Why Pluralism?

A Casual Argument for a Virtue

In my last casual argument, I suggested that religion remains the most intellectually cohesive and experientially powerful way of coming to terms with reality’s mystery and meaning that we have available to us. But I noted among the reasons why that argument needed to be made at all the following observation: our society is growing more religiously diverse, and as a result, the truth claims of individual religions are being relativized in popular consciousness to a great degree. Dependent on the religion, the society, and the culture—that is, on who enjoys the religious hegemony—that can be either profoundly worrying or deeply exhilarating. I prefer to think that it is the latter. In what follows, I hope both to explain why at a very general level and why, from a specifically and traditionally Christian perspective, I find religious pluralism to be valuable for rather than destructive to the cause of Jesus, his missionary disciples, and the Kingdom of God that they proclaim.

Let me start here: religious pluralism is a fact of the human experience and, as far as we can tell, it always has been. If one feels that this is a mistake, one has quite a lot to reckon with in the evolutionary, anthropological, and historical record as one seeks to make sense of divine providence’s activity within history, leading it toward its conclusion; there are ways of doing so, but they are not all equally compelling, and several of them bear the macula of the cognitive dissonance from which they are born no matter how sophisticated their presentation. This is because religion always originates from the local, the indigenous, the flavored and textured experience of the mystery of life in the world, of the fluidity between self, world, and God as it is worked out in a particular context. If religion is a part of our humanity, and even our animality, as far back as we can go, then we have to reckon with the fact that where and when humans have formed distinct cultures they have also by that very fact formed distinct religions, insofar as “religion” is a kind of artificial label for the nexus point of the whole human experience as it hinges on the raw, mediated, and cultivated experiences of the sacred. Religions have commonalities, certainly, based on shared ancestry, customs, language, and cultural practices: there is some broad connection between, say, Zoroastrianism and South Asian religion, and it is not for nothing that Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism are all typically described as “dharmic religions,” pointing to their broadly unifying concepts over their doctrinal divergences, just as Samaritans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Druze are all broadly thought to be “Abrahamists” (Yazidis and Mandaeans are sometimes lopped into that grouping as well). Traditional Chinese religion, Daoism, Confucianism, and Mahayana Buddhism, together with indigenous Tibetan, Mongolian, Korean, and Japanese cult (the last of these is Shinto), might be thought to constitute yet another broader religious family or world of meanings, though Buddhism originates as a dharmic religion. Of course, many thousands of indigenous religions continue to exist with their natural heirs, when and where they have been able to practice their customs with relative impunity. Already in these groupings, too, religious byways, connectors, and multiple belonging tie together traditions we normally think of as separate. Abrahamic faiths enjoy a passage to dharmic religions through Persian religion, which in fact was heavily exploited by Muslim conquerors, leading to cultural fusions like the translation of yogic manuals into Persian use by Sufis and to the eventual birth of Sikhism. Imperial powers, as Philip Jenkins has written and has a forthcoming book on, have often fostered not only the classical shape of individual religions but also many of the most remarkable moments of religious pluralism, exchange, and dialogue. The Persian Empire is of course the preeminent example of this sort of thing in antiquity: the emperors quickly realized that religious diversity was a superior basis for imperial stability, and practiced tolerance of ancestral custom and cult as a matter of protocol, which is probably the main historical reason that late preexilic and exilic Yahwism was able to become what we now call Early Judaism. Roman imperialism facilitated the ecumenical councils and the particular Christology they advanced, in many cases by way of compromise between differing forms of Christianity that existed within the oikoumene.¹ The Parthians and Sasanians continued to permit Jews, Christians, and others in their midst despite officially establishing the dualistic, Zurvanic form of Zoroastrianism as their state cult; when Islam swept what is now Iraq and Iran, Muslim rulers continued to permit those they acknowledged as monotheists (a list that varied considerably dependent on the context and liberality of the ruler) to practice, for a price (specifically that of the jizya tax). At the courts of Genghis and his grandson, Kublai Khan, Mongol shamans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Confucians, Daoists, Buddhists, yogis, tantrists, monks of a thousand orders, and more found a home, rights of religious freedom, and the opportunity for dialogue. This ideal would influence later Muslim kingdoms and empires with some kind of historical relationship to the Khans, like the Ibadat Khana of the Mughal emperor Akbar (1542-1605). Though Western Christendom—within which, given the scope of the geography I have in mind here, I am going to include the Byzantines—mostly restricted religious freedom to Christians and, to a much lesser and fragile extent, Jews, there are a few exceptions. The most preeminent is that of pre-partition Poland, where diversity of cult and culture were, as is usually the case with successful regimes, fully permitted provided that allegiance to the crown was a unifying point.

Reports of pluralism’s novelty are therefore greatly exaggerated. Contemporary Christians who are uncomfortable to share public space and privilege with, say, the local Hindu Temple or Sunni mosque should consider that what has been challenged is not so much their theology as their privilege. Really, Christian discomfort with religious pluralism is a historical side-effect of Christian discomfort with Christian pluralism: Greek-speaking Christians frequently cast Judaism as a Christian heresy, as they did Islam, and while they consigned “Hellenism” to the status of paganism, they typically used it as a pejorative for the othering of Christian intellectual opponents. This is easily observable if one spends any amount of time interrogating the patristic texts where this language appears: when St. Gregory Nyssen writes in the opening to his Catechism of the twin errors of Hellenism and Judaism as being polytheism and unitarian monotheism, is it really the case that in the fourth century he’s actively missionizing or engaging in any meaningful way either Greco-Roman pagans or Jews? The groups he has in mind are not the people from whom these names are derived, but intra-Christian opponents: gnostics (also not so much of a problem by the fourth century) and Arians, respectively. Moreover, the fact that Gregory feels a need to disparage these groups at all simply reflects a discomfort with the idea that his Christianity—no matter how humane, just, intellectually brilliant, spiritually compelling, theologically satisfying it is—is not everyone else’s. Indeed, for all their liberal education and generosity of spirit, the Christian Fathers in general are not very tolerant thinkers when it comes to Christian sectarianism or to interreligious dialogue, at least at the level of their explicit rhetoric; at a more fundamental level, though, the Fathers engage with pagan and Jewish texts (when they have the facility to do so) with great frequency, and rely on the witness of traditions that are distinctively non-Christian for some of their best ideas (such as, for example, the Corpus Hermeticum or the philosophical language of Middle and Neoplatonism). Some Fathers, like St. Justin Martyr, show their awareness of and appreciation for non-Christian or alternative sources at the very same time that they rail against them in their extant texts. To my knowledge, St. Clement of Alexandria—cosmopolitan genius that he was—is the only Church Father that I’m aware of to possess something like a fully tolerant attitude towards non-Christian religion in general.

To what extent are these attitudes rooted in biblical literature? It is true that Jewish and Christian Scripture enforce a policy of monolatry (exclusive worship of YHWH) and aniconism (worship of YHWH without the use of images claiming to depict him) on their readers. It is also true that the nascent Jesus Movement attracted gentile members who were permitted to join on the grounds that they were abandoning their family, city, and state gods—and therefore constituted, in the eyes of society at large that saw the cultivation of a positive relationship with those divinities as essential to peace and prosperity, a cosmic threat.² It is also true that Paul himself expects an agonistic, forthcoming final battle with evil gods in the cosmos, in which Jesus will be the final victor as Davidic messiah (1 Cor 15:20-28). And yet, Paul’s very apocalyptic, messianic understanding of the relationship between God, gods, humans, and Israel would have constituted the minority point of view in ancient Judaism, which in general took it for granted both that the gods of the nations existed and that gentile worship of their gods was fully appropriate, per the words of Deuteronomy 32:8. Israel had to worship YHWH, and YHWH alone, but the nations were in fact assigned their gods at Babel, and those gods might be thought of positively by Jews in certain circumstances. LXX Exodus 22:27—probably speaking to Diaspora Jews living under foreign powers and speaking Greek—makes the command “Do not revile the gods” part of the Covenant Code. Philo of Alexandria called the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars which the nations worship “visible gods” (De Opificio Mundi 28), and they are part of the logical, powerful, good order of the cosmos. And in an era after the apocalyptic headiness of Paul and the earliest generations of Jesus’ followers, the more philosophized understanding of the gods found its way back into mainstream Christian theology. Colossians 1:15-20 insists that Christ is the agent of creation for the gods themselves, and that by the cross “all things in heaven and on earth”—hence, the rebellious gods—have already been reconciled to God; and again, in Colossians 2:15, the author (not Paul, to be clear) reroutes the eschatological final battle with the gods to the events of the crucifixion: Christ has already triumphed over the cosmic powers by the cross, implying that what gods endure in the world have already been subjected to Christ’s authority. Ephesians 3:7-12 speaks not of a final battle with the entities the author otherwise describes as “spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places” (RSV), but of a cosmic reeducation program, in which, paradoxically, it is the assembly of Christ itself that initiates the powers and principalities into the mystery of divine wisdom hidden before the ages. Sure, Ephesians 6:13 speaks of “the evil day,” but it is not clear that this is eschatologically meant: the quotidian character of the author’s recommendations in vesting with the armor of God might instead suggest that these things are simply meant to preserve his readers from the ordinary experiences of evil and suffering directly or indirectly attributable to the powers. Origen holds apocalyptic and sapiential readings in tandem, but ultimately subjects the former to the latter, in his reading of the eschatological realignment: Christ’s defeat of the powers is ultimately to restore the discipline of ruling to them, and their “destruction” is a metaphor for their rehabiliation (De Principiis III.5.7; 6.6). Here is the synthesis that seems to prevail in the eschatological tradition that runs from Origen through the Cappadocians, Evagrios, Ps-Dionysios, Maximos, Eriugena, and Isaac the Syrian: God created the gods, and does not desire their final destruction, even if demotion, imprisonment, “death” (whatever death can mean for a god), and unmaking might be contingent, temporary means of cosmic rehabilitation. In the final state, when “God is all in all” (1 Cor 15:28), it may well be that the cosmic hierarchy has shifted somewhat; but God will not forfeit any one of his creatures, even if some of his creatures must face the destruction of soul and body in Gehenna to ensure the salvation of the hypostatic spirit.

And even so, it is not like the New Testament authors or the Early Christians are really so unanimously confident in the completely dissolute spiritual character of the gods and heroes of the religious pluralism they were surrounded by. After all, they absorbed it, making use of the iconography, mythography, and ritual practice of the Greco-Roman world to make sense of Jesus in their own texts and practices, just as Jews had been integrating Hellenistic culture at various levels into their own ethnoreligion since Alexander first acquired the region of Ioudaia. On the one hand, to venerate the image of Christ Pantokrator is to worship Jesus Christ, and not Serapis; and on the other hand, Jesus Christ has clearly assumed the iconography of Serapis, such that to approach Christ in the icon is at some distant level to be approaching Serapis as Christ. The Blessed Virgin Mary is not necessarily equivocable with the various goddesses of the Mediterranean whose cults and images she displaced and assumed, and yet, it is not not Isis that one adores when one venerates the image of the Theotokos with Child. No less than C.S. Lewis would have been the first to insist on this, that paganism has not really died with the coming of Christianity, but simply been reassembled underneath the banner of new names, faces, and organizing principles, what someone familiar with South Asian religion might call new bhakti. The religious pluralism of the ancient world was not finally eradicable for Christians, even when they claimed that this is what they were interested in.

And modern Christians should ask themselves the question, honestly: do they really desire to see Christianity as they know it displace and destroy the religious diversity and cultural beauty of the world? I am certain that some do; yet what an impoverishment not only for others but for Christians themselves it would be if every mandir and stupa were to be demolished and rebuilt as evangelical megachurches, or if the Great Mosque in Medina started passing out welcome cards, or if the Kotel became a place where praise bands started belting “How Great is Our God” over the drones of religious Jews praying the Siddur. What a pity it would be if the yogis and tantrists lining the streets of Kathmandu started wearing polos and ties, or if Shinto temples started hosting youth group meetings at SkyZone.

If it sounds like I am conflating the adoption of Christianity with the adoption of peculiarly Western forms of contemporary (and very American) culture, that is because religion and culture are inseparable from one another. When evangelical missionaries leave America and go to Romania or Zambia or Ecuador or China, they unavoidably bring their own cultural assumptions, practices, systems, and personas with them as part of the package they are trying to communicate together with their brand of Christianity. Even if it were theoretically possible to isolate a missionary’s theology from their culture—it is not—the theology would still reflect the originating culture’s worldview as an infiltration, since culture—the collectively inherited and constructed characterization of human experience for individuals and groups—shapes the way we think about and engage with reality. The answer of many a Western Christian, Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox—that not all cultures are equally gifted with regards to insight on reality—sidesteps the issue but does not resolve it. Every culture has its own strengths and weaknesses of perspective, as does every generation, that can only be brought to the light by dialogue; the cultural imperialism involved in so much missionizing seeks to remove the speck from the neighbor’s eye without attending to the beam in one’s own. It is obvious to anyone sufficiently educated that non-Christian peoples and cultures have frequently hit intellectually and morally superior strides to those of Christian counterparts, even if this does not quite constitute an argument against Christianity per se. Vast treasures of transmitted experience are frequently lost to the undiscerning hunger of this sort of missionary, and his goals are infrequently realized, anyway, since religion survives or dies in large part on its viability in any particular context. That means that the only successful way to spread one’s religion is to help it make sense to and for the people that live in a specific time and place, to make it part of their culture rather than one’s own. Christians have historically been mixed at this: on the one hand, Christianities backed by state power often fell into the ubiquitous ancient conflation between ethnicity, culture, and religion, such that to “become Christian” was not really distinct for much of the Common Era from becoming Roman or European, just as to “Hellenize” meant to become a Greek culturally and religiously in antiquity, and to “Judaize” meant to become part of the ethnos that called itself Ioudaioi. But where Christians were able to successfully inculturate—and here, the Assyrian Church of the East and the Miaphysites put us all to shame—Christianity was easily recognizable as indigenous, in part because it was willing to participate in the pluralism that has been normative around the world from earliest times to the present. Some missionaries, of course, have bridged the gap, like Bartolomeo de las Casas and other missionaries who opposed the Spanish treatment of First Nations peoples; but this is, sadly, the exception that proves the rule.

It might then be helpful to define what we mean by religious pluralism not just as a fact but as an active practice, because it is here that legitimate theological questions and issues arise for many Christians. As defined by Diana L. Eck, of Harvard’s Pluralism Project, “pluralism is an ethic for living together in a diverse society: not mere tolerance or relativism, but the real encounter of commitments.” Practiced correctly, it involves four pillars: (1) “pluralism is not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with diversity”; (2) “pluralism is not just tolerance, but the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference”; (3) “pluralism is not relativism, but the encounter of commitments”; (4) “pluralism is based on dialogue.” The call to Christians to engage in religious pluralism only superficially contradicts the Christian commitment to mission under this definition: in reality, it simply creates rules for mission that respect the dignity and conscience of others as not merely potential religious conquests but as human beings already made in God’s image and likeness, already engaged in the quest of seeking after God “that they might find him” (Acts 17:27). True: a commitment to pluralism puts Christianity on an even playing field with other religions, philosophies, and cultures that Western Christians in particular are not accustomed to, since their historical experience has been one until the collapse of Christendom of the privilege of the majority and state coercive power. But in that sense what a commitment to pluralism does is not violate any core principle of Christianity, but expose to light the aberration of Christendom’s project. If the allure of Christ cannot be experienced intellectually, morally, even erotically (to use Ps.-Dionysios’ language) in simple dialogue with a Christian who seeks to honestly, earnestly, and humbly communicate their own experience of God in Jesus, then what power does Christ have, anyway? The most authentic, most powerful conversions do not come by the sword, whether literal or metaphorical, of coercive power, but in that cruciform vulnerability of being willing to sit as one among many.

In broader cosmic vision, too, religious pluralism should strike Christians as deeply fitting. Pope Francis caused alarm among Catholic conservatives when, in the 2019 Abu Dabhi document, he signed that “The pluralism and diversity of religions…are willed by God,” but he was right: no other reading of human history, culture, and society befits any divine providence worth a damn if God does not so will, for God would be proven utterly impotent at preventing religious diversity if it were otherwise. Religious pluralism is frankly dignum Deo if God is in fact the infinite source of existence that classical monotheism—really panentheism—takes God to be. And one always has to consider that, if we happen to live, as I have argued, in an infinite creation, and perhaps in one that hosts many other kinds of intelligence higher than and like our own, then religious pluralism is effectively a necessity of such a kosmos: shall it really be the case that aliens many lightyears away must practice terrestrial religions to know or love God?

Theologically, the issue raised by religious pluralism is not really about the question of whether there are “many paths to salvation.” The entire conversation, in fact, is a red herring: the real issue is one’s Christology. Is it the case that Jesus Christ, God and man, has both perfectly reconciled all of reality in himself and, by his katabasis and anabasis, has filled all things with himself? How high do we take Jesus to have ascended—merely to the heights of the Ptolemaic universe, or to the highest and therefore also the lowest and most intimate reaches of reality as we know it today, and will know it in the future? Is Christ smaller than the Krsna of Bhagavadgita XI? Is Christ outdone in the cosmic reach of his charity by the bodhisattva Ksitigarbha? Hand-wringing over the mechanics of salvation is a way of avoiding the discomfort one feels with the sheer magnitude of Jesus Christ, who has become the “life-creating pneuma” (1 Cor 15:45) that fills the kosmos with divine life. Religious pluralism makes us uncomfortable because we ultimately like Jesus small: a small Jesus is a Jesus that can in some sense be controlled and contained, a Jesus that will in some sense favor us over our enemies and cultural others, a Jesus that will justify our prejudicial attitudes and practices, our unjust policies and actions. But the risen, ascended, and glorified Jesus is nothing less than the one in whom “all things in heaven and on earth” come together and subsist. As my friend Jordan would argue, narratological thinking actually inhibits our understanding of the true metaphysical claim of the Incarnation: the crucified and risen Jesus is the site of judgment and creation, respectively, such that the entire kosmos is nothing less than his mystical body, and therefore that creation, incarnation, and deification are all one and the same divine movement from beginning to end. And that includes the gods—for it must include them, cannot help but include them—and it includes the worlds as well, the rich diversity we perceive round about us in all things, as all things, irreducible for all things. Pluralism, then, not only helps us to be more honest and faithful disciples of Jesus, committed to the way of the cross in the manner that we share the good news of his resurrection, rather than to Caesar’s way of the sword: it also invites us to consider that Christ’s providential orchestration of reality far exceeds our expectations and agonies, and that the dualisms we may experience, spiritually or materially, with human and inhuman others in the world are all subsumed in the divine unity and pluralism of the Trinity itself.

1. See Philip Jenkins, Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (SanFrancisco: HarperOne, 2010).

2. The text to read on this is Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).