To me, pluralism is a natural outgrowth of the realization that God doesn't fit in any boxes, even the box labelled "Christianity." Eck quotes John Hicks' idea that pluralism is religion's Copernican revolution. Christian inclusivism is Ptolemaic: it sees other religions as orbiting around, defined in terms of their relationship to, Christianity. (This is CS Lewis' view when he says that other religions are true where they correspond to Christianity and false where they diverge.) Pluralism is the realization that all of the religions orbit around God, not around Christianity.
And I think that, while I can't proof-text to support it, this is a thoroughly Christian idea. Christianity may be my path to the Truth, but if I say that Christianity itself IS the Truth, then IMHO I am committing idolatry. I am worshipping "an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals" (Acts 17:29) rather than the true and living God who is infinitely larger than my conception of God can possibly be. (The "God behind God," to use Tillich's language.) As a Christian I cannot say, "I have God totally figured out, and am competent to give an absolute judgment of others' opinions of God based on how similar they are to mine."
Romans 14:4 says, "Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall." If, as a Christian, I am a servant of God, then I cannot presume to judge, in a final sense, my fellow servants. On a practical level I may need to decide whether I agree with them and whether their ideas work for me, but if I dare to say that their ideas are False with a capital F, then I am in effect saying that I am the lord before whom they stand or fall. And that is profoundly un-Christian. IMHO. Not that I'd, you know, presume to judge it so. ;-)
no subject
To me, pluralism is a natural outgrowth of the realization that God doesn't fit in any boxes, even the box labelled "Christianity." Eck quotes John Hicks' idea that pluralism is religion's Copernican revolution. Christian inclusivism is Ptolemaic: it sees other religions as orbiting around, defined in terms of their relationship to, Christianity. (This is CS Lewis' view when he says that other religions are true where they correspond to Christianity and false where they diverge.) Pluralism is the realization that all of the religions orbit around God, not around Christianity.
And I think that, while I can't proof-text to support it, this is a thoroughly Christian idea. Christianity may be my path to the Truth, but if I say that Christianity itself IS the Truth, then IMHO I am committing idolatry. I am worshipping "an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals" (Acts 17:29) rather than the true and living God who is infinitely larger than my conception of God can possibly be. (The "God behind God," to use Tillich's language.) As a Christian I cannot say, "I have God totally figured out, and am competent to give an absolute judgment of others' opinions of God based on how similar they are to mine."
Romans 14:4 says, "Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall." If, as a Christian, I am a servant of God, then I cannot presume to judge, in a final sense, my fellow servants. On a practical level I may need to decide whether I agree with them and whether their ideas work for me, but if I dare to say that their ideas are False with a capital F, then I am in effect saying that I am the lord before whom they stand or fall. And that is profoundly un-Christian. IMHO. Not that I'd, you know, presume to judge it so. ;-)