One Hell of a Sleight-of-Hand

I've got all these thoughts going on now and I've got to get them out. Brian left an insightful comment on my pluralism/inclusivism/exclusivism post from April. I argued for a separation between theological exclusivism (the belief that those who do not believe as we do are wrong) and soteriological exclusivism (the belief that those who do not believe as we do are not saved). He wrote:

(1) Your proposal concerning theological and soteriological exclusivism/pluralism only works if it can be proven that within a theological construct, exclusivism or pluralism is not a central element. If it is, then we cannot separate dogmatism concerning a particular theology from the declaration of that theology concerning who is and is not saved.

Thanks for your comment, Brian. First off, the pronouncement of soteriological exclusivism on the basis of theological exclusivism has such drastic consequences that I cannot help but ask myself, what if a piece of the puzzle is put together wrong? What if we have misunderstood the way the atonement works? What if salvation is an issue about knowing God instead of an issue of eternal destiny? Who are those people standing outside the New Jerusalem (Rev 22.24-27) after all the sinners have been thrown into the lake of fire(in 20.15)? We must resist answering these questions too smugly.

Have you ever done this little sight test. Read the the words in the triangles on the picture. Read them out loud. Go ahead. Do it right now.

If you thought it said, "Paris in the spring," "Bird in the hand," and "Once in a lifetime," you are wrong. Read them again. This time put your finger on each word as you say it. The words the and a are repeated in each triangle. In our quickness to make judgments, it can be easy to miss important details. My point is simply that it is so easy to be wrong.

But my real issue is that I think we miss the point when seekers ask about soteriological exclusivism. The typical response seems to go: (1)The fact that hell awaits those who reject Jesus is inherent in our theology, (2)Our theology is plausible based on other factors (things like manuscript evidence or arguments for the resurrection), therefore (3)The fact that hell awaits those who reject Jesus is plausible. But internal consistency was not the issue behind the seeker's question. I think most seekers have no problem with (2) unless it leads to (3). The plausibility of Christian theology is undermined by soteriological exclusivism.

The conclusion of my argument in the original post bears repeating:

The problem many of my friends have with Evangelical Christianity, I would suggest, is not its claim to theological exclusivism. It is rather in the fact that traditional evangelical theology includes a harsh pronouncement of soteriological exclusivism. I am not convinced that our faith has a strong enough epistemic foundation to make such bold exclusivist claims. I think what people find offensive is not when we claim “Jesus is Lord,” but when we claim “if you don’t believe the gospel you will go to hell.” To conflate the two forms of exlusivism and then defend theological exclusivism seems to me a rhetorical sleight-of-hand which does not really address the issues my non-Christian friends typically have.

N.T. Wright Wrecked My Life

Once upon a time the Christian faith made sense to me. There were some things that I did not understand or some things that did not seem to fit perfectly, but overall the whole thing worked pretty well. Then I started reading N.T. Wright and my whole world crashed down around me.

See, I read somewhere that you ought to pick one author and read as much of their writing as you can so that you can interact in depth with their thought. This was well before I started seminary, back when I did not care a whit about scholarship. I decided to read Wright after first encountering him in a "Life of Jesus" class at church. We had read through the little book The Life of Jesus, and even though it was not that impressive I felt Wright had more under the surface than I had been able to garner from this little volume. He seemed to be a highly regarded Jesus scholar, so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

So I went to the library at our local Catholic college where I found and checked out his two massive works, The New Testament and the People of God and Jesus and the Victory of God. I also picked up The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, in which he and co-author, Marcus Borg, defend and critique one another's historical reconstructions of Jesus. I began with The Meaning of Jesus, since it seemed the most accessible of the three, and I started to get hooked. But it was when I moved on to The New Testament and the People of God that everything I believed was shaken.

The problem is that it was not a frontal assault. In fact, I stood behind N.T. Wright as we took the liberal onslaught from Borg in The Meaning of Jesus. But as Wright prepared to deliver an uppercut of historical scholarship to Borg, I moved in to see things more closely and got elbowed in the face. I have spent the past decade trying to recover from that injury.

What is this great injury? Simply this: to understand the New Testament, we must read it in light of the world of first century Judaism, which is a lot more alien to us in the twentieth century than we like to think. It is especially rooted in the apocalyptic genre, especially in Daniel. Specifically, Daniel 7 is a particularly important passage for understanding early Christianity and the message of Jesus: the Son of Man is enthroned beside the Ancient of Days as the Kingdom of God is ushered in.

The book of Daniel represents in a microcosm the locus of most of my theological problems. Was it really written by Daniel or was it actually written centuries later during the Maccabean period? Scholars can make a good case for the latter, which even Wright accepts. Why should we even accept Daniel as scripture? It is not enough to say that we accept it because Jesus accepted it, since this whole examination of Daniel was prompted because it is the linchpin which holds together the New Testament. The book of Daniel (and the Old Testament as a whole) provides the entire foundation for the New Testament. As I see it, if Daniel falls, so does the New Testament.

The book of Daniel presents the primary OT basis for belief in an end-time resurrection of the dead. If it was written just to encourage the faithful that were being martyred by the Hellenistic king Antiochus Epiphanies, then what reason do we have to believe it? Would we not have warrant to judge that it was just wishful thinking? ...that as the Jews looked around at the injustices against their people, they speculated that there must be a resurrection to put things right? Wright himself proposes that this sort of eschatology (God will one day make all things right) arises from the combination of the doctrine of monotheism (God is in control), election (He has chosen Israel), and reality (Israel is suffering). Am I to believe in the resurrection of the dead because there was a pogrom against the Jews over two millennia ago? Please forgive me if this is a bit of a stumbling block in my faith.

Finally, even if I can get past all of this, the message of Daniel looks very different from the gospel I received. The gospel I know says you can be forgiven for your sins if you trust in Jesus, but if you do not, you will be damned for eternity. The message of Daniel is much more intuitive: that even when the bad guys seem to get away with it in this life, they will not in the end; and even if the good guys seem to get screwed in this life, they will ultimately be vindicated. It is a much more 'pluralist-friendly' message than orthodox theology seems to allow.

N.T. Wright does a fine job of making the New Testament seem historically plausible, but only at the expense of making its message seem utterly implausible.

O Dr. Wright, why tormentest thou me?

Interview with AlHaj

This is the first of what I hope to be a series of interviews on the topic of religious pluralism and the agreement and disagreement between world religious traditions. Today's interview is with AlHaj ibn Ibrahim Asy-Sarawaki, who runs the Reminder to People of the Book blog. I have made some minor formating changes from our email interview. Using the compose feature of blogger makes consistency in formating almost entirely impossible.

RTJ: Thank you for agreeing to an interview.

AlHaj: PEACE BE UPON THOSE WHO FOLLOW GUIDANCE!

RTJ: What motivated you to start a blog that addresses the People of the Book?

AlHaj: I did not start to write a blog on religion. I actually started to write a blog on cure of sickness using Quranic verses. That's why you see the url of the blog was nur-syifa. The syifa verses in the Qur'an are use to cure sickness, especially person possessed by evil spirit. I do not have experience in that, but I would like to share ideas with fellow Moslem healers. The oringinal name of the blog was Nur Syifa.

When I started to put Google ads on the blog, I do not know how ads of Chritianity appeared on my blog. I wrote to Blogger to rid off the ads. They told to me to use the ads filter. I tried but the ads filter did not function. I created the blog by trial and error until it becomes what it is now, and I came to learn the type of ads coming to your blog depend on the words appearing in your posts. If you write about Islam or Chritianity, ads relevant to them will finally appear on your blog automatically. So I have to lived with them. In a way with the ads I am indirectly propagating Christianity but on the other hand the ads help me to keep abreast of what is happening in the Christian world.

I am not an Islamic scholar, but I do find the Christianity ads are rather misleading when touching about Islam, we are always put on the defensive. [I think that's how you and J. K. Jones felt also when you read my posts]. So I started to write counter commentaries, but as far as possible I tried to be honest to stick to fact and as you see I prefer to quote from literature produced by recognize figures in their respective fields. I changed the name of the blog to 'Reminder to Believers'.

In politics I based my argument on terrorism from books written by Noam Chomsky and Samuel Huntington (they are world level thinkers). From them you know what is militant Islam or terrorism is all about - their roots. I don't want to talk from prejudicial point of view, after all we want this world to be in peace. I find the results of his research that terrorisms are engineered by America are more plausible rather than the Western prejudicial reports against Islam, not that I support terrorism or militancy. You may disagree with Chomsky. The trauma of Iraqis under the tyrant Saddam is no comparison with their trauma under American occupation. Under Saddam people can still lived their normal life, but under American occupation Iraqis genarally lost their dignity. Somalia and Afghanistan is still bleeding badly. I have with me three books, 'Imperial Ambitions', 'Failed States', and 'Perilous Power' by Chomsky and 'Who Are We' by Huntington ( also author of the 'Clash of Civilizations'). I still wanted to collect onother book by Chomsky, 'Hegemony and Survival'.

RTJ: Why do you believe Islam is true?

AlHaj: I believe Islam is true not because I was born a Moslem. My parents are not religious people, they are nominal Moslems. But I thanked God I am born a Moslem. It is the most precious gift for I can't make myself a Moslem without His will.

RTJ: In your younger days you were educated in a Roman Catholic MissionarySchool. How has this impacted you?

AlHaj: I studied Islam, I self-argued it, but I read a lot book on Islam by Moslems as well as orientalists; and I choose to go to a Christisan missionary school not because I want to study Christianity even, but I want to get the best facilitated educational opportunities. The years I studied in the missionary school ( Sacred Heart Secondary School were among my happiest younger days). I am at ease with fellow Christians in my country. We seldom talked about Islamic terrorism or militancy here, I think it is irrelevant in Malyasia. We achieved our independence from the British not through revolution as our Indonesian counterpart from the Dutch but through the round table. Turbulence historical background in one's country does affect one's world view towards others and set one mindset. We Malaysian I like to believed are gentlemen when facing natoinal crisis. We articulate our objective even when we get help from the Americans to fight the Communist insurgency in the early independence days.

But then surfers began to comment on my posts especially on political matters touching America and I find their writings quite subjective. Its hard to confront subjective writings. So I deleted all posts on political matters and retained the religious ones and again I changed the name of my blog to what you find now, concentrating entirely on People of the Books with references from the Al-Qur'an and the Bible and especially literatures written by Prof. Emeritus Geza Vermes. I have three of his books with me at the moment, 'The Gospel Of Jesus', 'Nativity', and 'Whos Who in The Age of Jesus'. I still need all his other books including the 'Dead Sea Scrolls'. I surfed the Pontif blog once in a while but his blog is not productive. I also surfed the Vatican webpage to keep abreast of the latest news and I was surprised when Bush visited the Vatican, I say Romans demonstrated against him on the Iraqi issues. See that is Godly people sympathising the suffering of the Iraqis. I feel sorry also for Alan Johnson. But I think these journalists have gone overboard reporting from insane places.

RTJ: In a comment I left on your blog I asked why you accept the authority of the Qu'ran. I also said that the Bible does not play the same part in Christian theology as the Qu'ran does in Islamic theology. For Christians, Jesus is the Word of God, just as the Qu'ran is in Islam. The Bible is more like Muhammad in that it is the vessel through which God makes His revelation known. How do you respond?

Why I believe in Islam? What do you think religion is? What do you think Qur'an is? You believe Prophet Muhammad was an imposter? Are you people honest with him as we are honest with Jesus?You say, Jesus was God's word, I believed with all my heart.

You say Jesus is God, no! If you say Jesus is God then Al-Qur'an is also God because Al-Qur'an is also God's word. What do you see of the Al-Qur'an - if not papers, ink, writing etc. Are those items God? No! And what do you see of Jesus, not man? Sure! Man is no different with papers, created. Did he not become from the womb of a woman and grew as any of us? Did he not undergo the path of creation? Why blinded yourself, because the light is too bright until you cannot see? Who raised him to the level of God, himself or you and why did you deliberate on his Godship if it is inequivocally stated by Jesus that he is God? You argued and you have to argue on his Godship in the Council of Nicea 325 AD. So you hesitated also? You did doubt it also. It took convention by convention to determine that he is God, not Jesus himself dertermined it. But then you decided to claim him God. And you deliberated 'painstakingly' to come to the point that God is Jesus based on Greek script not in his own Aramaic language, having no point of return (original Aramaic manuscripts) when there's discrepancies aroused between Arius and Athanasian?

Let us be honest. Aramaic is not simply chosen as the language of revelation, you bear that in mind, it was a 'language of revelation' chosen by God's word and that's why Jesus spoke it and God did not choose Greek as His channel. Did God choose the language of revelation hanky-panky? You are a man of reason. Why God give us the gift of reason? Reason functioned to understand not to be the arbitrator. The arbitrator is the Scripture. Once the Scripture is not in the original, the translation are noly traces! What make man fall is dishonesty.

I read also Richard Dawkins' 'The God Delusion'. I couldn't help laughing reading his book. I am not enraged. I pity the man. Alas he is propagting Atheism in America, aggresively huh! Its you the front liner there to counter him. There's also one big name, an old lady Karen Armstrong, also said to be an atheist but not the like of Dawkins, she defended religion. I think she is a theist without any orgainzed religion affiliation although she was ealier a Roman Catholic nun.

The Triune aside, you believe God is one. Why I believe Islam is true? Because God is one. And there's nothing in Islam that goes against my human nature.

And the idea of 'incarnation'? Whose culture is that, be honest, Greek (Hellenistic) or Semitic? Had any God's Apostles from Adam till Muhammad spoke of incarnation? Jesus? Jesus or you? I know you can quote the Biblical verses as proofs but none is objective but all are subjective that can call for multiple/variant, even the dangerous 'allegorical' interpretations.

I have read the last revised Bible ( 2006) published by Pengunin Classis, 'The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible (TNCPB)' that charged that the earlier translators misrepresented some of the words in the Authorised King James Version. So the TNCPB come with and as the more precise one. Read the preface to the TNCPB. In ten years time maybe another scholar come again with another version who saw another misrepresentation. Who dare to do that if there's an original Aramaic Bible as the original Arabic Al-Qur'an is? Do not be mistaken with the Arabic Al-Qur'an with its translation. Its translation is not Al-Qur'an at all. In the end you will have voluminous Bibles and those native Christians here have to alter also from time to time the Bibles in their native languages. And they will argue among themselves which native vocabulary is of proper usage or precise. For ages you will have that problems. You have argued about the Bible eversince the Bible was in Latin or Greek and you will never stop for God is not pleased with your tempering with His scriptures.

Quranicly speaking the Holy Qur'an says, chapter 32 (The Byzantines) verse 30, 'And so, set thy face towards [one ever-true] faith, turning away from all that is false, in accordance with the natural disposition which God has instilled in man: [for,] not to allow any change to corrupt what God has thus created - this is the [purpose of the one] ever-true faith; but most people know it not.' This makes me a Moslem. And the religion of all Prophets from Adam till Muhammad (Christ Jesus inclusive) is Islam (only officially known as Islam with the advent of Islam meaning submitting to the will of God as stated in the vesre alluded).

RTJ: What is the biggest misconception that Western Christian have about Islam?


AlHaj: My days in Roman Catholic Missionary School has made me understand the difference between Chritianity and Islam crytal clear. I can't take man as God. It is scripturally and rationally impossible. Jesus has spoken to be aware of your fellows who speaks on his behalf whom he will deny. Do you think they are we Moslems? We don't propagate Chrisitianity. Those will be you Christians preaching on his behalf speaking about him of which he never ever categorically approved.

RTJ: Do you believe there is salvation for non-Muslim monotheists?

AlHaj: If Islam is true which is true, Christians have no justification of remaining Christians but to embrace Islam. Prophet Muhammad says if Moses is living in my age of which I am the last Messenger he must also bear witness to me. Since Christians existed to the time of Muhammad so they must bear witness to Islam. If they refused their final everlasting abode is Hell. I don't joke with you with that teaching of Islam. If Moses was the last Messenger and Muhammad came before him, Muhammad must also bear witness to him and we the community of Muhammad must follow the religion of Moses. If we refuse we are regarded as not accepting the commandment of God as a whole. That's what happened to Satan when he refused to bow to Adam. Satan obeyed other aspect of God's commandments but not the commandment to bow to Adam. Satan was egoistic, he thought he was better than Adam because he was made from flame and Adam from dust. He forgot the one who gave him the commandment was God and not Adam. If Adam commanded him he may ignored the commandment on the justification of qualification but when God commanded, God's commandment is absolute. [Your question] is answered - no salvation, unless you want also to join the community of Satan.



RTJ: Is there anything eles you would like to add?

AlHaj: I quote the Qur'an, chapter 28 (The Story) verse 56: 'Verily , thou canst not guide aright everyone whom thou lovest: but it is God who guides him that wills [to be guided], and He is fully aware of all who would let themselves to be guided.'

Finally, I quote the Qur'an again, chapter 29 (The Spider) verse 46: 'And do not argue with the followers of earlier revelation otherwise than in a most kindly manner - unless it be such of them as are bent on evildoing - and say: 'We believe in that which has been bestowed from on high upon us as well as that which has been bestowed upon you: for our God (not Triune) and your God (not Triune) is one and the same (Unity), and it is unto Him that we [all] surrender ourselves.'

So, speaking from the perspective of Islam my Creator God is also your Creator God.

RTJ: Thank you for your time.

AlHaj: Thank you Ryan Jones.

A Visit from the Mormons

I had a couple of Mormon agents stop over a couple days ago. Have you ever noticed how they never go by their first name, only by their title, elder so-and-so? They seem almost like agents from the Matrix, so I just started calling them agents.

At church we just finished a video series on Mormonism, which is perhaps a bit more fundamentalistic than I am comfortable with, but it still presents a lot of good information. Anyway, I had to let them in, having just seen the videos. I wasn't expecting them to be very open to what I had to say, but I wanted to at least try to find out why someone would believe such rubbish.

Since I have been dealing with epistemological issues recently, I was especially interested in what reasons they give for their faith. For both of the young men it all came down to, "I read the book of Mormon and I had a good feeling about it." Only one of them had experienced the "burning in the bussom," and that back when he was eight. The other converted from Roman Catholicism (with his mom) as a teenager. I asked questions like, "What makes your conversion experience different from a Muslim who reads the Koran and has a good feeling about it?" The only answer they had for me was that you just have to read the Book of Mormon and God will make it clear to you if you sincerely ask Him.

I am more convinced than ever that any truth-claim that is based on fideism (1)must be rejected as a claim to knowledge, and (2)leads to the logical problem of pluralism.

Evangelical Epistemology

I have been looking for an epistemological foundation for my evangelical beliefs for several years now. When I first became a Christian, I was able to dismiss all epistemological questions related to my faith because of powerful experiences with God which were based on submission to Biblical teachings, not on theological or philosophical reflection. I think that position was important during that period of my life, but after a few years I yielded to the fact that mature Christian belief should involve theological reflection if it is to resist devolving into mere superstition. Since then I have never come up with an Evangelical epistemology that I have been satisfied with.

I am currently taking a Religious Epistemology course, taught by professor Keith Yandell. The course mostly follows his book on the same topic. I am hoping to use this as an opportunity to finally hammer out my own religious epistemology. My course grade will be based entirely on a twelve-page paper, due in two weeks. I am supposed to use formal logic, which I am about as comfortable with as I was doing geometric proofs in High School (not much). I’m hoping to use this blog to sort through the issues I want to deal with in that paper, or at least to lay the groundwork in my personal thoughts so that I can write something else.

Before I begin, I shall define my terms. By Evangelical theology (E), I mean theology that is based on the authority, infallibility, inerrancy, and inspiration of the Bible. I take it that E entails the following:

E1. God exists as Trinity, one substance consisting of three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
E2. Jesus Christ is God incarnate, both fully God and fully human.
E3. Jesus Christ rose bodily from the grave.
E4. Humanity is enslaved to sin and destined to spend eternity alienated from God in hell.
E5. Jesus Christ made atonement for the sins of humanity on the cross, so that those who believe in Him will receive salvation.

By salvation I mean (a) having communion with God, and (b) receiving eternal life rather than eternal damnation.

When I first began my critical reflection, my defense of E ran somewhat like this:
1. I had powerful experiences of God after believing in Jesus. (A subject for another post.)
2. Having an experience of God entails (is dependant on) having received salvation.
3. Therefore I received salvation after believing in Jesus.

4. E entails that those who believe in Jesus will receive salvation.
5. Therefore E is correct.

There are several problems with this logic, however. First, premise 2 is based on E4 and E5, but these premises are themselves based on premise 5, which they are being used to prove. E4 and E5 would need to be supported on other grounds. Perhaps with some imagination I could reword the premises in such a way that would be logically sound. But this is not my primary concern with the syllogism.

A more critical error is that Premise 5 does not follow from 3 and 4. It is a fallacy that follows the form A entails B; B; Therefore A. For example, “Someone who has an M.Div. degree has necessarily taken at least one theology class; I have taken a theology class; therefore I have my M.Div.”
One possible way to avoid this fallacy is to change it to an argument of inference to best explanation:

5*. Based on Premise 4, E provides the best explanation for Premise 3.

But it is not at all clear that E is the best explanation. Many people in contrary religions have also had experiences of God. At the very least we would need comparisons with the explanations offered by other religions. Perhaps this is best way to proceed, but it requires significantly more knowledge than I currently have (or am particularly excited about taking the time to acquire). Instead, let me propose an alternate theological system that I shall call Soteriologically Pluralistic theology (SP), which is essentially Deism without the anti-supernatural bias. SP is based on the following premises:

SP1. God exists.
SP2. God has interacted, and continues to interact, with various people at various times (i.e. through prophecy, miracles, etc.)
SP3. Individual eschatological salvation (receiving eternal life rather than eternal damnation) is available through a plurality of religions.

SP is not pluralism in the sense that it entails that the major world religions are equally correct. Rather, it is pluralistic in the sense that salvation is not limited to a particular religion. Put simplistically, SP is the idea that God is more concerned with our deeds than our creeds.

Taking account of SP, my revised defense of E looks somewhat like this:

3. I received salvation after believing in Jesus.
4'. Belief in Jesus is a religion (namely, Christianity).
5'. Therefore I received salvation through a religion.

6'. SP entails that salvation is available through a plurality of religions.
7'. Based on Premise 6' and Premise 4, SP and E provide equal explanatory power for Premise 3.

I began looking for another defense of my faith. Christian apologetics seem to place a large focus on proving the Premise, God exists, but the connection from theism to Christianity rests entirely on the Resurrection. This argument runs as so:

R1. Jesus rose from the dead.
R2. If Jesus rose from the dead then E is correct.
R3. Therefore E is correct.

R1 was easy to accept when I thought my argument from experience confirmed E. When I am trying to use R1 to establish E, suddenly the arguments seem significantly weaker. It is easy to believe in the resurrection if I already have good reasons for being an evangelical, but when those reasons start to break down, the resurrection seems much less plausible. It is definitely not plausible enough to become a foundation for soteriological exclusivism! And even if we accept R1, I’m not entirely convinced of R2.

In contrast, SP has several factors that make it epistemically preferable to E. It accounts for positive aspects of other world religions in a way that is difficult for E. It avoids the problem of declaring large swaths of humanity (especially those who have never heard, or those who lived before the time of Christ) to be eternally damned. Finally, it has the support of some strands of Biblical narrative, such as Melchizadek and the Magi.

Again, I ask for your comments. I am not very happy with what I have written here yet, but it’s good enough for the blogsphere.

Exclusivism and Pluralism

There have traditionally been three ways that theologians have attempted to deal with differences between religions, which I will try to briefly summarize.
1. Exclusivists, or more accurately called particularists, believe all other world religions but their own are wrong. (Most particularists would not exclude other denominations within their own religion. This is perhaps self-intuitive, but many Roman Catholics I have talked with refer to other Christian churches such as Baptists or Presbyterians as different religions.)
2. Inclusivists believe their own religion is ultimately true, but other world religions contain elements of truth that are ultimately compatible with their own. Examples would include the Roman Catholic conception of “anonymous Christians” among other religions, or Hindus who accept Christians as constituting another caste within Hinduism.
3. Pluralists believe that all religions are equally true. The main proponent of religious pluralism is John Hick, who argues that The Real (which is more-or-less synonymous with “God”) is ineffable, or unable to be described. As each world religion attempts to describe the Real, they inevitably describe It/Him in culturally relative terms. Therefore no religion (or at least no “nice” religion) can make a claim to exclusive truth; they are all equally true.

The more I think about these categories, the more I think they are not really getting at the heart of the issues I think are important. Though I am aware that some argue that any truth claim is oppressive, most people I have talked with seem to have no problems with truth claims in themselves. It seems obvious to me that truth claims made by proponents of various religions are at least theoretically testable, even if we don’t have any ways to test them in real life. The real issue, as far as I see it, is soteriology: who will be “saved?” I suggest making a distinction between theological exclusivism and soteriological exclusivism. Then the categories would be redefined as such:

1A. Theological exclusivists claim that their own theology is correct and contradictory claims are false. In other words, they believe Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction must extend into the realm of religious beliefs. (I include anyone making a religious truth claim in this category, not just those who affirm the existence of God. I’m not sure what word to use that would mean what I mean by theology and still encompass atheistic Eastern religions.)
2A. Theological pluralists claim that all theologies are equally correct. At the popular level, this is the belief that “what’s true for you may not be true for me.” But when I talk to people who claim to hold this view, they typically retreat to a position of theological agnostic pragmatism: since we can’t really know what is true about God, what is important is what helps you in your personal life.

1B. Soteriological exclusivists claim that there is no salvation outside of their own religion. For many, the obvious and loathsome conclusion of this position is that large swaths of humanity will be damned eternally to hell.
2B. Soteriological pluralists claim that salvation can be found in a plurality of religions.

This is where I disagree with the position of my M.Div. advisor, Harold Netland. In Encountering Religious Pluralism, he singles out two forms “pseudopluralism”: the Hinduism of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and the Buddhism of the Dalai Lama (213-218). Both systems appear to be pluraslistic, he argues, but on closer inspection they are really just forms of inclusivism. Now I will freely admit that I am not terribly familiar with either of these systems so I may well be misrepresenting them. But it seems that the attractiveness of them lies precisely in their soteriological pluralism, not in any form of theological pluralism. They are not claiming you will go to hell if you disagree with them.

The problem many of my friends have with Evangelical Christianity, I would suggest, is not its claim to theological exclusivism. It is rather in the fact that traditional evangelical theology includes a harsh pronouncement of soteriological exclusivism. I am not convinced that our faith has a strong enough epistemic foundation to make such bold exclusivist claims. I think what people find offensive is not when we claim “Jesus is Lord,” but when we claim “if you don’t believe the gospel you will go to hell.” To conflate the two forms of exlusivism and then defend theological exclusivism seems to me a rhetorical sleight-of-hand which does not really address the issues my non-Christian friends typically have.
I don’t know that all this really makes sense like I want it to, but I think it’s good enough for blogging. I would appreciate any feedback you would like to give. Thanks!