that all religions are the same
Are all religions fundamentally the same?
Do they all lead to God and offer salvation?
By ROLAND CHIA
THE Irish playwright George
Bernard Shaw has famously said that "There is only one religion
though there are a hundred versions of it."
This interpretation has become very appealing in our modern pluralistic
context because it seems to address several concerns peculiar
to our time. Firstly, such a view registers the relevance of religion
in our increasingly secularised culture. It is appealing to religious
people in general who wish to stop the march of atheism and secularism.
Secondly, it is politically correct to hold such a view in a multi-religious
and multi-cultural society. Pluralism implies tolerance, and tolerance
is unconditionally upheld as a virtue in our modern world.
Perhaps the greatest advocate of this pluralist view of religions
in the 20th century is the philosopher John Hick. Comparing his
pluralistic theology of religions to Copernicus' astronomical
model, he argues that God, or Ultimate Reality, is the centre
around which the religions evolve as planets.
He argues that all religious traditions are open to the same Divine
Reality Christians call "God". Their experience of that
Reality, however, is fragmented and expressed through the various
cultural embodiments of the respective religious traditions. Thus,
for Hick, the Sanskrit term sat, the Islamic term al-Haqq, the
Hebrew term Yahweh and the Christian term God are all expressions
of the same Divine Reality. This has quite easily led him to conclude
that the different religions are all ways to salvation.
The pluralistic view of religions,
however, is fundamentally flawed. On the surface, it claims to
take all the religious traditions seriously, but in reality it
adopts a very cavalier attitude towards them. To take a religion
seriously is to take the truth-claims it makes seriously. But
once the truth-claims of a particular religion are understood
as expressing the essence of that religion, the pluralistic view
of religions collapses.
When truth-claims are taken seriously, sharp and irreconcilable
contradictions become obvious. For example, Muslims claim that
there is only one God, Allah, who created the world out of nothing.
Hindus on the other hand, do not believe in a personal creator,
but in Brahman, an impersonal reality which permeates all things.
Muslims believe that there is only one God, while Hindus hold
that there are millions of deities. The two belief-systems are
antithetical to each other. They cannot refer to the same Divine
Reality.
In addition, the different religions have different accounts of
the fate of individuals at death. Muslims believe that each of
us die once, and then face the judgment of Allah. Hindus, however,
believe in reincarnation, and teach that the individual will live
many lives on earth, although not necessarily in the same form.
Thus, a human being may be reincarnated as an animal. These accounts
are so different that different theologies of salvation necessarily
result. The religious pluralist is hard put to reconcile these
differences.
Finally, the different religious traditions have different accounts
of the universal problem that plagues humanity. Hindus, for instance,
maintain that the universal problem is samsara, which refers to
the endless cycle of birth and rebirth in which every person is
trapped. "Salvation" is therefore moksha, the release
from this cycle.
But the Christian account of the universal problem of humankind,
and therefore of salvation, is very different. Christians believe
that salvation has to do with the liberation from the bondage
of sin and death. This deliverance is made possible by the death
and resurrection of Christ. It is obvious that both claims cannot
be true at the same time.
The pluralist view of religions will only make sense if all these
doctrinal matters are set aside and taken as peripheral issues.
But such a view is surely offensive to the adherents of the world's
faiths because doctrines, or the understanding of reality they
espouse, have to do with the essence of their religions. Religious
truth-claims cannot be brushed aside as unimportant in favour
of some hazy, nebulous notion of religious experience. In fact,
it is impossible to speak of religious experience in a cultural
or intellectual vacuum. Religious experiences are profoundly and
inextricably tied to the belief-systems of the religions.
To insist, as Hick does, that the particularities of the various
religious traditions be dissolved into his concept of "Ultimate
Reality" is to fail to respect the distinctiveness and uniqueness
of the various religious traditions.
Far from being a respectful and tolerant approach to the religions,
the pluralistic view at its very core is in reality a form of
disguised imperialism!
The traditional Christian view does not hold that all religions
are the same. It recognises the different worldviews and belief-systems
of the different religions.
Do all religions lead to God? The consensual teaching of the church,
which can be traced all the way back to the patristic fathers
of the first centuries of its history, is that God's grace is
to be found in every culture. God has not left Himself without
a witness. The implications of this have been stated eloquently
in the missionary document of the Second Vatican Council of the
Roman Catholic Church, Nostra Aetate: "The Catholic Church
rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions."
This does not yet mean that these religions are "vehicles"
of salvation. They are, to use the term coined by the early Fathers
of the Church, merely a "preparation for the Gospel".
In some sense the nuggets of truth found in these religions loosen
the soil of the hearts of pagans and make them receptive to the
Gospel. But salvation is found only in Jesus Christ, "for
there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must
be saved" (Acts 4:12).
Dr Roland Chia is Dean of Postgraduate Studies and Lecturer
in Historical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Theological College.
He worships at the Fairfield Preaching Point in Woodlands.
QUOTE:
'Far from being a respectful and tolerant approach to the religions, the pluralistic view at its very core is in reality a form of disguised imperialism!'