RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY
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Religious Diversity
Religious diversity depicts that there exist a significant differences in the religious practice and the belief. The people outside the most isolated communities has recognized including the continuous increase in emigration, publishing and the information from the travel. This has given people to have different thoughts about the diversity of the religion. Pluralistic, exclusivist and inclusivity approaches are considered in this doctrinal issues. Pluralism tries to argue that every religion leads to God as postulated by John Hick, Exclusivism on the other hand is claiming that Jesus Christ stands to be the only savior of the world and claims that one need to hear gospel and put trust in God in order to be saved while inclusivism gives a different view that one is does not necessarily need to hear the gospel in order to get saved though at some point it also supports the exclusivism context that Jesus is the savior of the world.
I fall on the side of the inclusivity that everyone who is not rejecting God will eventually be saved for instance to those who have no heard about Christ and have not fully rejected God would not meet the essential test of going to hell for all the eternity. The claims of inclusivism and exclusivism pinned by Christopher Morgan contains many theological issues having various spectrum of positions describing the fate of those who are not evangelized. To start with, the church exclusivism makes an argument that there is no salvation outside of the church, people need to hear the gospel and put their trust in God in order to be saved unless God chooses to make a revelation through extraordinary way. Another revelation claims about inclusivism contends that people can respond to God in saving faith by seeing Him through the revelation, it also claim that people can trust in God after death and universalism claims that everyone will eventually be saved. Christopher Morgan concluded his claim that the unevangelized may be saved apart from the knowledge both Jesus Christ provided that they did not reject God in any way.
Similarly, following the ideas and claims made by Jacques Dupuis about the support of the inclusivism approach being the best one claims that regardless of the diverse religions, God may be reached and would not be a fair approach if God condemn people for the reason of not hearing His word. The author-Jacques Dupuis further indicated that since the truth and grace are found to be the traits overlying all of the religious traditions, he believes that these qualities will lead one into salvation. Besides, other religions might not chose to follow God but still abiding by the principles of truth and grace and so long one is not denying that presence of God will later leads to God saving them regardless of whom or what they were believing in.
The possibility of the salvation and inclusivity as stated by Jacques goes beyond the individual consideration and majorly spoke of the positive values that every individual possess about religious life of a person who might be outside of the church. As agreed by the Second Vatican Council, about the earliest Christian traditions with regards to the Asian freedom and Greek philosophy, it speaks of the seed of the word-truth that defines and enlighten everyone in almost all of the religions
In contrary to the support given by some of the authors about the inclusivity, various theological theories gives their own approach to the concept of religious diversity. In his book, ‘Contextualism in Epistemology’, Tim Black aired out the approach of contextualism. This is against my approach of inclusivity. The approach of contextualism provides the solution to the dilemmas that may be generated in an argument that may seem to be skeptical. Tim black explain that we might not be sure of the existence of God even though we do strongly believe in him. This argument contrast the way in which inclusivity and exclusivity put across its approaches. Tim black said that it is an easy step to convince someone about the presence of God by giving out the valid proof contained in the Bible but one cannot make a step of making someone to believe in just a theory that does not provides the physical proofs.
The context of epistemology has its main doctrine that the attribution of the knowledge are context sensitive and the values of the truth is dependent on the knowledge used in defining them, what this approach entails is that in one context, the utterance of attribution of knowledge can be true and in a context that requires a higher standard for knowledge, then the same statement can be false. This approach is used to explain why skeptical arguments can sometimes be persuasive while defending the correctness of the claims that we make hence dependent on the proposition of true or false statements. In order words, Tim Black tries to defend the claim about believing in God to being false since the claims of inclusivity that was made did not meet the required knowledge to convince him in accepting the approach. This explains that the claims could have been accepted if the conveyed knowledge could have been done in a high standard way that will fully persuade someone to believe.
Moreover, the approach of exclusivity was also pinned by Ronald Nash in his book-‘Is Jesus Christ the Only Savior’. Through this approach, he considered and believed that Jesus Christ is the only savior and that only those who listens, believes and hears the gospel and those who exercise their faith in Jesus Christ will be saved. Through the book written by Nash and their expounded views I was able to identify some of their worldview and how the worldview had an impact to the view of Jesus, the salvation and the Bible. Nash held to the more traditional view of Jesus, the salvation and the sin and according to Nash, Jesus is the narrow gate that will serve as a link to enter into a relationship with God and Nash does not discount that God can show Himself through His creation but he does acknowledge that salvation can only come in through the redemptive work of the cross.
I disagree with his statement since I strongly believe that those who are willing to repent and exercising the given doctrines of truth and grace and acknowledging that Jesus Christ is their savior. Besides, I believe that using Bible is not the only proof and way of getting to God and the use of bible is not a guarantee that one will be saved and that there exist various ways of finding Jesus that can be portrayed through our behaviors, utterance and he activities that we are engaging in.
The pluralism is a state whereby an individual in a diverse society is confined by the rights, safety and freedom to worship and not according to their conscience. John Hick-the author of the book ‘Is Christianity the Only True Religion’ have a believe that pluralism could be the best approach claiming that since various people hails from diverse backgrounds consisting of different religions and in most cases, people grew up under the influence of a certain religion such as Christianity. John Hick also stated that the nature of God does not change but only the human images of God changes over time and based on the background and the believes of the people.
I agree with the view of this author even though one cannot choose which religion to grow up with but is strongly influenced by those around us. I also believe that all the religions does not follow God but every religion will eventually come back to God regardless of whether we have created the image of God in our minds or any other image they choose to follow. Similarly, I agree with the fact that e should follow the inclusivity wat by living wholeheartedly with our own faith given that it gives rise to the spiritual growth while we should also recognize the equal validity of the other great world faith. Al of the religions should be seen as inferior compared to Christians but should only be seen as the different human response to the divine reality that was formed in the past within different kinds of human culture and history and that one does not necessarily need to be a Christian in order to be saved human being should only be guided by the common virtues that displays the general truth and grace.
Based on the view of Gary Aylesworth in the book ‘Postmodernism’, the author believes this as a good approach claiming that we are only challenged with the rules and games without having a concept of unifying the two of them and therefore making the end judgement to be reflective. Gary takes that the deeds and the practice of a certain religion will be an indication signifying what a certain religion worships hence making an early judgement that a certain religion will not be saved by just basing on the reflection made. I don’t agree with his point of view since judgement should not be reflective and one can live a live without the much knowledge about God while having small or no knowledge about existence of the gospel but still will be saved because of the repentance that they can make and the acceptance of God being the savior of their lives.
Work Cited
Morgan, Christopher W. “Incusivisms and exclusivisms.” A response to inclusivism: Faith comes by hearing (2008).
Dupuis, Jacques. “‘Christianity and Other Religions: From Confrontation to Encounter: The Storm of the Spirit.” The Tablet 20 (2001).
Black, Tim. “Contextualism in epistemology.” (2003).
Ronald H. Nash, “Is Jesus Christ the Only Savior.” 2010.
John Hick, Is Christianity the Only True Religion, or One Among Others? (2001)
Gary Aylesworth, Postmodernism, 2015