The Problem of Religious Plurality

A frequent objection leveled against Christian faith is what you might call the 'problem of religious plurality'. Often a non-believer will say 'There are just so many religions, how could any of them be true?', or 'There are just so many religions, how could they not all be right in their own way?'. I intend to answer both forms of the objection in this note.

So let's first address the former question. That is, if there are so many differing opinions about God and religion, how could any of them be true? The person asking this sort of question usually has one of two implications in mind. They are as follows:

1A: The plurality of religion shows that religion is not the sort of thing which, in principle, could be resolved through our methods of reasoning, and therefore we should remain agnostic on such questions.

1B: The plurality of religion is unlikely on theism, and therefore weakens the rationality of theistic religious belief.

Let's first try to give an account of 1A. For many people in the modern (or shall we say post-modern) era, religion is a sort of separate sphere of inquiry, utterly distinct from the sciences and/or the logical tools of philosophy. They are non-overlapping spheres. Science, they say, asks "how", while religion asks "why". This, however, is a false dichotomy, one that has been circulating in our culture since the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould initially proposed it. The fact is that religion makes truth claims not only about the "why" but also the "how". Religion makes claims as to what is real, and thus is a metaphysic which is subject to the sciences and philosophy.

One example of this would be the idea in much Eastern religion that the world is eternal. It has existed forever, and will go on forever. This idea, however, is repudiated by modern cosmology. The Big Bang theory says that the universe has a finite past. It exploded into being ex nihilo about 14 billion years ago. This, therefore, serves as disconfirmation of eternal views of the universe. It also serves as confirmation for finite views of the universe (the creation idea prevalent in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism).

Another example would be the proclamation of, say, Christianity, that we are not purely material beings; we are spiritual. We are immaterial souls, or minds, which possess material bodies. This view is known in philosophy as mind-body dualism. Neuroscience, along with philosophical analyzation of mental states, could serve as either confirmation or disconfirmation of this idea. If, upon analyzing mental states, we find that they have certain immaterial properties, then mind-body dualism is confirmed. But if, for instance, neuroscience succeeds in identifying all mental states with brain states, then we have disconfirmation. A last example would be that Christianity says Jesus of Nazareth was crucified and died, whereas Islam says he was taken up into heaven, never experiencing death. The historical evidence for one or the other view would support one or the other view (it does support, by the way, the Christian one. Jesus' crucifixion is the surest thing we know about him historically). It is in these, and many other ways, that science, philosophy, and religion are overlapping spheres. Thus we see that religion is, in principle, the sort of thing which can be decided to be either true or false. And thus by implication we should not remain agnostic or indifferent to such questions, but should investigate the truth claims of the various world religions.

Now let's look at 1B. In what sense is the non-believer claiming that theism is unlikely given vast religious plurality? I think the claim is something like the following inductive syllogism:

1. If God exists, then he will probably want all people to know the truth about him.
2. All people do not know the truth about him.
3. Therefore, God probably does not exist.

In the first and second premises, religious plurality is seen as the result of God not insuring people have the right beliefs about himself, and therefore creating a vast and contradicting array of religion. If God wanting all people to know himself were the only part of religious metanarratives, then this argument may hold weight. But there are, in fact, other considerations which come from various religious doctrines which show that the plurality of religious belief is perfectly compatible with theism. First of all, a theist who does not adhere to a particular religion has several options open to himself to refute this objection. First, theism entails that God is supremely loving, and therefore the plurality of religious belief can be easily resolved in conjunction with the following proposition: 'God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing a plurality of religious belief'. What that reason exactly is we can remain agnostic about, given our limited knowledge due to historical context and etc. But if the theist, simplicitir, wants to go further, he could add something like 'All people will know the truth about God upon death', and the objection is evaded once more. Of course, the theist does not have available to him or her the wealthy resources of religious doctrines, to which we now shall turn.

In keeping with the specifically Christian nature of this exposition, let's look at a few ways in which Christian doctrines can make sense of the plurality of religion. First of all, there is the doctrine that God has bestowed us with freedom of the will. So, we can initially say that the plurality of religious belief is partially due to our autonomy as human beings. A further doctrine we may use is the doctrine of the fall. The fall teaches that humanity initially rebelled against God, and this rebellion, from then on, came to propogate itself throughout the entire human race. Whether this was through original sin, sin-by-imitation, or so-called 'sin-structures' is irrelevant. The main point is that humanity has rebelled, become utterly lost in sin, and has turned away to idols and false gods. Scripture says that God 'gave them over' to these things. He gave them over to their own corrupt nature. Therefore, another partial explanation of the plurality of religious belief is that humanity once retained the right and true knowledge of God, but has now lost in in their rebellion and blindness.

The most powerful explanation of religious plurality, however, comes from the Christian doctrine, or shall I say doctrines, of salvation (so-called Soteriology). There are three main views which render the plurality of religious belief an, at best, irrelevant fact in the Christian story. They are as follows:

2A: Christian Universalism
2B: Implicit Salvation
2C: Calvinism

2A teaches that God will, in the end, save every single person. All peoples, despite their present state, will come to know either now, or in eternity, that Jesus Christ is their savior. They will collectively embrace him, and we will all spend eternity with him in paradise. Under this view, as you can see, God allows the plurality of religion belief because it is ultimately irrelevant to their final salvation and knowledge of the truth. It's sort of like a parent allowing their child to believe in much of the fairy tales they do while they're young, knowing that they will soon be grown up and know the truth of the matter.

2B teaches that, although explicit faith in Jesus is normative for salvation, it is also possible for people to have a sort of implicit faith in Christ as the Logos. In this line of thinking, someone can be a Christian without knowing it by virtue of their reaching out to God using their best lights. For instance, a muslim could be sincerely serving God as creator and livi in accordance with love and peace, and in this sense be reaching out to God as best he can, and therefore Christ's sacrifice will apply to him in a special way. Another example might be a philosopher (agnostic, atheist, or whatever) who reaches out to God as the Divine Rationale (Logos), and is thus saved by virtue of his or her implicit relation to Jesus. In this case, again, the plurality of religion is not an issue with respect to people's ultimate knowledge of or salvation by God.

2C is the harshest, but I believe the most biblical, view. Under Calvinism, the entire human race is condemned to Hell (as all Christianity believes it is without Christ's sacrifice). Out of fallen humanity, God then proceeds to show mercy to some. Their salvation then is the result of His sovereign grace. They are, as Calvinism (and the bible, I might add), calls the "Elect". In this case, those who come to explicit saving knowledge of Jesus are those whom God has chosen to save, and the rest, with all their false beliefs about God, false religions, and etc., were condemned anyway. Therefore, the plurality of religious belief becomes, again, an irrelevant fact. Whether they believe in Allah or whether they believe in Shiva has no bearing on anything but furthering their already deserved condemnation. Again, I realize this belief is harsh, and I do hold it, but it is by no means the only warranted explanation coming from a Christian perspective.

And thus the first objection, 'Given the plurality of religious belief, how could any one be true?' is resolved. Religious truths are, in principle, discernable. And religious plurality, on theism in general, and specifically Christian theism, is not that big of an issue, if not altogether irrelevant.

So let's look at the second formulation of the objection. This formulation tends to come from the religious pluralist (one who believes that all religions somehow lead to God and that they're all saying the same thing in different words). As the objector puts it, 'Given the vast array of religious beliefs, how could they not all be true in their own ways?'. Another way it has been put it 'Aren't all religions worshiping essentially the same God anyway?'. I will try to answer these questions sufficiently.

First of all, things aren't true 'in their own way'. Things are either true, or they are false. This is an issue with postmodernism in general, and not only in its application to religion. If Christianity says Jesus is the Son of God, and Islam that he was merely a great prophet, both cannot be true 'in their own way'. These are mutually exclusive ideas. If one is true, the other is necessarily false. So unless the relativist wants to cut his own throat and say that relativism is ALSO relative, he must shut his mouth and accept the rules of logic. The idea of subjective truth is easily disposed with.

Next, there is the proposition that all religions are really worshiping the same God. This question brings up important issues relating to identity. To what degree does P know X, if P has mostly false beliefs about X? Let's think through this objection by way of analogy.

Let's say that I know a certain man named Joe Shmidt. You say you know him as well. I say 'Oh really? So you've visited where he lives in California then?'. You reply' California? Joe Shmidt lives in Colorado!'. I reply, 'Joe Shmidt? With blonde hair and green eyes'?. 'What? Old Shmiddty has brown hair and blue eyes!' you respond. By the end of the conversation, we have only two things in common with respect to our ideas of Joe Shmidt: He is a human being, and he is male. Then, to what degree, are we even refering to the same person anymore? You would begin to suspect we were talking about two different people!

We may take the analogy further and say we both praised Joe Shmidt for being such a wonderful human being. We praise him for being born and for being a swell guy. In this case, we are praising him for similiar reasons, even identical reasons, but would you then say we were praising the same person given all the other contradictory things we ascribe to him? I think not.

In the same way, to what degree are two people worshiping the same God if one believes he was incarnate, died for our sins, is identified with Jesus of Nazareth, and is a Trinity; And the other believes that he was never incarnate, is by no means Jesus Christ, is not a Trinity, and whose one true prophet is Muhammad? They may both believe that there is one Creator-God who cares for humanity and has revealed Himself, but they have so many other very important and conflicting beliefs about Him that it would be senseless to say they knew, let alone worshiped, the same God. I think this idea of identity-knowledge is a good one, and demonstrates that different religions are emphatically NOT worshiping and engaging with the same God.

In conclusion, the fact of religious plurality neither shows that there is no way to discover religious truth, nor that all religions are equally valid. The objection fails on several accounts, is resolvable, and should therefore be rejected. Hopefully this discussion has served to clarify some important issues relating to religion, and specifically Christian faith.

NOTE: There are non-theistic religions which went largely unaddressed in this discussion. The reason was A. I was primarily concerned with how the objection related to theism, and specifically Christianity. And B. Most of what was said in this note could also be applied to non-theistic religion (such as its truth claims about the natural or moral structure of the world).