Pluralism and the Religions

Abstract

Religious pluralism, in my version of it, holds that all the ‘great world faiths’ are, so far as we can tell, equally effective contexts of the salvific transformation from natural self-centredness to a new orientation centred in the Transcendent; and that to account for this we should postulate an ultimate ineffable reality which is differently conceived, and hence differently experienced, within the different traditions. A frequent criticism is that, in believing this, ‘the transformational power of [the] religious tradition would be undermined for most ordinary believers’ (Clark 1997, 317). Speaking from a Christian point of view he says, [S]uppose that they [his children] learn that ultimate reality cannot be discovered and they just don’t know whether God is really a person or not, or loving and just, or even good or evil. Perhaps he/it/whatever doesn’t care about their transformation from self-centeredness into Reality-centeredness … Whether or not he/it/nothing is really concerned about human transformation is an enigma. (Ibid., 318)