God Among the Religions

It’s not fashionable to talk about “the truth” in matters of religion. A popular objection to religious tradition goes, “I don’t believe that any single religious tradition can claim to have figured out the truth. Look at how many different religions there are. Look at their different cultural backgrounds, their different basic assumptions. How could anyone rationally adjudicate between all their contesting claims about ultimate reality? And if no rational decision can be made between them, then it’s sheer arrogance for any religion to make an absolute and exclusive claim to the truth.”

The problem with this popular sentiment—what I call “the pluralistic objection”—is that it leaves itself with nowhere to stand. For we are all in the business of making exclusive truth-claims, even though we all stand within some particular perspective or tradition. I think that these two facts are not incompatible, and that it still makes sense to talk about “the truth,” even in this pluralistic age.

I see three positions that the pluralist objector might adopt.