A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Clark H. Pinnock is a professor at McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton.
Of the handful of pressing challenges which confront Christians today, few are more difficult than the issue of religious pluralism. Though by no means a new phenomenon (Christians have always known there were other types of religious faith), certain factors have intensified its importance for us. Among them, most mention the experiences of religious pluralism in the everyday life in our cities. But there is something I believe is even more influential, namely, the ideology of pluralism which fills the air of Western culture and puts tremendous pressure on Christian claims surrounding the uniqueness of Christ. This ideology stems from secular humanism which emanates from the Enlightenment and frowns on any claims to a knowledge of the transcendent and especially to confident and exclusive truth claims in that realm. This relativistic mentality places tremendous pressure on our belief that Jesus is the one and only mediator between God and humanity (1 Tim. 2:6), and has forced several important questions to the surface which we have to deal with.
1. Question One: do Christians really have to insist on Jesus as the only way to salvation for everyone in the world? Can’t they be satisfied with saying Jesus is their Lord and leave other people to find God in their own way?
This radical question is being raised by contemporary liberal theology. Until recently the vast majority of Christians would have said that it is essential to hold to the uniqueness of Christ on the basis of the apostles’ doctrine, the ecumenical creeds, and the liturgies and traditions of all the churches. Nevertheless, liberal theologians like John Hick and Paul Knitter today want to see this belief changed and the exclusivity dropped. They maintain that orthodoxy narrows down God’s love for the whole world and they offer a new reading of the biblical claims for Christ which would see them as love language, not as first order truth claims. Given the fact that it is very difficult to interpret the New Testament in this way and reduce its teachings so dramatically, it is natural to conjecture that these theologians are probably more influenced by the ideology of pluralism and its dogmas than they are by the plain teaching of God’s Word. For this reason, their influence among ordinary Christians in the pew has been and is likely to be slight. Not many believers are going to be willing to drop their ultimate beliefs in God and salvation through Christ just because humanists are insisting on it. After all, every world religion makes claims to ultimacy in one way or another and it is simply outrageous to demand Christians (or anyone else for that matter) drop their most precious beliefs just because relativists dislike them. Our faith in Jesus as the Lord of the whole universe is not negotiable — it is the most precious truth about reality we know. Why would we surrender it for a mess of humanistic pottage? It would be something like asking a doctor to give up his or her confidence in Salk vaccine as the sole antidote to polio because somebody objected to the narrowness of that medical claim. It’s not going to happen.
2. Question Two: if Christ is the sole source of salvation, how does God’s love impact the proportion of humanity who through no fault of their own have been ignorant of it over the centuries? Are they all just doomed to hell?
This is the question that worries the evangelicals most. It doesn’t seem fair that millions of people would be denied an opportunity for the salvation Christ provided for the whole world just because they were unlucky enough to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time. This question has stirred up a debate among the evangelicals who differ on how to answer it. Some are adamant in insisting that salvation is only possible if a person hears the gospel and comes to explicit faith in Christ in this life on earth. This would mean that all the unevangelized, when they die, go into a Christless eternity. There would be no hope at all for them. In their eagerness to protect the absolute uniqueness of salvation through Christ, these evangelicals are prepared to envisage the majority of the human race suffering everlasting condemnation. Other evangelicals cannot bring themselves to believe that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ operates this way and adopt a more lenient position. Thus it is common to hear people like J.N.D. Anderson suggest that God deals with everyone in the world on the basis of their response to the light which they have been given. Since God has never left himself without witness (Acts 14:17), there is light to respond to, and they reason that God will be looking for faith and a relationship with himself, not the level of knowledge a person happens to possess. They do not claim to know exactly how many of this Cornelius- or Melchizedek-type figure may have responded to God in this way but their minds are eased of an intolerable burden by thinking about the problem in this way. They place strong confidence in God, the judge of the whole earth, to do what is right and reason about it along those lines (Gen. 18:25). This is a lively debate now going on among the evangelicals.
3. Question Three: what role do the other world religions play in God’s plan?
This is the question which Roman Catholics in particular struggle with. Since Vatican II (1962-65) they have been toying with the idea that other religions can be viewed as ways to salvation through Christ. They consider that Christ’s atoning work had an objective impact on the world such that the religions themselves were affected in being divinely structured to lead to Christ. They argue that God, if he is disposed to save the whole world, will be issuing the offer of salvation to everybody and that, since humans are social beings, the offer will undoubtedly come to them in an embodied cultural form such as the religions which are already in place. Thus Catholics today hold the sort of fulfillment theory which was popular among liberal Protestants of an earlier generation in which the world religions function, like Old Testament Israel did, to lead people to faith in Jesus Christ as their fulfillment. It is an attractive theory because it seems to explain how God can desire to save the entire human race through the one man Jesus. But evangelicals find it implausible for several reasons. First, other religions upon inspection do not seem to be structured to lead to Christ. They lead in fact to goals and destinations which they themselves designate. They do not think of themselves as anonymously Christian nor do they have that appearance to us. Second, our experience does not suggest that people steeped in other religions welcome Jesus with open arms when he is preached to them. It is more often quite the reverse. Third, Scripture says little or nothing to suggest that God has structured the religions so as to lead people to Christ. It identifies a great deal of darkness, unbelief and deception in them.
Our faith in Jesus as the Lord of the whole universe is not negotiable — it is the most precious truth about reality we know.
Let me hasten to add though, that I am referring to other religions as systems. I am not saying that there are no valid truths in other religious traditions which might help a person find his or her way to Christ, or that one who calls out to God in the context of his or her religion cannot do so in an authentic way which God accepts. I only mean to say that, to take an example, Buddhism as a religion is not a way to salvation in Christ. I am not saying that that God’s grace is completely absent from people who live in cultures dominated by that religion or that they are beyond all hope living there. On the contrary, I believe God is not absent from any place or anyone in the world and that God loves the poorest and least of his creatures. I am only saying that Buddhism by its own admission leads to the void, not to a personal God of love.
In conclusion, by identifying these three questions, we have located the debate now going on around the challenge of religious pluralism and we have sought to give some direction how to answer the basic questions. Let me make one final remark. Considering the universal scope of Christ’s saving work (2 Cor. 5:18f.) and the prophetic vision of the unnumbered host before God’s throne at the end of history (Rev. 7:9), I think we have good reason to be optimistic, not only about the goodness and fairness of God, but also about the large outcome of salvation in terms of the human race as an organism. But at the same time, we must not compromise on that account our conviction about Jesus as the only way to the Father, because he is, as a matter of fact, the only way we know of for getting to our God who is the lover of mankind. Other religions do not speak of this God of all grace. Therefore, we must continue to preach Christ. Religious pluralism is unquestionably a tremendous challenge today — so let us continue to give it our best thinking in the light of gospel of Christ and the holy Scriptures.