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

THE PLURALIST PARADIGM IN THE

CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS
by GAVIN D'COSTA

W ITHreligions
increasing contact and knowledge of non-Christian
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).
211
212 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
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 recog-
nise 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.
 PLURALIST THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS 213
6
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

' 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.
10
Hick, DEL, GUF, ch. 2; Race, CRP, p. 146.
11
Knitter, NON, p. 269.
11
Hick, GUF, p. 132.
214 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY

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
 PLURALIST THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS 215
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 implica-
tions 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.
216 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY

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.
11
Smith, TWT, p. 178.
24
In C. F. D. Moule, The Origins of Christology (Cambridge University Press, 1977),
p. 166.
 PLURALIST THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS 217
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.
218 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
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 non-
Christians, 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.
10
Hick, DEL, p. 464.
31
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.
 PLURALIST THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS 219
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.
220 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
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).
 PLURALIST THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS 221
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 either-
or, 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.
222 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY

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 understand-
ing 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 both-
and 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.
 PLURALIST THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS 223
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.
224 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
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