All right, everybody, how are you? Hope you're doing well. We turn now to a new topic. We've been dealing with the problem of evil and divine hiddenness over the last few lectures.
We're going to turn now to the issue of pluralism and talk about what this is. Roughly speaking, and I'll define it in just a second, roughly speaking, pluralism is going to be this idea that all the religions are valid and we just need to accept it. And so we'll talk about that here in just a few moments. So let's start off with something that you have seen before plenty and plenty of times.
You've seen this bumper sticker on the back of cars, this bumper sticker of Coexist, taking the various religious symbols from the major worldviews or world religions and using them as a symbol to spell out the word Coexist. Islam, Buddhism, Science, Judaism, Paganism, Wiccan, and then Christianity. And plenty, of course.
The intent of this sticker is to say there's plenty more of these, and hey, we just need to coexist. Well, how should we respond to that? That's a good question. I know there's a standard way that Christians will respond to this.
We will protest that idea, and I think depending on what you mean by it, rightly so, we protest it. But we could mean something else by that bumper sticker. So let's just adjudicate real quick what this could or could not mean. I think it means the second thing. Maybe, look, if somebody, all they mean by this symbol is that, well, all religious persons, whichever of these we hold, that we should be able to get along with each other, if that's what they mean, then I'd say, sure, fine.
As a Christian, I should be able to be a next-door neighbor with an atheist, or a Jewish person, or a Muslim, or you fill in the blank, a Buddhist, or something like that. As a Christian, I absolutely should be able to coexist. in the sense that I can deal nicely with people and I can behave in ways that please Christ and I can get along with people and I cannot have warfare and hostility between them.
If that's all that's meant by that, fine. I suspect, however, that that is not what people mean by that when they put that on their car. Rather, what probably is meant most of the time is that this sticker or this little image here is a symbol that suggests something epistemological.
That, namely, all religious perspectives are equally valid. So most of the time when people put that on the back of their car, what they're really saying is not just, hey, we should be nice to each other and be able to be next-door neighbors. Really what they're trying to say is my perspective and your perspective are both legitimate. Our perspectives are all right. All of them should be accepted.
And if that's what they mean, they're making a much more fundamental epistemological statement. In which case, at this point, we obviously have to come in and do apologetics and say, well, actually, no, we don't believe these other perspectives are right. Now, saying that to someone doesn't mean, though, that we don't behave in the right ways. Of course we behave when we interact with people. So let's remember that.
Let's just start off here as we deal with pluralism, by making sure, yes, we're advocates of coexisting in the sense of behaving, but no, we're not advocates in the sense of coexist, in the sense of saying that all these belief systems... are equal. And that's probably not the case either. All right.
So let's just do a quick overview of what we're going to do in this lecture and over the next few moments. First of all, we're not interested. I'm going to look at the world religions broadly here in just a minute.
As we do that, we're not interested in merely scoring some theological points or some intellectual points or winning an argument per se. We don't want to paint all non-Christians or religious pluralists as evil either. We want to be kind.
and gracious with people when we do this and recognize this isn't a game that we're playing. What we do want to do is simply define what pluralism is, set it in relationship to inclusivism, universalism, and relativism, and even something called exclusivism. So we'll talk about what those isms mean, and then we're going to do just a quick comparison of the different worldviews. We'll talk about Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and things like that, the big ones, just to make sure we have a quick frame of reference. So that's what we'll do in this lecture.
All right, let's talk for a few minutes about pluralism. What are we talking about when we talk about this thing called pluralism? In short, this is a view that claims that all religious perspectives are valid in some way, that we should harmoniously coexist. Again, I'm a fan of that last part, but I'm not convinced that Christianity or even these other world religions would ever allow us to say that we're all valid.
I mean, some of what we believe, as you'll see here in just a few moments, we believe mutually exclusive things from each other. We cannot both be right. So it's hard to say, I think, from any religious perspective, not just the Christians, that we could all have a legitimate perspective. So pluralism is pushing for that.
Now, real quick, let's set pluralism in contrast to some other isms for just a moment. You'll hear universalism. You'll hear...
Inclusivism, those are often used interchangeably. We want to make a distinction between them. You'll hear people talk about relativism, which is a broader epistemological movement.
And then you'll also hear in this discussion this term of inclusivism. So what are all these about? Well, universalism says basically that all religions are true, and therefore they all lead to heaven. So ultimately in this one, all of them are right. And therefore, if all of them are right, all of them take you to heaven.
Inclusivism is a little bit different from that though. It basically affirms, well now one religion is ultimately true. So in this first part, let's imagine you're a Christian inclusivist. What that means is you'd say, I think Christianity is the true one.
And therefore, Islam and Buddhism and Hinduism are wrong. So it is affirming one's right and one's wrong. It would add though, however, Even though one of them is ultimately true, the others do offer salvation as long as the person is sincere. It's a bit like they're saying, look, Christianity is what's ultimately true.
But at the end of the day, God, the God of Jesus Christ, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, this God, though He is the true way, ultimately He will deal sympathetically and mercifully with people that were of other faiths, not because their faith is right, but because their attempt was sincere. And so this is going to be something called inclusivism. So universalism says they're all true. Inclusivism denies that they're all true, but it still admits that all of them have salvific value to us. Now relativism is a broader term, right?
Relativism comes from, frankly, epistemological, larger cultural movements in morality and epistemology and things like that. This is the idea that there really are no objective truths in religion. Each religion is true for the person holding it.
So, this one says they're all true. This one says one's true. This one says none of them are true. So there are differences between all of these, and you want to make sure that you know those distinctions there. All of them are true, therefore they lead to heaven.
One of them is true, but all of them can lead to heaven. None of them are actually true in the big T sense, but each one has their own little truth claims that they make. Now, exclusivism...
cuts against all three of these other ones. Exclusivism is different, diametrically opposed to inclusivism and universalism. It's the belief that Jesus Christ exclusively is the way to heaven.
All bets are, you and I and everybody in this course are exclusivists. That is to say, we believe that salvation can only come through the man Jesus Christ, and if you take either of those other paths, ultimately you will not get to heaven. So we just want to make sure that we understand what all these isms mean as we dive into the various worldviews and religions that we're going to talk about.
Alright, just very quickly, let's talk about Christianity. This isn't a theology course. I'm not even going to spend really, I'll probably spend less than a minute and a half on this. Because you know Christianity. Just real quick on the major five areas of worldview.
Reality. God exists and that God is the creator of everything. Of course, it has a lot to say about God.
But there in a nutshell, this is a theistic being, and this being is the Creator. Truth, we affirm that there's both natural and special revelation, which is to say that God's revealed Himself through the person of Jesus Christ, and also through the Bible, but He's also revealed Himself at least partially in nature. And you can know other things that are true from nature.
It's about man created in the image of God and fallen. We could add lots more to all of these, like body and soul and other things like that. About evil, Christianity says that it's the corruption of creation due to sin.
And then about salvation, it is through God's grace or by God's grace through faith. And so that, in a nutshell, is the Christian perspective. Obviously, you know this by now.
Lots and lots more that we could say about that. But I at least want to just kind of put that out there as we contrast it to these other belief systems. Now, closely related... but differentiated as well from Christianity is Judaism. God is the Creator, just like in Christianity, although I do have to say in Christianity there's a new emphasis on God as Creator.
It's there in the Old Testament, but by the time the New Testament comes along and then Saint Augustine in particular, the Christian tradition really does develop this idea of God as the Creator of all things. So in Judaism, God is the Creator. He's also the judge of all people.
And it's not that Christians would differ with that. It's just simply to say these are points of emphasis. Truth, truth comes through the law. I think it's safe to say Jewish faith would also say that there's natural and special revelation, but they put a strong emphasis on the law, on the Torah. Man.
All created by God, but the Jews are God's chosen people. And then salvation. Salvation comes by conversion to Judaism and in the keeping of the law. So those are the two big ones that we're most familiar with. Let's talk about Islam for just a second.
There's lots to say about Islam. Again, the point here is not to give a crash course on worldview. It's just to kind of set up some basic differences between these religious perspectives. Alright, so first of all, when you talk about Islam, you want to talk about their five articles of faith. About these five things, they have very strong theological things to say about them, about God.
Allah is the name of God. Allah is supreme and an uncreated being. He is absolutely sovereign.
If you've ever picked up the Quran and read through the Quran, the theme of divine sovereignty is on every single page. This is a major, major theme in the Quran. God, or Allah, being absolutely sovereign. Angels.
Each person has two angels. One records the good deeds, and the other records the bad deeds. Regarding scripture, they believe that the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Quran are all scripture. But the Quran is the highest of all of them and outranks all the other ones. About the prophets, they believe that Adam, Noah, Moses, Abraham, Jesus, and Muhammad are all prophets.
Muhammad being the highest prophet of all of them, the most important prophet of all of them. And then in the last days, the resurrection. They believe that there will be a resurrection, that there will be judgment, and there will be heaven and hell.
Now, regarding their pillars of faith, this is more having to do with their practice, right? The first five are articles of faith. This is some of the core teachings of Islam. And now we're looking at some of the core practices.
that are often referred to as the pillars of faith for Islam. So there's five of them. Creed, this is what they confess.
By confessing this a number of times and believing it, one becomes a Muslim. They confess that there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the prophet of Allah. So simply put, you see here that God is Allah, Muhammad...
is the Prophet. So that is to say, Muhammad ranks up very highly and important to them as a major part of their practice of faith. Prayer, five times a day towards Mecca. That's what's required. Not all Muslims do this, of course, but a lot of Muslims do.
They will direct themselves facing towards Mecca, wherever they are in the world, and they'll pray during those prayers. If you're ever in the Middle East or even in Israel or anything else like that, you will hear the call to prayer. throughout those times of the day. There'll be a big almost like siren that rings and there's a call towards all Muslims to stop what they're doing and to pray.
For almsgiving, they give one 40th to the needy of everything that they have. When they fast, they place a big emphasis on fasting from sunup to sundown during Ramadan. And then they also practice the pilgrimage to Mecca. At least once during your lifetime, you're supposed to have made that pilgrimage. All right, Hinduism, very quickly.
One major difference between Hinduism and the other religious perspectives that we've looked at, all the religious perspectives we've looked at so far, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, are what we refer to monotheistic religions, which is to say these are religions that believe in one God. Now, of course, Jews and Muslims accuse Christians of not being monotheistic because we believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, but we are monotheistic. based on the way we define what God is. God is one in essence and three in persons. And so we make two kinds of statements there.
These are all monotheistic perspectives. They're also referred to as Abrahamic religions, which mean, historically speaking, we find our roots back all the way to Abraham. Now, because of those two things, monotheistic and Abrahamic, some people are going to say that we worship the same God.
Well, that's not the case. You can understand historically, yes, there's roots there that we share. And two, we're both monotheistic. But when you get down into the description of God, what God is like, it is very clear that we believe fundamentally different things about God. And so it's not the case that we worship the same God.
Now, when we get to Hinduism, though, we make a major break because here we're no longer monotheistic. We're polytheistic. Okay. So just very quickly, in fact, there are some parts of Hinduism.
that are actually atheistic. And then there are some that are monotheistic or pantheistic. Overall, Hinduism is predominantly polytheistic. They believe in about 33 different... 33 million different deities or gods that they worship.
Now, which way, and some of those sects of Hinduism actually affirm something close to a theistic concept. So within Hinduism broadly, you have some that are a bit atheistic, you have some that are a bit pantheistic, you have some that are somewhat theistic. So which way is it, and how can Hinduism as a whole affirm? All those very, very different ideas.
Well, in short, let me draw it to you this way. Here's a map, and let's just pretend that that's India, okay? The peninsula of India.
Unlike Christianity or Islam or even Buddhism or something like that that starts with a central figure and thought comes from that central figure. And so the development of those other world religions is very linear, right? It has a point of origin. a key figure that it starts with and goes forward from there. Hinduism does not do that.
Essentially what Hinduism is, is imagine that you've got this little tribe here and this little tribe here and little tribe here, little tribe here, little tribe here, little tribe here. You've got the little tribes all over India, the peninsula of India, right? And each of these have their own beliefs, right?
Beliefs about God. Some of them are somewhat atheistic. Some of them are somewhat theistic. Some of them...
or some pantheistic, but there's different gods in all of them, right? And they each developed on their own in their tribal regions. Then we come along and we say, hey, let's put a big rubber band around the whole thing and let's call that Hinduism.
And that's why you have such a variety of thought on something fundamental like God within Hinduism broadly understood, okay? Now, across this, predominantly, here's some major beliefs that are held. First of all, there's the belief in reincarnation, which is to say that for a person like you or me, there's a continued existence that goes on before this life and after this life, and you and I are existing now in these bodies as these people, but this person has been here before, will be here again. So there's this process of reincarnation that continuously happens, of birth and rebirth.
And how you're reborn depends on your karma. So in other words, how you live your life here and now. If you're good, you come back and you're reborn in a better status.
If you're bad, you come back in a lower status. And that's how that kind of progresses. Now the goal of all of that is something called moksha.
Moksha is to be released from that cycle of birth and rebirth. And so if you think about it, it might sound like, oh, that's great. You get to live forever and come back and have another life and do all those things. Well, the point that they would make is, but yes, there comes a time when that just gets to be somewhat brutal and cruel and exhausting, and we just want to be released from it. And so the goal is if you live right, then ultimately it'll all come to an end, and you'll cease to be.
And so it would all just stop. So this is Hinduism, a very Eastern idea. If you've ever watched The Good Place, you know that it... Buddhism has some similar ideas to this, that when it's all over and if you do it right, then ultimately at the end, you're released from it all.
And the good place ultimately ends that way where they try out this kind of sort of very, very, very pseudo-Christian idea of heaven as a good place. But they keep coming back and back and back and back and back. And then eventually, they just want to be done with it.
And they walk away from the whole thing and cease to be. So anyway, if you've never seen the show, I just ruined it for you. Anyway, so there's some core ideas within Hinduism. They do have a collection of sacred writings, holy books.
There's actually several here. Let me hit these three. The Vedas, the hymns, the prayers, and the rituals is basically what that's composed of. The Upanishads consists of basically treatises on nature, on reality, on the absolute. And then the most well-read of all of them, the Bhagavad Gita, which is basically a conversation between Krishna Arjuna, that a warrior and the eighth avatar Vishnu.
So anyway, there's this conversation between those two and these are the Hindu scriptures. Now interestingly, just very quick, going over to Western philosophy a minute, we tend to make a pretty hard line of distinction between East and West, okay? The West being where Plato and all of Europe and North America comes from, that ideology, and then the East which is typically we think of Hinduism and all those other things.
Well, the godfather of all Western thought is Plato. And Plato has this idea of the reincarnation of the soul. And Plato got that from Pythagoras. And Pythagoras got that by spending 20 years in India reading the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita and other things like that. So that...
The distinction between East and West is actually, you know, kind of interesting. All right, one other very quickly. Let's just say something about Buddhism. And again, the goal here is not to give an exhaustive account of any of these perspectives.
It's simply to give us a frame of reference as we think through pluralism. Buddhism is known for the Four Noble Truths. Essentially, the Buddha said all of life is suffering as he observed the human condition. He felt that all of life, whether rich...
or poor, it didn't matter. To live and to exist is to suffer. That suffering comes from desires and desires being unmet. He thought that the way to end that suffering was to end desire, to no longer desire anything at all. And the way to end desire is the Eightfold Path, which is Having the right views on things, the right speech on things, the right thoughts on things, the right conduct on things, the right livelihood, the right effort, mindfulness, and meditation.
And if we just do all those things right, then ultimately we can put an end to desire, and we can cease to suffer by living in this world. And it too would lead to a place where at the end our existence is dissipated and don't exist anymore. So anyway, that's just a point of reference on the world religions, and we'll use that now.
to go into pluralism broadly. We're going to explore in the next lecture some of the motives for pluralism and respond to those motives on how we deal with it. Because here what you're going to find is not necessarily a bunch of good arguments in favor of pluralism. You're just going to have a lot of things motivating this disposition of pluralism.
We want to know how to respond to those motivations. So hope that helps. We'll see you in the next lecture, lecture 33.