strongly states that dialogue “implies respect, but it does not presuppose agreement” [page 157]. He recognizes the importance of dialogue to enhance our understanding of others. It causes us to critically evaluate our own faith in an ever reforming pattern. However, the result of dialogue should never be to suppress differences for the sake of establishing commonalities, but to clearly recognize the legitimate differences within a respectful engagement.
With this understanding in mind, McGrath moves on to consider the notion of salvation itself. He claims that “salvation is a complex and highly nuanced” notion [page 163]. However, from the Christian perspective salvation is “grounded in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ” making it by its very nature a very particularist notion [page 163]. The underlying Christian doctrines associated with the nature of God and the incarnation of Jesus Christ drive the Christian view of salvation toward a particularist perspective. He cites the work of Harvey Cox in advocating the importance of beginning inter-faith dialogue from the concrete, historical perspective of Jesus rather than an abstract symbol. Communicating about salvation from this perspective requires that Christians assert that salvation is “Christologically determined” [page 174]. However, Christian theology “must be able to accommodate itself with the creative tension that results from the simultaneous New Testament affirmation of the particularity of the person and work of Christ and the universality of the scope of his mission” [page 177]. It does this through recognizing that God’s salvation is not conditioned on human failure to evangelize. God’s saving work is not restricted to the human preaching of the gospel. McGrath directs our attention to God’s prevenient grace which prepares the way for humanity to respond to the message of the gospel.
An Evidentialist Approach to Particularism (R. Douglas Geivett & W. Gary Phillips):
Geivett and Phillips begin by making the helpful distinction between the “first-order debate between Christian particularists and inclusivists, and the second-order debate concerning religious plurality. They contend that because pluralists, for the most part, do not accept standard orthodox views on the authority of the bible, dialogue with them occurs outside of the bible in the realm of natural theology. Therefore, Geivett and Phillips begin their discussion of salvation from the evidence supporting the existence of “a God who might be mercifully disposed to take note of the human condition” and provide a plan to meet those needs [page 219]. They start by examining the general religious impulse in humanity and our innate desire to make sense of our world in the midst of her problems. They then move on to inquire as to the nature of the universe and the possibility of a personal creator. Humanity is said to exist within a “remarkable confluence of life-sustaining features” that contributes to a reasonable view of life as depending on this personal creator. Within this perspective is the recognition of the estrangement that many feel between humanity and God that could only be rectified by that God. This situation “leads us at once to expect that a particular revelation, answering to the specific needs of the human condition, might be provided by God” [page 225]. Finally, they conclude that this particular revelation has been provided and conforms with “what is revealed about God independently” of that revelation, that has a message that is ‘suited’ to the needs of humanity, and can be “corroborated by external signs…” [page 226].
Geivett and Phillips then examine their brand of Particularism in light of their view of the teachings of the bible. They seek to answer a series of questions including: “which view best fits the biblical data, inclusivism or particularism? What are the conditions of salvation…? Is there anything that one must believe in order to be saved? Does scripture teach that salvation is dependent on an explicit trust in Jesus Christ…? Or does Scripture teach that salvation is available outside of an explicit faith in Jesus?” [page 229]. After examining several passages in the bible they strongly conclude that their restrictivist position on particularism is more in line with the bible’s teaching. They conclude that only through explicit belief in the person and work of Jesus Christ will God grant salvation to an individual.
Evaluation/Strengths and Weaknesses:
With respect to each of the arguments in the book and the various responses delivered to those arguments, I find myself more in line with those presented by Pinnock and McGrath. I agree with McGrath that Hick seemed to unfairly characterize Evangelical understandings of Christology in general and the incarnation in particular. McGrath mentions N.T.Wright’s work as an example of Evangelical scholarship that supports a more orthodox or traditional position though not from a reactionary or Fundamentalist direction. I only wish that he had more fully explained Wright’s nuanced view of Jesus’ self understanding as being driven by a “vocational” understanding of his person and work (see Wright – Jesus and the Victory of God). I also wish that he would have more fully explained his statement regarding the transitions that are made from narratives to doctrinal statements and the metaphysical language used to accomplish this task [page 66].
In addition, I appreciated that McGrath drew our attention to the topic of evaluating the moral superiority of one religion over another. I agree with his insistence that Hick’s “unknowable ‘Real’” is a “postulated universal” that pushes the pluralist hypothesis to a position of “one among many explanations of the diversity and divergence of the world’s religions” [page70]. I agree with his assessment that the collapse of the Enlightenment worldview has greatly affected this situation.
On the other side of the spectrum, I also agree with McGrath that the Natural Theology approach of Gaevitt and Phillips poses problems with respect to apologetics. I believe that their approach that begins with Natural Theology has benefits for those who are already believers and provides an explanation of some aspects of general revelation; however, it does not address the issue of the fairness of God that drives much of the discussion surrounding pluralism.
Finally, I found Pinnock’s assessment of the difference between his position and that of McGrath to be insightful. He referred to his position as being more in line with Karl Rahner and McGrath’s position to be better aligned with Leslie Newbigin. That insight illustrates why I probably find more affinity with McGrath than the other contributors in our book. Most of my positions in this area have been informed by Newbigin. In his work, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, Newbigin addresses several issues that have been touched upon in our subject book.
In the process of laying out his position on the interaction of the claims of the gospel of Jesus Christ relative to the claims of other religions, Newbigin addresses Hick’s distinction between “confessional” and “truth seeking” approaches to dialogue. According to Hick, the “confessional” approach either leads to the conversion of one person or the other, or into a hardening of the two positions. On the other hand, Hick’s “truth seeking” approach has each participant operating with an awareness of the “Transcendent Being” and is helped by the dialogue with others to move closer to the Divine Reality [Newbigin, page 164]. In his extended treatment of this subject, Newbigin clearly shows that Hick’s perspective has its own presuppositions that “under the guise of openness and teachability” deny the possibility of approaching truth from any other route. I agree with Newbigin that “there is no dichotomy between ‘confession’ and ‘truth seeking.’ A confession of faith is the starting point of [someone’s] truth seeking” [Newbigin, page 168]. A Christian is like any other participant in the dialogue. As Newbigin says, “no standpoint is available to anyone except the point where they stand;… there is no platform from which one can claim to have an ‘objective’ view that supercedes all the ‘subjective’ faith commitments of the world’s faiths;…everyone must take their stand on the floor of the arena, on the same level with every other, and there engage in the real encounter of ultimate commitment with those who have also staked their lives on their vision of the truth” [Newbigin, page 168].
Newbigin began laying the groundwork for this perspective in the beginning of his book when addressing the issue of authority. He stated at the outset that his personal commitment to Christianity “cannot be demonstrated on grounds established from the point of view of another commitment” [Newbigin, page 15]. All statements of truth that are external to a person are statements of faith whether they are scientific postulates or philosophical constructs.
Finally, Newbigin addresses two other topics that were touched upon in our subject book. The first is the importance of the Trinity. Through an extended argument, Newbigin shows the importance of the Christian concept of the Trinity within the larger story that Christianity tells to make sense of her world and hold out hope for healing the “dichotomy between the sensible and intelligible worlds” [Newbigin, page 26]. I agree with him that “[n]ew ways need to be found of stating the essential Trinitarian faith, and for this the church in each new cultural situation has to go back to the original sources of this faith in order to lay hold on it afresh and to state it afresh in contemporary terms” [Newbigin, page 27]. I think that in some ways, the Trinitarian perspective that Hick reacts against is one that needs this new restatement.
The second topic is the subject of judgment. Newbigin’s analysis of this topic includes a clear recognition of historic Christianity’s reading of the bible with two seemingly contradictory perspectives: (1) a universalism that claims that the omnipotence of God and his desire to save all of humanity will result in salvation for each individual soul; and (2) the clear teaching in the bible about judgment. In spite of the tension involved, he maintains that it is essential for Christians to hold both of these perspectives together.
Newbigin begins his treatment of this subject by stating that the simplistic ease of the “rationalistic universalism” of the first statement should immediately warn us against an exclusive acceptance of this perspective. On the other hand, we must “refuse to engage in speculation about the ultimate salvation of other people” [Newbigin, page 79]. The prime target of Jesus’ warnings associated with rejection seemed to be to those who appeared sure of their own salvation. The warnings were to the insider instead of the outsider. In the end, however, I agree with Newbibin that biblically based “universalism is wholly compatible, and in fact requires, the acknowledgment that there remains the fearful possibility of missing the mark, of falling short, of being rejected…” [Newbigin, page 80]. I believe that there is a level of mystery to the ways of God that will not permit us to draw a more definitive conclusion than this tentative stance provides. Therefore, we must couple our knowledge of God’s desire for all to be saved with the bible’s portrait of judgment and the seeming ultimate rejection of some in an almost paradoxical and sometimes frustrating dance.
Todd Rivetti 