Pluralism

• What is religious pluralism (as a belief)?

  The view that all religions, in different ways, reflect divine truth or ultimate reality
• Christianity is just one…?

  of several equally valid paths to salvation
• all religions are equally valid expressions of what?

  one universal truth
• different religions share the same…?

  goals but have different doctrines and practices, which are human constructs
• who believed in pluralism? why?

  Hick, because of his belief that a God of love wouldn't deny salvation to people just because they happened to be born in a non-religion Christian culture or had found God through another religion
• what did Hick write?

  ’God has many names’ - and he believed that God wills universal salvation
• finish the quote - ‘whether one is a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh or Hindu…

  depends nearly always on the part of the world in which one happens to have been born’
• what is Hick’s universalism?

  the purpose of life is soul-making NOT soul-deciding, everyone goes to heaven and ‘all will be saved’ (inclusivist approach)
• (s) inter domination relations within Christianity suggest what?

  pluralism may be possible, ‘eventually we may hope, the relationship between the religions will be rather life that between most of the main sections of Christianity today‘
• (s) what is pluralism consistent with?

  God’s omnibenevolence - the New Testament teaches that ‘God is love’ - the idea of universalism supports this idea that is a key belief for many Christian’s
• (w) what is religious pluralism/Hick’s universalism inconsistent with?

  exclusivist views from scripture, it arguably contradicts key New Testament teachings such a s Jesus‘ claim that ‘I am the way, the truth and the life, nobody comes to the father except through me’
• (w) what does pluralism/Hick’s universalism minimise the importance of?

  Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection
• (w) how does pluralism/Hick’s universalism minimise the importance of Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection?

  many Christian’s do believe that Jesus alone is the source of salvation, as he is the incarnation + Jesus died for our salvation - ultimate sacrifice