Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion. - book reviews

Christian Century, Feb 28, 1996 by Leo D. Lefebure

The religions of the world propose paths of transformation which lead to diverse forms of fulfillment. A Zen master challenging aspiring students to awaken holds forth a very different ideal from a Hasidic rabbi teaching the Torah in a yeshiva. The religious attainment of a Muslim fadir is not that of a Catholic saint.

In this thoughtful and provocative S. Mark Heim places the diversity of the salvations offered by different religious traditions at the center of reflection on the theology of religions. Members of one tradition can recognize legitimate and genuine values in the very different ideals of another path while continuing to regard their own tradition as normative and definitive. Metaphysically, Heim argues, there is no reason to assume that these diverse religious fulfillments could not continue eschatologically in the next world as well. We can imagine an afterlife in which a Buddhist would experience nirvana and a Christian would experience communion with the triune God. Each would regard the other's salvation as penultimate, but nonetheless as real, good and distinct from his own fulfillment.

The insistence on taking seriously the different goals of religions is the centerpiece of Heim's effort to advance the debate in the theology of religions. In recent years most discussions have focused on the typology of attitudes toward other religions that Alan Race proposed in 1992: exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. While Christian exclusivists insist that salvation is offered only to Christians, inclusivists allow that faithful Muslims or Hindus can go to heaven because they are included in the redemption of Christ. Pluralists, on the other hand, acknowledge that people can be saved through a wide variety of religious traditions without being included in the work of any single religion or savior. The debates have mostly raged between inclusivists and pluralists, but practitioners have increasingly become dissatisfied with the terms themselves and the restricted range of options they present. Heim charges that most parties to this discussion have assumed erroneously that one religious fulfillment awaits devout practitioners of all different paths.

The first part of this work is a cogent critique of the major representatives of pluralistic positions, especially John Hick, Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Paul Knitter. Heim charges that "the most insistent voices calling for the affirmation of religious pluralism seem equally insistent in denying that, in properly religious terms, there is or should be any fundamental diversity at all." If all religious paths lead to the same salvation, there is no reason for accepting one religion rather than another, and the concrete specifications of different traditions lose their importance and interest. Most pluralistic theologies of religion "relegate specific individual elements in a tradition and its concrete historical texture to secondary status."

Moreover, pluralistic theologies of religion have no contribution of their own to make to existing dialogues that search for religious knowledge, spirituality and social justice. Pluralists seek to abstract from particularity in shaping a metatheory of religions; but the premises of the modem Western critique of religion inevitably shape the principles of the pluralists, leaving them closer to inclusivist and even exclusivist positions than they acknowledge.

At times Heim may exaggerate the onesidedness of those he criticizes and thereby also overstate the differences between their positions and his own. His criticism of Hick is the most successful. Knitter, though the object of vigorous critique, has expressed his "essential agreement" with Heim's proposal (see One Earth Many Religions: Multifaith Dialogue and Global Responsibility).

In the book's second part Heim proposes an alternative option which affirms both the finality of Christ and the validity of other religious paths. This position, which he variously calls pluralistic inclusivism or inclusivistic pluralism or orientational pluralism, claims to hold together the apparently competing values of dialogue and witness. To demonstrate the coherence of acknowledging a legitimate. plurality of conflicting, perspectives, Heim draws upon the orientational pluralism of philosopher Nicholas Rescher, who has sought to chart a path among the continuing debates of philosophers.

Heim is persuasive in seeking to balance fidelity to his own tradition with openness to the legitimacy of other perspectives. Nonetheless, questions remain about the coherence of the result, especially concerning eschatological pluralism. Left to the sideline, for example, is the question of reincarnation. Would those who have followed paths based on the assumption of reincarnation return? Would a Tibetan Buddhist go through the process described in The Book of the Dead, while a Catholic would encounter the world of Dante's Divine Comedy? What would become of those who practice a religious tradition while remaining skeptical and suspending judgment concerning the afterlife? Would their judgment continue to be suspended? Despite the questions that remain, this is an important contribution to the debate.